Dark Shadows - Plot? What's a plot?

There was intense excitement at my workplace about 2 years ago when it became apparent that there was a large film crew on site constructing a series of sets that were barely visible from our car park.  A large crane appeared and intensely bright lights were visible long into the evening.  The loosely-kept 'secret' information about what was going on gradually seeped out from those in the know, apparently this was a Hollywood production.  Not just any old Hollywood production, but a Tim Burton film called Dark Shadows starring - obviously - Johnny Depp.  Depp generates a well-deserved level of excitement whenever he appears in anything, and no less so for this as rumours flew around the site as to when he would be here and where he was staying in the local area.  How much time he spent here is unknown, but when watching Dark Shadows there were scenes of the film that were clearly shot on our 'small roads system' here at TRL. Some of these scenes had Mr Depp in them, so he was clearly here at some point.  Yay us!

Sadly this was the most exciting thing about Dark Shadows.  At first I was worried that my constant vigilance for places and locations in the film that might have come from TRL was getting in the way of me following the story.  But soon I realised that this is a film without a story.  It does kind of have a premise though, which is that Depp plays Barnabas Collins - an 18th century man who is cursed to be a vampire for all eternity by a witch (Angelique Bouchard - played by Eva Green) whose advances he spurned for a lowly cleaning girl.  Barnabas is excavated from his living tomb in the 1970s and suddenly is thrown into the modern world, a world he doesn't understand.

And that's kind of it.  Angelique is now a successful business woman (apparently witches live forever too?) and the Collins' family are now wealthy land owners in the town.  So Barnabas seeks his family out, convinces them to take him in and then mooches around being confused by the 1970s until Angelique starts trying to seduce him again.  Then he falls in love with the modern equivalent of an 18th century cleaning girl and everything happens again.  I think that's it anyway.  At some point Barnabus tries to become human again, but that doesn't work.  Then for some reason it all ends in a big battle where statues come to life and Chloe Moretz is a werewolf and Helena Bonham Carter tries to be a vampire for some reason.  It's also got Michelle Pfeiffer in it, which just had me wondering when it was I last saw here on screen.  But she doesn't become a vampire.

It's a complete shambles of a film; a washed up gothic fantasy about tragic lovers, eye shadow, opulent hair, pale make-up and heaving bosoms with only the thinnest attempt at a plot or character arc.  Comic moments arising from Barnabas' misunderstandings of the modern world are few and fleeting.  Johnny Depp is an accomplished actor, but I think he needs to start reading Tim Burton's scripts before agreeing to be in absolutely everything he directs.

On the plus side though, I do like the Brady Bunch style poster I've stuck at the top of this post.

The Impossible - except that it really happened

Did my first cinema trip of 2013 Sunday last weekend when I got home much earlier than I was expecting to from a trip up North to visit old university friends.  Cycled in my hi-vis jacket in the biting cold up to the Winnersh Showcase where I a choice between Les Miserables and The Impossible.  Now although I do want to see "Les Mis", 2 hours 45 minutes is more than a little off-putting (especially when I wanted to get home to watch the NFL playoffs), so I went with The Impossible.

The Impossible tells the real life story of a Spanish family (cast as British here allow them to use native English-speaking actors) who were on holiday in Thailand when the Indian Ocean tsunami of Christmas 2004 happened.  They were staying in a beach-side resort and were hit by the brunt of the huge tidal wave as it crashed down upon the unsuspecting Thai island.  The family survived the initial wave but were split up and some of them were seriously injured.  The film tells the true story of the various family members' journeys to reunite with the others amidst the carnage of that natural disaster.

The film breaks down into 3 major acts, the tsunami, the aftermath and the rebuilding.  The major set-piece is the tsunami.  The director and special effects crew have done an outstanding job of bringing a terror that I can only imagine to screen.  We see the tsunami from the point of view of Watts' character.  We see her helplessly dragged underwater, then tossed like a toy doll into cars, trees and debris as she can do nothing to prevent the onrushing water taking her and everything else where ever it wants.  We hear the ominous sounds of the water approaching and share in the terrifying groaning and creaking noises after Watts' character is submerged and tossed around by this destructive phenomenon.  The director uses wide panning shots sparingly, but when he does he captures the incredible scale of the tsunami's destruction.  It's an outstanding sequence that uses audio and visual special effects, but relies on Watts and Tom Holland (who plays one of her sons) to provide a human reaction to it.  It's a reaction of uncomprehending terror, in which neither nature nor nurture can prepare anyone for.

