The Black Hole

In Cygnus And In Health

The Black Hole
USA 1979 Directed by Gary Nelson
Walt Disney Club 30th Anniversary Edition 
Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Warning: Some slight spoilers in this.

I loved The Black Hole as a kid and, dated as it might seem in certain aspects today... I still love it.

I remember thinking nothing of the details of the story and the way it plays out at the time (I would have been 11 years old when I first saw this at my local cinema) but, looking back on it now, it seems to be a little grim and ambiguous for what was perceived at the time as a ‘kid friendly’ family film. I just read that, despite the ‘cute’ robots in this, it wasn’t necessarily made for kids at all and it was being made with adults in mind as much as the youngsters. Although, if memory serves, it wasn’t exactly marketed like that.

Okay so, first things first, the film has a tremendous cast. You have the main heroic leads played by Robert Forster as Captain Dan Holland, Yvette Mimieux as Dr. Kate McCrae (she was the main female lead in the original version of The Time Machine, you might remember), Joseph Bottoms as Charles Pizer and Anthony Perkins as Dr. Alex Durant. Also joining our heroes is the mighty Ernest Borgnine as reporter Harry Booth (who is a little more ambiguous in his actions towards the end of the movie) and the uncredited voice of Roddy McDowall as the cute robot V.I.N.CENT. They comprise the crew of the Palomino spaceship and later on in their adventure, they are joined by another cute robot, Old B.O.B, voiced, again uncredited, by Slim Pickens.

And the plot is a simple one... they find a black hole in space and when they go in for a closer look they discover the great, lost starship the Cygnus ‘parked’ just outside of the full pull of the hole. It seems deserted but, when they explore it, they find themselves guests of the mad tyrant scientist Dr. Hans Reinhardt, played by Maximilian Schell, along with his giant robot Maximilian. Plus a crew of sentry robots and also... well, there’s a crew of some kind but I don’t want to spoil the movie if you haven’t already seen it.

And, yes, if you are wondering if this sounds a little like the plot of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea relocated to deep space with Maximilian Schell as the Captain Nemo figure, you’re absolutely right and there are a few parallels with Disney’s earlier adaptation of that novel thrown into the mix too. Ultimately though, the plot involves Reinhardt wanting to move into the black hole ‘and beyond’ while the crew of the Palomino are racing to fix their crippled ship and get off the Cygnus before this happens... and, due to some trouble they have later in the story, getting into all kinds of laser gun shoot outs with the various sentry robots as they try to get somewhere safe as Reinhardt steers everyone into the black hole.

It’s a nice looking film, full of colour and action. I well remember the Topps Bubble Gum cards (these days called ‘trading cards’) from the film which hit the newsagents at the same time... still got my set from back then, all in a presentation album now. It’s a bit of a mixed bag in terms of acting and effects though.

The effects work wasn’t farmed out to dedicated houses (as was just about becoming the normal procedure since the invention of Industrial Light and Magic a few years earlier) and so they were done totally in-house by Disney. So some of it, where the various crew members are floating around in various states of anti-gravity, looks quite extraordinary to this day and I would give myself a headache if I could figure out how they did it and make it look so natural with everyone on a different ‘flight path’. There must be some wire work in there but it really is quite special. Unfortunately, the matte lines around the various characters later and the pedestrian, cartoony looking laser gun bursts don’t do the film any favours. They didn’t look great then and, now the film has been restored for this limited Disney Club USA Blu Ray, they look even worse... the film looks especially grainy still where several shots are overlaid so, this didn’t really feel like a great restoration job, if I’m being honest.

And then there’s the acting/tone of the movie too. They really need V.I.N.CENT the robot as comic relief here because absolutely everyone else in the movie is deadly serious. There are very few smiling faces through most of the film and there may not be a lot of gravity in some scenes but there’s an overabundance of gravitas, that’s for sure. Also, for a film which was perceived as a kid friendly movie and was basically one of many space operas which came out riding the Star Wars bandwagon, it’s got some really questionable content.

For instance, you don’t expect the first of the death of three of the main protagonists, Anthony Perkins’ character, who is the only one who thinks what Reinhardt is doing is a good idea, to have his chest and stomach drilled open by the whirling blades of the Maximilian robot and falling to an electrical death (if he isn’t already dead after having his intestines churned in his tummy)... you don’t see stuff like this in a Disney movie for kids that often. Ditto for the unbelievably WTF ending where the heroes totally fail their mission and everyone goes through the black hole, which is when the movie really starts to get like the end of 2001 - A Space Odyssey, with bizarre, religious imagery as everyone, including Maximillian Schell who clambers inside the continuity challenged shell of the Maximilian robot (Schell within a shell!), are transported to a land of skull faced followers around volcanic pits and an angel floating through an endless corridor. And absolutely no comments from anyone in the cast by this point... the heroes lost their roll of the dice and are in some strange, abstract vision of heaven and hell and that’s the end, deal with it! It’s not exactly a fun looking vision (if you’re stuck in the middle of it)... it’s pretty dark and grim, to be honest.

