5-Word 365 #149 – GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

Posted on May 28, 2012 by

Yesterday’s film was excellent, but it was also a bit heavy duty in the furrowed brow/serious drama stakes. Whaddya say we go for something a little lighter today?

GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra

Guess what? A cobra rises.

From the toy company who brought you Transformers and Battleship, this is the heart-warming tale of US Army officer “Duke” Hauser. Duke and his detachment are escorting a package of experimental (with the emphasis on mental) nanomite warheads from the manufacturer, MARS Industries, to NATO for testing, when the convoy is attacked by a mysterious team led by a familiar face. Suddenly, another equally mysterious team comes to the rescue. Duke and his buddy Ripcord are the only survivors and insist on joining the second mysterious team who plan to recover the warheads from the first mysterious team before they can use them and TRY TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Also, only about three people seem to have a real fucking name.

I had planned to save this to watch just ahead of the release of the GI Joe 2: Retaliation in five weeks’ time. That was the plan anyway, but Paramount decided to screw with my careful plans just last week by announcing they were pushing the sequel back until March 2013 so that it could take a trip through the 3D-a-liser. When announcing this decision, executives said – and I’m paraphrasing slightly here – “we saw what The Avengers banked and we want some of that action too”*. At least they are being honest in their intentions, but it remains to be seen just how successful this plan will turn out to be. The “3D is dead” lobby are getting more and more traction as each new post-conversion effort sees the light of day and the cries of “it’s a waste of money” and “it’s too dark! I can’t see shit!” echo through multiplexes across the world. As I have noted before, I quite enjoy natively-shot 3D but I have mostly avoided post-converted flicks (with one obvious exception) because I don’t think the technology is there yet to make it anything more than an expensive distraction. That’s right, I said yet; I don’t have the ideological objections shared by some of the louder online voices. It’s a natural progression of the way we watch movies, and who knows how refined the process will be in nine months’ time? The big downside to this last-minute bait-and-switch is the cost for Paramount, not just for all the extra post-production work but all the advertising they’ve already forked out for will just have to be written off and then spent all over again next spring. There’s no doubt that it’s a gamble and you know all the other studios will be just as eager as Paramount to see the final balance sheet. But in the meantime, I decided I’m not waiting another nine months to watch this first big budget explode-a-thon featuring the stars of the GI Joe toy lines, comics and cartoons.

For a General, that is quite a jaunty walk.

We never had GI Joe here in the UK when I was growing up. Over here it was Action Man; essentially the same thing but just rebranded. My big brother had some of the toys when we were kids, but we were generally more into our Star Wars and The A-Team toys. The upshot of this was that I was totally ignorant of the whole story. I didn’t know GI Joe was a team; I thought he was just one guy named Joe who was in the army, and he got to play with all the cool shit because he was a really good soldier. Luckily for me, Stephen Sommers’ film does not expect you to know the Who’s Who before sitting down to watch. Unluckily, all the characters with a qualifying backstory get some of the most awkwardly constructed and clichéd flashbacks I have ever seen. Seriously, this film is jumping all over the place from 1641 to “the not-too-distant future”, then to four years ago, then back, then to twenty years ago, then back, then to four years ago again, and back… I was on the verge of hitting the pause button so I could make myself a diagram to keep up when I had an epiphany: Sommers knows what flick he is making. This isn’t a serious film. There is no subtext or allusion here. This is, in a word, Big Dumb Fun. Once I realised that, the rest just fell into place.

