Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim – Guillermo Del Toro – Big monsters hit big robots – the very definition of ‘heavy-handed’: it is a simple and gleefully boyish formula which Del Toro invests with affectionate energy. However, while clearly presenting a step up from Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise, it still suffers from being grounded with insistently anonymous action man type characters. It was this rugged lack of soul that, for me, prevented Avatar from ever being anything more than visually appealing. Granted, being ‘visually appealing’ is the drive of these films, but would it really be too much of a stretch to extend some of  the imagination (poured with such abandon into the CGI monster creations) into depicting male characters that go beyond a bicep-centric heroism and devastatingly chiselled features. The exception in Pacific Rim is Idris Elba’s character, despite a fairly stock steely eyed solemnity with a buried heart of gold type - Elba alleviates the template with his undeniable gravitas and natural charisma.

 

The basic premise of Pacific Rim, aliens born from a tectonic breach in the earth’s crust, deep underwater as opposed to from outer space, is an enticing and relatively original concept. The monsters themselves, although often partially obscured by oceanic spray, darkness, pummeling robotic arms, or falling debris, are all portrayed with Del Toro’s familiar and detailed excitement in such creations. Somewhere between Roland Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla, hammerhead sharks and vast marauding crustaceans (all lovingly customized with the standard Alien jaws within jaws feature), my only complaint is that we don’t have more time with these creations – outside of the quick edit frenzy of combat and its murky, splashing obscurity. To do battle with these apocalyptic beasts, man has naturally created huge, man shaped robots ( a la Matrix Revolutions, Avatar, Transformers and, ticking jubilant nerd boxes everywhere: Warhammer 40k). This leads to an interesting dimension of the narrative in which, in order to control such lumbering machines, a telepathic link is made between co-pilots/controllers – drawing upon a shared neurological connection. Cue: montage of bleached out memories, whizzing past to suggest ‘plugging into’ the unconscious intuition of our dearly beloved warriors. It has a Minority Report-lite vibe, seasoned with Tron flourishes of neon. All fairly fun, underdeveloped possibilities abound. Del Toro knows his terrain, that of loud, popcorn crunching adrenalin, and thus here is not the time or space to bother with such ponderous implications. So, instead we have a comedy scientist duo. Depending on your mood, this comic relief could either seem mind numbingly abrasive or, kinda charming – in an amdram kinda way. I found them closer to the former – the scientist adopting a painfully ridiculous over-English accent and wielding a cane, in my eyes, took it too far! Overall, for what it aims for, and knows itself to be, Pacific Rim is a successful, loud and entertaining spectacle. With Del Toro behind the camera, the main complaint I am left with is that neither the intelligence nor originality of Pan’s Labyrinth surfaces with any influence. In that respect, it remains as standardized as its stock dialogue and the muscled mannequins of masculinity it sports in leading roles. 6.5/10

 

Philomena

Philomena – Stephen Frears – Following the true story of Philomena Lee (played by Judi Dench), an Irish nun whose son was taken from her at an early age, Stephen Frears’ film (with a screenplay written by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope) recreates her search in later life – driven by the journalist Martin Sixsmith (played by Steve Coogan). Sixsmith is depicted as an opportunist; drawn to Philomena’s story not through compassion but through a cynical, occasionally tragic, desire to regain publication and vocational relevance through its ‘human issues’ tabloid potential. The journalist terrain of the ‘human issue’, an area he had, in less desperate times, condescendingly dismissed as “stories about weak and vulnerable people to be read by weak and vulnerable people”. Coogan brings a straight-faced control and restraint to the role, assuring his presence – though at times unlikeable – always remains enjoyable to watch. Philomena is just as sensitively portrayed in a predictably terrific, although not necessarily typical, performance from Judi Dench. Philomena exudes her wittering and humble compassion with a simple and grounded honesty, tempered with trembling reserves of Catholic guilt and her own silenced anxieties.

