Lola

 

Champagne
Like Cola

Lola
Ireland/UK 2022
Directed by Andrew Legge
Cowtown Pictures

Warning: Some spoilers.

Lola is a new, ‘found footage’ science fiction film (after doing the usual festival circuits it played on general release over here in the UK in early 2023) shot entirely in black and white in a 4:3 aspect ratio (more or less) and expertly made to look like a cobbled together relic from the 1940s... and, it’s quite a long way into the movie before it just about justifies the polish of the story in terms of that footage and how it’s been deliberately manipulated. I could probably put my hand up and shout that there’s no way anybody would be silly enough to shoot certain sequences (which in itself has become a cliché of the found footage genre) or gotten all of the footage used to make the story work but... I’d be a bit of a killjoy in the case of this one and, it’s not too far a stretch when you take into account the invention at the heart of the movie.

So, the film starts off with various statements informing us that this was a ‘broadcast’ which was found in a house in 2021. We then, via one of many montage sequences used in the film, witness two sisters - Martha and Thomasina - who have been orphaned and left on their own to bring each other up - grow into adulthood by the late 1930s. And one of them, Thomasina (played by Emma Appleton), is an extremely ‘ahead of her time’ inventor. And, within minutes of the movie’s opening, she invents a time machine of sorts, which they call Lola. A screen that can intercept any broadcasts from a particular date and time in the future. Both she and Martha (played by Stefanie Martini) are quite taken with the music of the future... the first broadcast they pick up is footage of David Bowie singing Space Oddity.

And then the war comes and they realise they can predict where German bombers will hit and, through a very clever broadcasting method, they are able to anonymously warn the people of Britain where to evacuate before it happens, saving many lives in the process. The anonymous voice of the girls becomes known to the people of Britain as The Angel Of Portobello. However, a clever army intelligence officer manages to trace the girls and ‘enlists’ them into using future enemy broadcasts to change the course of the war... for the better. Except, while they are doing this, Martha realises that they have erased the future they were so enjoying... including erasing people like David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and her now favourite director, Stanley Kubrick.

Then things get dark and... that’s all I’m saying about the story itself but, I will say it’s one of the more successful and enjoyable microbudget movies I’ve seen in a while. Very cheap movies usually look just that - cheap and with a tendency to wear the limitations of their budgets on their celluloid sleeves (okay... probably not celluloid these days but, you know what I mean). Partially because of the limited locations and partly because of the format in which the movie is presented, it actually feels a little slicker than it probably could have been and, well, ‘value for money’ it well may be but the movie certainly doesn’t suffer from the limited ingredients juxtaposed with the abundance of ideas.

Let’s get to the lead actresses... they really nail this. The girls have that kind of laid back, almost narcissistic attitude towards life that rich people living without the consequences of their actions sometimes are portrayed as having (especially in films set in the 1930s but made with a more contemporary eye, I’ve found). Emma Appleton especially plays Thomasina as a kind of spoiled brat of a genius who also happens to be wanting to do the right things for the right reasons. Martha is more sympathetic and equally righteous in her motivation and it’s interesting because the whole film is pitched as a message to Thomasina from Martha in the future... which you will know from the start and which, in some ways, spoils the surprise of the ending a little but... it does have a good ending and a terrific punchline in a single photograph. Not quite the final shot of Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining in terms of style but, certainly it should give those who have been following along with the story and thinking things through a window into whether Martha was successful in getting her message... aka this film... through to Thomasina or not.

One really nice sequence makes good use of a song by The Kinks... although, while the title of the film (and the central time viewing machine) may or may not be a nod to The Kinks, the sequence in question very much is. When Thomasina and Martha are at a celebratory dance party in the 1940s, Martha gets up to sing, accompanied by Thomasina on piano, the song You Really Got Me. And the audience at this point (and it’s a great sequence) will learn from the montage, via a stray news item, that ...You Really Got Me becomes ‘The Anthem Of The War’. And that’s partially what the film is... as well as touching briefly on the nature of film and how you manipulate it to tell a story... the film is all about consequences and what happens when you use knowledge of the future to try and avoid the bad bits. It inevitably catches you out and things can end up getting a whole lot worse. Can the past already done be changed somehow, is what this ‘message in a bottle’ of a film actually manages to answer with its final shot. And it’s nicely done, it has to be said.

And not much more to say, I think, about Lola other than, I really enjoyed it and I hope the writers and director (not to mention the crew) get more of a budget to carry on and do something even more spectacular. In some ways, Lola is a stretched out episode of The Twilight Zone in substance... just like a few other modern directors I could name have been doing over the years... but it’s a really successful one and has a style all of its own. Definitely one to catch if you are into the usual scientifiction conundrums done right. Loved it.

1900th Post - The Traveller

For my 1900th post I thought I’d try my hand at a very short piece of fiction. Hope you like...

I was nine years old when I first met the traveller.

It was around the end of August 1962. He spotted me in the street and we got to talking. He had one of those faces which always seem familiar and I kinda trusted him from the start. Good move by me, for sure.

