New Release Review: 'Ender's Game'

A goodly few find science fiction to be silly, indulgent and puerile. There's certainly plenty that's just nonsense and fluff, but the same is true of any genre. Its worth is in how it can wrestle with big ideas by changing their form so that we come at them from a new perspective. Ender's Game (the film, rather than the book) is nine-tenths fluff, one-tenth big idea. That it is, for the most part, fluff isn't entirely director Gavin Hood's fault - it's just mostly his fault.

Condensing the set-up of Orson Scott Card's novel into a paragraph is probably futile, but here goes: Ender (Asa Butterfield) is being trained to become a master tactician because of an attempted invasion by an alien race 50 years before his birth. He's sent to battle school, which is on a space station in Earth's orbit. (Half of you will have already started to tune out, but stick with it.) The literal and figurative centre of the school is the Battle Room, a zero gravity chamber where the cadets fight. There's no up or down, no east or west; tactically it's brand new territory. Which is why Ender is so important. He's young enough to set aside his preconceptions and fight in a way his elders could never imagine. This is all just lead-in. What's at the heart of the story is the quote during the opening credits: "In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him." Ender is being turned into a weapon, but to become the perfect weapon guarantees he'll be a weapon that'll never fire, because how can he destroy what he loves? That's an interesting idea right there, and it's what Hood is supposed to be exploring. What he's actually done is produced a CliffsNotes version of the novel: it hits all the major story beats, but is ultimately lifeless. There's no tension to any of it. No risk. Instead Hood spends the first two-thirds of the film shouting about how the aliens WILL come back because, um, because they WILL! Which isn't a particularly good stand-in for actual tension.

Frustratingly Hood manages to get the hardest things right (the casting of Ender and the immaculate design of the Battle Room) but drops the ball when it comes to basic storytelling. He sprints through the story to suggest narrative momentum where there is none, and in his rush forgets to explain things that would help us connect with the impossible things we're seeing (the most notable thing to go unexplained is how battles are won or lost (or even fought) in the Battle Room, which is a rather crucial bit of info - if we don't understand that then we don't understand why Ender's as good as he is).

Hood is a workmanlike director, usually better suited to grounded dramas (Tsotsi) than anything sci-fi inflected (X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Here he simplifies Card's award winning book to such a degree that it'd be indecipherable to any who hasn't read it. It's only in the last few scenes that the film seems to escape its first act, finally telling the story it had been hiding in plain sight. But then it ends, and the credits roll.

Overall: 4.5/10

Minor spoilers! (highlight to read)

In a flashback/stock footage of the alien invasion we do battle against the invaders with fighter jets. Not futurist-type ones, but the ones we presently use. Jump forward 50-years and our tech, particularly that of our spaceships, is so powerful it would give Lord Vader and his Death Star pause. How did that happen exactly? And how did we build them and send them many many lightyears into the aliens home system by the time the story starts? From what I remember of the book this isn't an issue as we do battle with tech of a comparable level. Not sure why Hood changed that. It just adds to the film's many problems.

New Release Review: 'Captain Phillips'

Paul Greengrass isn't very good with titles. In the tedious and patronising Green Zone the characters are in the Green Zone (the international zone of Baghdad); in United 93 we're on the plane United 93; in Captain Phillips we mostly follow - drum roll! - Captain Phillips. They're not terribly evocative titles but they're a good snapshot of what Greengrass is about: he's fact based and to the point.

Captain Phillips is set almost entirely at sea, so it's off to a good start (is there a better home for Greengrass' jumpy-jarring-shaky-cam then on a boat?), and is based on the true story of the first hijacking of a ship under the American flag since the 19th century. Looking like a ringer amongst a cast of (for the most part) unknowns, Tom Hanks plays the titular captain. Moments after his introduction we meet his soon-to-be adversary Muse (pronounced Moo-say), played by the spookily good Barkhad Abdi. Phillips is tasked with guiding his container ship safely round the horn of Africa, which means going through Somali waters; Muse is tasked, by a rather angry gun wielding warlord, with interrupting that journey. What then ensues is a battle for survival, as Phillips tries to outrun and then outmanoeuvre Muse, and it'll have you either nail-biting, armchair-rending or knuckle-gnawing - yes, you'll have to pick one, I went with armchair-rending, it's less masochist. The tension is unrelenting, but it's also exhausting. An audience can't be kept cresting on a wave of relentless danger forever. Eventually it needs to crash down, giving them a moments respite, as well as some pay off. Otherwise you have to switch off, or at least step back, to get some distance from it. Most thrillers and action films work to a 90-minute running time, and I'd hazard a guess that that's because when you edge past that number, particularly with a thriller, you risk tiring out your audience. At 134-minutes Captain Phillips goes well over. That the tension never abates is impressive, at least after a fashion, but it might have been better if it had abated a tad, at least for a short spell.

