Category: movie

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movie

So They’re Really Doing It…?

About a year and a half ago I blogged on the then rumour that a Buffy film might be made without Joss Whedon’s involvement – and that that might not be so terrible a thing.

For those who hate clicking links and actually reading stuff, my argument was boiled down to:

  1. Most movies, even ones where there’s a real script and real people involved, don’t get made.
  2. Most movies that are made aren’t any good.
  3. Sometimes a different take on an idea is better than a continuation.
  4. A movie probably isn’t the right kind of medium for the kind of stories Buffy on TV was about – so even with Joss it wouldn’t be the same.

So I came out in favour. Partly it has to be said, because I didn’t think it would happen and partly because I wanted Joss to go on and do new and fresh things. Well he did and is. But also it is.

Happening that is.

That is, I mean they really are making it. A new Buffy. Without Whedon, without Gellar and without a lot of the characters we know and love[*].

And I find my theoretical “It might not be so bad” has been challenged somewhat by the reality. In particular:

  • the fact that they’ve hired Whit Anderson (who?) to write the script. Apparently she (seriously who?) had an interesting take on the concept.
  • the fact that it’s perhaps pitched primarily as a comedy (that worked out well for the original didn’t it?)
  • that it looks for all the world like a cynical attempt to cash in on the whole vampire thing that culminated in the Twilight movies. (That Buffy pre-dates most of this by at least a decade has meant I can safely deride this trend without attacking my beloved show.)

So yes, I concede it probably won’t be any good and I’ll probably hate it (though I’ll have to see it of course). But I won’t be joining any protests or online petitions (although feel free to yourself).

Because the other half of the argument – that Joss should move on and do other things – is still valid. He should and he is.

 

[*]I think because the people concerned own the rights to the original movie and underlying concept – but not the TV show and its add-ons i.e. Xander, Willow, Angel, Spike and Giles. Or maybe they do but they just wanted to make it a clean slate.

Categories
movie TV

Buffy vs Edward

I don’t usually do this – partly because, like fan-fic, there are so many of these ‘mash-up’ videos that are mediocre at best – they’re fine but they’re not really my thing.

What sets this apart is that a) it’s really well done and b) it has a valid point to make. Actually more a). I’m slightly uneasy about jumping on-board a critique of Twilight when I’m not familiar with it – either in literary or movie form – but from what is said in the associated article, it does seem like it doesn’t compare too well with Buffy in the gender politics stakes.

Anyway, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]

Categories
movie

Buffy Movie Again (Again)

There’s a blog post here with an analysis of the original Buffy movie. Worth a read, it’s a fairly in-depth look comparing the script with the movie with the TV show. No real surprises though I’m glad to see they like Swanson.

My own review of the Buffy movie is here.

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movie

Please Don’t Die Rob Reiner

Like a lot of people I was saddened by the untimely death of John Hughes. I am the right age to have seen his films when they came out – though many I actually caught later. But when I saw online the way people were talking about him, how important some of the films were and how they captured a certain part of their youth I started thinking about other directors that make me feel that way. In particular I started thinking about who I would’ve thought of my favourite director a decade or so ago.

It’s tempting to say someone like Ridley Scott. He directed Alien and Bladerunner – the later being my ‘official’ favourite movie for years (until I finally realised that whilst good it wasn’t that good, it was just one of the first I’d seen that created a new world so effectively and completely). He also directed some other good movies like Someone to Watch Over Me or Thelma and Louise. I don’t really go for his big epics but I enjoyed Gladiator and at the other end of the scale, Matchstick Men is a lesser known one of his well worth checking out.

Woody Allen might be another choice. Sleeper is one of my favourite comedies of all time. Until a few years ago I would always catch his new movies and always find something to enjoy. But there became something of the stamp collector about watching his movies. I was more interested in being a completist than the films per se.

But there’s one director whose body of work seems to contain more of my favourite movies than any other and it’s a name that always slightly surprises me because I don’t tend to think of him as a great director. Of course it’s Rob Reiner – otherwise that’d be a rubbish title (maybe it is anyway).

Reiner has three films that would make my top 10, probably top 5, including my real absolute favourite. Those are

  • When Harry Met Sally – still the benchmark by which I measure romcoms, because it’s genuinely funny and romantic at the same time.
  • This is Spinal Tap – the DVD cover says “possibly the funniest film of all time” – hard to argue with that.
  • The Princess Bride – this is my number one film. Why? Well it really does have it all – it’s funny, romantic, action-adventure, childlike without being childish, endlessly quotable – so of course in answer to why I should have just said: “Are you kidding:? Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…“

But those are just the top three. When I look over the list that comes up when I IMDB him there are several more that are real gems that are important to me personally or just really great movies – The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, Misery, A Few Good Men, The American President.

