Up in the Air (2009)

George Clooney does some really awkward dance moves, the creepy stalker chick from Two and Half Men marries the disabled war veteran who beat up Robert Downey Jr in Due Date, and lots of hardworking Americans get canned.

Up in the Air is a 2009 movie directed by Jason Reitman and starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Jason Bateman.

Despite being a George Clooney fan I avoided this film for a long time because I thought it was the type of movie I despise – the sort of film The Simpsons makes fun of; films about “people coming to terms with things.”

I knew the general gist – Clooney plays a man whose job (a corporate asshole hired by employers to fire people) keeps him travelling. He lives out of a suitcase, barely sees his sisters and has no attachments besides a mutually beneficial loyalty to his boss (a wonderfully sleazy Jason Bateman). I figured it was about Clooney’s character finally ‘finding his feet’ and the woman of his dreams yadda yadda.

And for the most part that’s what this film is. It’s predictable, sometimes corny, rarely laugh-out-loud funny, but watchable due to Clooney and Vera Farmiga, who plays Alex; a woman seemingly as vacuous as Clooney with whom he begins a casual relationship.

But then it redeems itself at the end when it has Clooney doing the ‘coming to terms with things’ moment – showing up on Alex's doorstep. It’s set up like a happy ever after moment but instead he’s greeted with the cold reality that she is married with kids and has been lying to him.
I especially like the way she essentially ‘fires’ him in the same passive aggressive way he’s been firing people throughout the film.

The film has a really obvious metaphor that I would normally pretentiously sneer at, but this time it actually made me laugh (maybe it was the sleep medication I was on – which clearly wasn’t working). After spruiking idiotic self-help seminars on how to ‘empty the backpack’ of your life – free yourself from the baggage of friends, family, and possessions – Clooney’s character is forced to carry around a cheesy cardboard cut-out of his sister and her fiancé that juts out of his carefully packed carry on suitcase (she’s asked him to take lame tourist selfies with it at various landmarks he visits on his travels). The metaphor is as subtle as a knee to the groin, but director Jason Reitman somehow makes it work. I guess growing up with Ivan Reitman as your dad would instil a certain deftness at juggling sentimentality and comedy.

What I liked most about the film was that Clooney’s character essentially doesn’t change. His character arc is a full 360 – he ends the film the way he began; groundless and happy to be. The film essentially employs the rationale that made Seinfeld so great – the philosophy that good comedy should have ‘no hugging and no learning’. Works for me. Two sleep-deprived hours well spent.

The Hitcher (1986)

A young man gets framed for some gruesome murders all because his stupid brother can’t answer his goddamn phone, and after all these years I still have no idea what the ‘C’ stands for in C. Thomas Howell.

The Hitcher is a 1986 thriller directed by Robert Harmon and starring Rutger Hauer, C. Thomas Howell and Jennifer Jason Leigh.

There is a clue to what this movie's all about in a scene at the very beginning where Jim Halsey (C. Thomas Howell) asks John Ryder (Rutger Hauer) "what do you want?" as Ryder holds a flick knife blade to his eye. Ryder replies "I want you to stop me."

Robert Harmon directed this thriller written by Eric Red (who penned the 2007 remake). It is simple and effective. Mark Isham's score is subdued and creepy, perfectly suited to the amazingly eerie Death Valley settings brilliantly shot by John Seale. Interestingly, Harmon made a film very similar to this (though nowhere near as effective) starring Jim Caviezel, Highwaymen, in 2002.

Jim is driving a Cadillac cross country USA. It's not his car, it's a 'driveaway', but that doesn't really matter. What matters is Jim doesn't have a great deal of common sense. It's rainy. It's dark. It's the middle of fucking nowhere, and he stops to pick up a hitchhiker.

Rutger Hauer enters the car with the cold air of barely contained menace. When, after some strange and eerie small talk, he casually tells Jim that he severed the extremities of a VW driver a couple miles back and he's going to do the same thing to Jim, you believe he is capable of doing just that.

