Wonder Woman

Blood n’ Wonder

Wonder Woman
2017 USA/China/Hong Kong
Directed by Patty Jenkins  
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very slight hints at spoilers.

I was actually quite apprehensive about going to see the latest of the DC superpowers movies. Not half as much as anxious as I am about seeing what looks like quite a dreadful attempt to put the Justice League of America on screen later in the year but certainly, given the last three films by the studio... the terrible Man Of Steel (reviewed here), the not too terrible Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice (reviewed here) and the passable but superfluous Suicide Squad (reviewed here)... were all much less than great movies, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to how the studio might screw up Wonder Woman. As it turns out... I needn’t have worried. This movie is easily the best movie they’ve put out in the last five years and even towers above a fair few of the Marvel movies released during the same period.

Wonder Woman made her first appearance in comics in 1941, which is a time period a bit further in the future to the setting of the majority of this movie. For some reason the writers here decided to take her out of her original World War Two setting and instead go back to the First World War. I’m not complaining though... it works really well for the movie. She was created by psychologist William Moulton Marston, who invented one of the key components in what is commonly known as the ‘lie detector’. He also tended to inject the stories with a lot of oblique references to what we know these days as BDSM (which may mean he was a lifestyle practitioner himself... I don’t know) and so if you ever wondered where he got the idea that Wonder Woman would utilise a magic golden ‘rope of truth’ with which she could tie up unsuspecting captives and compel them not to lie... well there you go.

This film is pretty much pitch perfect and the director, Patty Jenkins, does an absolutely astonishing job here. Bookended by a scene set bang up to date with the recent DC movies, we first see Diana Prince (aka Wonder Woman aka Princess Diana of Themyscira) as she receives a gift from Bruce Wayne (although Ben Affleck is not present in the flesh in this movie). The gift is an old watch and the photograph of Wonder Woman standing with her allies in World War One which we first caught a glimpse of in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. I was pretty sure that photo would be making an appearance and its used here as the element which allows us into the movie length flashback of Diana’s exploits during World War One.

The film actually keeps the same kind of tone, visually, as the Batman Vs Superman movie (with lots of bleak colour palette) but this serves to highlight the times when stronger colours are suddenly used to good effect and it’s also very well used, as it was in that previous movie, in contrast to Wonder Woman’s magic lasso... the colours absolutely pop whenever it’s used in action.

Despite some reviews I heard where the pacing was criticised, I found the speediness of this movie to be pretty good and evenly paced throughout.

After the opening bookend we start with Diana as a child on her invisible island of Themyscira (or Paradise Island as it used to be known before a well known writer was let loose on one of the many revamps of the character some decades ago) and watch her grow up as an Amazon in training... preparing for the day the God of War will return to destroy humanity. We are presented with the... I’m sorry but this was such an obvious reveal from the start... so called ‘mystery’ of the ‘God killer’ and this is used later for pretty much the only moment in this wonderful film you might see coming. Soon the actresses playing the younger versions of the title character mature into lead actress Gal Gadot and she rescues the main male protagonist, Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine), when he accidentally pierces the veil which hides Themyscira from the outside world and also accidentally brings an army of death dealing German troops, hot on his tail, who kill many amazons before they are slaughtered themselves.

When Diana learns of the ‘war to end all wars’, as it was known before we stupidly had a second one to warrant the first with a numeric designation, she shuns the wishes of her mother and accompanies Steve to the outside world to see and destroy Ares, the God of War.

That’s the basic set up but let me say that, apart from the really obvious reveal of the ‘God killer’ towards the end of the movie, the film is so less formulaic than you would reasonably expect it to be and it also plays on the innate sexism of its audience - male and female alike - in one sequence by refusing to conform to having a certain fight scene between two characters when you are probably thinking, all the way through the movie due to the expectations of how these things are usually written, that it’s a pretty inevitable scene. Instead, the film actually managed to surprise me in regards to a reveal towards the end of the villain of the piece and, if you read my reviews regularly then you’ll already know that there’s nothing I like better in cinema than if it can actually catch me off guard and surprise me.

And it all looks so brilliant and, yep, the cast are fantastic, too.

Gal Gadot, as she did in Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice, absolutely nails Diana as a title hero you can believe in. Demonstrating a strength of character and also a sense of vulnerability and mental progression which matches the writing and rewards the viewer with a pitch perfect performance. She really is a great Wonder Woman and a worthy successor to Linda Carter in the good old 1970s TV show of the same name. I was really in awe of this performance and thought she brings a carefree but responsible attitude to the character. And luckily for DC, the supporting cast are also all great. Chris Pine probably puts in the best performance I’ve seen him do here. Lucy Davis as Etta is perhaps a little underused but shines whenever she is on screen. Elena Anaya, who was so good in Room In Rome (reviewed here) makes for a menacing presence as a German villainess, as does the always remarkable Danny Huston, playing her boss. It’s also good to see the Scottish well represented by the likes of Ewen Bremner and James Cosmo and especially great to see one of my all time favourite actors, the amazing David Thewlis, here too.

There’s a certain stylistic dynamism to a lot of the scenes and, although there were a lot of slow motion scenes which were a little distracting, I can see why director Patty Jenkins chose to use these and, overall, I think she’s done a fantastic job here, giving the modern DC cinematic universe their most credible and polished film to date. There was one shot which did puzzle me but I think I’ve maybe worked out why she did it now. I’ve seen other directors do similar things but she only does this once in the movie and so it kind of stuck out a little. There’s a scene where Steve Trevor suggests to Diana that she “follow the smoke” while he looks around to find a motorbike and then we follow her progress as she gallops off into action on a horse. For some reason, the shot is turned on its side and it looks really alien to what you would expect to see. The shot then cuts to a similar shot the right way up. It looks pretty odd and I don’t know whether the shot was actually shot at this angle or whether it was actually turned on its side during the edit. Looking at the overall effect, though, I’m guessing that the camera movements in the shots proceeding, coupled with the direction in which the bike which Trevor finds is pointing, meant that the director decided she wanted the next shot to follow through on the ‘right to left’ forward motion of the preceding shots and so used that version of the shot in the final movie to keep momentum going. Maybe it looked even more jarring if she cut a ‘right way up’ version directly in? Who knows? That’s my best guess on that one though.

