Somewhere in the space-time continuum exists an alternate history where Nixon is elected to a third term, Vietnam is an American triumph and superheroes (read: people who dress up and can fight well) are banned seeing as they often do more harm than good. This is the world of Alan Moore's much hailed epic graphic novel "Watchmen", called by many the "Citizen Kane" of the comic book world, and adapted by Zack Snyder ("300") into a two and a half hour science fiction mindslide.
I have searched my mind, and I do not think that I have seen a genre film of such peculiar impact and profundity since Deckard chased down Replicants in a futuristic Los Angeles. “If you can see what I’ve seen with my eyes”, indeed; wait until you meet Dr Manhattan in meditative mood.
For some reason, I feel that with a film this big in scope and theme (tragically, it is seen as a box-office disappointment), the less said the better. I will say that the film is structured according to character, and freely leaps between present, past and memory, thereby presenting a challenge to mainstream moviegoers to follow the events. Oh, and there's much to say about these characters, flung into a narrative of desctructino beyond their control: The Comedian; Silk Spectre; Nite Owl; and the pleasures of Rorschach and Dr Manhattan, who is an entitity of energy such as filmdom has not yet seen. The film proceeds to use these characters to examine American history, identity, moral responsibility and nothing less than nucelar holocaust (in a brave but smart move, Snyder replaces the graphic novel's ending with something far more authentic and terrifying).
I savour every frame of his film, this comic book come to life. Some scenes will, I know, haunt me for weeks, maybe months to come: Dr Manhattan on Mars; Silk Spectre I's encounter with The Comedian; Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II getting frisky on their transport craft; Ozymandias's explanation of his actions; Rorschach's final moments; many, many more.
The film boasts a cast that works, every single one. Allow me to point out Jackie Earle Hailey who would, in a perfect world, get an Oscar for his performance as Rorschach, and Patrick Wilson's all-too-human Nite Owl.
Emotional, intellectually multidimensional and politically subversive, "Watchmen" is a monumental motion picture. At the year's end, I will return to it.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Inertia in action
Having seen a number of heavy films, I opted to watch a straightforward action vehicle starring one of the few action heroes I can tolerate as a means of compensating for the mental atomisation that the other films had incurred. Although I subscribe to Ebert’s dictum that a good movie can never be depressing, overdosing on such films do exert a toll, often manifesting, at least for me, in a strange feeling of mental fatigue. With this motivation I justified watching Olivier Megaton’s (!) “The Transporter 3”, featuring Jason Statham as franchise protagonist and Audi aficionado Frank Martin.
This time, Martin is forced into transporting precious cargo by an American villain (Robert Knepper) intent on forcing a Russian politician to sign a document that will result in great financial benefit to certain people and certain ecological doom for others.
“The Transporter 3” is easily the worst Besson-scripted film I’ve yet seen. From the opening sequence which is later nearly forgotten by the film to the men on the boat catching fish to the bizarre and embarrassing love story between Martin and his travelling companion (who is also a stunningly bad actress), the film has plot holes large enough to double flip a black Audi on the back of a speeding train through.
Halfway through the film I reflected on the possibility that the action sequences should be interesting enough to keep my interest from waning, but no – like many other action films in the post-“Bourne” era, “T3” also shows us fistfights where you’re never quite sure who’s doing what to whom. You see an arm extending, a leg flailing; yet, you seldom seem to witness actual contact, or to hear bones crack.
This is a low for Statham (keep in mind I have not seen his turn in Boll’s “In the Name of the King”, which I intend to watch as part of a 'suicide combo' paired with “Dragonball: Evolution” and “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li” towards the end of the year) who does his best to do his macho man-thing but an actor is only as strong his material, and Statham has barely anything to stand on. I could go on and on discussing the numerous glaring flaws in this film – and here I don’t even omment on the physics of the Bessoniverse – but I can’t see why. No-one will remember this Eurotrash action rubbish by 2010, if they haven’t already forgotten it. Hopefully Statham, who really deserves better, gets a gig for Guy Ritchie soon. From what I've heard, "Crank 2: High Voltage" isn't much of a step up (and, for the record, I despised the first "Crank").
