The last time I was anticipating a film as eagerly as I’m anticipating Prometheus was 13 years ago. Uncle George, the good, the great, the creative genius Uncle George, the Uncle George that would never, never, never ever, could never ever disappoint his adoring acolytes, was preparing to deliver what would, beyond a shadow of a doubt, be a masterpiece, a wonder to behold, a groundbreaking pivotal moment in cinema history that we would forever recall with special fondness, compelling us to stand from our mobility hover-scooters to salute our heroic uncle and proudly tell our grandchildren where we were when we were first lucky enough to witness such a magnificent, supreme work of art.
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. What a turd that turned out to be.
13 years later another creative genius, the director of two of the greatest science fiction films ever made - Alien and Blade Runner - has gathered renowned talent, including a phenomenal cast, conjured an intriguing, mysterious premise somehow related to the Alien universe, and the clearly confident 20th Century Fox has backed it all up with an elaborate marketing campaign complete with a handful of heart-racing, jaw-dropping trailers.
The excitement is almost tangible. The filmmakers want it, the fanboys know it, even the slightly less aware general public is starting to feel it - Ridley Scott’s Prometheus is on an unstoppable march towards a sizable plot in the realm of modern cinema classics. Of that there is no doubt. None at all. Not one bit.
OK. A little bit.
Scott, 74, is a living legend, deservedly widely recognised as one of the all-time great film directors. He consistently makes films that are, at the very least, of above average quality. But this isn’t a question about whether Prometheus will be good or not - we’re well beyond that - we want, expect, even (and that’s the problem), Prometheus to be great. A modern classic. A game changer. Whatever that means. But, arguably, Scott’s last great film was Gladiator, which came our way in 2000. As for his sci-fi classics, Alien burst onto the scene in 1979, Blade Runner in 1982. That’s 30 years ago (for the arithmetically challenged).
The sole produced screenplay of Jon Spaihts, who wrote the fist draft of the script that would become Prometheus, is that for The Darkest Hour, a film that was nigh-on universally derided. Screenwriting duties were, however, handed over to hot new talent Damon Lindelof, who has since been hoisted onto a prominent creative throne alongside Ridley Scott. The way the two royals have talked about the story of Prometheus is the most intriguing aspect of the film, more captivating than the effects we can already see are amazing from the trailer, more exciting than the acting performances from three of the finest film actors of the moment, and their approach appears to be intelligent, inventive, and uncompromising.
However, it might be worth keeping in mind that not only is Lindelof also relatively untried as a feature film scribe, he is also responsible for, if you remember TV series Lost and dedicated 100 hours of your life to it, the single most frustrating, unsatisfying, kick-in-the-balls conclusions in the history of storytelling. Even if Prometheus is beautifully skipping along by the 120th minute of its 124-minute length, I won’t be counting my face huggers before they’re hatched.
On the subject of the story, there are signs that the very foundations of Prometheus could tip the fantastical tale into a somewhat preposterous one.
Perfectly understandably, a lot of people don’t care one jot about how realistic a film is, especially a big-budget, mass-appeal, screams-and-explosions spectacle like Prometheus - films can be a wonderful vehicle for sheer escapist thrills, after all. Very few people responded to The Avengers with “Ooo, that’d never happen” or “My, isn’t Loki posh? Was the Norse god educated in an English public school?” No, of course they didn’t, and it wasn’t just because they were busy laughing at Captain America’s dayglo gimp costume.
But this is science fiction and, as wild and fantastic as they are, most great works of the genre, including Alien and Blade Runner, have a firm grounding in rationality. So how will Prometheus, with its tagline “The search for our beginning could lead to our end”, measure up on the grounds of credibility?
We don’t need to search for the beginning of the human species because we already know how it came about - we evolved. The trunk of the tree of life sprouted animals from which mammals, primates, apes, and then man branched. The filmmakers should be credited with enough sanity to assume that they wouldn’t even contemplate a plot involving humans being zapped into existence, complete with a plethora of vestigial characteristics, alongside all of God’s creatures. But what if their intention is grander - to suggest the beginnings of life or even the universe? Artificially creating life is well within the realms of science and as long as the film doesn’t insinuate some kind of morphologically human-like alien has planted a seed that lead to the evolution of a being in his image (because not only did we evolve, we evolved by adapting to our environment - natural evolution doesn’t have a direction), creating an almightily deterministic slant with unavoidable parallels to ignorant creationist rhetoric - the antithesis of science and a preposterous, plot-hole-tastic premise on which to base a film - we’ll be fine and dandy. What’s that you say? The trailer shows some king of morphologically human-like alien that apparently, at least, communicated with humans in ancient times?