After Jim manages to push him out of the vehicle, we see him slowly get to his feet against the slowly-rising sun. This is Ryder's game; getting picked up on desolate highways, killing whoever gave him a ride, then getting out and doing it all over again to the next unwitting driver.

But Jim ruins it. He pushes Ryder out before he can finish the job. So, Ryder comes up with a new game. And Jim is the unwilling player.

Ryder watches the car disappear along the highway. He's marked Jim. Jim is a dead man. Or at least that's what we're supposed to think. But Ryder doesn't want to kill. In fact, he gets a perfect opportunity to a few minutes later in the film. Yet he doesn't take it. Instead, he toys with him, and sets him up to take the fall for a few random killings. He's 'grooming' Jim, trying to force him to grow the balls to do what he must: stop Ryder.

The film stretches plausibility a number of times in the ensuing cat-and-mouse game Ryder and Jim play out against the backdrop of the lonely highways of outback USA. No-one is a match for Ryder - the highway patrol, the sheriff, the... um, other sheriff, his deputies, even a helicopter can't dent him. He brings it down with a couple well aimed rounds. He also manages to appear and disappear like a ghost, even through locked doorways and past fully conscious people. And this would all suck, if it wasn't for the great performances by the two leads.

Hauer is perfect as Ryder. His eyes have just the right amount of unhinged crazy. And I like the little touches - like Ryder wearing a wedding ring. It's such a subtle detail I didn't notice until watching the film again recently. I wondered if it was a trophy, or some detail of his past - some indication of a loss that drove him insane.

And C. Thomas Howell is great as the kid who got more than he bargained for. You really feel for him in a couple of scenes as Ryder thwarts all his attempts to contact the authorities and explain what's going on.

Jennifer Jason Leigh makes a brief appearance as Nash, the love interest who takes to Jim and tries to help him. I find it hilarious that she is very quick to abandon her normal life and become a felon. In one scene she's a small town diner waitress dreaming of 'one day' going to California. The next, she's hanging out of a car window shooting at cops.

Anyway, at it's core this is a two-man drama. It's this one-on-one aspect I really like about The Hitcher. Yes, we know how it's going to play out. But the fun is watching Ryder taunt, and Jim squirm. And then it's fun to see the tables turned. Though Ryder hardly squirms - he knows this is how it would go down.

The final scenes are haunting, mainly due to the sparse score and John Seale's fantastic photography. I like how Ryder seems to almost welcome death in the film's last moments. It's just the two of them, on a lonely stretch of highway. Jim has a shotgun levelled at him, but Ryder makes no move to get out of the way. We get the feeling this is just the way it had to be. By his own admission, Ryder is "tired." He wants this to be over. And in Jim, Ryder has found the perfect adversary. The only one who could ride this out with him to the grisly end. Ryder's orchestrated chaos has played out right down to this very moment. Game over.

Note: this is an updated version of a review I posted for The Hitcher on Best-Horror-Movies.com. The original can be seen here:
http://www.best-horror-movies.com/review?name=the-hitcher-1986-review

Rocky IV (1985)

Americans = Good. Commies = Bad. Got it. Now I just need the rest of my life to be this black and white.

Rocky IV is a 1985 movie directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone, and starring Dolph Lundgren, Carl Weathers and Brigitte Nielsen.
        
I normally don’t bother with plot descriptions in my write ups, but because the plot of Rocky IV can be summed up in ten syllables I figured what the hell.

Apollo dies. Rocky avenges him.

This was my favourite of the Rocky movies when I was a kid. Watching it now, I can safely say it still is, but for very different reasons. When I was a kid the aforementioned revenge plot (which back then seemed a lot more complex to my sugar-addled young mind) and the David vs Goliath showdown between Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) and Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) was thrilling. Now, it’s laughably over the top and all the more enjoyable because of it. As a kid, the subtle-as-a-sledgehammer Cold War allegory was completely lost on me. Now, it’s loads of fun to watch these actors try to make this moronic stuff seem sincere. As a kid, the incredibly cheesy moments between Stallone and his son gave me goose bumps. Now, they make me laugh so hard I nearly pass out.

