The War Of The Worlds - BBC

War Of The Wells

The War Of The Worlds - BBC
2019 UK Directed by Craig Viveiros
Three episodes. Airdate: 17th November 1st December

Just a heads up that there have been two TV series based on H. G. Wells’ famous novel The War Of The Worlds in 2019. One is produced by Fox/Canal, runs for eight episodes and, as far as I can tell, has not yet been screened in the UK (although it has aired in a lot of other countries, by the looks of it). The subject of this review, however, is the recent BBC, three episode mini-series. I was originally going to write three reviews, one for every episode but, after I saw the first installment and knowing I really don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, I decided to just do one piece encapsulating the whole series. Why post three miserable reviews when one could suffice?

Now, I‘ve had my problems with both The War Of The Worlds as it’s been adapted for the screen over the years and the current state of BBC created science fiction. Let’s briefly mention the previous adaptations first...

I’ve not seen all of the screen versions of the novel but I have seen many of them. The George Pal movie of the 1950s is something I would probably enjoy watching again but the last time I saw this, when I was a kid, I remember being disappointed with the lack of the tripods from the book in it and, obviously, the change to the time period. I remember seeing a couple of episodes, too, of the semi-popular TV series in the 1980s which, if memory serves, used pretty much the 1950s George Pal version of the martian machines and, again, it seemed to have not too much to do with the book. Even Spielberg had a go with it but his contemporary version with, again, some pretty hefty changes to the concerns of the book, was somehow closer than the other versions out there. In fact, in all cases I’ve seen so far, the closest to Wells’ original novel would have to be the rock concept album produced by Jeff Wayne in the 1970s... which really is a work of earworm perfection if you listen to it in its original form.

The new BBC series, despite claims of period authenticity (which is dubious but close) is somehow even further removed from the source material than even Spielberg’s version, it has to be said. The science fiction of the BBC always used to be a wonderful thing. They had the Quatermass serials, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Doctor Who, Blake’s Seven and a whole host of other hot and interesting sci-fi shows done with creative flair and panache which helped make them a leading representative in the field of televisual science fiction. Alas, standards have slipped over the years and there seems to be a lot of ‘not up to it’ productions going on lately. For instance, the state of Doctor Who over the last seven or so years in terms of the quality of the writing (nothing wrong with the way the Doctors are played at all, which has been consistently brilliant) has been pretty ‘Bleah!’ and you only have to compare the BBCs vibrant and exciting, ‘definitive’ adaptation of John Wyndham’s The Day Of The Triffids back in 1981 to their ‘dire to the point of being almost unwatchable’ 2009 adaptation of the same novel to see how far standards have fallen.

And I have to say, the trend continues with this new adaptation of The War Of The Worlds. This is pretty much nothing to do with Wells’ original story other than it a) has martians on it... looking nothing like the original martians, b) has tripods in it which have somehow been designed to look as bland as possible instead of the robust, steampunk creations which might have served the spectacle of the story better, c) has something similar but really not right in terms of the way of ending the martian conquest was inadvertently thwarted in the books and d) has token references to the red weed.

Now, the writer here has obviously decided he can write something different and more relevant than H. G. Wells here and you can even see where he’s been trying to do something different with the material to set it apart from what we’ve seen before. Well, my big argument with that would be... we’ve never had a faithful adaptation as far as I know. You’re trying to run before you’ve proven you can walk and people wanted to finally see a straight adaptation of the original rather then some half baked, non-linear depiction of something barely inspired by the events of the novel in a way that’s deliberately structured to take away any surprise whatsoever from anyone not familiar with the source... which, bearing in mind it has never been properly adapted, is probably less well known than the writer here thought.

So yeah, we have the death by disease coming up in the flash forwards to years after the initial invasion and giving away the real ending before it’s barely begun. It’s also not a common cold virus that knocks the martians out in this either... it’s a carefully worked at and cultivated mish mash of viral ingredients that, in this version, spells the end of the red weed. So even Wells’ brilliant punchline of the deadly foe being taken out by accident, by something as relatively docile as the ‘common cold’, is revealed way too early and has had its real sting removed. So yeah, not happy and that’s just the tip of the iceberg in regards to this version.

Then there’s the acting. It’s bad but I’m not blaming the various cast for their performances here... I’m blaming the writing and direction. Some of the lines are bad enough... not to mention the introduction of a subplot about divorce coupled with an extra marital affair culled from H. G. Wells’ own life and a ridiculous, bizarre guilt trip about the achievements of the British Empire. However, the way the physical performances are often left as dangling, visual non-sequiturs was, perhaps, the editor having nothing to cut to in the next shot or, I dunno, just some strange decisions on the part of the director.