He bought me a coffee in a local cafe and started to tell me about his talent for prediction. He must have been in his fifties and we hit it off straight away. At the end of what, even for me, was a most unusual conversation, he looked down at the comic I was reading. It was an issue of Amazing Fantasy and it featured the first tale of a brand new character called Spider-Man. I didn’t expect the comic to last but I kinda liked the story on this one. Anyway, I digress, he looked at the comic and pulled out two £10 notes which, frankly, was more money than I’d ever seen at the time... and told me to buy a few more copies of the comic and to save them for later. To take real good care of them and then he gave me a list of other comics which, he said, his contacts in publishing told him would be coming out in a few years. He told me to buy a few issues of each and to keep hold of them and to never forget. Just keep them safe. Put them in an attic or something but save them until I could sell them for some real cash. And after that it was a few years before I saw him again.

I don’t know why I trusted him then or, well, what made me do it anyway but I did what he said and didn’t think back on it. But then, every few years, I’d run into him in the street in exactly the same place and every time he’d have a hot tip for me. Like who to bet on in an upcoming Grand National or, as I got older, which artist to invest in. And, after a little while, I got used to him being right. I started looking forward to these random encounters and, though I didn’t see him every year, he usually had a good piece of financial advice with him. I managed to get the fees to pay for college to study the sciences, all off of the money made from buying the things he told me to procure. I mean, it took a while for the comics to suddenly become worth a fortune but, other stuff had a quicker pay off and, after a while, I stopped questioning him about why or how he knew this stuff because I’d figured it out by then, of course.

I mean, I didn’t know who Damien Hurst was but I know investing in his art helped me pay my way for a better house and the money I made meant I was doing my own research for myself. I was my own boss and the things I was interested in were what I got to study every day, in my own laboratory which, due to my mysterious (seemingly ageless) benefactor, I set up not far from where we’d first met.

And when those comics paid off in the late 70s and early 80s... which amazed even me (nowadays everyone knows who Spider-Man, The Hulk and The Avengers etc are)... I was able to use the money I’d invested in them to buy shares in a new computer company he told me about called Apple. It took a little while but, honestly, not too long before... well, you know Apple I’m sure?

Of course, by now I had a pretty good idea of who my mysterious benefactor was and, I suspect you do too, right? I mean, my scientific research into things that interested me was going pretty well and though I didn’t outright say much about it, I think he knew I had figured things out by now too... just as he’d figured things out back then, so to speak.

What I hadn’t expected was for the visits to not stop when I’d caught up with him... or we'd caught each other up.

I mean, sure, the visits slowed down a lot... the intervals when the traveller came to me were now sometimes as much as six years apart but, once I’d finished inventing the time machine (my chrono-perambulator, as I called it) which... well let’s still call him 'The Traveller' shall we? When I’d finished my time machine, which 'The Traveller' had told me never to tell anyone about, I expected the end goal had been reached but no, even as I went back to visit my younger self and advise him... um... me... about the comics and the art and everything else, I was still getting visits from myself. So I did what I always did and kept taking my own advice... or rather, his own advice. Gets confusing sometimes. 

 So there I was in 2012. I was 59 years old and, honestly, The Traveller seemed like he was getting slightly younger every time he popped up. Or, at least, the frequency of his trips, from his point of view at least, were obviously getting less spaced apart and I was really catching up with myself, if that’s the right way to say it.

I never once questioned the paradox I was living. I guess a more philosophical man might have stopped to wonder how this cycle got started in the first place but... well, I have no room for philosophy. I am a man of science or I would have never invented my chrono-perambulator in the first place.

But, I’m getting away from myself again... so there I was in 2012 and he tells me to start building a big storage warehouse out of town and to start filling it with canned foods and then, he tells me, start storing water around about mid-2019 and also... you know those little surgical masks you see people wearing in countries where they’re worried about infectious diseases? Get some of those, he says. So, since I know enough to trust myself, I did what he... is ‘he’ the right word? I did what 'I' said.

So now it’s 2020, right? I’m just getting the first reports of the new breed of Coronavirus in China and I figure, this is it, we’re going to have a pandemic this year... just like The Traveller implied...

I was hoping to see him again just to make sure we’d survived this whole Covid 19 thing okay but, I tell you, now I’m self isolating with my stash of water, tinned goods and, yes, loo rolls... well, I really worry when I think about when he last came to see me a few weeks ago. I’d gone back and advised myself to stock up on these things as soon as I had a spare minute, of course.

However, when I last saw him he was looking decidedly dishevelled... a far cry from the impeccably dressed, older version of myself I had been used to seeing over the years. I even think I noticed a rip on his sleeve but I didn’t say anything about that... nor about the bruise on the left side of his head, either. He said he couldn’t have more than a few minutes stay this time because he had to get back to... well wherever... make that whenever... he came from but he just wanted me to know that, 2020 was just the start of our problems and, stupid as it may sound, I should try my best to gather some of the things on the list he handed me as soon as possible. He knew I was good for the money, he'd... okay, we’d... been investing in profitable items for almost sixty years but he warned me I needed to keep an open mind about how things were going to go.