After that, the film settles down into a pattern of people fighting to overcome adversity.  Watts' character is gravely injured and helped by local people to a hospital.  McGregor's character is physically fine but mentally destroyed by the loss of his wife and eldest son.  Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts are brilliant in their respective roles here.  McGregor has taken some questionable roles in the past, but when he's on form he's a great actor.  It would take an extremely cynical person to not be moved by the sequence in which McGregor's character borrows a phone to call home.  All his emotions are released in one moment as he finally has to admit to someone that he has no idea where his wife is.  I didn't realise before that Watts was born in England, which probably helps to explain the flawless English accent she puts on in this film.

There has been some criticism in the press that The Impossible largely ignores the plight of local Thai people in favour of depicting the distress of wealthy European tourists.  The family are no doubt extremely wealthy, but I don't have a problem with this as their story is true and amazing so there's no reason not to make a film about it.  It would have been nice for the film to have had some sort of epilogue that told us a bit more about the local people and the sheer number of Thais who were killed though.  My other criticism would be that there's a very slight anti-American moment (basically the only American we ever see has an unhelpful 'me first' attitude), not sure what the point of that was.

I think that these are extremely small nit-picks though, and overall The Impossible is an excellent film of a very real human suffering and hope against all odds.  Excellently acted with outstanding effects, it's a great way to embark on my journey through 2013 in film.

Brave - not just for teenage girls & their mums!

The 'Pixar film' of 2012 was Brave.  I never went to the cinema to see it as it didn't really generate the excitement in me that Toy Story 3 or Up did in recent years.  Perhaps it was something to do with the reviews of the film.  They told me that Brave was for teenage girls who can't get on with their mothers, anyone who has ever been a teenage girl and is ashamed by just how much of a brat they were to their mother, and mothers of teenage girls struggling to work out what they're supposed to do.  I don't fit into any of those categories.

Brave is set in a Scottish medieval fantasy land, a land of kings, queens, princes & princesses; a land where there are will-o-wisps and witches and spells that can turn people into bears.  The story is of Merida (voiced by the always-excellent Kelly MacDonald), a brash tomboy of a princess with tumbling red hair, who loves nothing more than charging around on her horse shooting arrows.  Merida is constantly at odds with her mother, who spends most of her time trying to get Merida to act like a princess and preparing her for the day when she will be given away to a prince.  All the while Merida's father spends most of his time eating, drinking and telling tales about how he lost his leg to a bear.  When the time comes for Merida to marry a prince, she doesn't want to and will do anything to stop her mother getting her own way.

Rarely have a seen a film that so obviously pulls at the viewer's heartstrings than Brave.  You've got the strings fading in and out like nobody's business and in the final 20 minutes of the film it's one teary scene after the next as Merida is forced to be responsible and comes to realise that her mother actually loves her, and that she loves her mother back.  Not only that, but she would do anything to protect her.  I can imagine the teenage girls and their mothers welling up in the aisles.  I would be lying if I said I was emotionally unmoved by the story, it's just so well-constructed.

Like all Pixar films, Brave is visually stunning with astonishingly lifelike faces on the characters and sweeping vistas.  It's not only the big things, it's the attention to detail too.  Small things like individual strands of grass swaying in the wind or Merida's messy hair falling around with a life of its own, these all took someone time to animate.  The effect is outstanding.

Brave is hardly Toy Story or Up, but that's hardly a criticism.  One real criticism might come from the people of Scotland.  Are Scottish people tired of the stereotypes yet?  There are scenes of highland games and people fighting-as-a-national-pastime and one character who's a totally incomprehensible Glaswegian.  I've only been to Scotland once, and that was Edinburgh - so maybe that's what the rest of Scotland's really like?  Anyone from Scotland care to comment?  Well there are plenty of Scots here at work so maybe I should ask one of them.  On the upside, at least they got some real Scottish people to do the voices rather than Mike Myers hamming it up a la Shrek.

Crucially though this is yet more proof that me and my housemate Rich have utterly opposing view on films.  There's a barely a film that passes by upon which we have convergent views.  When he saw I had Brave on DVD he gave me the 'oh dear' eyes and warned me it wasn't any good.  I thought perhaps this would finally be the one we agree one; after all this is a film that's meant to be for teenage girls and mothers of teenage girls.  I guess I've got more empathy for that demographic than Rich does then, because I thought Brave was a fine film.