Now, “our beginning” could refer to the emergence of civilisation or of humanity in the sense of human nature, not too dissimilar from the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This would fit in nicely with the Prometheus myth, telling of a powerful being stealing fire from the gods to give to already-existing man, and allow for evolution by natural selection or, hell, even traditional creationism if you insist - at least the story’s fiction itself would then be more firmly grounded in science.
One step further, of course, is that a search for something doesn’t necessarily mean that certain something exists or will be found - a search for God could just turn up some pesky crazed aliens, for example. But Ridley Scott hasn’t helped matters with dubious, ill-informed comments about the age of the Earth and the probable likelihood of civilisations existing on this planet before humans popped along, pre-human hominid civilisations, at that - a categorical impossibility. Maybe he meant humanoid civilisations, although it is difficult to see how that is relevant unless there is a stuff-science, natural-selection-rejecting god-created-man-in-his-image belief behind it.
“What’s really great about this particular screenplay [is that] so much of it is based not on speculation but on walking around the truth…” Scott has proclaimed, which would be just lovely if he hadn’t also said “This particular screenplay is about who made us”. So there’s actually a whole lotta room for a big fundamental chunk of the screenplay to be based on rather unfounded, irrational speculation.
There are very encouraging signs pointing to Prometheus being a strong film. But in a (possibly vain) attempt not to get carried away in a blinding intoxicating haze of excitement it is wise and healthy to temper any mad enthusiasm, just in case. The one thing we definitely don’t ever want to experience is a repeat of that dark grief-ridden day 13 years ago and we must, at the very least, hope that Uncle Ridley hasn’t jarjarbinksed this one up.
]]>A thoroughly written script layers its characters supremely and gives them a great deal of depth and essential credibility. The actors, adults and children alike, are, without exception, not only believable, but compelling, evoking real pathos, and they are directed with care and precision so that relationships develop seamlessly in a story told with impressively consistent pace.
The angle of a teacher learning as much from his students as they learn from him is nothing new but the subject matter, of naivety, grief, and difficult adult-child relationships, is delicately handled and genuinely moving without being artificially manipulating, right down to the slightly predictable but absolutely wonderful tear-inducing final shot.
]]> 4 out of 5A meandering exploration of emotions and an attempt to capture a glimpse and understanding of young love, Un amour de jeunesse, to give it its original name, is a moving, if flawed, naturalistic romantic tale. A semi-autobiographical story, this is perhaps key both to its success and its failures - although providing some clearly heartfelt insight it suffers from being bogged down by possibly subjective meaning.
The middle of the film lingers far too long on the protagonist’s “getting on with it”, providing little character progression, and the central characters uncomfortably lean slightly towards gender stereotypes: The hyper-emotional girl is excessively clingy and the free-spirited boy is, well, a bit of a bastard and, as a result, neither of them are especially lovable and their attraction isn’t always entirely convincing. At the same time, however, with a fine cast in nicely exploited contrasting landscapes of Paris and the Ardèche, there are some lovely, very true, very believable touching moments that instil feelings of both “I wish I was that age again” and “thank God I’m not that age any more.”
]]> 3 out of 5There’s one good reason to go out and see Silent House: Elizabeth Olsen. Her turn in 2012 highlight Martha Marcy May Marlene was as impressive as it was surprising and she is without doubt an exciting prospect for the future - “one to watch”, as stalkers and probation officers say.
Unfortunately, though, little is made of Olsen’s talent and Silent House is yet another lazy, low-quality boo-flick with a formulaic central character that merrily degrades a big-busted young thing by putting her in a tight white vest and having her running around screaming and whimpering a lot.
A “shown in real time” novelty adds nothing to what little tension exists and the story is not only poorly paced but also jarringly clunky: Playing a pretty simple haunted-house card for the first two-thirds of the film, it then makes a sharp turn and firmly heads towards a just-about-decent but not entirely unexpected ending and “twist”.
Now in rapid ascendency and surely with more roles to choose from, we can only hope that Olsen won’t feel the need to opt for such bilge in the future.
]]> 2 out of 5The Hulk bits are good. Iron Man’s quips are tiresome. Captain America’s uniform is hilarious. Norse god Loki had a good English private school education, didn’t he?
I’ll get to the point: I think Avengers Assemble is a little bit rubbish. I make the point of saying “I” because this, evidently, isn’t an opinion held by the rest of the universe. And, in part, that is what has compelled me to write a review of a film I would usually just ignore.
This isn’t director Joss Whedon’s most intelligent, inventive foray, throwing lightweight nonsense action scenes together, hoping that liberal sprinkles of equally nonsensical and mind-numbingly quip-tastic dialogue might add depth. It isn’t helped by the characters’ quickly glossed over motivations and decisions, either (“No! I don’t want to join! Oh, go on then.”), resulting in an implausible union, the very crux of the film. But, hey, they need to move on to the next action sequence ASAP!