As per usual, I have a couple of slight criticisms of the movie but they are very minor things, to be honest.

The first is that I thought that the film could have maybe had just a few more humorous one-liners in it. Sure, there’s humour in here but I just felt it could have been a little less poe faced on occasion. Although, of course, we are dealing with The Great War which is not something to be humorous about and, also, it feels like the current crop of DC movies almost have 'a lack of humour' written into their brand guidelines... so I’m not too fussed about and it works so well with less of that comic element in it anyway that I’m certainly not complaining.

The other thing, though, is the lack of blood. It’s the First World War. People are getting blown up in this movie, mutilated, dying in various horrible ways and even getting run through with a sword. And it’s all quite bloodless. I don’t blame the director for this. She probably well knows that she might have been fired if she didn’t deliver a film suitable for young children so the studio can get a bigger profit (and you just need to look at the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies to see how far this ridiculous predilection for grim violence with no blood to appease the censors can be taken) but I do feel that the gravitas of the war and the message that violence is a bad thing would have been better served by showing, just a little more, the direct consequences of that violence. The director does her bit by showing the mutilated bodies of the survivors to strike home the horror of war and Diana’s awakening to that horror but... it just felt unnecessarily bloodless is all. Like I said, though, we are unfortunately living in a social climate which makes those kinds of censorious decisions a necessary choice in an art form which can only thrive when commercial considerations are accommodated so... yeah, I guess the director does pretty well getting in what she is able to in this one.

Rupert Gregson-Williams score to the movie is serviceable but feels a little bland and unnoticeable in a lot of the movie... like it could have done with more textural contrast to make some of the cues stand out. However, at a couple of key points he, or whoever made the decision, does the right thing and brings in musical continuity by referencing Hans Zimmer’s Wonder Woman theme from Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice. The theme was already prominent in the various trailers for this movie and I’m glad the powers that be saw sense and used it here... he also goes with a full on rendition of this theme at the start of the end credit music so, you know, special shout out to DC for considering the musical continuity, finally. And at least this one has got a proper, physical CD release so there’s at least that. Having now listened to that CD release, I can  confirm that, as a stand alone listen away from the images, it’s really powerful and was maybe suffering a little in the movie from being slightly buried in the final sound mix in some points. There are some nicely subtle textural contrasts here... they just can't necessarily be heard amongst all the blood n' thunder of the final cut.

If you are a fan of superhero movies then Wonder Woman is absolutely unmissable. It feels like a completely epic cinematic spectacle and, well... that’s because it is. If you are not all that familiar with superhero movies, however... go see this one anyway. It doesn’t matter because it’s a pretty fine example of the current trends in cinematic art done almost perfectly and should be supported by all enthusiastic cinema goers. An all round positive recommendation from me for this one to pretty much everyone I know. Both Patty Jenkins and Gal Gadot deserve some serious recognition for this. Can’t wait to see what direction the sequel takes us. I’d personally like to see Wonder Woman in both the Second World War and the Vietnam War in future movies, maybe?

Anomalisa

New Lisa Life

Anomalisa
2015 USA
Directed by Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman
UK cinema release print.

Welcome to my very short review of Anomalisa, a film that I went into totally unprepared for... which is usually a good thing. I’d seen someone recommend it on Twitter and I liked two other films written by Charlie Kaufman... Being John Malkovich and Adaptation. All I knew about the film itself, however, is that it was not a children’s film and that it employed stop-motion animation in the pursuit of the story, as opposed to live action filming.

As it started, I realised my experience wouldn’t be a totally negative one, at any rate, because there is a line or two of dialogue referencing Darren McGavin as Kolchak - The Night Stalker... so I was pretty happy about that. Another thing that I was happy with, after about a quarter of an hour, was the dawning realisation that the main lead was being voiced by one of my favourite and much under-rated actors, David Thewlis. So this was all good. What I didn’t pick up on until I waited for the cast list at the end, however, was that the Lisa of the title, Anomalisa, was being voiced by one of my favourite actresses too... Jennifer Jason-Leigh... so this was all good.

Another point of note is that there are a large number of characters, many of them quite minor, appearing in the film but the entire voice cast of the movie is only three people in total. Of those three, Thewlis and Jason-Leigh only play one character each... which means all the rest of the characters in the movie, male and female, are voiced by another underrated actor, the original Francis Dollarhyde himself, Tom Noonan. So a curio of a movie and I would expect nothing less than that from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, to be honest.

However, that being said, I can’t say I was totally enthralled by the movie I saw, either.

The problem with the film for me comes not from the basic idea or the voice acting (the three are amazing, as you’d expect) and even, the ‘acting’ of the stop motion models is pretty convincing... you might even find yourself forgetting you are watching puppets at some points. The main problem for me was just that it was a little dull in places. It wasn’t because the story is quite down beat and depressing, dealing as it does with Michael (David Thewlis) who is staying in a hotel for a night before addressing an audience about the keys of customer service... I can handle downbeat just fine and often prefer that kind of movie over anything which feels false. It just didn’t really go into a totally unexpected realm until one nightmarish sequence when one of the characters turned out to be dreaming. I thought it was going to go full tilt into paranoia and fantasy at this point but... nope, it just came right back into the hum drum reality of the characters again, as Michael spends his evening having a kind of meltdown, one of the symptoms of which is his one night stand with the title character.