I can’t say he’s done much recently that I’ve really cared for Alex and Emma, and Rumour Has It were amiable but forgettable – but anyone who’s made those eight films I mention above, heck the man who made Princess Bride alone, doesn’t have anything left to prove in my book.

Categories
movie reviews

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

Despite lukewarm reviews I had high-ish hopes for this movie – at least in a stay-in-and-slob-out-feel-good-waste-of-time kind of way. Firstly it’s the kind of movie I’ve liked in the past – gentle rom-com with young attractive leads – and second I liked Michael Cera in Juno. So did it live up to my modest expectations?

Not quite.

It reminds me of those movies from the eighties that involve some kind of journey – Adventures in Babysitting; Blind Date; Planes, Trains and Automobiles; and even Risky Business. Here the MacGuffin is the quest for a secret gig by a cool on-the-up band. Michael Cera’s Nick and Kat Dennings’ Norah are on the hunt for this gig and along the way they share some fun, grow a little closer, there’s misunderstanding then… well you can guess the rest, it’s a rom-com right?

The leads are likeable enough but I can decide if the lack of spark between them is the fault of the un-inspired script of just that missing je ne sais quoix they call chemistry. The film also suffers from not really knowing what it wants to be tonally – there are elements of gross-out comedy, slapstick and as mentioned, following the leads’ strengths, a very gentle burgeoning teen romance. It never quite meshes but one would be expecting a lot to think that it might – I blame, as ever, the legacy of American Pie for that.

It’s also the fact that none of the necessary non-Nick, non-Norah scenes are that memorable or interesting. The obligatory comedy sidekicks are neither endearing nor outrageous enough. The funny set-pieces aren’t funny enough.

Perhaps notable is the sex scene, not for any lascivious reasons – it was reasonably discreetly done – but for message it conveyed. The idea that “it’s in his kiss” is used in many rom-coms – they use the song in Adventures in Babysitting – but this was the first time I seen a movie where “you’ll know he’s the one if he can give you an orgasm” was the message. And as this was – of course – their first mutual experience that’s kind of unhelpful and unrealistic. But it is the logical extension of what Hollywood has been saying about romance for years I suppose. I dunno though there’s room in the subtlety for a little more realistic fantasy.

5/10 – vaguely likeable, almost entirely unmemorable and done better elsewhere.

Categories
movie reviews

The Boat That Rocked

The Boat that Rocked
The Boat that Rocked

I saw this movie with M. on my birthday so I figure I owe you a review on it. However I’m not sure how much I have to say.

OK it’s a Richard Curtis movie that’s not a romantic comedy (well not really). It’s a (very) fictionalised version of pirate radio in the 60s. It takes place on a boat in the north sea which houses a radio station. There’s a colourful collection of characters – some obviously based on real life DJs – and a plot about the authorities trying to shut it down.

It’s good fun, it rattles along pretty well and there’s plenty to laugh at. It does suffer from some of Curtis’ particular ‘sins’ i.e. a tendency to over-sentimentality, plus an entirely unrealistic moment where the guy is completely inept but the girl goes for him anyway. It also has an ending that’s both illogical and too drawn out.

But… I dunno, it’s hard not to like. Thanks to all-round good performances the  characters are so amiable, and it’s all so breezy and light that you don’t really care about that stuff. At least I didn’t.

8/10 – a fun, even if completely unmemorable, way to spend a couple of hours.

Categories
movie reviews

Another Watchmen Blog Post – Why?

Movie Poster
Movie Poster

M. and I went to see Watchmen on Tuesday night and one of the things we did afterwards was to browse some of the online comment about the movie together. She read out one blog entry that basically just kept repeating the question “Why?”

Which is kind of how I feel – about this post, not the movie.

I’m not sure I have anything original or insightful to say. Still most of my reviews are well after the fact so I’m going take the opportunity to gain a bit of passing trade by comment on something current when I’ve actually seen it.