What staggers me now is how oblivious I was as a kid to the homoeroticism in Rocky movies. It’s fantastic. After Drago pummels Apollo Creed to death we get a brilliant scene where Rocky drives his car (in the rain of course) and reminisces about his friendship with Creed. We are treated to a montage of scenes from the previous films of them sparring in the ring, frolicking in the surf wearing short shorts and dancing together in front of a mirror while so oiled up it’s a wonder they don’t slide across the floor.

And I love that the American/Commie references take a nose dive into absurdity more than once. My favourite is the requisite ‘training montage’ that Rocky movies are famous for. In this one, we see the Iron-Curtain himself, Dolph Lundgren training in a state of the art gym, aided by machines and steroids. Everything about his training is artificial and robotic, and thus FALSE YOU PINKO COMMIE BASTARDS. Whereas Rocky trains in the snowy wilderness, lifting massive tree trunks and slogging through the snow like a sled dog, because he is a REAL ALL AMERICAN MAN.

But what the hell is with comedic relief robots in 80’s films? I think people just got so excited about technology advancing they just wanted to stick robots in everything.

There's one strange moment at Paulie’s house when the robot interrupts Apollo telling Rocky that he's coming out of retirement. It sort of appears from nowhere, plays some music, chatters incessantly and then, hilariously, it disappears and the scene continues as if nothing has happened. This film doesn’t just throw reality out the window. It dropkicks it out and screams ‘Fuck off!’ after it.

And while we’re talking about reality or lack thereof, the climactic boxing matches in the Rocky movies are always hilariously ridiculous, but the one in this film outdoes all that came before it and nothing has topped it since. Not only does Drago basically use Rocky’s head like a speedbag, but a couple of times they actually seem to start doing wrestling moves. I love the over-emphasised punching sound effects too. It sounds like a guy smacking a wet bag of potatoes with a shovel.

And then of course to top it all off we get Rocky’s inspirational speech at the end. It really is tremendous. This writing launches so far into terrible that it comes full circle and becomes absolutely fucking brilliant. And just when you think it can’t possibly get any more ludicrous there’s a scene where the crowd slowly starts applauding and getting to their feet. Even the stalwart Russian leader guy who is basically Gorbachev without the birth mark seems to shed a tear. Jesus wept, either shoot me now or give me a US visa so I can emigrate. 100 minutes extremely well spent indeed.

American Sniper (2014)

Bradley Cooper buffs up and single-handedly defeats the terrorists all while raising a family and…wait a gosh-darned minute here… I don’t think that baby’s real!!

American Sniper is a 2014 war film directed by Clint Eastwood and starring Bradley Cooper and Sienna Miller.

Clint Eastwood’s films are very much like the old school, all-American cars that feature in a lot of them. They are reliable. They are big, bold, and dependable. There are no surprises. What you see is what you get. He is the Gran Torino of Hollywood directors. And I’d hazard a guess he’s not a Democrat.

An almost deific reverence for the US military permeates a lot of the films he has directed in the last decade. From the noble Marines in Flags of Our Fathers, to grizzled Korean War veteran Walt in Gran Torino, and now to a decorated Navy SEAL in American Sniper, it’s obvious Eastwood holds the American armed services in high regard. This is by no means a bad thing, it’s just that it makes for some very black and white films. There’s not a lot of grey in Eastwood’s American Sniper. It’s once again the heroic Americans against the evil terrorists. American Sniper is not a brilliant film. Like the cars I alluded to earlier, it’s dependable. It’s extremely well made. But there are no surprises. The battle scenes, while very well staged, filmed, and acted, are pretty much Whack-A-Terrorist. The villains, although apparently based on real people, are pretty stock standard Evil Terrorist Scum. The main bad guy even wears all black just so we're a hundred per cent clear this is a guy we're supposed to hate. And the Iraqi people in this film who are not the ‘bad guys’ even wear white in several scenes. Clint, dude, we get it. It’s nice to see that old age has made you no more subtle than when you were waving a 44 Magnum in people’s faces, but enough already.

