Friday night double bill: Annie Hall / Eraserhead

Following on from last week's bizarre pairing is this bad date of Annie Hall and Eraserhead. Surely the most mismatched double bill ever. Lobster and chicken in a basket.

Friday night double bill: Straw Dogs / The Food Of The Gods.

A genuine British double bill poster from the 70s. What were they thinking? Sam Peckinpah's insanely violent and problematic siege film, paired with a limp eco-horror giant rats and chickens movie. God, I miss double bills.

 

 

Bricking It. The Lego Movie

This was going to be so easy....

I was going to start by paraphrasing Stewart Lee's Harry Potter skit: 

"Have you seen 'The Lego Movie'?"," Have you seen The Lego Movie?". "No. I haven't seen The Lego Movie because I'm a grown man who enjoys the films of Kurosawa, Goddard and Kubrick. So fuck off!"

But then I saw it....and I have to say that for a 90 minute toy commercial...it's pretty bloody good.

You know those guys that collect Lego minifigs and stand around in shops for hours fondling the little foil bags. I'm not that guy. 

You know those people that go on about how you should see some kids' film because it's full of really grown up jokes and it's clever because it's full of cinematic references and catchy songs.  Nope, I'm not really that guy either.

You know those people that like to be surprised by something even if they think they've seen it all before. People who go on about pure cinema and subversive messages and then ramble on about alchemy and allegory and deconstructing and reinventing myths. I'm more that sort of guy.

So there's something for everyone.

Even kids.

Actually, kids will probably enjoy it least of anyone. Kids just want to skip around the cinema and shout out loudly and go the toilet every 5 minutes. That's why we invented DVDs.

Anyway....where were we? Ah yes, 'The Lego Movie' a film that had me laughing all the way through its perfectly constructed 100 mins. It's charming and playful and inventive. It stands tall with Pixar and Aardman but has a distinct flavour of its own. It feels less focus group targeted than you'd expect and is surprisingly freewheeling. It has a better Batman than 'Batman', more wisdom than 'The Matrix' and the best good cop/bad cop routine ever. It's fast and funny and family friendly. It's also full of strange Illuminati symbols and masonic messages about master builders but don't let that kind of subliminal mind-control stuff put you off.

Is it preachy? A bit, but then I'd rather that than have it be mindless. Big business is evil, we are all special but don't know it, we need to restore our need for play and creativity. What's to argue with?

It's hard to dismiss it as a cynical marketing exercise because the merchandise is already out there and doing very well nicely thank you without any help needed. It's just a big, fun, goofy idea that has clearly been developed with real talent and care and a belief that it's worthwhile.

If you have any little kid left in your heart go see it. It's awesome!

Friday Night Double Bill: The Thomas Crown Affair/Out Of Sight

Two for Valentine's Day. Super cool, super sexy, super duper.

No Direction Home. The Freewheelin' 'Inside Llewyn Davis'

I love this film; really, really love it, which is a surprise because I don't think the Coen brothers have made a wholly satisfactory film in decades.

I like them, but the plaudits for 'True Grit' didn't chime with me and 'No Country For Old Men' was astonishingly overrated. At least they had the good sense not to direct their script of the reworked 'Gambit', but even so, I was starting to think they'd 'lost it'.

If I'm being honest, I have to say that 'Inside Llewyn Davis' didn't appeal much. The story of a singer/songwriter trying to make it in Greenwich village in the early sixties sounds like a riff on the well intentioned but underwhelming folk mockumentary 'A Mighty Wind' from 2003. I was expecting a middling mix of oddball characters, forced cool and knowing, sardonic smugness.

It's not like that at all; it's a bittersweet wonder that reminded me of those early Jim Jarmuch films 'Stranger Than Paradise' and 'Down by Law'. It feels like it this one comes from the heart.

Don't get hung up on the sixties folk scene thing. This is a timeless story; intimate but epic. It should resonate with you because it feels truthful. It's a sort of feel good movie about failure, if there is such a thing.

