The Red Baron (2008)

The Red Baron is a 2008 war film directed by Nikolai Müllerschoen and starring Matthias Schweighöfer, Lena Headey and Joseph Fiennes.

I bought The Red Baron years ago but only got around to watching it recently because the cheap packaging made it look fairly ordinary. I should have known better than to let packaging deceive me. It’s a fantastic film. I’d put it right up there with War Horse as one of the better films depicting World War One. 

It’s rare to see an English-language film depicting things from the German side, and it’s here that The Red Baron really shines. The Nazi party was still more than a decade away – these fighter pilots are indeed fanatics, but they are fanatic about flying. The combat (at least at first) is completely secondary and they see it more as ‘sport’ than warfare. When Manfred von Richtofen first takes command of a fighter wing he emphasises to his men that they are to shoot down airplanes, not men. There’s a strange sort of chivalry between the British and German fighter pilots (something that was mostly lacking in the trenches they fought above) evident when the Red Baron and his loyal wingmen fly over a British flyer’s funeral at the beginning of the film to drop a wreath. They considered the British their opponents, not their enemies. 

This is also illustrated when Richtofen rescues a British pilot he’s shot down (Joseph Fiennes) and pulls him from the plane, handing him over to a nurse (Lena Headey). It’s enough to down the plane, he has no interest in killing the man flying it. He sees himself more as a duelling knight than a soldier, even remarking that dogfighting is like jousting, like ‘a tournament’.

Richtofen is a wonderfully drawn out character. We are first introduced to him as a young boy, and this is one of my favourite scenes. He’s hunting with his younger brother and he has a deer in his sights, but then gets distracted as a plane flies overhead. I like the way he abandons his rifle without shooting the deer – it’s not subtle but it works marvellously: he enjoys the hunt, not the kill.

Schweighöfer plays Richtofen with a mixture of boyish enthusiasm and war-weariness. His best scene by far is when he’s talking to Lena Headey about why he refuses to accept an officer’s commission (which would see him grounded, giving orders instead of flying, and thus safe as more and more German pilots are blown out of the sky by the advancing allies). He says he refuses to order his men into battle, he will only lead them. 

This scene comes after a mercifully non-sentimental love story between the Baron and the nurse after she treats him for a head wound. He playfully says he’s glad he got shot down because it gave him a chance to see her, so she decides to take the wind out of his sails by showing him the other side of the conflict, the one he has remained immune to while flying above it. 

At the same time, as the war ramps up and the allies advance, more and more of his wingmen begin to die rather than simply get shot down, and the varnish starts to come off. The scenes where his friends die are played brilliantly – there’s nothing heroic about it, they are just mangled bodies in the flaming remains of their aircraft. His bright red plane starts to become more of a burden on his soul than the symbol of German victory the military leadership are using it as. I like the scene where he visits the front lines at the Western Front and sees German soldiers being mown down by British machine guns. There’s nothing chivalrous about it, it’s just ugly. It’s around this time that he stops believing his own legend and starts to come to terms with the fact that, in the air or on the ground, it’s not a sporting match, it’s just war. 

I don’t know a great deal about the real Richtofen, but the film seems to stick pretty well to historical accuracy. For instance he got his famous nickname because he painted one of his early bi-planes red long before the famous red tri-plane showed up (he only flies it in the climactic battle of the film, the rest is in bi-planes). And there’s a solemnity to the final battle as he gives his wingmen a short pep talk before take-off. It’s clear they all know the war is lost and the battle is futile. This last aerial battle is filmed superbly – it’s far more brutal than the earlier jousting matches. Planes don’t gently coast to earth; they plunge from the sky engulfed in flame or simply break apart like wooden toys.

And the final piece of historical accuracy is one I really liked – we don’t see the Red Baron’s death (in reality it was never confirmed who actually shot him down), the film ends with Lena Headey visiting his grave and seeing that the British laid a wreath on it. Nice closure to a really nicely-done film. Two hours well spent.

Intersection (1993)

Intersection is a 1993 film starring Richard Gere, Sharon Stone, Lolita Davidovich and the ghost from Stir of Echoes and directed by Mark Rydell.

