The Big Lebowski

Bunny Lebowski Is Missing

The Big Lebowski
USA/UK 1998
Written and Directed by The Coen Brothers
Universal Ltd Edition Blu Ray Book Zone B

I remember the first time I saw The Big Lebowski. It was at the end of April 1998 at the Metro Cinema on Rupert Street in London. The cinema is, sadly, now deceased but I remember I was alone and all through the film I was just in awe of what is, frankly, one of the greatest movie comedies ever committed to celluloid... I just had nobody to talk to about it. When I left I realised that the film was one of those rare beasts that is, as I exclaimed to myself at the time, ‘pure cinema’. This is the kind of amazing spectacle that completely justifies the art of film to anybody who would question the validity of the medium. It blew me away and I pretty much dragged a fair few people to see it over the course of the next month. A truly brilliant piece of magic.

I’ve now just got around to watching a limited edition book set I picked up maybe four or five years ago and, although I haven’t had time to watch the supplementary material (as I rarely do), it is packed to the brim with extras. And, more importantly, the film itself really stands the test of time. From it’s opening narrative from the great Sam Elliot to his address directly to the audience at the end of the picture, the film is a pure joy as we follow the exploits of a week or so in the life of Jeff ‘The Dude’ Lebowski, who is set on a mission by his millionaire namesake to be the ‘delivery guy’ for the ransom of The Big Lebowski’s wife Bunny. A job which turns into a convoluted mess of a plot which is an absolute joy to follow as the overly relaxed and accommodating, Fletch-like character becomes inexplicably embroiled in a bizarre double cross of a blackmail plot which is itself exploited by the potential victim of that plot.

I’ve mentioned Fletch above as perhaps being close kin to certain aspects of the character but perhaps only because of the similarity of the tropes of the genre The Coens are following here. This is pure Raymond Chandler/Dashiel Hammet style, hard boiled detective noir but shot through with a slobby but 'adrenalin rush' jab of broad humour and some nicely surrealistic moments... uniting in a work which is an experience first, a film second.

Played expertly by Jeff Bridges, Lebowski is aided or, frankly, more abetted by his companions Walter and Donnie, played brilliantly by John Goodman and Steve Buscemi. During his adventures he meets more and more bizarre characters played by the likes of Julianne Moore, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tara Reade (as Bunny, who was also perfect in the remarkable Josie And The Pussycats), Peter Stormare and John Turturro, who reprised his role earlier this year as ‘Jesus’ in his film The Jesus Rolls.

The plot is not something I’m going to dig into here... it’s a standard mystery with various reveals but it’s totally not important... the film is completely character driven and though it certainly needs a story to tie the whole thing together (just as Lebowski needs his rug to tie his room together) it is the brilliance of the characters, the people who perform then and the witty script which really maketh the movie here. Being as it’s by Joel and Ethan Coen, who I still find a bit hit and miss on their projects, the whole thing looks great too... and no wonder when they’ve got cinematographer Roger Deakins on board. I especially liked the very sharp focus, brightly coloured and contrasted stuff he shoots the second dream sequence, the Gutterballs porn parody, with. It looks fantastic and brings that whole sense of ‘epic’ to the silliness of the premise. This is a work of genius here, make no mistake.

I also love the way the dialogue kind of keeps refuelling itself from scene to scene too. I think the first two or three times I saw this it took a while to sink in but, the more you see it, the more you realise that a lot of Jeff Bridges’ dialogue is culled from things he’s heard other people say in a prior sequence. It’s amazing how somebody will say something to him in one scene and he will then say the exact same phrase he’s picked up to somebody else in a later scene. This kind of eclectic approach to the dialogue is fantastic and, though it’s obviously very rigid in the way it evolves in the writing, Bridges makes it feel so off-the-cuff and natural that... well, as I said, you might not even notice it for a while.

There are a lot of little sly references to other pop culture elements in the film but, with the structure of dialogue and the way the piece folds in on itself by building on its own foundations, some of these do kind of get lost in the mix on first or second viewings and, even if you do spot them, like the various overt shout outs to the TV show Branded (The Dude even sings the theme tune when he’s drunk), they are often fictionalised with, in this case, a fake writer and a ‘way off’ episode count.

Probably my favourite reference, though, is the fact that the nihilists fronted by Peter Stormare, who are among those who give The Dude and his friends such a hard time in the film, were also part of a once famous, fictional ‘euro pop’ group who are so obviously a version of the group Kraftwerk. Even their album cover features a nice parody of exactly the style of 70s/80s artwork the band would use as their front jackets and the name of their group is the name of one of the band’s famous hits, Autobahn.

Oh, saying that I also love the Lenin/Lennon confusion moment with Donnie repeatedly saying... “I am the Walrus.”

And I think I’ll leave it there. I could probably go on to say quite a lot about the movie if I had the time but I don’t want to get into a full blown analysis of every minute of the film on here and, frankly, if you’ve never seen it before, I certainly don’t want to spoil it for you. All I will say is that, despite a mainly needle-dropped soundtrack comprising of songs and only a few minutes of Carter Burwell score, The Big Lebowski is still an absolute masterpiece and, probably still, the greatest movie The Coens ever put together. This is one of those films that deserves another look every seven years or so, for sure. Recommended for absolutely anyone who loves cinema.

Bad Times At The El Royale

Royale, No Cheese

Bad Times At The El Royale
2018 USA Directed by Drew Goddard
UK cinema release print.

So this one surprised me a little.