Marvel’s clever years-long marketing strategy has heavily relied on the “simple” amalgamation of several popular franchises - great storytelling was never really a factor in this film’s potential success and the end result very clearly demonstrates that fact. It could have been worse - it definitely could have been a lot worse - but there’s an inherent problem in creating a solid, compelling story (as opposed to a compelling string of action scenes) over two hours and twenty-two minutes with so many characters with such history and monumental egos.
And there’s a huge irony in the big event of bringing together this range of characters: When you strip away their skills and powers they exhibit as much variation as the mythical depressing tube of all-yellow Fruit Pastilles. Underneath the paper-thin psychology of man-out-of-time Captain America, man-with-inner-demons Hulk, lovable dick Iron Man, and so on, every character - every single character - behaves in the same way. OK, they’re all heroic - they can have that - but how, for example, have they developed the exact same dry sense of humour? Ultimately they’re all as shallow as a flea’s swimming pool and that’s another problem arising from dealing with so many domineering characters.
Just for good measure, the film tops off a boring story and bland characters with some pretty awful acting performances (by no means universally bad) and questionably camp and relatively dull production design. So, yeah, sorry to disagree with you all, I’ve tried - I really have tried - but I can’t find a lot to admire. The Hulk bits are good.
]]> 2 out of 5Another Audrey Tautou vehicle, this is significantly better than her last banger but comes with a new set of problems. This isn’t as “outrageous” a comedy although a “romantic comedy” apparently it intends to be, complete with a light tone throughout, skipping along with a merry soundtrack. But how does that approach cope with a subject like bereavement? How, when this is set up as a serious theme (the husband doesn’t exactly die as a result of slipping on a banana only to have an Acme piano fall on his head) does a romcom deal with death? The answer is simple, it seams - it just glosses over it.
So Delicacy doesn’t so much fail to achieve depth, it doesn’t make much of an attempt to plough depths in the first place and what we’re left with is a peculiar marriage of lead-heavy subject and feather-light treatment.
The lead actors and their characters are fine enough - both charming in their own way - even though they lack some chemistry, in part due to an inadequate establishment of their relationship. But rather than focus on inner-turmoil and awkward new feelings (making the characters cry and say “oh, this is difficult” every now and then isn’t enough), the writer-director(s) are more interested in showing peripheral characters’ gobsmacking shock at how an angel like Tautou can fall for an oaf like François Damiens. Over and over and over again. Damn, we get it, OK? How ridiculous everyone is! Ohohoho. Everyone’s shallow and shit except for the wonderful leads! Ohohoho. What’s that? Someone died? Oh, I forgot about that.
These criticisms are born out of frustration more than anything. The premise is decent and a firmer step in a slightly different direction could have lead to something much more successful. As it is, instead of a thoroughly credible, moving, humorous dramatisation of a difficult but intriguing subject, Delicacy is a just-about-decent trivial comedy. With a bit of anguish thrown in.
]]> 3 out of 5The traditional horror film-within-a-film (that is, the terrorised teens), purposefully featuring a swathe of kids-in-peril horror clichés, isn’t especially scary (which is a shame but then, if I was to be both cynical and generous, perhaps that, too, reflects a trend in horror films of late) and the film could have been funnier (it’s funny - very funny - in places). But, taking the meta-horror film to a level the Scream series barely comes close to, an intelligent, original concept that is difficult to talk too much about without giving away all of its secrets, backed up by a strong script, is the film’s defining, winning element. Luckily, it’s not only clever, it’s extremely enjoyable, too, culminating in a truly riotous showdown.
Who knew the All-American dumb teenager slaughterfest sub-genre doesn’t have to be inherently crap?
]]> 4 out of 5The massively powerful opening sequence (which is the basis for the film’s incredibly effective trailer) sets the tone immediately and unsettling scene follows disturbing scene all the way to the massively powerful ending that leaves you to fill in a huge what-happens-next.
No explicit judgement is passed on the lead character, played by Michael Fuith with frightening believability. There is no “this man is doing wrong” but through a multitude of memorable, chilling scenes, from an indoor snowball fight to Michael’s amusement and re-playing of a horrible joke, from a short walk with another child he intends to abduct to him digging a pre-emptive grave when his prisoner falls ill, an image of an extremely mentally unhealthy man is carefully painted and passing of judgement is left to the audience.
Although questions of writer-director Markus Schleinzer’s state of mind and motivations behind making the film arise, his storytelling is immaculate, firmly establishing a complex character and relationship whilst avoiding any stereotyping pitfalls and relying on minimal dialogue to the extent that subtitles are barely needed. The naturalistic end result is a truly scary film on a level no “traditional” horror movie can come close to.
