Splice

Splice – 2009, Vincenzo Natali

Genetic engineering goes horribly wrong in tense sci-fi horror. Sounds unoriginal and uninteresting, so it’s no surprise that even with a promising international trailer (‘Embed disabled by request’. Lame) Splice went by quite unnoticed.

The premise of Splice isn’t anything new; ambitious scientist take an experiment in ‘gene splicing’ too far and it’s all aboard to The Island of Dr Moreau, but this time it’s well written enough to rise above the usual B-Movie status.

The protagonists are scientists and lovers Adrian ‘Oscar Curse’ Brody and Sarah ‘been in loads of films but you still won’t recognise her’ Polley. At first they come across as un-likable, annoyingly cool, hip young scientist prodigy ‘nerds’. They live in a cool apartment surrounded by cool Japanese art and stuff and even in the lab they wear expensive and stylish clobber. As with all modern day would-be Frankensteins, their geeky ambition in the face of corporate pressure leads then to stay up late and, via Science Montage, isolate that elusive genome or whatever. And so what if we use human DNA, we’ll just destroy the embryo after a few cell divisions right?

Wrong. A monster is created. It starts out as the freaky rabbit thing from the clip and quickly grows into a super fast, super strong, almost human being. Things progress slightly predictably, but the lead characters are given enough subtly revealed background history to flesh them out and make their rash behaviour believable. Adrian and Sarah aren’t just crazy scientists, they progress from enthusiastic creators to unwilling custodians to loving parents to jealous lovers, all within a well paced 100 minutes.

The creature effects are well designed and executed and the director achieves just the right mix of suspense, gore, shocks and sexual tension that are vital to any horror (although it’s not a Horror horror if you know what I mean). About half way through the action relocates from the laboratory setting to the familiar creepy barn near the creepy woods, which seems a little lazy and clichéd but it makes sense to the plot and probably helped keep the budget modest. It’s cheaper to film things happening in the dark after all.

Good stuff all round, as good as my other favourite under the radar sci-fi film from 2009, Surrogates.

I was pleased to hear that Mr Natali is going to take the reigns of the long awaited Neuromancer adaptation.

FIGHTING!

AWOL aka Lionheart – 1990, Sheldon Lettich
Fighting – 2009, Dito Montiel

I know that Jean-Claude Van Damme’s films are crap, but I still like them. I don’t feel I have to excuse myself for watching bad films anymore, I’m such a movie optimist that I’ll watch almost anything that I think might have a single redeeming feature. I can always find something to like. This is the attitude that allowed me to watch AWOL and Fighting within a couple of days of each other. Obviously Fighting is about fighting, and any film starring JCVD is going to have a lot of fighting in it, but I was surprised at just how similar these films are.

The following summarises the basic plot of both movies:
The leading tough guy gets involved in a fight whilst trying to make some money. A small time hustler sees him in action and tells him that he could make a lot of dough if he had the right manager. The badass main character is reluctant at first, but his increasingly desperate situation and the lure of a large payday are enough to make him fight ‘Just this one time’. The fight is arranged in a seedy location full of seedy types, yet lots of rich classy folk are there too, betting large sums of money on the outcome of the fights. Looks like there’s some kind of underground bare knuckle boxing taking place. Our hero wins against a seemingly unbeatable foe and pockets the cash, stating ‘No more fighting’. We are lead to the predictable showdown with the ultimate bad guy. Along the way some bird and her young daughter get involved and become the beneficiarys of the main characters underground fighting. The last big fight is surely un-winnable, but with the odds against him, our hero comes out on top, and makes loads of money after betting on himself.

Watching these films it’s clear that Fighting is the least awful (like a low-key Rocky without the training montages), though both have the same basic elements. Fighting benefits from over 30 years of crappy action films; it’s far better informed. Today’s Cheesy Bullshit is far better made than that of the 80s/90s action heyday. But taking AWOL into context as a film that’s now twenty years old, it’s actually no worse then Fighting. The newer film has better developed characters and a (slightly) more believable story (though there’s nothing fantastical taking place in either) but the real difference is aesthetic.