I took a punt on Bad Times At El Royale and kept my fingers crossed that Drew Goddard, who directed The Cabin In The Woods (reviewed here) would deliver something greater than the dreadful, slickly edited gangster film that the trailer kinda half made it out to be. I’d recently said to somebody that, more often than not these days, trailers really put one off going to see the movie and reflect the tone of said movie in a completely inaccurate manner and... I’m happy to say that this is the case with Bad Times At The El Royale.

Now, the film is about criminally inspired shenanigans at a famous hotel (once owned by Frank Sinatra) which is split in half by the state line which separates Nevada from California (the rooms on the California side are a buck more expensive). It’s also got a rollicking good ensemble cast including Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, John Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman and Chris Hemsworth... who are all truly excellent and it’s nice to see this cast interacting in ways you wouldn’t expect them to here.

I say ways you wouldn’t expect because, although I quite liked The Cabin In The Woods, I did find it incredibly predictable. However, this new film surprised me a number of times when I was sure I knew what was coming next. For example the film has a pre-credits sequence which consists of a static camera watching a room in the El Royale. After a while the action within the shot keeps cutting to different parts of the day in the same shot placement, rapidly, in a montage which shows us the set up one of the film’s main plot points. I don’t want to ruin this sequence for anyone but this set up includes buried treasure (of a sort) and a man with a shotgun. Now, after the sequence ends and the title goes up, the rest of the film takes place ten years later, in 1969 and tells the story of what happens when seven characters converge on the place over the course of the fairly long running time. My point is, though, that I was pretty sure I could figure out the identity of the man with the shotgun within the opening minute of the post opening credits shot but, as it happens, I’m glad to say I was wrong. On the other hand, certain things about this opening set up do go unanswered still by the time the end credits start to roll but, you can take an educated guess at certain things and it’s nice to at least leave a movie with something to think about.

Now, the film has an excellent script, good acting, a nice fluid camera style which alternates between static shots and slow pans when required and it gets you interested in the various characters in a number of chapters which give you a little of the back story of each person and how they came to be here as the movie progresses. It’s an old cliché of a way of giving you the information in the most suspenseful way, to be sure and certain things are deliberately left unsaid (as in that pre-title sequence) so you can draw your own conclusions about them but, for the most part, it’s a very smart movie and it keeps you interested in the way things are going to turn out all the way through. It also feels dangerous a lot of the time, so you fear for the way things are going to go down when you see someone who’s got a gun, for example. Especially when not all the characters are as stable or predictable as you might think... Dakota Johnson’s character, for example, or Chris Hemsworth, who seems to be playing some kind of evil cult leader in the same vein as Charlie Manson.

I guess if I was going to compare it to something else, I might say it’s put together in the same way and with the same intensity as a Quentin Tarantino movie... just with less flowery dialogue (not knocking Tarantino’s dialogue, it’s usually very good, just saying that the speech here doesn’t match expectations of his particular work). Less sonorous dialogue is no bad thing though and I have to say I found the, relatively, smaller amount of ironic, post modernistic references in the movie to be a refreshing change in a film set in this kind of era, to be honest. That being said, Jeff Bridges does sign his name in the hotel register as Father Daniel Flynn, Flynn being the name of his character in the two Tron movies (reviewed here and here)... but I can forgive them that one, I think.

My main criticism of the movie is actually found within that dialogue, however. That being the use of very similar phrases coming out of different character’s mouths, rather then getting them all to speak about things in different ways. For instance, at least two different characters from different backgrounds use the phrase “all the bad” when such a distinctive phrase is not probably something two different protagonists are going to share. So the voice of the writer/director is very much present in the dialogue and... like a lot of writers tend to do and should really think about not doing... all the characters are thus easily perceived to be a version of how he speaks/writes. Which is a shame if you ask me.

The only other thing I didn't like so much was the constant use of songs in the film. They play an important role in terms of both atmosphere and, in at least one scene, commentary on the action but the rest of the music in the film is handled by Michael Giacchino and is less prominent. Maybe if I’d known more than a couple of the songs I would have had a better response to the musical side of the film but, as it stands, I’m not sure it’s quite my cup o’ tea.

All that being said, though, these are really minor criticisms and I have to say I enjoyed Bad Times at The El Royale from end to end. Which is especially impressive because the film has a running time of 2 hours and 22 minutes but it really doesn’t feel that long and the pacing is such, with a cliff hanger seemingly at the end of every chapter stop, that you certainly won’t realise where the time has gone. At least I didn’t so, yeah... pretty impressed with this one. It’s not something I think I could watch again but it certainly holds the attention and I’d definitely recommend you catch this one while it’s at cinemas. There’s a lot of rubbish out there at the moment in movieland but this film certainly doesn’t add to that pile and is worth your time, I’d say. You’ll find yourself caring for characters who probably make a bad first impression on you when you first meet them, which is no mean feat in itself... so give this one a go.

Kingsman - The Golden Circle

Kingdemonium

Kingsman - The Golden Circle
UK/USA 2017 Directed by Matthew Vaughn
UK cinema release print.

Disclaimer: The only real spoilers you will see in here can all be easily gleaned from the trailer. However, if you haven’t seen the trailer then I would urge you to go in blind.

