S + Ship Of Theseus

 







Margin
For Error

S
by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams
Canongate Books
ISBN: 9780857864772
incorporating
Ship Of Theseus by V. M. Straka
(Winged Shoe Press, New York, 1949)

S, by Doug Dorst and director J. J Abrams, is a curious and extremely interesting proposition of a book. You will only find the title of the book on the handsome slipcover... a big, black S spot varnished onto a black cover and a small seal of paper on which is printed other details such as the identity of the two authors. And then, as soon as you break this seal to pull the tome within from the slipcase, you are embarking on an adventure which, well it may not lead you to an easy resolution but it will certainly hold your interest throughout. The actual book you will find inside is not called S at all. It is Ship Of Theseus, the final work of a reclusive mystery man of an author called V. M. Straka. An author who very few people ever met or knew and who died falling, with torn pages from a manuscript in his pocket. As did, we are told, many people in real life who were possibly part of a faction of revolutionaries involved in bombings on behalf of a group called the S. Or possibly they were not but this is pertinent because it is one of the mysteries to be solved, not on the printed word on the page of Ship Of Theseus, but by the two people, Eric and Jen, who leave the book for each other in a safe place and explore the mysteries of the tome, with good purpose, to the point where their lives are in danger... and whose story you will read from the many notes in different coloured inks which they leave in the big, scholar’s margins of the book.

And, you really do have to be careful how you open this one... and how you read it. Because the book itself is a deliberately distressed tome (distressed right back to 1949) and the two readers whose adventure you are sharing, don’t just leave various notes in all the margins as you watch them try to come closer to the hidden codes which Straka... and the woman who he loves but has never met, who is writing the English translation and leaving her own footnotes... as they unearth and hide in public the various injustices and crimes which the S were, possibly, fighting against. Not just notes, you see but loads of paraphernalia such as postcards, letters to each other or from various people locked into the Straka mystery, photographs, a code wheel (if you are cleverer than I as to where various clues about hidden codes in the book are hidden and what they say)... and even a wonderfully reproduced napkin on just the right kind of paper, where a map has been drawn by Eric to show Jen the secret ways in the tunnels under the University campus which houses the library where they leave this book for each other... to kickstart their own romance which does, it has to be said, have some parallels between Straka and his translator.

The story in Ship Of Theseus itself is really quite an abstract tale of a man called S, who doesn’t know who he is and spends many years in distorted time on the titular ship where he writes, stitches his own lips together with thread (as most of the crew do) and goes ashore in various towns to commits acts of assassination and terrorism... all the while trying to find out why he has been chosen for this life which he doesn’t understand and to find the woman who he thinks he loves... which is a metaphor again for the fictional Straka and his translator.

Of the handwritten (but obviously printed, quite convincingly on the yellowing paper of this dusty tome) notes from Jen and Eric... well, after a while you will realise that they are reading and re-reading to get more clues and ideas as to where they are going, in an effort to beat Eric’s ex-tutor in getting out a book unveiling the actual identity of V. M. Straka before Eric does the same. And each time they make another pass, the inks change colour so they can see the new notes to each other in the relevant places. Which is nice because you end up getting three parts of their story developing at the same time as you read the notes highlighting or starting from certain passages in the book from different points in their growing romantic relationship. It’s kinda cool.

And it has some really nice touches as you read through... not just the obvious Ship Of Theseus thought experiment which is actually highlighted as a metaphor in the book by the constant rebuilding of the ship over years. Such as a moment, which truly terrifies both readers, is when it turns out the little handwritten ‘S’ symbols, aping the ones that have started appearing... along with arson attacks... around campus and near Jen’s home, have not been drawn in the book by either one of them. And, of course, because the characters as represented by their notes to each other are scared by this, you as a reader become concerned too. It’s a lovely idea for a book but, all I will say is don’t read it when you are likely to doze off. I did this once and one of the many artefacts dropped out from the pages. Luckily it was one I’d already read but even then, it took me ten minutes or more to figure out which page it was supposed to be slotted into and only then because that specific artefact was referenced in Jen and Eric’s notes to each other (not all of them are).

My one real problem with the book is the ending. I liked the actual Ship Of Theseus tale well enough. It’s very much in the style of a piece of classical contemporary literature of the year in which the real writers purport it was written and it does have a definitive ending of sorts. My real problem was the conclusion of Jen and Eric’s tale. While that also has an ending, it doesn’t spell anything out for the reader and the central mysteries which spurred the collaboration of these two ‘reader characters’ are never really answered. Perhaps if I’d been clever enough to actually figure out the codes... left in the footnotes by the translator sometimes as small dots by some letters (it will take you a while to get your eye in on these) or the occasional raised letter... I may have been able to figure it out. I’m guessing not, actually but, you know... maybe.

Even though the ending of S was less a revelatory moment and more a celebration of two people finding love between the lines of an ‘old’ piece of literature... I have to say I really enjoyed the journey* and, as much of a cliché as it is to say it, the journey was much more the point of the thing, I feel, than the actual destination of either of the parallel stories depicted in the book. So, in spite of the end game of the book, I thoroughly enjoyed the telling of the tale and I would thoroughly recommend this one to my more literary friends who are maybe looking for something a little different to read, regardless of whether it has a more concrete resolution or not (and maybe some will see one where I did not... I may just have been losing IQ points by the end of my journey through the double narrative). So yeah, great looking book and a satisfying journey from start to finish. Liked this one a lot.

*and now I know what words like leptorrhine (The Shadow should know that one), fricative and panjandrum mean... although goodness knows if I will ever use any of them in a sentence ever. Or maybe, yeah, maybe I just did.

Star Wars Episode IX - The Rise Of Skywalker

Merry Sith Mass

Star Wars Episode IX -
The Rise Of Skywalker
2019 USA Directed by J. J. Abrams
UK cinema release print.

Warning: I’ve decided to write this with HUGE SPOILERS in it because I’d rather this review had a little more longevity to it, since my Star Wars ones do tend to get revisited by people a little more than some of my others. Please DO NOT READ this if you’ve not seen the movie.

Okay so, Star Wars Episode IX - The Rise Of Skywalker is a mixture of good and bad stuff, although I quite liked this one but, before I get into it, I just want to reiterate my spoiler warning above. There’s stuff revealed here that you won’t want to know (even if you’ve already figured it out anyway) before seeing the movie... so just don’t read this until after you’ve seen the film.

Right... so if you’ve been keeping track of my Star Wars reviews over the years you’ll know that I really didn’t think much of Episode VIII - The Last Jedi. I think it was a huge wrong turn of a movie with some brilliant set pieces but an absolutely terrible story and direction for all of the characters. In terms of Star Wars films I’d stick it down with Attack Of The Clones and Revenge Of The Sith as being one of the absolute worst of the series. And, while nobody from the production of the movies has said it outright... although it has been heavily implied by some of the big names behind and in front of the cameras this last few months... I think the producers probably recognised that The Last Jedi was a huge mis-step for the franchise too. Just speculating here, mind but... that’s how I see it as playing out when people have been interviewed. Abrams himself has said this movie is something of a course correction and, yeah... absolutely... The Rise Of Skywalker does spend a lot of its time, perhaps a hugely disproportionate amount of time, backtracking and erasing elements of The Last Jedi. Sometimes though, it does throw the baby out with the bathwater, it has to be said.

