Rambo - the new one

Not entirely sure why my housemate decided it would be a good idea to watch Rambo (the 2008 version) a few evenings back, but as the film got underway I had no idea quite how much material it was likely to provide for this blog.

Rambo is the story of John Rambo (known in the film mostly as 'Boatman'), a Vietnam war veteran played by Sylvester Stallone who goes into the jungle to shoot baddies, rescue helpless people and generally raise hell.  Here he goes to the Burmese jungle for some reason, and ends up joining with a bunch of other Western military types to try to rescue a bunch of hapless and wimpy charity workers.  This involves shooting, stabbing, bayoneting and blowing up as many Burmese military personnel as he can before the credits roll and anyone who's still alive can live happily ever after.  This is a Rambo film - what did you expect?

I always imagined that Rambo would be something like The A-Team in its style - this could hardly be further from the truth.  In actual fact Rambo looks a lot more like Saving Private Ryan, with its visceral depiction of violence and death.  People who get shot have their arms and limbs blown off.  People getting shot in the chest have clear holes blown clean through them.  A man who is shot at point blank range with a .50 calibre machine gun is reduced to a pile of red mush in seconds - from several camera angles.  Whereas in Saving Private Ryan these moments of horrifically bloody violence are used sparingly to underscore the terror of war, here in Rambo they're used all the time.  And I do mean all the time.  The official body count for the film is 239, which tallies in at 2.59 per minute.  That's an entire company of soldiers for fuck sake!  The majority of these deaths are shown in ludicrously gory detail.  By overdoing the realism the film loses any power it could of had.  By removing any concept of the terror of warfare and replacing it with video game cut-scene style visuals, the film undermines itself.

To be honest though I can't imagine the makers of Rambo were really thinking about making a film that puts the viewer though the psychological grinder.  Instead they wanted to make a film where Rambo shoots a Burmese militiaman in the neck with and arrow, then that militiaman falls on to a mine and explodes.  And to be fair to them, that's exactly the film they've made.  If you're looking for a popcorn film that kills 2 hours of time and shows you nearly 250 people being killed in a variety of stupid ways, then this ticks every box.  Citizen Kane it is not.

Lovefilm Update

Regular visitors to this blog will be aware that I have a subscription to Lovefilm.  I recently discovered that my subscription has been changed without me being made aware of it.  Normally when this sort of thing happens you would assume that you're about to get screwed over by the man, but in this instance the change has been quite beneficial.

Up until last month I have had the same plan on Lovefilm since I first signed up to Amazon's DVD-by-post scheme 8 years ago - 4 DVDs a month, 2 at a time.  From this month onwards my subscription has been changed to an unlimited number of DVDs per month (still only 2 at a time though).  Previously this was a slightly more expensive package, but I never went with it as I didn't think I would have much chance of getting through more than 4 films each month.  Now Lovefilm have upgraded my account to have this new package without charging any more money - great!  I'm already reaping the benefit as I've got my 5th DVD of November coming my way as I type.

The question of why this has happened and why now has sloshed around in my brain for a few days, and I've concluded that there are probably a series of reasons, but one major of those reasons is the biggest of all.  Two minor reasons for this happening are likely that a) Amazon have recently re-acquired Lovefilm and are looking to do something different with the business and b) Lovefilm no longer offer 4 DVDs a month to new customers and so to cut down on admin they're moving all existing customers on to new packages.  The big reason for this though is surely the thing that's staring down the barrel at the entire home entertainment industry at the moment - streaming and catch-up TV.

The future of home entertainment looks to be inextricably linked to the internet, smart TVs and services like I-Tunes and I-Player.  As more and more film and TV are available on demand via services such as Netflix, what will happen to the more traditional film rental industries?  Only this week Blockbuster announced that almost all its video rental stores are due to close after years of haemorrhaging money.  Is Lovefilm worried that its own business is heading in the same direction?  Perhaps the heads of Lovefilm are trying to re-invigorate the DVD rental market by giving all their customers a free upgrade?

It's impossible to know the real motives behind what Lovefilm are doing, but what I do know is that while coverage of the internet remains sporadic in parts of the UK and non-existent across much of the world there will still be a market for by-post rental services.  The future will no-doubt be in online streaming services, but as Microsoft discovered recently when they tried to force the games industry to accept that the new Xbox One will only operate with an active internet connection, most people aren't quite yet ready for a world in which you have to be connected to the web in order to exist.  Only when access to the internet starts to be treated more like a utility than a luxury commodity will that future start to materialise.