He then went his merry way but... I don’t know... I’m not so certain I’ll be seeing him again. He bounced back to his own time quicker than usual (the shorter the length of the journey the shorter the duration of the visit before the physics of the situation mean that it’s a good idea to bounce back to your point of departure or... untested things might happen to you... don’t ask me to explain the technical stuff unless you can keep up).

Anyway, I hope I see him again someday but, in the meantime, I have the latest shopping list to get to. The machine guns and ammunition shouldn’t be a problem. But the amount of timber and the necessity for crossbows might take a little longer. Goodness knows how I’m going to be able to get all that Holy Water from the church though... I wouldn’t even believe in such a thing if it wasn’t on this list. I wonder what happens to make me become all religious in the future? Only time will tell, I guess. Like I said, I hope I see that traveller again soon... there are some pointed questions I’m just going to have to ask him.

The End

Happy Death Day 2U

Bury My Heart
At Wounded Tree

Happy Death Day 2U
2019 USA Directed by Christopher Landon
UK cinema release print.

Well this was an unexpected surprise.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved the first Happy Death Day movie (which I reviewed here), especially since I only really went to hear Bear McCreary’s score and found myself caught up in what I personally think is a bit of a modern phenomenon of a teenage slasher movie... the premise of which was that it was another version of Groundhog Day but with the central character, Tree Gelbman, having to relive the same day over and over until she can figure out who it is who’s killing her at the end of the day so she can kill them and reset her life back to normal. It was such a nice idea with a great cast and some neat directorial and writing flourishes that I really didn’t see how they could go anywhere on a sequel which wasn’t just a rehash of the first movie and, yeah... I wasn’t expecting too much from this follow up, truth be told.

Which why it’s such a pleasure to be taken by surprise here because, yep, despite the central concept and the slightly clichéd but nicely handled expansion of that idea of a narrative being based on a repeat loop structure... Happy Death Day 2U is one of those rare film sequels which, while maybe not being quite as good as the first film, certainly lives up to any expectations of what a second part should look and feel like. So yeah, this movie in no way lets the first movie down and is a thoroughly entertaining ride.

Once again the insanely talented and charismatic Jessica Rothe plays Tree and back for the ride are pretty much all the main actors from the first film (and I do mean all) such as Israel Broussard, Phi Vu and Ruby Modine... but the fun doesn’t stop there because the writer/director manages to bring in a new bunch of characters and throws them into the mix too, played by people like Suraj Sharma and Sarah Yarkin. Frankly, it’s a testament to Landon that none of these characters feel like unnecessary add ons and they have a proper place in the continuing story of Tree and her ‘time looping’ dilemma.

And, like I said, the concept is expanded just a little so that we’re following some of the same stuff, in a way but... with different elements thrown into the mix.

So, for example, the film starts off focusing on Phi Vu’s character and as you twig right away, he is obviously going to start off in a loop because, right from the outset, you can see the director putting those little memorable incidents into his walk to his room mate’s bedroom on campus so the audience can pick up on these anchor points for the next time around... which is obviously why they’re there. However, rather than just run with that, Landon very quickly moves you into the next phase of the movie where some other freaky stuff starts happening and... yeah, the beauty of this movie is that, while it still very much uses a repeat structure to tell its story, it doesn’t do it in as static a way as the first and every time you think you’ve got the hang of how the movie is going to go for the rest of the running time, he manages to pull in another slightly different element and this keeps things fresh throughout the whole of picture, I’m glad to say. He even, at one point, manages to bring an audio element in from the first film,  just for a second or two, which acts as a kind of sound flashback to remind the audience of what the next part of a specific cycle should be, without having to add in a visual element to go with it... which impressed me greatly, I must say.

So I don’t want to give away too much here but, yes, you will find out exactly how (if not yet why) the incident in the first film took place and, although in some ways it would have been nice not to have to peek behind that curtain, the catalyst for all this stuff is a story element which has a lot of use to trigger different outcomes throughout the film so... I guess what I’m saying is, if they had to do a sequel, well this one is definitely a good way of solving certain problems. Also, it’s nice to see actors playing very specific character stereotypes in the first movie being given a chance to play their same characters in a different way at certain points. So there’s a lot on offer if you liked the first one and are happy that this isn’t just a repeat. And that includes the opening Univeral logo too... which was in a repeat loop at the opneing of the first movie but for this one... yeah, I'm not giving that away here either.

The film is pure fun from start to end and, surprisingly perhaps, manages to also be quite moving in certain moments. There were tears in my eyes during a specific scene and that’s just not the kind of emotional level that you would normally expect from something that, on the surface, masquerades as just another teenage Hollywood slasher movie. Like the first one, this movie has a lot of heart with the kind of strong, moral centre you’d not necessarily expect to be witness to in this kind of cinematic territory. And once again we have Bear McCreary picking up on the themes and ideas he used on the score to the first movie and expanding on them, enhancing the emotions just as you would hope. He does another great job here and I just wish this sequel score was put out on a proper CD instead of a low quality electronic download (at time of writing this article... I’ve still got my fingers crossed for some kind of physical release in the near future).

