The Cutprice Guignol

There’ll be no beating around the bush here. No skirting the issue. No dodging the bullet. No dancing round the point. No talking around the real conversation. No literary procrastination. No tantric writing. No humming and hawing. No passing the buck. No bollocking on about nothing in particular. No pussyfooting. No waffling. No previcating.

I LOVE Gremlins.

Joe Dante’s surreal, touching and wildly entertaining movie lands in a rare and prized area of the horror genre; a family horror film. It matches wierd-looking but ultimately not TOO terrifying creatures with black-as-night humour and ridiculously fun action sequences. And probably the cutest protagonist ever (no, not a wide-eyed and goofy Zach Galligan-Gizmo, the unbelievably adorable Mogwai who I utterly and totally want as my own).

It mixes a Twilight-Zone-y premise with a small-town Christmas setting, and doesn’t once let up the barrage of jokes and sequences of the Gremlins running amok throughout the town (for such a light film, they do seem to murder an awful lot of people in incredibly violent ways). There’s also this scene in which a Gremlin puts some popcorn packets over his ears and does a little dance for a fraction of a second; I truly believe this to be one of the, if not the, funniest moment in cinema history. The first time I saw it, I was very nearly sick with laughter.

Add to that one of the catchiest film scores not written by John Williams, Dante’s madcap direction, and a cast who look like they’ve never had more fun in their life, and you’ve got one of the finest films to toe the scary/witty lines in all of silver-screen history.

Choose life. Choose a fucking big television. Choose to watch more films directed by me, Danny Boyle, etc etc. No, really, Trainspotting’s brilliant.

First off, you have the source material; that searingly witty, brilliantly dark Irvine Welsh novel that just spits at you as you turn the page. Packed with emminently cinematic characters, there’s no way someone wasn’t going to adapt it at some point. Terrific stuff.

Then, that music-right from the borderline criminally fun Lust for Life opening scenes, to Blondie (who were the first band I ever saw live, fact fans) crooning about being radioactive or whatnot. In a very Tarantino-ish move, Boyle wove songs that should have no right to work into scenes they have no right to work in-the overdose/Lou Reed’s Perfect Day scene lollops into mind.

Then, those performances. First off, you’ve got a sterling Euan McGregor as Renton-the sad, slightly bitter, ultimatley unlucky hero of the piece. But he’s backed by scores of other brilliant characters. Johnny Lee Miller as one of my ultimate movie crushes, Sick Boy, knocks it into the stratosphere with his sleazy, witty charm and mismatching eyebrows, while his foil, a bumbling Euan Bremner, staggers around screwing up job interviews and generally being the most lovable heroin addict ever. Then there’s the supporting cast; a gorgeous Kelly Macdonald playing someone far too young to be called gorgeous by a legal adult, and the simply electric Robert Carlyle as Begbie. A sickeningly cruel wide boy with a penchant for the kind of arrogant violence this kind of group is all too privy to, he’s scary, cruel and simply one of the best on-screen characters ever.

So, aye. Trainspotting.

Shudder. Retch. Save me from myself. Yes, it’s time to tackle to colossal titan of a blockbuster that was this summer’s Man of Steel.

Right off the bat, Superman is a boring superhero. He’s the ultimate good guy- no layers, no facets, no deeper meaning, no dead parents, no fear of flying rodents. Swooningly handsome and donning the stupidest outfit I’ve seen in yonks (trying to make the ridiculous rubbishness of the original outfit better by “modernising” it just drew attention to the fact it’s still just as bloody ridiculous), the Man of Steel was already manging to do the opposite of piqueing my interest.

Then there was the actual plot. Granted, I fell asleep four times in the cinema when I went to see this with my consort (apparently, at one point, I woke up, took in the wildly stupid goings-on onscreen, laughed once, then dozed off again), but Chrsit almighty. Aside from demolishing practically an entire city, the plot was dizzily all over the place, bouncing around girtty pathos and big silly fight scenes. And I will stand by my defense that Superman ALWAYS looks a bit daft when he’s flying around.

And this brings me to my main point. This movie took itself far too bloody seriously. Much as I thought Michael Shannon was slightly brilliant as Zod and everyone else seemed to WANT to have fun with it, the movie still remained a slightly too po-faced rendition of what is, at the heart of it, a bit of cartoon fun from a long time ago. I can see why one might think a gritty reboot of the Batman franchise might work (more importantly, it actually did), but when someone went “Hey! Wouldn’t it be awesome if we redid the whole Superman series as a deadly serious trudge through moderatley good-looking Americana? We could even have Kevin Costner being nobly killed by a tornado!”, someone should have punched them in the face.