So yeah, I just loved that ambiguous ending as a kid but I remember some of the other kids at school having a problem with it, now that I think of it.

Another great thing is the musical score by the late, great John Barry. I believe it was the first film to have its score recorded on digital equipment and also one of the last two movies to feature an overture of the music in cinemas before the film started (the other being Star Trek The Motion Picture). Now I believe Barry didn’t actually like the absolutely brilliant and upbeat ‘overture/heroic things happening’ theme he was asked to write for this because it was in the romantic adventure mode just being re-popularised by John Williams at the time (and possibly felt inappropriate to him?) but, honestly, it’s a fantastic piece of music. As is his totally hypnotic and repetitive, swirling opening title music, which really makes you feel the presence of the antagonistic title element. And, yeah, the whole score does just sound like Bond in space, more so than even Moonraker (which is a far lesser score in comparison to this one)... and what’s wrong with that? Easily one of Barry’s greatest scores from this period and another CD I could listen to on repeat when required.

So yeah, there you have it. Well performed but sombre characters, a mixture of staggeringly good and unbelievably ropey effects, some impressively colourful scenes, a thunderously cool score and some comedy robots... what more could you want from a movie. I know it has its detractors but I still, after all these years, love The Black Hole and would recommend it to those movie watchers who are interested in seeking out films which are... I dunno... just a little bit wrong or off-kilter for their marketed target audience. I don’t think you could really get away with delivering this movie in the current political and cultural climate but I would absolutely welcome a remake/reboot of this if anyone had anything interesting to add in the way of ideas to infuse into this template. I’ll definitely be watching this one again at some point over the next few years.

Survivor

Boom Watch

Survivor
2015  UK/USA
Directed by James McTeigue
UK cinema release print.

Okay, so Survivor is a film I knew nothing about going in other than what I saw in a trailer at the cinema the week before. That much being that it had Pierce Brosnan and Mila Jovovich in it, two very competent actors, playing a deadly game of cat and mouse with the pre-requisite mix of explosions plus running, jumping and shooting that seems to be part and parcel of all modern cinema these days. Fine, no complaints, I like the two leads and so I figured I’d give it a go.

As I watched the movie, it slowly began to dawn on me that this was the same film that I’d heard Brosnan was making about a hit man which was originally going to be called The Watchmaker. Now let’s face it, The Watchmaker is a way better title than the assuredly bland Survivor and how many films are they going to release with this title in the history of the cinema anyway?

So, anyway, this is the story of an American security agent, Kate Abbott (played by Jovovich), who has been relocated to London’s American Embassy to handle security on passport control and, when she gets wind that something is afoot, including a corrupt element on the staff, she is targeted for assassination by someone who calls in Brosnan’s watchmaker character... a highly paid assassin who is also doing another job for the same boss with a tryout in London for a terrorist attack in New York, set for a slightly later date.

And, of course, since Kate has a narrow escape when several colleagues die in an attempt on her life, not to mention being caught with a smoking pistol on the corrupt official who has not been actually revealed to her bosses yet, she has to stay alive while being hunted by both her own people and Brosnan’s ruthless assassin... while finding out what it’s all about and averting the terrorist act Brosnan will try to get away with at the end of the film. Standard set up and a pretty standard action movie, to be fair, but with a nice level of performance from all of the cast, including veterans like Robert Forster and, um, Frances De La Tour (funny how she’s started popping up in everything again these days).

So it’s kind of like a Jason Bourne film but with maybe a bit less intelligence on the part of the main heroine... for some reason she’s been written to not be that much ahead of the game which, I guess, makes things easier for the scripting to keep getting her into hot water with the killer but makes her a slightly less credible security figure in some ways... not Jovovich’s fault though, who does an excellent job. As does Brosnan playing a basic riff on the “hard man” side of his old James Bond character, only with less charm and more ruthlessness than audiences might associate this actor with... although it’s always been something he’s brought to the table in his performances in these kinds of action roles, to be honest.