All that being said, however, despite my ambivalent attitude towards the on-screen shenanigans of the animated characters, I didn’t exactly hate it either and I was surprised to find the end of the movie had gone so quickly... the hour and a half of the screen time felt like a little over 40 minutes to me... so I must have been getting something out of it. Perhaps it’s my ability to easily put myself in the shoes of the central character which made the film a bit less lustrous in terms of plot or story content (not that I’m the biggest fan of story, either).

There is, obviously, much to recommend and admire in the film, though...

I’ve already mentioned the incredible voice talent but Kaufman’s regular composer of choice, Carter Burwell, provides an appropriate if, not entirely, memorable score... at least in the context of its mix in the movie itself. It's the craftsmanship of the models, however, which really stands out in this movie and, more importantly, the way their movements and mannerisms have been observed. Little throw away moments that people seem to exhibit in their day to day existence seem to be captured in the way the models move and react to both each other and their immediate environment. There’s a sex scene which, I’m reliably informed, was the longest thing to film and get right. It certainly shows it was laboured over because it’s a nicely observed sequence where humanity at both its best and worst comes together as two people try and capture their own personal lightning. It’s a nice moment in a film full of ‘moments’ but, ultimately, it brings no real peace to the main protagonist, Michael, and the next morning Tom Noonan’s voice is pitched against Jennifer Jason-Leighs saying the same lines simultaneously. This is a clear indication, as we are obviously experiencing things from Michael’s perceptions, that Lisa is maybe less standout and special in Michael’s world than he (or she) at first thought... which is a shame and one of many downbeats in the film which races towards an ending of... well not much closure. The only sequence in the movie where a kind of 'anti-closure' is given is the final scene of the film, which is the only scene in the movie not to feature Michael, as it happens.

Ultimately, I’m glad, as an observer of cinema, that I got the chance to see Anomalisa. It’s probably not going to set the world alight, I suspect, but it is interesting and shows us a juxtaposition of technique and content that, while not exactly new, is at least unusual and rarely glimpsed. Not something I would rush out to see again but fans of cinema might do well to at least take a little look at this exploration of humanity and, frankly, I want to see (and hear), David Thewlis in more lead roles. America seems to have really wasted his talent, in some ways.

Regression

Gone With The Mind

Regression
2015 Spain/Canada/USA
Directed by Alejandro Amenábar
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Yeah, spoilers all over this review. 

I wanted to see this movie because I trust the lead actor, Ethan Hawke, to make interesting choices when it comes down to films to star in and the premise of this one looked kinda interesting. I eventually ended up in the Empire cinema in Leicester Square but, it turns out, in the smallest screen possible. For the outrageous price of a tenner, I was watching the movie in a screen which only contained 23 seats, divided unevenly between three rows. I guess the manager made the right choice of screen size for this film though because, despite the fact that there really shouldn’t be any screens this size outside of someone’s living room (you definitely shouldn’t be charging more than 50p for the privilege in that kind of tight squeeze environment), I was the only person in that screen watching the film on a Saturday afternoon. I’m guessing Regression won’t be breaking box office records anytime soon.

I’ve only seen one other movie by Alejandro Amenábar and that was The Others... which disappointed me big time when it was released into cinemas because it had a so-called twist ending which I'd found pretty obvious. The one thing I took away from the experience was that the director had composed his own score, which wasn’t a bad one. Other than that, despite some good performances and atmospheres, that film left me kinda cold.

However, because of this experience, I was primed for Regression to have some kind of twist ending and so, as I watched the story unfold, my mind was turning to find out what was going on but... as the film progressed to the end of its running time, I began to realise that, not only wasn’t there any kind of twist to the film, there really wasn’t even anything actually happening at all. So if you don’t want the ending of this film spoiled... don’t read the next couple of paragraphs.

This film is purported to be based on real life events which, having watched it now, I can fully believe... given the lack of anything actually occurring. It also claims to be about a devil worshipping cult which is turning families against themselves and causing, in this particular case, a man to abuse his daughter, played by Emma Watson. It’s up to the main police detective protagonist Ethan Hawke to protect the girl and get to the bottom of the truth of the devil worshipping cult versus a case of child abuse... aided by the equally watchable David Thewlis as a psychiatrist who specialises in hypnotic regression, whom Hawke calls in to help with the investigation. All three of these, plus their supporting cast, are turning in nicely sound performances but, I felt, both the story and the shot design lets them down big time.

The truth is... not only is there no devil worshipping cult... there’s no actual crime either. It’s all just hysteria created by outside influences on the mind and, as possibly hinted, false memories created by the hypnotic regression sessions intended to find the truth. So, despite the fact that there are some reasonable attempts at scary sequences where Hawke believes he is possibly being drugged and forced to take part in demonic rituals involving the slaughter and consumption of babies... it’s actually him just having nightmares and there’s really nothing much going on. So I guess, in some way, there is actually a twist ending to the movie... in that there’s just “nothing to see here... move along”.

To be fair, the actors do their best to capture the tensions and signs of hysteria that they are all thinking themselves into and you could say that there’s a parallel somewhere in this movie for the ‘Salem Witch Trials... or at least the version of them popularised by Arthur Miller in his play The Crucible. It just feels like by the end of the movie, metaphorically, everybody’s been dying to see what’s in an attractively decorated paper bag and, when someone opens it, they find the bag is completely empty, which explains why the bag is light enough to be able to fly around from one direction to another as any particular breeze takes it... there’s just not enough weight in it to keep it anchored. And in that analogy... the bag is the storyline. Which is a shame because, when you get a group of actors such as these, it almost feels like its a waste of their time to have participated in this one. Not a popular thing to say, to be sure, but this movie did leave me disappointed and less than entertained.