Channing Tatum has been described variously as wooden, boring, a charisma vacuum, the list goes on. He appears to be potentially on the cusp of a career resurgence in the hands of his new collaborator Steven Soderbergh but as far as Tatum Mk1 goes, I think this is the role he was born to play: a plastic action figure. I think Christopher Ecclestone and Joseph Gordon-Levitt had a side-bet on the set to see which one of them could chew up more scenery than the other. JGL especially is just hilarious to watch as the mysteriously scarred Doctor behind the nano tech. I haven’t seen him cut loose like this since his Third Rock days. Former LOSTies Saïd Taghmaoui and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje team up with Marlon Wayans, Ray Park and Star Trek’s Rachel Nichols as the Joes under the command of Dennis Quaid as General “Hawk” Abernathy, while Sienna Miller, Lee Byung-Hun and Arnold Vosloo are on Team Ecclestone with JGL. One thing you may have noticed from that list is that the baddies are so much more entertaining than the good guys. You can always bank on Vosloo, but Byung-Hun has got more charisma than almost all of the Joes combined as the all-white ninja assassin Storm Shadow. His fights with Park’s Snake Eyes are consistently the most watchable hand-to-hand stuff in the flick. The chick-fight between Miller and Nichols is fun (and surprisingly brutal) but doesn’t get nearly as much exposure. Speaking of Sienna, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Sommers farmed out her costume design to a bunch of horny 12-year-olds.

And this is one of her more conservative costumes. Honestly, I spent the entire movie thinking she was about to start screaming about Lycans.

The action scenes in the flick are hugely derivative of so many other films, but the surprising part is that Sommers has reached all the way back to the seventies and eighties for his inspiration. At one point we had The Spy Who Loved Me, Firefox and Return of the Jedi all happening at the same time! Some of the green-screen and CGI work is a little iffy in places – I’m looking at you, The Pit – but I have to admire the decision to go for practical sets as much as possible. That sense of tangibility makes a huge difference, particularly as the action gets more and more outlandish. The script, such as it is, is suitably ridiculous and apparently plays pretty fast and loose with some of the accepted character histories and motivations, but these things are retconned so many times over the years it doesn’t really matter anymore.

In the battle of 2009’s cinematic Hasbro advertisements, this trumps Michael Bay’s assplosion in almost every way possible. Is it any good? Shit, no. But it is fun.

*Way down at the bottom of the press release, they also noted “and we knew Ryan was holding off on watching the first movie so this is partly just to fuck with him”.

Posted in Movies, 5-Word 365, 00s, Action, Sci-Fi, Comics | Tagged | 3 Comments

5-Word 365 #148 – Even The Rain

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

I know this may seem like a bit of a let-down for all of you, but WTF Sunday is taking a bit of a break this week. I went to the movies with my roommate this afternoon to see this film on her recommendation. Before it was even half over I knew I just had to write about it. Don’t worry though; I’ve got some wacky shit all lined up for next week.

Even The Rain

Like Braveheart, but in Spanish.

In 2000, a Mexican film crew arrived in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba to shoot an historical epic about Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the New World and his enslavement of the indigenous Taíno people. In the role of Hatuey – the leader of the Taíno rebels – they cast Daniel, a local man who also happens to be a leader in the city’s protest against the government’s privatisation of the water supply. While his devotion to this cause threatens to disrupt the film, the filmmakers themselves remain insistent on completing their project, even in the face of growing civil unrest.

After this and Cell 211, Luis Tosar is fast becoming one of my favourite actors. He leads this film as Costa, the producer of the film-within-the-film with Gael García Bernal as Sebastián, the director. At the start of the movie, Sebastián is treated by Costa as if he were a favourite child, with his every wish acceded to. As the movie goes on, Sebastián starts to resemble Fitzcarraldo as his determination to complete his plan teeters into obsession. Costa starts off not much better than the original conquistadors. He isn’t a bad man, just selfishly thinking only of the film and how to keep the costs as low as possible. It was his idea to go to Bolivia at all; even though the story they are recreating took place on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean, the production will save a fortune in Bolivia where the locals can be “enslaved” as extras and manual labourers for just two dollars a day1. It is through his growing bond with Daniel and his daughter Belén that his conscience is roused. García Bernal is excellent as always but Tosar completely owns every scene he is in (which is almost every scene in the movie). Among the supporting cast, the standouts are Karra Elejalde and Juan Carlos Aduviri. Elejalde – star of the fantastic Timecrimes – plays Antón, the actor portraying Columbus. Antón is a loudmouthed drunk, but he is the first to sympathise with the plight of the native Bolivians. A late-night conversation between the two men serves as a key moment in Costa’s awakening. This is Aduviri’s first film, possibly even his first acting job ever, but he is completely believable as the underestimated Daniel; a man of will, intelligence and leadership who is pegged as little more than a peasant by almost everyone.