In Fighting almost everyone is stylish and handsome, even when they’re rolling around on the floor fighting in the style of MMA / UFC fighters that has become fashionable in modern films. I know Kung Fu fighting is unrealistic, but it looks better that the real thing. Fighting is dripping with ‘urban chic’ or whatever you call it. The glamorous lifestyle the target audience aspire to is on screen; ‘hoes’ and ‘clubs’ and ‘hip pop’ (far more attention is paid to the soundtrack of such films nowadays). And the hero gets the girl of course, by which I mean he nails her. This is the least noticeable evolution in the action type film; the good guy doesn’t just save the girl, he has sex with her and we get to watch. When did Stallone or Schwarzenegger or JCVD actually get laid in any of their films?

Films like this aren’t supposed to be anything other than entertaining, like all of JCVD’s films (with the exception of JCVD) AWOL isn’t looking for anyone’s respect. Fighting on the other hand is so careful to avoid the slightest hint of ‘goofiness’ that has the air of a film that takes itself too seriously (I’d hate to think the people behind Fighting thought they had another Raging Bull on their hands). Everything about Jean-Claude is goofy, from the lump on his forehead to his incredibly high waistline into which he forever tucks his shirt (necessary for all those crotch defying high kicks). JCVD watch anyone?

Perhaps I just begrudge the fact that the action films I grew up with and so adore have aged badly, and while modern audiences only appreciated them in that ironic post 80’s way, I still hold some of them in the same regard as ‘good’ films, perhaps for all the wrong reasons.

Hmm...I’m suddenly reminded of how long it’s been since I went to the cinema.

Next in line after Fighting and Never Back Down; Warrior.

Surrogates

Surrogates – 2009, Jonathan Mostow

I’m sure I saw a trailer for this in a cinema at some point earlier in the year, which implies it had at least a limited release, but I’m not so sure it didn’t just go straight to DVD outside the US. Although it wouldn’t be the first Bruce Willis film to slip under the radar (anyone ever see Hart’s War, or Tears Of The Sun?). I think it’s overexposure that has caused Bruce to become less of a draw than he was; he’s been in at least two or three films a year since 1988. I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you he should have been more picky.

I think Surrogates is one of his better choices. If someone had told me after I’d watched it that it was based on a novel by Philip K Dick, or it was written by Andrew Niccol I’d have believed them. It was in fact based upon a short running comic book by a guy called Robert Venditti (short lived by design, not because it was discontinued as far as I can gather).

‘Surrogates’ refers to the remotely controlled robots that the people of the future use to life out their life. What started as a mobility aid for the disabled has become an eternal youth for the majority of the people of the world. The trailer explains what’s going on:



If the plot looks predictable, that’s because it is, but in this case, I don’t think it detracts from the film.

The reason Surrogates is so reminiscent of Phillip K Dick’s work is because it takes place in a future where most people don’t seen very happy, and some technological advance has occurred that changes or affects everyone’s lives. Phil’s books, like a lot of sci-fi, tend to revolve around one Big Idea which in itself is interesting and original, but doesn’t stand up to much scrutiny when the central concept of the idea is questioned.

The best example of this is his 1968 novel ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?’ which was adapted into the 1982 movie Blade Runner. The story is about androids, who are almost completely indistinguishable from humans, who have super human strength and intelligence and are created solely for the purpose of working in the harsh conditions of Martian colonies. These androids are almost completely human, but their big flaw is that they cannot develop or process emotions properly and completely lack empathy. So when they eventually go crazy and return to Earth from Mars and start killing people, android bounty hunters are called in to take care of them. This all makes for a riveting story, but it begs the question ‘Why would they make inherently psychopathic robots in the first place?’ I think that Blade Runner does a better job of brushing over this little problem than the novel, and it seems to be the case than a lot of the films based on the works of Phillip K Dick are better than the novels that inspired them.

Surrogates suffers from the same kind of problem; it presents the audience with a particular future world scenario, then requires the audience to accept that scenario without thinking too hard about how plausible it is. The film brushes over a lot of the implications the scenario might have on society and focuses on the ones that are important to the story being told.