The editing combined with the camera work seemed a little less than remarkable too. There were some tracking shots and examples of moving camera but I did notice that this film did seem to be more comprised of static (or almost static) camera set ups which would play out for a few seconds before cutting to another shot and then returning to roughly the same angle as the first... but at a slightly different zoom or distance from the camera. There wasn’t as much use of master shots and moving the camera through them as I would have expected, to be honest, and the way in which various scenes were treated was obviously enough for my conscious mind to take note... the dullness of the shooting style did bring me out of the movie a bit, I think.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Regression. It’s a film which seems to be mostly about performance in terms of having anything good going for it. The score by Roque Banos is okay and appropriate to the images but it didn’t strike me in the same special way that this composer’s Herrmannesque scores for The Machinist or The Oxford Murders (reviewed here) did, to be honest. It might be that it stands up better away from the film but I need to hear some album samples from this one, I think, before I’ll commit to a purchase. All in all, though, it’s not a film I’d recommend to any of my friends and certainly not one I’d bother to repeat watch anytime soon. If you want to go see a twisty turny horror film then I’d advise against this one because it just goes nowhere, ultimately and, even the journey to the ending, which is often as important, is less than interesting. Hardcore fans of the actors and actresses involved in this film may get something out of it but, honestly, it’s nothing special.

The Zero Theorem

Zero Wolf

The Zero Theorem
2013 USA/Romania/UK
Directed by Terry Gilliam
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Kind of a big spoiler in here about the end of the movie, depending on your point of view.

Terry Gilliam has always been a bit of a directing hero for me... so I wish I didn’t feel like I have to write this review and make the kind of judgement I do on it. I alluded to my experiences with The Zero Theorem in my previous review of Under The Skin (reviewed here) and I’m afraid I had less than a good time with this one.

I find his films, themselves, a bit hit or miss but, ultimately, Gilliam is an individual artist (yeah, he’s an auteur, for sure), mostly uncompromising (as far as I know) and always interesting. My favourites of his films: Brazil, The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen, The Fisher King and 12 Monkeys are all pretty incredible in their own way, each of them either a major or minor masterpiece, as far as I’m concerned. And The Zero Theorem is no different in its inventiveness than any of these four movies... which is why it annoys me to deliver a harsher call on this one.

The Zero Theorem has a hell of a lot going for it, though. So let’s get all the good stuff out of the way first.

For starters, it’s got absolutely kick ass actors including a bald Christoph Waltz, who is always watchable (even in The Green Hornet, reviewed here) and, another of my personal favourites, David Thewlis, playing the line manager at the company Waltz works for. All the supporting actors were pretty cool too and, added to this, you have an intricate and art directed to death, dystopian world created for them to all work in. An alternative version of our world perhaps, in the future, where advertising and hard edged consumerism has taken over and trivialised the human existence even more... like we all knew it would. We should have heeded Philip K. Dick when we had the chance. It is a highly detailed clutter of a world with a slightly unreal feeling to it (which I’m sure is deliberate) and a sense of chaos which is directly reflective of the times we are now, unfortunately, living in... and it all works really well.

Conceptually this film is, still, a bit of a masterwork. The “crunching” which is the sole purpose of our hero Qohen Leth (played by Waltz) and his co-workers, is a job which is laboured with game-pads, bicycles, computer screens and software, which comes in a liquid form, to the extent that the actual understanding of the mechanism of the work the people in the film do is just a notch beyond our comprehension... we just see it as a video game analogy of something approximating hard work but conceived in a way which is alien to our way of thinking at present. Which of course further enhances the far flung future aspect of the environment that the film’s main protagonist inhabits.

After an encounter at a party in which Qohen finally gets to talk to the elusive “management”, he is reassigned to work from home on a concept called The Zero Theorem. His goal, as we perceive it, is to guide blocks of formula into walls in a virtual landscape to prove the idea that “Zero must equal 100%” without destroying the integrity of the formula and causing all the formula built structures in the framework to come tumbling down, which they inevitably do... frequently. This is a special project which has already, over the years, seen many people burn-out while trying to solve it and, by the end of the film, when Qohen has abandoned the girl who he loves for his all important work and the promise of his delusion of a “life affirming” phone call, we find that Qohen really is no different from all the others who have tried to solve this apparently unsolvable puzzle. Or is he? With his final descent we are, perhaps, left with the assumption that, ulitimately, life really does have no meaning and that Zero, does indeed, equal 100%. In fact, by the end of the film, I’m not even sure the main character even ever existed as anything more than a virtual reality within the memory banks of a computer where he thinks he works... nor even that the computer, indeed, like anything in the movie, even exists.

Who is doing the asking, for example? Qohen’s boss or God? And is there a difference? And does it matter? The simple answer, perhaps, is no... who cares?

And therein lies my main problem with the movie... I don’t care and, honestly, if Gilliam is trying to prove that either life has no purpose, or at least that life has no purpose that man is able to comprehend, then thanks but... like most people I imagine... I already knew that. Life is pretty meaningless and seems to be about chasing bits of money which are completely unimportant.

Now I’ve often said on here that the end of a movie doesn’t really matter if the build up is good. Like sex, a good tease as a set up doesn’t mean you have to finish in the most traditional way if you don’t want to... and I still say that. The Zero Theorem is nothing, if not one long tease of a movie. But something left me feeling underwhelmed with it... it’s like I was wrestling and hanging on with complex issues dressed up as fun but it felt like there was too much melting ice cream and nothing, really, of the main meal... to mix my metaphors somewhat. It just felt like empty window dressing to get us to a point where the writer of the movie says... “Hey, you know what? It’s been fun but I’m going now. Please lock up on your way out.”

It felt anti-climactic and, although I’m a big fan of movies crammed with exploratory ideas, and this film has them in spades, I was just left unimpressed and, worse, uninterested in the events on screen. Tellingly, this is not the kind of movie I could watch as a repeat viewing... which seems a strange thing for me to be saying about a Terry Gilliam film but, there you have it, I’ve said it and I’m disappointed by that but I have to be honest about this stuff.