The biggest problem I have with Intersection is that Richard Gere's character is immensely unlikeable. It's impossible to sympathise with the plight of a protagonist who is such a colossal douchebag. Every problem he faces in the entire film (including the car accident) is entirely the result of his own selfishness. The whole film is built around the crucible of a car wreck that apparently claims his life, shown at the beginning, hence the title. But even this elicits no sympathy - he crashes into a stalled van because he is speeding like a loon on wet country roads with blind bends.

Anyway, Vincent (Gere) is a famous architect who was stuck in a loveless marriage with Sharon Stone (there's a problem for starters - I find it impossible to believe a woman as sexy as Stone is could be anything but ferociously enthusiastic in bed) until he met some ditzy redhead, Olivia (Lolita Davidovich) at an auction and suddenly discovered himself . . . or whatever. Because of their daughter (the chick from House and the ghost in Stir of Echoes when she was like, 12) and their architecture firm Gere and Stone are forced to still spend time together, and of course this causes issues with Gere and the ditzy redhead yadda yadda.

The scene towards the end outside the diner where Gere cries as he writes a letter ending his relationship with Olivia (a "find someone who doesn't have complications", type-thing) as rain beats down on his car is supposed to show how heartbreaking it all is for him, but for me it's just hilarious. Firstly because Gere is not a very solid actor, his tears seem horribly rehearsed, but more so because Vincent, the poor baby, is basically deciding which of the two women in his love triangle will have the privilege of his company. His wishy-washy excuses of wanting Olivia to find someone better are facetious at best - her needs are completely irrelevant. It's all about him.

And he's not half irritating. Throughout the film, Gere babbles these almost incomprehensible monologues that are supposed to show what a deep guy he is and how passionate he is about the women he loves, but he just comes off as an obnoxious nitwit.

The character we're supposed to root for, Olivia, is unfortunately not much better. She's one of those annoyingly eccentric characters, and her vibrant personality is supposed to be a counterpoint to Stone's cold detachment as the wife. Unfortunately she's just irritating. She bounces around like a squirrel on meth and her behaviour throughout the film is obnoxious - she shows up drunk to an event so she can create some drama because she knows Vincent's wife will be there, she gets horribly insecure about her relationship with him because he seems reluctant to build her a house so they can play happy couples, and she tries mercilessly and shamelessly to ingratiate herself to his daughter. She's a bundle of insecurity wrapped in a pretty package and has a fuse as short as a lima bean. She's the sort of chick you learn to avoid after she throws your possessions from a second-storey window and tries to brain you with a marble ashtray. But Gere hops after her like a lovestruck puppy.

The character I felt the most sympathy towards was actually Sharon Stone's. As I mentioned she is supposed to be the cold, detached wife that drove Vincent into the arms of another woman, but she is basically a decent person. Her only flaw seems to be that she married a dipshit. There's a ridiculous flashback scene in their bathroom where Vincent is coming onto her and she takes a phone call from a colleague. Gere slinks away pouting while she's on the phone and we're supposed to feel bad for him - oh, look, she denied him sex, what a twat! No wonder he hates her!

The film ends with Gere apparently breaking up with Olivia by writing her the letter, but then he has a sudden change of heart (he sees a little girl with red hair and gets all weepy) so he leaves a voicemail for Olivia (another babbled monologue) but then gets wiped out by a semi-trailer on his way to see her. Sharon Stone gets to the hospital first and finds the letter but decides not to give it to Olivia, thus both women leave thinking he had chosen her. The narcissism of this is absurd. Once again, it's not about Stone or Olivia. Their happiness is completely irrelevant - it's all about who was 'chosen' by Vincent.

And to make matters worse, we get some overwrought dream sequence as Vincent is dying where he sees his daughter and Olivia at a dreamy wedding banquet as some sort of symbol of the happiness he might have been headed towards. The startling thing about it, for me, is that Sharon Stone is not in it at all. A woman he supposedly loved, the mother of his daughter, and as he's dying he doesn't give her a single thought? She was probably better off without him.

The Counselor (2013)

I’ve said elsewhere on this blog that Ridley Scott is my favourite director. I didn’t think anything could make me doubt that opinion. And then I watched The Counselor.

The Counselor is a 2013 thriller directed by Ridley Scott and starring Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz.

I went in to The Counselor wanting to like it. Sure, along the way, Ridley Scott has made some clunkers. Remember GI Jane? Hannibal? Thelma and Louise? Yikes, yikes, and yikes.