To do this, Abrams has had to set up a story beat which I believe he always planned to be there but, because of the way the last movie went (my understanding is that he had little involvement or knowledge of the story of the last one when it was being made) he actually uses the opening crawl to set up the return of Emperor Palpatine where if he’d have done the whole of this trilogy, I believe he would have heralded Palpatine’s return in a much more subtle and surprising way. I don’t have too much of an issue with this, however, because that’s what the title crawls did in the first two movies when they were released in 1977 and 1980 so, it’s not a new thing to bring in new information in this manner.

The fact that Palpatine returns from the dead here is handled in a way that is credible to an extent, if you don’t mind the movie dipping into 1930s/1950s Universal Horror territory... there really is a kind of alchemical ‘weird science’ vibe that’s not been visited before, to my memory, in the Star Wars films but... I think it finds its place in the series and certainly brings a ‘pulp literature’ element with it. And the lighting on Palapatine’s face in his introduction scene reflects this in a wonderful manner too.

Now we get in to the real spoilery stuff so... to quote Edward Van Sloan in Frankenstein... well, we warned you.

A week or two ago, when I realised that Abrams was going to jettison the idea that Rey’s parentage wasn’t important... which is just as well because it was set up so well in the first one that she knew exactly who her important family tree were in The Force Awakens... I was talking to my friend and said, “You know, she’s probably not a Skywalker like you keep saying but Palpatine’s granddaughter. The ‘Rise’ of Skywalker is probably Kylo Ren redeeming himself in a similar way to Darth Vader in Return Of The Jedi.” And, yeah, I so totally called it... those things come to pass in this movie. And it all makes sense except the last little scene on Tatooine where Rey refers to herself... as you know she’s going to because of the way the stroy beat is presented... as a Skywalker. Well she totally isn’t but I guess, because she holds all of the past Jedi in her now, she can maybe take that name and, lets face it, if she calls herself Rey Palpatine she’s going to have some serious hate mail. It all works... just... but I do think the ‘pendulum swing’, as Abrams puts it, of The Last Jedi really did hurt this new film with its legacy and things could have fit together in a lot more smoother manner without Episode VIII.

How Abrams cushions the blow and gets the franchise back on course is to completely borrow (see how I’m nicely not using the word ‘plagiarise’ here) a load of elements from a fair few previous films in the franchise. People who love the series will literally recognise scenes taken almost wholesale from the original trilogy and sometimes it’s done in a referential, loving homage kind of way such as Luke lifting his X-Wing from the sea while Yoda’s theme from the similar scene in The Empire Strikes Back plays out in exactly the same orchestration that it might even have been needle-dropped in and... sometimes it isn’t. There was one scene, for instance, when I leaned over to my friend (who had already seen it earlier in the day) and whispered... “Why didn’t they just CGI Don Henderson into this scene if they were going to do this?” So, yeah, some of the stuff was not that subtle and felt... not out of place, just very familiar and, well... there are a lot of bits in this movie where fans of the films will find themselves in very familiar territory.

But you know what? That’s what Star Wars has always been about. Swiping stuff in a postmodern manner from other things. George Lucas couldn’t secure the rights to make a Flash Gordon movie (Flash Gordon already borrowing heavily from Edgar Rice Burroughs John Carter of Mars books) so he wrote Star Wars and the films have always been full of iconic and often ‘borrowed’ ideas and images which the films have assimilated into their own cinematic language. So I really don’t have a problem with what Abrams is doing here. There are a few things I did have a problem with, though.

Like the introduction of a new droid. Frankly, it’s fun but has no purpose in the plot and feels like a fifth wheel most of the time. It just seems there to sell toys.. as does the clunky (or should that be McClunkey?) bikes that launch the flying stormtroopers. “They fly now!” say three of the characters... somehow oblivious to the fact that their nearest stormtrooper equivalents did in the prequel trilogy too. Didn’t think this added anything to the action scenes but then again, the action scenes were another problem for me.

They felt, somehow, anti-climactic and flat a lot of the time. Ironically, the action sequences in The Last Jedi were far more interesting and impactful. There’s nothing as cool as the throne room skirmish or the battle of Crait in The Rise Of Skywalker, for example. However, the action sequences in this one, although not as exciting, felt more organic to the story and not just slotted in because they felt like they needed something to happen (for the most part). This movie covers a lot of story at a fairly fast pace and so there’s less action but more integrity to the Star Wars universe I felt.

There was a lovely ‘shock’ character death fairly early on in the film but it turns out it was just a dupe and, frankly, lifted from the baskets scene in Raider Of The Lost Ark. I totally bought it for a while before they revealed a certain character was alive. Oh, and for the record, the force energy coming from people’s hands, especially in the later scenes, looks terrible compared to how it looked in the 1980s. Just rubbish and too wispy. Needed to be much more dense, I think.

There’s also a dubious scene which, funnily enough, I was talking to someone about a couple of times over the course of the last few years but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t be able to do it for this film. I said to my girlfriend that they really needed to somehow get Han Solo back in it for a resolution to his son’s character arc but they wouldn’t be able to do it because they would somehow have to coax Harrison Ford back and, also, there’s no precedent in the series for a ‘non-force’ ghost. But, what the heck.... they did it anyway. They must have paid Ford quite handsomely for his little ‘cameo’ here and his appearance is treated in almost exactly the same way as Kevin Costner’s ‘memory ghost’ appearance in Batman Vs Superman. They did it and... it’s a bit questionable but it’s nice to have it and it worked for me.

There were also a lot of voice cast returns of a load of the other Jedi from previous films. I was ridiculed on Twitter by someone for spotting that Liam Neeson’s voice was in the teaser trailer and was told it was Mark Hamil. Nope, it was Neeson, as I’d said. This film would have been a lot better had it brought back full-on force ghosts of a fair few Jedi from the previous movies too but, alas, I guess voice rates must be cheaper and the producers didn’t want to spend the extra money, is my guess.

My biggest gripe is not knowing how in hell they got Luke’s old light sabre still, after that terrible throw away line in The Force Awakens about it being a good question for another day. This was a question I really needed answering and the film makers have just ignored it... which I think is the only way in which Abram’s two movies disrespect the fans of the original films.

One thing I did love about this movie is... finally C3PO was cool again. He’s the least irritating and most witty he’s ever been in the franchise and his character really worked well here. Alas, R2D2 is hardly in it again and I wish they’d used him more but, I’m guessing it might have damaged the story flow in some way and so they chose to do with him what they did here. It was great how they worked C3PO though... really good stuff here.

And, it goes without saying, that the cast in this were all pretty much outstanding... including the new characters although, I wish Keri Russell had turned in her performance without a mask covering her head... she was a cool character. My only grouch about the casting would be that none of the original trilogy characters had much to do and were hardly in it. Carrie Fisher wasn’t integrated nearly as seamlessly as they said she was and, they totally lied about not CGIing her in one scene where, frankly, you couldn’t have had the training scene with Luke and Leia done any other way than to de-age them (and make them look vaguely unreal and cartoony). Luke and Han (who was admittedly a mostly unexpected bonus) hardly have any screen time, Yoda is practically non-existent other than a voice and a brief glimpse and I just felt Billy Dee Williams was kinda wasted in this. He was cool... just under utilised but, at least he got to say a specific line which is pretty much in almost every Star Wars movie, so there’s that. I could also have done with a lot more of Kelly Marie Tran’s character being in here because, frankly, she was one of the best things about The Last Jedi.