The staring contest eventually had to go to a judge’s decision.

The film was written by frequent Ken Loach collaborator, Paul Laverty, with actress-turned-director Icíar Bollaín at the helm. Bollaín also has a history with Loach, starring in his 1995 film Land And Freedom, about an English communist fighting for the militia in the Spanish Civil War. That one wasn’t written by Laverty though. This film shares the typically Loachian2 themes of socialism (with a small s), labour relations and real human interaction against a larger, politicised backdrop. Similarly, Bollaín follows Loach’s example of casting people who have really lived the story she is telling. It is easy to believe that a lot of the Bolivian cast were involved in some way with the actual “Water War” events that are depicted here.

One particular thing that I liked about this film is something that it is missing: at no point does any character turn to any other and say “Gee, doesn’t this fight with the ruling elite over the water supply bear a striking resemblance to the Taíno’s fight against Columbus that we are here to recreate?”. Unlike so many other movies these days, Laverty’s powerful and emotive script does you the service of assuming that you are not a moron and treating you accordingly. The echoes in the story are easy to see, and each side amplifies each other well, only occasionally leaning towards heavy-handedness. The escalating water crisis is depicted viscerally, aided by the use of footage shot during the riots themselves, included here as news broadcasts watched by the film crew as the action rages on outside their hotel. I’m sorry to say that I was completely ignorant of these real events before today, so the story is clearly one that needs to be told.

One thing I wasn’t overly keen on however was the “making of” element. There is a member of the film crew (I missed her name, I’m sorry to say) whose job is shooting the behind the scenes documentary. As the movie went on, she started capturing less of the filmmakers and more of Daniel in skirmishes with the water company and leading the demonstrations. I was starting to suspect that Costa would ultimately choose to abandon the historical drama and instead turn his associate loose to document the real-life political drama happening behind them. Unfortunately, this entire sub-plot seemed to disappear about half-way through the film.

“If I scowl for long enough, I know they’ll let me keep that Beetle”

Even The Rain is currently on limited release throughout the UK and will be available on DVD/Blu-ray by mid-September. For my trans-Atlantic amigos (hi guys!) you can get it now by VOD. Trust me on this: it is worth looking out for.

1I sincerely hope this film’s producers paid their extras more than $2 per day. It would give the message a distinctly sour aftertaste otherwise.

2To those of you saying “now you’re just making up words” let me respond with this: yes I am, but how do you think the rest of them got to be words in the first place?

Posted in 10s, 5-Word 365, Grown-Up Drama, Movies, Subtitled Movies | 1 Comment

5-Word 365 #147 – Trekkies

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

My sister bought her husband a Next Generation uniform this past Christmas. Brendan, this one’s for you.

Trekkies

It seems Klingons love Subway

Actress Denise Crosby explores the phenomenon of the Trekkie, in interviews with a range of Star Trek fans, their families and actors from all of the Trek incarnations.

Just to get this out of the way before we get started, I used to be a Trekkie. Up until about my mid-teens I was nutty for Star Trek. It started when I was 7, and Next Generation was first broadcast. For about the next seven or eight years I was all over that shit. The shows, books, a few models, hell I even went to a convention. It wasn’t a very big convention and there weren’t any famous people there, but I was 15 and it was awesome. As awesome as it was though, that was the beginning of the end for me. I never really got into Deep Space 9 or Voyager, and I didn’t even notice Enterprise until it was almost over. I still haven’t seen the Nemesis movie yet in fact. I didn’t make any conscious decision to leave that part of me behind; it was just something I grew out of. My attention passed on, as it does, to a wider range of cultural pursuits, and girls (and excessive masturbation. Don’t look at me like that. You know you did it too). This is a film about those who either never did move on, or just haven’t got there yet.