Surrogates is one of those rare films that is greater than the sum of it’s parts. The premise is flawed and the plot is predictable but it’s incredibly watchable because of the events that take place with the Surrogates. There is a sub plot about Bruce’s deteriorating relationship with his wife which is more interesting than the main story. If this were an independent foreign language film about people living out their lives through idealised robot versions of themselves, it would be lauded as a ‘compelling study of human relationships, and society’s obsessions with youth and beauty’. But it’s not. It’s a Hollywood sci fi action film without much action, and yet...so much more.

Blood: The Last Vampire

Blood: The Last Vampire – 2009, Chris Nahon

The original Blood The Last Vampire is a 50 minute animated film (is 50 minutes feature length?) made in 2000, it’s really good. Even though it’s so short, it still manages to build the suspense slowly and reach a satisfying climax (not in a sexual way you perv). Set on an American Airforce base in Japan in the 60s, it manages to squeeze in a well structured and tight plot about a female vampire who hunts other vampires and who works for some mysterious ‘council’ or ‘agency’ or whatever. The audience is told enough to understand what’s going on, so the lack of back story doesn’t matter. Less is more in every sense.

Live action adaptations of popular and beloved anime rarely stir up enthusiasm amongst fans of the genre (live action Akira anyone?), but given that the original Blood offers such a good premise, I was looking forward to this one. What a shame they turned it into a crappy Japanese B-Movie.

Not that Japanese B-movies have to be all bad. Godzilla and its’ sequels is perhaps the most charming collected work of films there is. I’ve not seen Machine Girl, or Tokyo Gore Police or RoboGeisha or either of the Tetsuo films, but it’s clear from the trailers that they are completely honest. They intend to thrill and shock the audience, and they have some kind of original idea at the core, some ‘thing’, some ‘idea’ is being explored. And even if some of them are complete drivel, at least they had an original idea. To be honest, I’m not even sure if Blood is a B-Movie as they clearly put a lot of money into it, but the CGI effects and the acting are of a B-Movie standard.

Blood The Live Action Version swiftly gets through the whole story of the original in 30 minutes. The original ending becomes the peak at the end of the first act. Then we go off and discover the origins of the main character. Descent into unnecessary back story, peppered with attempts at ‘awesome’ action sequences, although there is an old man fighting ninjas at one point which is quite good. It’s actually remarkable they got it so wrong. Entire auditoriums of Japanese directors must have wept when they saw this. A shot for shot remake stretched out to 120 minutes would have been better

That they made such a mess of it is criminal. Whoever it is who owns the rights to the source material must have been keen for an international blockbuster, so they happily went along with a western director, a cute American girl to co star with the cute Japanese girl, and to use an English script (although given that the animated version will have been widely seen with the English soundtrack, that makes sense I guess).

Watch this one, not this one.

Steven Seagal vs Gerard Butler

Kill Switch, 2008 - Jeff King
Law Abiding Citizen, 2009 - F. Gary Gray

It seems like a tenuous comparison, and it’s one that Mr Butler wouldn’t be too pleased about, but I recently watched the Seagal vehicle Kill Switch, shortly followed by the Gerard Butler / Jamie Foxx film Law Abiding Citizen. In this particular case Law Abiding Citizen is in a different league to Kill Switch in terms of quality, but both films are basically about a morally ambiguous badass getting revenge.

I have an unjustified soft spot for Seagal, due entirely to Under Siege. I really want to like every one of his straight to video efforts, and occasionally they aren’t complete shit (Belly of The Beast springs to mind) but sometimes they’re beyond awful, like Kill Switch. What upsets me most about Kill Switch is that they were trying harder than usual to make a ‘Steven Seagal’ film, so it’s shitiness seems deliberate.

But the fact still remains that because of Under Siege, Seagal will always be able to make movies.

Is it fair to say that because of 300, Gerard Butler will always be able to make movies? He’s been in wider range of films that Steve, all those romantic comedies and even the upcoming Shakespeare adaptation, but ultimately, will Gerard always fall back on playing the Angry Wronged Man?

Gerard Butler is Gerard Butler in Gerard Butler Film.

Law Abiding Citizen is a bit like The Life of David Gale, only more people blow up.

...

Is anyone else as obsessed with Jamie Foxx’s hairline as I am?