The fact that Chris Kyle, the US Navy SEAL sniper this film is based on, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, is no surprise. The first human being he kills, seeing it close up through a high powered scope, is a small child. This is one of the film’s best scenes. The kid is running towards a Marine convoy carrying a grenade, so Kyle (Bradley Cooper) has no choice but to shoot him. This is the first scene it became apparent to me that Bradley Cooper has well and truly transcended being The Hangover guy, and can actually act. Eastwood lingers both on Cooper’s eyes, and his vision of the dead child through the scope. You can see all of Kyle’s training, patriotism, love of and need to protect his beloved America has come down to this single moment – the mind-numbing realisation that his job involves having to kill kids. 

This leads into another great scene later on, where a small boy retrieves a grenade launcher from a guy Kyle has just killed. I loved the agony on Cooper’s face as he realises he may have to do it again. He’s quietly begging the kid not to pick it up. And then when the kid finally drops it and runs off, he is so relieved he almost throws up. Again, it’s all in Cooper’s eyes. His mind was already stretched like a rubber band. If he’d had to pull the trigger on a little kid again, it would have snapped. It’s a really impressive performance.

A scene early on sets the tone for the entire film. It’s a flashback to Kyle’s childhood, where his little brother gets bullied and beaten up at school. Around the dinner table later, his father tells the boys that there are three kinds of people in the world. Sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. It becomes obvious at that moment that Kyle took it upon himself to be the sheepdog. Becoming a sniper, able to protect other soldiers, was a natural fit for him. He even remarks later, when being counselled for PTSD, that it’s not the thought of people he killed that keeps him up at night. It’s the thought of the people he failed to protect.

The film reminded me a little bit of The Hurt Locker in the scenes where Kyle returns home and his wife (Sienna Miller) struggles to get him to communicate or stay home. He’s glad to be home, but at the same time it preys on his mind that while he is at home, he can’t be the sheepdog to his men anymore. I like the irony that he doesn’t realise he needs to be a sheepdog for his family as well.

Speaking of irony, I found the calls home really off-putting. Kyle has a satellite phone, and he repeatedly calls his wife back in the US. The problem is, he chooses really inappropriate times to do it. Like just as he’s about to snipe someone, and another time right as his convoy is heading into enemy territory. I kept thinking; why not just wait til you’re back at base? This leads to the strange irony of a scene where he says his wife needs to be ‘protected’ from hearing about his ‘work’, but then during these phone calls forces her to listen to him coming under fire. And he not once but twice leaves her uncertain as to whether or not he’s still alive by either dropping the phone or the signal crapping out. I’m surprised he was met with a hug when he returned home. I’d have expected a slap upside the head.

American Sniper is not a bad film. I think films like Lone Survivor and The Hurt Locker dealt with similar subject matter in much more effective ways, but it’s still a nicely executed war film with a strong central performance. And its proof that Eastwood still wields enormous talent from what must now be a pretty ergonomic director’s chair, even if he still has all the subtlety of a hydrogen bomb. Two and a bit hours well spent.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

The shocking story of the theft and subsequent destruction of Morris Frye's prize 1961 Ferrari GT California.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a 1986 comedy directed by John Hughes and starring Matthew Broderick, Mia Sara, and Alan Ruck.

I have a pathological inability to watch this film if I’m not on a day off from work. It just doesn’t seem right.

Although this is not my favourite John Hughes film, it’s right up there with his best and I love so much about it it’s going to be hard not to endlessly gush in this write up. But I’ll do my best.

It’s in the capable hands of a writer/director who knows how to strike a good balance between comedy and pathos. Though it veers towards Utterly Ridiculous on several occasions, Hughes steers it back before it strays too far into that territory. He also, thankfully, didn’t make this a stoner comedy and didn’t have the main characters indulge in any teen sex, drugs and rock and roll bullshit that would have made the film tedious and dated it beyond any hope of it becoming the cult classic it is today. Ferris (Broderick), Sloane (Sara), and Cameron (Ruck) ditch school to go to a museum, for fuck’s sake. These are not delinquents we’re dealing with here.

