Mission Imposspielberg, Vol 3: Grails and Planes

Having made film after film of capers, adventures and blockbusters for kids, Spielberg’s output took a more serious turn in the mid 80s.  Whether an effort to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker or just to try his hand at something a little different (hell, Scorsese made a musical in the late 70s), the results are not the sort of films that you turn to for something reliable on a Saturday night, but the quality remains high.

His 1985 Alice Walker adaptation The Colour Purple marked a departure from anything he’d done before.  A mostly very serious film with some essential flashes of levity, this covers 30 years in the life of the abused and downtrodden Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg and Desreta Jackson), from her forced marriage to ‘Mister’ Albert (a monstrous but slightly comical Danny Glover), the forging of her friendships, and her eventual emancipation.  Covering such a long period, it’s an oddly meandering film with a loose narrative structure, but it features some wonderful emotional payoffs.  The moment where Oprah Winfrey’s defeated, almost catatonic Sofia breaks her fugue state and lays down some home truths is nothing short of beautiful, and if Celie’s family reunion fails to bring a lump to your throat, I would recommend checking your pulse.

Grown up Spielberg is still fun and recognisably Spielberg, with some wonderful grace notes, his trademark visual flair used where appropriate, and an uplifting very deserved happy ending.  One or two things didn’t set well with me: despite his moment of generosity, I didn’t think that Albert had earned enough sympathy for redemption, but the film stops short of demonising him; and Quincy Jones’ score has not aged well.  In fact, there are times in the film where it borders on twee and threatens to step on the toes of the brilliant drama.

Keeping things literary and serious, Spielberg went for J.G Ballard adaptation Empire Of The Sun.  Probably the second best film of the 80s to feature the word ‘Empire’ in the title, it’s a brilliant movie, often meandering and without a traditional cause-and-effect plot.  It’s typical Spielberg fare (fractured family unit, centred around a child character coming of age/losing innocence, strong sense of awe and amazement throughout), despite the heavy subject matter.

A story about a boy (Jim – a brilliant, 13-year-old Christian Bale) who is separated from his parents as Japan invades China, and follows his experiences to the end of WW2.  Obsessed with aviation, he admires the Japanese fighter pilots despite being the enemy, and in a heartbreaking climactic scene, shows how a child’s naivety can build friendships on opposing sides.  This is classic Spielberg, showing a more serious side of his work which was not widely acknowledged until Schindler’s List 6 years later.  Empire has some truly spectacular moments, on par with anything he’s done before or since; the scene where Jim is separated from his parents is brilliantly orchestrated chaos, and the sequence where Jim watches the U.S. bombing of the Japanese airbase from the roof of a half-destroyed building is nothing short of spectacular.

Opting to return to familiar territory next with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg brought his most popular character back for (what we hoped was) one last adventure.  After seeing Temple Of Doom falling a little short of the high standards set by Raiders, the ante is well and truly upped for Indy’s third film. Again using a well-known religious artefact as a Macguffin, the juggernaut plot takes in one classic set piece after another.  A young Indy intro gives us some pleasing insight into the events that made him the character we know, as well as establish his relationship with Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery).  Spielberg is clearly relishing putting Indy in all kinds of peril as snakes, a lion, a rhino, and grave robbing goons all have a go at him but we see the origins of the whip, the phobia, and the hat in the process.  After a brief stop for exposition courtesy of the villainous Julian Glover (kind of a weak link in the film, but that’s nitpicking on my part) we are then treated to the Venice catacombs (with rats starring in the obligatory disgusting animal sequence) and boat chase, Austrian castle and motorbike escape, the airship escape, the German tank fight (probably my favourite part of the film) before the final holy grail sequence.  Thanks to Monty Python, anything that now involves the holy grail will do well to avoid any unwanted humour, and the final sequence with the 900 year-old knight and skirts very close to being silly, but Spielberg manages to keep the tone just right and the unpleasant death of Glover’s Walter Donovan is up there with Raiders’ melting Nazis.

Spielberg manages to create a really messed up family unit (Indy, his dad, the buffoonish Sallah, and the childlike Brody) and provides a much better female character than he did in Temple with Alison Doody’s treacherous Elsa.  It’s better than the predecessor, never going to live up to Raiders but The Last Crusade is still cracking entertainment, and really should have lived up to it’s name.

