The World's End - the final Cornetto

Friday a week ago I went to the Showcase in Winnersh to once again worship at the fanboy altar and revel in the glory of a Pegg / Frost / Wright production, the first since Hot Fuzz and the closing chapter of the hitherto magnificent Cornetto Trilogy.  The World's End follows Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead into a world in which the tropes of Holywood cinema are transported into the mundane humdrum of Englishness - where everything will be OK so long as we can find a pub and a decent cup of tea.  Chuck in a heap of cultural references, some frenetic camera work and a shed load of genius one-liners and you've got yourselves a couple of genuinely hilarious cult classics.  Given my adoration for Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead you can imagine my anticipation of this film, and my slight fear when the trailers came out and they weren't that good.  The jokes looked a bit tired, the format looked jaded and it seemed to lack a bit of the sparkle of earlier Pegg / Frost / Wright collaborations.  Things did not look good.

Sadly having actually watched The World's End I think I sort of got the right impression from the trailer.  In it Simon Pegg plays Gary King, a man who never let go of his youth, who still wears the same t-shirts he did at the end of high school and fantasises over the greatest night of his life when he nearly completed a famous 12 stop pub-crawl in his home village - 20 years ago.  Gary gets the old gang (who have all most definitely grown up) back together to return home and go on the same pub crawl once more.  However he discovers that things are not quite the way he remembers them, and that the creeping standardisation that has affected so many of Britain's high streets as also infected his village.  Not only this though, but the neutralisation of culture appears to be the work of an alien influence, here to apparently save us from ourselves.

Edgar Wright has said in interviews that the aliens in the film are meant to represent some sort of pan-galactic Starbucks, here to pacify tensions and ease people into a quiet happy numbness where all needs are provided for and all conflict is quelled.  Of course the metaphor is a neat one.  The film presents two opposing forces and contrasts the failings of each.  Gary King, with his old band t-shirts and devotion to Primal Scream, represents the old school, the crazy recklessness of youth, optimism and nostalgia.  The aliens are the corporate, the conservative force of conformity; they represent the idea that for society to work people must somehow suppress their own individuality to conform to an idealised norm.  Should we root for Gary or the Aliens?  Or perhaps neither?

I had less fun watching this than I did watching either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz; a lot less fun.  Now I don't know if this experience makes it a worse film than those, or if it has something to do with my over-inflated expectations of the Pegg / Wright output, but it was a fact none-the-less that I left the cinema underwhelmed by what I had seen.  Perhaps it was the character of Gary King that left me cold.  King is a dislikeable guy who doesn't really get any redemption or change, hardly a Shaun or Nicholas Angel for the audience to root for.

As Wright has indicated in interviews, it might be that the real enemy presented by the film is in fact nostalgia itself.  Could it be that with this final part of a trilogy that once re-defined British cinema, that Pegg, Wright and Frost are in fact trolling their own audience?  Does Gary King represent the vocal minority of Spaced fans still calling for a third series?  Maybe he even represents fans such as me, the people harking back to Shaun of the Dead and lamenting Simon Pegg's ongoing move into the American mainstream?  Perhaps Pegg and Wright are telling us that it is time to move on, to not end up being a Gary King living your life in a glorious past that existed so very briefly?

However you choose to look at it, and regardless of the fact that I felt it was a let-down, The World's End is still funny.  It's a pleasant antidote to the endless churn of Holywood action blockbusters slugging it out for audiences this summer.  I'm trying to heed the lessons of The World's End and not get too nostalgic here, but I think Simon Pegg's best work has always been rooted in a deep understanding of Englishness, nerd culture and the hilarity of the mundane.  I hope that he, Frost and Wright all keep their feet on the ground and not get too carried away by their increasingly elevated statuses amongst the Holywood literati.  I'm sure they've got a lot more to give to the cinema-going world; and I would like to see them making films together for a few more years yet.

Spiderman - another one!

Accidentally watched Spiderman the other day after I got the DVD through the post.  That happened because I forgot to re-order my LoveFilm list after I sent a better film back last week.  Well I guess I put the thing on my list so it's nobody's fault but mine it happened.

This review has got off to a bad start, probably because I didn't enjoy myself a great deal watching this reboot of yet another Marvel superhero they're rinsing to death for all the money they can.  This time around we have Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, a young lad who geekily stumbles his way through high-school before for some reason going into the big city, getting bitten by a spider, getting superpowers, making a red and blur suit before finally turning into The Amazing Spiderman.