So, yeah, I managed to get through this review completely spoiler free, it looks like but, if you are reading this and are thinking of seeing the movie, please make sure you stay through the first part of the end credits. There’s a mid-post credits scene here and it’s fairly lengthy, explains the not so common sensical ending a little better (although I’m still a little baffled by the mechanics of the resolution scene... need to see it again). This sequence also sets up a much bigger picture for the third movie which, given the identity of a character unmasked early on in the film and which at first I thought might be a loose end the writer had forgotten about, might mean that the third film in the series (which I’m very much hoping is inevitable now) will have a much bigger scope to the first two. We shall see.

In the meantime, if you’ve not seen the first film then don’t see this one yet (and in fact don’t even watch the trailer) as it reveals the end of the first movie in a handy recap sequence. So go watch that once first because... well... it’s kind of brilliant. If, however, you’re already an admirer of the first film then Happy Death Day 2U definitely doesn’t fall too short of what your best idea of a version of a continuation of the story could be, I suspect and, frankly, it’s a fun ride all the way through. So go see it.

Doctor Who - Heaven Sent

A Gallifrey Your Thoughts

Doctor Who - Heaven Sent
UK Airdate: 28th November 2015
BBC 1

Warning: Yeah, there are some hefty spoilers here, I guess.

Ha. Okay, so judging from my Twitter timeline last night, this episode was fairly divisive in its reception and appreciation. It seemed, by the looks of it, to be a particularly ‘Marmite’ episode, with some people absolutely hating it, giving up on the show and calling for a return to the fun and excitement of former years while others in my timeline seem to be saying it was one of the best pieces of television broadcasting in recent memory.

Okay, all of that is all very nice but I’m afraid I didn’t get such a big hit from it either way, to be honest. I didn’t love it and I didn’t hate it. It was an okayish episode and it wasn’t terrible... certainly not as bad as the last two at any rate. Also, I think I can understand what Steven Moffat, who is the series show runner and who wrote this one, is trying to do with this latest series in general and this episode in particular.

That is to say, the show seems to have become a little less relevant in recent years with the ratings going down slightly and with a lot of people jumping ship towards the end of Matt Smith’s era and into Capaldi’s. The show from two weeks ago, Sleep No More (reviewed here) for instance, had the lowest ‘appreciation index’ score for the programme in quite a number of years. So I’m guessing as a writer/producer you have to stir things up and what better way to do this than make Doctor Who a bit dark and scary again. Now I know Moffat has a very good memory of the history of the show and I would be really surprised if he and his co-conspirators weren’t trying for an episode here which hits exactly the same kind of tone of the old, and very controversial in its day, Tom Baker story The Deadly Assassin. That story got some complaints against it (not least from Mary Whitehouse) and helped seal the reputation of Doctor Who as being... well... too scary for kids. For the record here... there’s not much in fiction that’s too scary for kids, in all honesty. If you can’t be scared of something when you’re a young ‘un then when can you be? It’s the only way to toughen yourself up to life, I believe. Or, at least, one of the easiest... let those nightmares come and then conquer them forever.

So, yeah, I think this episode was a deliberate harkening back to hitting some of the beats of The Deadly Assassin... something which I was pretty sure he was doing on the opening of the first story this season, The Magician’s Apprentice (reviewed here). Interesting, also, that The Doctor lost the company of a companion just before The Deadly Assassin took place too so... yeah, I suspect there’s a lot of thought about how this season sits in terms of the history of the show. I may be wrong but... it’s my theory at the moment and, frankly, it doesn’t matter too much either way, as long as it gets people talking about the show again.

Heaven Sent is a bit of an experiment in terms of its content, for sure, with a very small cast. It’s essentially a one hander but, of course, we also have Jenna Coleman playing a manifestation of The Doctor’s mind as his recently deceased (maybe) companion Clara, and a monster figure and a young Gallifreyan boy. It’s very much a tour de force for Capaldi as an actor... but nothing we don’t already know he’s capable of, to be fair. We already know he’s a brilliant actor and he’s certainly a brilliant Doctor, whether the stories are any good or not. The trouble with this one, though, is that it’s so focussed on solving the ‘mystery’ at the heart of the story without any real distractions from the problem at hand, being as it’s essentially a one man show... no bickering with newcomers, no space battles or much running around in corridors (lots of shambling in corridors but, you know, the pace is down a notch) that the real problem with tackling a story like this reveals itself fairly easily. That is to say, once you’ve figured out how long The Doctor has been there and what the key to the story is... it’s all over and you’re just waiting for the central protagonist to catch up with you. Which, in this case, is maybe 15 minutes into the story tops? Once you’ve seen the skulls in the bottom of the ocean which all look exactly the same, you will have probably figured out that they were all The Doctor and, when you see the spare clothes drying by the lit fire, you can probably figure out who left them there for The Doctor... in fact, you see him do it.