But sadly, The Counselor trumps them all for complete and utter shit. I didn’t like a single thing about it. The acting is atrocious, the dialogue is pretentious, the plot is needlessly convoluted and the film looks terrible. It actually reminded me of a Tony Scott film from the 80’s rather than a Ridley Scott movie. The film even opens with some curtains wafting in a breeze overlooking a Mexican vista. Fuck me, this film sucked in so many ways I’m having trouble even beginning to describe it.

Ridley Scott seems to desperately be trying to make a slick crime epic. Instead the whole thing resembles a fucking Lexus commercial. The first steaming pile it lays is a scene where Javier Bardem and Cameron Diaz are watching her pet cheetahs hunt prey in the Mexican desert. They’re both wearing designer safari suits, and they sit there sipping cocktails while she pretentiously waffles on about a sunset. The entire scene is beyond ridiculous. These two nitwits are supposed to be some kind of uber-cool, pseudo-celebrity crime boss hipsters. Instead, they come across as two complete fuckwits.

It’s hard to take anything about the film seriously. One such aspect is the fact that Javier Bardem’s character looks like The World’s Biggest Douchebag. His shirts alone make you expect him to crack out some castanets and start dancing the fucking Macarena. You’re supposed to feel bad for him when the cartel guys catch up with him and blow his brains out. Instead, I was laughing my ass off.

But getting back to the worst part about Cameron Diaz’s character - her look. She has a cheetah tattoo on her back, and fingernails that look like claws. Wow. Subtle.

Of course she is supposed to be some kind of evil genius. She attempts to steal some drugs from a Mexican drug cartel but fucks it up along the way. However, this doesn’t stop her from stealing the money she wants in some of the most ridiculously complicated ways and doing away with anyone and everyone that can connect her to the crime. In the final scene she says hunters have grace, beauty and purity of heart. The film then ends with her saying that she’s famished. Oh right, in case I missed it with the film relentlessly slamming me over the head with it, she’s the hunter. Oh right! *smacks self in forehead* Jesus wept, I basically just wasted two hours of my life so Cameron Diaz could fuck herself with a Ferrari (don’t ask).

But enough about that. Onto the film. The film is one of those idiotic cinematic forays that pretends to contain a lot of substance, but is really just a slathering of style ladled on like brick cement. That’s fine I guess if all you demand of your films is slick nonsense that falls from memory like a discarded popcorn container as you walk out the door, but from a film maker like Ridley Scott, and actors like Michael Fassbender and Brad Pitt, I’m sorry, I ask for a little more.

One example of the idiocy I’m referring to, is where Diaz hires a couple of thugs to steal from the Mexican drug cartel. In order to get the drug cartel’s vehicle to work, she has to obtain a special wire gizmo from a guy who for reasons that only serve the plot, likes to ride his motorcycle really fast along deserted roads at night. And again, for reasons that only serve the ensuing plot, he keeps this gizmo…in his helmet. So how do these numbskulls seek to obtain this gizmo? They drive miles ahead of him and spend ages setting up a wire that will decapitate him as he rides past. We even get a stupid scene where the lead thug goes to a car dealership to measure the exact model of motorbike to make sure he gets the height of the wire correct. Fucking fuck me with a barge pole, why not just ambush the guy, shoot him dead, and take the freakin wire thingy? But no, that would make way too much sense so instead the guy spends ages measuring up this Wile. E Coyote roadside contraption while the audience is simply asked to ignore the fact that what, are these guys fucking psychic? How did they know this guy would ride down this particular road at this particular time? No one in his film ever does anything logically. It gets annoying really fast.

A scene that takes this stupidity to brutal extremes is where the 'Counselor’ (Michael Fassbender) is trying to get his bride-to-be (Penelope Cruz) out of harm’s way after his silly drug deal has gone pear-shaped and people are starting to die left right and centre. What does he let her do? She Googles a fucking hotel to hide out in. Fassbender is repeatedly warned earlier in the film about how ruthless and smart and conniving the cartel guys can be. So Jesus Christ Almighty, he didn’t think the cartel guys might be able to trace a goddamn Google search?

Anyway…another ridiculous death scene masquerading as something slick and clever and cool is how Diaz does away with Brad Pitt’s character. It’s set up early in the film where Javier Bardem inexplicably (most of his dialogue is inexplicably out of place or just simply clumsy exposition) tells Michael Fassbender about a cartel killing device that slowly garotes you. A wire is looped around your head and then a motor slowly tightens the wire.