Andrew Garfield is a fine actor, Rhys Ifans plays a good bad guy and I have a bit of a crush on Emma Stone - so you would think that with the cast alone there would be plenty of scope to make this a decent superhero movie.  It's not too bad, but I took something of a dislike to it as I've definitely had my fill of this kind of Marvel origins film where a nobody becomes a superhero and then has to have a fistfight with someone at the end to satisfy the fanboys.  Ifans plays your typical Marvel scientist who creates something he can't control and it drives him mad, a madness that can only be cured by Spiderman punching win a whole heap of times.  It's the same old story that's been done tonnes of times in the past and needs to be a little more imaginative if it's going to keep me interested.

I guess this is the sort of thing that pleases the vocal majority of Marvel fans out there as the film is rocking a respectable 7.1 on imdb and has a lot of glowing reviews.  Green Lantern was a low point in this genre of film and to an extent Iron Man also sits in that spectrum.  Let's not forget Captain America, but that was such a terrible film anyway it hardly warrants comment.  This version of Spiderman is hardly the worst of the bunch, but it's getting flak from me because I'm getting sick of the constant reboots.  There's a sequel pencilled in for next year so we'll have to wait to see what they do with the format.  Hopefully they'll try something interesting and make a slightly less-tedious movie.

Flight - Denzil Washington doesn't make bad movies

Denzel Washington seems to always make good films.  I'm not talking about masterpieces here or claiming that he's always a huge box-office draw, but whenever Denzel Washington is in a film I immediately expect the it to be at least passable or better.  I don't think I've ever seen a Denzel Washington film that was genuinely bad.  Case in point was Unstoppable a few years back.  It's a film that should have been terrible, but turned out to be pretty good.  Solid film from a solid actor who has consistently delivered solid performances for years.

And so we come to Flight, the Denzel Washington film of 2012 in which he plays an alcoholic airline pilot named Whip who saves a doomed plane from crashing out of the sky by performing an incredible maneuver that involves flying his passenger airline upside-down.  Disregarding the physics of this maneuver for a second (though a quick google search indicates that the plausibility of the feat is greater than I had originally assumed), it's a dramatic event that confirms Whip as a hero.  Until the investigators find out that he had alcohol and drugs swimming around his system at the time of the crash.  Whip awakes in hospital to find that only 6 people died in the crash - including the air hostess with whom he had spent the previous night.  The media are hailing him a hero, but the crash investigation team and his lawyers know that his secret cannot stay hidden for long.

Flight is a film about redemption and saving people both literally and spiritually.  Religion plays an important part in the film.  Whip's co-pilot Ken is an ardent Christian who sees his survival in the crash as a message from god to change, when in hospital Whip meets Nicole - an alcoholic in rehab who makes it her mission to try to save him from himself.  Whip of course is responsible for the saving of nearly 100 lives when he successfully brings the plane to the ground - but is he capable of saving himself?  As Whip is encouraged to better himself and clean his act up to survive the inquiry into the crash he struggles to cope without booze, is he better trying to change himself or simply being the man he really is?  At several points in the film Whip looks to the heavens as planes meander by, whether he's looking to the sky for salvation or lamenting his ostracisation from the life that brought him fame and joy is unclear.  What is clear is that he knows his life has to change, but has no idea how to do it.

Flight is a film that has a bit of action, a bit of wit, a bit of courtroom drama, a bit of spirituality and quite a bit of nudity in its opening scene.  As we see Whip for the first time waking up in his hotel room he takes a phone call as air hostess Katerina prances around in the buff behind him for several minutes - for no apparent reason.  As far as I can tell this is one of the only things in the movie that ensures the film has a 15 rating, it's almost as if the scene's there to ensure the film gets the 15 rating.  Though Whip's near-continual use of cocaine in the film is probably worthy of the 15 rating too.  Probably.

In conclusion, Flight is a surprisingly good film.  For a film that tries to be a little bit action, a little bit silly (Jon Goodman hamming it to the max) and a little spiritual - it mixes them up quite well.  Though as I said at the top of the review, Denzel Washington doesn't do bad movies - so perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at all.