There’s probably going to be a lot of criticism of Abrams on this one about how the power of The Force is used in certain scenes but I was fine with it all... especially the cool way in which Rey passes a light sabre to Ben Solo. There actually is a lot of back up in the history of the saga which means this kind of magical stuff is just a slightly different looking iteration of exactly the same kind of thing so I think Abrams and the writers made a good call here. It’s also a really cool moment too so, yeah, again it works for me.

As far as the music goes... John Williams’ score soars as he builds on the themes he introduced in The Force Awakens in exactly the way he didn’t in The Last Jedi. I can’t wait to give the CD a spin fairly soon. I hope they give him an Oscar for this one. He deserves it.

And that’s me pretty much done. I didn’t absolutely love this on first viewing but, like The Force Awakens, which I gave an absolutely terrible review to and regretted doing that as soon as I saw it a second time, I suspect The Rise Of Skywalker will definitely be something I get more out of on future screenings (probably sometime towards the end of next week... I just wish Kerry had been around to see this one). If you are a fan of the franchise then, I think you’ll really like this one. It’s not top tier Star Wars but it’s not bottom tier either which means it’s pretty great, right? But then again, you already know that because you wouldn’t be reading this spoilerific review if you hadn’t already seen it, I hope.


Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Overlord

Horrors Of War

Overlord
2018 USA Directed by Julius Avery
UK cinema release print.

Cry havoc... and let slip the dogs of war. Or, in this case, let slip the reanimated corpses of French villagers given a substance which turns them into crazed, mixed up super soldiers.

When I first saw the trailer to Overlord, a month or two ago, I found it interesting that J. J. Abrams was producing what looked to be a new entry into the ‘zombie nazi’ subgenre but I figured, at the very least, that meant there would be some money thrown at it so it might be worth taking a look. It could go either way in terms of quality and the trailer wasn’t really giving a good flavour of what the final product might be. So I went and saw this the opening night of its UK release and... by golly I’m glad I did.

Overlord is one heck of a well made horror movie, directed by Julius Avery and, well, it’s just extremely competently made and is entertaining as you could hope for. As far as it being a zombie Nazi movie... well technically it’s not. Most of the reanimated people in this are not actually German soldiers and the one Nazi officer who does benefit greatly from the effects of the super serum that the typically stereotypical ‘bespectacled German war scientist’ in the movie is developing isn’t... well, he isn’t dead. There are a few reanimated corpses of note though so, while not absolutely a ‘zombie Nazi’ film in its absolute correct definition, the juxtaposition of those two elements certainly throws it into roughly the same kind of area, if genre categorisations are your thing.

The film tells the story of a unit of soldiers flying into France to blow up a communications jamming unit on top of a Nazi controlled church (more like a fortress, truth be told). However, after they are shot down, the few survivors of the incident manage to find each other and regroup to carry on the mission. The main protagonist is Boyce, played absolutely wonderfully and with a fine mix of both confidence, righteousness and vulnerability by Jovan Adepo. Now, the only big problem I had in terms with suspending disbelief in a film about reanimated corpses taking a super serum is that, heck, you would not get that racial mix happening in the US army in the 1940s. The soldiers would have been segregated into different units but... if you can get past that, Adepo really owns the character and gives the audience someone to believe in and care about.

Another member of the troop is Ford, the tough and slightly enigmatic member of the unit. He also brings a nice quality to the film and all the way through I kept thinking how much this character would have been well played by Clint Eastwood back in the 1960s or 1970s. Now I knew it wasn’t Eastwood’s son playing this role (for my thoughts on him, read my review of Pacific Rim - Uprising here) but, once I’d stayed behind for the end credits and found out the actor’s name was Wyatt Russell, it all made sense. Closer investigation showed his full name to be Wyatt Hawn Russell and he is, in fact, the son of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn... so looking back I must have been picking up on a vaguely Snake Plissken vibe to the character. He does really well in this movie too.

Now, it has to be said, the film is pretty intense and brutal in places, even before the surviving troops befriend one of the local French women, Chloe (again, played quite brilliantly by Mathilde Ollivier) and get embroiled with a triple mission of blowing up the tower, stopping the mad experiments which are taking place in the basement of the fortress and rescuing Chloe’s younger brother. One of the reasons it is so intense and, for once, had me on the edge of my seat, is because the whole ‘war is hell’ angle is played up so well that it more than holds its own against the horror element. Scratch that, I would go as far as to say the way in which the conflict between the Nazis, the American soldiers and the occupied French villagers is handled is absolutely what gives this film its edge over a lot of others where they might not necessarily take up the amount of time to pitch the setting right. In fact, apart from a gooey mess of a body found in the early stages of the film, the horror B-movie (with an A-movie budget) doesn’t even start to emerge until about a third to a half of the way through the story. When it does it’s equally fraught, as Boyce finds himself on his own midst the enemy in the compound for a while... something the director really ramps up by using a lot of hand held camera during these passages. Heck, even Boyce’s parachute jump at the start of the movie is an absolutely drawn out, nerve stretching suspenseful sequence and it just keeps getting more intense from there.

The other thing about this is that the film doesn’t skimp on is showing the brutality of war and what both sides are willing to do in the conflict. There’s one sequence in the middle of the movie, when the German officer who is built up as the main villain of the piece is being ‘interrogated’ by the Americans, where Ford is seen to be almost as brutal as the Nazis in his methods of acquiring the information he needs to know. To be fair, you’re definitely rooting for Ford again by the end of the film but this movie really takes no prisoners when it comes to being fair about what people are capable of doing for their respective side of the conflict. For example...

The film is full of clichés such as the soldier who is perceived as nasty but then turns out to redeem himself and have a heart of gold by stopping a bullet for the child he pretends to hate. The soldier in question is played by John Magaro and, like any of these actors, you could see them holding their own in some of the great war movies such as Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Ditto for the cliché of the war photographer who’s not really a soldier but ends up going through hell (played here by Iain De Caestecker from Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD). The thing is, though, because the film is so dark and raw when it needs to be and doesn’t really flinch in the ‘horrors of war’ department, I really didn’t mind the clichés inherent in some of the character types. Indeed it’s kind of comforting that they’re there in a way and, of course, it makes for really useful shorthand in telling the story quickly. And with Jed Kurzel’s wonderful score backing up the visual intensity... sadly unavailable as a commercial stand alone release when I tried to buy a copy of the soundtrack, CD or otherwise... you really do feel it when the action gets going and things get a little insane.

One other thing about this movie I should probably warn you about, if you’re not a die hard horror fan... there’s a lot of blood and viscera in the film. You will see a person, for example, shot in the head and then, with his face half hanging off, dose up on the serum before beating everybody else up. This is war and when the bullets start flying, sometimes when you least expect them to, then the director doesn’t look away when it comes to throwing in the guts and gore. Not necessarily an element which I particularly look for in a film but, if the story atmosphere calls for it then I don’t think you should skimp on it and this seems to be the view shared by the film makers on this one, to be sure.

So that’s my take on Overlord, a movie which I wasn’t too hopeful about but which I’m really glad I saw. This is quality B-movie exploitation shocks done just right and with, for once, a big enough budget to be able to pull it all off credibly. If you are into horror movies, or war movies or, as like this, a thrilling combination of the two, then you should definitely put Overlord near the top of your list because it’s all put together extremely well. Oh... and if you have already seen this and you were in the 8.20pm screening at Enfield Cineworld in Row E on the opening Wednesday... get a life. You don’t need to be texting on your phone all the way through the film. Turn the damned thing off and watch the bloody movie.