]]> 4 out of 5The cast of Best Exotic Oh Whatever may have a combined age that requires carbon dating to reach a semi-accurate number but it’s a seriously mouth-watering bunch of raisins: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy, to name a few… oh, and there’s also that geeky-looking kid with the ears from Slumdog Millionaire whose characters always end up with absurdly attractive women.
So, great cast, great start. How could it possibly, possibly go wrong? Well, perhaps if there were so many little stories going on that there wasn’t enough space to flesh out, or care about, any of them. Or if the characters’ motives were glossed over with such pace in an attempt to plonk them in India ASAP that, well, we would care about them even less. Or if the story arcs were so damned predictable (hmm, I wonder if the extremely racist person will get more or less racist as the film goes on) that there would actually be little point in caring at all. Or if a vision of India were to be painted with all the vibrancy of a dirty sun-soaked sepia photograph of an especially dull rock. Or if, just maybe, being aimed at an older audience, someone along the line were to exclaim “bah, the audience will be senile anyway - they won’t even remember any of these problems so let’s not put the effort into fixing them.”
Y’know, that’s how it could go wrong.
]]> 2 out of 5Meryl Streep’s thoroughly deserved Best Actress win was a minor surprise, with Viola Davis having been the bookies’ favourite for some weeks following highly significant and usually indicative success at the Screen Actors Guild Awards and Critics Choice Awards. Some also questioned if the weakness of The Iron Lady (Streep aside, it’s a terrible film) would drag down its leading actress while the subject matter of Davis’ The Help tends to be like crack to Academy judges.
A bigger surprise came with a win for Robert Richardson, cinematographer on Hugo. Although it wasn’t a huge outsider, and, well, it does look quite lovely, that prize was largely seen as being fought out between The Artist and The Tree of Life. Without wanting to take too much away from Richardson or Hugo, the failure to recognise Emmanuel Lubezki’s truly gobsmacking, league-apart cinematography for The Tree of Life was, from where I’m standing, also one of the biggest disappointments of the night.
I would also say that, as wonderful as Woody Allen is, his winning script for Midnight in Paris, although by no means bad at all, isn’t as impressive as that for The Artist - one of the most important (and overlooked) contributing factors to the dialogue-free film’s success.
But this remains, of course, The Artist’s year. Its success at the Oscars, on the back of success at every major awards ceremony preceding it, was a foregone conclusion and also one of the least contentious Best Picture winners in recent memory. Although observers may be getting sick of the sight and sound (or silence) of its hype, it’s hard to find anyone who fundamentally disagrees with the Academy’s decision. What is, essentially, a remarkably bold film triumphing at what are usually seen as conservative industry-lead awards ceremonies really should be celebrated, too. Nigh-on universally adored, with its critical acclaim, commercial success and inherent quality The Artist has thoroughly deserved its winning streak.
]]>The reunion of director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody, who brought us Juno almost exactly four years ago, is, to many, including myself, an exciting occasion. But Young Adult is a very different beast to its collaborators’ predecessor - it isn’t nearly as cute or as quirky as Juno and is, in fact, quite dark and more than a little bit depressing. While very funny it is also tough-going, following a confused woman growing old disgracefully, effectively having a breakdown, something that seems to be a theme of late.
Together, and individually, Reitman and Cody cement their reputation but Charlize Theron is a wonderfully fresh cherry-on-top. Her depiction of the central, complex character is absorbing, handling a gamut of emotions exceptionally well, hitting the right notes in all situations, from the ridiculously comical to angry and heartfelt moments.
In another strong year, awards juries have ignored numerous films worthy of recognition. But with rather special turns from writer, director, and lead actress, Young Adult has to be considered as a strong contender for the most standout overlooked film of the season.
]]> 4 out of 5Film adaptations of plays rarely work well. All too often they fail to embrace the new medium and the subtleties in tone and action it enables and remain stuck to a style more suited to the stage, with exaggerated, grand gestures and booming voices. Carnage, then, based on the play The God of Carnage by Yasmina Reza, who also tackles the screenplay, didn’t spark particularly high expectations, regardless of an A-list cast and widely celebrated director.
There is little doubt there would have been serious problems if it wasn’t for especially confident, talented actors but director Roman Polanski deserves the lion’s share of plaudits for producing a thoroughly engaging film (credit is, of course, due to Reza, although more for the original play than the screenplay). It remains quite theatrical, both through its confined sets and even, at times, in over-the-top performances but, containing quite farcical comedy, it is actually a good choice of source material and is still shot with a clear eye on exploiting the medium.
Effortlessly shifting between couple vs. couple and husbands vs. wives and building from sober polite conversation to outright drunken warfare, the admirably short film progresses like a fine stand-up routine, complete with suitably hilarious moments along the way.
]]> 4 out of 5