I wouldn’t recommend this movie to anyone who isn’t either a) a big fan of Gilliam’s work (which I am) or b) a big fan of movies with a lot of cluttered concepts in them (which I also am)... and even then, it would be to see it as a bit of a talking point rather than something I would really urge that kind of person to look at as a good time at the movies. This one gets a big zero from me, I’m sorry to say, but it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things... I’m still looking forward to seeing the next Terry Gilliam movie already because, after all, when he’s good he’s great but when he’s bad... he’s interesting.

RED 2

Mirren Image

RED 2
2013 USA/France/Canada
Directed by Dean Parisot
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Yeah, there’ll be some slightly retired 
spoilers resurfacing here and coming up for action.

The original RED from two years ago is one of those movies that, at the time, pretty much charmed the pants off of everyone with it’s mixture of bullet spitting mayhem and senior citizens kicking all the fine young assassins’ and agents’ collective backsides all over the place. It’s the kind of film that begs a sequel but, since the movie really hit the mark and did mostly everything right, it's not necessarily something you want them to really produce, just in case they manage to screw it up the second time around.

Well, I’m here to tell you now... they didn’t screw it up.

In case you didn’t know, the acronym R.E.D stands for “Retired Extremely Dangerous” and it tells the story of a bunch of ex-government killing machines who are trying to enjoy their retirement (for the most part) but who find themselves accidentally embroiled in extremely sensitive, extremely dangerous missions... with the young “civilian” girlfriend of the character played by Bruce Willis tagging along and having a blast in the process. It’s based on a DC comic written by Warren Ellis, one of the better writers in the field, and this gives the first film, at least, a real sense of strong story mixed in with the action and the comedy.

I don’t know if RED 2 is actually based on any of the comics but, I have to say, that the second movie continues to add a lot of fun and, more importantly, heart warming moments in between the various fast-paced and, quite spectacular (if ludicrous in some cases... do people really just walk away from a helicopter crash?) action sequences and, I’m happy to say that most of the characters are back from the first film. Notable exceptions are Morgan Freeman (and if you’ve seen the first movie you’ll know why), Karl Urban (who was brilliant in the first one as the “bad guy’s killer pawn redeems himself” character) and, sadly, Ernest Borgnine. Now Ernest Borgnine is a real shame because I know he loved appearing in his brief role in the first movie and I remember reading an interview with him around the time of the first film’s release a couple of years ago where he said he really wanted to do another one and have a bigger part in it. Well, apparently, a slightly more prominent part was written for him for a scene in this second one but, alas, he died a few weeks before he came to shoot it. Which is a great pity... I’m sure he would have had a blast.

However, most the main actors from the first movie are all back. So the line up for this one is Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox. Also along for the ride this time around are Catherine Zeta Jones, Anthony Hopkins (yeah, that’s right... this movie has two actors who have played Hannibal Lektor in it), David Thewlis (who is a sadly neglected genius of an actor) and Byung-hun Lee (who I’ve seen in a fair few Asian films over the last few years).

And guess what? It’s a cliché perhaps but, with a cast this good, it’s going to be hard to fail with this kind of ensemble unless the writing is really bad... and the writing is really quite good, for the most part, so you’re in good hands. Oh, okay, yeah... it has some cheap sci-fi inventions made up just to annhilate certain plot weaknesses (hello, I’m looking at you “red mercury”) but what film doesn’t these days. And it doesn’t matter too much because this film is one where, yes the action sequences are typical modern Hollywood spectacle... but the plot and dialogue which glue these little set pieces together are just as inspired and fun to watch and it feels like an appropriate mix, for the most part.

There’s a kind of twist which, I suspect, most people will see coming (even from the trailer and casting if they think things through) but it doesn’t really matter because, as well as being about a team of not-so-past-it wrinklies kicking ass, it’s also got the brilliant chemistry between Willis, Parker and Malkovich which helped make the first film such a blast. And of course, everyone is getting in on the act of advising Willis on his love life and how to not be so controlling with his girlfriend etc... it’s really humorous stuff. Oh and, yeah, it has the big thing which made the first movie such compulsive viewing...

Helen Mirren firing off machine guns.

All kinds of guns and weapons of lethal destruction, in fact, in what amounts to a slight expansion of her role and importance in the film compared to the first, I think. Which means, of course, you have a few moments where the relationship between Mirren and Brian Cox is, well, hilarious (He likes the way her toes curl up just before she pulls the trigger when she’s on sniper duty, it would seem). Unfortunately, my one criticism of the first movie (as reviewed here), still stands in this one. We want to see a “naked” Helen Mirren shooting off her machine guns... oh well... maybe they’ll do that for the third one which, I understand, has just been assigned writers.

The film does try to repeat, somewhat, the formula of the first film, it’s true... there’s even a “character realises he’s wrong and decides to help the team instead of killing them” moment again from one of the ensemble cast... you’ll probably see that one coming way before it happens too, I suspect. But it really doesn’t matter too much because the formula of the first movie was just perfect and this one really doesn’t drop the ball with it either.

It’s one up on a few fair modern action films too, in that the editing is pretty good and you won’t suddenly find yourself getting lost in the action like you might have in... um... I dunno... Pacific Rim maybe (reviewed here), as an example. This is good and the action and humour/drama of the thing is ably supported with a strong score by Alan Silvestri, who I find a bit hit an miss but he does a terrific job here. It also continues the inventive “comic book” location transitions from the first movie... and this movie does a lot of globe hopping I can tell you. Sometimes back to the same countries (which makes shooting these things out of sequence a good way to save money and add value by changing locales at frequent intervals) but that’s okay... it all serves the story and these transitions are funky.

And that’s my short review of RED 2 done, I believe. If you liked the first one and want to see a sequel which, remarkably, wont sour the sweet taste of the original (as so many of them can) then go see this movie. And if you haven’t seen the first one... well, having the background of the first one is better but you can pretty much gather the relationships between the characters as it goes along... and besides, it has Helen Mirren causing mass destruction... so go see it anyway!