Firstly, I love what rubes Ferris’ parents are. The opening scene where we see them coddling him in bed contains the film’s first hilarious moments. What I love about this scene is its inherent silliness; it’s obvious Ferris is faking illness, but his parents gulp down every syllable of the lie and do so in the cheesiest way possible. It really is joyful to watch.

Alan Ruck is terrific as Ferris’ best friend Cameron. I love his sterile house and his hypochondria. I love his meltdown in his car when he’s trying to convince himself to say ‘No’ to Ferris. And like so much of this movie, it’s filmed superbly. I like the way the camera remains in the car and we just see Cameron jumping up and down in frustration through the back window. It’s one of my favourite scenes. 

And I love the scenes juxtaposing Ferris hanging out at home with the class he’s missing. The close ups of bored students struggling to stay awake and the monotonous drone of the teacher’s voice is great. But I especially love the end of the scene – we see Ferris dancing stupidly under a giant poster for ‘Simple Minds’.

The film has countless other great moments. I love that Ferris is actually a bit of an asshole. I love Jennifer Grey as his sister. My favourite bit with her is a throwaway moment that has me in hysterics every time I watch it. She’s at school, ticked off that Ferris gets away with everything when a guy walks past her rattling a can collecting donations for the ‘Save Ferris’ fund. I love the look of derision she gives him and the way she smacks the can out of his hand. It’s stupid slapstick but I love it.

I love the comic timing in the film – again, it’s filmed superbly. Like the way he steals the cab from under his Dad’s nose outside the restaurant. It’s a great piece of physical comedy. And soon afterwards, the double take his Dad does when he sees Ferris, Sloane and Cameron in the cab next to him. When he turns back for a second look, it’s just Sloane sitting there in dark sunglasses. It’s a moment that’s difficult to describe but it works brilliantly. Again, I think it’s just the incredible silliness of the scene that I find hilarious.

I’ll mention the ‘dance number’ only because, typically for me the scene everyone loves is actually the one scene in this film that I don’t like. Ferris jumps up on a parade float and lip syncs.  It’s just too absurd. It comes out of nowhere and just seems out of place.

Thankfully, there’s way too much I enjoy in this film to care much about that small pothole.  I think my favourite scene is where they go to the museum. I love the music throughout and the way they hold hands with the group of school kids. The whole scene has a really cool vibe to it and really makes you care about the characters. As I said before, these are not a bunch of silly twits ditching school to sit around smoking weed. They take the day off because sometimes life’s too short to sit in a classroom listening to someone drone on about Reagan-era economics.

100 minutes of a day off well spent.

Open Water (2004)

A hard hitting documentary about an innovative new approach to couples therapy.

Open Water is a 2004 thriller directed by Chris Kentis and starring Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis.

I love studio marketing strategies. Occasionally they hit the mark, but more often than not they make hilariously little sense. Open Water was marketed as “The Blair Witch Project meets Jaws”, I assume because it’s filmed on a digital handycam and there’s sharks in it. But it’s there that the similarities end.

Open Water is in fact a pretty effective thriller. I guess the other thing it has in common with Jaws and Blair Witch is that it was made on a very tight budget, and like Jaws, employs the ‘less is more’ approach to building tension. The ‘enemies’ of the piece, the sharks, are glimpsed only briefly as they surface near the stranded couple or brush past their legs. These jump scares are very effective. I particularly liked the moments when Chris and Susan put their scuba masks on and peer below the water. At first, it seems like only one small shark is lurking down there, but each time they peer beneath the waves there are more sharks gathering below.

This film plays into a fear of mine – being stranded in the middle of the ocean (especially the scenes at night). I’m not a strong swimmer, so I wouldn’t last long having to tread water for hours on end.
The lighting during the scene at night is brilliant. It’s pitch darkness punctuated only by flashes of lightning. It amps up the tension perfectly – they can’t see, so neither can we.

