Primer - Confusing but rewarding

After the dismality of Iron Man 2 on Wednesday, on Thursday last week I watched a film that was billed as being about physics - how could I possibly go wrong? Primer is a story about a pair of amateur scientists who are trying to create something - anything - new in their garage in their spare time that they'll one day be able to patent and get rich on. The film opens with a few scene of them chatting with their scientist mates, discussing in reasonable technical detail what they're doing, trying to do and how to achieve it.

This inconspicuous start to the film made it intriguing and placed it importantly in the realms of reality. When our protagonists begin to build a machine of unknown properties that runs without battery power and they are unable to look inside, the story begins to come together slowly and mysteriously. Eventually they realise that they have created a machine that allows a user to travel back in time to the moment that the machine was turned on - ladies and gentlemen: we have a time travel film!

This is no 'Hot Tub Time Machine' though, this is a serious film about the causal and scientific implications of real time travel. Upon first trying the machine, the scientists concoct a series of schemes and ruses to ensure that they cannot interact with or be affected by anything that happened during the day they choose to relive. Soon though, they are unable to keep up with the paradoxes that they may or may not be creating. They begin to experience events that have been caused by future events they will never know - since their own present has now been changed - and begin to experience unknown physical lapses from their continual use of the machine.

The film becomes a paradoxical and logical minefield in the final 20 minutes, as there are revelations about the timeline that we - the viewer - have experienced and the relation of the main characters to it. My viewing experience was not helped by the LoveFilm DVD skipping several 30 second chunks of exposition - ably filled-in by this essay (pdf) on the meaning of the film. I've found numerous websites online that claim to explain the timeline of the movie, most consist of huge diagrams with arrows pointing all over the place. You have been warned!

You might think that a film requiring an essay to understand isn't really for you, and I fully sympathise. The film doesn't appear to have been written with the intention of being understandable by - well - anyone. But it is a mystery film above all else, and the best mysteries leave you asking plenty of questions at the end.

Iron Man 2 - Rubbish Physics

When I told my housemate the other day that I was going to see Iron Man 2 he warned me to not "... get annoyed by the physics". "Silly Housemate" I thought to myself, I sat through Paycheck and survived, why would a Marvel superheroes adaptation - in which the laws of physics are routinely bent - irritate me so? Well, we shall soon see.

Iron Man 2 is - obviously - the sequel to Iron Man, in which Robert Downey Jr plays an eccentric arms manufacturer (Tony Stark) who gets held as a POW in Iraq and develops a powerful suit - the Iron Man suit - to allow himself to escape. In the intervening period between the films, Stark has used his suit to "privatise world peace". The US government are not happy about this and demand that he turn his weapon over to them. He doesn't want to play ball, and so premise of the sequel is set - a film that explores the relationship between the rights and responsibilities of the individual, corporations and the state. Or so I had thought.

After only 20 minutes you can tell that there's going to be no subtlety in this film, no grey areas or layers of plot - just robots smacking each other on the head and far too many A-list stars setting up future Marvel superheroes film franchises. We see Mickey Rouke suiting up and trying to kill Iron Man. Why? Who knows, but he's got a Russian accent so he's probably evil. We see Sam Rockwell as the head of a rival arms firm trying to copy the Iron man suit; he's probably evil too cos his robots are all faceless and gun-metal grey. We see Scarlett Johansson pouting in tight-fitting blouses; she must have some reason to be in the film other than to flirt with Tony Stark and wear tight clothes - mustn't she? Anyone?

The answer is no. There is no point to quite a lot of what goes on in Iron Man 2, no plot, no reason for many of the characters, no motivation behind what anyone does. It is in a film like this that my mind starts to wander, I start thinking about things like "Does the physics of this make any sense?". I decide that I don't want to give the writers a pass when they have their lead character INVENT A NEW ELEMENT to power his chest-mounted reactor core.

Perhaps more annoying than the brazen abuse of physics is the fact that they could easily avoid this by saying that Tony Stark had invented a new compound, or a new crystal - anything at all really, if only the people who made the film cared for anything other than their bottom line.