Seriously, the main cast consisting of Rafe Spall, Eleanor Tomlinson, Rupert Graves and Robert Carlyle are all brilliant enough but, apart from having to deliver some ridiculous lines at times, they all seem to have a penchant for looking away or staring at something out of shot, sometimes at amusingly inappropriate times. Such as when Tomlinson might be asked by the director to ‘look up and out past that line of trees there’, perhaps... I was waiting for something to maybe materialise or at least show us what she was looking at but, nope. Just staring into space, I guess. And Spall seems to often pause in thought and pull faces without letting us know what’s precisely on his mind at regular intervals, for example. And, honestly, I’m happy with visual storytelling where characters can think and convey their inner turmoil without having to vocalise it and often enjoy these kinds of movies but, yeah, I really didn’t feel like playing guessing games for a show which, somehow, manages to skirt around the real heart of the source material it is busy ignoring and ends up as just, I have to say it, a deadly dull affair.

That being said, the second episode picks up the pace a little, only to jettison it by the time the third episode rolls around, with its unimaginative creatures and its slew of unnecessary, wholly preventable deaths of various characters, In fact, bearing in mind the ending of the original novel is kinda revealed and slightly side-stepped early in the story, I have to say I found the last shot of the last episode particularly confusing. Here we have the lovely Eleanor Tomlinson staring up at the sky and I’m left thinking... okay, what’s she looking at? Is it the... wait... is she patiently awaiting the approaching, inevitable end credits of this monstrosity to turn up at some point? Yep. Pretty much. I didn’t get anything else out of that last sequence which, considering it’s supposed to be The War Of The Worlds, left me a little disappointed.

Added to all this is the fact that, honestly, the special effects and the design of the martians isn’t all that great. I did find myself clock watching at a number of places in the narrative and overall, I can’t help but think that overly ambitious substitutes for a decent, working version of ‘the heat ray’ would have been a lot more satisfying than this dull carnival ride of a weapon that they’ve presumably spent a lot of time and money on dreaming up for this version.

So there you have it. I’ve always quite liked The War Of The Worlds but this is pretty far removed from anything H. G. Wells wrote, to be honest. Yeah, it’s time to do a proper, big budget version of this but, seriously, let’s not try to deviate so far from the story that it’s got so little in common with the original text that it’s almost unrecognisable. I’d been looking forward to seeing this production for a long time and I suspect I know why it’s had a fair bit of a delay in its release to the general public now. This one definitely wasn’t my cup of tea and I’d perhaps suggest going back to the musical album if you want a more palatable version of Wells’ original classic.

Men In Black International

Women’s MIB

Men In Black International
USA 2019 Directed by F. Gary Gray
UK cinema release print.

Well now, Men In Black International is a surprisingly better sequel than anyone had a right to expect from this franchise, I think.

The Men In Black films, based loosely on the comic book mini series by Lowell Cunningham, are usually not great films but neither are they ever in any way terrible. They’re fun, entertaining pieces which usually just about manage to rise above the level of mediocrity, truth be told and they do so with a certain amount of style... even if they don’t always make perfect sense or maintain their own continuity.

And this new spin off/continuation of the franchise pretty much falls under that same category, it has to be said. Well... except it makes a little more sense now than the first one (in light of the events of the third film) at any rate. Also, instead of going ahead with the two leads of the previous movie, this one gives us a new partnership and, it’s a pretty shrewdly cast one too. Both Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson have been imported over from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, hot from their on-screen partnership as Thor and Valkyrie as seen in Thor: Ragnarok (reviewed here) and Avengers: End Game (reviewed here).

Once again, the two prove to have good chemistry, with Hemsworth basically importing over the version of Thor from the later MCU films and Thompson playing it slightly differently but, again, making the perfect straight man... err... straight gal for Hemsworth’s charmingly imbecilic shenanigans and, more often than not, coming to the rescue when he gets himself in trouble. Which he frequently does.

Actually, it’s a very positive role for Thompson because, right from the start, she’s not only playing a strong woman but also a very smart one and, frankly, her character is a good example of a lady in a genre movie working her way to the top honestly with a nice combination of brains and tenacity. Although, with Emma Thompson reprising her role as the new head of the MIB organisation, we also have to suffer the inevitable and mostly necessary questioning of the gender bias of the film’s title but, you know, after a few references and even a ‘me too’ reference if I’m remembering things correctly, it doesn’t push the whole gender agenda in your face and manages to keep an equal balance exploring these issues without turning the film into some kind of catalyst for a preachy subtext so, yeah, all for it.

