Film: The Bad Education Movie (2015)

Spoilers ahead.

A few years ago, comedian Jack Whitehall had an idea for a sitcom about a schoolteacher who was "a bigger kid than those he teachers" (IMDB).  Before sitting down to write it, he had a bowel movement and suffered a horrendous case of diarrhea.  Before flushing the lavatory, he gazed into the shit-spattered abyss and found that despite all the undeniable crap, there were still traces of sweetcorn and he had what passed for an idea.  Why work hard when you can sketch out whatever and include the odd, passable gag when you happened to think of one by accident?  Rather than write it, he would simply use his toilet paper to gather some samples.  Due to the physical impracticality of using a stapler to join the corner of each sheet, he had to resort to a few wanking sessions in order to provide the glue.  When the manuscript was dry, he slipped it into a manuscript and posted it to E4, the channel that broadcast The Inbetweeners (2008-2010), a sitcom that proved popular with young people.  E4 decided that this submission - entitled Bad Education - was beneath them and the reader chucked it down the rubbish chute and it found itself drifting down a sewer.  Sometime later it passed a door built into the tiled walls of the dank underbelly.  The door was marked BBC3 (a channel which, yes gave us Doctor Who Confidential, Torchwood and reruns of Family Guy, but also puked up the satanic Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents).  A security camera fitted to the ceiling spied the debris and the door opened.   Someone emerged from the darkness within and grabbed it before it could sail on forever.  BBC3 loved it and the series grew up to become - according to Cineworld's synopsis - "one of the BBC's most cherished sitcoms".

Apparently the series proved popular enough to garner a feature-length motion picture spin-off  (Helloooo No. 8 in the UK Box Office Top 10).  Well some of it would be passingly amusing and not intolerable company, even if might never be laugh-out-loud funny (something which Mrs. Brown's Boys could achieve at least once) so perhaps the same could have been said of the film.  And could it?

The film opens in Amsterdam with some Hasidic Jews visiting the Anne Frank house.  The camera dollies past a queue of these quiet visitors until we come to the back where some British pupils are being disruptive.  Yes, the ever so unloveable Alfie Whickers (Whitehall) - who is also inexplicably romantically linked to the pretty-but-dull (Sarah Solemani) - has taken his charges on a field trip to the house where a young girl was hiding from the Nazis with her family.  Whickers decides to jump queue by pretending that the disabilities of a chair-bound student aren't restricted to his leg.  Afterwards, he is drugged as a prank and hallucinates his Chinese pupil as a panda.  He then mistakes an Anne Frank dummy for the real deal and abducts it, escaping on a bicycle.  During this, the dummy is wrapped in a white towel while Alfie is dressed in a red hoody.  Yeah, you can tell where its going before John Williams is invoked.

A year later, Whickers takes the class on another trip, this time to Cornwall.  This time, they are joined by the overprotective Trunchball-like mother of one of his students.  She dons a pair of what are essentially Google glasses so she can record everything that goes on (the one gag which passes for a joke is where a student tells it to search for "Two Girls, One Cup").  The class stay in the "Baits Hotel" and witness a Summer Solstice procession straight out of The Wicker Man (1973) (the filmmakers even go to the trouble of recreating a shot of two masked participants poking their heads out of a window).  Are the majority of the target audience really likely to get these references?  They might get the later references to Braveheart ("They can take our lives but they'll never take our..." "Pasties!") and 300 ("This.  Is.  Cornwall!") when a parodic battle is about to take place (Zack Snyder's use of slow motion is also given a nod).  Someone makes a jokey comparison between the procession and pantomime - presumably Whitehall thinks nothing of pantomime when tucking into his Christmas dinner or chocolate Easter egg.

In a pub, they fall in with members of the Cornwall Liberation Army and they mistake Whickers for a member after seeing his amateur tattoo "CLA...", which was meant to read "CLASS K FOREVER" before he fainted.  So at least, Whitehall understands the concept of "set-up" and "pay-off".  One of the members persuades Whickers to smuggle in what he thinks are drugs into a party for toffs (where Alfie is dared into "teabagging a swan" - the least funny gag involving a large bird this year since Kevin James fought a peacock in Paul Blart Mall Cop 2) but it turns out to be a bomb.  It takes some gall to depict toffs as victims of extremists whilst the country is under Tory occupation but this set piece is bookended by passing seemingly liberal quotes as "...the rich get richer..." (just like Whitehall will from the profits made from this abortion) and "Austerity is bullshit".  Alfie is later mistaken for a leader of the group and this is captured on the News (which brings to mind the infinitely superior Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa).

There is no excuse in all of conceivable reality for how this film exists in the state that it does.  With no laughs and no Michelle Gomez, The Bad Education Movie is not just a bad film, it is a call-to-arms.  Critics and reviewers should feel compelled to implore their audience no to spend one penny on this furball of British "comedy" (this is the same country that gave us The Ladykillers and Monty Python).  If anyone was curious about wanting to watch this in good conscience, the most ethical solution might be to find a cinema where a season pass is available.  Then it might motivate aspiring filmmakers to get their hands on what they can find and afford to produce something worthy of the faintest praise, free and independent of the industry responsible for this film's existence.  How dare this get past the script read-through without someone with a tenth of a brain cell raising an objection?  How dare the actors say yes to the project in exchange for more money)?  How dare there be more carbon emissions from the vehicular transport of actors and equipment to the various locations?  Really, Britain?  This is what it has come to?

Film: Fantastic Four (2015)

Quite possibly existing for the same legal reason that the unreleased (but available on bootleg) 1994 Roger Corman production, this latest Marvel reboot sees yet another cinematic origin story for one of their properties yet to join Spider-Man in his assimilation into the MCU collective.  As had with what is now the Amazing Spider-Man duology from Sony, the previously bright, light-hearted series is succeeded by a darker, arguably more "emo" retelling (both ASM entries were helmed by (500) Days Of Summer's Marc Webb).  Gone is whatever goodwill there was in the Saturday morning cartoon that was Rise Of The Silver Surfer (2007), replaced with a film that descends into the reputed body horror of bodily transformation, followed by heads blowing up through telekinesis.  Indeed, the sigh of Mile Teller's Reed Richards awakening in a lab to find his arms and legs stretched far out makes for Grimm viewing.  Not one for a slumber party unless there are some spare PJ's handy.  Thankfully, Kate Mara's cold checkered shirt-wearing music fan is a favourable replacement to Jessica Alba's XXX parody of Sue Storm (although Googling the character now seems to have proved me wrong).  The Human Torch's makeover has also caused a Storm owing to his race - a fuss that should be unthinkable in the 21st century.  But surely Michael B. Jordan's street racer (a scene which has a little setup wherein his car catches fire before crashing) is more preferable to the womanizing tomfoolery of Chris Evans (who has now, thankfully, been recast as a fine, upstanding avenger).  As for the Thing (played in human form by Jamie Bell), the CG is no more convincing than Michael Chiklis' rubber suit.  I'd rather spend time with these people than Alba, Evans or Grufford.