So my answer to them is no. No more plotless blockbusters. I enjoy battling robots and guns and explosions and lasers as much as the next nerdy 30-something, but I want to see a story at the same time!

Four Lions

Another massive gap in my cinema attendance was recently broken by 'Four Lions'. I first saw a teaser trailer for this on the Internet ages ago and have been well-excited about Chris Morris' latest dagger into the hearts of traditional media narratives. This time he's chosen the War on Terror. Where the mainstream media portray Islamic Jihadists as superhuman warriors who are so dangerous that anyone slightly resembling one needs to be arrested / shot on sight, Morris has chosen to paint them as a bunch of bumbling morons who have brainwashed themselves into believing that blowing up sheep is 'an attack on the infrastructure'.

Morris is doing nothing new here, it has been a long comic tradition to lampoon your enemies to demonstrate how ridiculous they are. Morris' band of muppets is nominally lead by a white guy who has converted to Islam ("I'm the most Al Queda one here!" - he exclaims at one point), a family man whose wife and son urge him to "... blow up the Kaffurs", a rapping jihadist and two other complete numpties who provide a wealth of slapstick humour. Why should anyone be worried about this lot?

The question is answered towards the end of the film as Morris allows his Jihadists to go on their suicide mission; as moronic as they are, you only need a moron to walk into a shop and detonate a bomb strapped to his chest. More than just lampooning the stupidity of the bombers, Morris goes further and applies the same logic to the security services, he fills their ranks with bumbling jobsworths who concern themselves more with covering their own backs than protecting anyone from harm. With this Morris has made the Jihadists seem more terrifying - and funnier - than ever.

Election Debates

I know this is supposed to be a film and TV blog, so I was wondering how I could get away with posting something about the election while staying on topic. I've only just realised (perhaps rather stupidly) that the majority of the electioneering in 2010 has taken place on the television, so in fact I'm perfectly-placed to comment.

The strange thing about the debates was how they dispatched with the idea that the new media had taken over from television as most people's way of consuming news and entertainment. This was supposed to be the election in which Twitter and Facebook were ruling the roost, instead we have good old-fashioned television 'changing the game' in favour of a lesser party.

The rise of Nick Clegg via the first televised debate has put to rest any remaining question about the ever-present power of the media in modern politics. Anyone with any serious interest in politics has been aware of Clegg for years, I guess that for the majority of Brits with a passing interest every 5 years the concept of a credible third party came as something of a revelation. Sadly for Clegg, the mass realisation by Britain that his party exists has coincided with what is sure to be the closest election since 1992, and as such the surge in support that he saw following the first debate has since ebbed away as people in marginals realise that they need to vote for one of the 'old' parties to keep the other out. Had the Lib Dem surge happened in 2001 they could easily have squeezed the Tories into third place. Now it seems that they will once again end up a long way third in the Commons.

Personally, as a resident and registered voter in Wokingham (current incumbent: John Redwood with his complete joke of a massive Tory majority), my vote (for the Lib Dems) will have literally no influence on the national scene. I have a council vote too, looking through the history of voting in Wokingham the council has traditionally swung between Tory and Liberal, so at least there's some comfort in having an influence locally. I'm voting Lib Dem partly as a tactically vote (they are the second party in Wokingham), partly as their public spending policy favourably impacts my job (they have promised to maintain the Highways Agency's research budget at present levels) and partly due to a number of policies (scrapping trident, immigration amnesty, increasing lower rate tax allowance); but mostly because of their opposition to the Iraq war.

Presently I am literally terrified about waking up tomorrow morning, turning on the television and seeing David Cameron's smug face in front of Downing Street. Labour deserve to be thrown out of office for their waging of a war abroad against Iraq and at home against civil liberties, but please don't let's allow Cameron and George Osborne (what even qualifies him to be chancellor?) to get in. Bring on the hung parliament with the Lib Dems demanding Vince Cable be chancellor as their price for a joint administration, that'd be nice.