Director Roger Nygard took on the project after being pitched on it by Denise Crosby herself, who he had directed in his 1991 feature debut High Strung. She conducts all the interviews at a series of conventions all over the US in 1996/97 (her insider status was no doubt helpful in getting the participation of the actors) but the film isn’t really hosted or narrated; the subjects just speak for themselves. Frankly, she probably couldn’t get much of a word in anyway. These people can’t half talk. The lack of any narration does have one advantage though: it negates the chance of the film being seen as judgmental. As a viewer, you are of course welcome to make your own judgments on the people you will be introduced to over these ninety minutes, but Nygard and Crosby will not make your mind up for you.

This is Gabriel. In 1997, aged 14, he’d already written his own two and a half hour-long Trek fan film, and created a bunch of computer visual effects for it. He’s now a VFX artist who did a lot of work on Battlestar Galactica, amongst other things. I wonder if he’s still rockin’ that awesome mullet though.

Have you ever seen a poodle in a Starfleet jumpsuit? I have. I don’t think that’s an image I’m going to forget anytime soon, and I have this movie to thank for it. Depending on your opinions on fandom in general and Trekkies in particular, you’re going to find this film somewhere on the scale between “these are my people” and “these are real people?”. For me it was somewhere in the middle; just north of “most of these people are a bit endearingly loopy but that one guy scares the hell out of me”. Be warned: the poster paints this as riotously funny. It’s really not, except for the contrasting moments where both James Doohan and DeForest Kelley tell the stories of the most memorable thing they have ever received from a fan. That’s all I’m saying.

Posted in 5-Word 365, 90s, Documentary Saturday, Movies, Sci-Fi | 4 Comments

5-Word 365 #146 – Bridge To Terabithia

Posted on May 26, 2012 by

Tomorrow night is the night of the Eurovision Song Contest, where the most bizarre, unpredictable or just downright crap singer each country can produce sings a terrible song about world peace or brotherhood or some other horseshit, and then all the countries vote for their friends to win. All of this is broadcast here in the UK accompanied by the dulcet tones of Terry Wogan Jr. as he gently ridicules each act with less class and less humour than his illustrious forefather carried around in each finger. I’m going to a Eurovision party tomorrow. This will include much booze and maybe even the odd spot of ridicule as well. But anyway, here’s today’s flick.

Bridge To Terabithia

It’s mostly a rope swing.

11-year-old Jesse is an outcast, both at home and at school. He’s the middle child of five, and the only boy, and has never fitted in anywhere. Leslie is the new girl in class and Jesse’s neighbour. She is just as alone as he is, and the two find themselves becoming best friends. Exploring the wild country near their homes, they discover an abandoned tree house around which their imaginations conjure a magical land Leslie names Terabithia. In Terabithia they are strong and powerful, but will real life get in the way? Let’s say yes.

I saw the title, I saw the cover art, I saw the trailer, and I thought I knew what this film was going to be about: a couple of cute and hopefully-not-too-annoying kids find a magical kingdom that they have to rescue in some way and there’s going to be a big battle at the end and everyone will live happily ever after. Lordy, was I wrong. This may be one of the sweetest and most affecting films about childhood and those awkward pre-teen years I have seen in a very long time. It’s an assured live-action debut from animation director Gabor Csupo (Rugrats), and his two leads, AnnaSophia Robb and Josh Hutcherson, are both totally engaging as the youngsters.

The screenplay was co-written by David Paterson, son of the original novel’s author Katherine. The film takes on a bit of an autobiographical cast when you hear that the main plot point was based on a real event that happened to a friend of David’s when they were 8. Katherine actually wrote the book as a way to help her come to terms with what had taken place. I haven’t read the book so I can’t tell you how the screenplay stacks up against it, but as its own thing it is a very well-written piece of work. Despite the sometimes potentially troubling subject matter, the film has a light touch. It could very easily have become mawkish (a lot) but everything we see is filtered through our young protagonists. This, combined with a welcome lack of clumsy exposition, keeps the story moving. Serious events are treated seriously but still matter-of-factly, without any great wailing or gnashing of teeth.