So because this piece of dialogue is inserted so ham fistedly into an early conversation you immediately know that this little device is going to turn up later in the film. Brad Pitt is hiding out in London and Cameron Diaz gets a randomly hired thug to jog past and slip the device over his neck. Sure enough it tightens around his neck and he dies in front of some shocked onlookers. The death scene itself is not bad, it’s just (like everything else in the film) needlessly complicated. Again, just ambush the guy and blow his fucking brains out.

The story is complete nonsense, the dialogue is fucking drivel and Michael Fassbender is wasted. He’s basically an idiot who gets what’s coming to him. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for him whatsoever. He was already a well off lawyer, so what does he do? He has the bright idea to suddenly get into the drug business. But does he organise some domestic club deal no harm no foul? No, that’s not this guy’s style. Instead, he jumps into bed with a Mexican drug cartel. Gee whiz, Counselor, that sounds like a great idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Fuck me, this is a terrible film. But what’s more amazing to me than the fact it was directed by Ridley Scott, is that it was written by Cormac McCarthy. How not one, but two, incredibly talented people could fuck something up so tremendously is beyond me. Alas, here it is and its name is The Counselor.

Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)

I’ve watched this film twice now and my chess game still sucks. Maybe I’m bringing my queen out too early...

Searching for Bobby Fischer is a 1993 drama film directed by Steven Zaillian and starring Max Pomeranc, Joe Mantegna, Ben Kingsley and Laurence Fishburne.

The most interesting scene in Searching for Bobby Fischer for me is where 7 year old chess prodigy Josh’s (Max Pomeranc) chess teacher (Ben Kingsley) lines up a pawn, rook, knight, bishop and king in front of him and asks him to choose which piece he is. Josh replies that he is none of them, that they are just pieces.

It illustrates that Josh, more than any of the adults in the film, realises that chess is just a game. It’s a point the film makes several times, and unlike most of the emotional elements of the film which are bordering on maudlin, it’s nicely subtle. Ben Kingsley’s character pretentiously waffles on about chess being ‘art’, Josh’s father treats it like a sport and becomes obsessed with his son winning trophies, and Josh’s friend Vinnie (an underused Laurence Fishburne) uses it as a hustle in blitz games in New York’s Washington Square Park. The adults don’t get that Josh doesn’t really care about winning or losing, or art, or how he is perceived by, or perceives, his opponents. He just likes to play chess.

I like the relationship between Josh and his father (Joe Mantegna). After Josh starts seriously winning tournaments, his dad forbids him to play speed chess in the park with Vinnie because his teacher insists it’s instilling bad habits in his play style and will ruin his tournament success.

The best scene by far is where his dad also realises it’s just a game and takes Josh back to the park to play a game with Vinnie. Vinnie baulks at Josh’s first moves (he opens with a predictable tournament strategy) and tells him “play from your gut, like you used to”, so Josh does, and quickly checkmates him.

The scenes in the park are great. Young Josh discovers chess by watching Vinnie and his mates play speed chess for money and drugs. I particularly liked that when they first head over to watch the games and you see it from his mother’s perspective, the camera focuses on the money changing hands. Then we cut to Josh’s point of view, and he only sees the chess boards. The money and the hustling are irrelevant to him; he’s just fascinated by the game. It’s a great use of perspective.

I wish the film had included more of the speed chess in the park scenes (it’s obvious a lot were cut for pacing) because they are not only the best part of the film, it would have helped to explain why people keep telling Josh’s parents to not let him play in the park. There are actually very few scenes of him actually doing that.

I also like how strong little Josh is throughout the film. I usually find kids in movies annoying, but Max Pomeranc plays real—life chess whiz Josh Waitzkin with a dignity far beyond his years. I like that when his teacher tells him that in order to be the best player he must learn to hate his opponents. Josh just shrugs and says “but I don’t.” His teacher then insists that his idol, Bobby Fischer, hated his opponents. Josh tells him “well I’m not him.”

Unfortunately the film jettisons the subtlety a few times. Probably the worst instance is where Josh’s dad moves the chess trophies from the mantelpiece into Josh’s bedroom (the film makes a point earlier of showing his father gloating over the trophies with Josh nowhere in sight). This scene would have worked far better without any dialogue. But no, because we audiences are morons we get a tearful line from Joe Mantegna, “these are yours now, son.”