So the time is already upon us when we get the first and, possibly, not the last sequel to Kingsman - The Secret Service, a film which I loved and reviewed here. Now, it has to be said that I was was really not looking forward to a sequel to that first movie because, while Taron Egerton as Eggsy and Mark Strong as Merlin were bound to be back for the next one, I thought that Colin Firth’s stand out role of Galahad (aka Harry Hart) was an important ingredient in making the whole thing work. Well Vaughn and co-writer, the often quite wonderful Jane Goldman, obviously thought so too because they managed to find a way to bring Firth’s character back which, while utterly implausible in real life, doesn’t really stretch the credibility of the hyper-real world of the ‘Kingsman universe’ too much and... a little more on that later. That being said, I have seen a lot of negative comments about the film being either dull or unwatchable from several quarters on Twitter and the like over the last couple of weeks so... yeah... I wasn’t exactly holding my breath to wait and see this one.

However, as it happens, it’s my firm belief that the bad criticism I’ve heard of it is, for me at least, quite wrong. Not only does Kingsman - The Golden Circle live up to and honour the spirit of the original movie, it also builds on that world fairly successfully and, to boot, is another fun ride. It’s quite true that it isn’t quite near as good as the first one but, honestly, that would be a pretty tall task. However, what the cast and crew have delivered here is a solid, action comedy super-spy thriller which, although I’m sure it completely strays from the comic book source as much or, posssibly, even more than the original movie did, is a nice slice of cinematic spectacle and, I would have thought, a bit of a crowd pleaser. There are, it has to be said, quite a lot of what I would call minor problems with it but, ultimately, these don’t add up to a significant movie killer and the film coasts along quite nicely with, as the first one, a real feeling of empathy and good will conjured up for the main protagonists to succeed in their mission.

Okay so, the three cast I’ve mentioned above are supported by a very strong, somewhat misused in cases, cast which boasts several big names. Julianne Moore is excellent as Poppy, this film’s super-villain, although I believe she is written quite badly and it does hurt the film a little, I think, that Eggsy and Harry don’t actually get to meet or interact with her until their final confrontation scene. So, excellent as she always is, she does tend to feel like she’s been plonked into the film in a corner to just cut back to every now and again in an effort to remind us that there is an evil mastermind making all these things happen in the film. Which is a shame.

Similarly, Channing Tatum is in this but you’d barely know it. His role is quite small and, although he stays the course of the film, the plot line treats him as just an example of how deadly the super-villain’s plan is... like he’s an egg timer so you know how crucial the mission is getting. Jeff Bridges is similarly wasted as the boss of Statesman, the US counterpart to Kingsman and Halle Berry is also not given much to do as the US version of Mark Strong’s Merlin character. I was surprised to see an excellent singer, Tara Hugo, in a little cameo as a bar maid. I don’t know much about her or even, to be honest, that she was also an actress but she brought out a truly great album of Philip Glass songs a year or two ago which is worth giving a listen to. And talking of singers, I was similarly caught unawares to see that Elton John has such a large and crucial part in the story. He’s like ‘the cameo that never goes away’ and he has some nice little moments during the course of the film. There are quite a few more ‘name’ actors putting in appearances in this one but if I list them all I’d be here all day and this would be the longest, scroll hungry review ever... so I won’t.

These people are all good, of course but, it was the surprise reappearance of a number of characters and actors from the first film which really helped pull this one together. A couple of main players are back but I don’t want to spoil the surprise if you haven’t seen this one yet. That being said, as in the first movie, the writers are not afraid to kill off well loved characters and, by the time this film is done, I found I wasn’t eyeing any further sequels with much anticipation after the loss of yet another main ingredient of the series... at least in my eyes.

The film is a joy to watch, though, for the most part and the director has got this really nice thing going with scene transitions which are reflected from the end of one scene into the next... so a pile of drugs will be the side of a mountain next to Poppy’s secret lair, a hole punched through a wall in that lair will be the hole left on the bomb site of the Kingsman shop in London and a bottle of whiskey would morph into a big building in Kentucky shaped like the bottle of whiskey, etc. It’s a nice touch and it really works through the movie without being overdone to the point that it begins to wear thin.

The stunt work and action in this is also great and there’s the usual strong humour undercutting things as it did first time around. Colin Firth’s resurrection is handled particularly well in that he doesn’t immediately snap into mission mode and a lot of scenes of him not being able to remember who he was are not rushed unduly. The way he is brought back into himself, as it were, hinges on the credibility of an ‘expanded’ flashback to part of the original film that everyone remembers and it’s done very well. Even the scene where he goes into a deliberate parallel scene of his famous “manners maketh man” moment from the first doesn’t go as you’d expect it to, being used to simultaneously show that the resurrection isn’t completely taken, as yet and also used to try, not all that successfully, to up the stakes with another character to give the final quarter of the film a little more edge... but, again, I can’t say anything more here because it’s quite definitively in spoiler territory (although a certain plot twist could be deduced from the trailer and I was wondering about a certain possible reveal before I even started watching the movie, to be honest). And even the resurrection of another character (who appears in the film right from the start) is pretty well accounted for and makes total sense, in all fairness.

All this being said, though, the film does have a fair few problems too. For one, a cable car sequence relies on having the car fitted with something which is both completely useless to anyone, super-villain or not, and makes absolutely no sense. Nobody would have a cable car that could do what it does here and, especially, for absolutely no good reason or practical use as it is portrayed during this sequence. Similarly, a character who is branded as part of ‘The Golden Circle’ would surely not let themself be played in the way that Eggsy plays that person in this movie. You can’t claim that a specific character is a naive person if we’ve already been shown how rigorous a ritual it is to be allowed to be a member of The Golden Circle. It makes no sense.

