The Men Who Stare at Goats

I went into this expecting to see a bit of a screwball comedy, what I ended up seeing was what I think was meant to be an anti war film - although I don't believe it worked as well as it could have done.

Allow me to explain. The title of this film, the subject matter, the trailers and everything I have seen about it have led me to believe that this was going to be some kind of comedy set in military intelligence. There is a lot of comedy in the film, but rather than being played purely for laughs the film is more of a parody of the crazy things that the military have spent money on. From Star Wars to ultra sound weapon systems, the military have invested ludicrous amounts of money in silly things – so why not a bunch of hippies who want to turn themselves into Jedi warriors?

All well and good so far. There's nothing wrong with a film that's trying to poke fun at the military. The trouble is that the film didn't really work as a satire. I think that this was because the jokes it was making were a little too outlandish to ever be anchored in reality. Its minor successes – for example the Iraqi man who is being driven insane in solitary confinement by music, or the two private armies shooting at each other – are fleeting and overwhelmed by the rather silly plot involving goats and hippies.

One of my favourite books of all time is 'Catch 22'. This is a book that analyses the insanity of war by presenting an insane system in which combatants work out that they are better off attacking their own side and commanders are spectacularly incompetent. In a way 'The men who stare a goats' is trying to be like that – demonstrating the stupidity of war by presenting the military in a farcical way – but fails because it never gets to the crux of what war is. 'Catch 22' takes a long time to set itself up, but when the horror of war is finally visited it is in the most terrifying and visceral way – a series of events that drive the main characters into hell. This never happens in 'The men who stare at goats', at the end I was left wondering if I was supposed to be thinking about the insanity of war or laughing at the (rather funny) jokes. It would have been nice to be able to do both, but they didn't quite mix.

Also, Ewan McGregor's American accent is terrible.

25th Hour - rant

I watched Spike Lee's 'Do The Right Thing' last night - pretty funny and thought-provoking but with a lot of nonsensical music. There was a moment in it that reminded me of a mesmerising monologue by Ed Norton in '25th hour' (also by Spike Lee).



Everyone's to blame but him. I wish I could monologue like this.

An Education

Lots of people in the film media have been getting very excited about this, a new British artsy film about growing up in the 1960s. Clearly you would expect the cinemas to be all over a British film with an up-and-coming young actress? Wouldn't you? Well only the Vue cinemas around my way had it on. The pit of despair that is the Bracknell Odeon will probably have it on the "director's chair" in 5 months time - epic fail.

Well I'm glad I went to the trouble of driving into Reading on a Wednesday after work for this fantastically acted and character-driven story a sixteen-year-old in the early 1960s who thinks she knows a lot, but learns she knows nothing. The heroine of the film is Jenny - played without fault by Carey Mulligan. She is a young girl on the up in a male-dominated world. She aspires to go the university, she has supportive and surprisingly liberal parents and has used her intelligence and charm to make herself one of the popular ones in school. She appears to come from a family who are not hard-up, but who have had to work hard for what they have and clearly appreciate their current lifestyle. A chance encounter with an older man (David – played by Peter Sarsgaard) changes this.

Suddenly Jenny (and her parents too) is swept off her feet by David's charisma, experience, knowledge of the world and money. Suddenly she realises that there's no point in getting an education if all it is going to mean is a long and difficult life working for not much. Why not have it all now - just as David offers? Jenny's parents are carried along for the ride too. In an age when the prevailing method of bringing up a girl was still to find a man to marry her off on to, even Jenny's father agrees that there's no point her going to Oxford any more.

Through this story the film asks some really interesting questions about modern British society. What is the point of getting educated if all that is going to happen to you is that you end up with a dead-end job? Why not try and live a life that's fast and loose while you're young? As Jenny asks of her headmistress, "you have to tell us what education is for!"

A big theme in the film is how people act out of convenience, how we can ignore obvious truths when it suits us to avoid reality. Jenny ignores David's obviously criminal activity, David's friend ignores the stunning stupidity of his girlfriend because she's hot and he's attracted to her, Janny's teacher Miss Stubbs lives in denial that the girls she teaches appreciate what she does and Jenny's parents ignore the obvious and slightly worrying age gap between her and David because he's a charmer and clearly well-off. I guess that in this way the film is about compromises that people make in. How far will the characters go in deluding themselves in order to have a trouble-free and enjoyable life? Will Jenny throw away the promise of her youth in search of fun and wealth?

One big drawback of the film was a terrible montage ending that neatly wrapped everything up in 2 minutes. The film could have ended much more satisfyingly a few minutes beforehand - still on the same note but not feeling rushed. This is a fairly minor point though compared to everything else. 'An Education' is funny, intelligent and fantastically acted by a great cast. British film of the year anyone?

Office Space - Printer Death

Office Space is a great comedy. Written and directed by Mike Judge - the creative force behind Beavis and Butthead - it captures the mindless grind that is the modern office environment where management buzzwords and meaningless figures generate alienation in the workplace in a very Marxist sense. Our heroes take out their anger at the system on a printer:



The first time I saw this I almost choked from laughing. There's loads more great stuff in the film too, including a couple of great performances from supporting cast members as various parts of the office's human machinery. All except Jennifer Aniston though, she is distinctly unmemorable as usual.

The X Files - I want to believe (I really did)

This came out ages ago, but I was kind of living in denial by not watching it. You see I am a big fan of the X-Files as it was. As I described in my post from a few months ago, the X Files was a seminal television series that combined great writing with episodic drama. It fitted in with the prevailing political mood of its time; it was perfectly suited to the mid 90s paranoia and governmental distrust in the western world.

I'm sad to say that this new film is a bit of a fail. There are too many nods to the original series to make it interesting for a casual viewer, and those nods are generally referring to events that took place in the final few seasons - when the series totally lost the plot - which alienate the hardcore fan too. I admit that there are a few nice touches for the avid fan - the mention of Luther Lee Boggs was particularly good - but they just highlighted how much this film really wasn't needed. When Skinner turns up near the end and helps out I think I was meant to rejoice at the return of a great character; I just sat there in the realisation that I hadn't seen him in anything since the X Files finished. Maybe he wasn’t a very good actor after all?

I turned my DVD player off thinking that they'd managed to miss what could have been a good opportunity to introduce this classic series to a new generation. By having a plot that looked more like a long 'paranormal event of the week' episode rather than reanimating the monster that is the alien conspiracy arc, they had a good chance to reach a non-fanboy audience. It just didn't work though.

What they should have done was gone for a slightly revisionist approach. Why not set the film in the middle of the original series, a new previously unseen case? Anderson and Duchovny don't look that much older so it wouldn't have been too much of a stretch. The producers might say that they didn't want to retread old ground; but then why make this film at all? At least then we wouldn't have to put up with the painful memory of the series' demise in its 8th and 9th seasons.

I've started watching my season 1 DVDs in protest.