Cloverfield

Clovers and Shakers

Cloverfield
USA 2008 Directed by Matt Reeves
Paramount Blu Ray Zone B

Cloverfield was a virally marketed, big monster movie directed by Matt Reeves and produced by J. J. Abrams. With the sequel, 10 Cloverfield Lane (reviewed by me here) out earlier in the year, I thought I’d take the opportunity to pay just £2 extra to grab it in a double movie set with the first film and upgrade my original to Blu Ray. I’d loved the first movie, as much as I enjoyed the sequel, and I wanted to rewatch the sequel with this first one still fresh in my mind. It has to be said, the last act of the sequel is making a lot more sense to me now I’ve refamiliarised myself with the original masterpiece.

The film is a hand held shot affair, with Hollywood in 2008 finally beginning to capitalise on the first person shooter genre of camerawork which was repopularised by The Blair Witch Project, nine years earlier. So seeing what is a big, special effects extravaganza of a big monster and various other nasty creatures rampaging and destroying Manhattan had a lot of novelty value when it came out... it was the first time, I think, when we’d seen fairly large, broad, epic tales captured in this POV stylistic vein.

Now, this is one of those movies which seems to split people straight down the middle between loving it and hating it and... I have to say I’ve always loved it. I know one of the criticisms from people is that the film takes a while to get going, with the character Hud, played by an actor I recently saw in Deadpool (reviewed here), T. J. Miller, documenting what is supposed to be a going away party for his best friend Rob (played by Michael Stahl-David). Rob is leaving New York to take on a job based in Japan, which is a nice little nod to the Japanese influence on this movie... everyone knows this is an American parody of a Toho kaiju movie, right? Then things go to hell and Rob, his friend Lily (played by Jessica Lucas), Hud (and that character name is obviously a nice, little jokey reference to the abbreviation Heads Up Display, due to the way the movie is shot) and Hud’s ‘crush’ who is ignoring him, Marlene (played so well by Lizzy Caplan, who is the ‘lady horseman’ in Now You See Me 2 - reviewed here), go off to rescue Rob’s estranged ex, Beth (Odette Annable), who is trapped in her apartment in the area of New York where this monster is attacking.

Now one of the problems I’ve heard people cite for this movie is that it takes so long to get going. Yes, it does take a while to get into the action, I admit... especially for such a short film... but I think it’s pretty necessary, actuallly, because it introduces you to the characters and helps create a bond so that you’ll worry about them whenever they’re put in peril. It’s a standard movie making tactic and I think it works especially well here. Especially since the ‘found footage’ tape that’s been recorded over still has traces of the previous footage, which tells the back story of Rob and Beth and is a nicely subtle counterpoint to underline and reenforce emotional values when it flickers back from underneath the top surface, when the video is paused for whatever reason and some tape presumably winds on. It’s well handled and I think modern audiences really need to be a lot more patient than they are today.

The film really does get going once it starts up with the fantastical element, however, and the great scene from the trailer where the Statue of Liberty’s severed head lands just a few metres away, in the street, from our main protagonists is still a great effect... although, apparently, nobody was willing to believe the real Statue of Liberty’s head is actually smaller, so the effects company were forced to make it a lot bigger than actual size for the version of the scene in the movie.

There’s a lot of frantic camerawork in the film, it has to be said, but at least, due to the nature of the beast, there’s a lot less visible editing going on (although I’m sure there must be a lot of hidden moving wipe edits during many of the scenes. There are also some great disaster and horror movie tropes and set pieces dotted throughout the movie... like the terrified swarms of rats in the abandoned subway running away from something our main protagonists, who are walking the tunnels, don’t see until one of them has the bright idea to switch on the night vision on the video camera. Hud faithfully documents everything he can for as long as he’s able to but... I won’t say too much about that right now... spoilers.

Another scene reminiscent of a disaster movie is where our crew climb up the insides of one skyscraper to try and gain access to the other skyscraper which is resting against it, half fallen, in an attempt to rescue Beth. Lots of great scenes here to be honest and the final fate of one of the characters, Marlene, adds a whole new level of intrigue to just what it is we could be dealing with here... something I had hoped would be picked up on in the sequel but... yeah, that one went in a whole other direction, for sure.

The film is riveting and exciting, with amazing performances from all the actors and some deftly handled transitions into one set piece after another. Alas, due to the nature of the film, there is no underscore but it does, during the end credits, have a beautiful end title piece called Roar!, composed by Michael Giacchino and it’s yet another reference to the film’s influences in that it’s very much an homage to the old Akira Ifikube music to the original Godzilla movie, Gojira, from 1954. A beautiful piece and I can’t believe this track still goes unissued on a CD somewhere... although it is available on iTunes, if you want to hear something really cool, in the vein of those good old kaiju eiga scores. 

And that’s about it. Cloverfield is a film that I personally believe is a much more subtle blend of set ups and styles than people give it credit for. Certainly the best hand held shot giant monster movie to date (well, yeah, of course... I think it’s probably the only one, so far) and certainly something which is maybe a little more of a big spectacle cinema experience... which is ironic, given the nature of the format it’s trying to mimic. However you see it though, it’s very much a hard recommendation from me and monster movie lovers should find it an interesting watch. I much preferred it to something like the two official US made Godzilla movies (to date) and it’s something I will be watching again at some point. Definitely a lot of rip and loads of roar to be found in this rip-roaring spectacle.

10 Cloverfield Lane

Under The Hood

10 Cloverfield Lane
2016 USA
Directed by Dan Trachtenberg
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Mild spoilers plus some clearly marked large spoilers towards the end of the review.

You know, contrary to a lot of people I know, I really enjoyed the original Cloverfield when it was released back in 2008. I know some of my friends were put off by the found footage format (one of my friends, to this day, still refuses to watch it in case it gives her motion sickness) but I thought it was a truly excellent use of the shooting style in the choice to make an American kaiju eiga. In fact, I still feel it out-Gojiras the US Godzilla movie made just two years ago in being a much more fun and terrifying movie.

You could be forgiven, though, for not even realising that the new movie, 10 Cloverfield Lane, was  upon us since it was put together under such a veil of secrecy that it wasn’t until the trailer appeared less than two months ago that people outside of the studio and crew officially knew it existed at all. That producer J. J. Abrams was able to get this made in secret in this day and age of intrusive media saturation, perpetually fuelled by the studios themselves (more often than not, I suspect), is pretty unbelievable.

Okay, now first let me address issues about whether this is an actual sequel or not to the original Cloverfield because, I had a much better ending for this movie in my head after seeing the trailers and, unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Yes, we know the film is a self contained thriller (not a horror movie until the last 20 minutes or so) that started life as something slightly different and had some new ‘Cloverfield’ scenes tacked on to the end. Unfortunately the film does seem like that too, a little, and I know one of my friends is going to love it up until the last act, where he’ll probably get really angry with it... so that'll be an interesting conversation. However, as far as I’m concerned, the film is a direct sequel to the original Cloverfield, even though I’ve seen people arguing about it on message boards as to why it certainly isn’t. Yes, there are elements about the last act which make no sense in terms of having the information about the original that we already have but... that was always one of the main points about the original movie... but there’s also a big link to the ‘baby monsters’ aspect of that original too and I think, since the clue is kinda in the title, people should maybe ponder more about why it’s called that and enjoy the ‘gaps’ in the story which allow for the movie to fall under the Cloverfield umbrella. After all, there are big gaps in Abrams’ own Star Wars: The Force Awakens (reviewed here) and nobody complained about that... oh wait, yes they did. Still, he’s obviously a producer who’s not against leaving something for the imagination and in this movie, he doesn’t seem worried about the director leaving it for the audience to fill in the blanks as best it can. I’ll come back to this last sequence, with spoilers, a little later in this review.