Another big problem is the quality of the action. Like I said, it’s all great but it also feels a little anti-climactic at times because the opening action sequence of the film which involves a fight and chase in a Kingsman cab (as seen on the trailers) is so blisteringly good and makes for such a strong introduction to the film, that nothing else in the movie really feels as intense as that again. Great opening though. However, for a film that does a lot to link in with the first to the point of both replaying scenes and setting up parallel versions of some of those set pieces, then I was bemused that the two most talked about orgies of violence from the first - the blood rage church sequence and the head exploding sequence - had no alternate versions explored in this one and... I felt it really needed something as extreme as those towards the end of this one to keep the feel a little closer to the first.

The film is probably, I suspect, not all that great as a stand alone movie either. There are a lot of jokes and nods to the first one but some of them are quite subtle and rely on knowledge gleaned from that movie. For instance, when an exchange between two characters goes to saving the world, unless you’ve seen the first one then you won’t know what that little hook in the conversation is all about and no idea that they’re really talking about anal sex. Similarly, when we are shown Eggsy’s Kingsman office in his flat, people who haven’t seen the first one may not understand why three, completely unglamourous newspaper front pages are decorating the wall. Even when Colin Firth’s character is being questioned by Merlin about the exact same thing, unless you know what Firth’s explanation of the newspapers is in the first film, you may find yourself scratching your head as to the significance of these questions. So this really is a film for people who are familiar with the first... not least because so many scenes from the first one are ‘given away’ here. That’s not particularly a problem, mind you and I prefer it like this but... I can see how some people might get lost in this one.

However, even with all the minus points, the film still manages to be a cut above many others which have tried... and failed... to do this kind of thing properly. They've also convinced me that the time is right for somebody to have a crack at a movie version of The Ballad Of Halo Jones at some point soon please (anybody who remembers Toby will know exactly what I'm talking about when they see this).

And the score, once again by composers Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson from the first film, creates the all important musical continuity which so many big screen franchises (Marvel, DC, Alien, Star Trek etc) get wrong. The Kingsman theme is used more, has instant recognition value here and I suspect I’m going to be playing this score a lot more than the first one when it comes out on CD at the end of next month. It even, apparently, has some of Jackman’s score for X-Men - First Class deliberately used for a certain scene here.

All in all, then, Kingsman - The Golden Circle is a great night out at the movies. Not devoid of problems but definitely one which I think fans and admirers of the first film will enjoy a lot. Like I said earlier, I can’t see how a third movie would be able to work without a certain ‘ingredient’ in the mix but, hey, there’s at least a possible replacement character already lined up for that role here, I suppose, so... lets see how the box office on this one goes before we write off another sequel.

A Walk Among The Tombstones

Tomb It May Concern

A Walk Among The Tombstones
2014  USA
Directed by Scott Frank
UK cinema release print.

I’ve not seen Eight Million Ways To Die but it’s probably worth mentioning that here because it’s a film which stars Jeff Bridges playing the same character, Matthew Scudder, that Liam Neeson plays in A Walk Among The Tombstones. Nor have I read the 18 books published by Lawrence Block about the adventures of the character on which each of those two films is based... A Walk Among The Tombstones being the tenth in the series. So I guess what I’m saying here is that I can’t pitch this review in the context of any past experience of the character in any previous media incarnations. So as far as it’s success as a faithful adaptation goes... I can’t tell you.

What I can do, however, is point out to you that this is one of the best film noir style thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. It’s not exactly a police procedural movie as such because, certainly, the main character Matthew Scudder, played quite brilliantly and believably by Liam Neeson as a recovered alcoholic, is an ex-cop who now works as an unlicensed “private” detective... but it certainly uses many of the investigative methods, or at least the cinematic shorthand for them, used by both policiers and various other private detective films throughout the years.

When I say it’s a modern film noir I’m not being creative with my words either. This is almost a text book classic noir film with many, if not all, of the main ingredients of the classic noir thrillers of the 1940s and 1950s. In terms of the crisp quality of the cinematography and general mise en scene as well as the grimy, grey moral territory that’s often best rendered through a curiously chiaroscuro point of view, allowing the audience to stand in moral judgement of the dilemmas faced by the anti-heroes of such tales.

The plot concerns one of the big noir themes used almost to oblivion but re-appropriated very well for a film with this kind of tone... revenge.

Liam Neeson’s character is hired by a drug dealer because he believes he has a particular set of skills needed to find the people who kidnapped the drug dealer’s wife, ransomed her for a large sum of money and then chopped her up into little pieces after he’d paid them off. There is no shilly shallying around with motivations here... the dealer makes it clear that he intends to kill them. This makes it a little harder for Neeson’s character to take on the job but some cinematic sleight of hand which is presented to the audience as a kind of male bonding follow up scene to his first interview with the husband is all that’s needed to justify why the less morally flexible (than he used to be) Matthew Scudder takes on the job in the first place.

One of the main ingredients of the standard film noir, the femme fatale or presence of a strong female character in the plot, is curiously absent in this movie. There is really no single female lead in this film, only a few supporting female characters. However, it’s tellingly noirish, I think, that the women and girls in this film are mostly seen as the motivations for the actions of the majority of the male protagonists and antagonists here. If you were feeling mean spirited about it I guess you could say that all the female figures in this movie are reduced to catalysts and obsessions for the men to act out their revenge fantasies. However, the other way to look at it is that the female presence, in a movie mostly devoid of women, is actually very strong and certainly, the way one of those women is viewed in this movie, that of the drug dealer’s wife Carrie, is very much an echo of the way a female presence can be used in a classic film noir.