Captain Phillips

Every time I go to the cinema these days I get to thinking how I go less and less.  Last week especially it feels like months since I went.  With my new mobile phone in hand but still on the Orange network I made immediate use of the Orange Wednesday offer by sending my first text message with the new handset to get a free ticket.  One wonders how much longer this offer will persist now that EE have stopped the Orange Wednesday adverts before films in cinemas.  I guess while EE are still spamming out their Kevin Bacon adverts before films though they're still contractually bound to keep this offer in place, so I'm going to keep on using it.

The film that moved me to actually go to the big screen for once was Captain Phillips, Paul Greengrass's latest drama / action film that tells the story of an American-owned cargo ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009.  Tom Hanks plays the eponymous captain of the ship, who faces off against the unknown Barkhad Abdi who plays Muse - the leader of the small band of Somalis driven by some kind of local feudal lord into taking to the high seas in search of people to rob.  The film is an outstanding depiction of what happened; the director effortlessly generates tension and empathy as we follow the ship's journey around the horn of Africa, flight from potential hijackers, eventual hijacking, cat and mouse games between crew and hijackers on board the ship and lastly the psychological warfare that breaks out when the US navy arrives on the scene.

In addition to this though, this is a film that's about much more than simply one hijacking off of Africa's eastern coast.  It's about the sadness of what some people are driven to, about the facelessness of governments and economic systems when it comes to dealing with people, and how that contrasts against the care and empathy that normal people feel for each other regardless of their backgrounds.  The Somali chief who forces Muse to go out on to the open seas to look for cargo ships to hijack doesn't give a shit about him, he just wants his pay day and doesn't care if Muse dies in the process.  Similarly the captain of the US warship that arrives on scene has it made very clear to him that Captain Phillips is not to be allowed to set foot in Somalia - even if that means blowing him up along with his Somali hijackers.  We are left in little doubt that the American military might is not really here to save one man from kidnapping, rather to send a message to future hijackers to not fuck with Uncle Sam.  Contrast this to how Captain Phillips acts towards one of his teenage kidnappers, or the way that the medical orderly cares for him in the film's final scene.

The final scene is one that's so touching and emotionally powerful one wonders why more directors don't just copy what Paul Greengrass is doing.  The director seems to do so easily what all great dramatisations of real life should do, which is to present events in a way that are as even-handed as possibly, while at the same time forcing you to confront things you never really wanted to think about.  He's telling us that the world is far more complex than the black-and-white picture often presented in mainstream news, and to cap it all he's doing it with an awesomely-paced psychological thriller.  Captain Phillips is excellent, a film that once again confirms Paul Greengrass as one of the best directors around just now.

Carnage - famous people in a flat

Watched Roman Polanski's middle class rage-romp Carnage the other week before I went on holiday.  Just after I started watching the film my housemate Andy came in, saw the cast and quickly joined in after getting a synopsis of the first 5 minutes from me.  I think that this nicely sums up the reaction that I had to this film when I first saw it advertised.  I can't really imagine a situation in which a film starring Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C Reilly and Christoph Waltz would be bad, or even a bit indifferent.  Let's see shall we...

The premise of Carnage is that there are 4 people stuck in a flat, they all want out of it for a variety of reasons but somehow are unable to escape.  These 2 couples are brought together because the son of Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz has hit the son of John C Reilly and Jodie Foster with a stick - and they come together to work out some sort of reparation between them.  We see these boys very briefly in a long shot at the start and end of the film, but apart from that the film focuses entirely on the two middle class couples arguing their way around what has happened.

Because of the premise, this is a film that is naturally quite stagey.  Christoph Waltz is the mostly uncaring doctor who spends more time on his mobile phone than looking after patients, Kate Winslet is his highly strung wife who barely hides her contempt for his 'dedication' to his profession.  Jodie Foster is the wannabe liberal who hates the fact she lives in a city with any Republicans, John C Reilly her alcohol & cigar-loving husband who keeps his true opinions to himself - mostly.  Into this melting pot of modern angst is poured monetary tensions, some off-food, plenty of booze, a bit of vomit and a hell of a lot of people finally telling some home truths.  It's entertaining stuff on the surface, but when you think about what really happens over the course of 75 minutes and the cast at the disposal of the director, it's all comes out looking a bit empty.

By the end I was sort of engaged by it, but at the same time a little bit thinking "that's it?".  It makes sense that the script for the film derives from a play that was a minor hit on Broadway, given that it's all set in one place.  By all means give this film a go because of the stellar cast - the performances are very good after all; but try not to be too upset if you end up wondering why you bothered.