If you've ever known someone with a talent for something, but maybe just not enough talent you'll get it. Maybe that's you. Maybe that's all of us.

The look of the film takes it's cues from the front cover of 'The Freewheelin Bob Dylan'. You'll feel the chill, but there's a human warmth to it all. This is no "hey look how clever we are at recreating the period detail of the sixties" exercise. You'll barely notice it is the sixties, as you'll just be swept up in the story. This is the Coens at their least flashy; serving the story rather than striving to impress. Llewyn Davis is not a substitute for "the Bob Dylan" story, but it does dovetail with it in a satisfying way.

The acting is masterful. Oscar Isaac is a revelation, Carey Mulligan creates a real person rather than just another part. The obligatory John Goodman cameo is very welcome. It's good to see F. Murray Abraham's formidable presence again too. 

All of them are upstaged by a cat. That wonderful, wonderful cat, that turns this shaggy dog story into something feline and elusive. The Coens can be too cynical and cruel to take at times and whilst there is some misanthropy here, there is also a resigned acceptance of the melancholy of it all. It's emotional without ever being manipulative or sentimental. It's vinyl, not digital.

Maybe it just caught my mood right. Maybe it was just the perfect film for a cold, blustery February morning but I've got the feeling that me and Llewyn are going to become very good friends over the next few years.

Have you tried switching it off and back on again? The 'Robocop' reboot.

We're all agreed that the 1987 'Robocop' is a near flawless highlight of 80s pop culture right? It was the film that Tim Burton's 'Batman' should have been; an ultra-violent joyride with brains and laughs and gore. It was the closest thing we could get to Judge Dredd (unfilmed until 1995) on the big screen. It was my generation's 'Dirty Harry'. It was cyberpunk before we understood the term. It had a gritty, futuristic setting before it was fashionable and took an unblinking look at runaway corporate greed, corruption and privatization. It raised the bar for action movies, used it's genre trappings intelligently and worked equally well as political satire, media piss-take and comic book entertainment. If that wasn't enough, the story of a cyborg wreslting with suppressed memories was enough to keep University media courses talking about subjectivity, simulacrum, body/mind schisms and the end of modernity for decades. Beneath it all was a real emotional core: the story of a machine that discovers it was once a man and fights to regain the humanity that was lost.

The 2014 'Robocop' is basically just another man in an exoskeleton suit battling big robots story....because we've not had enough of those recently. The spoof commercials and black humour are gone, the direction is flat, the action repetitive and tired. It gets off to a great start with a satire of drone style military policing in a Middle East conflict zone and sets you up for a great ride but once we're past the titles it starts to lose it's way.

This time the film goes to great lengths to assure us what a great family man Murphy is, what a great cop he is and what a great sharpshooter he is before he is injured and the the armour is fitted. It's interminable and only made worse by the fact that Joel Kinnamon is not so much wooden, but just dull to watch. It makes you realise how truly great Peter Weller's performance was in the original.

In the first act of the Verhoeven's 1987 film we are introduced to a future world and rooting for an under resourced police dept battling against impossible odds as anarchic criminals run riot around Detroit. The villain is truly sadistic; we see Murphy's limbs blasted off at point blank range with shotguns. In addition we've laughed at the adverts of tomorrow,  and seen a prototype war droid inadvertently blast away yuppies at a board meeting. In the first act of this film we've seen lots of kissy kissy stuff and lots of bang bang shooty bang bang stuff but it feels very TV movie, very safe. Then you realise that this is a 12A certificate film. No wonder it feels compromised. The original set a new standard for what levels of gore mainstream audiences would accept with their popcorn. When Murphy is politely killed offscreen (more or less) by a car explosion you know this film is going to have no bite. You know it's going to be just another 'superhero' film.

That said, there are still some queasy blood and guts scenes to savour when we see Alex Murphy quite literally stripped back to the living innards that still remain beneath the suit. It's a surreal image; both unforgettable and uncomfortable. The whole 'rebuilding' sequence is well done and the 'does the machine rule the man, or the man rule the machine?' premise sets up the  drama for the rest of the film. Unfortunately it doesn't really pay off.