Rust and Bone

Anyone who talks to me a lot about films and TV will know that I'm very interested in knowing what the plot is.  One of the biggest criticisms of the recent Star Trek reboot part 2 was that the plot (where it existed) was thin to the point of breaking.  The slightest question about the motivations of the characters would be likely to bring it crashing down.  It is interesting then that with Rust and Bone, we have a film for which the plot cannot be easily summarised, but is entirely the opposite of that Star Trek movie.  Allow me to attempt a summary for your consumption:

Matthias Schoenaerts plays Alain, a simple man with a simple talent to whom we are introduced when he is trying to hitch a ride with his son to stay with his sister.  Marion Cotillard is Stephanie, a woman who works at the local sea life park and is terribly injured when one of the shows she is performing with a whale goes horribly wrong.  Stephanie and Alain meet at a night club where he is working and he helps her get home.  After her accident the pair become close friends, then lovers as Stephanie struggles to cope with a new life without legs.

When we are introduced to Alain he looks like a bit of a vagrant.  He takes work as a bouncer, as a warehouse worker in a factory and finally as a bare-knuckle fighter as he muddles his way through life trying to provide for him and his son.  Alain does have something special about him though, Alain is relentlessly honest.  Not once does Alain lie, cheat, or even contemplate foul play in anything he does, and it is this refreshing honesty in his treatment of a legless Stephanie that draws him and her closer together.

As far as plot goes that's sort of it.  But this is not a film in which the what is important, it's a character-based story in which the how, the why and the journey are important.  Now that might sound a bit pretentious, but it's the truth about a film that takes us on a journey through the lives of two interesting characters and the people around them.  For those of you out there who bloody love special effects, well there's a treat for you too.  I assume that there was a combination of effects and careful use of camera angles involved, but the effects that turn Marion Cotillard into a double-amputee are excellent.

Mad Men

Mad Men is a strange case of a television programme.  When I was first told about it and read reviews I was sure that this was not a television programme for me.  After all, I'm the guy who grew up on a diet of ST:TNG and Red Dwarf, I'm a 1990s X-Files fanboy who enjoys debating the existential nature of Mulder's sister, which Star Trek captain was best and how Buffy the Vampire Slayer should has finished at the end of Season 5. There's literally no reason why a drama series set in a Manhattan advertising agency in the 1960s should appeal to me in any way whatsoever.

Well, it does.  And it's great.  Perhaps because of great storytelling and brilliantly observed characters?  Perhaps it's the way that Mad Men takes us on a journey through some of the biggest social and political upheavals of modern times?  Perhaps because it does this without ever forcing politics on its audience, instead dropping hints and clues through the actions and dialogue of those on screen?  Perhaps it's all these things.  We see people living through momentous events in world history such as the Cuban missile crisis or the assassination of JFK, and though these events are important, the grind of daily life continued much as did at any point in history.

There's a lot in Mad Men for people who want to find it, lots more than just a drama about the life and times of an attractive womaniser in 1960s Manhattan.  It's a drama series that recognises that the lives of people, you know - the stuff we all do day in and day out, are the fundamental building blocks of an interesting story.  Just some of the many themes in Mad Men include sexual equality in the workplace, sexual liberation, changing attitudes towards traditional minority groups, the usurping of an older more conservative generation by a new more liberal one, the advent of mass consumerism... I could go on.

All of it would be a bit boring though without some outstanding characters and people to play them.  The series' main character is ostensibly Don Draper (played by John Hamm), an impossibly well-dressed advertising executive in his late-30s who's mere presence in the room is enough to melt the heart of all but the most hardened of 1960s Manhattan socialites.  He is an incredibly complex character with a hidden past who is idolised by all around him - quite literally all men want to be him, all women want to be with him.  For me though the series is really about women, the liberalisation of sex in society in the 1960s and the generation of the first cracks in the corporate glass ceiling.  In this sense, one could argue that the series' main character is really Peggy Olsen (played by Elizabeth Moss - who was president Bartlet's daughter in The West Wing).  Olsen starts out in the advertising firm as a humble secretary, but as the series pan out she changes considerably as she tries more and more to be like Draper.  She is baffled, angered and entranced in equal measures by the world around her, spending half her time trying to fit into this man's world and the other half raging against the conservatism still inherent in it.

Mostly Mad Men is an excellently observed character drama that's about a society that once was and has now passed - but it was only 50 years ago.  It's an amazing television show that shows once again how Hollywood's best writers all work in TV these days.  Yes - people really did used to drink copious quantities of hard liquor in business meetings and take their clients to brothels.  Only 50 years ago!

And if you're wondering, the best captain in Star Trek was clearly Picard.