Precious

Precious – 2009, Lee Daniels

Precious is a film that comes with a lot of baggage. Once American critics had raved over it so much, British film critics were predictably muted in their praise, and willing to knock it for frivolous reasons. I’ve read broadsheet reviews that say parts of the film play out like a sitcom, or that question why the characters who are trying to save Precious don’t encourage her to loose weight. I think the reason the UK press aren’t all that enthusiastic about Precious is that they are too worried about overstating the social implications of the film. No white British middle class critic can claim to truly understand or relate to impoverished life in black ghettos, and none would, nor would I. But it seems that they fear to speak too highly of Precious in case people mistake praise as a claim that they relate to the situation. The fact that the film is produced and championed by Oprah Winfrey was never going to help.

The film tells the story of Claireece Precious Jones, an illiterate teenage girl living with her abusive mother in Harlem. Precious’ life is hell, and the film follows her as she tries to improve her predicament. It can be very simplistically be described as a ‘victory in the face of adversity feel good film’, and is so by its detractors, but what adversity.

I’d heard that Precious was harrowing, and it is. I can’t recall the last time I sat in a cinema where everyone gasped in shock together. Mo'Nique's performance as Precious’ mother is every bit as good as everyone says and she deserves all the awards she is nominated for. What I hadn’t expected was for the film to be so funny. Some scenes featuring Precious friends are intentionally humorous, some are even laugh out loud funny. There are parts that made me laugh that are not meant to be funny, but that’s because listening to African American’s say ‘motherfucker’ makes me giggle. Lee Daniels has achieved just the right balance of humour and horror. The film has the happy ending you’d expect and it works well. A grim ending would have been too much. The upbeat ending is necessary, even if it tempts critics to say it undermines the rest of the film.

The one common criticism of the film I would go along with is that some of Daniel’s direction is heavy handed. The montages and fantasy sequences are a bit clunky and they expose that the film was made with a relatively small budget. Precious’ fantasies are a necessary device. She is so withdrawn that, to her, they are a real part of her life. She lives within herself to escape the abuse.

No frivolous link this time y’all.

Big Man Japan / Audition

Big Man Japan – 2007(JPN), 2009(UK), Hitoshi Matsumoto
Sometimes I see a trailer for a film and I think ‘I gotta watch that shit’

And afterwards I realise it could never have lived up to expectations.
Big Man Japan plays out a lot more slowly than I expected.
But the climax was completely unexpected and absolutely hilarious.

This film was written and directed by a Japanese comedian who plays the lead. For a reason I can’t explain, I really want to like Japanese comedy, but it just doesn’t translate. The funniest thing to come out of Japan is Takeshi’s Castle, and that’s not scripted. Why do Japanese horror films travel better than Japanese comedy? Because being scared shitless is universal.

Audition – 1999(JPN), 2001(UK), Takashi Miike
Sometimes I hear so much about a film that I think ‘I gotta watch that shit’

And afterwards I realise it could never have lived up to expectations.
Audition played out just as slowly as I expected.
But I expected more from the climax, only because I’d heard so much about it.

Why was Ringu remade in Hollywood and not Audition? Because Ringu is about a scary little girl, something we are familiar with (The Exorcist) and Audition is about a woman who tortures men to death.

Ringu started the whole ‘Scary little Japanese Girl/Young Woman’ craze, and is the reason the genre exists, but Takashi Miike’s Audition was only released a year later.

But why Ringu? Because Ringu does what Audition does, only better; slowly, slowly lures you in, revealing that you might be in store for something...preparing you...but no matter how prepared you are you still won’t be ready.

Horror films are a ‘love them or hate them’ thing, but I think being terrified by a film is underrated. Fear is uncomfortable, and discomfort reminds us we are alive. Horror films provide fear in a controlled environment. The most recent horror film I saw was the Spanish film [REC], which is also very good.

Bronson / Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

Bronson – 2009, Nicolas Winding Refn
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – 2010, Mat Whitecross

Considering how different Michael Peterson (latterly know as Charles Bronson) and Ian Dury are, it’s surprising how similar their respective biographical films are...or maybe it isn’t?