Also, here’s hoping Besson, who hasn’t directed anything noteworthy in a decade and released his best film a whole 15 years ago, moves on to interior design. He may be a profitable French export, but his movies are terrible.
This time, Martin is forced into transporting precious cargo by an American villain (Robert Knepper) intent on forcing a Russian politician to sign a document that will result in great financial benefit to certain people and certain ecological doom for others.
“The Transporter 3” is easily the worst Besson-scripted film I’ve yet seen. From the opening sequence which is later nearly forgotten by the film to the men on the boat catching fish to the bizarre and embarrassing love story between Martin and his travelling companion (who is also a stunningly bad actress), the film has plot holes large enough to double flip a black Audi on the back of a speeding train through.
Halfway through the film I reflected on the possibility that the action sequences should be interesting enough to keep my interest from waning, but no – like many other action films in the post-“Bourne” era, “T3” also shows us fistfights where you’re never quite sure who’s doing what to whom. You see an arm extending, a leg flailing; yet, you seldom seem to witness actual contact, or to hear bones crack.
This is a low for Statham (keep in mind I have not seen his turn in Boll’s “In the Name of the King”, which I intend to watch as part of a 'suicide combo' paired with “Dragonball: Evolution” and “Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li” towards the end of the year) who does his best to do his macho man-thing but an actor is only as strong his material, and Statham has barely anything to stand on. I could go on and on discussing the numerous glaring flaws in this film – and here I don’t even omment on the physics of the Bessoniverse – but I can’t see why. No-one will remember this Eurotrash action rubbish by 2010, if they haven’t already forgotten it. Hopefully Statham, who really deserves better, gets a gig for Guy Ritchie soon. From what I've heard, "Crank 2: High Voltage" isn't much of a step up (and, for the record, I despised the first "Crank").
Also, here’s hoping Besson, who hasn’t directed anything noteworthy in a decade and released his best film a whole 15 years ago, moves on to interior design. He may be a profitable French export, but his movies are terrible.
Planetary alignment
Eight years after its release, David Twohy’s “Pitch Black” remains a small, effective space thriller. Revisiting the film recently, I found that the reasons for why the movie works are simple but potent (possible spoiler warning):
- a creepy antihero in the form of Richard B. Riddick, a character that didn’t know he was about to launch a small cult with this film (Riddick has the movie’s best lines);
- Riddick’s eye shine, a gimmick that enables him (and us) to see in the dark while other characters simply stumble on;
- a sympathetic female lead, an anti-Final Girl in a way, in accomplished Aussie actress Rhoda Mitchell who serves as Riddick’s counter;
- alien creatures that are wonderfully predatory although the creature design lacks some imagination;
- deaths don’t always occur on screen, employing the “less is more-rule” of scary movies that work well;
- a clear setup that is SF simplicity itself: crash survivors on desert planet need to get off of said planet but they encounter hungry aliens that swarm during eclipses (I guess this almost makes the film a survival horror but it’s too SF for that to be completely the case).
A pity that “Chronicles of Riddick” ended up being bloated and indulgent, a far cry from this lean, snappy escape movie.
Of course, the best Riddick story is the one told in “Escape from Butcher Bay”. (I have not seen "Dark Fury".)
- a creepy antihero in the form of Richard B. Riddick, a character that didn’t know he was about to launch a small cult with this film (Riddick has the movie’s best lines);
- Riddick’s eye shine, a gimmick that enables him (and us) to see in the dark while other characters simply stumble on;
- a sympathetic female lead, an anti-Final Girl in a way, in accomplished Aussie actress Rhoda Mitchell who serves as Riddick’s counter;
- alien creatures that are wonderfully predatory although the creature design lacks some imagination;
- deaths don’t always occur on screen, employing the “less is more-rule” of scary movies that work well;
- a clear setup that is SF simplicity itself: crash survivors on desert planet need to get off of said planet but they encounter hungry aliens that swarm during eclipses (I guess this almost makes the film a survival horror but it’s too SF for that to be completely the case).