They just saw the poster.

Robb and Hutcherson are both great as Leslie and Jess. You never doubt for a second that these are real kids. As written, Leslie could easily have been a very flat character; she doesn’t really have much in the way of growth or development, but Robb has such an expressive face and brings an infectious warmth to Leslie that really makes her fly off the page. Jess is the one with more of an arc and Hutcherson sells this with style. It is no surprise that both have gone on to bigger things: AnnaSophia has nabbed the part of young Carrie in a prequel series to my most hated film of the year so far, while Josh was in this year’s second biggest movie. Something about missing dinner I think, and playing a game…

Among the rest of the cast, I’d feel bad if I didn’t mention Robert Patrick. The former killing machine plays Jess’ father as a man burdened by some heavy loads. He seems distant, but he obviously loves his son, and the rest of his family, very much. Zooey Deschanel is the world’s cutest music teacher, whose classes involve her playing some Steve Earle songs on her guitar while all the kids sing along, with tambourines. Damn, that seems like so much more fun than my school music class. Bailee Madison, who plays Jess’ younger sister Maybelle, skirts very close to annoying and very nearly falls over that line on a few occasions but in the end is shown to be just a little girl who idolises her big brother.

Van Halen were right on the money. Even in Crocs. Got it bad, got it bad, got it bad…

Despite all initial evidence to the contrary, what seems like a full-on fantasy film is actually grounded in a reality that becomes all too difficult at times. There are universal themes here that aren’t usually touched on in kids’ films these days; themes like friendship, that innocent first love, how an abusive home life can turn someone into a bully, even the loss of a loved one. But Bridge To Terabithia is mostly about the power of imagination and how that imagination can affect your real life for the better. That’s what the title refers to. The Bridge is Jess and Leslie’s imagination. That is what takes them to that other. It is all of this that I think betrays he 70s-era vintage of the novel, in a good way.

There are a couple of things that don’t spoil the film necessarily but are enough to keep it from being excellent. The score is solid, but is drowned out by a typical Disney cavalcade of soppy songs, including an obligatory effort by the leading lady. Even after only a couple of hours, Aaron Zigman’s music is fading in my memory and that is only because of the preponderance of inappropriate pop songs. This flick deserves better than that. Alright, I know I said there were a couple of things but I’m having trouble thinking of any more right now. Let’s just call it a night there, shall we?

And the trailer was bullshit by the way. Probably the most ill-judged and misleading trailer for a kids’ film ever.

Posted in 00s, 5-Word 365, Kids Film Friday, Movies | Tagged | 5 Comments

5-Word 365 #145 – A Perfect Getaway

Posted on May 25, 2012 by

Every once in a while circumstances, or technology, or my own confounded nature will conspire to make the day almost over before I get to see a film. This of course greatly limits the time I have to write about the film before I pass out from exhaustion. On these occasions, I must resort to watching the film and writing about it at the same time. I call this the run-and-gun, for no other reason than I think it sounds cool. Anyway, today is one of those days.

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Posted in 00s, 5-Word 365, Action, Horror, Movies, Thrillers | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

5-Word 365 #144 – Doghouse

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

Day 144. The Gross. Considering that little mathematical nugget, today’s choice seems strangely appropriate.

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Posted in 00s, 5-Word 365, British Films, Comedy, Creature Feature, Horror, Movies | Leave a comment

5-Word 365 #143 – The Ides Of March

Posted on May 23, 2012 by

It has been uncommonly hard to write yesterday’s and today’s columns as I am still hung up on Ink. We’re not even halfway through the year yet, but I know for a fact that movie will be in the top of the charts if I were to be crazy enough to rank all these. But anyway, Ink was Sunday and it’s time to move on. Here’s a sweet little indie heart-warmer for you…

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Posted in 10s, 5-Word 365, Grown-Up Drama, Movies | 10 Comments