Omen Holiday

The Omen Pentology Box

666 Warning of the Beast: This article contains devilish spoilers.

Ok... It’s been literally decades since I saw the original Omen trilogy and I’d never seen Omen 4 or the remake released on the 6th day of the 6th month of 2006... and what with every horror movie blogger on twitter going nuts about Halloween I thought I might as well jump on the rickety band-hearse and have a go at a horror movie blog too. Although I do feel it a bit strange doing something for such a dubious occasion because the truth is, when I was a child growing up in the late 60s/early 70s, Halloween was never really an event over here in the UK... in fact it barely got a mention and certainly we weren’t plagued by trick or treaters or encouraged to watch various horror movies to celebrate said non-event. I wasn’t even allowed to frolic naked in the woods and plunge my dagger bloodthirstily into an undefiled virgin as a sign of my willingness to sacrifice the pure in heart for a prosperous and everlasting life... let alone dress up in a dodgy costume and threaten people for sweets in a kind of ritualistic, monster endorsed protection scam. In fact, the only real reference I saw to Halloween each year was when the Sunday edition of The Observer would drop through our door and I would turn to that “special” page near the back and read about Linus and Sally waiting in the pumpkin patch all night, looking out for The Great Pumpkin.

But as usual, I digress.

So anyway... I racked my brains with what to watch and I remembered I’d not seen all The Omen movies and figured out, as an extra special treat, I’d watch them all back to back on the weekend before Halloween so I can write some kind of long and winding and hopefully, at least, marginally entertaining review of them which I can try to complete so people can read it in time for Halloween if they so desire. But the real clincher for this deal, the real deciding factor on this was... oh, bugger it. Alright, here’s what happened. I went to the Camden Film Fair and saw a copy of the 6 disc set of the five Omen films (The Omen Pentology) going for a measly five quid... so I bought the darn things and figured they’d be good blog material for this bizarre Halloween thingy everybody seems to be making a fuss about again this year... okay? You dragged it out of me.

But just so you don’t feel irritated about my incredible cheapness at having purchased all these films for just a miserable £5, please realise that I stuck through watching all five of these movies as the quality of them deteriorated exponentially as the series progressed. Back-to-back with an overnight sleep after three of them for the pretension of preserving my own sanity. So it’s not like I didn’t do some work here! Anyone who’s seen Omen 4 will probably know what I’m talking about here and hopefully sympathise. Anyway, on with the show...

The Omen 1976 US

Directed by Richard Donner

20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

I remember seeing this on TV when I was 10 or 11 and absolutely loving it. 30 or more years later... I still think this is a great movie and I can see why it had such an impact and garnered such box office success on its release. Mind you, if it hadn’t been a hit, we’d have never have had to sit through Omen 4... um... no, still glad they made the first one, regardless of the consequences of their success.

If you don’t know the story of The Omen then you probably aren’t into horror films and you should probably be reading one of my other blogposts instead of this lengthy piece. Let me just do a quick run down of major iconic elements for those of you who haven’t indulged... just the basics...

Okay...baby killed and swapped for Jackal’s spawn born at time of baby’s death. Son of the devil goes home with new British ambassador and called Damian. He has a 666 birthmark on his head. People know son of satan is around and want him dead. People die in devilish and cunning ways. British ambassador realises truth and goes to kill son but is shot dead by police instead. Damian is adopted and rises to power to be Devil born from politics to destroy the world... yada, yada, yada.

Okay, I’ve been trying to pick apart some of the reasons why the very first Omen movie worked so well whereas the sequels... really didn’t, and I’ve come up with the fact that The Omen has a kind of mystery element to it. The great actor David Warner plays a photo-journalist and his snaps of people show distortions on the prints which predict their violent deaths. Gregory Peck plays Ambassador Thorn and when he teams up with David Warner to find out just what the heck the violently deceased priest played by Doctor Who legend Patrick Troughton has been going on about, you are really rooting for the characters and willing them to put all the supernatural jigsaw puzzle pieces together in their heads. I remember as a child being absolutely on the edge of my seat when each new photograph and clue was followed up. This is a dimension the sequels are sadly lacking but, to be fair to them, you already know all the answers by the end of the first movie so you really can’t introduce much of a mystery element into the material after that point.

It’s a really well written (by David Seltzer) little horror movie and the performances are, quite frankly, all superb and you’ve got a brilliant cast so it’s really not surprising. In addition to the three acting legends I mentioned in my last paragraph, you also have Lee Remick, Billie Whitelaw and Leo McKern added to the mix. Seriously folks, on an acting level this film cannot fail.

So good script, good acting. What else?

Well, something I never noticed the last time I watched it (probably because in the late 70s they would have been showing it in ‘orrible pan and scan on TV) is the composition of the shots in this first one. Donner’s a great director but I don’t know much about his key visual signatures... but what I did notice in this one is that nearly all the shot compositions in this film (apart from one where Damian runs into Lee Remick on his bike and terminates her pregnancy by knocking her to a long fall from a flight or two up) are pitched to the right of the screen. Almost everything runs in perspective to the right of the shot... an effect which works consistently and well throughout the running time. I’d be really interested, time permitting, in going back to some other Donner films to see if they’re put together in the same way. Because this one just works so well.

And then of course there’s the music! The late, great Jerry Goldsmith composed a lot of movie scores in his long career and received his fair share of Oscar nominations over the years... and rightly so. His score for The Omen is phenomenal and influential (in the worst way) and it’s the one time in his entire career that he actually won that Oscar. There’s a great and sweeping Hollywood love theme but the most remembered sequences are those where he’s got a choir chanting latin lyrics, often set to a jaunty rhythm which maybe shouldn’t quite work... but actually does work really well. It’s unsettling and breeds anxiety in the viewer and really serves the film well. It’s not non-stop like scores these days... in fact it’s quite a short score. Jerry Goldsmith was a master of spotting soundtracks (spotting is the art of choosing which sequences of a film to write a musical cue for and which to leave unscored) and it really shows in this film with great, long sequences left unscored, allowing for the dread filled sequences to carry a greater impact on the viewer.