It's only in the closing scenes that Greengrass eases off. And what he does, and more importantly what Hanks does, in that last stretch is staggeringly good. Greengrass has done 'real world action' plenty of times, and he's better than anyone else at it, but it's when he deals with its repercussions that I think he becomes a real (and utterly compelling) storyteller. It's almost frustrating how strongly it finishes. It's like reading a 500-page tome that, although intriguing, is often vexing, and probably isn't one you'd shout about from the rooftops; except it then has the temerity to finish with such audacity and skill that that choice - along with the earlier nail-biting options - is taken away from you. I guarantee* that as the credits roll you'll feel the same.

Overall: 8/10
Hanks' closing scenes: 11/10 (yes I'm going to 11; the hyperbole is necessary)

*As this is the Internet I'm sure someone will eventually inform me that they were left unmoved and that my guarantee is worth naught. If you really are left unmoved, the odds are you're a sociopath. You can take that as a formal diagnosis.

New Release Review: 'Filth'

Adapted from the book of the same name by Irvine Welsh - a book that was considered unfilmable, although the 'unfilmable' list grows ever shorter (just this year we've had Cloud Atlas, Midnight's Children, and As I Lay Dying) - Filth looks and feels like the bastard offspring of Alfie, Fight Club and Trainspotting, and that's no bad thing. It's anarchic, raucous, and uninhibited, but it's also ever on the verge of succumbing to the chaos and madness of its chosen subject: the unhinged Detective Sergeant Robertson (James McAvoy).

The story (or, in this case, 'the psychological landscape' might be a better term) follows DS Robertson as he juggles a shot for the position of Detective Inspector, a minor phone harassment case, and a seemingly straightforward murder case. He's also got other things preying on his mind pulling him in even more directions: his drug(s) habit; his psychiatric sessions with Dr. Rossi (Jim Broadbent), which quickly take a surreal turn; and his attempts to prove himself worthy of his family, particularly his wife.

McAvoy plays Robertson like an infinitely more warped version of Michael Caine's Alfie. He's got an endless stream of patter that distracts us, the people around him, and, after a fashion, himself as well. His machiavellian scheming is so all pervasive that it would give even Iago pause. What's impressive about McAvoy's performance is that Robertson inspires fascination more than hate. He's as close to irredeemable as an anti-hero gets, but just before he goes too far Jon S. Baird (the director, and the brave man who adapted the book) plays his trump card, increasing our understanding of Robertson tenfold and, just maybe, eliciting a tiny bit of sympathy for him.

The only thing that doesn't quite work is the psychiatric dream/hallucinatory scenes between Robertson and Rossi; they're important, for various reasons, but the tone and change of pacing trips up the film every time we come back to them. But considering how many of the madcap images and ideas the film tries out and nails, it's not as problematic as it might be in a more straightforward tale. Random sidenote: Rossi is a tapeworm in these sequences (a fact that I missed at the time). Make of that what you will.*

I don't know whether to recommend Filth; it's not as simple a thing to do as it usually is. Think of a book or film that exhilarated you but left you feeling like you'd been dragged through a hedge backwards: would you ask your friends or family to go through the same, knowing that the hedge dragging feeling is guaranteed but the exhilaration might not be? My gut says that it's worth chancing. What does yours tell you?

Overall: 8/10

*As I understand it the book had some chapters which were narrated from the perspective of a tapeworm living in Robertson's intestines, so it obviously ties in to the that, but how it plays into the themes of the film and the character - beyond some talk about the tapeworm's capacity for survival - is a tad unclear. If anyone knows, or wants to take a stab at guessing, please jot down your thoughts below.

New Release Review: 'Blue Jasmine'

I don't get Woody Allen. I feel I should say that upfront. I've never found his comedies terribly funny or his dramas particularly dramatic. His awkward and nebbish delivery - or that of his leading men doing their best impression of him - is fine for a couple of minutes but gets trying over a couple of hours. Fortunately his nervous patter has calmed somewhat over the years and even when he lets his anxieties run wild in halting monologues, delivered by leads that are created from the same recipe he's been using for years (intellectual job + stutter + bon mots), it's rather less irksome when delivered by a woman, as it is in Blue Jasmine (and in Vicky Cristina Barcelona).*

Cate Blanchett plays Jasmine, a New York socialite whose husband (Alec Baldwin) is arrested after perpetrating a massive financial fraud of the Bernie Madoff variety. Jasmine loses everything and has to move in with her adopted sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins), who lives in a cluttered apartment in San Francisco. Jasmine is desperate to return to her pampered lifestyle, and she does what she can to get it back, but her tenuous grasp on reality has a habit of getting in the way. Easily the best thing about Blue Jasmine is watching Blanchett hold her head high despite (as she sees it) the demeaning circumstances she now finds herself in. She's completely believable as the slowly unravelling, entitled Manhattanite, and I don't think she's ever been better. Even when the story lost me - which happened bang on the halfway mark - Blanchett didn't.

The problem with Blue Jasmine is that it has nothing to say. Nothing really happens and no one really changes. Which is about as close to a theme as Allen comes. All the characters are in stasis, unwavering and unchanging. Plenty of good and bad happens to both the sisters - they rarely deserve the good (such as a lottery win for Ginger and a wealthy husband for Jasmine) and they mostly don't deserve the bad (their entire world pulled out from under them). Life just happens. That's the main point of the film: life happens to you, whoever you are. You didn't deserve it and you probably won't learn from it. It's a bleak and simplistic point of view.