Okay, so I have to say right up front that I really loved this movie, almost as much as the monster fuelled carnage of Cloverfield itself, although it’s probably not fair to the writers and director to directly compare the two as they are vastly different kinds of movies. This one starts off with what, for me, is the best sequence in the film... the pre-credits and opening credits sections which, seriously, I think should be required textbook viewing for people studying movie making. Starting out with the always excellent actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead playing the film’s main protagonist Michelle. She’s someone who I’ve seen in a few of these genre pieces and, frankly, the opening of this movie is fantastic as she plays in what is, essentially, a  mini silent film. We see her breaking up with her boyfriend but just from her point of view and by long distance... we never see her boyfriend even once in the film, just hear his voice near the end of the movie and, really, that’s no spoiler because the context of that says very little about the status of the characters.

This is all accompanied by Bear McCreary’s amazing tour-de-force of a score and it’s edited so beautifully, as is the title sequence where Michelle's car is wrecked, probably deliberately, and the sound design drops out strategically to accompany title inserts cut in to freeze the action in your mind and enhance the trauma of it as the noise of the crash keeps returning. It’s a visceral piece of film making, very intense and quite wonderful. Now the rest of the film certainly lives up to this opening but, for me, this three or four minutes at the start were worth the price of admission on this thing. Absolutely what cinema is all about and the reason why I’ll definitely be picking up the Blu Ray release somewhere along the line.

Okay, so then we get to the rest of the film where Michelle is ‘rescued/imprisoned’ by John Goodman’s character Howard and has to live with him and a guy called Emmet, who has found his way to the bunker (for other reasons I won’t reveal here), played by John Gallagher Jr. And you don’t know what’s coming next people! If you’ve seen the trailer, that whole climactic moment where Michelle breaks the bottle on Howard’s face and goes to open the bunker doors to the outside world is... actually within the first third of the movie, more or less. So don’t go in thinking you know what’s going to happen next because... you more than likely just don’t.

As I said, Winstead is cool in this (like she always is) and Gallagher Jr does a good job with a half sympathetic character. John Goodman, though, is extraordinary as the ‘unhinged’ antagonist of the film... I don’t want to say too much about his character and his slowly revealed past but, honestly, this is not the kind of guy you want to stay locked in a Cloverfield-proof bunker with. Not by a long shot.

And the film continues on in a fashion which is quite intense, wonderfully acted, wonderfully shot and with a genuine sense of skill and competence shown by the director. The editing is really beautiful too... latching on to something Steven Spielberg seems to do in his work also, which is to manipulate both time and visual space, truncating and lengthening specific parts of certain scenes to wring the maximum amount of suspense out of them. This is especially true of the ‘mad rush’ to the bunker door set piece which I highlighted earlier... as the director stretches and compresses certain parts of that chase which will have most audience members on the edge of their seats, I suspect. And this tension keeps going all the way through the movie.

I noticed that, for the last 20 minutes of the movie, for instance, the guy in the audience siting next to me had his hand clamped over his mouth in fright the whole time... which is a pretty impressive reaction, in my book. And that last part of the movie, post-bunker, is where the film connects up properly to Cloverfield... and I’m going to reveal that here now so I can discuss it... so if you don’t want to know, stop reading now...

Big spoilers start here!

When Michelle gets out of the bunker she is chased by a smaller Cloverfield monster and also what look like Alien spacecraft. Now much argument surrounds the identity of both the monster and the spacecraft but it seems pretty clear to me that the creature is a slightly grown version of the ‘spawn of Cloverfield’ mentioned, or heavily implied, in the first movie. The aliens could be something to do with them but the way they release gas makes me think that they are possibly wanting to tranquilise the monsters so... either the monsters and aliens are coincidental to each other and are natural enemies or... the aliens have released the monsters on the planet. Either way, it’s clear to me that the monster is similar in style to the creature in the first movie and that’s good enough for me. The whole fun comes from rubbing the two story elements together from each film and speculating on the connection... at least until a third project maybe comes to light.

Spoiler ends here.

And there you have it. An incredible film and, did I mention Bear McCreary’s score being an absolute masterpiece? It certainly is, at least in the context of the film itself. I’ve yet to hear a CD of it but I’ll snap it up as soon as it gets a non-download release because it was absolutely amazing. This composer goes from strength to strength and I hope he gets a lot more high profile films because of this one. Truly brilliant.

So there you go. 10 Cloverfield Lane is, in many ways, a bit of a future classic. The acting, editing, music and story elements are all superb and I even didn’t mind the tacked on nature of the Cloverfield element, grafted a little clumsily but not as badly as it could have been. This movie is a definite recommend from me and I can’t wait to see what director Dan Trachtenberg does next. Nor to see another Cloverfield movie, to be honest. Catch it in the cinema, which is the perfect venue for this kind of movie, before it goes.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Forced Entry

Star Wars - Episode VII - The Force Awakens
2015 USA
Directed by J. J. Abrams
UK cinema release print.

I think I’ve kept this review spoiler free... which means I’m going to have to skirt around some issues here but, this is such a high profile film that, even if I put a spoiler warning like I normally do if there are spoilers here, I don’t think people will be all that into it. In fact, I had a much better title for this review but I figured the double meaning of it might enrage fans of the series if they figured it out before they saw the movie.

So... hmm... okay. Not really sure where to start with this one. I find Abrams a bit hit and miss as a director and there’s some good stuff in this movie but... there’s also some really bad stuff here too. If you’re looking for a really bright and breezy, fan positive rave about how good the new Star Wars movie is then, I’m sorry, as much as I love the original trilogy, I’m not going to let that get in the way of me being honest here. If that’s the kind of super happy review that you want then... this isn’t the review you’re looking for. Move along.

The main problem, first and foremost for me with this movie is... it doesn’t really feel too much like an original Star Wars movie. It does have some outstanding Star Wars moments, to be sure, but the whole thing looks like it’s being unnecessarily visually complicated to tell what, after all, is a very simple and repetitive story. This film feels more like it’s adhering to the 'special edition' makeover versions of the original trilogy rather than harkening back to the relative (it was mind blowing in its day) simplicity of the original cinema releases. Contrary to what I should be saying here, and this is really going to blow my credibility for most of you reading this, I really loved The Phantom Menace and think that particular prequel did what this movie is trying to do much better.

However, I don’t want that to dissuade from the fact that there are some really great things about this installment in the franchise so... let me cover the good stuff first.

Daisy Ridley (whose great uncle was Arnold Ridley, Private Fraser in Dad’s Army and writer of The Ghost Train), John Boyega and Oscar Isaac... as Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron... are all absolutely fantastic in this. All turn in outstanding performances and they all have some great writing behind them. Even BB-8, the new droid of fame, is pretty amazing... there’s a particular moment John Boyega shares with the droid while Daisy Ridley’s stuck under the floorboards of the Falcon tinkering with the workings that is truly outstanding.