I don’t remember having seen Always before.  Despite being a lifelong Spielberg fan, it’s just not about anything I’m interested in.  A story about a pilot (Richard Dreyfuss) who dies fighting a forest fire, and then pretty much stalks his girlfriend (Holly Hunter) from beyond the grave, it always (see what I did there?) struck me as saccharine and schmaltzy.  And I was kind of right.

Dreyfuss is brilliant in Always, as he frequently is.  He brings an everyman humanity and sense of humour to a part that would maybe seemed better suited to Richard Gere or Kevin Costner at the time.  Dreyfuss nails it: the scene where, as a ghost, he professes his undying love to an unhearing Hunter’s is earnest and powerful because of him.  Hunter is also great, as she normally is, in a role that makes her at once love interest and independent, highly competent pilot.  Also great is John Goodman, whose comic relief makes the film much better and less twee than it could have been.

That said, Always is not a great film.  A remake of 1943 Victor Fleming film A Guy Named Joe, it tells a tale of a man who has to let go of his past in order for his soul to settle.  In this respect, it’s almost an anti-love story. A few of his nifty trademark gracenotes aside, there’s not a massive amount of his visual flair at work here and few truly memorable scenes.  The whole thing seems to have been shot in various degrees of soft focus, too.

So maybe this is just Spielberg’s romantic side coming out to play for a while; maybe it’s just his tribute to a more innocent time. Ultimately though, the 80s, arguably the decade that was kindest to his career, both started and ended on relative low points for him.  But Spielberg at a low point is easily the match for most directors on their best day.  Except for 1941. Never 1941.

Film Review: Jack Reacher - Never Go Back

Star power doesn’t work any more.  There was a time not so long back that branding a film’s poster with ‘Starring Julia Roberts’, ‘Starring Tom Hanks’, ‘Starring Bruce Willis’ and so forth was enough to guarantee at least a moderate hit.  These days, franchises and recognisable properties are more important than the stars themselves. Those three have all endured struggles of late and today’s big stars are often in favour of doing odd, challenging films rather than guaranteed hits (see DiCaprio in The Revenant or Brad Pitt in The Tree Of Life).

Tom Cruise was easily at the top of that list for a time but looking at his C.V. for the last ten years, anything approaching a hit for him as been an existing franchise or based on something that’s already popular.  It’s a shame, because Live, Die, Repeat and Valkyrie weren’t half bad.  Star power has waned so badly that I know people who would actively avoid a film because of the star.  Normally, that star is Tom Cruise.

Disobeying the law of diminishing returns, the Mission: Impossible franchise goes from strength to strength, with the last two films probably the best in the series.  Never Go Back sees Cruise attempt to cement a second franchise in the public eye, with Lee Child’s ex-military drifter Jack Reacher now looking like his new pet project.  Reacher is already a popular character, with 19 published novels, but it helps that the film is really good too.

2012’s Christopher McQuarrie-directed Jack Reacher was surprisingly good.  On paper it was a seen-it-before thriller; an ex-army hard ass working outside the law to solve a crime, the project nothing more than an ego boost with a hilariously miscast short-arse star playing 6’5” Reacher.  Well paper counts for shit and the film boasted intrigue, action and a surprisingly brutal turn from Cruise.  It did respectably well and Cruise, staying on board as star and producer, hired The Last Samurai director Edward Zwick for Reacher Round 2.

A more complicated plot involving shady arms deals and conspiracies among Generals is not the film’s strong suit, neither is a 2^nd act slowdown, with Zwick often getting too bogged down in details.  However when Never Go Back does well, it does really well.  Grouping Reacher with Cobie Smulders’ tough Lieutenant Turner and a 15 year-old kid (Danika Yarosh) who may or may not be his daughter is a smart move, adding emotional stakes and some welcome peril to somebody other than Reacher himself.