A convention of biographical film has been recently establishing itself whereby the subject narrates and tells the story of his own life, breaking the fourth wall. Abstract and fantasy sequences are employed to help portray the character of the subject so the audience might better understand them. The feel of the time and place where the person lived are brought across using music and animation.

Most biographies still play it straight, as is fitting for the subject, like the Ian Curtis bio ‘Control’. But increasingly, when the subject is artistic/creative/notorious, accuracy has given way to presenting the subject as their persona. A direct line of biographies can be traced which have slowly become increasingly conceptual;

The Doors (1991)
Ed Wood (1994)
Chopper (2000)
24 Hour Party People (2002)
American Splendour (2003)
I’m Not There (2007)
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (2007)

And they’re just the ones I’ve seen. The three italicised films from early in the new millennium are the particular examples of the modern biography; take a famous persons public persona and use it to show who the real person was. We use the public image to understand the private life.

This may all seem painfully obvious, but here’s the interesting bit. Bronson and S&D&R&R share an almost identical structure and method of narration.

In ‘Bronson’, the film opens with Charles Bronson standing on a stage in a theatre. He begins to tell his life story to the both the theatre and cinema audiences. Throughout the film we come back to Charlie Bronson ‘the entertainer’ for his take on the events of his life. S&D&R&R opens in exactly the same way and uses the same method of cutting back to Ian Dury as narrator of his own story.

This may be pure coincidence, but these are two British made biographies of British men, set during roughly the same period and released within months of each other.
Does the fact that they are so similar prove an inevitability of influence? Both of these films are quite original, but they have both hit upon the same idea at the same time.
As hard as the writers and directors have tried to be different, they’ve ended up doing the same thing as the other guy. Is this because the other guy has seen the same films he has?

Anyway.
The similarities end there. The films both works well, but ‘Bronson’ works better. Bronson is funny and brutal, like the Mark Read bio ‘Chopper’ performed in a circus. The Dury film is more conventional. After all the abstract sequences it boils down to the familiar ‘he was a bit of a bastard but he loved his kids’.

Je m’appelle Charles Bronson

What bearing does this have on the upcoming Iggy Pop biography featuring...Elijah Wood?

When We Were Kings / Tyson

When We Were Kings – 1996, Leon Gast
Tyson – 2009, James Toback

The best documentaries take an interesting subject and use it as a plot. Conventional fictional films have twists and turns and revelations, and there’s no reason documentaries can’t have them as well. For this reason WWWK is better that Tyson, but even the most perfunctory documentary about Tyson would be good. Tyson is an interesting, crazy, despicable and sympathetic man. Boxing saved him from a life of crime. Make that a life of even more crime.

Tyson sits and talks about his life and we are shown footage of his fights and court appearances. The best thing about this film from a boxing point of view is the footage of Tyson’s pre rape conviction fights. All we ever see nowadays is an out of shape tattoo face Tyson biting off ears or giving up to Irish journeymen. When he was on his way to his first title Tyson was unbelievable. He was strong and could hit as hard as anyone, but he was also faster than almost any other heavyweight at the time, this made him unstoppable.

Iron Mike has mellowed, and as sympathetic a portrait as this doc paints of him, you still wouldn’t want to be alone in a lift with him. The most loathsome thing he mentions is that he is angry at the conviction he received for raping Desiree Washington.

How many women did you ‘take advantage’ of Mike?


When We Were Kings is the better documentary, but Gast benefited from the wealth of footage that exists from The Rumble In The Jungle, the biggest boxing match in history. The circumstances of the fight, the atmosphere in Zaire and the build-up were all documented at the time by the world’s press. As well as the fight there was a concert; Zaire 74 (which is the subject of a 2008 documentary Soul Power) which provided a lot of material (including some excellent footage of B.B. King).

Mohamed Ali is the obvious hero of the film, but George Foreman isn’t completely demonised. WWWK left me with mixed emotions. Discovering more about Mohammed Ali makes it all the sadder that he wasn’t able to fulfil his potential in later life. He could have become an even bigger influence than he already is. Conversely, George Foreman appeared not to have had any charisma at all in 1974. After a crushing defeat to the underdog Ali, he went on to become the larger than life purveyor of domestic appliances we know and love today.

And for the record; at their respective peaks Tyson beats Ali hands down.