Finn is an extremely likeable character and the chemistry he shares with Rey and Poe is amazing. The scene where he meets Rey and there’s a whole ‘modern feminism’ vibe going on with a scene I shall refer to only as the "take my hand" sequence, is something which a lot of people are going to love. I’m not one hundred percent sure if it was actually trying to hit a feminist beat but it does it so well and triumphantly that you are going to be immediately on the side of the writers from this moment in the film on. What its basic function is, though, is to set up a relationship where one of the characters gains credibility and acceptance/welcome from another character and it does it very quickly in a kind of visual shorthand that really works. People are going to remember this stuff for a long time.

I was less impressed with Adam Driver’s performance as Kilo Ren, to be honest, but he seems pretty popular with everyone else so I think he must be a good casting decision, even if I think his character and the actions performed by that character are an unbelievable cinematic and literature cliché. Still, nothing wrong with that, the Star Wars films are based on homage and one of the original intentions when Lucas was involved was that it tell a story of three generations of heros like in the epic Cinerama movie How The West Was Won. That film is split up into segments which means that characters who were the heroes in one sequence died or went off and give rise to new heroes in the following sections and that’s always been in the back of my mind when it comes to approaching the way I watch the prequels and sequels.

Now here’s where I do my strange verbal dance and try and talk about certain things for the benefit of people who have already seen this movie while absolutely not saying what those things are. So here goes...

In the first film of each trilogy, something happens in the last section of the movie which makes good dramatic sense and, if you were going to try and make a Star Warsy style movie, it’s a good bet that you’d want to continue that dramatic set up in the first part of a new trilogy. So about a year and a half ago I figured out something specifically epic was going to happen in this one and I even, as it happened, nailed the character who was going to be involved in this incident. At some point before the film opened I widened my scope a little on the specific character because I didn’t think the director/writers would have the nerve to do this thing in the new movie to this character but, as I watched the various actors doing the pre-publicity tours and heard little snatches... I mostly avoided this stuff like the plague... something made me realise that this thing was definitely going to happen after all.

And this is where one of the bad things comes for me and where, I’m afraid, I hate being right. I don’t think this incident was handled particularly well but I think it’s going ot be the thing that this movie is most going to be remembered for... okay, it’ll also be remembered for Daisy Ridley’s Rey character for sure... and so I wish this moment hadn’t been quite so badly telegraphed throughout the entire movie either. I was actually just waiting for this thing to happen and maybe that spoiled my enjoyment of it somewhat.

See, file this under bad stuff but... there are really no big surprises in this film. There are two revelations set up and one of them could have gone either way but, seriously, the writers chose the most obvious solution to one of them and you’ll find that one out very early on in the movie, the first time you see Snoke, the master villain behind the scenes (in another holographic moment reminiscent of the title character in The Wizard Of Oz). The other revelation to be had... well, let’s just say I don’t know why Abrams and co have left this to be revealed in another film. Seriously, we all got enraged when it was so obvious before the movie even opened that Benedict Cumberbatch was playing Khan in Abram’s Star Trek Into Darkness... why he’s teasing out the identity of one of the characters here and carrying it into one of the following movies is a total mystery to me. I won’t reveal the obvious here but... everyone already knows, why hide it.

Okay, so we also have some returning cast and characters from the original trilogy and all I will say is that Harrison Ford as Han Solo totally nails it again this time around. I criticised him quite badly on the performance he put in on Return Of The Jedi but here he’s almost perfect. And when he isn’t perfect, it’s not his fault. There is a tremendously fun scene involving a 'monster vs prey' scene on board a ship which is, frankly, somewhat over the top for a Star Wars movie, I felt. I appreciate the filmmakers need to get new ideas in there and keep pushing the visual syntax of the universe of the movies forward but this just felt like too much. Ford handles it brilliantly though, so there’s that.

The other thing that bugged me a little about Solo in this one was his relationship with Chewbacca. The two have been friends and colleagues in the timeline of the Star Wars universe for how long? At least 40 years of history between the two characters, maybe more? And this is the first time Han has ever used Chewie’s bowcaster? In all their time together? Seriously? You expect us to believe this rubbish? Again, Ford plays it beautifully in some nice comic moments but the credibility of those moments is completely lost in the logic of the situation. Also, the bowcaster was a big, heavy weapon that you always imagined only something as big as a wookie would be able to use... here it’s revealed it's almost as light as a regular weapon and it kind of diminishes the look and design of the prop when used in this context too, in my opinion.

And talking about historic props... there’s the return of a major one here which kind of beggars belief in terms of conitnuity with the last trilogy but, what the heck, I guess they may have a stab at clearing that up in a future film... I hope.

So before I get to my last bad thing... there was one thing which left me puzzled and that is in terms of music. Once again John Williams delivers a brilliant score and, listening to it in the context of the movie (I don’t have it as a stand alone yet... come on Christmas) it’s easily one of his best scores of the series, harkening back to the musical soundscape of the original trilogy rather than the prequel trilogy. That’s a double edged sword in some cases because there are some musical moments in here which, while I know thay must have been re-recorded, sound so close to the original orchestration and timings for other scenes they’ve been used in before, that they sound almost needle dropped in. That being said, the puzzling thing happens when we get our very first glimpse of the Millennium Falcon in this movie, in a wonderfully constructed set up sequence. As soon as we see the Falcon though, it’s accompanied by the Death Star leitmotif from the first movie. What? That popped me straight out of the movie as my mind boggled as to why Williams had chosen to use this at this point in the score. My only guess is that it features prominently in the cue entitle Ben’s Death and Tie Fighter Attack on the original 1977 Star Wars album, which accompanied the scene where the Falcon is fleeing the Death Star... a case of musical association by proximity rather than actual literal translation of the theme I guess. It’s still a nice moment and it didn’t diminish my appreciation of the scene too much, I suppose.

Okay, last bad thing... this movie doesn’t have a Star Wars ending. All the other “first movie in the trilogy” films ended with a celebration/closure, no matter what had happened to various characters throughout the movie... and even the cliffhanger chapters like The Empire Strikes Back left the heroes poised to go on the next bit of the quest. Here, the film should definitely have finished where Rey and her companions in the scene (I don’t want to say who) go off in the Falcon but, curiously, we get a little tagged on ending to the movie which feels inconsistent with the series as a whole. I know, in some ways, if they didn’t include something of this nature here, the fans would be out hunting for Abram’s blood (and I include myself as a great admirer of the Star Wars movies, for sure). At the end here, though, we have a scene which feels like it best belongs coming half an hour or so into Episode VIII although, to be fair, the character arcs for everyone are so easy to see here that, well, I can’t see that there will be any surprises there either so, what the hell, just have that final scene in this one, I suppose. Felt tacked on to the end kinda haphazardly though so... yeah, could really have done without it and would have preferred to wait patiently for another few years instead. But, you know, hindsight is a marvellous thing etc.

And that’s that. I kind of regret the fact, almost, that I now have to take various people I promised, to see this movie in the next week or two. Normally when I see a Star Wars movie I can’t wait to get back in te cinema and see it again. This one... I would be quite happy to wait until the Blu Ray release and see if it holds up better the second time through. I usually leave the cinema with a feel good vibe after Star Wars... I just felt kind of numb and depressed for a couple of hours after seeing this one. That being said, there’s some really great stuff in this one and, like The Avengers - Age Of Ultron (reviewed here), I’m really hoping it will grow on me after repeated viewings. Some films do have that power and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be the case with this one.