If the slating this reboot has received is largely down to its darker slant, then surely its not much worse (exploding heads aside) than the colourless post-Heat, post-Dark Knight thriller that was Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), or - more controversially - the post-9/11 remake of Superman II that was Man Of Steel (2013).  One could argue in defense that what Josh Trank set out to do was no different from Zack Snyder with Man Of Steel or Christopher Nolan with the Dark Knight trilogy.  Whereas Snyder seemed to suggest the physical ramifications of a superhero battle in a city, Trank might have wanted to show the horror of bodily mutation (something of which is given little attention to in the X-Men film series).  And the film is not entirely without the colour of the source material.  Whereas what passes for the "superhero costume" in this film are now blackened jumpsuits, the rest of the screen is painted in varying shades of blue.

Needless to say, it's not without flaws.  Besides the bloody attacks of the now much more fearsome Doctor Doom, there is perhaps some resulting evidence of the apparent studio inference.  There are instances where CGI appears not to have been convincingly rendered - namely a place, a base and chimp test subject that looks to have been cut-and-pasted in from Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011).  There is also perhaps an oversight that the apocalyptic climax is surely a result of our heroes undertaking the unauthorized trip that resulted in their transformation in the first place (nothing is made of this if one recalls correctly).

Flawed maybe, but an unlikely Director's Cut might have shown a very interesting story and world, free of the ubiquitous Cinematic Universe.

Film: Pixels (2015)

Adapted from a two-minute short in which video game characters invaded the world through the broken screen of an abandoned television set, the latest offering from Happy Madison adopts a premise not dissimilar to Galaxy Quest (1999) by having aliens mistake 1980s footage of kids playing arcade games as a declaration of war and responding by sending various invasion forces modelled on various arcade games.  An episode of Futurama (2001) was brought up with regards to the premise, the episode in question (Anthology Of Interest Part II) containing a segment (David X. Cohen’s “Raiders Of The Lost Arcade”) that explored the premise of a reality based on video games and saw the Omicrons invade Earth with Space Invaders and Donkey Kong being the US ambassador of planet Nintendo 64.  That segment had more wit than the entirety of this film.  Brought in to defend the Earth are two nerds, including Adam Sandler (who largely seems to be sleepwalking his way through it), aided by their mutual childhood friend, played by Kevin James (better than he has been in some other Madison productions).  James also happens to be the President of the United States but has proved unpopular (yet curiously popular enough to have been elected in the first place).  Unbelievably, James in child form (in an opening flashback sequence – perhaps something of a convention in Sandler features, cf. Happy Gilmore, Grown Ups, That’s My Boy) manages to beat a claw crane in order to win a Chewbacca mask (this pays off later when his older self gets to use a crane).  They are joined by the incarcerated “Fireblaster” (Peter Dinklage), who seemingly beat Sandler’s younger self in a competitive game of Donkey Kong.  For Patrick Jean, having your short film adapted by Hollywood feature film must have seemed like a dream come true – at least until it transpired it was to be made by Happy Madison (like winning a trip to Switzerland only to be told you’ll be staying at Dignitas).  Sandler’s love interest this time is a single mother (Michelle Monaghan essentially being the “MILF” now that perhaps even the producers think the middle aged Sandler shouldn’t go after “hot teacher” as with Billy Madison twenty years earlier) who also happens to be in the military and has a son that Sandler can bond with.  Her husband left her for a “nineteen-year old Pilates teacher” and she is now trying to come up with a “slut-seeking missile”.  No actors involved could possibly have been interested in anything other than a pay cheque and no laughs are to be had (at least one moment which might have been funny in the trailer is Sandler’s “Pacman’s a bad guy?!”), which makes it even less funny than even the one-snort Jack And Jill (2011).   One sequence of merit is the climactic boss battle accompanied by Queen’s “We Will Rock You” but any goodwill earned is soiled when Lady Lisa is reintroduced as a “trophy” for one of the nerds.  Wow.  Go watch the original short instead.  Or Galaxy Quest.  Or Futurama.  Or Wreck-It-Ralph (2012).  Or Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World (2010)… 

Film: Terminator Genisys (2015)

Seemingly embarrassed by how things had been handled after Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), the writers open this instalment with a voice-over of the new Kyle Reese (Jai Courtenay) who gives the year of Judgment Day as 1997 (there is still yet to be a depiction as scary as Linda Hamilton’s nightmares in T2), thus negating the postponement that led to Rise Of The Machines (2003) (and in doing so wiping off the pudding the writers of that film made of working around the ages of the Connors) and, consequently, Terminator Salvation (2009) (Katherine Brewster – the wife of John Connor – is unlikely to reappear anytime ever).  Those aside, we finally get to a scene only ever talked about rather than portrayed – the moment when the Resistance capture the technology that will send Reese back to 1984.  Prior to doing so though, the machines manage to send a T-101 – brought to life courtesy of a CG rendering of ’84 Arnold Schwarzenegger (perhaps there was some rights or age issue with employing stock footage).  This reboot goes the route taken with Star Trek (2009) in employing time travel to change everything we knew before and recasting the leads with some fresh faces (Game Of Thrones’ Emilia Clarke takes home the prize for best cosplay).  It also uses a similar technique seen in X-Men: First Class (2011) of recreating an opening scene in a way that might usually be hard to notice – in this case, the original Terminator’s encounter with some punks (at this point, the CG loses credibility when “young Arnie” speaks).  It is also here that the film uses its “one F-bomb” quota to retain a PG-13 (the “Fuck you, asshole!” catchphrase) because money.  The Terminator is now a blockbuster franchise that the whole family can enjoy because money and you can’t make mainstream films for adults anymore (except maybe Fifty Shades Of Grey).  Thankfully, the disappointing CG doesn’t last very long (much like “Arnold’s” better cameo in Salvation) as proper Arnie (to some extent taking the Leonard Nimoy role in the Star Trek reboot) interrupts the first film, backed by the Terminator jingle (which threatens to play every time he walks through a door).  To the filmmakers’ credit, the 1984 segment is designed with the original films various shades of dark blue (the early future sequence also brings back the purple lasers and with a hint of synth in the music).  Perhaps in future films, they’ll learn how from the independent first two films’ limitations.  Midway, our heroes jump forward to 2017 for the new, new Judgment Day, courtesy of an app spelt “Genisys” for no reason.  Also appearing is the latest incarnation of John Connor, as played by Jason Clarke, swapping one rebooted post-apocalyptic world ruled by apes for one ruled my machines.  JK Simmons bumbles alongside as a cop with a conspiracy theory and then disappears for the rest of the film.  Much in the same way that Star Trek (2009) and its follow-up …Into Darkness (2013) changed everything but had something of the spirit of the ‘80s film, there is fun to be had here – the series had resorted to parody in Rise Of The Machines – and at last we can perhaps not have to witness any more attempts to assassinate John Connor.  And, as with Thor: The Dark World (2013), director Alan Taylor gets to work with a largely thankless role for a former Doctor Who (in this case, the curiously credited “Matthew Smith”).