Cruise seldom gets the credit he deserves as an actor.  Magnolia, Eyes Wide Shut and maybe Interview With The Vampire aside. Now aged 54, his matinee idol looks are starting to fill with crags and this lends him a roughness and maturity which suit Reacher down to the ground. He nails the comic timing and emotional moments when he needs to.  He can still do the action beats, too, and more convincingly than, say, Liam Neeson, whose perennial ‘ageing hard man’ roles seem more motivated by money than they are interest in the material.  Never Go Back sees Reacher up against an effective villain in Patrick Heusinger’s nameless assassin. Heusinger adds shades of humour and menace to a character which you otherwise would have seen in at least 4 of the Bourne films, giving Reacher something to work against which he didn’t really get from Jai Courtney or Werner Herzog in the first film.  The Big Bad here is played by Robert Knepper of Twin Peaks and Prison Break fame. This doesn’t quite work: since Knepper is so associated with playing bastards there’s no way he could conceivably play a virtuous character.

My only other gripe is with the ending, which, after a satisfyingly brutal (for a 12A-rated film) fistfight, wraps things up in too neat a package which borders on twee.  With this film, Jack Reacher is becoming established alongside the outside-the-law, one man army sub-genre that includes the likes of Bourne, Taken, John Wick and The Equalizer.  That said, there are parts of this that feel a little familiar but not enough to spoil it.

A couple of minor issues aside, Never Go Back is a more than solid thriller. And in a time where audiences seem less and less adventurous, flocking to familiar properties again and again, there is room for another franchise if they’re as well made as Reacher’s two outings.  Cruise is clearly invested in the project and has made sure that the standard remains high despite the change in creative input.  The title may say never go back, but I personally hope that Jack Reacher will return.

Film Review: War On Everyone

I’m a fan of John Michael McDonagh’s first two films so it was very much the strength of the director that drew me to War On Everyone.  The Guard and Calvary both boasted strong concepts, a thematic identity, well drawn central characters and bittersweet touches.  There were also highly literate and McDonagh’s fledgling voice spoke with a pitch black sense of humour.  They were both distinctively Irish; the setting as important to the story as any event onscreen.

Why, then, he’s chosen to relocate to Albuquerque for War On Everyone only adds confusion to a fairly confused film.  I didn’t dislike the film per se, I just couldn’t find a lot to like, and I tried really hard.

War On Everyone is a parody on the buddy cop genre, with trope after trope thrown in and masterfully undermined.  Some of these are overt and some are nicely subtle, so you feel like you’ve seen them before: a wealthy British villain who breeds horses; a flamboyantly-dressed androgynous henchman; wipe edits aplenty; a shooting gallery sequence; an run-ins with the chief who’s “taking heat from above…”

Whether it’s deliberate or not, McDonagh has dropped the ball on one crucial matter: his two leads are both playing the Bad Cop role.  Alexander Skarsgard and Michael Pena, fun as they are, play cops who are, respectively, terrible and slightly less terrible.  It’s like teaming Riggs with Riggs.  While admittedly this would prevent the horrible softening of his character that takes place after the first Lethal Weapon, but without Murtaugh’s grounding influence there is no character dynamic.  The leads are both good and do what they can to bounce off each other but when they’re both criminals, with approving families, much of the dramatic tension is gone.

The other issue with the film is really no fault of its own, but the timing isn’t great.  Recent cinematic history has given us some cracking examples of parodies and spoofs on the buddy cop genre, all of which were funnier and more keenly observed than War On Everyone.  The wonderful Hot Fuzz set the bar as high as it’s likely to go, taking every genre convention you’re likely to see in an L.A.-set blockbuster and transplanting them to rural England.  The extremely knowing 21 Jump Street and self aware sequel 22 Jump Street were completely stupid but squeezed the genre for every laugh. My personal highlight: the homoerotic undertones of the buddy genre are revealed in a riff on the lobster scene from Annie Hall.  McDonagh’s own debut The Guard, billed by one reviewer as “Lethal Weapon meets Father Ted”, offered its own spin on buddy cops and did a really good job of it, too.  His desire to revisit the same turf again is strange to say the least.  The Albuquerque setting, too, is strange; it feels like even a cursory nod to Breaking Bad was needed in order to secure the funding…

McDonagh’s voice, so prominent in his first two films, is at once both muted and overwhelming here.  The Guard and Calvary focused on two men, both flawed authority figures, and their importance within the community; they are two films which spiral towards death.  While it’s admirable that War On Everyone deliberately does the exact opposite, it’s also not as clear what McDonagh’s getting at.  Just telling a story about two corrupt cops shaking down criminals for money before eventually discovering a conscience simply isn’t enough after what he’s done before. 