We also get a ridiculous scene where father and son stand in the rain having an emotional conversation after Josh deliberately loses a game because he’s terrified that if he becomes a chess champion everyone will hate him. The impact of the scene is diminished somewhat because they stand under a torrential downpour when, moments earlier, they were safely inside a building. It’s sledgehammer subtlety that just doesn’t work.

The film is at its best when it’s not dishing up the emotional manipulation with a soup ladle, and thankfully the underlying theme that young Josh is more emotionally mature than most of the adults pushing and pulling him in various directions is done with some subtext, and so becomes the film’s strongest point.

The best moment in this regard is during the final game where Josh faces off against his nemesis – another chess-whizz kid – in a tournament grand final. Josh, seeing 12 moves ahead and knowing he’s won, offers his opponent a hand shake (signalling a draw) and his eager father and teacher watching on through a video monitor both reel at first asking “what the hell is he doing?” Josh knows he has won the game, so he doesn’t feel the need to ‘hate’ his opponent by humiliating him.

It could have been a little less ‘coming to terms with things’, but all in all Searching for Bobby Fischer is a strong film with some decent performances. Two hours well spent.

Terminator: Genisys (2015)

The Terminator films have all been products of their time. Terminator: Genisys is no exception.

Terminator: Genisys is a 2015 sci-fi/action film directed by Alan Taylor and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke, and Jai Courtney.

Terminator: Genisys moves away from the post-Cold War nuclear paranoia that permeated the first two films and expands on a notion first explored in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines – that the very technology we are becoming so reliant on will one day be our downfall. In Terminator 3 this was the internet (there ended up being no 'system core' to blow up - Skynet used the internet to infiltrate every computer on the planet).

Fast-forward to 2015 and they've updated this plot point to be that Skynet will take over 'the cloud' (ie our tablets and smart phones) when Cyberdyne Systems launches Genisys - a new platform that will link everybody's devices. There's even a handy 'countdown' clock to the Genisys launch to inject some tension into the film. Somebody studied their Film-making 101.

The first two Terminator films are brilliant. In my mind, they are near-perfect examples of action-cinema. Terminator 3 had its flaws, but it more than made up for them with exciting and brilliantly-executed action sequences, solid performances, and a poignant and memorable ending.

Terminator: Genisys is also not without problems, but overall it’s a pretty solid film. What I like most is that it’s not a ‘reboot’. I think they realised after the staggeringly poor box office returns for Terminator: Salvation, that a reboot was a colossal mistake. So what we get here is a weird sort of sequel/alternate reality type thing where we see a couple of key scenes from the first film recreated shot-for-shot, but with a typically Terminator-esque mind-bendingly convoluted twist: because that future/past/whatever has already happened, both Skynet and John Connor know how it plays/played out and so both have attempted to subvert it for their own advantage.

What I disliked was that this film tries to eliminate one of the very best aspects of the first three films (particularly the idea set up in Terminator 3) that "Judgement Day" is inevitable. This slightly depressing idea made the ending of Terminator 3 so damned awesome. The numbing realisation that dawns on John Connor and Clare Danes as they find themselves trapped in the underground bunker: the world is doomed to end in nuclear annihilation no matter what they do to try and stop Skynet. It is what they do after the holocaust that is important.

And for the sake of an understandable storyline this film also does away with the notion that Skynet is something intangible. That humankind never really got the chance to figure out how Skynet had subverted machines to its evil influence before they were thrust into a fight for their very survival, and investigating what happened was rendered pointless (think back to Kyle explaining the future to Sarah in the first film). In this film Skynet is again something that can be ‘blown up’ as long as you can get your hands on enough TNT. This makes for a solid action film but it makes this film, and to a lesser extent Terminator 3 and even Terminator 2, far less thought-provoking than James Cameron’s original masterpiece, which remains the best of these films.

Another thing I disliked was that this film retrofits Kyle Reese (played in the original Terminator by Michael Biehn) into a cookie-cutter, muscled up action hero. Don’t get me wrong, Jai Courtney is fine in the role, but why is it that every action leading man these days needs to be a steroided-up, gym-sculpted beefcake? The fact that Michael Biehn was an ordinary-looking, human (read: fallible and vulnerable) man gave the first film the desperate, urgent quality that made it so great. He seemed so powerless against the relentless hostility of the Terminator stalking Sarah Connor. It gave their flight a gravity and urgency that transcended the genre and made the first film so memorable. It also made his climactic fight with the Terminator, and ultimate sacrifice, so heart-breaking. He knew he didn't stand a chance against it, but he took it on anyway to protect Sarah Connor.