I said Jerry’s score was influential in the worst way and that’s because, every time now somebody want’s to do a parody of The Omen they use Orff’s O Fortuna from Carmina Burana... and the reason they do this is, for some reason, people think this is the music used in The Omen. No... it’s not even close in structure, melody or tempo and I’m always left wondering who it is that thinks Jerry’s score is even remotely similar to Orff’s signature piece. I’ve even seen Classics meet the Movies style albums include the Orff piece and claim it’s from The Omen on the track listings... madness!

Goldsmith’s score would exert a very long reaching influence on all of the subsequent movies in the series, even the ones he didn’t score, as you will see later.

Okay... so if you’re a fan of horror movies, The Omen is a great movie to sink your Halloween fangs into. Which brings us to...

Damien: Omen 2 1978 US

Directed by Don Taylor and Mike Hodges

20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

The one really good thing about Damien: Omen 2 hits you like a ton of bricks as soon as the movie starts... and that is Mr. Goldsmiths follow up score. If The Omen score got him the Oscar, this movie should have got him a knighthood. It’s even better than the score to the first movie... it’s like The Omen on viagra. Fast syncopated rhythms mixed with haunting and often aggressive vocal chanting... it pounds your musical soul like a strong tide pounds away at a cliffs edge. Truly beautiful and sometimes disturbing music. The vocal motif for the “crow” which is one of Damian’s familiars, is true genius.

That being said... there’s a lot not to like about this movie. As that pounding masterpiece seduces it’s way into your eardrums, we join Leo McKern as he races to join Ian Hendry to get the seven daggers which will kill Damien. These are the daggers that he gave good ol’ Gregory Peck to do the deed with and it was established in the first film that you need all seven to kill off Damian... the first to extinguish the life and then the other six radiating out from the first piercing to destroy the soul... take note of that because they really screw that up in the next movie. My whole problem with this opening sequence where McKern and Hendry get buried alive in sand is that this little prologue to the main narrative is supposed to take place only about 8 weeks after the end of the first movie... but Leo McKerns hair and make up look very little like they did in the first one. Seriously, the continuity between how he looked in the first one and how he looks in the second one is seriously screwed.

After this sequence the film jumps several years in time... Damian is in Military Academy and is now living with Gregory Peck's brother as his new father figure, played by William Hurt. This film is all about Damian discovering his demonic inheritance and killing all those who get in the way of his family fortune of wealth and political power. Where he had Billie Whitelaw playing his “devil’s protector” figure Mrs. Blaylock in the first one... and a really big dog, here we have a young Lance Henricksen (Yay! Frank Black’s in an Omen movie) playing a similar role along with a crow and... you know... a really big dog. Unfortunately, having Lance Henrickson in this movie really does nothing to save it.

The first film is notable for it’s violent deaths presented as gory set pieces... but they were well paced and made sense and held interest in the context of the growing mystery of the photographs. Unfortunately, this film seems to be trying to give you even gorier or nasty deaths (woman with eyes pecked out and run over by truck, guy cut in half by lift cable etc.) without really having any need or emotional context to them. It really does seem to be a few set pieces hung together for the sake of having them in there and this really doesn’t serve the film very well... which is appropriate because there is no real story, the shot set-ups are fairly run of the mill (to these tired old eyes anyway) and it’s just, plainly speaking, an uninteresting watch.

Which is a shame but, seriously, other than the music it’s a dull watch... just not as dull as...

The Final Conflict: Omen 3 1981 US

Directed by Graham Baker

20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

Yeah this one’s terrible. Damian is all grown up now and, like his pseudo-father, becomes the British Ambassador based in London. He manages this by using his demonic ways to influence the death of the current Brit Ambassador who sets a press conference so that when the door to his office is opened, a shotgun blows his head off. I was quite surprised to see that his secretary was played by a young, uncredited Ruby Wax and it is she, herself, who inadvertently pulls the trigger on her boss.

Actually this movie could have done with a few more sequences like this in it. You remember I said the last film seemed like gory set pieces written in and glued together for the sake of having them? Well this film has hardly any of those kinds of scenes and you really do miss them. The Final Conflict: Omen 3 is a dull plod of a movie which deals with Damien’s King Herrod-like reaction to stop the son of God being born into the world... but the pay off to that... the scene where you want to see the Devil and God battling in evil confrontation... a final conflict, if you will, just doesn’t happen. At the end of the movie Damien just gets stabbed with one of those knives and dies. Good triumphs over evil and the credits roll.

And about those daggers people. A sect of good guys (one played by Tony Vogel of Dick Barton fame) who are there to make sure the son of God is born and Damian fails are each given one of the daggers so each can make their own assassination attempt on Damien... but we know from the previous two films that this just isn’t going to work, right? You need all seven to get the job done, remember? This just best serves to demonstrate just how poor the writing has gotten by the time of the third movie... which is a shame because that very first movie was really something special.

By this time, the familiar trap of recurring horror films with lengthy character arcs has happened and a lesson could be learned from watching Universal’s old Mummy series in regards to this. If these first three films are supposed to take place over the space of, say, 20 years... how come they are always set in the time contemporary to their release? What’s up with that?

And I’ll bet you can guess what the one good thing about this movie was now. Yep! Goldsmith’s score is a far cry from his scores to the previous two pictures in tone and style but it’s still a corker of a score. I think it’s on a level with some of his work on Poltergeist and maybe the Vger music from his Star Trek: The Motion Picture score. Whatever the style is though... it’s another winner and I think the differences occur because there is a sense of hope and lightness all the way through this one which wasn’t really prevalent in the first two movies. This was the last Omen film Goldsmith specifically scored but... well hold on, let’s not get ahead of myself...