Both performances are consistently strong – and Coogan and Dench find a natural pace and chemistry together. Unsurprisingly, considering Coogan’s involvement in the writing, some of the best scenes are those of humorous bickering – often redolent of the comedy in Winterbottom’s film/series The Trip. While Philomena offers a competent adaptation of this true and unnerving tale, supplemented by decent acting and the capacity for gently musing on faith, truth and the prickling tensions between the two, it did leave me (perhaps due to the overwhelming critical praise) slightly underwhelmed. Not that there is any expectation of grandiose or awe inspiring cinema in such a film but that, by the end, it did seem frequently more akin to a plush TV drama, than the involving cinematic drama it occasionally inhabits. Additionally, I worried that the film’s ending had the potential, despite both Coogan and Dench’s excellent performances, to diminish character complexities in favour of comedic neatness. There were moments when Sixsmith’s bristling, smug education and Philomena’s grounded priorities of morality and politeness, became convenient archetypes taking license with the story’s realism. However this pedantic fault was less a flaw of acting than of the film’s more general edits. The score seemed at times insistently sentimental, in a way that seemed discordantly ‘cinematic’ – given the understated naturalism embodied by Coogan and Dench. There were also certain cuts and moments of emphasis that seemed to condescendingly privilege a gentle chuckle over the less comfortable emotions at play. Overall it was an acting triumph of the two leads over the less consistent style and direction. 6.5/10

Alps

Alps – Giorgos Lanthimos –After directing the critically acclaimed oddity Dogtooth and acting in Attenberg, Lanthimos’ second feature uncoils its dark premise with a haunting mystery of restraint.

‘Alps’ is the name given to a group of people who offer unorthodox services in the counselling of mourning. In a warped therapy of substitution they temporarily fill the place of whoever has died, acting out (with varying degrees of conviction) the character and actions of the recently deceased. The character around which this darkly humorous theatre unravels is played, Aggeliki Papouilia, the same actress who portrayed the rebellious sister in Dogtooth. Lanthimos uses her gaunt and awkward frame to similar ends, enacting displays of social discomfort, detached sex, deranged dancing and a desperately uneasy misunderstanding of any emotional interaction. She is a nurse, while also being a member of ‘Alps’. She comes to enact the role of a girl who has recently died in a car crash. However, in reanimating the dead daughter’s existence for the bereaved family – dressing up and adopting her phrases – her new identity becomes a dangerously comforting alternative to her own lonely existence.

Unlike Dogtooth, which felt contained and neatly crafted in its blackly comic world and conducive to allegorical speculation, Alps feels more lingeringly unresolved. Although utilizing similar themes (the meanings arbitrarily mapped in language, social dislocation, deception, escape and intrusion) Alps eschews the starkly satirical bite of Dogtooth for something less immediate. Sharing a similarly concise running time of 90 minutes, whereas Dogtooth felt like a beguiling puzzle, Alps feels snatched away too soon. Our interpretations of the film come to stand in for its ghostly sadness, and like the bizarre ‘Alps’ collective we are driven to enact, fill and explore the same troubling lack of resolution that is left behind. 8.5/10

Friends with Benefits

Friends with Benefits – Will Gluck – Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis star in this abrasively perky romcom, bouncing through its lightweight world of artifice and beauty with effortless sitcom efficiency. There are many films that make New York seem iconic, alluring and dam near mythical (King Kong, The Apartment, Manhattan, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Saturday Night Fever, Mean Streets, The Godfather, Escape From New York, When Harry Met Sally…, As Good As It Gets, American Psycho, The Squid and the Whale…just a very eclectic and random few) but this film manages to make New York seem as vacuously anonymous as the resilient cheer, and inevitable relationship lows of the two character-less characters. Both Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are assigned their yuppie characters with over familiar broad strokes: the uber-driven, afraid to commit, but mischievously charming man of work – whose suit hides his puppy dog heart and a family problem (here it is an offensively slapstick portrayal of Altzheimers); Milu Kunis as the stunningly good looking, inhumanly buoyant, successful avatar of business know how, while still fostering a ‘girl next door’ accessibility (so beloved of American romance…*cough* Jennifer Anniston *cough*) and a wayward, hippie-esque mother . To return to the character assassination of New York, which Mila Kunis introduces Mr. Timberlake to with excitable pride, perhaps the main reason for its grating nature is the recurring incorporation of dancing ‘flash mobs’ as a plot driving, romantic motif. I wanted to vomit – everywhere. For a film that tries to imagine and depict a relationship simply about sex (that hard to navigate ‘fuckbuddies’ terrain) it trips up on all the conventions it superficially shrugs off in the ‘bubbly’ script. 3/10

Ah...such japes!