The direction is very ‘work a day’ with nothing too flashy and a variety of different styles of shooting scenes that bring to mind no immediate signature. Sometimes he’ll go with long swooping shots, other times he’ll go with static shots with various cuts and still other times he’ll switch to hand held camera when it makes sense to do that dramatically or as an echo of the pacing and mental state of the main characters being shown on screen. There’s some nice framing in certain scenes and less obvious, less aesthetically pleasing frame designs in others.

 For instance, the bulk of the action takes place in the heart of London, on streets I know fairly well, and there was a nice piece of framing where Milla Jovovich is walking through Chinatown and the director has taken the shot from a point of view where the vertical posts are all cluttered together and truncating the screen in a whole bunch of sections. This then transitions to a different character coming out of a flat where the fences on the right hand side of the screen echo the verticals thrown up by the previous shot. Then, the main part of where those verticals lead is again echoed as a single vertical splitter in the cut back to the previous character, by now at a different location.

So yeah, there’s some nice stuff going on in certain scenes but, for the most part, it’s a fairly straight, run of the mill action fest and... it’s no worse than a lot of the ones out lately and certainly has some good performances in it, as I said earlier. However, it seems to be set around the Christmas and New Year period and, what with the title change too, I’m guessing this film has had a somewhat delayed release... possibly due to a lack of confidence in it by the producers, I would guess. There would have been no need to worry though.. it holds its own pretty well and I think it would have been better if the studio would have gotten behind it a little more with the marketing, in all fairness. I wasn't aware of any real push on this and it was a surprise release for me.

One thing which they may be worried about is the baggage that Brosnan brings with him to the role. To be fair, both Brosnan and Jovovich have proven very capable of heading up their own franchises (Jovovich has the Resident Evil series) but I can see how the producers might be wary of having the former James Bond playing a villainous role. As it happens, Brosnan is absolutely fine playing against type but there was one moment, I have to admit, where I think his past role got in there to haunt him... although it’s absolutely not his fault, it was written that way. The thing is, Brosnan goes all the way through the film showing that he’s a) a ruthless killing machine who would end your life rather than leave a witness and b) that he’s not a superman and he does, in fact, fail to kill his prey many times throughout the movie... and it’s not for want of trying. Which is all very well and good except for one little scene involving a stairwell where, I have to say, Brosnan’s character pulls off a stunt which is much more worthy of his earlier, super spy roles and... while nice to watch... I think seems totally out of character for the role and I have to wonder if that particular sequence would have been tooled like that if it had been anyone other than Brosnan doing it. A slight mis-step there, I feel, but a forgivable one seeing as the rest of the film brings it back down to earth in terms of the action sequences fairly well.

Another good thing about this movie is the score by Ilan Eshkeri. He’s not a composer I’m that familiar with and I’m not the biggest fan of electronic, synthesiser scores either... which is what this one is. That being said, this is one of the more effective scores I’ve heard of that nature and it never seems inappropriate to the various on screen antics of the characters, helping to fuel some of the action scenes for sure... giving them a little extra as the baseline and percussion elements kick into overdrive. Such a pity this particular score doesn’t seem to have had a soundtrack release as I would definitely have liked to pick up a CD of this at some point. I’m beginning to come round to the electronic score as a viable alternative to orchestra a little more in later years, I have to say.

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about Survivor. There’s some really clunky dialogue in here, especially at the end of the movie, but the performances are strong, the action is well staged and the editing doesn’t get so confusing that you don’t know what’s going on... which is half the battle these days, it seems to me. Definitely should be a hit with those of you who like action spy thrillers and certainly not the worst work either Brosnan or Jovovich have done. By no means is it a terrible time at the cinema so, if you find yourself at a loose end anytime soon, this movie could be one to go on your “to watch” list, I reckon.

Olympus Has Fallen

Stabracadabra!

Olympus Has Fallen
USA 2013
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: Very slight spoilers lurking stealthily to jump out and stab you up!

In his new film Die Hard, Bruce Willis plays an action hero who is trapped in a building with a group of terrorists... woah.

Wait, wait. Okay... sorry folks. For a minute there I got my movies mixed up. Let me start this review again.

In his new film Olympus Has Fallen, Gerard Butler plays an action hero who is trapped in a building with a group of terrorists.

Yep, that’s nailed it good.

For anybody still in any doubt... yes, Olympus Has Fallen bears a similar structure and stimulates the exact same thrills that the original Die Hard movie did. The simplistic plots to both are uncannily alike and when I tweeted less than an hour before going to see this new one that I was just going off to see Die Hard 6: Today Is A Good Day For Olympus To Fall, I really wasn’t expecting the similarities to be so blatant and while I think the original Die Hard has a lot of edge over Olympus Has Fallen, in both its witty visual and musical language and, also, its good humour, the slightly more straightforward Olympus Has Fallen is also quite entertaining and is actually quite competently made.