A pity that “Chronicles of Riddick” ended up being bloated and indulgent, a far cry from this lean, snappy escape movie.
Of course, the best Riddick story is the one told in “Escape from Butcher Bay”. (I have not seen "Dark Fury".)
Paris of Pain
Released in the mid 1990s to great acclaim, Matthieu Kassovitz’s controversial “La Haine” (“Hate”), featuring Vincent Cassell as a hotheaded marginalised French youth, remains a good film (the politics remain unsettlingly relevant), with crisp black and white imagery. It is unfortunate that a film that is all about emotional turmoil, resistance against exploitation and the claws of anomy loses steam halfway through, unlike a similarly themed film that it is often favourably compared to: Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”.
In my mind, Lee’s film is superior, but Kassovitz’s film does manage to give visual voice to those unwelcome to France: the Algerians, Afro-Caribbeans, and so on. If nothing else, it is difference that unites these characters who do cannot participate in the benefits of Parisian life due to their low income status.
In my mind, Lee’s film is superior, but Kassovitz’s film does manage to give visual voice to those unwelcome to France: the Algerians, Afro-Caribbeans, and so on. If nothing else, it is difference that unites these characters who do cannot participate in the benefits of Parisian life due to their low income status.
Smart car, white vision
The story of the grumpy old men who learns a life lesson late in his life which Changes him is a familiar one. In the predictable “Gran Torino”, at least the old man is played by Clint Eastwood, who also directs, and who has simply gotten better with age. Had the film starred anyone else, it would’ve disappeared into oblivion; with American legend Eastwood starring, it became a surprise phenomenon, but it’s not a personal favourite. I think his “Mystic River” is indulgent and overrated, while the awards and acclaim for “Million Dollar Baby” still baffle me. Then again, “Flags of our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” together is a great film of the 2000s. “Gran Torino” features much in the way of good acting and solid old school filmmaking but little in the way of originality.
When a talented filmmaker makes a lesser movie, chances are that the ‘lesser movie’ will still be much more interesting and worth viewing than films made by less talented filmmakers. After impressing the world with “City of God” and memorably adapting “The Constant Gardener”, Fernando Mereilles adapts difficult material for his third film, “Blindness”, an unsettling commentary on social life and the lack of authentic social relation. Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, the film starts as a drama and escalates into depraved horror by the halfway mark. Although it’s not thematically complex and doesn’t truly interrogate notions of intimacy and (in)sight, the film is effective in a cold, detached way in how it, like other films before it, shows humans as capable of great wrongdoing but also of self-sacrifice. Not an easy watch, and not particularly mentally stimulating, but rather captivating.
When a talented filmmaker makes a lesser movie, chances are that the ‘lesser movie’ will still be much more interesting and worth viewing than films made by less talented filmmakers. After impressing the world with “City of God” and memorably adapting “The Constant Gardener”, Fernando Mereilles adapts difficult material for his third film, “Blindness”, an unsettling commentary on social life and the lack of authentic social relation. Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, the film starts as a drama and escalates into depraved horror by the halfway mark. Although it’s not thematically complex and doesn’t truly interrogate notions of intimacy and (in)sight, the film is effective in a cold, detached way in how it, like other films before it, shows humans as capable of great wrongdoing but also of self-sacrifice. Not an easy watch, and not particularly mentally stimulating, but rather captivating.
Township
With hype strong enough to split the atom, “District 9” arrives in South African theatres following a blistering opening in the United States. Not only has it already proven to be a highly profitable film, but the critics adore it. At CHUD, Devin Faraci announced it as one of the best films of its type of the decade (10 out of 10), while HitFix’s Drew McWeeny (aka Moriarty from AICN) likened his experience of the film to watching “Robocop” for the first time. Furthermore, there’s lots of award talk and acclaim for star Sharlto Copley, who makes his acting debut in this film, and deserves every positive comment allocated to his performance.