To explain that last comment, Carrie’s painting on her husbands wall serves as a very visual and constant reminder reminder (the camera loves it) of the woman he has lost and is consequently so obsessed with. His brother, also, has various sketches, paintings and studies of her on his wall and the character almost comes to life in a way just from her painting. This is very similar to the way the portrait of Gene Tierney’s character Laura is used in the first half of the movie Laura, in this respect, although that’s probably all I want to say about that particular classic noir in case you’ve not seen it and I give too much away. Needless to say, there was something I was expecting to happen in A Walk Among The Tombstones because I’d made that connection while watching it, which doesn’t actually take place, I’m happy to say.

What we do get in this film, however, is a heck of a lot of male bonding. There’s even a young teenage character who Scudder, almost accidentally, takes on as an assistant who serves both that function and, surely not coincidentally, acts as a kind of redemption fulfilment figure for Scudder due to certain aspects of a shoot out that went wrong in Scudder’s past.

We see this shoot out at the start of the movie, right after a scene which is used to establish Neeson’s character as someone who is initially unlikeable. This shoot out is probably the most kinetic and frenetically edited sequence in the whole movie and, when we revisit the scene later to bring new information to it which wasn’t revealed at the opening of the piece, it’s then that we see why the young teenage character, TJ, has been introduced into the plot line.

The rest of the movie, including the revisited opening chase and shoot sequence, is shot and cut in a much more sedate manner which really allows the shots to breathe and the actors to perform in either long static shots or slow, languorous camera pans etc. The film never gets boring though and concentrates and distills your attention to the emotional heart of the story so that the revenge motif and the moral dilemmas faced by many of the characters never once seem false or fake. You believe in the people in this and you know something bad is going to happen to a lot of them here before the film resolves itself in a very curious couple of ending shots which are, in some ways, very brave of the film-makers.

It’s also got a very nice score by a guy called Carlos Rafael Rivera that is totally appropriate, never overpowers the dialogue or action, but still maintains a strong melodic presence throughout the whole of the picture. I’m guessing it works okay as a stand alone listen too so that’s a reminder to myself right there to go and order the CD after I finish writing this. The score really helps too, in a shoot out sequence at the end that is a stop and start counterpoint to some of the “steps” of a recovering alcoholic, acting as a kind of audio glue. At least I think it was used in that sequence... I’ll need to watch it again. I think this particular sequence was almost a misstep from the director but, since there’s a couple of extended denouement scenes at the finish of the movie, it didn’t completely spoil the tone of the rest of the film for me and I’ll cut them some slack for that. For all I know they deliberately needed to slow the sequence down for some reason, in the final cut, and I can appreciate the metaphor as it’s presented, at least.

Not much else to say about this one. If you like strong, gritty, noirish movies with characters you can believe in and a high level of both emotional and physical violence at certain points then you can’t really go wrong with A Walk Among The Tombstones. Neeson’s performance is superb, as you would expect from an actor of his calibre, but so is everyone else in this and the dialogue is pitch perfect. Seriously go out and see this dark little thriller while it’s still showing.

R.I.P.D - Rest In Peace Department

Brown Breadquarters

R.I.P.D - Rest In Peace Department
2013 USA
Directed by Robert Schwentke
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: There are some slight spoilers about the basic set up of 
the plot here, most of which are already detailed in the trailer anyway.

R.I.P.D is one of those simple concept pitch films which comes up every now and again and, for all intents and purposes, the trailer is not really far from the truth of the movie. With apologies to Mark Kermode and his recent comments on summing up a movie in a few words, the trailer was pretty much "Men In Black does Ghostbusters". And that’s not a million miles away from the truth, in actual fact. Maybe a bit less Ghostbusters and more Men In Black sequel in tone perhaps but... well you’ll get the idea.

The plot involves young cop Nick (played by Ryan Reynolds) who is killed by his partner Hayes, played by Kevin Bacon. Instead of rising up to the pearly gates to face his "Judgement Day", he is instead whisked sideways and joins up with the R.I.P.D... that’s Rest In Peace Department to you. Here he is partnered up with the always watchable Jeff Bridges playing a 19th Century cowboy called Roy... although I think its fair to say that the character as Bridges plays him is less inspired by the name Roy and the connotations that has with the "All American Western" at a certain stage in its history and more informed by Bridges stint playing Rooster Cogburn in the Cohen Brothers version of True Grit. He does seem to be channeling that part a little, although he manages to make his pronunciation and delivery only just comprehensible at times, it has to be said. But it’s a fun performance and certainly entertaining when pitched against Reynolds fish out of water rookie in the R.I.P.D.

So, anyway, the job of the R.I.P.D is to track down all the escaped “dead ‘uns” who have fled to earth and bring them back for their final judgement. Thus endeth the plot and thus begineth the rooting, tooting and shooting. And there’s not much else involved, to be honest. It’s a very formulaic movie but there’s certainly nothing wrong with formulaic entertainment done right.

There are some very obvious clichés right from the outset though, it has to be said. You don’t put someone like Kevin Bacon into a picture like this, for example, playing a minor role so, even before the first ten minutes are up and he’s betrayed his true colours, you know that he’s going to be more involved in the plot later on. As it happens, a transgression Reynold’s character has made means he needs to make up with his fresh widow, who is under the spell of Bacon and it’s here that the film really does go exactly the way you think it’s going to go, I’m afraid. I’m not going to tell you want happens but I’ll be amazed if you can’t work out the little twists and turns before they occur.