So this is a totally different Men In Black here... the London branch, in fact, with Liam Neeson in charge of the UK side of things and some nice little ideas thrown into the mix. It’s also a little more globe hopping than the previous films and this gives Danny Elfman and his co-composer Chris Bacon some more scope for different orchestrations on the scoring front. I’m not sure how much of Elfman is in this score (aside from the obvious use of his main Men In Black theme) but I seem to remember in an interview around the time of the second movie that he was kinda implying that he was just doing it by the numbers and so I suspect there’s a lot more of the always excellent Chris Bacon in here than I might at first have suspected. I think this one is getting a CD release at some point soon so hopefully I’ll be able to give it a listen away from the film.

It’s nicely put together and there’s some real good comedy moments from the leads and supporting cast... including a surprisingly interesting character played by Rafe Spall, who actually gets a chance to progress considerably in the story, considering his short amount of screen time scattered throughout the film. The film is not without one problem however...

Although the story is a lot simpler maybe than the previous films, which is not necessarily a bad thing, it does make the ability to surprise the audience a lot harder for the writers. Indeed, there’s a so called twist towards the end... two twists technically... which are only surprising in that the movie makers obviously thought we were supposed to not know this stuff already when, honestly, most people are going to figure out both these things about two of the characters within the first half an hour for sure. If you are going to go down that route... especially given the way the film is structured in the way it reveals and hides certain information... then maybe the story should be a little more convoluted to distract the audience from the obvious conclusions.

So, yeah, you’re not going to be surprised by anything in this movie but at least it’s fairly entertaining and that, pretty much, means it’s at least ‘on brand’. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to this one with these same characters at some point but I don’t know how likely that is having seen some of the word of mouth on the film via Twitter. We shall see, I guess. After all, they’re making a sequel to the recent Tomb Raider film (reviewed here) and nobody I know liked that one other than me.

At the end of the day, Men In Black International is not the greatest film out there but it does rise to the occasion and give us something which is humourous and never boring. It’s possibly a little longer than it needs to be (some of the motor bike sequence, for example, could have been pruned down a bit) but it upholds the standards set by the previous movies and if you are a fan of those outside of just being hung up on whoever the main leads are, then this film should be right up your street. Definitely worth giving a look at if there’s nothing else you want to see at the cinema this week.

Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom

Amber-ling Entertainment

Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom
2018 USA Directed by J.A. Bayona
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor spoilers.

Hmm... yeah. Okay this is not that great people. In fact... it’s far from good. I gave the previous entry of the five Jurassic Park films, Jurassic World, an okayish review (just here) but you can tell I was trying to be really kind to it and I said it was my fourth favourite of the bunch. This one... well, it’s not exactly terrible but, yeah, I guess this is my fifth favourite and it seems to be one of those franchises like Transformers or, to an extent, Pirates Of The Caribbean, which gets just a little bit worse each time around.

It’s pretty hard, I would have thought, to screw up a movie where giant dinosaurs run around eating people and, to be fair, this still holds true for this movie... kinda. Except there must be some real problems, it seems to me, when I find myself struggling to stop myself from looking at my watch during the movie.

Okay... so let me focus on the stuff they got right for a minute...

Well, the performances from returning actors Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are top notch and, even when they haven’t got great dialogue... and this is a film of a lot of scenes which don’t have great dialogue... they do an admirable performance in their roles here. As do co-stars Rafe Spall, Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith. Jeff Goldblum is, of course, always watchable but, as I suspected when I saw the trailer, he’s only in it for a couple of minutes at the start and a couple of minutes at the end so... not a great return for his character Ian Malcolm, to be honest. I was quite pleased when Toby Jones turns up as a nasty business man because the first thought you have is.. this guy is just here to get eaten. That’s almost his sole purpose in this movie... so that was another box ticked off.

Another positive is that the director seems to be making a concerted effort to design some nicely composed shots some of the time. There are cool examples of emphasising things by shifting focus and using sections at the edges of the screen in a few instances. So some nice, cinematic moments scattered throughout.

Okay so... that’s pretty much all the good stuff there.