This film doesn’t really bother with having Kyle Reese or Sarah Connor actually fight the evil Terminators. A lot of the fighting is Arnie fighting a younger, CGI version of himself. And while Arnie is no stranger to staring himself down (see The Sixth Day), I would have preferred some more human vs Terminator action. Of course there’s the requisite ‘other Terminator’ thrown into the mix for good measure (a Terminator 2-esque shape-shifting Terminator), and another villain, which brings me to the major thing I disliked about this film...

They make John Connor a bad guy.

Yeah, they try and inject some kind of anti-hero bullshit into it, but they basically turn a complicated, mysterious, super-cool figure from the other films into a total freakin douchebag.

They introduce a silly plot line about John Connor being infiltrated by Skynet and turned into a new kind of Terminator (some convoluted nonsense about infiltrating him on a 'genetic' level) and as such he kind of becomes a villain who doesn't think of himself as villainous because he believes what he's doing is right. Whatever. It veers dangerously towards the 'robot-that-doesn't-realise-he's-a-robot' crap from Terminator: Salvation. It didn't work in that film, and it doesn't work here.

There’s really not much to say about Arnie’s performance – he’s basically the same heroic-evil-robot-turned-heroic-saviour-robot that he was in Terminator 2 and 3. In fact he said in numerous interviews that the role was a piece of cake for him. The characterisation veers pretty hard into self-referential eye-rolling absurdity a few times with his “I am old, not obsolete” dialogue, and I giggled a couple of times when the big lug tries to get his emotion on, but after so much awesomeness contributed to cinema over the years I can forgive Arnie just about anything.

I also laughed at another bit. In the lead up to this film’s release I’d been wondering how they would explain the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger is 30 years older than when he first appeared in the Terminator. They pretty much palm this off with a silly explanation that although the robot endoskeleton is metal, the flesh on top is real and thus, ages normally. Okay. But wouldn't this then open up a monumental plot hole across the entire franchise – that nothing ‘real’ can survive the time travel process? Wouldn’t this mean that all that ‘real’ flesh would be burned away and the Terminators would arrive in our time, sans-Arnie-shell? Ah, whatever. What I’m more eager and still waiting for is an explanation as to why an American designed and built evil supercomputer decided to make its Terminators speak with thick Eastern European accents.

Anyway. A welcome addition to the franchise for me is Emilia Clarke as Sarah Connor. I’d only seen her in Game of Thrones where all she really had to do was look pretty and recite dramatic dialogue. Terminator: Genisys gives her a chance to flex her acting muscles a bit, and she does so surprisingly well. She has the physique to pull off the action scenes, and the acting skill to inject some pathos into what could have been laughable scenes where she has to get emotional about the thought of losing a robot. Maybe I was blinded by the fact that she’s one of the hottest women on the face of the planet. That certainly didn’t hurt my appreciation of her performance.

As much as I enjoyed this film far more than I thought I would, I can’t say I’m overly keen for another installment (this film, predictably, ends with a ‘sequel-possible’ post-credits teaser). Honestly, Arnie can hit the gym as much as he wants, he’s pushing 70 so I don’t know how much more ass-kicking mayhem he has in him (although Stallone is still churning out Rocky films so who knows). Terminator: Genisys is a welcome return to form after the ambitious misfire that was Terminator: Salvation, but it might be time to let the franchise retire gracefully with an "Hasta la Vista, baby". (Come on, I had to go there...)

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

Trying to follow the plot of this film is like walking into a movie halfway through and trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

Jupiter Ascending is a 2015 sci fi film directed by the Wachowskis and starring Mila Kunis, Channing Tatum and Eddie Redmayne.

The story of Jupiter Ascending is so hard to follow I actually literally checked the display a few times to make sure I hadn’t accidentally skipped a chapter. Even the exposition-heavy voiceover fails to make the plot any less incomprehensible. And I use the term ‘plot’ pretty loosely. It was directed by the Wachowski brothers, who are now (through the miracle of modern medicine) the Wachowski brother and sister. But this film is kind of what I imagine the Matrix might have been if someone like Michael Bay had directed it. A toxic overdose of style that masks any trace of substance that might have tried to waft on through. Obscene amounts of money spent on CGI effects with a ludicrous story shoehorned in between action scenes. And that action tries valiantly to mask plot holes so massive you could jump through them without touching the sides.