Iron Man 3 - none of this makes sense

As with a lot of the films I end up blogging about on here, I sometimes wonder why I bothered watching them.  Iron Man 3 came out in May this year and was definitely one of those films I had no intention of paying nearly £10 to see.  The character of Iron Man is on the surface a very interesting one.  The man underneath the suit is Tony Stark, a one-time weapons mogul who got kidnapped by enemies of America and managed to escape after forging a powerful suit from bits left lying around their cave - a bit like MacGyver I guess.  When he realises that a war wound threatening to critically damage his heart can be kept at bay by a device that also powers his suit, man and machine merge to create Iron Man.  He subsequently decides that his time as an arms dealer has only been a force for evil and chaos in the world, and resolves to reform.

That's what happens in the first film anyway.  By the time the second one comes around Iron Man has to hit Mickey Rourke a lot of times because he has the audacity to declare that the Iron Man suit has created an end to war.  But what they were really doing was setting up Avengers Assemble by introducing Scarlet Johansson and Samue L Jackson as yet more characters in the Marvel universe.  With Iron Man 3 though the film looks like it isn't even setting up a sequel.  It's a film that feels like it only has half a script with characters that are hardly fleshed out.  Avengers Assemble has come and gone and I'm left wondering why they made the film.  Apart from money of course.

The plot holes are rife in Iron Man 3.  There is very little reason for anything in the film to occur.  Tony Stark ends up going after the 'big bad' Mandarin, but he only does it because his slightly douchey security guard accidentally gets himself involved in an explosion.  But that's just the start.  The film spends ages referencing things that happened in Avengers Assemble rather than actually telling a new story.  It carries on as if the memory of Martians invading New York in that film has only caused an incurable psychological rift in Tony Stark's mind as opposed to the collective mind of the whole of Humanity.

The one saving grace at all in the film is Ben Kingsley's exceptionally entertaining performance at the Mandarin.  It's a good job he's in there chewing the scenery up as Guy Pearce is utterly terrible in his role as the arms dealer who's trying too hard to be like Tony Stark used to be, plus Rebecca Hall is totally wasted - all she does is stand around being doe-eyed for most of the film before getting rather unfairly shot out of hand.

Now I'm not a Marvel fanboy, and so I don't know if Marvel fanboys love all this stuff.  What I do know is that I don't care about Marvel building a massive universe in which to spam out endless bland franchise movies about their characters.  If this is what Marvel suerhero movies are going to turn into in the near future then I'm afraid I'm going to lose interest pretty quickly.  Thankfully the resolution to this film indicates that we might not be seeing much more of Iron Man in the future.  And if you're worried that's a spoiler - don't be.  I've probably just saved you from watching a pointless car crash of a movie.

Byzantium - British vampires are best

Man I love the modern age of film releasing.  I remember first seeing films in cinemas in the mid 1980s, where if you missed it on the big screen you would have to wait years to see the thing later on a fading VHS at my Nan's house (she had a video player - we didn't).  Not so these days; and so after feeling disappointed to miss out on seeing Byzantium in cinemas in the spring I had to wait out only the summer months before being able to catch up.  Billed in some places as the thinking viewer's alternative to the Twilight saga, Byzantium is a vampire story in which Clara (Gemma Arterton) and Eleanor (Saoirse Ronan) play so-called Sucreants.  They live off human blood and have lived for more than 200 years each.  As we are introduced to them, we see them having to leave town quickly after a vampiric order they appear to be on the run from catches up with them.  Clara ruthlessly murders her vampiric pursuer before telling Eleanor to get her things and hitching a ride on to the first truck out of town.  Why are they on the run?  Well that's something that gets revealed slowly as the film unfolds.

While looking for an image to post in this review I stumbled across quite a few pictures of Gemma Arterton's heaving bosom on Google.  There's a lot of that in this film, but there's even more blood, pain and soul searching.  While Clara is happy to live a life of lies and deceit to stay one step of the order and keep her head and body in one piece, Eleanor is tired of living on the run and longs to tell her truth.  She writes her story into a diary and then throws the pages to the wind before anyone can read them.  The idea of vampirism is presented here as something of a sentence to endless purgatory, rather than a glamorous ticket to instant cool.  Clara survives the only way she knows how, which is to sell her body.  Eleanor preys on the aged, drinking the blood of men and women who are close to death and agree to her ending their suffering. When Clara takes advantage of a potential customer and shacks up in his dead mother's house, she sets up a brothel to make ends meet.  Meanwhile, a chance encounter between Eleanor and a local boy gives her an emotional outlet she has never had.