So… I think I agree with most of the reviews that one problem with Watchmen is that it’s too reverentially close to the source material. Perhaps that’s unfair because as I said in my review of the comic book

That and extraordinary visuals. Take for example the iconic cover-art image (above) and see how that’s used and developed on the very first page. This kind of thing — starting on a small detail and pulling back and back until a fuller picture (literally and thematically) is revealed — is done throughout the book. It’s no wonder people want to make this into a movie. It’s like a pre-drawn storyboard for itself.

Though actually it’s not the direct copying of the book’s visual ideas that’s the problem. It’s the adherence to the plot – which makes the film episodic – which is obviously fine for a comic book but not for a movie where we need a single consistent story.

Where I also agree with a lot of the reviews is that the ‘Hallelujah’ sex scene was cringe-makingly awkward and awful. It reminded me of the kind of soft porn I used to furtively seek out as a teenager. Superficially enticing, once you get over the “ooh naked bodies” of it, it’s extremely un-erotic due to how obviously fake it is. Two naked people rubbing themselves against each other but blatantly and deliberately not having sex is weird and embarrassing.

I did enjoy the movie – Rorshach was great, as was Dreiberg/Nite Owl – but it felt slow and ponderous in places and gratuitously violent in others. The change to the ending was not as radical as it might have been (should have been perhaps) and in my opinion slightly improved it. But then I never really liked the comic book ending.

But having agreed with a lot of people who basically said it was a disappointment let me say this: it’s not so very long ago that a big budget CGI-fest like this came with a free lobotomy. Aside from a few notable exceptions such as Dark Knight many still do. One of the trailers was for Transformers 2 and that doesn’t look like it’s got anything interesting to say about the moral ambiguity involved in wielding power. It’s nice to see a blockbuster that’s actually got some ideas in it.

6/10 – enjoyable but not as good as the book because it needed to be not the book a bit more.

Categories
movie reviews

Ghost Town

Ghost Town Poster
Ghost Town Poster

They seem to love Ricky Gervais in the US. Something I can’t quite understand – for the simple, arrogant reason that I personally think he’s just ok. I can’t see why many other fine British actors or comedians never get the reception he gets.

Anyway they obviously like him enough that someone thought he could star in a romantic comedy. And you know what maybe they’re right because it oh-so-nearly works. And as you may know if you’ve read this blog for a while that’s quite an acheivement for a rom-com in my opinion. The nearly-great ones are rare enough never mind the tuly great.

Gervais plays a mildy misanthropic dentist, Bertram Pincus, who dies briefly on the operating table and acquires the ability to see ghosts. This is not much fun as they all want something from him – all that unfinished business with the living – “tell my daughter I love her”, “the will’s hidden behind the…” and so on.

Chief amongst these is Greg Kinnear who is the dead husband of Téa Leoni and it’s his attempts to frustrate Leoni’s new relationship via Gervais that occupy most of the film. Naturally Gervais falls for her and thus we have a story, albeit a fairly predictable one.

Which is not to say this movie is without its charms – it looks great, it manages to find some shots of New York we’ve not seen a million times before – but let’s get to the key question: does Gervais pull it off as a romantic lead?

Well yes and no.

First the no. At the end of the day he doesn’t look like a leading man. It’s not actual looks per se it’s the way he holds himself I think. He’s too used to being the figure of fun. Also whilst I think he’s likeable and has some chemistry with Leoni, when Greg Kinnear comes on screen you realise what a great comic actor he is and what’s lacking a little with Gervais.

Also, and this is not Gervais’ fault really, there’s this thing that happens in some comedies with a forceful comic personality at the centre where the comedian steps outside of the plot and basically does his schtick – his well-known sitcom character, or even his stand-up routine – and the characters around him/her carry on as if this is nothing unusual. You see it in everything from Woody Allen to Groucho Marx and it makes for a certain kind of comedy, but I don’t think it works in a rom-com because it distances you slightly from the emotional reality of the characters.

What works is that Gervais does sadness well. Cleverly David Koepp co-writer and director, has fashioned a story in which Ricky’s character is more sad than bad. He doesn’t really hate the world he’s hiding from it because he’s been hurt. This is where Gervais’ training as a comic loser comes in, because such characters as David Brent are really tragic figures. So Gervais knows how to make us feel sorry for his dentist Pincus. It’s a short step from there to empathy and to imagine why Leoni feels something for him.