I also really like the efforts the film makes to make a statement on human nature – the couple, growing desperate and exhausted, begin to uselessly blame each other for their predicament. I couldn’t help but laugh at the moment where Susan yells “I wanted to go skiing!”

It occasionally goes a little deeper into their relationship, which I also liked. There’s a great moment where Chris, in sheer frustration begins to scream at the ocean around him. I love Susan’s reaction to it – she looks both understanding and annoyed. You know she feels the same way, she is just handling it differently.

I always love films that show the cruel irony of nature – Chris and Susan are dehydrated but surrounded by water they can’t drink. And the film is terrifying because it’s so real. There’s no big Great White menace circling slowly out in the darkness. There are just scores of smaller sharks (I don’t know about you, but if I was stranded on the ocean miles from rescue and running out of hope, any species of shark with its eye on me would have me shitting myself). I love that the sharks bide their time – they simply swarm beneath the couple, waiting. They know they are the top of the food chain in this particular situation.

Unfortunately the film has some stuff working against it. For one thing, the soundtrack is really odd. During a couple of scenes that are supposed to be quite tense and desperate, the film makers use this Polynesian choir that is almost upbeat. It’s so out of place it’s almost comical.

And I don’t like the way the film cuts back to goings on back in Hawaii. At times it’s just random shots of lizards on rocks or palm trees swaying in the breeze, but we also get scenes back at the boat, where the diving guide discovers Chris and Susan’s belongings and realises they are missing. I can only assume the film makers did this to trick us into thinking that maybe the couple will be rescued, but I found these scenes unnecessary primarily because they break the tension. The film would have been far more effective if we the audience were trapped with the stranded couple.

Anyway, after one of the final cuts back to the couple we see that Chris has died due to blood loss from a small bite from one of the sharks. It’s a really nice moment from Susan as she begins to cry and pushes him away. I then love the final reveal – Susan once again puts on her scuba mask and looks into the water, and we see scores of sharks circling right below her. I love that she simply resigns herself to her fate, and slowly removes her scuba gear and sinks beneath the water. It’s a chilling moment that is again somewhat ruined by that stupid choir music. It’s like the film makers weren’t confident enough to simply let the scene play out in silence.

And the epilogue is really bizarre. We see a freshly caught shark being carved up with a knife – it’s fins are cut off and it’s then gutted. It’s supposed to again be some kind of statement about nature, but it comes across more like “Hey you murdering little bastards, you may have won this round...but I feel a hankering for shark fin soup tonight! Mwahahahahaha!”

Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014)

What the hell does Ridley Scott have against horses?

Exodus: Gods and Kings is a 2014 epic directed by Ridley Scott and starring Christian Bale, Joel Edgerton, Ben Kingsley and Sigourney Weaver.

This film has got to set some kind of record for most violent acts against horses. I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to any kind of film violence, but a couple of scenes in this had even me shaking my head. I don’t mind big battle scenes where men on horseback charge each other and both men and steeds are killed in the ensuing chaos. I don’t mind it because I’ve seen it in so many movies it barely even registers anymore and my reptilian brain knows it’s all just foam latex and CGI.

But there’s two scenes in Exodus that feature horses getting slaughtered for no apparent reason. The first is the tidal wave that comes to swallow up Pharaoh’s army after Moses has parted the Red Sea. For some reason, Ridley Scott decides to have a horse bolting away from the wave, and we see the damn thing get washed away quite brutally. Was this to show the force of the wave? The height of the wave? It’s a goddamn tidal wave. We know it’s big and powerful because thirty seconds later we see a freakin army get swamped by it.

The second is Moses’ horse after he’s been swamped by the wave and Moses washes up on the beach. For some insane reason he looks out into the water and we see his horse being ripped apart by sharks. The scene is not overly gory, it’s just maddeningly unnecessary. It serves absolutely no purpose in the film.