So yeah, it’s an interesting idea and I’m very glad that Moffat tried it but, since we’ve known forever that Gallifrey was gong to return in this series, it’s not too hard to figure out what was going on (and if you cast your mind back to hte late 1970s, parts of The Deadly Assassin were set ‘in The Doctor’s mind’, so to speak, on Gallifrey).  The one thing it did take me a while to see was the gradual chipping down of The Doctor’s escape from his ‘confession disc’. The reason I didn’t quite see that coming until 5 - 10 minutes before it happened, and was still a bit iffy on the premise, is because we were told that all the rooms were resetting themselves to exactly what they were when The Doctor arrived (and keeps arriving) every day... so wouldn’t the wall reset itself too, don’t you think? Just a thought.

The episode does bring back another common element of the modern Doctor Who series though, which was originally perpetrated by Russel T. Davies in David Tennant’s last regular year on the show but which is something which Steven Moffat has run with for a while and, given the nature of the show over it’s 52 years, to date... I’m surprised it’s only in the last few years that this idea has been greatly touched upon. The element I’m talking about is... the long game. The times when we see The Doctor and he’s been in the same incarnation but there’s been a gap of hundreds or more years since we last saw him. Tennant’s incarnation went a bit loopy and ran off for years at one point after he lost Donna and Moffat’s been using that ingredient of ‘the character who takes the long way around’ quite a bit since. It’s almost become a bit of a signature for him on the show. Examples would include Amy Pond, the girl who waited decades for her second meeting with The Doctor in The Eleventh Hour (reviewed here) and even longer than that when she was trapped in that alternate timeline in The Girl Who Waited (reviewed here), Rory in The Big Bang (reviewed here and don’t get me started on that whole Pandorica thing again), River Song as a youngster in the opening scenes of Let’s Kill Hitler (reviewed here), Matt Smith prior to the events of The Snowmen (after losing Amy and Rory, reviewed here) and even Capaldi himself quite recently in Before The Flood (reviewed here). And more times than I can remember, I suspect. So yeah, once again we have The Doctor taking the long way around... this time by way of over a million days in which he dies at the end of each one... and they really padded that repeat montage out just way longer than was necessary for pretty much any audience comprehension, I believe, but who am I to argue.

And there you have it. We’re back on Gallifrey, wherever it was hidden, and I am really expecting to see Clara again at some point during the next episode. Also kinda hoping to see John Simm’s back as The Master so we can finally see him regenerate into Missy as we know him now but... I’m guessing that won’t be happening anytime soon. The other thing is... Moffat’s guilty of a little revisionism on the show here. The Doctor as ‘the hybrid’ is not such a big problem to me as it might be to some long term fans, to be sure, but the fact that this possibly contradicts the knowledge that The Master is The Doctor’s brother does rankle me a little. So we shall see how this is handled... presumably next week. Other than that though, not much to say other than I stand by my judgement that this wasn’t a great episode but neither was it a poor one. I think next week will really either be quite spectacular on it’s follow up or... possibly just go the way of most of the previous Smith and Capaldi season finales and be... well... a bit of a let down. No worries... time will tell. I’m really looking forward to catching up with River Song again in this year’s Christmas special so... not that fussed about the finale at the moment.

Predestination

Fizzle Puzzle

Predestination
Australia 2014
Directed by The Spierig Brothers
Sony Pictures All Region Blu Ray

A friend of mine recommended that I see this movie and now, thinking about it, I think I did see it trailered last year and was waiting for it to come around to my local cinema... but I don’t think it turned up in my neck of the woods. Which is a shame because I’m always into time travel stories and he was right, I did enjoy this one. It also proves my much aired theory that modern day Hollywood are plundering old 1950s sci-fi short stories as either direct source or inspiration for a lot of the movies being made over the last ten years or more in that this one is a strong adaptation of a 1958 Robert A. Heinlein short story called “All You Zombies”... which is one I’ve not read. Since there aren’t any zombies in this story though, because the context is different to what modern cinema audiences would expect from a title like that, it’s been wisely, I think, changed to Predestination. 

Now it’s hard to talk about this movie without giving huge spoilers and I was in two minds about whether to include those or not. On the one hand, as you go through the movie you can work out what’s coming next and I got to about twenty minutes into the movie and I pretty much knew 90% of the reveals and, certainly by the time they’d arrived, I’d already figured out the other ones. That being said, there’s something to be said for the kind of enjoyment one gets from working things out as you go along and, since being a time travel story makes it almost a requisite to have a temporal twist in the tale, the majority of the audience are going to want to dig in and figure it out before the end anyway. That’s part of the fun.

So I guess that means I’ve got to somehow continue reviewing this without any spoilerage.

So what can I tell you about this then? Well, it’s a story about a time travelling secret agent who is trying to stop a ‘time terrorist’ throughout history known as The Fizzle Bomber. There, you see? Even revealing that much about the plot has already given you your first suspicion of what the ending might entail without me even going into details... which is the problem with these kinds of stories. Luckily, however, the various twists and turns of the narrative are such that the film works out as a kind of series of Russian dolls of a plot line. The things you think are the important reveals start becoming less and less important as the story unfolds and more and more like everything is chasing its own tale... which is kinda the point, I guess. This film has a real Ouroboros of a story line and really does follow its own rear end to an extent that lovers of time travel stories will, probably, hugely embrace. It mixes the temporal elements with another element which I really can’t tell you about without major spoilerage and then uses that to both mask and maintain the self reflexivity of the ultimate paradox which lies at the heart of the solution of this movie. A solution which does, of course, mean we are both privy to the tail wagging the dog and the huge anomaly in logic that this manages to create.