The Impostor

A very interesting documentary about a man who successfully convinced a Texas family that he was their long lost son.  Despite having different hair and eyes, and not even speaking English as a first language (let alone not being from the USA), Frédéric Bourdin managed to convince the entire Barclay family that he was in fact their son Nicholas - who went missing 3 years previously.

The film raises very Interesting questions of both Bourdin and the Barclays, and of what really happened to the real Nicholas.  If Bourdin was so obviously not their son, why on earth would the family accept him so readily?  At the same time though, given the mental anguish the family had suffered, the desire for relief and for the return of Nicholas was so strong that perhaps they were willing to accept anything.  Interestingly, rather than being repentant in retrospect, Boudin goes on the offensive and accuses the Barclay family of knowing more than they claim to about Nicholas' disappearance.  Maybe if the family know something untoward about Nicholas' disappearance, and they thought that any move on their part to doubt the validity of Bourdin's claim to be their son would be viewed as a guilty admission that they know he's not coming back!

The documentary superbly mixes up recreations, interviews with people involved and real footage to tell its story.  Bourdin is providing a voice-over to his actions almost from the very start of the film, and as such it makes unusual viewing.  After all, how often do you see a documentary about a historical crime in which the criminal provides you a voice-over insight into what he was doing at the time?  Similarly there are interviews with Nicholas Barclay's sister and mother, both of whom are invited to look back upon the time when they allowed themselves to be taken in by Bourdin's lies and comment on how they felt and feel about it.

One of the best bits about the story is that there is still no resolution at the present time.  Bourdin has served his time and moved on with his life while the Barclays still don't have Nicholas back.  The private investigators in San Antonio who can be bothered to are still looking for Nicholas, some are even prepared to entertain the idea that the Barclays were involved in foul play in his disappearance.  It's a real life modern Machiavellian tale involving real people, that's still going on, and is utterly gripping.

Die Hard 4.0 - trying too hard

I went into watching Die Hard 4.0 with a clear mind and an open heart, but came out wondering what the point was.  We watched it 'as a house' last night after we cooked a big communal dinner - good times.  Die Hard is a classic film which pits the ordinary cop in the wrong place at the wrong time (Bruce Willis as John McClane) against the number one pantomime bad guy of the era, Alan Rickman as the gleefully nasty Hans Gruber.  Willis makes his way through various floors, air conditioning tunnels and lift shafts of one sky scraper as he attempts to rescue his wife from Rickman's Germanic terrorists and get home in time for Christmas.  Would Die Hard 4.0 live up to this?

So there we were watching Die Hard 4.0.  Immediately I have a question: why the 4.0?  Why not just 4?  Probably because the film has a lot of technology in it, and you know technology often has 'point something'.  The publicity people for the film haven't exactly got off on the right foot with me here.  The film starts off with some techie type people who are obviously up to no good.  A woman who looks a bit like Jessica Ennis is typing away and hacks into a government computer before a bunch of bad guys blow up the house where a dude she's hacking with is working.  The government aren't happy their computer was hacked into, so they want to interview all the hackers that might be capable of doing it, so John McCane is tasked to bring in one of those hackers.  Got it?

From then on the film is a series of set-piece action sequences linked together by scenes in which McClane his hacker buddy (Matt) travel between locations.  There's a car chase in a tunnel, a shoot out in an apartment block, a car crashing into a helicopter, an SUV dangling down a lift shaft, a jet fighter versus an articulated lorry and plenty of bullets flying around without anyone ever running out of ammunition.  This takes place over the space of about a days, during which time McClane doesn't appear to eat or sleep.  The point of Die Hard is that McClane is meant to be an ordinary cop, not Superman or Chuck Norris.  In fact, why call this film Die Hard at all?  Just because it's an action film with Bruce Willis in it?  Apart from that it's got nothing at all to do with the original film and looks more like a feature length episode of 24, several years after the concept of 24 got old.

Comparisons between the bad guys in Die Hard and Die Hard 4.0 leave the latter floundering at sea.  The bad guy here is some utterly wet computer 'genius'; the worst thing he manages to do to McClane s daughter is slap her in the face and when his girlfriend is killed he simply brushes his hand across his table in mild disgust.  What was his motivation?  Something about proving to the government that he's right?  Also where did he get all the money from to finance this criminal enterprise?  Did he steal it?  No one at the FBI seems interested in catching him for that though.  And where do the endless French goons come from?  And why are they all French?!  Sigh.

The film does have a few good points.  The relationship between McClane and the hacker kid is quite well done.  There's a generation gap thing going on between them in that McClane doesn't understand any technology while Matt doesn't do guns and violence.  They're a good double act and thematically the kid is playing the part of a younger audience who might not have seen any of the Die Hard films.  The action scenes should be applauded for their audaciousness if nothing else.  I would have loved to be in the script review meeting where they agreed to go with the scene that involves a jet fighter literally facing off against a truck.  It's a scene that's so silly the film-makers deserve praise for having the balls to keep it in the final cut.

Die Hard 4.0 is an absolute mess of a film, the kind of thing that teenage media students would probably end up making if they had a $100 million budget.  It has nothing to do with the original Die Hard and - despite providing good entertainment value by being so over-the-top - it was a disappointment.

The Clairvoyant

My Dad bought me a LOT of films at Christmas, and I started trying to make a dent on them last weekend by watching The Clairvoyant (normally if anyone says 'The Clairvoyant  to me I think of this). A lot of the films I watch are the ones I missed at the cinema recently; The Clairvoyant is about as far from that as possible, having been released in 1935 and starring Claude Rains (who has been died 10 years before I was even born). Rains is most famous for his role as the captain of the local police in Casablanca, but a quick check of his imdb entry reveals that he was in so much more at and around the time.

Here he plays Maximo, a man who earns a living by playing the part of a telepath on the theatre circuit. He and his wife Rene have a well-rehearsed routine in which they convince a crowd of people that he is able to work out what personal items she has taken from the crowd, despite being blindfolded. It is a trick of course, but during one show Maximo appears to enter a sort of trance state when staring at a beautiful woman in the crowd. While in this state he makes a prediction about a train crash, a prediction that comes true. Soon Maximo is national news, more so when he successfully predicts a 100 to 1 outsider to win the Derby. But he can only make predictions in the presence of the beautiful Christine. Maximo soon realises that this power is more curse than blessing, as not only is the weight of the world on his shoulders to make predictions, but Rene's jealousy towards Christine risks tearing his marriage apart.

The Clairvoyant suffers in front of a modern audience from being made at a time before Citizen Kane when movies looked very stagey, plus the footage seems to have become a little bedraggled before its conversion to digital format. It is difficult these days to work out how impressive a film like this would have looked to a 1930s audience. Was the explosion that happens towards the end of the film an impressive special effect back then or not? So I'm not going to comment on such matters with my 21st century brain. In terms of the story, I thought it was a shame that the ending shied away from becoming a full-on episode of the Twilight Zone. That's hardly too much of a criticism though since the Twilight Zone was still 20 years in the future when this was made. Aside from these minor points the film is a solid piece of storytelling starring one of the great actors of classic cinema.

Films of the Year - 2012

Didn't go to the cinema as much in 2012 as I would have liked to.  As such quite a lot of films that I wanted to see I have missed out on and aren't elligible for this chart.  Mainly I'm thinking of Looper and The Life of Pi.  I'm sure I'll get around to seeing these fairly early in the new year as they become available on DVD / Netflix.

Regardless, I've set myself a tradition of doing a top 5 of the year each January - so here's this year's top films of 2012 that I actually got around to seeing in 2012.

5 - The Hunger Games

A surprise entry here. Earlier in the year if you had told me how much I would have bought into the story of Katniss I would never had believed you. Rather than simply being teenage fodder in the Twilight mould, The Hunger Games is a savvy political thriller that has launched the career of the superb Jennifer Lawrence.

4 - Cabin in the Woods

My horror film of the year isn't really a horror film, but a horror spoof. Proof that Joss Whedon (as a co-writer here) can still be a genius at the same time as churning out Holywood action no-brainers for Marvel.

3 - The Raid

A throw-back to the kung fu action movies of yesteryear, The Raid is an intensely violent action thriller in which the premise is simple and in which when someone gets punched it looks like it actually hurts. Sometimes the best films are the ones in which you concentrate on getting the basics right.

2 - Shame

Michael Fassbender is one of the best actors around at present, and in Shame he gives an outstanding performance that shines a light on the crushing nature of addiction. Not only him, but Carey Mulligan's in it too and appears in my scene of the year!

1 - The Artist

Easily the most fun I had at the cinema last year, The Artist is a wonderful story that shows how the future of cinema doesn't have to lie in the realm of 3D, or even colour or sound. If you've got a great story, people will love it!