Once Robocop hits the streets the film becomes quite tedious again. It's not so much robocop as the missing Daft Punk brother on a bike. You half expect Nile Rodgers to pop up playing some funky guitar. As far as the music goes it has to be said that the soundtrack is fucking awful at times. There's a key action sequence scored to some yodelling. Yep, Robocop's first field test is scored to 'Hocus Pocus' by 70's Dutch prog rockers Focus. I'm sure Jeremy Clarkson would approve. It tells you where this film is coming from. It's all very Top Gear.

*spoilers*

The final act abandons all intelligence and opts instead for some 'running around shooting things with night vision goggles on' type footage and a showdown with the bigger, better war drones. On the rooftop finale Robocop recovers enough of Murphy's humanity to override his machine programming and shoot the big bad corporate bad guy. Because that's what humanity means. Obviously.

One day maybe I'll tell you my theory about how Robocop is really about a man who gets his dick shot off and then has to wear a big shiny helmeted dick suit to get his potency (wife and child) back but we'll save that for another day because I'm not sure this new version deserves such a brilliant reading.

What I must talk about is that terrible final scene. It's as if the makers suddenly remember that this this is supposed to be satire and graft on a rousing Samuel L. Jackson delivered speech about how America is the greatest country on Earth. I think we're supposed to 'get' how subversive and ironic it all is, but the thing is, it just doesn't play like that at all and leaves a badtaste in the mouth. It's a bad, misjudged note to end on. Still, at least Sam L Jackson saying "motherf**er" got the audience laughing for the first time. Shame it was 5 seconds before the end credits.

It is what it is - a big budget franchise reboot that doesn't improve on the original. I'm sure it's all very exciting if you're a 12 year old or never seen Robocop before. It's not without merit and could have been a lot, lot worse but I thought it was a 'watch it once' disappointment; okay but a missed opportunity.

Good Robocop Bad Robocop.

Two other films I saw this week but couldn't be arsed to write full reviews for.

Made In Dagenham

'Made In Dagenham' was marketed in most European territories as 'We Want Sex'. One word summary: inequality

Comfort and Joy

The best Bill Forsyth film featuring Clare Grogan that isn't 'Gregory's Girl'. One word summary: melancholy.

Side Effects. Warning: May Cause Tense Nervous Headache.

 

Is Steven Soderbergh an auteur? I mean really. What thematic links are there between projects as diverse as 'Sex, Lies and Videotape', 'Erin Brockovich', 'Traffic', 'Ocean's Eleven', 'Solaris', 'Haywire' and 'Side Effects'? Thank God for Wikipedia then, which helpfully points out that "while Soderbergh's subject matter is highly varied, many of his films feature as a central theme the exploration of the act or moral consequences of lying.' That's bang on the money and absolutely at the core of this superior psychological thriller. Somehow it manages to avoid the soap operatics of courtroom dramas and the absurdity of erotic thrillers whilst still remaining a thoroughly enjoyable "did she, or didn't she?" style potboiler in the style of 'Jagged Edge' or 'Basic Instinct'. It's Hitchcock-like in construction but has a very different kind of visual flair; filmed like a morose study of descent into the "poisonous fog bank" of depression. It an aesthetic that keeps the film grounded and believable.

It works as a character study, a mystery, a critique of the pharmaceutical industry, a meditation on the effects of depression and as entertainment. The plot twists feel like natural developments rather than scriptwriter beats. There's a strange tension throughout it all; a very different feeling to the usual humdrum feelings of suspense. It achieves something closer to existential dread. It's very disconcerting. 

Even Jude Law brings his 'A' game to the project. It's that good. 

Friday night double bill: Downhill Racer / Slap Shot

Tonight's double bill is inspired by the Winter Olympics; two of the best and most cynical sports movies ever made.

These aren't the films you're looking for....

Look Who's Talking 666. Devil's Due

By now you've almost certainly seen the viral video promotion for this film with the remote control devil baby in the pram. If not, this is it...