Okay... so this is why I can’t say much about the plot here guys. You will work out what’s going on but, hopefully, it will all work like layers of an onion for you once you realise that each question raised becomes less important than the next and hopefully, you won’t be waiting too long for a certain character in this film to catch up with the solution. Either way, though, it’s a nicely put together ride and I really didn’t mind that the end result was, by the end of the movie, a bit obvious.

We also have three actors who really nail this movie headed up by the always watchable Ethan Hawke, who was in the last Spierig Brothers movie, Daybreakers. He is ably supported by Noah Taylor, who I always think is great, and an actress called Sarah Snook who... well...believe me, if this movie wasn’t perceived as ‘a sci-fi movie’, she would have been a shoe in for an oscar here. She has a much more difficult job than any of the other actors here and once you get the spin of just the first of many of the tricks of her character, you will realise just what an incredible job she is doing in this movie... a lot of the first half of which is told as a series of flashbacks via a conversation in a bar. The answer to all the riddles and conundrums the plot throws at you, and it’s up to you to decide just how many really are being pitched your way, relies a lot on her brilliant performance here and her character is very much the main protagonist of the film... I think it’s safe to say.

There’s some nice visual stuff going on here too. There are some beautiful compositions and there are some bold and absolutely striking colour choices which, while they aren’t the same palette throughout (the opening sequences pitch blue against orange for example, before moving into something completely different), seem to be sticking to mostly two dominant colours per sequence, over the course of the story. I’d like to think that this basic colour choice was an attempt for the directors to synaesthetically gel with certain elements of the story but I’m never going to know about that one, I’m sure... due to the reason that it might not be something desirable to reveal during an interview about this one. Whatever the motivation for this element, however, it certainly works a treat and pushes the film up to an artistic level which it might not have achieved without such a rigid aesthetic principle in place.

The one thing which did mislead me about the movie is the existence of a specific “space comfort” agency... which is basically a way of training women to travel and ‘bond’ with men who go into space (yeah, it’s basically government sponsored prostitution). It’s presented as a historical fact in the movie and it did make me wonder if the audience are being shown some kind of parallel universe specific to the world of the movie... and I guess in a way that’s true. However, when I saw in the end credits that it was based on a 1950s Robert A. Heinlein story, it all made perfect sense. This was speculative fiction of an organisation that Heinlein obviously thought ‘could’ exist in his future and the directors were merely being respectful of his material... and it does give the film a nice little fantasy element it wouldn’t have had if they’d have changed little details like this, it has to be said.

So yeah, that’s me done on Predestination, I think. It gets to be damned obvious over the course of the running time but the writers/directors did well to mask the full extent of the solution in the less linear bits of narrative for as long as they did when dealing with a specific kind of time travel concept which is almost the grand-daddy of temporal conundrums, to be fair. And the ride is worth it too because it’s a brilliant movie, well acted by amazing performers and edited in such a way that it can happily jump around all over the place and you don’t have to be worried about getting “lost in time” yourself as you marry up all the visual data to figure out who is doing something or, more importantly, when they are doing something. A definite watch for fans of science fiction and, if sci-fi isn’t really your thing, then that just makes it all the more easier for you to play the puzzle game with it. Really glad I saw this one and that I have friends who are able to twig me enough to recommend this kind of stuff to me. Definitely give this one a go.

Terminator Genisys

Pie In The Skynet

Terminator Genisys
2015  USA
Directed by Alan Taylor
UK cinema release print.

Well, I have to admit, I was expecting this movie to be a huge train wreck. Colour me surprised that, while it has some problems, Terminator Genisys was a really entertaining time at the movies and I’m really pleased about that.

I saw the original 1984 James Cameron film, The Terminator, between one and two years after it was released at cinemas, courtesy of a rental VHS tape from my local off-licence. I got to see it again on a big screen and in the right aspect ratio years later and, as such, it’s the only one of this series of movies, at time of writing this article, that I’ve seen twice. Although I’m thinking of getting a blu ray set if they release them all uncut towards the end of the year.

I loved that first movie at the time. It was obviously low budget and it was the kind of midnight movie style offering that made you wonder why they ever bothered to release it into cinemas in the first place. A B-movie exploitation film but a cool one... as far as I was concerned. When we all queued up a number of years later to see Cameron’s sequel, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, I was really disappointed with it and just didn’t have much good to say about it, in comparison to the origuinal. I preferred Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines because it had a sexy lady Terminator and it had a Schwarzenegger tribute to the original Django movie in it... really enjoyed that aspect of it. The one I really liked was the fourth one, Terminator: Salvation, for some reason, which I enjoyed almost as much as the first movie.

This fifth movie is really starting off from a point which is, frankly, a load of nonsense. None of the same actors apart from Schwarzenegger are back and it’s something I criticised some of the other films for... if the same actors don’t want to come back... don’t make another movie. Simple. So right away you know it’s a ridiculous load of tosh and the story seems to be full of so many mistakes in the temporal logic of the thing, similar to the stupid errors in films like Back To The Future Part 2 and X-Men: Days Of Future Past (reviewed here), that you have to completely ignore any grounding in trying to make this a valid sequel to anything... so the main thing is to not take this movie in any way seriously and you should have a good time with it.

Yeah, I understand if I say it’s a “switch your brain off movie” it’s just validating the lack of attempt of film studios to make more robust and logical movies but, heck, I can only respond to what’s in front of me here. And I fully understand that my lack of remembrance of pretty much anything of the previous movies makes me unable to properly comment on any possible continuity problems in this chapter of the series. That being said, if something is changed in the past, you can’t just go back and sort it out from a future point because the future point of what you just changed no longer exists... that’s pretty much a no brainer. There’s lots of that kind of anti-logic in this one but, you know what, I’m just going to let it slide because it’s so self evident that I can’t imagine anyone not having a problem with it and you certainly don’t need me to point this stuff out.

However, what this film is... is a non-stop action movie. And it’s a well oiled machine of an action movie, at that. It isn’t confusing, keeps up the pacing (which is pretty much action crescendo all the way through... like the recent Mad Max: Fury Road, reviewed by me here) and has a great set of actors. In addition to the always underrated and always brilliant Arnold Schwarzenegger, we have Jason Clarke as John Connor, Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor, Jai Courtney as Kyle Reese, Byung-Hun Lee as the Jason Patrick version of The Terminator (?), J. K. Simmons (playing slightly against type compared to what I’ve seen him do, though no less brilliantly) and the wonderful Matt Smith (in a not so visible but highly effective role). All more than capable actors, all doing a bang up job. So that’s all good, then.

The film is really well directed and Taylor keeps the camera moving a lot of the time. The rhythm of the editing is pretty neat (a scene where Schwarzenegger and Courtney are competing at ammunition loading springs to mind) and the lighting and colour palette seems to be pretty cool throughout and also helps stop things flagging on a visual level. There are some really cool sequences in terms of shot design and the way the editing works too...

For instance, there’s an amazing scene where we follow Jason Clark in profile as he walks through a load of vertical machinery like pipes, at speed, with the verticals rushing past to the right of shot as his character is walking towards the left of the screen... while he is kept in the middle of the shot via the moving camera viewpoint. Then the shot suddenly cuts to a pan of the same character continuing his walking... however, we see him from the front and we are panning in to him from the right... at exactly the same speed as the previous shot... which means the verticals rushing to the right are just continuing at the same pace, making it a completely seamless transition despite showing a completely different angle, because of the “visual glue” of the camera movement in relation to the foreground elements. Unbelievably cool and, although the two shots put together probably last less than 5 to 6 seconds, it just blew me away. The director completely won me over with these couple of shots.

Another great thing is the music. Now, apart from a couple of moments where literally just a few notes of the original Terminator theme are referenced, before being properly brought into play in the end credits suite (which plays like a new version of Brad Fiedel’s original) there aren't a lot of similarities to the thematic elements that have come before. However, Lorne Balfe’s score is robust and, like his score to The Sweeney (reviewed here) is an absolutely awesome and appropriate set of musical cues to accompany and enhance the emotions and dynamics of the movie. I felt myself admiring the music more and more as I got further into the film, which managed to thankfully hold its own in the sound mix during some of the fast and furious bullet ballets which the movie has on offer. This composer is definitely one of the "new guard" to watch out for, as far as I'm concerned... Taking his place among such modern soundtrack maestros as Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giachhino, Bear McCreary and Brian Tyler, as far as I'm concerned.

Ultimately, although there are some really big flaws in the thinking of certain elements - such as being able to grow new flesh which is designed to age and have it all blending in somehow - the film gets a lot of things right. True, there is a, presumably deliberately left, loose end in terms of just who or what sent the Schwarzenegger version of the Terminator nicknamed "pops" back to Sarah Connor’s childhood and there's a certain amount of predictability in terms of the ultimate fate of that version of the character (which will become obvious to you as soon as you see the interior of a certain interior set about half way through the movie) but the lack of logic and surprise doesn't mean an awful lot, bearing in mind that they throw it all away right from the start anyway. This film won't explain or fix any timeline issues of the previous movies but, at least, the audience can have some fun with the competency and creative flourishes inherent in the visual side. And, hey, there are some nice one liners in there too, which may make you smile. So, yeah, if you're into science fiction movies in general, Terminator Genisys is a flawed but fun picture to put on your "to watch" list. Not as good as the first or fourth installments but, yeah, it's definitely worth a watch and, I'm pretty sure after this one, Schwarzenegger will be back.

Looper

Time To Kill

Looper 
2012 China/USA 
Directed by Rian Johnson
Playing at UK cinemas now

Warning: Ever so slight imagery spoilers
looping back through time to confront you.

I’ll admit it up front. I, more often than not, just love stories based around the concept of time travel. Mainly because you can set up so many ironies and mind-blowing revelations just from tinkering with somebody’s past that it makes for some great tales. Stories that can explore ideas and follow through on arcs which remain inaccessible to fictional explorations in other genres. Like most good science fiction does, for that matter.