Overall it’s a brave attempt and I did enjoy it. As a movie per se it’s no better than quite good, but if you have to choose a rom-com from the last 5 years you could do an awful lot worse.

lots of ghosts
lots of ghosts

7/10 – Mildly enjoyable

Categories
flubbage movie

Why What Works Works

Yesterday I happened upon a list of the top ten cheesiest movie lines, as decided by some site linked to by J. Random Blogger. I was slightly disturbed to see some of my favourite movies up there with what I consider to be reasonable lines. However one I could definitely agree on was from Four Weddings and a Funeral where Andy MacDowell, soaking to the skin but basking in the fact that Old Floppy Hair has just told her he loves her, says:

Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed

I groaned the first time I saw it and ever since. The film as a whole I quite like (though there’s a story behind that, maybe another time) but that line really doesn’t work.

Then it occurred to me that there’s a similar scene in As Good As It Gets which I think does work. It’s where Jack Nicholson’s grumpy OCD-sufferer has finally woo-ed, so we think, Helen Hunt and they go for an early morning stroll to the bakery. As they’re walking and talking she notices he’s moving away from her, looks down and notices she’s walking on a patch of cobble-stoned pavement, and he’s avoiding the cracks. She tells him it’s not going to work, he ignores her and gives a big romantic speech and then kisses her. The camera then pans down to show that they’re both now standing on the cobbles.

Of course these two moments aren’t exactly the same, but they’re using a similar technique, the idea of being so distracted by being in love that one forgets one’s normal concerns. But the effect, for me anyway, only works with As Good As It Gets. I’ve been thinking about why that might be. What I’ve come up with so far is

  1. The Four Weddings line is on the nose whilst the other isn’t even a line. Four Weddings tells us exactly what the character is thinking whereas As Good As It Gets lets us make the connection ourselves, even if it’s reminded us of what “stepping on the cracks” means a few minutes earlier.
  2. The Four Weddings line is a throw-away. It’s meant to be charming and romantic but it could be any line that achieves that. The As Good As It Gets moment is the culmination of a theme developing through the movie – the idea that he’s so in love with her that he’s willing to try to change for her.
  3. Specifically it recalls one of the most romantic and thematically important moments in the movie – the “You make me wanna be a better man” line. Four Weddings most romantic scene is arguably when he stops her on the street to tell her he loves her. There’s no connection with that, or any of the other key moments of the movie for that matter.
  4. Maybe I just like As Good As It Gets more so I’m more forgiving. I don’t think that’s true but maybe it is.

What do you think?

Categories
book movie reviews

Atoning for the Lack of a Proper Ending

Stupid title, oh well.

I recently read Ian McEwan’s Atonement for the Ship of Fools Book Club, and then, since it was availble in Tescos for a fiver, I got the DVD and watched that too. So here’s your all-in-one multi-purpose Atonement review.

The Book

I really enjoyed the book, well most of the book. It’s in four parts and the first four tell the story of Robbie and Cecilia a couple whose fledgling love affair is almost prevented by class, family, war and false accusation of a crime. The final part reveals the fact that the previous three parts were a novel written by Briony, who made the accusation, regretted it and is atoning by writing the story. Only she reveals that she may or may not be telling the truth, part of her atonement may be to tell a better version of the story, one which gives Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending that real life denied them.

Except of course it’s all fiction any way so there is no “real life”, so it doesn’t matter right? As McEwan, speaking through Briony says,

I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened?

Well yes, and sorry Mr McEwan but I am that kind of reader. But I’ll come back to that. Anyway if you want to hear my musings on the ending read my comments on the Ship thread.

As for the parts I enjoyed, the other 90% of the book, let me say a few words about that. The first section was slow to start but very atmospheric, something quite deliberate as we’re later told this is one of the flaws in Briony’s writing style. It’s very clever in the way it switches perspective and moves around in time, without ever being confusing. As someone who’d like to be a better writer I envied McEwan’s talent and will go back and look at those parts to learn I suspect.

The second section of the book is Robbie’s journey to Dunkirk through a war-torn France. I haven’t read a lot of wartime fiction (though I’m aware there is a lot) so perhaps it was that that made me so engrossed in this section. I learnt a lot and like the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan it put me there in that situation and gave you that feeling of how utterly brutal and yet random the sufferings of war can be.

The third section is the story of Briony training to be a nurse and treating some of the victims of that suffering. Again it was the things I learnt, the empathy evoked for the suffering and the sense of Briony’s growing up. There’s also a very real sense of wanting to know what will happen, how it will play out when, if, Robbie and Cecilia are re-united. This leads up to a riveting scene where Briony meets with them to tell them she’s recanting and to make her atonement.