Before I review the film, I’d like to quickly get this out of the way: “District 9” is not a South African film, just like “Tears of the Sun” is not a Nigerian film and “Black Hawk Down” isn’t a Somali war movie. Like those films, “District 9” is an American movie. It’s directed by Neill Blomkamp, who is South African born and, according to some of the trades, based the move on the apartheid atrocities he’d witnessed. Oh please. Blomkamp is now 29, which means that he started seeing and noticing things outside of his own individual child universe by 1989 or 1990 – two years before Madiba’s release, and a mere four years before South African became a democracy.
But I digress.
“District 9” is produced by Peter Jackson; the effects were mostly handled by a shop in Canada; the film is modelled according to a familiar pattern (not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying). I repeat, it’s not a South African film – it’s funding is one hundred percent American. Now let’s stop calling it a great South African movie. It’s not South African and it’s no masterpiece.
The highest compliment I can give “District 9” is to call it a solid popcorn movie with a social conscience which employs seamless visual effects and a stunning performance by Copley to tell the story of a pencil pusher put in charge of a dangerous alien relocation program. Blomkamp knows what he’s doing – he probably knows Joseph Camopbell off by heart - and Jason Cope’s work as the prawn(s) is near unbelievable. It’s the kind of SF actioner that effectively adds to the body horror subgenre and ends up being a memorable mainstream cinema experience.
Now, here be spoilers. I assume that you’ve seen the film from this point on.
Wikus gets sprayed with an alien juice in the film’s first act, and you just know the payoff of that scene is close. He starts transforming into a prawn which enables him to use alien weapon technology (which is never used by the aliens themselves? Not even against the Nigerians?) This obviously creates a rift between him and his wife, poorly played by Vanessa Haywood, who sticks out as a sore thumb in the film’s cast. If Blomkamp and cowriter Terri Tatchell had completely cut this character out and made Wikus a bachelor, nothing that is essential to the character or the story would have changed. All in all, I think Blomkamp, who clearly knows his genre, could’ve used a different shot than his current final shot of the now fully transformed Wikus folding metal flowers on a scrapheap. It was almost “Wall-E”-esque, and didn’t quite fit.
For all of its apparent originality, there are still many clichés in “District 9”. For one, there’s the one-dimensional uber-villain who does nothing but grimace and frown and swear. This is the type of character that exists simply for audience gratification and the payoff they experience when he is literally torn to bits by the prawns. The film also uses the “other beings like eating quirky stuff” rule, which here means that the aliens like cat food. Apparently they also like human flesh, so what gives? Why cat food? If you want to make the film more 'South African' – to an extent – why not make them eat marog or pap?
I suspect that the discussions on how good “District 9” actually is will split fanboys from other filmatists. This happened just last year with “The Dark Knight”, where if you for a second let on that it is not The Best Film of All Time, you were verbally assaulted and lambasted for a long while. Usually, fanboys know a lot about Their Film, and they truly dearly love it, but they can’t put it in any kind of context, which is why they can usually foam at the mouth at you when you criticise Their Film, but not much else.
You wish all commercial movie enterprises were made like this: rather cheap but great looking, emotionally involving and with numerous sequel possibilities. The story is simple but quite captivating, starting out in a documentary approach which works like a charm until it’s quietly abandoned for a more straight forward storytelling device where we are aligned exclusively with our hero, Wikus van der Merwe (Copley). It’s a more layered story than anything Emmerich could envision. “District 9” is at times brutal, touching and heroic. Of all the possible comparisons already made, I can’t get past thinking of the film as a distant cousin to Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers”. Things go splat there, too. Much has been made of the film’s social commentary (apartheid, xenophobia) but seeing as the film is not at all subtle about its message, one shouldn’t over emphasise those themes over what happens to Wikus, and how his journey gives new life to the aliens-on-earth SF subgenre.