His style of dialogue doesn’t quite work here either.  Much like Kevin Smith, whose swathes of dialogue about Star Wars and weed went from fresh to tedious within about two films, McDonagh’s tendency towards philosophical ramblings is tiresome.  There were a few eye-rolling moments in his previous films: dialogue about Dostoefsky and Moby Dick from characters it didn’t really fit, did seem a little contrived. These were forgivable in the context of better films with stronger thematic content but War On Everyone often comes off as trying too hard to be clever: in one scene, Steven Soderbergh is described as “an auteur” rather than a director; a character discusses Pythagoras’ ideas about death; the climactic stand off is punctuated by a philosophical joke/riddle; and there’s a half-heartedly running debate over the origin of a quote.  None of this is really necessary: it adds little, and seldom fits the characters.  McDonagh should also realise that just putting an Irish character in a place you wouldn’t necessarily expect to see one doesn’t make him funny.  The net effect is that a decent film is speckled with pretention.

War On Everyone, however, is a very funny film.  There are some genuinely great moments and as a genre parody, the plot points are all well executed, your expectations both met and undermined in quite a satisfying way.  It’s such a shame that for his American debut, McDonagh has travelled so far from his roots while trying too hard to exert his identity, to the point where it feels forced.  A great cast tries really hard but unfortunately they’re on the losing side of this war.

Gig Review: Red Fang/Torche/God Damn, Newcastle Riverside, 04/10/16

There are times where you go see a band that nobody you know has heard of and some part of you thinks you’re being really cool for doing so.  People ask you who you’re going to see and you tell them anyway, knowing full well that they will neither know nor care about your answer but still, you cling to those cool points.  Finally you arrive at the gig, proud of yourself for having discovered a band so obscure that they can’t even sustain their own existence only to find that every member of the band are wearing t-shirts for even more obscure bands that you’ve never heard of, thus reminding you how thoroughly uncool you really are.

This was my experience of what turned out to be a really enjoyable gig.

Wolverhampton three piece God Damn are up first. They boast heavy, fuzzy guitar tones and killer grooves, the kind that Monster Magnet used circa Dopes To Infinity, but mix it up with elements of the dynamics of 90s alterative bands,  Think The Jesus Lizard playing Fu Manchu’s guitars.  They’re also really bloody good.  Playing with no bass player (guitar, keys, drums), they often switch instruments and make for a really exciting live prospect.  Keep it up, fellas.

Torche released one of the great underrated albums of the decade with 2012’s Harmonicraft and didn’t quite match it with the recent Restarter, but they’ve done enough to make me wonder why I didn’t discover them sooner.  Heavy, fuzzy, full of hypnotic grooves but Steve Brooks’ laid back, high-register vocals keep them accessible to the point where I’m surprised they’re not more widely known.  They play with minimum fuss but maximum impact, with impressive segues between songs even when the tempo shifts.  Some of their best tunes get an airing, including the brilliant ‘Sky Trials’, which crams an impressive array of riffs into its 78 second running time.

I’ll confess that I was at this gig more for Torche than anything else, but I like Red Fang and I was curious about how they’d sound.  About to release their 4^th album, the Portland four piece sound not unlike early Queens Of The Stone Age (before anyone knew who they were), mixed with some of Mastodon’s quirkier moments.  Considering how dense and thick Torche sounded, Red Fang sound a little tinny and hollow at first but this is soon addressed.  At times they look a little shy onstage; a bit of a problem for headliners.  Their stage set up is also strange: like Mastodon, vocal duties are shared between guitarist and bassist, but bassist Aaron Beam has a habit of fucking off beside the drum kit during instrumental breaks, which leaves a bit of a frontman gap and an oddly unbalanced space onstage.  It's distracting when a band member keeps buggering off to the back of the stage!

That said, they do play really well, offering a varied set but not entirely engaging or interacting.  Their brand of sludge/stoner metal is elevated above the pack by the band’s sense of humour and rock and roll sensibilities, with an emphasis on fun over bludgeon.  It’s the same problem that’ll stop Mastodon from ever reaching arena level: big bands need a frontman.  However, it’s unfair to reduce them to a few obscure musical similarities when Red Fang have an identity of their own but until one of them steps us the stage presence they’re unlikely to break out of playing venues this size. 

Overall this was a fun night, but one spent pondering how obscure one’s band has to be for a fairly obscure stoner band to wear on of your t-shirts. That I had to think about this proves that I am the least cool person you know.