Blues Guitar Face to the max.

Avatar

Avatar – 2009, James Cameron

Avatar is not a very healthy fantasy. Do we all want to be taller and thinner and bluer? Maybe if the human race were to find an alien planet occupied by a sexier versions of ourselves we would create our own version, only slightly better looking. We would indulge in paradise like the main characters of the film. The Na’vi that Sam Worthington possesses is more ripped than any other Na’vi male, and the Na’vi version of Sigourney Weaver looks younger than any other Na’vi female and has bigger tits.

As on screen fantasy goes this is the best looking and most compelling ever created (and I’ve seen The Red Shoes). In fact the most unrealistic things in a totally unreal world are the one dimensional, corporate bad guys. They make Disney villains look like well established characters. It’s a very lazy plot to have evil men destroy a paradise they don’t understand. All the effort that went into the creation of this film warranted a more mature and developed story.

Cameron must have been satisfied enough with his ‘biological-internet-circle-of-life’ to bother coming up with a more original plot to wrap around it. This is understandable as the world of Avatar is a good reflection of what the people of earth (the cinema going ones that matter that is) desire most. Huge amounts of human effort are put into the two goals everyone shares; to be attractive and to have lots of friends. We are achieving this though exposure to the ‘celebrity ideal’, and through social networking and all the friendships it provides, both real and superficial. Imagine if through natural evolution everyone was slim and gorgeous, and the very plants that grew around us provided a spiritual connection to the entire planet. Avatar is our greatest artificial fantasy in biological form. How long before Na’vi porn becomes a well established fetish? Move over Furry Fandom, Na’vi is the new ‘Yiff’.

There is a lot to like about Avatar though. If the Lord of The Rings films hadn’t convinced us that an imaginary world could be created on screen without looking fake, Avatar certainly does. With enough resources the greatest visions that the human imagination is capable of can be brought to life. I am truly grateful to Cameron and his production team. Cinema will benefit from the technical advances of this film. Unfortunately, the power of this new technology will be put to more bad use than good. I’m not looking forward to what Michael Bay and McG have planned for motion capture based CGI.

Some folks out there will not go to see Avatar for the same reason I didn’t go to see Transformers 2 ie sick of big budget bullshit being rammed down my throat. But this is one spectacle that is worth seeing. I suppose it really has to be seen in the IMAX, but does anyone else find 3D a bit blurry?

This is just the beginning.

A Prophet

A Prophet – 2009, Jacques Audiard

Can you really go wrong with gritty French prison drama? Probably not. French cinema has been turning to France’s under-privileged ethnic population for stories for a few years now, but it’s not getting old. La Haine, Caché and now Un Prophete all take a different take on the French migrant underbelly; street urchins, foreign labour/xenophobia and organised crime respectively.

Without giving the plot away, the film follows the six year prison sentence of a young illiterate Arabian dude, Malik. He doesn’t want to pick a side in the prison yard, he wants to keep himself to himself, but that’s not how prison movies work. Inevitably he ends up being involved with/protected by a group of Corsican Mafia types. As time goes by Malik slowly, bravely and ingeniously becomes a player in French crime circles. Refreshingly it’s not a story about redemption.

The title refers to the spiritual and religious aura that seems to surround Malik. He’s very lucky and makes all the right moves. The whole ‘divine guidance’ thing seems a little forced, even though the director has obviously tried to do it subtly.

French prison life is depicted in all the filthy realism you’d expect. Real life ex-cons were cast as extras, and every member of the cast looks like they belong on the inside. The life of those involved in organised crime is exposed as being far from glamorous, and although other films have been showing us this fact for a while now (Gomorra in particular), A Prophet doesn’t suffer for it.

I don’t mean to say that the plot is predictable or clichéd, it certainly isn’t, but... ...there’s something about watching ‘a criminal play one group of criminals off against another in order to get one over everyone’ that seems very familiar. Maybe that’s just because I’ve spent so long watching The Shield and The Wire?

I saw the film without having seen a trailer first, which was good because the trailer gives too much away, this little clip doesn’t reveal too much; only that Malik looks a bit like the guy from Stereophonics crossed with Keanu Reeves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12SjQ5u7XtE