That being said, it’s a nice bit of Men In Black style chemistry the film has going for it, without quite the same level of rich details and twists which that specific film series tends to bring to bat. You could, however, argue that it’s more streamlined with less deviations, entertaining or not, from the story line and, if you did, I’d be happy to defer to that judgement. The relationship between Bridges and Reynolds is strained and unforgiving a lot of the time, but that actually works in its favour. Do you really want to go through this whole movie where the two lead protagonists are acting all “nicey nicey” with each other?

On the whole, the performances are all excellent. I especially enjoyed Mary-Louise Parker’s Proctor character, and her relationship with Roy, but all the performances are as dead on, if you’ll excuse the inadvertent pun, as they need to be for a ‘popcorn fodder’ kind of movie like this one. And, as it happens, it’s supported by excellent special effects, supportive scoring, good solid direction and, helpfully, editing which won’t confuse you in the action sequences which, considering what happens during those sequences, seems to be to be a bit of a minor miracle right there. One thing I can’t tell you for sure though is whether it’s a good adaptation of the Dark Horse comic book it’s based on... I’m sorry, I just haven’t read it.

The film is predictable, as I said, but there are really two ways the ending, given its target audience, could have gone and you won’t know which of the two possible versions, involving Nick’s widow, they go with until right at the last knockings. That’s okay though, at least you’ll be guessing up until the last minute. As is expected in films of this nature, it’s easy to see where you could get a sequel from on this one and I certainly would like to see where the studios would go with this as I did find myself quite entertained through most of the running time. Alas, I don’t think it’s been at all successful financially and so it’s unlikely now that we’ll be seeing a sequel to this one anytime soon... unless it manages to pull an Austin Powers or The Transporter in terms of its DVD takings. Time will tell I guess... but I’m not expecting much from that revenue avenue.

However, fans of good time Hollywood blockbusters where you really don’t have to be thinking about anything while your watching should have a fair enough time with this one. Worth a watch before it leaves the cinema, I think.

Things Ain’t What They Rooster Be

True Grit US 2010

Directed by

The Coen Brothers

Still just about playing

at UK cinemas if you

can find one...

Warning! OK, this article will probably contain spoilers in it... even for people who have seen the original 1969 version of True Grit. I’m not sure about people who have read the book because, frankly, I haven’t.

I should also warn potential readers that this will probably be, like my previous post, somewhat short, because I find myself at somewhat of a loss of interesting things to say about this movie... even though I liked it a great deal.

The Coen Brothers have always been a bit hit and miss for me. I remember going to see stuff like Blood Simple, Barton Fink and Miller’s Crossing at the cinema at the time of their release and thinking... yeah, technically brilliant but there’s no real emotion in these movies is there? Then they hit a phase with me where they could do no wrong and brought three movies out in a row which were all pretty good... The Big Liebowski (basically one of the great pieces of cinema of our time), The Man Who Wasn’t There and Oh Brother Where Art Thou? Then I kinda lost my way with them and didn’t like a lot of their choices for material and, worse, when I did get to see their later output... didn’t find myself enthralled or entertained as I had been by earlier efforts (even as much as their initial stuff). As a result I didn’t bother with their movie No Country For Old Men and now I wish I had because everybody keeps telling me how brilliant it is.

Now I don’t like it when the Coen Brothers do remakes and stayed well clear of The Ladykillers when they turned their collective eye to that because... well come on? Remake The Ladykillers? Why not just remake Citizen Kane or Star Wars while you’re at it. I initially felt the same about True Grit but then somebody said that it’s more an adaptation of the original novel than a remake and so... well I let the film slip back onto my radar.

Now it’s been a long time since I saw the original version of True Grit... maybe a couple of decades... and so I really don’t remember it all that well. However, one thing that I did remember about the original was Kim Darby in the role of Mattie Ross being absolutely sensational and how the relationship between her and John Wayne’s portrayal of Rooster Cogburn kinda carried the film. I was therefore really annoyed when the Coens’ cast someone other than Ellen Page (from Juno) in the role of Mattie Ross... after all, Ellen Page is pretty much channelling Kim Darby in every film anyway isn’t she? She would have been perfect. If they ever want to do a remake of The Karate Killers then they need to get Page into the picture.

Anyway, I was kinda wounded when I learned Page wasn’t in it but I went along anyway and I have to say... I had a pretty good time with it.

It’s not a remake as such but considering I could hardly remember a thing about the original it was surprising how much of the original was coming back to me when I saw this movie. Seriously... either the original was really faithful to the novel other than the prologue and epilogue book ends or this was more a remake than people would have led me to believe. I hope it’s a case of the former because I don’t see the point of a remake to be honest... and even though I didn’t remember much of the original, this felt pretty much scene by scene to me.

Hailee Steinfeld is pretty darn good, actually, as Mattie Ross. Jeff Bridges is always good but there’s not a heck of a lot of difference (to these nostalgic eyes) between his performance and John Wayne’s original and Matt Damon as LaBoeuf is perhaps, if anything, a little less sympathetic than the way Glen Campbell played him in the original.

Actually, that’s an interesting point to note. The characters in this version are all a lot less sympathetic than in the original and the only ones I really felt sorry for, perhaps perversely, were some of the villains. I just don’t care about the main protagonists in this version enough to root for them all that much and the final death blow on my sympathies lies in the one-armed version of Mattie Ross at the end of the film and how hardened and unlikeable she turned out to be. I think the only one in this picture who I really felt sorry for was the horse, Little Blackie, who Rooster rides to his death to get Mattie to a doctor (securing that death with a bullet to the brain of the horse in question).