The Omen 4: Awakenings 1991 US

Directed by Jorge Montesi, Dominique Othenin-Girard

20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

Omen 4: Awakenings is a made-for-TV movie which had limited success and was, I believe, released theatrically in some countries... although I don’t remember it ever getting any kind of broadcast or screening over here in this country.

Or, to put it another way...

Omen 4 is a preposterous movie which really tries hard in places and attempts to establish a bond with the audience through some of the characters but ultimately fails on many levels.

The Devil’s son is replaced in this one with the Devil’s daughter and the main female protagonist who plays the mother who adopts this child at birth, is played by none other than Faye Grant, who older readers may remember played the charismatic resistance leader in the original miniseries and follow up series of V on TV. But even she cannot save this awful excuse for an entry into the Omen series.

And the one thing which totally does more to kill it than anything else is Jonathan Sheffer’s unbelievably inappropriate score. Seriously... it needs to be heard in the context of the movie to be believed but I bet it makes a great stand alone listen for fans of Carl Stalling’s work. Almost the entire show is Mickey Mousing it (Mickey Mousing is the term for music which is designed to catch and highlight on-screen action) and the net effect is that you have this seriously comic score playing all over the damned thing and making it sound like a Tom and Jerry cartoon (and I have nothing against Tom and Jerry music, have a CD soundtrack of that stuff myself). It’s like the studio executives just said to the composer, “This stuff is too dark for us. Can you lighten the mood somewhat so we can sell more Hallmark moments during the commercial breaks please?”

And when they’re not playing Mr. Sheffer’s score, they track in a bunch of cues “needledrop” style from Jerry Goldsmith’s first and third Omen scores... sometimes with a little overdub of electronics by Sheffer on top. This method of scoring reaches it’s laugh out loud funniest moment when a private detective is about to be demonically killed and he’s having hallucinations in the street. He looks up to see a group of hooded pseudo monks lip synching the latin chants from Goldsmith’s Omen score and, quite frankly, I was bouncing with laughter at this point. What the f---? Is this supposed to be a comedy?

At the end of this shambling, comic zombie of a movie, Faye Grant is demonically influenced to shoot herself through the head and the devil’s spawn is waiting in the wings to return in a further sequel which, thankfully, the studios never bothered to inflict on us. Good for them... but that wasn’t the end of the Omen’s diabolical grasp for the cinema box office...

The Omen 2006 US

Directed by John Moore

20th Century Fox DVD Region 2

On the sixth day of the sixth month of 2006, Fox released their re-make of the original film. Now I almost went to the cinema to see this because, although I mostly tend to steer away from modern remakes, the initial teaser trailer for this one showing a young Damian playing on the swings who then turns slightly to look dead into camera was quite eerily done and shows a certain cinematic competence (it’s a shame in a way that this little sequence isn’t in the final movie). I can’t quite remember why I never got to get to the last showing before it left my local cinema but I suspect sex was involved somewhere along the line. I could either go to the last screening of The Omen or travel many miles to my (then) girlfriends house and have a weekend full of bizarre, demonic sex... as usual in these things, sex won out on that particular occasion.

Thing is though... it’s not a bad remake now I come to look at it... it’s just completely unnecessary. Here’s the stats on it...

1. David Seltzer, who wrote the original movie back in 1976, is once again credited as being the writer on this one. That’s because the script on this one is almost, word for word with the odd exception here and there (possibly improvised or changed around by an actor) identical to the original one from the first movie. It’s framed from different angles and some of the locales are changed but, ultimately, it’s like watching a new movie run off from the exact same template. One or two differences like a zoo replacing Windsor Safari Park (from the first one) and a slightly different, but no less grim decapitation scene are changes but other than that it’s pretty much a total rerun.

2. The actors in this are major talents and all do a great job except... they are not as great or legendary as the original cast who you are always going to compare them to. You have Liev Schreiber playing Gregory Peck, Julia Stiles playing Lee Remick, Peter Postlethwaite playing Patrick Troughton, David Thewliss (one of my favourite actors) playing David Warner, Mia Farrow playing Billie Whitelaw and Michael Gambon playing Leo McKern. They’re all seriously good too... just not as serious as the originals.

3. Marco Beltrami’s score is excellent but is typical of modern horror scoring. He’s favoured leaving any choral chanting behind and going for sinister and atonal with the odd bit of rhythm and melody... and it works really well. However... why go to that effort when you are going to have six piano notes in one scene, where Liev Shreiber sees the news story of the skewered priest, lifted directly from the sinister lead into Goldsmith’s original main theme, which was a piano rendition of the love theme The Piper Dreams? No other musical reference in there except during the end credits where the original, latin chanting Ave Santani theme is briefly rearranged about halfway through. Why? Do you really want people to compare one of the greatest scores ever written for an American horror movie with a piece of 21st century horror scoring. Jerry always wins... he has the devil on his side.

OK, so it was worth it for me to see this remake to just see what kind of spin David Thewlis was going to give to the David Warner character but ultimately... it really didn’t need to be redone. But I can see why they did it. Releasing it on 6/6/06 was a bit of a marketing opportunity that you can only waste once!

All in all, I quite enjoyed rewatching, in my own perverse way, these movies for my Halloween “celebration”. The first film will get a spin again in a year or two. And the second and third are tolerable for their tap-your-feet-along-video-jukebox-style appeal with Jerry’s golden scores. But ultimately I can’t recommend any of these movies bar that first one... but it’s a strong recommend for that first one if you’ve never scene it before. The way Richard Donner builds up tension and suspense is riveting.

Take a look... but keep one eye out for sharp, spiky, falling objects!