Film Review: Don't Breathe (that's the name of the film, not an instruction...)

They call it ‘mumblegore’, apparently.  Taking some facets of the largely dull ‘mumblecore’ movement (naturalism, un-cinematic, a focus on the mundane) and applying them to the more insalubrious, supernatural and downright nasty aspects of life, it’s much more interesting than watching young, unemployed New Yorkers argue.  Like any good movement, people will rarely make a film to deliberately fit into it, and the aesthetic criteria at work are a little more vague than the more obvious movements; say, film noir, or the frat comedies of the early 00s.  With a focus on real situations, naturalistic acting and atmosphere over arterial spills, the ‘gore’ part of the name is often more pun than it is particularity.

The movement has produced some cracking films so far, with the likes of The Babadook, In Fear, Creep (not the one set on the subway), Kill List and It Follows all bringing interesting new ideas to the table at a time when mainstream horrors are deliberate throwbacks like Insidious and The Conjuring.  Fede Alvarez’ Don’t Breathe is a worthy addition to the canon, offering a great concept (amateur burglars bite off more than they can chew when they target a blind but resourceful war vet), jumps, almost constant tension, and some moments of genuine unpleasantness.  It also has a post-crash Michigan setting where the urban decay adds so much to the atmosphere and sense of isolation and desperation.

It starts badly.  We meet the three thieves mid-robbery in a scene which establishes the characters, all of whom are either flirting with or balls-deep inside cliché.  Daniel Zovatto’s Money (yes, he’s really called that) is all baggy pants, cornrows, expletive-spewing bravado.  If nobody else in the film had wanted to kill him, I would have done it.  Rocky (Jane Levy) is his girlfriend: horrible home life (abusive mum with swastika-tattoo boyfriend) but a little sister to save, she wants one last job to set her up for leaving it all behind.  Dylan Minnette’s Alex has a crush on her and facilitates the jobs while chickening out every few minutes.  For 20-odd minutes, I was getting both annoyed and bored at the same time.

I should have had more faith.  From the second their mark, played by an impressively cut Stephen Lang, sits up in bed and fixes a blind stare on Money as he creeps around the room, Don’t Breathe is a tension machine.  The predator is blind, so the burglars quickly become acutely aware of the sounds they make.  This careful manipulation of one sense is inspired.  The recent Lights Out tried to do it with, well, light, and it worked until the film started reading from the Third Act Textbook.  Don’t Breathe just plain works.  As soon as you think you’re heading for a seen-it-before climax, it throws a curveball made from a turkey baster and sample jar (yes, really). Any sympathies you might have had are rapidly questioned.

Alvarez exerts a demonic control over the audience, showing you details you’ll need to refer to later (a hammer, a padlocked room, a hidden gun, a crawl space between floors), evoking sympathy for Lang’s unnamed character before making him both terrifying and repulsive.  It’s largely set within one house and Alvarez by turns gives characters reason to leave, go back in, and then traps them within when they want to escape.  By this time, he’s done enough to make you like the characters just enough to give a sense of threat.

His hidden weapon is Lang.  A damaged combat vet and victim of personal tragedy, we know he’s sitting on a cash fortune and find out a lot more as matters unfold.  Lang’s performance, almost wordless for much of the film, is believable and complex.  You believe he has both the skill and motivation to kill; his blindness is played well, being both hindrance and advantageous to him as well as a nifty plot device; and when he does speak his voice sounds like a jagged chasm.  As monsters go, you begin to feel for him as well as being scared that he’d choke you to death for looking at his dog.

Alas, the third act does throw in the odd horror cliché, namely the to-be-expected sequences where previously hapless characters suddenly find A-Team levels of resourcefulness when the story suits them.  This doesn’t really spoil anything, though, and the final denouement is satisfyingly downbeat and low-key, the end leaving a chill without dangling the obligatory sequel threads.

It’s hard to make an effective horror these days. No other genre succumbs to the weight of expectation so much; a disadvantage when the purpose is to shock and surprise.  More so than the found footage and torture porn sub-genres, the loose tropes of the mumblegore movement are more a canvas than a set of formulae. Don’t Breathe, while not as masterpiece, is a fine picture on that canvas.  But painted in blood. By a blind guy.