Rage

Rage – Sally Potter – The first feature film to debut on mobile phones, making early and imaginative use of the possibilities of Multi-Platform releases. The film uses the device of brightly coloured backgrounds and talking head style interviews. Through these interviews the diverse and astounding cast are introduced - and a murder mystery scenario emerges. The film centres around the activities of a fashion show, interrupted at several points by unexpected catastrophe and tragedy. The actors are mesmeric; the potentially limiting style of ‘talking head’ monologues manages to sustain its impressive strength of dramatic tension throughout. The cast is beyond amazing, everyone masters an individual ability to transfix, entertain and startle: Jude Law turns in a jaw dropping performance/transformation as an American drag queen with a Russian Alter-ego; Judi Dench plays a sardonic and intellectually disillusioned fashion critic; Eddie Izzard becomes an emblem of sharply dressed greed and power; Steve Buscemi plays a world weary photographer, convinced of his own philosophies; Lily Cole plays a young and vulnerable model; Riz Ahmed is particularly memorable as a pizza delivery man whose aspirations of fame quickly sour; David Oyelowo struts his parody of  retro incarnations of ‘cool,’ posturing as a literary detective armed with ridiculous quips and quotes; I could continue, but these were the highlights. Using fashion as a vessel to explore fame, vanity, representation and communication, Sally Potter crafts an intelligent and compellingly entertaining masterpiece. 9/10

 

Jude Law as 'Minx'

Lunacy

Lunacy – Jan Svankmajer – The Czechoslovakian, surrealist animator probes into the popular surrealist fascination with insanity and depicts an asylum run by its patients. The main character is haunted by a recurring dream in which he succumbs to the same madness that consumed his mother, in the dream he is cornered by two bald doctors (looking like a maniacal version of Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum) who chase him with a beckoning strait-jacket. The film takes its inspiration from two Edgar Allen Poe short stories, ‘The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether’ and ‘The Premature Burial,’ supplemented with the blasphemous and orgiastic menace of Marquis de Sade. Svankmajer is surrealist in the traditionally capitalized sense of the word – subscribing with polemic conviction to Bretonian ideas and the early surrealist texts. This carries with it the same problems inherent in Breton’s manifestoes and recalls the movement’s often naïve inability to recognise its own limits and contradictions. Alongside the objective mystification of Women, the romanticised obsession with mental illness was a defining case in point. This film is at its best in the interludes of animation, where Svankmajor’s magical and inventively morbid skills are made entertainingly apparent. While the rest of the film is interesting and often visually thrilling, its fidelity to traditional surrealism makes the central portrayal of madness, and its treatment, as questionable as some of Breton’s least laudable views. 6.5/10

Human Centipede

Human Centipede 1 – Tom Six – There are some things in life that you know, without equivocation, will be unpleasant. And yet, human curiosity nibbles away at the evidence of rationality and before you know it, like intrepid advocates of touching wet paint, we are plunging into the debased inevitability of Human Centipede. Alas.

I can remember, fairly vividly, the moment in which I first heard of the film’s twisted concept. I remember being huddled around a friend’s phone, watching the trailer over a post-lecture pint (twas back in the heyday of BA daytime drinking) and feeling nauseated and exhilarated. Pretty much the two key elements to the film, with one sad alteration – exhilaration is no longer on the ‘muffled-mouth-to-anus’ menu.

Never had a pitch for a film been as simple as Tom's infantile and disturbing doodle on the napkin. 

Once you’ve seen the trailer you have more than seen the film. I say ‘more than’ as the trailer preserves the possibility that the film may in fact build upon its central grotesque premise, that maybe it will be allegorical, or frightening, or startling, or deeply blackly comic. It is the wet paint you knew would be wet …and yet touched anyway. Shame on you.

It is the undeveloped result of having an extravagantly disturbing notion, dreamt up with the same sophistication as a playground insult, and then lacking the artistry or craft to do anything remotely interesting with said notion. The underlying feeling from watching such a film is one of monotonous nausea and an accumulating annoyance at having expected anything other. If you have seen the trailer, heard of the ‘ingenious,’ scatological, DIY Siamese, crawling, surgical nightmare, then: you have no need to watch this. It is a badly made, badly thought out, juvenile mess of titillating provocation, devoid of any of the intelligence or style to make such an act worthwhile. I’m all for horror or the grotesque and always receptive to indulging provocation and titillation, yet this is simply dumb. Perhaps the only redeeming features are the faintly amusing references made to the crazy professor’s ‘trial-run’ pet Labradors, condemned to become ‘My Sweet-Three-Dog’. Apart from that, avoid experiencing what is essentially a depressing low for human endeavour. However, that encapsulation suggests this has some grandiose place in filmic history, as an emblematic and abortive aberration that will be remembered as something to forget…a summary far too monumental for this meagre turd. When I first heard about it, I thought Human Centipede would be in the vein of a budget monster movie, I envisaged a towering human/centipede hybrid, crushing buildings and doing battle with Godzilla. I would still like to see that movie; thousands of insect legs grafted onto a herculean mutation, swatting bi-planes and catching screaming blondes in its lusty mandibles. 1/10