Take the first action sequence with the main actors, Mila Kunis, playing the heroine, Jupiter Jones (a character name that would make Stan Lee smirk with amusement) and Channing Tatum. He’s the loyal hero (his name, Caine Wise, sounds like a brand of dog food). Anyway he’s tasked with protecting her from the bad guys. They are outnumbered and outgunned, so naturally you’d think they’d opt for low-key (think Kyle Reese and Sarah Connor), but what does he do? He activates his gravity-defying rocket boots, scoops her up into his arms like Superman, and launches out of a high-rise building high above Chicago. Naturally this alerts every bad guy within a six mile radius so we get some ridiculous action scene with people jetting around skyscrapers and ping pinging lasers at each other. Why not just walk downstairs and hail a cab?

Another scene that is miraculous in its stupidity is when the bad guys try to kill Caine by jettisoning him into space. Only they launch him out into space with a whole bunch of inflatable oxygen suits. What the holy fuck? That's like trying to drown a guy by dropping him into the ocean with a scuba tank.

Of course Channing Tatum spends half the film with his shirt off. I suppose when a producer pays to have an actor spend four months in the gym before filming they expect some return on investment from the ‘squealing teenage girl’ demographic. I don’t mind me a bit of hunky man flesh, but only when it’s attached to a halfway decent actor. Take Jason Statham. He could spend every movie wearing nothing but a rhinestone-encrusted jock strap and it’d be fine, because he’s fun to watch. Channing Tatum has all the charisma of a damp sponge. Plus there’s his make-up. He looks like Mr Tumnus from The Chronicles of Narnia on steroids:

Another nonsensical plot point is when Titus (Douglas Booth) asks Jupiter to marry him (I'd explain why, but my brain might implode). When she gets cold feet he tells her not to think of it as a marriage in human terms, but rather like a mutually-beneficial ‘contract’. Fair enough. So then why give her a giant fucking engagement ring? If you want her to think of it as a contract, oh I don’t know, maybe just get her to sign a piece of paper?

While we're talking about the plot, the big reveal halfway through is that humankind is being ‘harvested’ to create some sort of anti-ageing wonder drug for the ruling classes of the universe. Unlike a similar reveal in The Matrix, which came as a shocking and disturbing twist, the reveal here has no weight whatsoever. It’s all a bit ‘so…what else has been happening?’

If it’s not the plot that’s annoying, the dialogue is not much better.  It consists of gems like this exchange between Channing Tumnus and Jupiter:

Caine: "I'm more dog than man."
Jupiter: "I like dogs."

Just about the only thing in the film that’s not annoying is the villain, Balem Abrasax (okay so the name sucks) played by Eddie Redmayne. Redmayne mostly whispers his lines in a sort of snake-like way for most of the movie, and that’s entertaining in its own right, but he then occasionally launches into this weird, breathless screaming. This sounds annoying but trust me, his bonkers performance pole-vaults so far over the top that it actually manages to transcend the shittiness and becomes its own gleeful diversion. It’s far and away the best performance (which admittedly isn’t a difficult feat) because he’s the only one that seems to realise he’s in a preposterous film. He actually seems to be having fun with it, whereas everyone else has a bad case of Serious Face.

Regular readers of this blog will know how much I hate lazy exposition, but bizarrely in the case of Jupiter Ascending I actually didn’t mind because without it I had no fucking idea what the hell was happening. I was actually relieved by the predictableness (yeah yeah I know that’s not a word) of the characters pausing after every action scene to explain what just happened. They spend half the film explaining who certain characters are, where and what the place is, and how certain things in this universe work etc (like princess-smelling bees?? Jerry Maguire-kid didn’t include that one when he taught me that bees and dogs can smell fear).

Don’t get me wrong though, even with half the script devoted entirely to exposition the film is still unbelievably baffling. With a better film I’d suggest that this could be alleviated by making it longer, but in this case, I’m more than happy to leave shit unexplained. I don’t think I could take a director’s cut, I’d probably end up hanging myself.