But for all this I found myself still quite gripped by the action on screen and caught up in it to a point I didn’t expect. I think it might be just because there are so few Westerns made these days... I even liked Jonah Hex whose titular character was played by Josh Brolin and who winds up here playing Tom Chaney, the man Mattie Ross has sworn revenge to bring to justice as the killer of her father.

A lot as been made of Carter Burwell’s score and he’s certainly a fine composer but I found this one lacking. Listen to Elmer Bernstein’s original and you know the kind of scoring you’ll get on the action sequences... the scoring on this one is quite laid back and more atmosphere based than blistering leitmotif. Nothing wrong with that, of course. That was the late, great Bernard Herrmanns approach to most of his scores too and that worked like gangbusters... I just felt like the music on this one was a little underwhelming at times. Not necessarily blaming Burwell for this though... might have just had his score dialled down too low in the final mix for all I know.

At the end of the day, True Grit is a solid piece of Western filmmaking but, you know what? It seems totally unnecessary to have remade it. It really doesn’t do a whole lot different from its predecessor and one wonders if the Coens’ didn’t just take the money and rune on this one... we all know how much Hollywood loves commissioning remakes these days.

If you like a good Western yarn told in a convincing manner then the new version of True Grit is definitely worth checking out... just don’t go expecting anything earth-shattering or groundbreaking on this one.

Fill your hands you sunnuva -!

Twice A Tron A Time

Tron Legacy 3D 2010 US

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

This film currently screening

at UK cinemas

This review contains electronic spoilers which may try to crawl into your computer systems to lead a software rebellion and eradicate humanity.

Tron Legacy is another great movie... but you’d find it hard to believe that given the amount of critical whining and pounding it’s received. Perhaps we’re all just living in more sophisticated times but Tron Legacy, though a sequel, almost at times seems like a remake of the original, which I reviewed here.

I say a remake, but it’s certainly a direct sequel to the original confection which lit up our cinemas and our collective computer-boom obsessed minds back in 1982. For example, the film starts up 12 years after the events of the first movie and then quickly switches to the present day. Bruce Boxleitner is back as the original human “model” for Tron. Unfortunately he is only briefly glimpsed as the younger Boxleitner version of Tron for some obscure reason... the Tron character (or what he has become) goes through the movie with his helmet visor covering his face... presumably a cost cutting exercise based on whatever it cost to do what they’ve done to Jeff Bridges.

And what have they done to Jeff Bridges? Remember what they did to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan at the opening of the third X-Men movie (the worst X-Men movie ever made to date)? Well Jeff Bridges plays three versions of himself in this movie... he plays the younger, fresh from Tron, twenty-something version of himself outside the computer world (in a, frankly, less than successful CGI or however they did it version of “young Jeff Bridges”). He also plays the CLU version of himself... that’s the computer version of himself which got “de-resed” at the start of the original movie but seems to be back and is, in this movie, now the “villain of the piece” and he also, finally, plays the Jeff Bridges as he looks now, trapped in a computer for the last 16 or so years and... well he’s brilliant in all three roles but he really seems to be “channelling Liebowski” in this third version of his personae. Not complaining. Love The Big Leibowski and would like to see him do more work in this vein (he may get the chance... it seems Tron is about to become the next big Disney franchise with future movie installments and a TV show in the planning stages).

The movie is not hard to follow and has virtually no plot. The son of the original Bridges character Flynn should be running the global and kind-of-evil company that ENCOM has become since his dads disappearance but instead he has just been lounging around and lunging out at people and especially ENCOM. Then he gets sucked into a computer in Flynn’s old amusement arcade and has to help his dad defeat the evil CLU and also promote and propagate the one surviving “program” who is an evolved form of new life spawned chaotically from the computer world... kind of like a self-writing virus I guess. As it happens, said self-writing virus takes the form of sexy, young lady program so there are love and pixellated sex possibilities happening now in the Tron universe.

The movie, it has to be said, plays like a complete rerun of the first movie. Young Flynn gets sucked into computer, has to go and fight in the “games” by doing exactly the same things and in the same order as his father did in the first film... just more impressive looking versions of them. So... fight with flying discs... astonishing light-cycle chase and then a big, long, slow ride on that Jules Verne meets cyberspace flying contraption they used in the first movie (and I’m pleased to say, since I’m a big reader of Verne, that said author gets a little mention in the movie). Along the way a few more action sequences have been inserted (excellent bar fight scene) and some nice metaphors are made... such as the “rescue” dog young Flynn owns in the real/non-computer world and the “rescue” programme in the shape of a sexy, hot woman he ends up with at the end of the movie.

I also liked the little reference to Wendy Carlos’ score to the original movie that “younged-up Jeff Bridges” hums for a few seconds in the bedroom of his son at the start of the movie. I had been moaning about the lack of Wendy Carlos’music in this movie but, as it happens, the score to this one by a young band with the unfortunate name of Daft Punk is quite enthralling and compelling and toe tapping and worthy of instant purchase on hearing it (which I did, naturally).

Basically, the big fault of this movie is that it’s really just doing what the original movie did when it was released. That movie was all about the effects and so is this one. Tron was just eye-candy for an early 80s audience which looks a bit clunky by modern standards. Tron Legacy is eye-candy for the “now generation” and it’s actually very respectful of the look of the original movie... it’s all just ramped up a bit. More detail and the 3D aspect is really superb on this one (for once... wish they’d stop making 3D movies again now though... the cinemas are using it as an excuse to charge us more money for the tickets).