It would be a cheap shot to say that this clip is better than the film itself; which it's not, but it may the first time that someone makes more money from the marketing clip than the actual film. Everybody seems to be lining up to commit infanticide on this movie but I actually thought it had enough interesting stuff going on to make it worth my while.

I must admit my heart sank when I realized it was yet another 'found footage' movie but for a change it does lend itself to the subject matter. We're following a newly wed couple on their big day, on their honeymoon and through their pregnancy. It's the sort of thing that people do believably record every detail of for posterity. What most people don't do on honeymoon however is allow an unliscenced taxi driver to show them a "good time" at a hidden rave in the backstreets of an unknown part of town in a foreign city. Most people would be flinging themselves into the road from the car to avoid this situation rather than filming it .... but I guess there is precedent in the real world for people being that naive. Actually I thought this part of the film had a real frisson to it. Santo Domingo hasn't really been used as a location before and certainly not at night so it does capture the fear of being caught off the tourist map and it is unsettling to see this couple make the bad decisions that will seal their fate.

Then something happens on that night. We know it involves something to do with ritual Satanic practices; they remember nothing and wake up with hangovers so figure they must have had a good night. You'd think they might just have a quick look at the hours of footage they recorded, just to see....but wouldn't you know it, they've got a plane to catch.

*spoilers*

The honeymoon is over, Sam(antha) is pregnant and life is good. Life must be very good because whilst we see their big house and their big telly and their big computer we never actually see them do jobs or anything. All the usual horror movie shit starts happening: "Oooh look there's a man across the street just staring at us", "Oooh look the family dog is behaving weirdly", "Oooh look here's the new creepy man doctor instead of the nice lady doctor I had before". On top of all this we have that new trope common to recent found footage movies I've seen where being marked out for a greater purpose equates to having superhero like abilities. We see Sam effortlessly punch in car windows and then develop telekenetic powers. Best of all, this heavily pregnant woman can carve up the floorboards and sneak out of the house to kill deer in the woods without her candid cameraman husband noticing.

But the thing is, pregnancy is scary enough without Satan being involved, and there's some genuinely unnerving sequences in the middle part of this film that exploit that. These scenes don't involve big jumps or special effects but exaggerate those intimate moments that signify change and can be unsettling. We see vegetarian Sam's sudden overpowering lust for raw meat; we feel her horror of medical probing and prodding and we see her change into a different person when threatened, overstressed or exhausted. All of that stuff is literalized very effectively. One of the best scares is set during a group antenatal class and relies on nothing more than timing and surprise. Such moments show real invention and are so much better than the predictable jolts of most contemporary multiplex horror.

Matters escalate at the right pace but the film becomes uneven towards the end as if it's fully aware that it doesn't really have a good enough ending to give birth to. The last ten minutes are very similar to last ten minutes of all these found footage things: an extended segment of one character's POV as they are chased through a maze of rooms and corridors and encounter choreographed scares and flying furniture. It doesn't really pay off in any satisfying way but at least it doesn't end with a demon faced baby in a pram gnashing its jaws at you.

Saying 'Devil's Due' is a a rip-off of 'Rosemary's Baby' is liking saying every shark movie rips off 'Jaws'. Critics who are saying this probably haven't seen Rosemary's Baby recently. Polanski's film is about the fears of pregnancy yes, but the focus is more on how Rosemary is manipulated, controlled and sedated by everyone around her: the witch coven, the medical profession and even her husband to deliver the antichrist unknowingly into the world. This film is much more about the very real things expectant couples have to go through. The medical and psychological horrors are blurred into the supernatural ones. In Rosemary's Baby,  John Cassavetes basically sells his soul to the devil for short term success. The husband here hasn't got a clue what's going on other than that his wife and mother of his child is turning into a monster. It's unsaid, but implied that Sam is fully aware of what's happening to her but is powerless to undo it.

There's still a lot of horror to be tapped from the pregnancy theme and this film for the most part makes a decent job of it.  Give the 'Devil's Due' its due.