Green Zone - now available for DVD rental

Green Zone spent a lot of time on my Lovefilm list as 'currently unavailable' - meaning that it is available for sale, but not for rent. No need to worry, I'm happy to wait. And wait I did, for nearly 2 years. Finally a month ago Green Zone shifted its status on Lovefilm from being unavailable for rent to being a normal film. A similar thing happened to A Serious Man earlier last year. I wonder how much money the distribution companies managed to make out of sales of these two films before they realised that people are much more likely to download them illegally than buy them when they're not given the option to rent? Hopefully not too much. I can't imagine any situation in which I wouldn't want to spent money going to the cinema to see a film but would be happy to buy the DVD immediately upon release. Can anyone imagine anyone doing that?

Whatever the distribution company's business model is, I beat them at their own game and waited them out until their film was available to rent normally. The film stars Matt Damon as a specialist soldier during the recent Iraq war of 2003. The task he is assigned is to visit dangerous locations throughout the nation at which weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are thought to be stored. The film opens with Damon's character visiting such a site and (once again) coming up empty-handed. This is just the latest in a series of red herrings, and as such he starts to question the validity of the intelligence that is sending him and his team on these missions. His questions to his commanding officer raise the eyebrows of a local CIA agent (played by Brendon Gleeson trying his very best to cover up his Irish accent), who convinces Damon's character to go on a secret mission within Iraq to oust the truth behind their failure to find the WMD. It's basically because the US government made it all up.

Looking back at this period in history with almost a decade of hindsight, it is obvious now that there were no WMDs in Iraq. This was obvious to many of us in 2003, but the leaders of Britain and the USA convinced enough of the world that these weapons existed and set about launching their illegal war. To many, the Iraqi war has now come to an end for Britain and the US and is in danger of becoming a historical footnote. It is important that this does not happen. The blatant lies and propaganda surrounding the 'evidence' for the existence of WMDs in Iraq needs to stay fresh in the mind of the public, because when they try it next time (and they will) we need people to be wise to it.

In that it's trying to sell an important political story to a wide audience, Green Zone is similar to Comrades. In sharp contrast to Comrades though, Green Zone is a film that will succeed by having a mass appeal. Green Zone stars several big name actors, has a big name director, superb action sequences and a big box office draw. Contrast that to Comrades' intricately detailed realism and lengthy depictions of the tedium of 19th century life - giving it a limited appeal. You might argue that Green Zone contains a lot of plot contrivances and certain characters behave in a way that would never be tolerated in the US army, but these are concessions to reality that director Paul Greengrass is prepared to make in order to tell an important story in a way that will engage a wide audience.

Green Zone is a good action film that does well to get a message about political deceit into the public domain.

Comrades - very long

Finally got around to watching this just before I went away for Christmas. Comrades is - according to the information written on the DVD box - a much-maligned classic of 1980s British cinema that details the battles fought in the 1830s by the Tolpuddle Martyrs. Starring a number of well-respected British actors like Imelda Staunton and Keith Allen, the film tells their story in extended detail. We open in rural Somerset, then transfer to the courts of London before moving on the Australia where the men were sent as punishment.

Who the Tolpuddle Martyrs are, what they did and what happened to them are a very important part of British history. A part that has been forgotten about by a lot of people who must think that the rights they enjoy in the modern workplace were handed down by god at some point in the past, rather than being fought for by ordinary people. The kind of person who would fight for a decent living standard in the workplace is George Loveless - played here by Robin Soans - a man of ordinary intelligence who simply asked for a decent standard of living at a time when some had a lot and many had little. For this simple request, he and 5 of his associates were deported to Australia where they worked for several years before a campaign in the UK successfully achieved their release and return.

This is an important story that should be told more widely. Sadly Comrades isn't a film that's going to spread this message beyond anyone who's already prepared to spend 3 hours watching a grim recreation of rural life in the 1830s. It's a life where little ever changes, a life where the monotony of daily routine is broken rarely by the occasional travelling minstrel or circus. It's a life that is recreated in often-numbing detail at some length, I could almost feel the boredom of life at the time permeating through the screen into my living room. That's either great film-making or a case of the bad editing making a film that's paced far too slowly. By all means decide for yourself, but I thought the latter.

What is true is that the story of George Loveless and the Tolpuddle Martyrs needs to be kept alive - Loveless doesn't even have his own Wikipedia page! And though I would love to say that this film will do exactly that, I know it never will.

My top films of 2012 will be coming up in a few posts time...