That being said, the film doesn’t quite satisfy enough at the end.

Similarly, a film I liked years ago by the same director, The Replacement Killers, also suffers from the same lack of over the top panache in the “end game” stakes but then again, that might not be what the director was aiming for with this one. And while it’s far from a perfect action movie, it’s certainly very well crafted... not particularly in composition terms but certainly in the editing. It’s not the jumpy MTV generation style of visual jiggery pokery you might be expecting from an action fest of this magnitude and there are some nice, fluid and longer shots amidst the “dazed and confused” style of editing going on in some of the more insanely loud sequences in the movie. And at least the shots all seem to match up to each other.

What I’m trying to say here, I guess, is that the action sequences, of which there are many, won’t leave you confused and wondering about what’s just happened... it’s all very well put together and easy to understand. They’ve started getting a little better at this kind of stuff again just lately in Hollywood it seems, as opposed to five or so years ago when you couldn’t follow hardly anything in these types of action jamborees.

Olympus Has Fallen is a phrase used for when The White House has been “taken” and it’s certainly been taken in no uncertain terms in this movie (a group of terrorists with a particular set of skills, no doubt). Aaron Eckhart, an actor I rate quite highly in modern Hollywood, does an excellent job of playing a president who is taken hostage with his staff in his own bunker in The White House and Gerard Butler, who is not such a slouch himself, plays the action hero with a tragic link to the president’s recent past life and is the “man of the match” and “on the scene” when it comes down to being the only “weapon” that stands between the nuclear destruction of the USA and North Korean terrorists. Although one of the ways he does this, and there seems to be an abundance of this kind of action in this particular movie, is to run around stabbing terrorists in the head.

I’m not kidding. That seems to be almost a mini theme of this movie. Stabbing people in the head. I’m not sure you can even do that all that efficiently, can you? I understand a high speed bullet will go through a person’s skull but surely a blade weapon which isn’t launched at “deadly miles per hour” is just going to glance of the skull of a person, isn’t it?

Apparently not, it would seem, and the person who knows this the best is Gerard Butler... who will basically stab anything in the head that moves in this film. Now, yes, I know he’s got to be all stealthy and not fire off any shots lest the terrorists know he’s there and “shhhh... be wery, wery quiet, I’m hunting rabbit”... and all that but, seriously, there’s more head penetration action in this flick than Deep Throat. What can it all mean? A disturbing trend setter perhaps.

Anyway, Gerard is obviously the man for the job and we watch as he runs about the floors of The White House, getting a couple of people to safety and figuring out how to get into the bunker before atomic death reaches Washington in fairly more realistic way than Martian death rays or giant reptiles. He’s ably supported by a brilliant cast, too, including the aforementioned Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Robert Forster and the much wasted Rhada MIichell as “the wife of the action hero”, who is there to provide the odd poignant moment while Mr. Butler’s character takes a shot (in the head) at redemption to make up for the time six months prior to these events when he fumbled saving the life of the President’s wife.

And that’s what this movie is about. Redemption!

Well, okay, redemption and, you know, stabbing people in the head really a lot. It’s about that too.

I have to say that the character set ups in this one, dead Presidential wife, teaching the President’s son all the nooks and crannys of The White House etc are really kinda obvious, but at least what’s on the written page is executed extremely well and this extends to Trevor Morris’ excellent score which is appropriately flag waving and percussive and matches the on-screen fireworks pretty well... although it does get buried under the sound effects quite a lot, I'm afraid. I’d like to hear this as a stand alone score away from the film but, sadly, so far it’s only available as a download and not on a proper CD... so I probably won’t get the opportunity. Still, if we’re lucky, somebody might release it at some point.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say about Olympus Has Fallen. If you like the Die Hard kinds of action movies and you want to see one that succeeds in all the areas a movie like that needs to succeed in and which presses all the right buttons, then this movie is it and you won’t regret giving it some of your time. That being said, it’s not something I’d probably look at again as opposed to the Bruce Willis films, which I probably will give a spin every ten years or so. But, again, having said that... I’d be fine with queuing up for a sequel and seeing how that goes. If explosions and bloody mayhem and err... head stabbing... are your thing, held up by some solid acting from all the principle cast (and the various people being stabbed in the head), then you should probably get down to your cinema to see this one while you can.