Frankly, this film dragged quite a bit... even though it was full of action. Well, I say that... nothing much happens for the first twenty minutes or so but, once we get to the island, things go wrong for the main protagonists very quickly and heroes and villains are speedily identified. Everything is clearly marked but even the main characters seem to be acting like they have labels rather than names. Like many films, each character has their function but this movie makes it seem so obvious as to what role the characters are supposed to fulfil that you might as well just label them up... ‘velociraptor whisperer’, ‘high heel in peril girl’, ‘vet girl’, ‘button gal’, ‘computer guy’ etc. Everything slotted into place so obviously that there was nothing much to surprise you except... oh yeah... that one thing.

There’s a sleeper of a twist reveal which you kinda know is coming for the little girl played by Isabella Sermon as they keep dropping visual hints but... and this is a problem with a lot of things throughout the whole film... nobody, including the audience, really gets time to digest it when the big reveal is finally... um... revealed. And that’s a typical thing happening with this movie because, once the movie ramps up about 20 minutes or more in, there aren’t really that many pauses or time for reflection and suspense to build up before the next bus load of dino madness is upon us. So there’s no real weight or sense of terror lurking in the background and the suspense sequences feel just a little bit samey and anemic. Not something which has bothered me before when I see these things but it is a big problem here because this story really doesn’t have too much going for it. It really can’t afford to rollercoaster over those few good dramatic beats here and there in the way it does.

It’s interesting because this movie is much more graphic in its depiction of violence compared to the other Jurassic Park movies... it seems to me. Bearing in mind it’s a 12A rating in the UK, there’s a scene where half a guys arm gets pulled off while a dinosaur ‘toys with its food’ and another scene where you see a man ripped in half, Darth Maul style, between two dinosaur’s mouths. Now I’m not specifically blaming the director for what I’m about to say here but... you never really feel the violence and it shows just how beautifully crafted Steven Spielberg’s first two films in the franchise were because, with a minimum level of on screen goriness, you somehow feel the grizzly nature of violent death more in the way those are shot, edited and scored. Here, you see more but feel way less. Maybe a good demonstration of that old cliché ‘less is more’ in reverse here, it seems to me.

And talking of scoring. I love the majority of Michael Giacchino’s film music... heck, I even went to his birthday concert last year... but the music in this really is an unstoppable force and has a heck of a time trying to compete with the sound effects on this one. It seems simplistic and overpowering and, given the composers knack for weaving in other composers styles and melodies, the John Williams source material is barely referenced. In fact, there was probably more of it in the trailers than you got here and that’s just crazy because there are some real moments where the audience could benefit from the identification of those Williams themes to lift the emotions and, it just doesn’t really happen.

My one big, unforgivable mistake on this whole movie, however, happens within the first ten minutes or so and I was so angry about this that I could barely watch the next scene because my outrage was  persistent. In the early scenes they use a lot of BBC ‘newscast’ footage to recap the audience on what happened at certain points in the last movie as well as bring them up to speed as to what has happened in the couple of years chronologically between the two films. There were even scenes of people watching these broadcasts with their naked eyes and no special glasses... you know what’s coming don’t you? How in the heck are we supposed to believe that the BBC or whoever is broadcasting in 3D? Seriously, the TV footage stuff was all in 3D too and there’s absolutely no way that would happen. Popped me straight out of the movie. Just completely dumb. How is this stuff allowed to happen? I don’t even have the words to express my anger as to how a flat screen is suddenly able to magically broadcast in 3D. What were they thinking?

Also, while I’m at it... is it even possible for amber to break, let alone shatter from such a small distance? I think not, somehow.

So, yeah, I’ll just try and calm down now and say that... if you like the other Jurassic Park films then Jurassic World - Falllen Kingdom is probably going to hit some of the right buttons although, honestly, I’m getting really fed up with these now. There’s a post credit sequence which just underlines what you already know, which is that the producers obviously have a clear goal for the next movie in the series but, honestly, I’m just not sure I care what happens after this. A bit of a misfire but the kid inside you might like it. Or not. Who can tell? Give it a go and see what you think.

The Ritual (2017)

In Tents Horror

The Ritual (2017)
2017 UK Directed by David Bruckner
UK cinema release print.

The Ritual is a UK horror movie directed by David Bruckner and based on a novel by Adam Nevill. I’ve not read the book myself but, from what I can see on brief mentions of the plot hook, the whole reason the four friends are going on a hiking trip to Sweden in this movie is either absent in the book or, maybe, a reveal later on. I don’t know which but I expect some major changes have been made... however, it’s clear that I am unqualified to pass any kind of judgement on this in terms of its success as an adaptation so, you know, the usual caveats apply as far as that goes.