There are a couple of plot points that don't seem to make much sense.  Such as why Clara and Eleanor return to the town of Clara's upbringing if they're on the run?  Perhaps it was such a long time ago that it hardly seems to matter to them.  Then there is Eleanor's constant run-ins with local boy Frank.  She seems to conveniently bump into him all over the place.  Perhaps we can put that down to some sort of superior vampire sense that draws her to him?  Or something like that.  But the main one is why Eleanor is only getting bored by the ennui of being a sucreant now, why not 50 or 100 years ago?  Perhaps it's because they've returned to their home town?  Maybe.  The thing the film does well with its plot points is not to get bogged down in the whys and hows of vampirism.  When one of the vampires discovers that they've drunk the blood of someone with Leukaemia there is literally no hint that this might turn into a plot point, other than to identify a character who because of his cancer feels close to death and therefore drawn to vampirism.

So what I'm saying is that plot points aren't really what Byzantium is about.  It's a story about two women trying to independently survive in a world that doesn't want them while being pursued by a deeply misogynistic order obsessed with killing them.  It's a film that asks questions about the lies people tell and then have to live with in order to survive.  It's also a film that presents vampire mythology as it might appear in the real world, in which to become a vampire you have to run a terrifying trial of blood and then to maintain your secrecy you sometimes have to kill in cold blood.  Impressive then that the film succeeds in presenting both Eleanor and Clara as sympathetic characters, despite Clara acting out of desperate callousness on more than one occasion.

Byzantium is a very slow film, but it's an intense character drama with a smattering of extreme violence that does the things a vampire film should do - the film likely gets its 15 rating as much from its language and sex as its violence.  I can't understand why the film did so badly at UK cinemas.  I guess it was marketed at the Twilight crowd who were expecting something a little more light-hearted rather than a horror / thriller crowd who were happy to allow its slow-burning drama to play out.  I am recommending Byzantium.

In the Fog - Do not watch when depressed

Jesus Christ has anyone ever made a film before this that stares for so long and so deeply into the abyss humanity's dark side?  In the Fog is an unrelenting trudge through the muddied plains of Eastern Europe, marching without emotion towards the conclusion that at its heart human civilisation is nothing but a brief respite from our selfish and warlike nature.  But that doesn't necessarily make the film a bad one, as we shall see.

In the Fog is set at a non-specific point during the Second World War on the Eastern Front.  Given that the action is set somewhere in Belarus and the power of the German occupiers seems all-encompassing, we can probably assume mid-1942.  The film opens with an execution by hanging that happens out of shot.  A group of local men are hanged for some unknown crime and the onlooking crowd are warned of the perils of messing with their German overlords.  Cut to two men traipsing through a forest.  It soon becomes clear that these men are Soviet resistance fighters on their way to find a man from the village named Sushenya.  As the dialogue progresses we come to learn that Sushenya was not hanged with the others, rather he was released and the resistance fighters want to know why.  If the Germans didn't hang him then he must be a collaborator - mustn't he?  If he's a collaborator then he should be shot - shouldn't he?

There are plenty of films that use time and space to allow depth to form in their story.  In The Fog does this and then some.  Here we follow our resistance fighters walking through a forest, crossing a stream, and then partaking in a perfunctory conversation with Sushenya's wife about onions - even though they all know why they've come for Sushenya.  It all serves to emphasise the normality of these people and tedium of their lives, juxtaposed against the world-encompassing events sweeping up everyone around them.  The reality of being a Soviet resistance fighter is hardly heroic, rather it's a boring job much like any other.  As the truth about what really happened is slowly revealed in flashback, Sushenya becomes a sympathetic representation of human civilisation as a whole, trying to do its best to the right thing while people around him take advantage of the opportunities the chaos of the war has presented them.

After about 90 minutes Sushenya makes a speech to no one in particular about how he can't understand how the people in his village have become savages so quickly.  He wonders how everyone who knew and trusted him implicitly just 12 months ago is now hunting him as a traitor.  Is it because they can't comprehend that he wouldn't sell out to the Germans to save his own hide?  Is the reason they can't comprehend it because they know they would also defect under the same circumstances?  If so then why are they so quick to condemn him and hunt him down?  After all, it might be one of them who next has to choose between death and collaboration.  He wonders where all the good in the village has gone, and how quickly the veneer of civilisation is washed away.  This is the heart of the film, it's an thought-provoking message that the film-makers clearly wanted to deliver to the world.

As the film's final scene plays out, there is a brief moment where you think things might be left hanging on an ambiguous thread that dangles the slim possibility of future hope.  But a single sound tears that away in an instant.  Overall In the Fog is an exceptional film to watch.  It stares long and hard into the depths of human souls and finds frightening things there.  Good though it is, it's a film that you shouldn't watch if you're in anything less than an entirely coherent emotional state - because it's depressing as hell.