Film: Man Up (2014)

Director: Ben Palmer
Writer: Tess Morris

Lake Bell is 34-year-old single Nancy who meets the nice 24-year-old Jessica (Ophelia Lovibond, still waiting to be cast as Bond girl purely on the basis of her name) on a train and after being gifted with her book Six Billion People And You, mistakenly meets Jack (Simon Pegg, who is also an executive producer) who is under the impression is that she is his blind date and Nancy goes along with it.  Pegg also cracks a joke about train delay due to someone jumping onto the tracks, at which point anyone with a claim to decency would quite rightly have walked out and asked for a refund.  The film is directed by Ben Palmer of the television sitcom The Inbetweeners (2008-2010) and its televisual 2011 theatrical feature and it is shot in its entirety in a white hazy focus that is as soft as the comedy.  The moment in which Skyfall's Rory Kinnear is semi-nude in a public ladies' toilet wrapping a scarf around the necks of himself and Bell and pulling her close for reluctant kiss is when the sound should have cut out and as that film's theme music kicks in, Adele tells us "This is the end.  Hold your breath and count to ten..."  Kinnear had more dignity as the prime minister having offscreen sex with a pig in Black Mirror (2010).  There is one laugh when, having met Jack's soon-to-be ex-wife and got confirmation that she had had an affair, Nancy ups the pretense that she is Jack's new girlfriend by being extra affectionate and Simon Pegg reminds us that he has a face for comedy (he can be a good dramatic actor too).  Destined for the cheap section of the DVD shelves in Sainsbury's.

Film: Moomins On The Riviera (2014)

In a contemporary mainstream cinema dominated by the CG produce of Pixar, Dreamworks and the next "classic" from Disney as well as to a less extent, Blue Sky, here is an eighty-minute U-rated hand-drawn cartoon (remember when Disney did those?) from Finland and France which has "no material likely to offend or harm" according to the BBFC (except for brief vague mild shark threat) and is witty (Snorkmaiden is worried about going to a swimming pool as she does not own a bikini), charming and slightly odd.  Originated in Tove Jansson's comic strips, the Moomins have appeared in various forms of animation - perhaps mostly notably in puppetry and anime (the creepy Groke only gets a passing reference in this feature) and the latter's style is somewhat similar here.  After rescuing Mymble and Little My (still a little shit) from pirates, the naive family (for them, the pirates' treasure is a chest containing seeds for the earth rather than the chest containing gold) set off for the Riviera and mistakenly end up staying in a Grand hotel.  Little of dramatic consequence occurs and there's next to no character arcs, with the exception of a rich bohemian artist and elephant sculptor whom Moominpappa befriends.  Despite the seemingly conservative, almost nuclear family set up (Pappa wears a top hat and Mamma always wears an apron), there is an interesting, if curious and not entirely discernible, Queer theme going - the Moomins meet a dog whose secret is that he "only likes cats" and Moominmamma persuades another male dog to pose as cat and has purple stripes painted on him.  After being in the sea, his stripes wash off and the misled canine says he looks good without stripes (I'm not entirely sure he finds out the complete truth).  It is sure to be enjoyed by students who are members of a university animation society and go to animation festivals and parents, if you're near both a multiplex and an independent cinema that are showing it, take your kids to the latter.

Film: Mad Max - Fury Road (2015)

A franchise reboot (or extension) that follows 30 years on from a series of post-apocalyptic films that started with an ill-behaved, nasty little revenge movie (but with some room for emotional investment) with a climax that explained how Max became Mad before we got two self-contained Hollywood-ised action adventures (the PG-13-rated Beyond The Thunderdome recalling Indiana Jones's Temple Of Doom and coming out the most family-friendly, despite a cheeky F-bomb) in which Max seemed the most sane whereas humanity had descended into chaos.  Here, it's slightly less well-behaved than Beyond The Thunderdome and we're back in R-rated territory and, even if adolescent in tone, it's more in line with The Road Warrior and is also the first installment since the original to bring up the subject of Max's state of mind (thanks to voices in his head and quickly-cut flashbacks).  Essentially a 90-minute film stretched out to two hours, (perhaps in part owing to some interminable chasing), it exchanges the minimal locations of the previous sequels for the open road as Max (Tom Hardy) teams up with "Imperiotor Furiosa" (Charlize Theron channeling Sigourney Weaver as Ripley) to protect a group of "babes" (including a surprisingly quite good Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) in an exodus to the promised land.   There is almost nothing for any newcomers unfamiliar with the other three films to have missed and, as entertainment, it might just scrape by as a night-in for teenage boys.

Film: Unfriended (2014)

Despite not being released at Halloween, here we have what might be the next franchise to fill in the gap left by Paranormal Activity and Saw, which is perhaps appropriate given that the story kind-of has a bit of both.  Less of a "found footage" horror but more a "live feed" teen slasher (and with the original title Cybernatural it could usher in a new subgenre), the cinematic experience resembling that of a big screen projection of someone's Mac - perhaps a theatrical live performance  - with our protagonist being the only occupier of the stage while all her co-stars Skype in their performances - might be a nifty idea.

Opening with what may or may not be an homage to The Exorcist (1973) - our protagonist "Blaire" mimics a demonic voice and has a crucifix on her wall - and soon developing into what comes across as the most inventive Saw sequel in years in which someone operating under the username Billie227 (recalling Jigsaw's puppet, Billy) informs our set of young people (with their own guilty secrets) that they want to play a game and - for at least some of it - leaves it to the characters to form their own destiny.  As well as possible supernatural occurrences, household appliances get put to particularly nasty usage.  Jigsaw operating from beyond the grave via Skype would be a fun idea but in this instance, the apparent troll may or may not be the ghost of Laura Barns, whose suicide the year before was caught on camera after a prior video uploaded to YouTube made her an object of public degradation.  What one can do on a computer screen gets fairly maxed out - Skype, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube and Instagram.  Tumblr and Twitter are absent and YouTube seems an odd place to display an apparent sex tape (perhaps any popular adult site would have garnered a more restrictive rating).  The most questionable moment is when a black-and-white YouTube video of Laura Barns holding up cards to the camera evokes a real life case.  The film stays on the computer screen for almost the entire film and, barring the odd ominous hum to let the audience know when its getting suspenseful, any music used is diegetic.  Expect quite a few songs to have "Unfriended sent me here"-type comments on their YouTube page.

Most of the characters aren't particularly emotionally investing but the pulse-raising suspense will be good for the heart in the safe space of a cinema.  Alternatively, it might be suitable to watch on full-screen on a home computer in the dark.  By yourself.

Film: Two By Two (2014)

A take on the story of Noah's Ark that seems less taken from the biblical text than picture book paraphrases of said text.  It takes an Ice Age-esque premise of throwing cartoon animals into an apocalyptic scenario with some slapstick along the way as well as some modernizing humour not dissimilar from the sort seen in The Flintstones and perhaps more appropriately in Veggie Tales - there are no Ninevites slapping each other with fish but the ark does employ a lion as it's captain (humans are mentioned but remain offscreen) and a monkey as a butler (one of the highlights).  It's no more offensive than the already inoffensive interpretation seen in Noah (2014) and can serve as a diversion for kiddywinks while preparing Sunday dinner.  They might well be amused or weirded out by the surreal sight of an unconscious lion being strung up and used as a puppet as well as a slug-like monster with a big gaping mouth who at first appears to be a talking hill.

TV: 'Thunderbirds Are Go' - 'Fireflash'

It perhaps says something when you have to start crediting the creators of the original series for the basis of your script.  The episode - the best so far - mashes up original pilot Trapped In The Sky and its sequel Operation Crash Dive, with reference to Alias Mr Hackenbacker (that episode only hinted they were going to land in the desert) and the 1966 Thunderbirds Are Go feature film (someone whom the Hood is disguised as is found in storage).  Speaking of the Hood, this brings his disguising up-to-date by replacing masks with holographic technology.  There is also an interesting twist on the Elevator Car climax to Trapped In The Sky (played out in a near Star Trek Into Darkness-ish homage with the score taking its cue from Barry Gray) in that the rescue attempt fails and it looks as though the new Tin Tin is willing to basically end up killing everyone in order to... save the day.  Despite the miniaturisation problems and the set design still looking like a cheap parody as opposed to the real thing, this is the most mature this remake has been yet.

TV: Thunderbirds Are Go - 'Space Race'

Putting this turbocharged rebranding of 'Thunderbirds' on a Saturday morning at 8am seems like a sensible idea, but ITV showed how much they actually cared by starting it on two minutes early.  Anyone coming late might well have missed the pre-title sequence but those fortunate enough to tune in beforehand would have found Alan Tracy piloting Thunderbird 3 - the once seemingly massive rocket of uncertain colour (was it red or was it orange? Now it's definitively red) now reduced to the aesthetic and maneuverability of a Micro Machine - in space, where he happens upon a space mine left over from the "global conflict" of 2040 (yeah, because 6-11 year olds aren't allowed to know about World Wars 1 and 2).  The mine activates and chases TB3 around with a countdown to detonation and Alan has to wait while Lady Penelope and Parker (along with Lady P's pet pug, Sherbert) have to infiltrate an underground facility to retrieve the deactivation code.  Sounds like several redrafts from Move And You're Dead.  Oh, and Alan now has a space-surf board - might as well give him an oxygen pill instead of a space suit and be done with it.

More digestible than the double-length debut, this shows little sign of improvement (John Tracy - ironically - is the least annoying thing in it) but one can only complain that it's less mature than the 2005 remake of Captain Scarlet as that show's original was darker and took itself more seriously than the original Thunderbirds.  The CGI characters here though does look cheaper but while it's not entirely awful, the fact that the cast can now walk - and Parker can now perform some videogame stunts - is not something to be proud of.  The idea that "fast = good" and "retroactively old = old" is a baffling one and the plot described earlier is pretty much all that happens and it's over before you know it.  What is also curious is the idea that this reboot be aimed at a specific age group, whereas - correct me if I'm wrong here - Anderson aimed for a family audience and not just children.  It's fairly innocuous stuff.

TV: 'Thunderbirds Are Go': "Ring Of Fire"

 

 

In an era in which popular children's programmes from the last century are now being recreated for the digital age courtesy of CGI - Noddy, Thomas The Tank Engine & Friends, and soon The Wombles - Thunderbirds Are Go is the latest reboot of a cult Science Fiction franchise to have been revived and in the process potentially leaving a bad taste in the mouths of certain sections of the originals' fans.  Whovians and Trekkies can complain that the Doctor Who continuation and JJ Abrams' Star Trek rewrite is too fast paced and the Star Wars prequels might well have reduced the apparently sacred SF saga to a "jumped-up fireworks display of a toy advert".  These claims can be made against this latest do-over.  Arriving ten years after Gerry Anderson's own CGI remake of Captain Scarlet was shafted by ITV scheduling and put in Saturday morning's Ministry Of Mayhem (which, as one forum user at the time said, would be like the BBC putting Doctor Who in Dick n' Dom inda Bungalow), this Thunderbirds has been given near the same attention given Who's return in 2005 but denied to Scarlet.

The highest praise that Gerry Anderson's indestructible 1965-1966 original could possibly received came when Lew Grade interrupted a screening of the half-hour pilot Trapped In The Sky and declared "Gerry, this isn't a television series! This is a feature film!" and subsequently, the serial running time was bumped up to fifty minutes.  The absolute worst thing that can be said about Thunderbirds Are Go is that it wouldn't look out of place on Ministry Of Mayhem.  It's next episode has also been scheduled for 8am on a Saturday.  Rather than resembling a feature film and being plotted with something that might resemble a story (besides a partial remake of the original's Lord Parker's 'Oliday), this shows' editing suggested that some snorting of sugary substances and injecting of Red Bull had been taking place behind the scenes, tailoring the programme for kids that apparently can't sit still.  Things happen very, very fast and you don't remember nor indeed really care most of the time what was just said (a lot of it is technobabble now).  Besides the use of the iconic march in what passes for a title sequence (they might as well have used the Busted song instead), the score is less Barry Gray and more Murray Gold, except that Gold's work at least has its fans.  The model work barely registers and in some cases resembles both a model railway (insert tabloidy "more Island of Sodor than Tracy Island" gag here though the actual island was okay-ish) and a Playmobil set.  The CGI Thunderbird 2 appears - ironically - light-weight.  Gone also from the narrative is, somewhat depressingly, Jeff Tracy, thanks to an apparent act of the Hood (seemingly now fused with his Thunderbird 6 doppleganger, the Black Phantom) but Peter Dyneley's voice-over countdown is brought back from beyond the grave for both the titles and the launch sequences.  All of them.  Never would any fan have thought that one day they'd be asking Jeff Tracy to STFU.  Plus, Thunderbirds 1 and 2's launch sequences are shown twice in this double-length episode.

That is not to say that there isn't any innovation or vague interest.  The tele-video screens with which the characters used to communicate are now replaced by holograms (the date is now firmly stated out loud as being in 2060) and John Tracy now floats around the orbital Thunderbird 5 looking at a great big holographic globe rather than stand around waiting for the tape reels to start recording.  A couple of elements lifted from the ill-fated 2004 live-action movie (please Hollywood, it's not too late for a cinematic reboot) are FAB1 taking off into the air (originally it only happened in a dream sequence) and the subject being brought up of Tin Tin's (now Kayo's) family tie to arch villain the Hood who, Capaldian eyebrows aside, is now not the least bit scary and is now more clearly known to International Rescue than he had been previously.  The idea of "Kayo's" [mother?] coming in to save her with a small army also raises some interest, as do the references to "Global Defence" and the connections the Tracys have with it and the "World Council".  In the end, "Kayo" is awarded her own "Thunderbird S", the "S" standing for "shadow".  Why couldn't it have stood for "six"? 

The potential "Kayo subplot" might bring this series some merit but what it really needs is the Anderson touch.  There is no sense of authorship here and thankfully, the work of the next generation in the form of Jamie Anderson and his efforts show there might be hope for future yet.  Early on in the episode there is an amusing Stingray joke where John muses that he going to miss his favourite show.  One sympathises.

Film: The SpongeBob Movie - Sponge Out Of Water (2015)

DIRECTOR: Paul Tibbitt (also Story)
WRITERS: Glen Berger, Jonathan Aibel, Stephen Hillenburg (Story)

On paper, the plot sounds like many a draft after the finished screenplay for the 2004 feature length spinoff of the now nearly sixteen-year-old Nickelodeon cartoon.  In the former picture, Mr. Krabs was framed for the theft of King Neptune's crown and SpongeBob and starfish Patrick set off on a quest to retrieve it while arch villain and rival fast-food restaurateur Plankton took over Bikini Bottom via mind control and had an idol made in his image.  In this new film, Plankton is accused of stealing Krabs' secret formula for the popular Krabby Patty burger and while civilisation undergoes an apocalyptic makeover, SpongeBob sets off to proves Plankton's innocence and takes him along with him.  What really happened was that the formula mysteriously vanished, stolen by live-action character, pirate Burger Beard (Antonio Banderas), who is in possession of a book that helps him write out the film's narrative and thus control the diegesis.  He retrieves this book in the film's opening sequence in a kind-of Indiana Jones pastiche which sees him confront a Harryhausen-esque skeleton that out-creeps the undead crew in Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl (2003).

The laughs come as soon as the BBFC card preceding the film warns the audience that the U-rated feature contains "toilet humour" (cue a scared seagull farting and then crapping itself).  Reining in the Redbull-infused kinetics of the previous feature (here all channelled into a surrealist sequence in which Plankton physically climbs into SpongeBob's psyche which draws a comparisons with Magic Roundabout spin-off Dougal And The Bluecat) , this is something of a refreshing change from the usual slew of CG animations albeit enhanced in 3D, which gives the "hand-drawn" sequences a ViewMaster effect, if only to make up for the lack of the novelty CGI employed when the principal characters end up on human shores in the film's climax.  Here, they use magic to make themselves into Avengers-style superheroes for a team-up against Burger Beard in a beach town. 

Any accompanying adults who might at times find their patience tested by the 92 minute running time will find just about enough gags (verbal and visual) to keep them as entertained as the principal audience (perhaps even more so) in the latest family film that really can be not just for the very young, joining the likes of The Lego Movie, Muppets Most Wanted (2014) and Wreck-It-Ralph (2012) to some extent.  As with Lego and (at least a couple of times) Wreck-It, the humour is nearly at Aardman level (pun ahoy!) and makes reference to both Stanley Kubrick and Douglas Adams.

Along with the customary (but otherwise televisual) "hand-drawn" segments and CG "live-action" takes on the SpongeBob cast, the film also features very good photo-realistic digital animal work, namely with Beard's "crew" of card-playing seagulls as well as Sandy Cheeks' (a talking squirrel) "live-action" form, who gets to spit nuts like a machine gun. 

Film: 'The Divergent Series: Insurgent' (2015)

Director: Robert Schwentke
Writers: Brian Duffield, Akiva Goldsman, Mark Bomback (based on the novel by Veronica Noth)

Whereas The Hunger Games film series took two sequels to get to its own Empire Strikes Back, this technically "middle chapter" of the dystopian* YA fiction with an oh-so subtle allegory about not fitting in is both darker and danker than the predecessor, opening with its own "Battle of Hoth" (or rather, Amity) which sees our heroes-in-hiding.  Meanwhile, arch-villainess Jeanine (Kate Winslet, one of whose earliest roles was as an SF heroine in the BBC serial Dark Season) is on a Vader-like hunt that sees Divergent experiment subjects (or at least one onscreen) die like force-throttled Imperial officers while occasionally, the score audibly honks with portent.  The film's climax event even takes places within shiny white corridors and there is a game-changing (but not particularly earth-shattering in this instance) revelation.  But while the honking might be comparable to an ocean liner (cf. Mark Kermode's review of Shutter Island), it's not an disaster that awaits our heroes (there is neither an iceberg nor any loss of limbs or parental plot twists), but rather the audience as the film's ethics walk off a ledge.  This is a film in which our "heroine" wants to kill the villain (wow, great role model) but then later says the killing has to stop - all the while fisticuffs are traded, noses are bloodied, people are shot, and bodies are thrown off trains (remember the gag on Family Guy about Brian supporting the death penalty to show that killing is wrong?).  There are two occasions in which those whose side we are supposedly on shoot unarmed enemy prisoners at point-blank range.  The end credits trade in Ellie Goulding for a song entitled "Blood Hands" - at least ending on "Starry Eyed" would have been funny.

*a dystopia where fugitives can still apply eyeliner and hair bleach.  Plus, Tris' haircut doesn't help any digs that this is essentially Hunger Games-lite by evoking Jennifer Lawrence's pixie do.

There is some visually interesting images, aided by the 90% useless "converted 3D", in which simulated buildings crumble apart but the panning shots are a blur (and it fails to bring any dimension whatsoever to Theo James' Four).  The virtual reality dreams from the first instalment play a bigger role here, with post-Matrix (you die in the game, you die for real), post-Inception (crumbling buildings and a surreal-twist on a realistic environment with a flying building replacing Inception's folding Paris) video game sequences that Tris has to play through (foreshadowed by real dreams).  There is even a Trial Of A Time Lord-ish concept on going into a virtual reality to combat the incarnation of your dark side, mixed with other Doctor Who "dream" story in which his self-hatred is made manifest in Amy Choice.  At least the games Katniss faced took place in the "real" world.  About two set pieces are undermined by a retro-spoilerific trailer and viewers can play a game of "guess if it's a dream or not" and score points in almost all cases.  This is also a film which seems to champion brains over brawn - the erudite (i.e. learned) Caleb is useless in the battlefield, comic relief and ultimately a [spoiler removed].  He's also one of the best-dressed characters.  Whereas Empire taught its protagonist that violence isn't fun and ended on a cliffhanger and its protagonist mutilated, this film is seemingly optimistic in its conclusion and quite a right place to end the story, despite our heroes having blood on their hands and the film having arsewipe on its morals.  Still, at least after an innocent person is mind-controlled into suicide, our very sad protagonist gets to shag her bland boyfriend.  Every cloud, eh?

Film: 'Frozen Fever'/'Cinderella' (2015)

'Frozen Fever' (2015)

Director: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee
Story: Chris Buck, Jennifer Lee, Mark E. Smith

Perhaps the most anticipated Disney short of the 21st century, this seemingly inconsequential addition to the extremely well-legged "Classic" (besides Kristoff letting slip his love for Anna) concerns Anna's birthday celebration and Elsa having a cold which manages to magically create miniature snowmen every time she sneezes.  These are eventually taken under the wind of Olaf, who gets to have some of Anna's ice cream birthday cake.  Despite the animation not seeming quite as well done as the premiere feature seemed (maybe a 3D viewing would have proved beneficial) and the vaguely depressing notion that Olaf's overhanging snow cloud that keeps him from melting is essentially life-support machine, this is a charmingly illustrated product.

'Cinderella' (2015)

Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Chris Weitz (based on Disney's Cinderella properties and the fairy tale by Charles Perrault)

*Possible spoilers*

"Product" being the word that is easy to label this new instalment in Disney's cash-in phase - not only does it credit the source being Charles Perrault's fairy tale but also the 1949 film's "properties".  Wow.  Having seemingly done with the run of straight-to-video sequels, the company now visits their Vault with a new method to making money off of the more sacred entries in their animated canon and anyone disappointed by the revisionism of Maleficent (2014) can understandably approach this remake with low expectations.  This time though, the reinventing route of screenwriter Linda Wolverton (Maleficent and 2010's Alice In Wonderland) is put aside in favour of a much more straight-up re-enactment, courtesy of Chris Weitz (and unlike 2007's fantasy flop The Golden Compass, this actually retains the source material's ending).  Here, it is neither a sequel (Alice In Wonderland), nor a revision (Maleficent) but something more akin to a Shakespeare play being performed by the same company via pantomime (and it doesn't get much more pantomime than new fairy godmother Helena Bonham Carter).

The remake largely discarding the original's songs, relegating "Bippity Boppity Boo" (performed by Bonham Carter) and "A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes" (Lily James) to the end credits, much in the manner of "Once Upon a Dream" in Maleficent (after all, Disney does have a soundtrack album to sell).  It also tones down the anthropomorphism of the mice, reducing their sped-up voices to incoherent babbling and taking away their clothes.  The digital work on the mice isn't perfect but it's better than whatever was done to depict Bonham Carter's fairy godmother as a decrepit (it's AWFUL).  Gone also are the Tom & Jerry antics between the mice and pet cat Lucifer.  What we do have is more of a backstory (given in the original as narrated exposition) in which we meet Cinderella's parents prior to her mother's U-rated illness and death.  The creation of Cinderella's original dress (aided by the mice) is now reduced to being part of a montage and the motivation behind it's humiliating tearing is now snobbery rather than because the step sisters recognised elements of their own property being seemingly misappropriated. 

The love story is also much closer to the "meeting of two people in the right circumstances" that was digged at in the original, sixty-four years before Frozen (2013) questioned the marital pairing of people who had only met that night.  Here, our heroine meets her future bae after she runs away from home on a real-life horse and he is out hunting a poorly-rendered stag.  They circle each other on horseback and it's quite obvious she desires congress.

As a singular self-contained entity, it is quite an efficient entertainment with beautiful scenery (a glimpse of what the inevitable live-action Frozen might look like) and an extremely well-detailed palace.  It's a grottier portrayal of the time and place than the original, but not quite as darkly designed as the Cinderella segments of Disney's recent musical fairy tale assembling Into The Woods (2014).  The morbid humour in that film cannot be found here - the step-sisters don't hack off parts of their feet in order to make the glass slipper fit and neither are they blinded by birds.  Also, in this remake, the sisters are "fairer" on the outside than perhaps usually expected of an adaptation while their "ugliness" is internal.  The stepmother is now re-MILFed by Cate Blanchett who - in an interesting tinkering with the third act - tries to use Cinderella's one slipper as a key to gaining power in the kingdom.

The film also takes advantage of the physically three-dimensional characters by making them more human than their hand-drawn predecessors.  Lily James's (Fast Girls, 2012) Cinderella breaking down (breaking some crockery in the process) elicits genuine sympathy while the stepmother is allowed a tear for the passing of her husband - although whether it's from grief or from fear of financial ruin is unclear.  The stepfamily's poverty is a key point and they are permitted redemption at the end - the sisters seemingly repent while the mother is shown grace.

Digital mice aside (and Bonham Carter's appearance may be sniffed by some as stock casting), it's a fine companion piece and essentially enjoyable by itself (it might have been fruitful to filter out the original's references).  2017's Beauty And The Beast will have some of its own original's fans to convince though.

My Picks of "New" Who Stories (2005-2014)

On 26th March 2005, Doctor Who returned to television as a regular series after a near-absence of nearly sixteen years, barring the 1996 TV movie (a significant point in the show's history as a franchise) and the odd sketch.  Show-run by Russell T. Davies, it starred Christopher Eccleston in the role of the Ninth Doctor for one series before he regenerated into David Tennant and a legend was reborn.  The series has carried on the tradition of occasionally renewing itself and its various features, be they Doctors, companions, theme arrangement, TARDIS control room, Daleks and Cybermen.

Tomorrow, I shall blog on some highlights from across the revival up to the end of 2014 but in the meantime, here are some of my picks of the stories from 2005 onwards.

THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR (2013)

Recently voted the favourite all-time story by readers of Doctor Who Magazine - even beating The Caves Of Androzani (1984) - this is pretty much "New Who"'s own The Five Doctors (1983).  The 1995 Special Edition of 20th anniversary special was my full-on introduction to the series.  It works pretty well as a stand-alone (well enough to convince someone in their pre-teens of the series' value) although the original cut is slightly clunky when watched as part of a broadcast-ordered marathon.

The Day Of The Doctor was a 3D 75-minuter which garnered a theatrical release (winning a place in the UK Box Office Top 10) and pays off an arc that tailed off with the departure of David Tennant (the Time War) and paid off a mystery teased in the Series 7 finale, The Name Of The Doctor (2013) - that of a previously unseen Doctor (John Hurt).  Had there not been a surprise cameo by impending Doctor Peter Capaldi, this would have served as a satisfactory finale to the series as a whole and a good point to end it indefinitely again.  If one watches this at the end of a run through everything since 1963, it might seem like everything had been building up to the scene in which every Doctor returns (albeit thanks to stock-footage and someone impersonating the voice of William Hartnell) to save the day.  It ends on a positive note with an optimistic reversal of the original premise of the Doctor being an intergalactic exile.

Besides the perhaps obvious use of the Daleks (courtesy of the Time War), the special also amusingly revived the Zygons (did Moffat have a hat with some pieces of paper in it?) for a long-non-awaited sequel to Terror Of The Zygons (1976) which seemingly ended in an apparent path to peace with the human race. 

A Doctor-team up had previously occurred in the Children-in-Need skit Time Crash (2007) and, sort-of-but-not-quite in the festive special The Next Doctor (2008) but this is the first instance of "New Who" (a division which I hope to drop this week) has carried on in the tradition of teaming up Doctors during the anniversary year with particular resemblance to The Three Doctors (1972-1973).  It perhaps suggests the best team-ups are at least two at once - Tennant and Smith work well together (it also serves as a bonus David Tennant story) while Hurt is more of a supporting role.  It's a bit of a pity that Eccleston could not join the line-up and than McGann could not have been an alternative fill-in to make the link between "old and new" but Hurt's Doctor works in bringing back some mystery and brought some new mythology not only to the show, but to the Doctor.


THE ANGELS TAKE MANHATTAN (2012)

Some of those who know me probably know about my thing for Karen Gillan and this was the official final episode with Amy Pond (barring a hallucinogenic cameo in Matt Smith's send-off).  The "mid-season" finale ending a set of stand-alone episodes (which had no relation to the Silence arc of Series 6 and set-up the future mystery of Clara Oswald), this is arguably the bleakest episode since The Caves Of Androzani, both in tone and (at one or two points) in the score and has two beloved characters making the ultimate sacrifice in order to defeat New Classic monsters, the Weeping Angels.  Reminiscent of Rose Tyler's departure in Army Of Ghosts/Doomsday (2006), it sends the characters off to an apparent point of no-return, thanks to the power of wibbly-wobbly-timey-whimey (which fans have tried to work their way around).

BLINK (2007)

A fan favourite, this is basically the "Gospel tract" of Doctor Who.  A "Doctor-lite" episode with more supportive appearances from David Tennant and Freema Agyeman as companion Martha Jones, this is very much from the point-of-view of one of the best-companions-never, Sally Sparrow (Cary Mulligan).  Watched again as part of a marathon, it also comes across as a prototype Matt Smith episode (thanks to some music that would be used in an Eleventh Doctor computer game and only recognised on a subsequent viewing).  It has a hint of the future "dark fairy tale" tone that Moffat would use for Smith's first series.  It begins with our heroine breaking into an abandoned house, has her battling against living stone angels and concludes with the implication that the monsters can be found around us in our everyday surroundings.  The go-to episode for winning a convert to the series (at least from the "revived" lot).

LISTEN (2014)

Steven Moffat's second Blink.  It sets up a mystery that turns out to what might be nothing at all, this is one of the best directed episodes of the revival.  Going from a child's bedroom in the past to a lonely time-travelling astronaut at the end of the universe (before concluding in the childhood bedroom of a lonely time-traveller), it has the kind-of "domestic horror" (i.e. bringing it into the home) that I'd like to see more of in the future and can be seen in earlier serials such as Terror Of The Autons (1971) and Survival (1989), whilst also returning to the "dark fairy tale" not seen for about four years.  If Blink has a monster at the end of the garden, this has the monster under the bed.

Film (Home viewing catchup): Pudsey The Dog: The Movie (2014)

Director: Nick Moore
Screenwriter: Paul Rose

The Pudsey act is perhaps tolerable for a 2-3 minute YouTube video but isn't anything worth not changing the channel over and had any feature-length cash-in had a story, been adequately-shot and enough amusement to pass the time innocuously, this might have been vaguely passable as something for the Children's Film Foundation.  But we don't get that.  What we do get is plod rather than plot, a TV talent show star seemingly channelling the voice of one of his judges (and, with his farm animal co-stars, occasionally aided by rubbish digital mouth work which is so below the standard set by Babe), badly-shot slapstick and a seemingly 'U' rating-friendly cumshot gag, which even Michael Bay might have thought would be a bit much in a children's film.  There isn't even that much of Pudsey walking on his hind legs.

Film: Chappie (2015)

Starts out as Robocop with dog-ears (or K9 meets Pudsey/any dog that can walk on its hind legs). Essentially about an amnesiac police officer being raised by a gang, it is both too sweary and graphic for anyone under the age of 15 yet has preschool-level moralising (a children's book on the story of a black sheep provides an oh-so subtle analogy). Good cinematography and synthy scoring and Blomkamp's continued throwback to more adult SF action fare indicates quite capable hands for the next 'Alien' instalment.

Film: 'Fifty Shades of Grey' (2015)

TITLE: Fifty Shades Of Grey
YEAR: 2015
STUDIO: Universal
DIRECTOR: Sam Taylor-Wood
SCREENWRITER: Kelly Marcel (based on the novel by E.L. James)


On the same day I watched this film, my parents came home from a little holiday and had bought me some cheese, the package of which promised a hint of blue.  Anyone going into this film hoping for some cheese will be disappointed but there is at least a hint of blue in it.


Based on the vastly popular bestseller by E.L. James and adapted by the writer of the vastly superior Saving Mr Banks (2013), perhaps the film-makers should have learned a lesson from that film and followed Disney's lead in how they chose to adapt the source material despite the author's protestations.  If the film-makers had indeed tried to adjust the story due to questionable material (hands-up right now, this author has only merely scantly glanced at the source material), they have come up with something that seems both compromised and at the same time nothing that members of the kink community should be protesting about.  Compromised because they may well have tried to "improve" on the source text, ethically speaking, but also having to be saddled with the two leads giving monotonous readings for the duration.


The leads in question being Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) - a virginal English Literature student with an annoying name, and 27-year-old-but-looks-12 billionaire Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan), who is clearly an alien or a robot, based on the evidence of Dornan's performance.  They are introduced to each other when Steele comes to his office for an interview for the student magazine and she makes a very contrived trip onto the floor.  For some reason, she is soon taken with him and for some reason, he starts demonstrating stalker tendencies.  Early warning signs include when he informs her that he won't touch her without her written consent but pretty much a minute later changes his mind in a lift and says "Fuck the paperwork!" before cornering her for a snog.  At another point Ana phones him while drunk on a night out and he comes over to rescue her from a friend coming onto her (and no, not in that way).  Ana swoons and regains consciousness in a bedroom and in a new set of clothes with an 'Alice in Wonderland' plot device at her bedside - a bottle of something that says "Drink me" and something the says "Eat me".  So, like any idiot, she does.  Apparently Christian redressed her and slept at her side but nothing further - "Necrophilia is not my thing", he claims.  Dude, that's not the word for what it would have been - this is the first of two instances where the film-makers tread around that particular subject like it was an eggshell.  The other is when it turns out Grey was seduced at the age of 15 by his own "Mrs. Robinson".  Mrs. Robinson wasn't a paedophile though, although Ana's refers to the seductress as a "child abuser" for some reason.


Grey also gifts Ana with old books, a new computer, and a car, and soon she is taken to his place.  He claims he doesn't do romance but he does show what he does do - he has a "play room" (yeah, he's into that sort of thing).  Ana reveals that she's a virgin and he decides that's something that needs rectifying.  Wanker.  What follows is the first of a few sex scenes that reminds us that this is a film for "adults" (through the eyes of mums that were technically too old for Twilight).  It's vaguely surprising to see a mainstream Hollywood film have this kind of frank nudity on display but it's not particularly onanistic stuff.  If anything, Steve McQueen's Shame (2011) could serve as a palette cleanser and the quasi-religious flogging scene (accompanied by Church choir courtesy of Danny Elfman's score) serves as a reminder to go back and re-watch Ken Russell's The Devils (1971).  Even the seemingly stop-motion animated subliminal "flash" (oh, I see what they did there) of a close-up of Dornan's crotch as he unzips just brings to mind the dancing penis from Bruno (2009).


One can detect the Twilight roots with regards to the Grey character - he's a protective guy who at one point saves our heroine from being knocked down and likes to play the piano.  So it seems Grey's way of doing things is to set up a contract if Ana is to be his submissive (hardly an appealing selling point for the lifestyle) and she proposes a business meeting so they can negotiate (zzzzzzz).  At this meeting, she declares that there is to be no anal fisting (you'd think at this point, the film-makers were sniggering behind the camera like the audience would be while E.L. James gives them the evils).  Perhaps unfortunately, this wasn't directed by Paul Verhoeven nor written by Joe Eszterhas, although the nearest to Eszerthasan it gets is when Grey declares "I don't make love.  I fuck.  Hard."  Still, Showgirls (1995) it ain't.


Ana is reluctant to sign the contract and seems to prefer a "normal" relationship.  She asks Grey at one point why he's trying to change her, and he tells her it's the other way round.  There's no real evidence of this except when he's persuaded to stay in bed with her the whole night and actually smiles (sorta) in a newspaper photo taken of the two of them together.  We don't actually really care about these characters although by the end of the film, perhaps through its sheer length, we at least feel like we've known them and have been in their company and any "nostalgia" felt when seeing them in subsequent sequels would be like seeing Bella and Edward in a new Twilight film even if you weren't a fan of the previous ones.
 
To be fair, even if the kink lifestyle isn't given a fair hearing in this film, it is possible that the film (I can't comment on the novel) can be seen as a cautionary tale on how not to live it.  Anyone curious about the lifestyle could be either attracted to it even more or turned away from it.  And unlike the Twilight movies, this adaptation refrains from using a voice-over by the protagonist, thus creating an objective view of the proceedings and letting the audience decide for themselves.  Rather than a "love story", it's more of an "anti-love story" where the two leads don't end up together.  What would have made it more interesting would be if the film-makers provided a commentary on a seemingly "vanilla" (i.e. "normal") equivalent of a dominant/submissive relationship, such as that in which the woman is regarded and treated as a "princess".  Here, they could even have added an anti-monarchy agenda.


As with Jupiter Ascending (2014), it's a bit of a shame this film presumably wasn't edited by the makers of the film's trailer - the one that showcased Beyoncé's theme song "Haunted", and succeeded in making the film look like a fragrance advert.

Film: Project Almanac (2014)

In which a bunch of young people build a time machine based on plans left behind by the lead's dead father after seeing the lead on a home movie of his ten-year-younger self's birthday.  The screenwriting debut of writers Jason Pagan and Andrew Deutschman as well as the feature debut of director Dean Israelite - the cousin of Jonathan Liebesman, he who directed Platinum Dunes' The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006) - this sits alongside The Purge (2013) in the Non-Franchise Science Fiction section of Platinum Dunes' output.  A found-footage movie (which ends with the footage being found), it's USP is that the footage concerns its characters travelling through time and capturing on the camera both the time travelling and the effects the characters' actions have on the timeline (including a Back To The Future-esque fade-out variation of the Blinovitch Limitation Effect).  As the characters make mistakes and travel back again and again to fix things, it makes a verbal reference to Groundhog Day (1992) as well as Looper (2012) (marking a character in the past and witnessing its effects on them in the present) and - in what is perhaps the most flaccid "geeky" reference imaginable - Doctor Who.

As with slasher movies, its leads aren't people that we particularly care about, the blonde girl barely registers, the central lead Jonny Weston is clearly more than ten years older than his past self but Sam Lerner does seem a suitable, if not better, replacement for Shia LaBeouf if they ever consider bringing Sam Witwicky back to the Transformers movies.  This is more of a film where you don't character about the characters but you're more interested in what happens to them.  The plot fairly aimlessly wanders once they have figured out how the time travel works and use it to their own ends, such as winning the lottery (and using it to help the lead's mum), getting back at a high school bully and a teacher as well as - albeit with questionable ethics - getting the girl (cf. About Time, 2013).  The found-footage motif is really only justified by the time travel angle but as with Cloverfield (2007), the filming and editing techniques might be put to interesting use outside of the 'found-footage' genre.  Also, Imagine Dragons' Radioactive gets performed at a gig, the usage of which in any film might be enough to bump up a star rating.

Film Brief: 'Big Hero 6' (2014)

TITLE: Big Hero 6
DIRECTOR: Don Hall, Chris Williams
SCREENWRITERS: Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird (based on the characters created by Duncan Rouleau and Steven T. Seagle) (Heads of Story: Paul Briggs, Joseph Mateo)

IN BRIEF(ish):
After plundering fairy tales for stories to integrate into what would become the "canon" of Animated Classics (the most recent example being the seemingly immortalised Frozen), Disney more "modern mythologies", such as video games in 2012's Wreck-It-Ralph and now Marvel comics in Big Hero 6.  And indeed, after the Marvel Cinematic Universe turned going to the movies into homework assignments (the biggest chore being 2013's Thor: The Dark World), Big Hero 6 is one of the best looking of the latest Marvel offers.  The design of San Fransokyo makes this Disney's Blade Runner and it makes a great case for the good that CGI can be put to as well as what depth to CG animation that 3D can bring.  It is also one of the most fun so far.  On my so-far initial viewing of Guardians Of The Galaxy (2014), I could not get into it and dismissed it as a Saturday morning cartoon on a similar par to DC's flop Green Lantern (2011), although admittedly it may have been as much to do with the environment in which I was watching it and will give it another chance soon.  But Big Hero 6 is proper good fun and a real treat to take kids to see as a Saturday matinee.  It is funny, even if not quite in the same way as Wreck-It-Ralph's near-Aardman-esque humour, isn't entirely clean-cut when it comes to deciding it's heroes and villains (even the protagonist makes a not particularly heroic choice) and it has a likeable USP character in inflatable robot Baymax.  It does somewhat suffer a common problem from Disney animations in that it isn't easy to get emotionally invested in its CG humans (Frozen perhaps comes close) and one set piece gag about Baymax getting inebriated as a result of running low on batteries is simply a one-off and is never paid off in a way one would expect in the film's climax.

Film Brief: 'Ex Machina'

Title: 'Ex Machina'
Writer and Director: Alex Garland

In Brief:
This one was watched knowing next-to-nothing about it and is perhaps best watched that way.  For at least half of it, it comes across as Black Mirror-lite with less of the biting satire but things then do turn nasty.  But whereas Black Mirror tended to be conceptually nasty (the conclusion of 2014's Christmas special being perhaps most delicious example and this film's ending is admittedly reminiscent of it), this relies more on being lurid (although a scene of self-harm does recall a chip-removal scene from 2011's The Entire History Of You).  Plus, there is significantly more nudity than is likely to be found in any future BM episode.  You may not miss much by waiting for a home-viewing release but it does have good key performances.  Oscar Isaac is consistently untrustworthy and Domhnall Gleeson is a good young vulernable Everyman (it makes for a good, albeit adult, opening cinematic bookend to be finished at the end of the year with their appearances in December's Star Wars: The Force Awakens).  A bewigged Alicia Vikander recalls what John Green would call a "mid-2000s Natalie Portman".

Film Review: 'Exodus: Gods and Kings' (2014)

TITLE: Exodus: Gods and Kings
DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott
WRITERS: Adam Cooper, Bill Collage, Jeffrey Caine, Steven Zaillian

Perhaps less controversial than Noah released earlier in the year but still managing to cause some fuss, partly due to continuing the Hollywood tradition of casting largely caucasian actors in Biblical roles.  But had that been the only flaw, one would not have particularly minded, had it been in the tradition of Biblical epics in other aspects.  If Noah was something of a diverging text that was not made purely for Christian audiences, one can detect something of what kind of worldview is behind this latter offering from the opening text telling us that it is set in such-and-such-a-year B.C.E.  There is also something to be said of the portrayal of God, manifested as a petulant boy (recalling Juilette Caton's Satan-as-guardian-angel in The Last Temptation Of Christ, 1988) who makes tea, gets cross and - in the words some people might use - is a bit of a little shit.  Also, the film - or rather Ramses (Joel Edgerton) brings up, perhaps understandably, the ethics of a God who would sanction mass infanticide.  It is possible to suggest that in this film, Ramses comes out of it pretty well.

As with Scott's Robin Hood (2010), there is something of an "early film" approach with expository text setting up the background to the story mixed with slo-mo footage of Egyptian slavery presented in 3D that does, admittedly, bring some resonance for someone who was raised in a religion in which this was a key story.  It is not only here that the 3D does prove rather effective - there is also quite a few shots of flying birds that helps creates some depth in some impressive photography.  There is also some pretty terrific location footage.

As suggested earlier, had this been a traditional, albeit whitewashed, Hollywood Biblical epic, it might have proved satisfactory but until roughly the half-way point, it would not pass muster as Sunday afternoon television.  Things shift a bit from the moment Moses (Christian Bale not having much of a commanding presence in his role of protagonist and using some kind of accent) is knocked out and meets God and sees a burning bush while - for some reason - being buried up to his face and not being asked to remove his sandals.  It goes a little bit Last Temptation-y when a post-bush Moses returns to Egypt and chooses the bow (whereas Willam DeFoe's Jesus had an axe) and trains a bunch of Merry Men.  The "fun" really starts when the Plagues are occuring with a rather Nolan-esque twist (the sea turning to blood is caused by crocodiles massacring each other) and Ewen Bremner is brought in as an "Expert" to explain the science behind the apparent supernatural (during this sequence, Scott makes some choice editing with some comic hanging).  The red sea sequence is also re-envisioned so the waves no longer pass with a narrow path to cross but rather it dries out almost altogether before the waters return for a Moses/Ramses face-off.  What else impresses about this sequence is a collapsing cliffedge which sees a lot of Ramses' soldiers and their chariots fall victim to a thin road (this film is also unkind to horses).

It's a near acceptable half that shows what potential this film had, but if I wanted "heresy", give me Aronofsky's Noah, as exhausting as it is.