However, I’d have to say that the big fault of the movie being so much eye-candy is also it’s biggest asset. It doesn’t need much of a plot, it is what it is... and if it does kinda drag in tempo in the middle and towards the end, no matter. It’s got a lot to look at and your eye will be enthralled. This movie is not about the underlying art of its substance (of which there isn’t much, to be fair) but it’s everything about the art of it’s surface... and this, in this one case, more than makes up for the hollowness of that outer but beautiful looking shell.

Tron Voyage

Tron 1982 US

Directed by Steven Lisberger

Disney Region 2

Tron was a well hyped movie when I was a teen. I remember all the furore over the “ground-breaking” computer animation effects which, way before the movie even opened, had ushered in expectations from people all over the world that any movies which were dealing with “cutting edge” themes like computer games would, from now on, look “exactly like Tron.” No! Really! In the early 80s computer games really were thought of as cutting edge! This was only four years after the birth of Space Invaders don’t forget... and people’s jaws were dropping and their eyes were popping out of their heads at just seeing little pixilated blobs invading your lone defender of the earth at the bottom of the screen. Tron was like the ultimate that special effects movies could achieve or ever could achieve as far as pretty much everyone on the planet was concerned. This was way beyond what most people had even dreamt of.

And it was a movie that seemed to be on everyone’s lips in the media. I even remember much loved Radio and Video DJ/comedian Kenny Everett giving it a good review and admitting he’d liked it so much on pirate video the year before, that he was even going to go and see it again at the cinema when it was released - can you imagine the kind of stony silence that would follow a comment like that on British TV today? But these were the days when all the local kids in the UK had seen E.T. - The Extra Terrestrial on video almost a year before it was released in the cinemas over here. So it was a comment very much of its time... just like Tron was and is, very much a movie of its time.

And of course, in all this hype you can bet that not too much mention was made of the plot or, more obviously, the narrow skeleton of one on which to hang state-of-the-art special effects. Nor was the premise of a man being sucked into a computer and interacting with the “little men inside who are programs and run the computer” considered as any way näive. Back then, computers were still very much of a mystery and, even though most kids had started getting ZX Spectrums, BBC Micros or Commodore 64s in their homes, the adults who were not at school attending the quaintly named Computer Studies lessons had no idea what was in these little black and white boxes... as their kids used the latest technology to make a little animated miner jump around bizarre little platforms grabbing keys while trying hard not to get captured by a penguin or some other, less obvious animated nemesis of the main character.

So nobody thought much about the plot when we all finally went to see Tron at the cinema. I watched it again the other week in preparation for the new one and I have to say that... um... certain parts of it haven’t aged all that well. The acting is very uneven with most of the cast such as David Warner and Bruce Boxleitner (in the title role) acting very wooden and, supposedly, what high tech programmers would presumably act like in the eyes of the post-Asteroids public. Contrasted against this is Jeff Bridges acting style which is, in this one and to be fair and polite to the man who has turned out to be one of the great actors of his generation, a little over exuberant to say the least. But this is what "hackers" were supposed to be like, right? All Han Solo with a modem instead of a blaster.

All in all, there’s not much plot to spoil here, hence the lack of my usual warning. Bridges’ character Flynn goes into the computer and with the aid of Tron, they ride light cycles and battle to save the computer world from an evil programme who wants to control all computers in the “real” world and subvert humanity to its binary-encoded will. Sparkly special effects showcasing the latest Disney animated effects are what the story is all about and, even in the publicity leading up to its first screenings, this was in no way played down or even thought of to be an inherently bad thing for a movie like this to aspire to... and nobody really minded at all to be honest.

So how does it hold up today? Well lets just say that it’s not worn too badly... but it has aged and parts of it are very clunky. Some of those “new computer age of mankind” effects still look great... and some of them actually look surprisingly ropy and very much in the style of standard Disney animation - but that’s not something which would have been noticed at the time because even that animation was pretty good for contemporary expectations of the other stuff and the subtle differences are just not something we were, as a collective audience, sophisticated enough to notice at the time. Films do change over the years because of the way we, as a society, bring ourselves to the experience of viewing a movie (hence the phenomenon of nostalgia) and when you look at Tron today you have to remember it in the context of the film’s original audience if you are going to find anything worthwhile in it. I watched it again the other week with the memories of being a part of that original audience who experienced it in cinemas and even I was disappointed by a few sequences in the movie which just don’t hold up to closer scrutiny these days.

Also, the film has a kick ass score by composer Wendy Carlos (who pioneered the use of electronic music as a classical instrument in the days when s/he was Walter Carlos and churning out ground breaking albums like Switched on Bach... readers here might best remember her for her contributions to Stanley Kubrik’s films A Clockwork Orange and the powerful and terrifying music from the opening sequence of The Shining). It’s a shame that the studio hasn’t tapped her to provide the score for the sequel... I’ve got nothing against Daft Punk (don’t know their music) but it would have been nice if some of the leitmotifs from the first movie were retained for the new one.

All in all though, Tron is a big, dumb effects movie from a time when Star Wars had inadvertently created a celluloid environment where special effects were reason enough to go and see a movie, regardless or plotting, pacing, acting or editing. It does pretty much what it’s supposed to and if you're retro enough to appreciate it in spite of its more obvious flaws then you’ll probably have a blast with it.

As for the new sequel... well I’m looking forward to it. I’m pretty sure it’s still going to be a big, dumb effects movie with a silly plot and some irrational leaps of faith required of the audience but... so what! This kind of movie has it’s place. I’ll be going to see it soonest I can.