So the only final word I’m going to have here, I think is... if they writers don’t bring Billy Dee Williams back as Lando Calrissian in the next installment, they are really missing a trick. They’ll really need him to make the story beats work, I think.

Star Wars at NUTS4R2

 Episode 1: The Phantom Menace 

Episode 2: Attack Of The Clones

Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith 

Solo

Rogue One 

Episode 4: A New Hope

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

Episode 6: Return Of The Jedi 

Episode 7: The Force Awakens 

Episode 8:  The Last Jedi

Episode 9: The Rise Of Skywalker

Mission Impossible III

Mission ImpossEyeballs

Mission Impossible III
2006 USA/Germany/China 
Directed by J. J. Abrams
DVD Region 2

Warning: Okay, so this one will need to have spoilers 
in it so I can talk about why this movie doesn’t work.

So here I am again, continuing with my Mission Impossible catch up, enforced by my dad. This third one came out 6 years after the last and I have to say that I am not as completely enamoured of the director of this one, as everyone else seems to be. I find it strange that each of these movies has a different director and they all bring to the gig their own specific visual style as opposed to seeking any continuity with the last one. Oh well, I guess that’s true to the nature of an episodic TV show of the time too, I guess... although I think it’s less obvious when you get less known directors who are happier letting the style of what’s been done previously dictate the art direction somewhat.

This starts off with a really strong opening scene which, I’m afraid to say, is also its biggest weakness. Here we have a captive Tom Cruise being interrogated, with his girlfriend tied and gagged in front of him while Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a really nasty character who counts up to ten and then shoots Cruise’s love interest right in front of him. It’s all thoroughly nasty and, therefore, thoroughly effective. Lot’s of problems here, though, which serve to highlight the main trouble with all of the entries I’ve seen so far in the series... it’s all too damned obvious what’s really going on.

So lets look at this opening scene shall we?

It’s got the lovely Michelle Monaghan in it playing Cruise’s leading lady. The producers are probably not going to waste her in a movie where she gets killed off before the opening titles have even started rolling... so you more or less know, due to the way this scene ends, that this is a flash forward to a later point in the narrative which we’ll be rejoining later in the film. Now Michelle can’t be another character wearing a mask because we can see very visibly she’s not wearing a throat mike except... oh yes she can... because they’ve taped her mouth shut so she can’t speak. What does that tell us? Well it tells us the director doesn’t want us to hear her voice as she isn’t wearing a throat mike... which means this woman who gets shot definitely isn’t Tom Cruise’s leading lady. So that’s that then. It’s all too obvious and drains the scene of any tension it might have had when we rejoin it towards the end of the movie. Really silly idea starting out with this scene, I think. It tipped me off straight away and also tells me there’s going to be a scene where Cruise’s wife (as she is) gets snatched. Damn silly.

Unfortunately, after the scenes which you just know you’re going to get establishing Michelle Monaghan’s character and a really cool action sequence where the rescue of an agent behind enemy lines goes horribly wrong (pretty much the best action sequence in the movie... it all goes down hill after that point in terms of on screen excitement... or at least that’s how I felt about it) the movie continues in using this same kind of policy of pointing out and showing you all its cards before any of them are actually played out.

Even in the first action scene we are shown an attempt to neutralise an explosive charge in a person’s head so we know Cruise’s character will be okay at the end of the movie (we are told that he has one in him during the pre-credits sequence so you are pretty much waiting for them to establish how to get one out or neutralise it as soon as they can). We are also given a new character played by the excellent Laurence Fishburne who is pretty much set up as a villain straight away and, since this is the way he’s been set up, you pretty much know he won’t really be the villain and straight away suspect Ethan’s friend/director character instead. This is pretty much spelled out in big letters for you when they trace the call of the lead villain directly to Fishburne’s office halfway through the film... from then on in you wonder why the filmmakers are trying to be so obvious with their misdirection and you know that Fishburne is almost certainly one of the good guys.

So yeah, this is the film where, like the first two movies in the series, I was just waiting for the penny to drop with the main characters for far too long again and kinda got bored waiting, to be honest. This is definitely my least favourite of this franchise so far because, well at least the second movie had fantastic cinematography and truly beautiful music.

Talking of music, I like Michael Giacchino a lot but the score in the mix in the context of the movie is a bit rubbish, to be honest. There was one cue in it which really made me stand up and say to my dad that this is why movie producers hire Michael Giacchino... because he’s really great at copying other people’s musical styles. And that cue I was responding too really did sound like it was coming from a 1960s TV show and it definitely hit all the right points for me. Unfortunately, when watching the end credits I found that this piece was, in fact, part of Lalo Schifrin’s underscore for the original series (quite apart from his main Mission Impossible theme tune which is used in every film in the movie series anyway) and so it was Schifrin’s original cue that I was responding to. Still, Giacchino is a cool composer and I look forward to receiving his score in the post soon so I can hear it without a layer of bullets and explosions over the top of it and evaluate it in a more ideal circumstance (even though that’s not the use it was originally composed for in terms of its primary function as a component element of a big movie).

Having said all this... it’s got a few nice things in this movie too. Seeing a mask sculpted and made and then collecting a voice for the throat mikes in the field at not very much notice is all very interesting and the performances of the cast in this are all pretty cool... to the extent that they’re allowed to be... seeing that the script manages to telegraph every little twist at least a half an hour before. The “one eyeball pointing one way and the other wobbled in another direction” death face of the young agent Cruise loses in the early action scene is also impressive in that it’s a neat idea of showing that something exploded inside her brain without actually demolishing the exterior of her head and because it’s also quite disturbing. It’s a very powerful piece of imagery and the camera does dwell on this a couple of times to get maximum usage from it. So that’s pretty good.

There’s no need, though, for yet another “Tom Cruise is left dangling” homage to the first movie (just like the last one did when that original sequence really wasn’t that great in the first place). What were they thinking?

All in all, not my favourite Mission Impossible film and, even though they were just as obvious, the first two definitely have more edge to them than this one, I think, in terms of both watchability and visual splendour. i guess I’ll be watching Ghost Protocol soon then.




Mission Impossible at NUTS4R2
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to click on one of the titles below to take you to my review.

Mission Impossible
Mission Impossible 2
Mission Impossible 3
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 
Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation 
Mission Impossible: Fallout

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Dark Trek:
Gorn But Not Forgotten

Star Trek: Into Darkness 
(aka Star Trek 12)
USA 2013
Directed by J. J. Abrams
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Big, wrathful spoilers will awaken 
in this review and walk over your cold corpses.

There’s an old Vulcan proverb that says that, sometimes, it is possible to have your cake and eat it.

Or at least, if there’s not, there probably should be. I don’t think I mentioned it back in my review of the last Star Trek movie (right here) but this ‘have cake and also eat it’ mentality certainly drove the previous film in terms of skewing off the timeline into a new series of adventures with the same characters without having to worry about any previous Star Trek continuity. And it managed to keep the original Leonard Nimoy version of the Spock character in this new universe too.