Anyway, unexplained gratuitous equine violence aside, on to the film. Ridley Scott is my all time favourite director. I think he’s brilliant, unique, extremely talented and makes interesting, thought provoking and entertaining films.

So it pains me to say that I didn’t enjoy Exodus: Gods and Kings. Aside from some brilliant production design and some few-and-far-between moments, for the most part the film is confusing and dull.

Although it clocks in and over two and a half hours, it seems like a 4 hour film that’s been massacred in the editing room. Characters make unexplained decisions that make little sense, transitions between locations and scenes are sometimes jarring, an early plotline goes nowhere...the list goes on. The entire second act of the film is just a jumbled, confusing mess. No sooner could I latch on to the story and settle in, thinking it was finally going to make sense, the film would transition to something else and never resolve the thought it began. Watching the film is sort of like trying to carry on a conversation with someone in the latter stages of severe dementia. They can’t keep a train of thought, trail off in the middle of sentences and tell stories that don’t have points or conclusions. The film had four screen writers, two of whom did rewrites, and it shows.

And, it’s like Ridley Scott has a deal with the studios – they get him to whack a big set piece battle at the beginning of his films, and then once that’s out of the way he’s free to make the film he actually set out to make (see Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and Robin Hood). The battle at the beginning of Exodus is easily the best part of the film, unfortunately aside from setting up a sort of rivalry between Ramses (Joel Edgerton) and Moses (Christian Bale), it has nothing to do with the rest of the film. It’s completely abstract from everything that follows. What’s more, it doesn’t even set up the rivalry all that well. At least in films like Gladiator and Robin Hood the battles at the start had some place in the overall story. They made sense.

Not much in Exodus makes any sense. As I’ve said, it seems like a much longer movie that has had huge chunks of exposition excised. Probably the most jarring example of this is Moses’ wedding. In the space of about ten minutes of screen time, he’s gone from being exiled in the desert, to being taken in by the villagers, to being madly in love and married. It’s incredibly rushed and doesn’t allow you to invest at all in his wife’s character or his relationship with her.

Slightly less jarring but nonetheless confusing is Ramses sudden decision to not trust Moses after Moses has returned from Pithen with the Viceroy. At least during this scene Moses seems as confused as I was that he was suddenly ejected from the room with all the servants leaving Ramses and the Viceroy to scheme and plot his exile. I get the basic gist of it, but again, the whole sequence leading up to Moses exile to the desert seems horribly rushed.

The film has some good points. As we’ve come to expect from Ridley Scott, the film is visually stunning and extremely well made. Everything about the film is polished – the production design, the costuming, the special effects. It has some superb stunt work and stunning visuals involving large scale battles and sandstorms. And of course the plague of locusts, the Nile turning to blood, all that stuff looks awesome. The panoramic shots of Alexandria and Pithen are an incredible blend of model work, practical effects and CGI. I really struggled to tell where the real and the fake merged. Ancient Egypt has never looked so amazing, and so real. It’s really brought to life.

The performances are mostly good. Christian Bale has become adept at playing characters who are batshit crazy yet relatable and that we can sympathise with, and he does that to its full effect with his portrayal of Moses. Joel Edgerton is also good. He’s not among my favourite actors, but he plays Ramses as scarily intimidating yet childishly pathetic. It’s a nice performance. And John Turturro is fantastic as Seti. He’s not in the film very long, but he’s a joy to watch in every scene he’s in.

Another performance worth mentioning is God-kid. Firstly, I loved that Ridley Scott went with neither man nor woman to portray God. He threw a kid in there. This could have been laughable, except that the child actor is incredible. He’s by turns menacing and benevolent, often both in the same breath. I really can’t do the performance justice here, the kid is simply brilliant.

Ridley Scott dedicates the film to his brother Tony, who tragically committed suicide. Knowing this at the end, the scenes between Ramses and Moses suddenly took on a deeper meaning. I wish he had of spent more time on the relationship between these two men than on trying to make a Biblical epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments or Ben Hur. This was two and half really disappointing hours.