That Allen hasn't learnt anything as a director doesn't help. He made his first film back in 1966 and there's little to distinguish what he was doing then, to what he's doing now.

My advice would be to watch Blue Jasmine as part of a double bill with Richard Curtis's About Time. That way you can follow Allen's relentless pessimism with Curtis's relentless optimism, and come out a mostly balanced human being.

Overall: 6.5/10

*I'd argue that his mannerisms are less pronounced when women 'play' him, but it's equally possible that I'm just more tolerant of a beautiful woman being hyper-verbal and nervous than I am Allen (or one of his surrogates).

New Release Review: 'Prisoners'

I do like a good thriller. They're rather rare. What trips most of them up is the third act: the moment that all the plot threads get tidied up and explained away. Come the credits the ground is usually scattered with red herrings that added little, thematically or otherwise, and numerous instances of characters behaving moronically to make sure the plot keeps moving forward. The best thing most thrillers can do is to treat the mystery like the villain in a horror movie: the less you can make out, the less you can see, the more fascinating it is. Once we see it in the cold light of day it's almost always disappointing, plain, and drab. So when you watch a story that not only hangs together, but also engages you, there's a good chance you've experienced something rare. That's how I felt watching Prisoners.

Denis Villeneuve's first english language film is as effectively restrained in its pacing as his last effort (Incendies). Waiting for the answers to Prisoners mysteries is agonising, and that burning desire for an answer will make us complicit in some dark things to come. The story: a pair of young girls disappear just outside their homes, right in broad daylight. In no time at all Alex (Paul Dano) is arrested, and never has a man looked more guilty, all greasy hair, ill-fitting glasses and - worst of all - a parka. But he isn't forthcoming and there's no proof with which to hold him. The man heading up the case, the rather incongruously named Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal), is forced to let him go. Keller (Hugh Jackman) - father to one of the girls - knows it was Alex that did it. Or, rather, he 'knows' he did it in that 'my-gut-tells-me-so' fashion. Time is ticking on and the odds of a kidnap victim being found alive after 7 days is... Not good. So Keller kidnaps the supposed kidnapper and begins the task of breaking a man with the IQ of a 10-year-old.

It's a pulpy setup, but it's all so soberly shot (by the ever-brilliant Roger Deakins) and seriously acted that if often feels more like a straight drama than a thriller. Jackman gives his best performance since his criminally overlooked turn in the The Prestige. His coiled rage - at himself for losing his daughter, at everyone else for not finding her - gives every scene an edge of violence, even when he says or does nothing. Gyllenhaal is effective as the Detective, but I'm not sure his tics (particularly his hard blinks) add as much as he thinks they do, but he's never less than watchable. It's unlikely that Dano, as the possible culprit, will ever be better cast, having slowly dialled up his awkward and greasy persona that he first trialled in There Will Be Blood and has since tweaked and built upon (Cowboys & Aliens, Ruby Sparks, Looper).

The one thing that tarnishes the film is how slow Villeneuve makes Gyllenhaal's detective. There's a clue (that we're not supposed to realise is a clue) that we get at the same time as Gyllenhaal, and it's a striking enough visual that you won't forget it. Unless your Gyllenhaal. When another clue crops up that directly links to it (quite obviously), Gyllenhaal does little but blink hard and move on. I had to fight the urge to yell at the screen as if shouting at a would-be murder victim about to be stabbed. For a moment it'll look like he's got it, because how could he not? He's closed every case he's ever had. He's a supercop. But no, he just blinks at it even harder and wonders just what it's all about. Why can't he work it out? Because Villeneuve needs other things to happen first. It's the only moment the plotting slips up.

Also it's unclear what Prisoners is trying to say about vigilantism. Is it condoning Keller's actions? He wrestles with what he's doing, but not all that much. Plus it produces results, of a sort. As a study of a family torn apart and a man on the edge, the film's damn good. As a mystery thriller, it's pretty damn good too. But what it actually has to say thematically, about religion, family, intuition, and many other things besides, is less resonant and well thought out than I might have hoped.

Overall, despite its flaws: 8/10

Ish-Spoilers! (highlight to read):
There's a lot that's unclear, at least on first viewing, but the film's various plot threads just about hang together when you take the time to parse them. The visuals of the snakes and the mazes, Alex and Bob's real backstory (Bob being a sort of red herring, that actually isn't a red herring), are explained so briefly (and hazily) that they can be easily missed. I won't go into the whys and wherefores here, as I think most of you would prefer to work it out for yourselves - if you haven't already. I just thought it'd be worth noting that the film has fewer plot holes than has been suggested. It does have the odd narrative hiccup, but they're slight and do little to mar what is one of the year's better films.

Very Spoilery!
That being said, it was more than a little irksome when Gyllenhaal just walked into the actual kidnapper's house and caught them red handed because they left the door unlocked and suddenly went deaf - somehow failing to hear him knocking and shouting for them. 

Oh, and how does Alex have a driver's licence? Or any identification? When he was arrested shouldn't the police have found themselves chasing a false trail of IDs created or bought by Alex's 'Aunt'?