Of course it’s this very sense of wanting to know what happened that is frustrated in the final section. Although at the very end there’s a cosy call-back to Briony’s childhood which if not making up for her ripping the narrative rug from under us, at least leaves a better taste in the mouth.

But the unsatisfying ending is all the harder to take because the rest of the book is so good.

8/10

The Movie

In terms of structure the movie is very faithful to the book. It’s beautifully shot, especially the first section, but then almost all period dramas are. I guess once you’ve got gorgeous locations and wonderfully made period costumes that it seems a shame not to make the most of them, and so the cinematographer is given his head.

My problems start with the middle section, the France section, which in the book was my favourite and in the movie is truncated. That’s ok, adaptations have to cut stuff out, but what they removed was most of the tougher stuff, so that sense that the journey was perilous and at any moment you might be killed, or saved, by pure dumb luck wasn’t really in the movie. The scene at the beach at Dunkirk, a masterfully shot 4-minute one shot, gave the impression that it was merely that things were a bit disorganised.

I also had a problem with the casting. Keira Knightley does ok, she’s as good here as anywhere, and James McAvoy is slightly better but in key moments they fall short of the source material. That killer scene I mentioned earlier, the confrontation with Briony, contains a moment where Robbie becomes enraged and may even harm Briony, and Cecilia brings him back from the edge by force of will, her love and holding him with her eyes. The scene is in the movie but it has none of the sense of physical menace nor the restraining power of Cecilia’s love communicated in a look. I watched it and thought, they just didn’t nail it.

Perhaps where the movie is most different is the ending. They replace the putting on of Briony’s play with a TV interview about the publishing of her book. In doing so Briony tells us exactly what happened. That Robbie and Cecilia both died, unre-united in separate senseless losses of the war. That her atonement was to write them a happier ending and that that’s precisely what she did.

Watching this made me realise that whilst I didn’t like the ending of the book, I preferred some remaining ambiguity to the certainty of the movie. The movie ending did have at least one thing going for it though, and that was showing Robbie and Cecilia enjoying their happy ending, playing in the surf near their seaside cottage. And leaving them on a happy moment, even a false one, is nice that it otherwise would have been.

6/10

The Buffy Episode

No really.

The discussion around the ending and the nature of storytelling has reminded me of the Buffy episode Normal Again. Naturally I’ll be getting to this in the Buffy Re-watch project but since it’s season 6 and therefore it’ll probably be 2019 before I get to it I’ll mention a few thoughts here.

Normal Again is superficially just BtVS’s version of a staple plot in genre TV – the alternate reality story where two interpretations of events unfold and the hero is not sure until the end which is real. In this case Buffy is attacked by a demon which infects her with some kind of drug that causes her to hallucinate that she’s really in a mental hospital. Her dead mother is alive and visiting with her abandoning father. It’s explained that Sunnydale, the monsters, her powers and all her experiences are an imaginary world she’s created as a kind of comfort.

It’s cleverly done but so far so Star-Trek-did-it-first. What sets apart Normal Again is that it ends the wrong way. There are certain conventions about this kind of episode. One is that you tell it from the hero’s point of view until you’re ready to reveal which reality is the true one, but Normal Again pretty much sticks with thirdy party pov all the way through. The plot is set up so that Buffy has to choose which reality she wants to live in – if she kills her friends it will “kill” the hallucinatory Sunnydale world and be cured, able to return to her mom and dad. What she actually does is kills the demon and the hospital world disappears.

But the kicker is that it ends, not in Sunnydale, but with Buffy catatonic in her hospital room, the camera pulling back slowly. In TV language that’s saying this is the true reality and it (it being the whole series so far) was all a sick girl’s imagination.

This made a lot of people angry, as Atonement apparently did also. However I think that given that we know from the consistent point of view and the fact that the show carries on and is in fact about Buffy fighting monsters in Sunnydale, that that final shot is about something else. It’s about saying that like Buffy we get to choose which reality we want to live in. We can choose to suspend disbelief and we get the fantasy world of Buffy with all her exciting adventures.

This episode came at a time when there was lots of discontent amongst the fans, a lot of which was around how unrealistic, how untrue to the characters, the show had become. There was also a lot of nitpicking over plot holes and inconsistencies. I always thought of Normal Again as a sly dig at those fans, as an appeal to suspend disbelief again and thereby enjoy the fantasy.

I guess the difference is that BtVS managed to do it in a way that didn’t make me angry.

In case you’re wondering, I’ll rate Normal Again when I do a proper review.