Also, right, there’s a bit towards the end which apparently I was the only one to take issue with where Superman and Zod are battling away on a building or whatnot and Zod snarls with glee “There’s only one way this can end- either you die, or I do!”. That’s TWO WAYS. He presented two seperate options with no equivocation right there in front of Superman. And, frankly, I don’t want the person defending our planet to be devoid of basic literacy skills.

I’d very much like to welcome a guest author for this post-the formidable talent of my father Steve, and his quite expressive reaction to Elysium which I received via email from Thailand this morning. You can find more of his bloody brilliant writing (well, I must get it from somewhere) here, here and here.

Saw Elysium last night. Also read your review. I agreed with most of it, but overall I think you were too kind. It was no more than a loose grouping of ideas stolen from a range of sources. Elysium was a straight copy of Citadel from the computer game Mass Effect (look at the screenshot – it’s so close I’m surprised no-one seems to have mentioned it). The look of the dystopian earth (and how bored I am with dystopian Earths!) is a straight lift from the second Mad Max film. The plot, if you can call it that, had all the depth and complexity of a teletubbies episode. With pathos added by the wheelbarrow-load just in case you didn’t get it – the little girl dying of leukemia who tells the parable of the meerkat and the hippo. I guess it was supposed to get you right in the heart, but it caused me only an involuntary spasm of the lower bowel.

And don’t get me started on a dying Earth, polluted and starved of resources, but where all the characters are plump and healthy looking (including the little girl in the terminal stages of cancer) with great teeth and men who clearly manage to spend several hours a day in the gym despite their poverty-stricken lives. And then there’s Sharlto Copley, notable only for the ability to flex his muscles and shout in a funny accent, who for no discernible reason dons an exoskeleton to fight Matt Damon (I mean, it’s not as if he was short of guns…) and then decides to make himself President of Elysium. And Jodie Foster, who’s death when it arrived meant nothing at all. And Matt Damon’s death, where we were bludgeoned with the terrible pathos of it all (“Tell her I understand about the hippo”) in a way that had me spluttering indignantly over my choc ice. And a plot so full of holes that it looked like a string vest (to take one minor example, Elysium has all this technology and wealth, and how do they defend themselves against attack? By depending on a renegade agent on Earth who has less than five minutes to nip out to a mysterious parked van and launch the requisite missiles. What if he’d been dropping a big one on the bog? Or his car wouldn’t start? Or he was watching something really, really good on TV and couldn’t be arsed? Wouldn’t it have been logical to build some sort of defense system on Elysium?).

I agree that Spider was probably the least crap character. But he was still a long way short of plausible or engaging.

Pah! What an utter waste of time, money and effort. For me and all the poor souls involved with making this dreck. It’s not often you’ll hear me say this, but I actually preferred Pacific Rim. At least it was cheerfully and unashamedly crap, and had a sort of childish exuberance that prevented me from lapsing into a coma.

Now, I have an opinion about Pan’s Labyrinth. This won’t surprise you, as I have a fucking opinion about everything; only a few nights ago I had a balls-to-the-wall rant about urinary tract infections. But Pan’s Labyrinth, the Guillermo Del Toro fantasy romp set against the background of the Spanish revolution, is something I have a very strong opinion about.

I don’t really like it. And I want to; I really like Del Toro in general, especially the wonderfully creepy The Devil’s Backbone. I like films that use major historical events to tell smaller stories, and I love the kind of vaguely Grecian mythology that’s woven throughout the film. But I just-don’t-get it.

The film isn’t bad. It looks absoloutely stunning; visually, it’s a luscious film, whether it’s following an annoying little brat running around a maze (for some reason, I just can’t stand the little girl who is the focus of the film. It’s beyond the child-actor affect; she’s a fucking idiot) or watching a man sew his cheek up in brutally unflinching detail. But it feels unfocused; it wants to be a biting historical commentary, but it never really bothers to flesh out the relevant characters, with anyone involved with any kind of political intrigue essentially acting as a big cardboard cut-out with a smiley face and a funny mustache scrawled on them. The actors do their best, and manage to scratch out some genuinely affecting scenes from the messy script, but overall the film becomes lost in what it wants to be rather than what it can actually achieve. It is neither a brilliant historical drama or a magical fantasy movie; it is a reasonably average representation of both, mashed together with a big stick of fascism.

Del Toro himself said that Pan’s Labyrinth was the first film he’s ever had complete artistic control over; great for him, but for me it proved that the Peter-Jackson-alike is best when his genius is reigned in by someone to point the story and the characters in the right direction. Or just when he makes stuff like Pacific Rim. Which was incredible.

And yet Labyrinth is almost universally considered a genius piece of cinema. I’m not saying I’m right and the entire critical world is wrong. But then again, I’m not not saying that either. Ho hum.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Spectacle: 9
Script: 6
Acting: 7
Entertainment Value: 6
Influence: 8