Do you want to know more? www.wikus.co.za
Before I review the film, I’d like to quickly get this out of the way: “District 9” is not a South African film, just like “Tears of the Sun” is not a Nigerian film and “Black Hawk Down” isn’t a Somali war movie. Like those films, “District 9” is an American movie. It’s directed by Neill Blomkamp, who is South African born and, according to some of the trades, based the move on the apartheid atrocities he’d witnessed. Oh please. Blomkamp is now 29, which means that he started seeing and noticing things outside of his own individual child universe by 1989 or 1990 – two years before Madiba’s release, and a mere four years before South African became a democracy.
But I digress.
“District 9” is produced by Peter Jackson; the effects were mostly handled by a shop in Canada; the film is modelled according to a familiar pattern (not that there’s anything wrong with that, I’m just saying). I repeat, it’s not a South African film – it’s funding is one hundred percent American. Now let’s stop calling it a great South African movie. It’s not South African and it’s no masterpiece.
The highest compliment I can give “District 9” is to call it a solid popcorn movie with a social conscience which employs seamless visual effects and a stunning performance by Copley to tell the story of a pencil pusher put in charge of a dangerous alien relocation program. Blomkamp knows what he’s doing – he probably knows Joseph Camopbell off by heart - and Jason Cope’s work as the prawn(s) is near unbelievable. It’s the kind of SF actioner that effectively adds to the body horror subgenre and ends up being a memorable mainstream cinema experience.
Now, here be spoilers. I assume that you’ve seen the film from this point on.
Wikus gets sprayed with an alien juice in the film’s first act, and you just know the payoff of that scene is close. He starts transforming into a prawn which enables him to use alien weapon technology (which is never used by the aliens themselves? Not even against the Nigerians?) This obviously creates a rift between him and his wife, poorly played by Vanessa Haywood, who sticks out as a sore thumb in the film’s cast. If Blomkamp and cowriter Terri Tatchell had completely cut this character out and made Wikus a bachelor, nothing that is essential to the character or the story would have changed. All in all, I think Blomkamp, who clearly knows his genre, could’ve used a different shot than his current final shot of the now fully transformed Wikus folding metal flowers on a scrapheap. It was almost “Wall-E”-esque, and didn’t quite fit.
For all of its apparent originality, there are still many clichés in “District 9”. For one, there’s the one-dimensional uber-villain who does nothing but grimace and frown and swear. This is the type of character that exists simply for audience gratification and the payoff they experience when he is literally torn to bits by the prawns. The film also uses the “other beings like eating quirky stuff” rule, which here means that the aliens like cat food. Apparently they also like human flesh, so what gives? Why cat food? If you want to make the film more 'South African' – to an extent – why not make them eat marog or pap?
I suspect that the discussions on how good “District 9” actually is will split fanboys from other filmatists. This happened just last year with “The Dark Knight”, where if you for a second let on that it is not The Best Film of All Time, you were verbally assaulted and lambasted for a long while. Usually, fanboys know a lot about Their Film, and they truly dearly love it, but they can’t put it in any kind of context, which is why they can usually foam at the mouth at you when you criticise Their Film, but not much else.
You wish all commercial movie enterprises were made like this: rather cheap but great looking, emotionally involving and with numerous sequel possibilities. The story is simple but quite captivating, starting out in a documentary approach which works like a charm until it’s quietly abandoned for a more straight forward storytelling device where we are aligned exclusively with our hero, Wikus van der Merwe (Copley). It’s a more layered story than anything Emmerich could envision. “District 9” is at times brutal, touching and heroic. Of all the possible comparisons already made, I can’t get past thinking of the film as a distant cousin to Verhoeven’s “Starship Troopers”. Things go splat there, too. Much has been made of the film’s social commentary (apartheid, xenophobia) but seeing as the film is not at all subtle about its message, one shouldn’t over emphasise those themes over what happens to Wikus, and how his journey gives new life to the aliens-on-earth SF subgenre.
Do you want to know more? www.wikus.co.za
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