As in the trailer, the movie starts off with five friends in a pub but when two of the friends go to an off licence at the request of main protagonist Luke, played here by Rafe Spall, they get into a spot of bother when they accidentally disturb a robbery in progress. Luke hides but is forced to watch his best mate killed while doing nothing himself. 6 months later he and the other three remaining friends of the group, including the annoying Dom played by Sam Troughton (grandson of The Second Doctor, Patrick Troughton) attempt to fulfill what their dead friend Robert (played here by Paul Reid) would have wanted for their annual ‘lads’ trip... a hiking holiday in Sweden. You so know this is going to go wrong... right?

So, yeah, when the weather gets cold the four chums are wanting to get where they’re going on their hike quicker, especially after Dom twists his ankle... so they decide to cut through a big, spooky looking forest and shave some hours off their time. You would think that when they come across a freshly killed animal strung up in a ritualistic pose in a tree, the blood still dripping from its body (I think it was a horse but I’m not 100% certain due to the way the body is arranged), they might want to turn back the way they came but, no, this is a group of lads so the whole thing gets very Blair Witch very quickly... especially when they stumble upon a deserted cabin with strange ritualistic totems and an unnerving atmosphere. When the four awake from some very unusual nightmares, they find themselves strangely compromised and, from then on, everything goes into full-on survival horror mode while they four are whittled down in number as they try to find their way out of the woods before, something, finishes playing with them and killing them off.

And it’s actually very well put together. Maybe not as intensely scary as you might hope but it's certainly very suspenseful in places. The director does some very nice things with the way it’s shot which I really liked. You get the obvious ‘camera looking at the backgrounds of the forest’ so the audience can strain to see whether they can see anything lurking on the peripherals but there’s also some very blatant stuff where he will just point the camera away from the main parts of the shot, into another part of the forest or looking up at the sky and... he will just hold it there and just put these deliberate pauses into the flow of the action. Which is something I thought was quite effective, actually.

Another nice thing that’s done on more than one occasion in the movie is to blend bits of the forest into flashbacks of the main protagonist’s earlier encounter in the newsagent. While there’s certainly a sense that the four friends have had very vivid dreams, you also get a sense that the thing they are up against in this is manipulating their minds while, simultaneously, you get the feeling that Luke’s dead friend Rob is trying to help him survive his experiences from beyond the grave. The director shows this by, as I said, blending the two environments and the people into various bits of the forest, quite unexpectedly, at various points in the narrative. Now I couldn’t work out if this was done as CGI or built practically as sets (it looked good enough that it could have just been created on the sets themselves rather than with ethereal looking computer aided trickery) but it’s very effective and helps give the film another level of surprise to keep you off guard as an audience and thus keep you vulnerable for the next big scary moment... depending on whether you actually felt the film was frightening or not.

So... yeah, there’s also some nicely effective scoring by Ben Lovett which is just the right side of being ‘B-movie over the top’ in places without being too clichéd and with some really relaxing atmospheric textures in it too (alas, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of soundtrack for the release of this one, as yet, which is a shame). And this, coupled with some fine performances from all the actors, a nice reveal on the kinds of people you would expect to meet in the middle of a forest and even a mini King Kong homage (I suspect)... all make for a nicely entertaining, ‘satisfyingly pulpy’ horror movie. However, there is one slightly disappointing thing about the movie and it’s this...

None of the characters are that sympathetic or, honestly, anyone you’d really want to hang out with if they were in your local pub. Especially the main protagonist Luke, who is played brilliantly by Rafe Spall but, he’s not exactly someone who you’d want to get to know. So, all in all, I really didn’t mind if the whole lot of them got killed throughout the course of the movie if I’m being brutally honest and this, for me at any rate, watered down the tension to some extent. You kind of go through the movie expecting Luke to redeem himself and make good on his inaction at the start of the film which ‘possibly’ got his friend killed but, as the story wanders on, although you can see he wants to finally do what’s right, I didn’t get the feeling that he’d made good on his shot at redemption by the time the credits roll. In some ways, it just re-enforces the lack of moral fibre the character exhibits from the start of the film, if you have a think about the way things are left here (which I'm obviously not going to reveal).

Still, for all that, I’d still say go and see The Ritual if you are a fan of horror movies and it’s still playing on a big screen. It’s nicely performed, nicely shot and has a lot going for it as long as you don’t feel you have to like the characters. It’s never going to be the greatest horror movie in the world but there are some nice moments which make it worth taking a look at if you have the time.  Not something I’d watch again but highly recommended in terms of the quality of the piece.