Star Trek: Into Darkness also, very much, uses this cake-eating logic because what we’ve got here, and this is something a lot of Star Trek fans guessed from early trailers last year, is a partial remake and homage to the two previous Star Trek stories which featured Ricardo Montalban as the superhuman villain Khan Noonian Singh, namely the original series episode Space Seed and its big screen sequel Star Trek 2: The Wrath Of Kahn. Given that the second film in the series is so beloved by fans and that this is director J. J. Abrams second film for the franchise (but, given the presence of Nimoy as Spock in these films, certainly the 12th in the series and the 8th to feature Leonard Nimoy as the original Spock), I’m guessing the temptation was always there to match the darkness of The Wrath Of Khan and somewhere in that early process the decision was made to... “well, what the heck, let’s just have Khan in it”.

This, is something which, given the pre-publicity hype on the movie, may have been better highlighted in the marketing instead of being kept a mystery because... well frankly it backfires. The film probably works on two levels but most people who are even minor fans of Star Trek are going to figure out what’s going on very early on. When the role played by British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who appears to demonstrate superhuman combat skills (saving key crew members of the Enterprise from a bunch of klingons) asks how many of the strange, new “super proton torpedos” there are and is told that there are 72, people will probably remember there were 72 left of Khan’s superspecies in the original Space Seed episode and, even if you don’t realise that (and I confess I didn’t)... even I, by that time, had figured out that there were super powered beings being hidden in the torpedos long before any of the characters in the Enterprise crew figure it out.

The story structure does seem to be the biggest weakness of this movie, in all honesty. It’s simplistic and the arcs of the characters are too obviously signposted. When the excellent Simon Pegg, playing Scotty, resigns from Kirk’s command due to a difference of opinion, it’s pretty obvious he’s being left behind to save the day when it looks like the Enterprise crew are about to be destroyed... and I found this kind of set up for a touch of temporary deus ex machina just a little disappointing in the overall scheme of things. And that kind of strategy is pulled out and reused quite a few times in this movie.

A puzzling but major source of enjoyment for the film, though, are the direct quotes and scene remakes from both of the first two films in the franchise. Admiral Pike, for example, is once again seen wearing the outfit that Admiral Kirk wore throughout a lot of Star Trek The Motion Picture, and he even has William Shatner’s “They gave her back to me...” line which, actually, given the context of that line in this movie, kind of hit a bit of a false note with me in all honesty. It was also a bit of a shame to see Pike’s final fate as being so different from the character’s farewell in the original series story The Menagerie.

Of course, the big scene which is going to get a lot of Star Trek fans uptight is the remake of the ‘Spock death scene’ from The Wrath Of Khan, which is plugged in near the end of this film but in reverse, with Kirk dying behind the radiation flooded compartment and the two characters switching and referencing each other’s lines from the original. This all, like a lot of the sequences in this movie, relies on a certain knowledge of the previous versions of the on screen references to tap the audience into feeling anxiety and suspense based on prior versions of the scenes, rather than anything created specifically for this movie... although there are those kinds of moments too, to be sure. The real cheat and ultimate disappointment of the ‘Kirk death scene’ in this one, though, is that even before Kirk is dead, you know exactly how he can be brought back to life again... since the story uses advanced genetics as one of its elements. So this movie is, in no way, as gutsy as when Spock was killed off, possibly for good at the time, back in cinemas in 1982 (although, to be fair, they did build in a little escape door in case they could talk Nimoy back for the third film... one which was used for his return soon after).

Okay, so far I’ve mostly talked about the negative or slightly disappointing aspects of this movie. What I’ve been leaving out, however, is that some of these same scenes, along with loads of others in the movie, are also bags of fun and make for an all around ‘grade A’ entertaining motion picture experience. People who took to the last film in the franchise certainly shouldn’t be disenchanted with this one and I, despite all the things I’ve been mentioning here, really loved it.

The performances were all great although there was slightly less of an ‘ensemble’ feel to it with Sulu, Chekhov and even McCoy not getting that much chance to shine here... but then again, that would also be in keeping, to some extent, with the way the original series was put together in the 60s which, although it did have a very good ensemble cast, was very much the Kirk and Spock show for a lot of its running time (something some members of the original cast, famously, never seemed to forgive William Shatner for, for some reason).

There’s a lot of action in this one and lots of bright, classic Star Trek colours (intermingled with a touch of dreary colour homage to the look of the first film in the franchise too). There’s even a nice line which relates to the fan pleasing “red shirt” status, when Chekhov is promoted to Mr. Scott’s post and asked to “put on the red shirt”, which immediately causes the fans in the audience to wonder if they are going to be killing Chekhov in this one. Nice references, too, to past Trek races and characters such as the Gorn and Harcourt Fenton Mudd but, I did wonder why there was only one tribble in the film (which is used as a plot device, as it happens). Surely there should have been more of them after a short while?

One big old character reference is the introduction of a young Dr. Carol Marcus, who we only knew as an “old flame” character at a much later stage in her life in Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. We know in the original version of the timeline she gives birth to Kirk’s son who is also in The Wrath Of Khan, and who is killed by the Klingons in Star Trek III: The Search For Spock... so we already have foreknowledge of where these characters may well be going in future films in the franchise.

It’s a shame that Noel Clarke (companion Mickey from Doctor Who and a successful writer/director in his own right) didn’t get more of a role in this film, however. His scenes are over and done with pretty quickly and his character is just used to establish the threat the Enterprise crew in this film face. That threat, however, is indeed Khan, and although Benedict Cumberbatch obviously plays him in a completely different way to the way Riccardo Montalban used to play him, he is still a very real and dangerous threat and, when you’ve got an actor of Cumberbatch’s calibre in the role... you know you are  not going to be let down. I was very pleased to see that the character, and his superpowered army, have all been preserved in cryogenic sleep and locked away in a warehouse, in the style of the ending of Raiders Of The Lost Ark... Khan with a sinister smile on his face. I hope the director and writers consider bringing this character back for the next installment in the franchise to cause more mayhem... he has, after all, kind of become the Moriarty character to Kirk’s Sherlock in a way (which is kinda ironic, given the role he’s most famous for on British TV screens).

Added into the mix, of course, is Abrams’ regular composer Michael Giachinno, who both repeats and builds on his excellent score from the previous film and, thankfully, remembers to bring back Alexander Courage’s original fanfare and theme tune right where it’s needed. I’ve already got the CD on pre-order from Amazon and am looking forward to wearing it out as soon as possible.

All in all, then, Star Trek: Into Darkness is wildly entertaining and, as far as I’m concerned, very repeat watchable (yeah, I’ll be getting in line for another showing and grabbing the BluRay when it’s out). Certainly it might annoy hardcore fans of the franchise but I think, even if they lighten up a little they will probably enjoy it too. The reliance towards past reference to hit the right notes worries me a little in terms of Abrams being entrusted to direct the next Star Wars movies (we need proper sequels, not a bunch of old character references) but certainly he’s not been too disrespectful to the Star Trek franchise and these particular movies seem to be heading in the right direction I think... although the laws of physics are completely abandoned in these new movies. Don’t get me started.

Either way, it was good to see a movie where the famously mocked and quoted Captain Kirk line/word was switched to Spock to deliver in this one... “Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!”


Star Trek @ NUTS4R2
Star Trek Series 1
Star Trek - The Motion Picture 
Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan
Star Trek III - The Search For Spock
Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home 
Star Trek V - The Final Frontier 
Star Trek VI - The Undiscovered Country
Star Trek - Generations (aka Star Trek VII) 
Star Trek - First Contact 
Star Trek - Insurrection 
Star Trek Nemesis 

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond