Horsehead

I Love Lucid

Horsehead
France 2014 Directed by Romain Basset
Paramount Blu Ray

Well this is certainly an interesting little movie experience. It’s not the most entertaining film I’ve seen this week but it does have moments that hold the interest and visual images which turn the head. That being said, there’s good and bad as far as Horsehead goes and ultimately I feel that, by the journey’s end, the film doesn’t really add up to the sum of its parts.

So, the good hits you right from the start where the snorts of the ‘character’ from which the film takes it’s title, is first glimpsed. A girl who we identify as the films main protagonist, Jessica, played with a certain amount of presence by Lilly-Fleur Pointeaux, is unable to move on a bed while the twisted fingers and head of an upright standing horse creature in a suit peaks around the curtains at her before impaling her with metal... we then come to understand that this is a dream that Jessica is having, followed swiftly but the news that her grandmother has passed away and that she is urged by her mother to return home for a while, as a result of this.

We see her take a train and it’s here that I first noticed how well the film was shot. The main protagonist is always dreaming in this movie... quite deliberately... as her experiments in lucid dreaming are something she uses to get her closer to the truth of a situation. Even when the main character is not experiencing a dream state, however, the photography manages to both capture a dream-like quality  to the reality around her while at the same time bringing everything into sharp contrast... on this blu ray I could literally focus on the texture of the knitwear of the top she is wearing in this opening sequence, for instance.

When she gets home she is ambivalently greeted by her mother, played by Catriona MacColl (who some of my regular readers may recognise for her association with some of Lucio Fulci’s better movies) and happily welcomed by her step-dad Murray Head. The same Murray Head who played/sang Judas on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s original concept album Jesus Christ Superstar... which was, of course, turned into a stage musical very soon after. In her room next to her dead grandmother, and also when she’s in the bath, she goes through a series of dreams coupled with illness in a film that reminded me, just a little bit, of Dario Argento’s Suspiria in some places. There is a certain sense of surrealism present in the dream scenes and the movie becomes, quite quickly, more and more about the pursuit of these sections as Jessica tries to unravel the mysteries of her family’s past while ascertaining her own place in the chain of events that has guided her to this point.

Unfortunately, there’s bad stuff in this movie too in that things are set up without necessarily giving you any answers or, as in the case of this script in places, clumsily. For instance the writer/director feels the need to point out in the script that the lights in the upstairs “keep going”... so that the main protagonist can carry around a torch while exploring the dark areas conducive to a sense of lurking dread found in cinema such as this. The line when her step father gives her the torch is quite literally “... you’re going to need this... a lot of the light bulbs have gone up there.” Why not just replace them, then? It seems a cliché which was best left unsaid rather tham raising it to a level at which the viewer would be conscious of it, it seems to me.

There is also a bad moment, very soon after this line is uttered, when the torch comes into play and we are unfortunately treated to a bounce back reflection of the light glancing back from the camera lens. However, the clumsy line and the technical error do at least add as a distraction because, immediately following the bounceback, there is a moment where Jessica switches on the light in a room and it fails about half a second later. In that brief burst of light we are able to make out her dead grandmother standing directly behind her. It’s a nice moment but, alas, while the surprise is total because you are still reeling from the technical error, the impact of that moment is perhaps a little diminished. Still... nice try, I think.

The film is beautifully shot and the night time sequences especially, which make up the majority of the movie, are nicely put together in rich reds and warm oranges pitched against the obligatory darkness of each frame. Other visual tropes and clichés of the horror film abound such as ‘the creepy childhood teddy bear’, mini rocking horses and a metronome which Jessica uses as an aid (along with some ether in some scenes) to enter a dream state. Of course, the director also uses this to highlight the difference between dreaming and wakefulness at one point because the way the film is put together, it does get kinda hard to distinguish between the two as the running time drifts on.

The film is ultimately a surreal trip through a dreamland with those sleeping fantasies seeming to have some connection to the main protagonist’s past. However, while strong hints are given as to what might be going on, the film doesn’t resolve that much for the audience and, although it has a brilliant last, haunting shot to leave you with, it really doesn’t give much guidance as to everything that’s been going on. A lot of it is ‘fill in the blanks’ and, although I could do that fairly easily, I suspect that each audience member might walk away with a slightly different interpretation of what those blanks might be.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this, of course, and it’s the kind of ambiguity I usually like to embrace in movie making but, for all its rich visuals, slick editing, exciting mise en scene and engaging performances, I did find the film just a little dull in places. Also, the insistence and perseverance that the main character has that her dreams can solve the riddle of her birth and the physical and supernaturally tangible manifestation of the things that go bump in her id do kind of set the film up for a bit of a fail at the end of the movie, when the personal quest takes a strange turn, I feel. Ultimately, it’s a nice little film that has some truly gorgeous sequences but, alas, promises more than it delivers, not least of which is the identity or symbolism of the horse headed title character. I got bored during this one, which is kind of rare for me. I would still recommend Horsehead to fellow fans of horror and surrealism because some of the images are quite odd and worthy of a quick look. I probably won’t be rewatching this anytime soon, however.

Doc Savage - The Sinister Shadow

Lurks In The Hearts Of Bronze

Doc Savage - The Sinister Shadow
by Kenneth Robeson (Will Murray)
ISBN: 978-1618271983

Warning: Very marginal spoilers here.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? 
The Shadow Knows!

Okay, so I’ve been a big admirer of both the original Doc Savage novels (since I started reading them in 1975, when the movie came out) and also Will Murray’s continuation novels, including his new batch under the collective term “The Wild Adventures Of Doc Savage”. All of the Wild Adventures are being reviewed here in the order of their release and, if you look them up in the Index By Title at the top right of this page (the book section is at the start of the index), you’ll see there are only a few of Murray’s magnificent tomes that I found wanting. Unfortunately, this is one of them but I don’t think that’s necessarily Murray’s fault in this case... it’s more my reaction to the literary style of Maxwell Grant. I’ll explain that a little more in a minute.

The Shadow started life as a radio show character to promote Street And Smith’s pulp magazines in 1930. He became more and more his own thing and it wasn’t long before people were asking the news stand sellers for magazines of pulps specifically based on the character. Eager to feed that market, the publishers commissioned Walter Gibson to start writing his literary adventures in The Shadow magazine and I understand he wrote the bulk of them, under the Street And Smith pen name of Maxwell Grant. Orson Welles played him on the radio, the magazine sales were astonishing and several films and serials, not to mention comics, were sold of the adventures of... The Shadow. In the UK he’s not so well known as a character but in the US he was a really big phenomenon in the 1930s. Characters like Batman may never have been invented if it wasn’t for The Shadow. I have a wonderful Batman comic somewhere from the seventies used as a reintroduction to the character, to usher in DCs revival of The Shadow in his own comic, which pretty much underscores that fact.

While not directly influenced stylistically by The Shadow, when a young Lester Dent was asked by Street And Smith to have a go at writing for the character, it was more as an audition for another character the publishers were thinking of bringing to life and, in terms of the newer character, Dent was given the job... three years after The Shadow had debuted on the radio and about two years after the character’s pulps commenced publication. That character was, of course, Doc Savage and Dent wrote the majority of the Doc Savage novels under the Street And Smith house name of Kenneth Robeson (although I don’t think he wrote any of The Avenger novels also written under that same publisher pen name... I may be wrong). Doc Savage was extremely popular, too, but he was always somewhat eclipsed by the popularity of The Shadow, I feel. There were no serials or even a movie about Doc until 1975 (although writer/director Shane Black is apparently trying hard to get a new version to the screen at some point, it would appear).

This novel is, as far as I know, the first full length novel to ‘team up’ the two characters... although the idea of Doc Savage and The Shadow getting together is not a new thing, of course. Various comic book companies over the years have tried it and... well the results are never that good and I’d have to say the same here, to a certain extent, although Murray certainly does a good job with The Shadow. Which is possibly why I didn’t like this one so much.

One of the major problems with crossing over these two characters is that they are so different in tone. The Shadow is the ‘ninja of noir’, lurking in the shadows, secreting himself and his investigations and ultimately dealing out leaden death to his enemies. Doc Savage on the other hand, while still possessing some hefty secrets, goes about his work openly as a global adventurer and he would never, knowingly, take away anyone’s life. Even the special guns he invented for his five aides are loaded with drums of ‘mercy bullets’, which explode on impact and just knock the person on the receiving end unconscious. So we have a very clear light versus dark tone on any stories that try to match up the heroes and... well that difference rarely comes across without one or the other of the characters being somewhat compromised, it seems to me and, in the case of Doc Savage’s side of the story, that’s exactly what happens in this novel, to some extent.

While I quite like the idea of The Shadow and loved some of his comics, film serials and radio shows, I’ve never really gotten on with his literary incarnation. And that’s not just because I can never pin a handle on who his real alter ego is... such as Kent Allard, Lamont Cranston or possibly, in this one, George Clarendon... in fact I believe the real identity of The Shadow became more obscured and involved over the decades. The real reason I’ve never gotten along with the character in the pulps is because he just seems so much less engaging and because he always seems so less well written than my constant literary companion, Doc Savage. The books just seem a bit ‘deadly dull’ in the way the action is expressed and... well, all I can say about that is that Murray must be doing a fine job here because... he’s really caught that deadly dull style and used it throughout the novel.

The majority of the action in The Sinister Shadow involves both The Shadow and his network of operatives. Doc Savage and co seem to have much less to do in this one and, consequently, the writing style for much of the novel, including many of the scenes involving Doc and his crew, seems to be very much in the style of the fictional Maxwell Grant than of the fictional Kenneth Robeson.

I don’t know enough about The Shadow to be able to really judge just how great a job Murray has done on him here but it did feel like it was very much in keeping with the few volumes I’ve read. There is a certain, overwrought sense of poetry to the prose as the writer finds ways to express The Shadow as he slips from sight and becomes ‘a living shadow’, so to speak. I do, however, think of myself a fair judge of Doc Savage and there are a few things I think were somewhat overlooked in this tome, regarding Doc and his crew, due to the bulk of the story feeling tailored to get as much time spent with The Shadow and his operators as possible.

For instance, early in the book, Doc and Monk accept a ‘lift’ from the police, rather than ride to the scene of the crime in something faster and more independent. I’m sure Doc wouldn’t have taken that offer in a normal situation without a hidden agenda because it leaves him somewhere where he’s possibly going to get involved with trouble, without any means of giving chase. So it seemed somehow wrong.

Secondly, the two heroes penetrate each other’s secrets, to a certain extent. The Shadow learns the location and existence of both the Hidalgo Trading Company vehicle hanger that Doc has set up and, even more damagingly, his Crime College, where he secretly cures criminals of their bad deeds, removes their memories, and teaches them an honest trade. For his part, Doc discovers and invades The Shadow’s Inner Sanctum but, frankly, there’s no way Doc would have let The Shadow escape him or fall into an unlikely alliance with him for the last act of the book. Doc would have never let him go, I’m sure. He would have chased him down to the ends of the earth to rehabilitate him, rather than tolerate a vigilante dealing out death in his city. So none of that really felt ‘true’ to me.

Lastly, Doc’s aide Ham is kidnapped early on in the book (along with Lamont Cranston) and is absent for quite a lot of it. Monk, however, doesn’t seem that unduly upset about this turn of developments through most of the adventure. Which seems kinda odd. The Monk Mayfair I know would have been going frantic throughout the whole of the story, I’m sure. Here it seems like it’s just business as usual for the apish chemist... so, again, it just didn’t ring true to the characters for me.

Other than this, though, the book is entertaining enough and full of action. It just seemed a little less interesting to me. Well done to Murray, though, for finally fooling me for a minute or two when Doc disguises himself as... ahem... a prominent character in the story. I usually spot these things a mile off and this is such an obvious thing to have happen here that I was amazed that I didn’t see that one coming. So that was good although, by the time in the novel this actually happens, I was kinda counting the pages until the end.

All in all, then, a remarkable facsimile in style and content to the original pulps of The Shadow and I think fans of the character will love this one. As a Doc Savage fan, however, I was less enamoured of Doc Savage - The Sinister Shadow, than I thought I would be... which is a shame but 'them’s the breaks', I guess. Still... looking forward to the wonderful Will Murray’s next Doc Savage adventure... which I already have sitting in the ‘to read’ pile.

The Nice Guys

Of Nice And Men

The Nice Guys
2016 USA Directed by Shane Black
UK cinema release print.

I have to be up front here and say that I’m not the biggest fan of either of the two leads of The Nice Guys. In the case of Russell Crowe, that stems from some of his behaviour off screen when it comes to journalists and it’s nothing to do with his skill at the craft of acting, which he's obviously very good at and which really should be what I’m looking at with an unclouded view here, anyway. Especially since it seems to be a fact these days that any stories reported by various ‘news machines’ are either fabricated to cause sensation or are, at the very least, not often showing all the sides of a story. So I’ve been slowly going through a process of letting the guy off the hook over the last few years, as far as my appreciation of him as an artist is concerned, at any rate.

As for Ryan Gosling. Well, I’ve only seen him in Drive and, to be honest, although I was quite impressed with him in it, I really wasn’t the biggest fan of the movie and, again, it’s probably not something I should let put me off going to see another movie with him in. However, that’s how it is with these two actors and their effect on me and if I’d have only heard of the title of this movie and the principal leads, unfairly or not, you probably wouldn’t have gotten me into a cinema to see this one... that’s for sure.

However, I saw the trailer for this, which was quite engaging, and it also mentioned the writer/director of the movie and... that’s where I sat up to take notice. The Nice Guys is written by Shane Black, who is one of the all time great, modern screen writers with such classic, fun movies like the original Lethal Weapon movie, The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and, yes, even Iron Man 3 to his name. He’s one of the few modern Hollywood scriptwriters I will bother giving some time to and this is the main reason why The Nice Guys was on my radar and why I got myself to a cinema to see it.

The other reason was because I’d heard some samples from John Ottman and David Buckley’s score a couple of weeks before and.... it sounded awesome. The trailer hadn’t managed to make me aware of the time period the film is set in before hearing these samples but the movie takes place somewhere in the mid to late 1970s (you’ll notice things like Jaws 2 playing at the local cinema in the film) and the score certainly highlights this with an amazingly funky, seventies cop show aesthetic which wouldn’t be out of place in an old episode of Starsky And Hutch, to be honest with you.

But how was the actual movie... asides from the excellent score?

Well, it was exactly what I would expect from a Shane Black movie, to be honest. A pretty darn good, fun time at the cinema with some characters who, although you probably won’t be able to identify with them, will certainly have you rooting for them as the plot thickens throughout the movie and they find themselves more in jeopardy at every twist and turn. Black’s camera eye is absolutely perfect with some great shots and a lot of his, almost trademark, zooms across the city landscape but the chemistry between the two principals is pretty great and, coupled with Black’s absolutely beautiful script, the two work absolutely brilliantly together.

Crowe and Gosling play tough guy Jackson Healy and, not so tough, private detective Holland March, who find themselves caught up in a web of big corporation treachery, starting off with the death of ‘adult’ movie star Misty Mountains... a death scene which looks like it was ripped straight off the cover of my old 1970s Panther edition of J. G. Ballard’s novel Crash. As the two try to find another of the women who starred with Misty in a certain ‘experimental movie’ which actually plays an important part of the plot, the two steal the show in a series of set pieces and comedy routines which will have you laughing out loud. In fact, it was only when Gosling goes into as much of an ‘homage’ to an old Abbott and Costello routine as the director thinks he can get away with, that I realised that Crowe is playing the ‘straight man’ and Gosling is playing the ‘funny guy’. Of course, being as it’s Shane Black, he layers the characters with a lot more depth and, dare I say it, pathos... and this stops the two characters becoming too much like cyphers for old time Hollywood comics. He does manage to indulge himself in the writing without doing any damage to the credibility of the characters, though, so that really helps and, as you can imagine, the movie zips along at high speed.

Another element which helps keep the movie afloat is the awesome actress Angourie Rice, who plays Holland’s daughter Holly. She is the light of reason and sanity in her dad’s world and Rice really does an amazing job with this character throughout the running time. Of course, Black is no stranger to having credible and gutsy teenagers in his scripts. It was a strong element in almost all of those movies I mentioned earlier and something of a cliché for him as a writer. Of course, the film is full of clichés but it reminded me a lot of Stephen Sommers’ version of The Mummy in some respects. As in that the film is very aware of itself. It knows it’s milking every cliché and, doing it quite stylishly, but it’s also not afraid to let the audience know it’s in on the joke. It knows the audience is going to see things way before they happen... the villain of the piece is very obvious when that character first appears on screen... but it’s kind of the point, I think. Black is very clear about foreshadowing a lot of the things which will happen later on in the movie and he wants the audience to be free to be thinking about other things rather than the story elements, I suspect. Either way, it makes for a very entertaining ride so I really don’t care too much that a lot of the movie is quite obvious... it just seems to work well.

Now, I can see why the box office isn’t as great as might be expected on this one. The two anti heroes aren’t exactly role models and, although the film doesn’t feel exactly anticlimactic (even with a slightly awkward couple of epilogues to the main action to round the movie off), I think it maybe could have done with souping up in the action department a little more in a couple of scenes. Maybe a car chase moment would have been nice.

That very minor grumble aside, though, I would absolutely recommend The Nice Guys to anyone who is a fan of modern, action cinema. And it’s also nice to see people like Kim Basinger and Gil Gerard on our screens again... although I was too caught up in the one liners to actually spot Buck Rogers in the movie but... I will go back to take another look for him when this one comes out on Blu Ray. A terrific picture, some solid and very fun performances, nice and definitely not confusing editing and a terrific score. Not much to not like in this one and definitely the best time at the cinema this week, I reckon. Catch it there while you can.

Star Trek - First Contact

The World According To Warp

Star Trek - First Contact
USA 1996 Directed by Jonathan Frakes
Paramount Blu Ray

And so on to what is undoubtedly the greatest of the Star Trek - The Next Generation movies and almost, but not quite, the best movie in the entire run of movies of either generation... I would still say that Star Trek IV - The Voyage Home (reviewed here) is still better than this one... but only just.

This was the second time an actor who plays a member of the crew of the Starship Enterprise went behind the camera and directed the film while still playing his character on screen. On this one it’s the turn of Jonathan Frakes, who plays Will Riker in the show and movies, to take the helm and... well he does an absolutely fantastic job here. Like his predecessor in Star Trek actor turned director, Leonard Nimoy, Frakes also directed two movies for the franchise - this one and the next one, Star Trek: Insurrection. My recollection of Insurrection is that it’s much maligned but really not too bad a film. First Contact, on the other hand, is absolutely wonderful.

The film starts off with Patrick Stewart’s character Captain Jean-Luc Picard having a nightmare about his previous experiences with the Borg Collective (or The Borg, for short) and these were at the time, and probably still are, the most iconic and downright threatening of all the Star Trek villains created in the show’s history. They debuted a few years earlier in the Star Trek - The Next Generation TV show and their reputation as being an almost unstoppable, collective consciousness who see the human race and countless other lifeforms as mere insects to be assimilated and then brushed away, made them a fan favourite and ensured their longevity and future appearances on pretty much all of the other Star Trek TV shows after their debut. Star Trek: Voyager even had an ex-Borg turned good, Seven Of Nine, as part of the crew. Captain Picard is perceived as a survivor of this experience in much the same way that one might perceive a survivor of the holocaust in the Second World War.

At the opening of the film, the Borg engage the Federation but Picard and the crew of the new Enterprise (that’s NCC 1701-E by now, if anyone’s counting) are ordered away from the rest of the fleet... presumably because Picard was once assimilated into the Borg collective and his superiors don’t trust him (and don’t realise his experiences give him a unique perspective on how to fight the Borg). As they monitor the raging battle, however, it’s clear that humanity is having serious problems defending itself from the Borg and so Picard rushes tot he rescue. Stopping only to emergency beam up Worf (who had gone on to be a crew member and regular character in the TV show Star Trek: DeepSpace Nine by this point), the Enterprise leads an assault which destroys the Borg ship. However, a pod escapes and starts warping backwards in time. The Enterprise follows in its wake, going back in time, and are protected by this ‘warp bubble’ when it turns out the Borg went back and wiped out humanity in the past, turning the Earth into one big machine planet. With the crew of the Enterprise the only ones left of humanity, they have to try and stop the Borg in the past and bring the timeline back into what it was before the Borg got there. Meanwhile, some wiley Borg have started to slowly take over and assimilate parts of the Enterprise... so we have simultaneous story threads taking place as some of the crew members have to fulfil a very specific mission on Earth, while the others are fighting to save the Enterprise and stop the Borg from calling other Borg from far away galaxies in the past. It’s all go, that’s for sure.

And that's the basic plot set up. But there are lots of interesting things to note about this movie.

It’s not an unusual thing for a time travel movie such as this one, for instance, to have the crew of the Enterprise travelling to fix things in their past but, to have that past era still be way in the future of the audience watching it is something a little different to what we’ve seen before. That era being the mid 21st Century, when Zephram Cochrane invents and tests the Warp Drive... an act which quickly leads to the Earth’s first contact with alien worlds, changing the course of our planet forever and leading the way to the Star Trek universe as we know it. This is, of course, the mission that the ground crew have to ensure still happens but once Zephram Cochrane gets wind of his ‘revered’ status in the future... well he’s not necessarily jumping at the chance to change the course of history.

Zephram Cochrane, of course, is a bit of a Star Trek fan pleasing addition to the storyline. Played here by James Cromwell, he was originally played by Glenn Corbett in the original 1960s TV show episode Metamorphosis. Ironically, he was played as a much younger person although the events of that episode were set many hundreds of years after the events of this movie. Which is okay, because he was being kept young and alive by the strange alien being in love with him on the planet he ended up on. So it actually makes sense to have Cochrane appearing as an older looking guy here, even though he’s younger looking in the earlier show. Of course, there’s a little slip in that Zephram Cochrane was said to be from Alpha Centuri in the original episode but, I’m sure this can be easily explainable as a slight lapse in the full info and the crew of the original Enterprise’s remembrance of it. Of course, it would have been great to have Corbett reprise the role in that it doesn’t matter he should have looked older but, alas, he was already three years deceased by the time this film was produced. Cromwell plays the role really well, though, and turns Cochrane into a real flesh and blood character with the short time he has in the role.

There are some other pleasing cameos in the film for Star Trek fans too... both human and non-human. We have the return of the Dixon Hill 1940s noir holodeck novel that Pickard invents in the TV show and, appearing in this, as a completely different character, is Ethan Phillips who played Neelix in the TV show Star Trek: Voyager. Also cameoing from Star Trek: Voyager is Robert Pickardo as another iteration of the holographic Doctor he plays in that show. And, of course, Dwight Shultz returns as the stumbling Lieutenant Barclay, the character he played as a semi-regular guest appearance in later seasons of Star Trek - The Next Generation.

And then we have the Borg themselves, of course. Here we have a new character in the form of Alice Krige as ‘The Borg Queen’... which a lot of people were quite annoyed about, given what we know of the species as a collective consciousness, but I think they can kind of get away with it here to some extent. She is primarily there to go toe to toe with Brent Spiner’s popular character Data, in a section of the film which I personally refer to as ‘The Last Temptation Of Data’. She does a magnificent job here, inhabiting an almost visually iconic character and clearly holding her own against, and complimenting, Spiner’s much loved performance. Which apparently wasn’t easy as both the costume she is wearing, the make up and the black contact lenses... were apparently more than challenging.

Speaking of contacts... LeVar Burton’s Geordi La Forge character has finally ditched the visor he’d been wearing in the role for the previous nine years and has robotic eyes instead, finally letting fans of his character be able to see what he looks like properly. It’s actually not as much of a jolt to the system seeing him like this as you might think and I found myself accepting his new look pretty much straight away.

For the musical score we have the late great Jerry Goldsmith returning to the franchise, where he would stay until the recent reboot movies. Assisting him with additional scoring on this one is his son, Joel Goldsmith, who is also not with us anymore. He can sure write music that sounds like his dad might have composed it, though. Together, they provide a score to the movie which is one of the best of the series and which brings some beautiful new themes along with the return of Goldsmith’s famous Star Trek - The Motion Picture main theme (which had been associated with Star Trek - The Next Generation since that show had started anyway) and the Klingon sub theme which he used in that one and which returned in his score for Star Trek V - The Final Frontier (reviewed by me here) and which is now used as a ‘hero theme’ for Michael Dorn’s Klingon character Worf... which is a nice touch.

And that’s about it on this one. Star Trek - First Contact is full of action and it really doesn’t pull its punches on the horror of the Borg situation either... even Picard is shown ‘mercy killing’ one of his own crew just before they are fully assimilated into the Borg collective and he has no problem mowing down ex-crew members turned Borg with a machine gun in a scene either. Additionally, my favourite Next Generation character Deanna Troi, played as always by the lovely Marina Sirtis, gets to play an outstanding drunk scene opposite her on-screen lover Will Riker, as played by director Jonathan Frakes, and she does it really well. Would liked to have seen these movies making more of her, to be honest. But this is just great and the film loses none of its charm and power for me now, watching it 20 years since seeing it on its original cinema release. Frakes manages to give us one of the ‘almost perfect’ Star Trek movies and, although he does a fairly good job on the next one, if memory serves me correctly, this really was the last hurrah in terms of truly great Star Trek films until the reboot from a few years ago (the third installment of which is out in cinemas this summer, I believe). If you need a jumping on point for the Star Trek - The Next Generation universe... well this movie is one of the most entertaining ways to do that, it has to be said. So if you feel a hankering to go and watch one of these things, as Pickard would say... “Make it so.”

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

Star Trek 11

Star Trek: In Darkness (aka Star Trek 12)

Star Trek Beyond

Money Monster

Wacking The Bankers

Money Monster
2016 USA Directed by Jodie Foster
UK cinema release print.

Okay.... so Money Monster has got to be one of the worst movie titles to come along in quite some time. Absolutely not something which would tempt me to go and see it at the cinema and, when you put the names George Clooney and Julia Roberts in the mix, much as I do like both those actors, it sends out big ‘stay away’ signals to me because, as great as these two are (and they are great at what they do), they tend to not very often make the kind of movies I would go and see. At least, not when they are working on a project together.

If you further add in the ingredient “Directed by Jodie Foster”, then you have another negative point stacked up against it. Sure, I also appreciate the acting skills of Jodie Foster (ever since seeing her in Bugsy Malone and Taxi Driver) but seeing large scale actors take on directing duties always sounds, to me, like they’re fiddling around with an experimental vanity project. Yeah, I know. It’s a terrible prejudice to have, for sure, but that’s my thinking.

However, despite all these potential hurdles, what got me into the cinema to see this thing was one of the few things that studios often tend to rely on but which rarely, in my experience, seem to actually work, one way or another. I’m talking about the trailer here. It was a good trailer which seemed somewhat hard hitting and which harkened back to a 1970s style of movie making, as seen in films like Network, it seemed to me. It was intriguing and it felt like it was going to say something really sly about the way people are manipulated by big corporations and, in a way, I guess it does.

Therefore, I was more than delighted when I saw this picture because, although it doesn’t quite have that 1970s vibe I was hoping for, and might not be quite as hard hitting or satirical as I’d have liked, it is a solid piece of cinema and all the cast and crew, in front of and behind the cameras, deserve a big round of applause for this one. It takes a subject which could, quite easily, be over in three quarters of an hour and pushes the boundaries to places where it doesn’t take you in the trailer, and which leaves a surprising amount of the last half an hour out of the equation.

The film tells the story of a day in the life of Clooney’s character Lee Gates, a financial personality for a TV channel, and the last show with his producer Patty, played by Roberts. In the middle of a live show where they are investigating the crash of a big company and the ‘shareholder’s fallout’, losing 800 million dollars, a victim of said crash, Kyle (played by Jack O’ Connell), takes Clooney hostage and makes him wear a suicide vest until he can get some answers. As the film goes down a semi-predictable route, the actual details that begin to emerge as Roberts and her crew are forced to investigate what really happened, as opposed to the cover story of a computer glitch, becomes what the real story is about.

Now although, as I said, I tend to avoid Clooney and Roberts due to some of the parts they take on, you can’t argue that these two are absolute professionals and they do their job to perfection here. As does Jack O’Connell playing the reluctant but hot headed antagonist/victim in the picture. The performances of all three, plus their brilliant co-stars, turns a somewhat clichéd but ultimately sound story into riveting drama and, of course, Foster makes a really good job of things too...

The director perfectly captures the ensuing chaos of a live show about to go on the air, not to mention the shenanigans that happen once the ‘terrorist’ of the piece enters the story. It’s a polished, fluid kind of rawness she captures, to be sure, but it is well covered with a lot happening on screen a lot of the time. The fact that she makes it so easy for the audience to follow everything that goes on speaks volumes about her skill at helming such a production. There is an impending sense of doom that starts to take a hold of you as the film progresses and, while it might be fair to say that there’s a certain amount of inevitability in terms of the final ten minutes of the movie, the fact that Foster can keep such a tight reign on the suspense while still managing to make you laugh at certain scenes within the ‘heat of the moment’, proves she knows her stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

Another aspect of it is that the cops in the story, who are supposed to be the good guys, almost come acrosss as the bad guys in the film. They are generally portrayed as inept a lot of the time, making the wrong calls and, when it counts, adding as much tension to the final outcome as possible. The police do not come out looking good in this one and one wonders if this is one of the agendas of the writers or director here. Either way, as the tension mounts and the story takes the viewer out of the studio environment which it stays in for the majority of the film (with occasional cuts to other characters involved in the investigation outside), the one group of people you really wish weren’t on the scene is the local police force. In some ways they become as much of an antagonist in direct contrast to Jack O’ Connell’s character becoming less of one as the running time moves inexorably towards its final solution. .. which I’m certainly not going to spoil for you here.

There have been a few of these kind of movies over the years, when powerful organisations are investigated due to the aggressive intervention of ‘the little guy’ but, at the moment, it’s in a minority amidst all the other kinds of movies playing at cinemas at the moment. It’s a welcome alternative to, and distraction from, the various super heroes and orcs showing across the country at the moment and this alone makes it worth your time to buy a ticket. Not the best film you’ll see at the cinema this year but certainly a pretty interesting one and if you like the actors involved in this one and are interested in seeing something which is, at the moment, a little bit different to anything else you are going to see out there, then Money Monster is definitely one to go take a look at. The pacing is pretty fast and the dramatic situations unfold at a rate of knots without killing the credibility of the situation. Not a bad evening out, if you get a chance.

Alice Through The Looking Glass 3D

Hatterstician

Alice Through The Looking Glass
2016 USA Directed by James Bobin
UK cinema release print.

Hmmm. Okay... I didn’t like the Tim Burton version of Alice In Wonderland much. I didn’t review it at the time (I think it just missed the birth of my blog by a whisker) but I did do a short review of Danny Elfman’s score when I was trying to write about music (which you can read here). The score was a triumphant masterpiece, as far as I was concerned. The movie, however, was overdone, emotionally inappropriate in the wrong places and just seemed to me like a Hollywood contrivance which the audience ‘better like, or else’... if you know what I mean. So why, you may ask, did I go and see this sequel?

Well, as much as I love most of the actresses and actors in these two movies, it wasn’t their presence that got me back into the cinema for this one. Neither was it the director... not Burton this time, although he did produce this one. No... the blame for me having to endure this slightly better but, in no way any good, sequel has to be placed fairly in the lap of the aforementioned Danny Elfman. He’s back to score this one and I really just wanted to see what he did with the musical follow through.

Now, I can’t remember if I ever read Lewis Carrol’s Alice In Wonderland sequel, Through The Looking Glass, as a kid but what I can tell you, and you can work this one out for yourselves just by watching the trailer, is that this one has almost nothing at all to do with the original source material. Other than the same characters are back and there is, actually, a looking glass that transports the movie’s title character back to Wonderland. If I further told you that this movie starts off with Alice in the real world performing large scale stunts with her ship and her crew to evade the chasing pirates... you might realise how far afield this is from what you might reasonably expect... although this opening sequence is quite strong, to be honest.

If I further told you that the main plot involved Mia Wasikowska’s Alice stealing a time travelling device from Time (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) and then using it to travel through the past in Wonderland to solve the mystery of the Mad Hatter’s missing, presumed dead, family and defeating and resolving the childhood issues of the Queen of Hearts... then you have certainly been fairly warned that this movie is not for anyone who is expecting a half decent adaptation of the original classic. However, I can’t place the blame for this entirely at the fault of the writer and director since, if memory serves, a lot of the core of the original novel was already sourced and twistedly used in Tim Burton’s prior movie... so I’m guessing there wasn’t really a lot left to play with, to be honest.

What I do know is that, as good as actors like Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Johnny Depp are... they really can’t do much to save this movie and its unfortunate inheritance by way of the last installment. Alas, Depp once more portrays the Hatter as an emotionally involved and sympathetic character... putting on meat where there was originally nothing but bone and continuing to do something completely different with a character that was probably not meant to be given any depth, anyway, to speak of. He plays an interesting character well, once again, but this really isn’t the Mad Hatter (I’d like to see him try his hand at The Joker in a Batman movie sometime, though).

The spectacle of the thing, however, is truly great and the special effects team, concept artists and everyone else involved should be congratulated on a really splendid vision making its way to the screen. Unfortunately, this only goes to prove that you can marvel at something but still feel empty because it’s not supported by an entertaining or especially well written story. It makes things bearable but that’s really no substitute for a tale that pulls you in tight, hugs you to its bosom and doesn’t let go until the final credits begin to roll. I feel bad about the cast and crew going to all that effort to pull this one off because, frankly, as splendid as it looks it really doesn’t do much to stir the blood... which is always a shame after everyone has obviously tried so hard to make it work.

The only real take home, again... and it is something I will literally ‘take home’ because I’ll order the CD... is Danny Elfman’s amazing score. Once again he weaves his brilliant Alice theme into the texture of the score and, once again, comes out with something both appropriate and pleasing to the ear in support of both the movie itself and, I strongly suspect, as a stand alone listen. Fans of the lyrics of the song, however, are forewarned that only one word, from what I could tell, of the lyrics makes its way into the score and then, only right at the end. I’m guessing you can probably work out which word that is already, though, if you’re a fan of the song. I won’t confirm that here.

At the end of the day, Alice Through The Looking Glass is a surrealistic ‘romp’ through time as our heroine strives to find the solution to the Hatter’s problem and also, as you would expect, gains strength from her adventures when she’s away from her fantasy realm. As far as I’m concerned, though, it really left me cold and in no mood to see any further additions to the story. Hopefully this one won’t become a franchise and the cast and crew can direct their obvious talents to something more interesting and captivating. Alas for Alice... this wasn’t it.

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D

Creature’s Pet

Creature From The Black Lagoon in 3D
USA 1954 Directed by Jack Arnold  
Universal Blu Ray Zone B

There’s a reason why I took my Universal Blu Ray box set around to a friend’s house and stayed the weekend just so I could watch one of my favourite Universal monster movies on her television. It was pretty much to relive, to a certain extent, a moment from my childhood. I’ve probably blogged this story before somewhere on NUTS4R2 but since this is one of the films in question, I think it’s worth repeating here...

When I was a youngster in the early to mid 1970s, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my parents took me into London to see a very special screening. It was in, I believe, a cinema in Piccadilly which was better known for screening “adult movies” and it definitely wasn’t the kind of place you’d expect to see this happening. The screening was a double bill of two movies projected in their original 3D format... Creature From The Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space. Now, you have to remember that this was the 1970s... 3D was a phenomenon pretty much unseen in cinemas since, maybe, the late 1950s? It was a few years before Star Wars would come out and make a splash on the art of cinema and a rare screening of a 3D movie was definitely something which was an education for this mere slip of a boy.

And this wasn’t the polaroid glasses of colour 3D movies or even the red and blue glasses that came out in the 1980s for certain 3D novelties... these were original prints from the 1950s and we had cardboard glasses with red and green surfaces in them. Now I have to say the fact that these were old movies certainly showed somewhat... It Came From Outer Space was pretty crystal clear but the Creature From The Black Lagoon print was kinda faded, from what I can remember. That didn’t necessarily make the movie lose its 3D but it was more of a struggle to watch without giving yourself a massive headache. But it really didn’t matter... I must have been the only kid in school who saw a 3D movie at that age (let alone two) and I’d always loved these kinds of movies anyway. I think it was the first time I’d seen either of these two, perhaps.

And that’s why, when I found out the basic set of Universal monster movies released on Blu Ray had an option to watch this one in 3D... I immediately rang up my friend and invited myself around. Now, I have to say that it’s ten times better here than I ever remember seeing it. Presented in its original widescreen aspect ratio, which means you don’t get to see the telephone poles rearing up above the undergrowth in the uncharted Amazon in certain scenes, the 3D on this one pops out like it’s not done in a long time and gives me a closer experience, I would suspect, to the movie if I’d seen it on it’s original run, some twenty years earlier than the screening I attended in the 1970s (for the record, I wasn’t born until 1968, people!). Certainly, the whole movie on this newish release looked crisper and more vibrant than I’ve ever seen it looking before and the lady I was watching it with was totally blown away by it, judging from her comments. And not, I hasten to add, on the quality of the 3D (although she did specifically mention how good that was compared to recent movies she’d seen in the format) but also the movie itself... which is nice.

So about the movie... I’ve always had a lot of love for the classic Universal monster movies and this one goes in the same niche as all the others... one of my “comfort horror movies” which I like to watch, not to be scared of (they really aren’t that scary these days) but as something I can sit back to and lazily drift along with, without having to think too hard. Being as it’s the first of the Creature From The Black Lagoon trilogy we’re talking about... I guess you could call it my creature comfort.

The film is based on a tall tale/urban myth that producer William Alland heard at a party one night about a ‘real’ half man/half fish creature and thought the concept would make a great horror movie. Alland went on to produce a lot of sci-fi tinted 1950s creature features but, if readers want to put a voice (at least) to the name, then he played the faceless voice of the interviewer who links all the pieces of Orson Welles classic movie Citizen Kane together... the newspaper reporter, hot on the trail to find out what Kane’s dying word meant.

Anyway, the film was scripted out, cast and produced in 3D and it was a fairly modest hit...  at least enough of a hit to spawn two sequels, Revenge Of The Creature (also originally released in 3D and a great follow up to the original) and The Creature Walks Among Us (which I think is the worst of the three, especially in terms of the monster make-up devised for this third outing).

The film starts off with the birth of the planet and explosions... well, it’s a 3D movie after all. They are constantly having to find things to chuck out of the screen at the audience. This is followed up with the discovery of a 3D ‘popping’ fossilised hand, a clawing living creature hand, the death of some explorers at the hands of the unseen creature and a new expedition to find the rest of the fossilised creature. This takes our fish scientist leading man, played by Richard Carlson, his boss played by Richard Denning and the object of both their affections, Carlson’s fiance played by Julie Adams, on a journey that takes them into close contact and unparallelled peril as they first try to catch the creature, who is fixated on Julie Adams’ character in much the same way that the titular giant ape was fixated on Fay Wray in King Kong. And after the reality of their situation becomes somewhat clearer, then they are just trying to escape it as the creature blocks off their exit from the lagoon which he calls his home.

While the film does trade in the whole beauty and the beast angle which set the cinema screens alight over twenty years earlier in King Kong, it doesn’t follow the same template where the creature is brought back to civilisation, escapes and goes on the rampage... they saved that one for the first sequel. That being said, the creature, beautifully designed by Millicent Patrick (mostly), certainly elicits the same kind of sympathy from the human audience that Kong did back in 1933. That’s one of the strengths of Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Another great strength of the movie would be the underwater sequences which are truly amazing and were the first of their kind in 3D. It was groundbreaking stuff and you can’t help but admire the amount of effort that went into these underwater shots... especially for the various actors in the creature suit. It was very much a case of shoot, air hose, shoot, air hose etc. A truly gruelling time from what I understand. However, when you see sequences like the “underwater ballet” as the creature swims below Julia Adams and her stunt double, mimicking the movements of the character just under her... and then gets bolder and touches her ankle... well, it’s totally worth all the effort and its a truly startling film, for its time.

The music in that particular scene is a little reminiscent of the two note motif John Williams used in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws and one wonders if he was aware of that at the time. Certainly the music of this movie is excellent, produced as a patchwork by various composers (as was the norm for these kinds of productions) by the likes of Hans J. Salter, Frank Skinner and even a young Henry Mancini. I was particularly please when I watched it again this time around that my friend actually agreed that the music was pretty good and, seriously, the three note stinger theme for the creature, played over and over throughout the course of the picture, is definitely not going to be something you’re going to forget in a hurry. If you want to get a really faithful rerecording, miked in the right way, then you can grab a beautiful CD of some selected highlights from the score by clicking this link to the record label Monstrous Movie Music here.

The film is an absolute pleasure to watch every time and with character actors like Whit Bissell popping up, it’s one I’m never going to get tired of, especially when the design of the creature itself is so provocative and beautiful. And having this new 3D transfer finally makes it worth having the scene near the end when the terrible, terrible bat special effect pops out of the screen to startle our creature hunting crew... it doesn’t make the effect look any less cheap but, hey, at least now it’s serving its practical function once more.

Honestly, I can’t heap enough praise on this movie and, frankly, nor do I have to. If you like the movie or have enjoyed this review, there’s a big behemoth of a book currently available at the time of writing this review called The Creature Chronicles: Exploring The Black Lagoon Trilogy by Tom Weaver, David Schecter and Steve Kronenberg which can tell you all you’d ever want to know about this particular series of films. The book is available from amazon here (UK) and here (US) and my review of it is here. I’m pleased to say that I had some feedback on that particular review in an email from one of the writers and they seemed pretty pleased with what I had to say about it so, seriously, if you trust me and you like these kinds of movies, go check the book out for yourself.

And that’s all I’ve got to say about Creature From The Black Lagoon. A truly beautiful, black and white movie with a team of rugged scientists, a beautiful woman and a wonderful gill man at the heart of the story... all hanging together pretty well, very entertainingly performed and with a score as ear catching as Julie Adams is eye catching. Definitely a fine moment in horror history and one to watch if you’re into cinema in any way, shape or form. A genuine classic and always a pleasure to watch... in its 3D or 2D version.

Brian Tyler Live

The Brian’ Mighty

Brian Tyler Live -
Film Music for Stars,
Cars and Superheroes.
7th May - Royal Festival Hall, London

So again I found myself with the same dilemma as when I covered the Hans Zimmer concert (right here). I rarely do concert reviews and, a few weeks now after the fact seemed probably a little late. However, this was a truly great evening and, since it turns out that this was the great man’s debut concert, I figured I’d write a little appreciation of it here... plus a few minor criticisms thrown in for good measure.

Okay, so while I had a couple of Brian Tyler’s scores from before the end of the last decade, I really started to sit up, take note, and begin to enjoy the music of Brian Tyler when he scored the fourth Rambo movie, back in 2008.  I was impressed by what he did with that score and... a fair number of them after that. I’ve been steadily amassing a selection of this guy's albums since then because I feel he’s one of the truly genuine blockbuster talents of his generation. One of the relatively ‘new crowd’ like Michael Giacchino and Alexandre Desplat who are the modern day equivalents of such composers with the stature of the Herrmanns, Goldsmiths and Williams of this world.

The concert was pretty packed out and, when he came on stage and addressed the audience, I was amazed by how young he looks. He’s actually only a few years younger than myself but, trust me, he looks maybe 20 years younger than that, as I’m sure people must tell him all the time. More importantly, he seemed very laid back and friendly and he seemed to have a nice, fun working relationship with the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Royal Choral Society, not to mention two outstanding vocalists called Tori Letzler and Yael Shoshana Cohen.

He also seemed very energetic and enthusiastic with his players, moving around a lot (almost dancing as he conducted) and generally feeling the music as he went. I usually find his music quite orchestrally dense or layered but, unlike a few of his contemporaries who tend to deviate to cacophony when using a similarly crowded palette, his works are often quite beautiful and tend towards melody in surprising ways, sometimes. He really is a great composer and I’m happy to say that he managed to get his exact ‘Brian Tyler sound’ out of his performers that night. I was sitting not far from the front and I could feel the bass notes hitting me as the band played on. I was surprised to see him wearing headphones during the conducting and what he had playing on them was clearly audible from where I was sitting... he’s the first composer I know who has taken along his own ‘click track’ to conduct to, while in concert, which I found fascinating.

In between tracks, he would take the time to regale the audience with stories of his career experiences such as the time he got the call from Sylvester Stallone and he hung up on him, thinking it was a director friend doing a bad imitation. When he told of how his agent rang up to tell him he’d just hung up on Sylvester Stallone, he got a big laugh from the audience. Of course, that phone call got him the score to Rambo IV (reviewed here) and the three movies, to date, in The Expendables franchise (Reviewed here, here and here). He also confirmed my suspicions that this was his big concert debut, and pointed out his mum and dad who were in the audience to see him. So that was pretty cool and heart warming, I have to say.

He got through a vast array of stuff and packed in quite a lot, with gallons of music from his career including Children Of Dune, Thor - The Dark World (reviewed here), Iron Man 3 (reviewed here), The Fast And The Furious, Now You See Me (reviewed here and which still, criminally, has not had a CD release), Constantine and Aliens VS Predator: Requiem... along with a whole host of others including some excerpts from his video game scores. I was annoyed that he didn’t play anything from Battle: Los Angeles (reviewed here), Bubba Ho Tep or John Dies At The End (reviewed here) but he covered a lot of ground in one sitting. He even ‘world premiered’ three tracks, two from upcoming movies... which included the stupidly titled Now You See Me 2 (Seriously? This needed to be called Now You Don’t) and a lengthy suite based on his Marvel Studios Fanfare music, which I’m really hoping he makes available on CD at some point.

Now it wouldn’t really be one of my reviews if I didn’t have a few little grumbles and so, here we are...

When it was announced that he would also be playing a ‘Tribute to John Williams’, a composer I’d seen conduct his own stuff a fair few times, I thought it was pretty unnecessary, to be honest. We were there for Brian’s music, not Johnny’s, and I would have rather he’d played just his own stuff but... well that’s his choice. As it turns out the tribute was only one track long and it was the concert version of William’s opening title march from Superman The Movie. So my first proper grumble was that I think he took the track just a little too fast and, also, that he didn’t seem to be bringing out the detail of the music like he did in his own stuff. Which was interesting but, hey, people were happy with this so I’m pretty sure I’m in a minority here.

My second criticism was the playing order of one of the pieces. He opened the concert with the main theme to Thor - The Dark World but, during the second half, he played one of the slower, more emotionally charged pieces from the film, with vocals performed, so beautifully, by the lovely Yael Shoshana Cohen. Since the track was so far removed in placement order in the concert, I wondered how many people in the audience who were less than familiar with the composers score on this one would have realised that she was singing a kind of slowed down variant of that opening melody. I know the two friends I was with had no idea that this is what she was singing so it’s a shame that this didn’t follow that opening piece, I think.

My third grumble relates to the titling of a piece. When each cue was played, the title of the film in the original typography of that movie was displayed on a big screen above the orchestra... but when Brian played his opening from Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem... the second of the two AVP movies, it was titled only Aliens Vs Predator, which is the name of the first movie with a score by someone completely different. Nothing wrong with the music, however. Tyler’s score is pretty much the only saving grace of that film, which itself plays like Aliens and Predators have been somehow caught up in a bad teenage slasher flick. Lovely, Holstian piece though and, as usual in this concert, Tyler knocked it out of the park.

My fourth grumble was the encore... there wasn’t one. Which is almost a criminal act in a UK concert venue (I don’t know what they do in the United States and, I don’t care). I know it was Tyler’s debut but we clapped an clapped and clapped while he came out four times midst standing ovations. The audience were really working hard wearing their hands out for that encore but they didn’t get one. Alas, that wasn’t great but... well the rest of the evening more than made up for that, I have to say.

All in all, I’ve seen a great number of movie concerts over the years by a great number of maestros such as Williams, Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Nyman, Glass, Morricone, Zimmer and a whole host of others I’m not going to list here. These people were/are giants and their music will enrich the minds of many generations to come. Brian Tyler came to England in his debut concert and he conquered the hearts and ears of the audience at the Royal Festival Hall (a venue I prefer much more, acoustically, to the Royal Albert Hall) and, as far as I’m concerned, he stood with the memories of these giants and more than held his own. An absolutely brilliant concert experience and all I can say is... if you get the chance to see him anytime, definitely get yourself a ticket, I don’t think you’ll regret it.

X-Men: Apocalypse

Mystique’s Roadshow

X-Men: Apocalypse
2016 USA Directed by Bryan Singer
UK cinema release print.

Partial Warning: The only spoilers in here
are already revealed in the trailers for the film.

I was fulling expecting to have to title this review Apocalypse, No! and to really give this movie some stick. Well, as it turns out, X-Men Apocalypse, the 12th X-Men movie in the series, is actually one of the more entertaining, technically competent and dramatic of the movies in the franchise. What a shame, then, that the writers still find themselves unable to correct the glaring continuity errors thrown up by the movies following the third film in the series, X-Men - Last Stand... something which everyone was pretty much hoping they would have been able to finally put to rest with the ‘time fixing’ previous, mostly awful installment in the franchise, X-Men - Days Of Future Past (reviewed by me here).

The way I see it we’ve got two main problems in the cinematic narrative that really aren’t taken care of. One is the previous movie starting out from a point where the original timeline version of Professor X, played by Patrick Stewart, is alive and well and somehow still inhabiting a body with the same physical appearance and vocal chords, even though he was killed before Jean Grey died, which Wolverine from that timeline clearly remembers happening. So they shot themselves in the foot straight away as far as I can tell.

Next we have them journeying back to a time after the Cerebro machine was already built in the X-Men First Class timeline, therefore not correcting the fact that Professor X and Magneto were supposed to have built it together.

Thirdly, we have the X-Men Origins - Wolverine movie (reviewed by me here) fairly compromised in various ways and... I’m not even going to attempt to go there and unravel the fallout on that.

Most of the other ‘seeming’ continuity errors are, for the most part, explainable but it’s really a shame that the same writers who have given us a script as interesting and entertaining as this one can’t be bothered to solve these issues properly. This is what happens when you don’t properly follow the franchise bible folks... this is pretty much the ‘George Lucas’ way of ‘ignoring stuff writing’ that’s going on here... and it’s only twelve films in!

Alas, not only does it not correct these errors... it seems to compound them further in some sequences. Also... what gives with the actors in this trilogy (this film and the previous two X-Men badged movies) being set in three different decades of the timeline? The 1960s (X-Men - First Class... reviewed by me here), the 1970s (X-Men - Days Of Future Past) and the 1980s (X-Men - Apocalypse) are all covered by the same actors playing mutants and humans alike who... somehow... don’t seem to age at all in the movies between decades. Okay, so in the case of Wolverine and Mystique you can kinda understand it but everyone else? This is not good time-lining, people? I guess that’s why Magneto’s son is revealed as Quicksilver perhaps (no spoilers here folks... it’s in the trailer) but a certain other mother/son relationship is kept under wraps still (as it was in X-Men 2). Michael Fassbender still looks a little too young but can maybe get away with it. The other two... people might not find it all that credible, methinks.

Also... it’s interesting that we have Quicksilver’s sister absent here but, she’s all over the ‘Marvel Cinematic Universe’ Avengers franchise... with her origins somewhat different to the comic and with Quicksilver already killed off in that franchise. I’m wondering why more casual viewers to these films aren’t questioning this, to be honest. Or maybe people just don’t care?

Anyway, I suppose I’d better mention some of the good stuff about this movie now, right? Since I liked it so much.

Apocalypse is played absolutely brilliantly by Oscar Isaac, who manages to play a pretty shallowly written character with the amount of conviction necessary to make these cardboard bad guys stand out and seem way more interesting and vital than they perhaps usually are. You believe in him and his power to galvanise his ‘four horsemen’ and I really appreciated the Egyptian tint to the proceedings in the earlier part of the film. A very strong opening set in ancient Egypt satisfied my own penchant for the iconography of the time and place and, amazingly, the rest of the film lives up to the amazing opening sequence... not just in spectacle but in the way the characters interact. And that includes a lovely opening title design which matches the style of a lot of the previous films but with a load of entertaining ‘historical colour’ thrown in for good measure.

Michael Fassbender,  James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence all do a bang up job and they are ably supported by new and old cast members alike. The continuing drama of Magneto’s back story is extremely moving and takes us right back to reminders of the opening sequences of both X-Men and X-Men - First Class, building on the inherent, rich material of the character’s troubled legacy and adding to the psychological motivation of the character, explaining why he is who he is, still, and why he does what he does. It doesn’t quite explain the way in which the character veers towards the end of the movie, I think, but the choice he makes doesn’t break the boundaries of credibility too far and I think they just about get away with it without compromising Magneto too much, to be fair.

Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is great again in this one. He’s written well and his big set piece, which took some months to shoot and which involved him being on the set longer than any of the other cast members, by all accounts, is another triumphant one... with the quirky humour of the character coming out in a high pressure situation. Singer catches a repeat trick stylistically too, with composer John Ottman’s magnificent score stopping dead as the character is backed up again with a famous pop song for the entire sequence. Which is something which I suspect audiences will subconsciously get a lot of enjoyment out of... even if the sequence isn’t quite up to the calibre of the previous movie (which was one of the few good things about X-Men - Days Of Future Past).

And that’s about it for this one. If you like X-Men movies then this is certainly a good one... I’d say it’s my seventh favourite in the series so far. So don’t miss out on this one unless, like me, the screaming continuity problems of these films drives you absolutely mad. Then you might have a problem.

Green Room

Clubbed To Death

Green Room
2016 USA Directed by Jeremy Saulnier
UK cinema release print.

Green Room is one of those movies that both looks, and feels, quite raw. I was expecting nothing less, to be honest, from the director whose last film was the fairly uncompromising but emotionally harrowing Blue Ruin (which I reviewed here). The two films both feel like low budget, independent features... which I guess they are. Green Room, however, also has a couple of well known faces who I was not expecting to turn up in the cast, one of whom, I have to confess, I had to look up after the film had finished playing to realise who I had been watching.

The person I had to look up is Anton Yelchin, who I had already seen do an excellent job in Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (reviewed here) but who is perhaps better known to many as the new face of Lieutenant Pavel Chekov in the recent Star Trek films. Here he plays one of a group of four 'heavy rock' musicians who are touring around the country as best they can, trying to get paid gigs and going from town to town by siphoning off petrol from parked cars. When their latest gig doesn’t quite go as planned, however, the four are offered another from the cousin of the guy who got them their current date.

They end up in a night club, waiting in the Green Room, a show business term for a room that an act waits in until they go on stage, and they really don’t like the crowd... a large amount of whom are skinheads. However, after riling the audience with a song guaranteed to do just that (rather like the scene in Breaking Glass, where Hazel O’ Connor gets the crowd worked up singing Black Man to a racist audience), they play through their set and make a good job of it. They are just about to be on their way when one of the four realises they left their mobile phone in the ‘green room’ and... this is where their problems begin as they find a group of ‘skins’ standing over a dead girl who has been stabbed in the head, with another girl being held prisoner... a predicament they quickly find themselves in.

The film then becomes about the owner of the club, who is called in to assist when matters get out of hand, finding a way to restage the situation for the police by attempting to kill the group and taking them to another scene where things will look like everything is the dead band’s fault. The band of ‘in way over their heads’ teens obviously have other ideas and when they manage to take an unlikely hostage in the green room in which they’ve locked themselves... and then things start to get even more ugly.

From here on out the film becomes a game of cat and mouse survival as the group, or what remains of them after a short while, attempt to find a way to escape their confines and the gang of thugs, who wear red laces in their shoes to secretly signify they’ve killed people and can be relied on to do the same in a situation such as this. Things get violent and nasty from the outset and, although the majority of the ‘heavies’ in this movie are blunt and unthinking instruments, you do have a couple of standout people in here who match the brutality of their ‘gang’ in both brains and empathy... which is one of the things which makes this movie so frightening, in some respects... the human face of the enemy.

The one of these ‘bad guys’ who has the most empathy in terms of their character, I think, and possibly the ‘weak link’ in the organisation, to some degree, is played by Macon Blair, who played the main protagonist in this director’s previous film, Blue Ruin.

It’s the brains of the organisation, however, who helps keep things really scary... because he’s a pretty well known actor who you really wouldn’t, at this stage of his career as a household name, expect to be turning up as a main character in such a gritty and violent film. His introduction is beautifully done too... if, like me, you weren’t expecting to see him in this. You just see him from behind in his first shot, where you see his balding head which fits right in with the gang of skins he leads... for it is him who we see dishing out the ‘red laces’ at one point in the picture (I don’t want to put any spoilers in this so I won't be saying more about that). It’s only a little while later that we see this main villain of the piece is played by another Star Trek regular, Patrick Stewart. And it’s actually a little genius piece of casting, to be honest. Bearing in mind the edgy feel of the script and the way the camera works to make everything seem more threatening than it normally might, Stewart brings an air of gravitas which matches and probably elevates the sense of impending doom for the rock group who have become embroiled in the murderous actions of this gang. It’s good stuff.

The film is quite gory and violent... one might go as far as to say it’s quite excessive in pushing the grizzly details of the plethora of violent acts on display here... including a penchant for head injuries which really gave me something I wasn’t expecting in the case of one of the actors near the end of the film. However, no matter how violent it gets... and it does get pretty heavy from very early on in the film, including a hand half falling off an arm while people frantically scrabble to keep it stuck on 'in situ' and a person having his torso slit open from the belly with a box cutter... the violence never seems to be less intense or gratuitous than you would expect from this kind of situation populated by these kinds of people. So... excessive but reflective, to a certain extent, I would say.

Luckily, the director manages to inject a certain amount of emotional bonding and poetic handling of most of the scenarios as they present themselves... wit the whole thing making for a very interesting movie and, at the very least, one which will keep the majority of people on the edge of their seat. I was certainly very pleased with it when I came out of the cinema and, although it’s like Blue Ruin for me in that it’s probably not a film I could sit through a second time, it’s certainly another minor classic of modern cinema from the director and people who love film will probably want to get a look at this one while it’s doing the rounds. It won’t be for absolutely everyone... especially those of a nervous disposition... but it’s definitely good cinema and a strong recommendation from me. Catch it while you can.

Our Kind Of Traitor

Le Carré On Up The Spy Bar

Our Kind Of Traitor
2016 UK Directed by Susanna White 
UK cinema release print.

I’ve not seen all of the Le Carré movie adaptations but, of the ones I have seen, I’ve only thought three of them were really worth watching... The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, The Russia House and The Constant Gardener. The last one I remember seeing was a very popular but, as far as I’m concerned, not so hot adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (reviewed here). However, I wasn’t going to be put off by one bad experience and, when I saw the trailer to director Susanna White’s new adaptation of Our Kind Of Traitor... well, it looked pretty similar to The Russia House to me and, since it had a stellar cast, to boot, I thought I’d give it a go.

The film is, it turns out, very similar to The Russia House in terms of the plot set up. In this one, Stellan Skarsgård plays Dima, a Russian employed money launderer who needs to get himself and, more importantly, his family, out of Russia fast, before they are all ‘executed’ by the Russian mafia. Fortunately, he has a bargaining chip, a list of names and numbers of bank accounts of prominent members of the British aristocracy who are taking backhanders in order to let the Russian mafia launder their money in a new bank in London. So, yeah... it’s pretty much a documentary of the current British political regime, it would seem to me. Anyway, he needs someone he can trust to act as his liaison with the British secret service and so he picks on a civilian and his wife, who he meets in a bar, to deliver a memory stick and to be an unbiased outsider to the process. The husband and wife he picks are Perry and Gail, who are going through a rough spot in their marriage and who are brought to life on screen, rather well I might add, by Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris.

When you have Skarsgard in the cast, you know you’ve probably got a quality product in the works... he’s come a long way since he was appearing in stuff like the Swedish sexploitation movie Anita: Swedish Nymphet (aka Anita - The Shocking Account Of A Young Nymphomaniac) opposite Christina Lindberg. I first came across him as an actor myself in the movie The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and, frankly, he’s got to be one of the best living actors in the world. Ewan McGregor is almost always good to watch... I say almost because I’ve still not gotten over how bad Mortdecai was, my new gold standard in the “At least it can’t be as bad as...” sentence finisher... but, yeah, he’s a pretty amazing actor. And Naomie Harris, who is perhaps best known as the new Miss Moneypenny? Well I’ve liked her ever since I first saw her in 28 Days Later and, personally, I think she should headline a load of films. Add to this mix a brilliant supporting cast with such modern day ‘character actor’ giants such as Damian Lewis, Mark Gatiss (doing extremely well here) and Jeremy Northam (the latter being somewhat wasted in screen time, it seemed to me) and you have a film which you’d think would be hard to mess up.

And director Sussana White certainly doesn’t mess it up, it has to be said. Turning in a film in which she manages to maintain the cold war suspense that is the lifeblood of these kind of low key spy thrillers... injecting the deliberate slow pacing with a shot of tension that does just the trick. And it’s a good job she does too because, in terms of the storyline on this one, it seems a very simplistic kind of affair and certainly not the convoluted, twisty turny thriller that one might expect of a novel by John Le Carre. In fact, some of the film’s key sequences are telegraphed far ahead of when the incidents in question actually happen. Now, I’ve not read Le Carré’s novel on which this is based and so, while it’s certainly a temptation to say that this big screen version of it has been somewhat dumbed down for a film audience, I don’t think this is necessarily the case. It could be, of course, but when you have someone like Le Carré and the kind of audience he attracts... why bother.

Luckily for everyone, White has a certain visual panache on display here. She often adds the nice touch of shooting a lead in to the main scene in a voyeuristic, fly on the wall, manner such as viewing her actors and actresses through a foreground frame, like an architectural detail or a window, the frame within a frame allowing us to approach the scene with caution at first, before plunging into the fray. Also, she does some lovely establishing shots which are way longer than they need to be but which give the film a certain leisurely pacing to match the building plot, such as a helicopter shot of a train which stays with the external view and follows it for a while, before taking us into the carriage with the central cast.

The musical score, by Marcelo Zarvos, matches the mood and pacing of the movie perfectly. Although I could have done without the Spanish guitar style moments, the music naturally owes some small debt to the kind of instrumentation shorthand invented, pretty much, by John Barry for the spy genre with films like The IPCRESS File (reviewed here) although, to my tin ear, it sounded even more stylistically closer to Jerry Goldsmith’s score for the aforementioned Le Carré thriller The Russia House. Especially in terms of the baseline rhythms used in certain sections of the movie. Either way, I’ll definitely be putting in an order for the score from Quartet Records, who are just about put this one out on CD. Looking forward to giving that one a few spins as a stand alone listen.

And that’s pretty much it, in terms of Our Kind Of Traitor, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not the greatest of the Le Carré screen adaptations, for sure, but it’s certainly one of the better ones to give a nice atmosphere reminiscent of the kind of spirit found in his books and, despite its simplicity and over obviousness in a few places, I was pretty impressed by this movie, over all. If you’re looking for something more sparingly paced and with much less explosions or car chases than the regular pictures playing in movie houses at the moment, you could do a lot worse than spend an evening in the company of this film. A strong recommendation from me for a film with characters that have a sturdy moral code by which they live their life... something not always found in the murky world of espionage, to be honest.