The Wachowskis have a lot of talent, but if the result of them being given a massive budget and free reign results in crap like this I’d prefer they have their ideas vetted more. That said, the ideas themselves are quite brilliant, they just fall short in the execution. For instance the film is blatantly anti-capitalist but this theme is conveyed so ham-fistedly (villains incessantly yabbering on about the virtues of capitalism) it comes off as almost farcical. The movie also takes the very Philip K Dick-esque idea of ‘time as a precious resource’ but then gives that idea all the depth of a wading pool. It’s a watered-down mimosa to Bladerunner’s shot of rye with a beer chaser.

All the shittiness aside, I actually liked the film's conclusion, even though it was amazing that I was actually still paying attention at this point. The idea offered up is that, flying in the face of all the characters’ repeated assertions throughout the film, there is indeed something more precious than time. If you can’t guess what that is, I guess you'll just have to endure the film.

The Adventures of Tintin (2011)

I swear by now Andy Serkis has just permanently glued motion capture dots to his face.

The Adventures of Tintin is a 2011 animated film directed by Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg and starring Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis and Daniel Craig.

That this film is enjoyable and exciting from start to finish is a great example of what happens when an adaptation is made by film makers who are dedicated fans of the original work. That this film received such an abundance of negative criticism upon its release is what happens when that film is then watched by people who are idiots.

When I first read about the Spielberg adaptation of Tintin it was planned as a live action film. I immediately recalled the abysmal live action film from the 80’s. Enough said.

But after I heard that Peter Jackson had become involved, with the full weight of Weta Workshop behind him, and that the film was to be CGI-motion-capture, I became excited. Jackson was the perfect film maker for this – his Lord of the Rings adaptation proved he is skilled at both keeping loyal fans happy, and bringing in new ones.

And unlike Tolkien’s wordy, old-English, Anglo-mythology (which must have been extremely challenging to adapt visually), Herge’s visual style of drawing would have essentially constituted a ready-made storyboard.

One of my favourite scenes is early on – where Snowy chases the kidnapped Tintin (Jamie Bell) across town. It’s a great example of the freedom a pure CGI film allows – the camera ducks and weaves through traffic, passes through gaps far too narrow for any human cameraman to pass through, and races along behind Snowy as he leaps over cars, people, and fences. It’s an amazing piece of action.

While the film is mostly an adaptation of The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure, it also takes sections from The Crab with the Golden Claws, which was necessary to do justice to introducing the character of Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis).

My other favourite scenes are the ‘flashbacks’ Haddock has to his ancestor doing battle with the pirate Red Rackham. The high seas confrontation is the best tall ship battle I’ve ever seen put to film. It’s fantastic in every sense of the word.

One departure from the books I thought was really necessary was the decision to not have Snowy vocalise his thoughts the way he does in the books. In the film he is a real dog, but the way he’s written it’s obvious what he’s thinking anyway.

The film manages to seamlessly mix comedy and action. The comedy is both dry and slapstick, and the action ranges from light hearted (the pickpocket scenes) to way over the top, but it never strays into absurdity. It’s like a CGI version of the set pieces from an Indiana Jones film.

The set pieces themselves are just incredible. The highlight for me is the scene where Tintin and Haddock (and Snowy of course) escape the freight ship in a small rowboat and then end up in the biplane. It’s a perfect example of what I was just saying – comedy and action seamlessly mixed. From Haddock drunkenly setting the boat on fire to Tintin bringing the plane down with a well aimed shot, and their subsequent hijack of the plane and flight through the storm, to the final tense/comedic bit where Tintin is almost pulled into the propeller but saved by a desperate Snowy, the whole scene is magnificently executed. Motion capture has come a long way and the animators here should be very proud of their work indeed.

And unlike some of Peter Jackson’s longer adventures, the intrigue and exposition between the action set pieces never drags (I’m thinking of the sleep-inducing Merry and Pippin/Treebeard sequences from Lord of the Rings).

Most of the character voice acting is spot on, with the exception of Daniel Craig. I really like him as an actor, he has screen presence up the yin yang but here his voice is just too recognisable or something. You immediately picture James Bond’s voice coming out of a middle aged guy with a cane. It just doesn’t work.

But that’s a small gripe in what is otherwise one of the best animated films I’ve ever seen. Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg have awesome jobs – they get unlimited funds to basically play with toys on a massive scale. I certainly hope that despite the negative criticism they do decide to team up again and that there’s more Adventures of Tintin on the way. Two hours well spent.