That being said, I really get angry when the basic temporal mechanics of a piece gets screwed up by mistakes of obvious logic in the story. Sometimes, a writer will fudge a common sense outcome of a change in time and run with it to make the rest of the story he or she has in their head a possibility, rather than find another, perhaps less obvious, route around to the sequences they want to drop in. Back To The Future Part 2, for example, doesn’t just fumble the ball in this regard, it darn well drops the ball and then ostentatiously kicks it out of the field in its complete lack of concern for the rules set up by the man made measure that is “the passage of time”. There’s a moment about a third or a half of the way through that movie when the whole rest of that movie, and the whole of the next installment, couldn’t have actually taken place in the realm of the Back To The Future universe they’ve set up, because a character returns to a point in his future which is no longer there because he’s already erased it. Stuff like that is just plain sloppy... not to mention as irritating as hell.

Steven Moffat, I feel, sometimes has the same problem with some of his Doctor Who story arcs... which sometimes tend to resort to what I call “the Tinkerbell syndrome” in their ability to reach a successful story conclusion. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve completely destroyed the science of the piece but, guess what, if you believe in Faires... it will magic it back up again out of the ether! That kind of lack of logic is used like a crutch too often sometimes (yes Pandorica, I’m looking at you!).

I’m happy to report that writer director Rian Johnson has no such problems with his new time travel dilemma movie Looper. Or if he does, then the sleight of hand with which he maintains the illusion of complete plausibility of a man who is in a state of flux because of changes to his past happening while he is at present in that past, sent back from 30 years in his future, is absolutely credible and makes absolute sense.

Consequently, Looper isn’t just a believable, fictional universe to find yourself watching... it’s a vital and, frankly, scary cinematic wonderland in which to get lost in for a couple of hours (or 30 years, take your pick).

I’d seen Johnsons debut feature Brick some years back on its initial cinema release, and I was completely blown away by it. So I was really looking forward to Looper until I started to see the poster marketing for it. Note to advertising agencies: comparing a well put together, moody and extremely gritty, time travel noir like Looper to a piece of rubbish like The Matrix, may put off fans of proper science fiction. Seriously, when I saw the advertising calling it “this years The Matrix” it really put my expectations down a notch. You might as well compare it to other, not so great and abysmally over-rated sci-fi movies like Avatar and Inception. However, like I said, I had seen Brick and so I went to take a look at this one regardless.

I’m glad I did.

Like Brick, everything in this movie works so well and comes together so beautifully that you just get swept along in the illusion of the thing. Everything works towards the focussing of a single vision all the way through... set design, knockout performances from everyone (not just the leads who are, obviously, excellent), music by Nathan Johnson which supports this movie in a different way to the way in which his music in Brick worked, marvellous editing... everything works together so well that you’ll feel the intelligence and single-mindedness of the writer/directors intent as every frame passes.

And it’s a harsh world in which you’ll spend your time. A plot involving killers called Loopers who close their own loop by killing themselves from the future as the beginning of their 30 year retirement plan is the main focus of exploration and the identity of a criminal mastermind from the future called The Rainmaker becomes the raison d’etre of the shenanigans in which our two main protagonists... who are actually the same main protagonist from two different points in time (and possibilities in flux in terms of the older of the two facets of the character)... become caught up in. It’s actually a simple plot when you think back on what you’ve seen after the movie is over... but Johnson pulls it off so intelligently that you’ll see where the big pitfalls could have gone and how he managed to avoid screwing with the temporal logic while pushing it right to the edge on occasion. There’s just one little mistake I think might have been made in one sequence towards the final scenes of the movie, but it’s the kind of mistake you seem to see in movies all the time these days (as if that should excuse it) and it may be the result of the film losing some footage in the final cut. Most people aren’t going to question it in the heat of the moment and I’m not going to point it out here... it doesn’t involve time travel.

I think what I’m trying to say here is... not only is Looper a good sci-fi movie... it’s an adult movie in a cinematic landscape which is constantly providing less adult orientated content. There’s also some stuff which is truly horrifying in it... such as the scene where the writer/director is showing you how a Looper can be damaged to change his own future self without actually screwing up the possibility of an infinitely different future, while also killing a second bird with the same stone and using this to show how the two/one main protagonist/s can communicate with each other. It’s all good stuff and will keep you dwelling on the implications long after the imagery lingers in your mind. I don’t want to spoil anything here but... the image of a man running for his life and having his foot disappear because his past self has just had it deliberately amputated to slow him down is not one I’m going to forget in a hurry.

So there you have it. A brilliant script, well acted, designed and scored, from a very young director who is an absolute master of his game. Anyone who thought Brick was a flash in the pan can think again... I think this movie will be pretty successful. Not necessarily at the initial box office take but certainly on home video formats and in terms of something that will still be watched with admiration and hailed as a minor classic in years to come. If you like science fiction, then Looper needs to go on your to watch list quick before it vanishes from cinemas as quickly as most movies made for actual adults do these days.