Scream 4

Sometimes, the longer a franchise goes on, the less well you start to think of the earlier films. Certainly this is now true for Pirates of the Caribbean. Will it be true of the upcoming Mission Impossible 4? The first and third movies were entertaining and will probably remain so. As bad as the fourth Indiana Jones was, it surely won’t affect the reputation of the first three, and Die Hard 4 wasn’t that bad in the first place (albeit perhaps just as an ordinary action film). Scream 4, however, seriously makes one question the value of the earlier films. The second and third movies weren’t that interesting anyway, and the rehashing of anything original about the first film in this fourth one, makes the whole franchise seem a waste of time. The larger, gruesome body-count isn’t likely to impress many viewers. The reversals, the genre-play, and self-referential irony, is no longer amusing. It was all done in the first film, and didn’t need repeating. It seems like the desire to make a fourth movie came before the ideas to put in it. This is often the reason for a franchise’s failure. When you put desire before ideas, you often come up bankrupt (creatively, as well as occasionally financially – although, as Mark Kermode has pointed out in relation to other bad movies, this film was a box office success). The characters are no longer engaging or interesting. What is Sidney (Neve Campbell) doing with her life? Like the heroes of other franchises, she has become a blank, uninteresting space at the centre of the film. All her issues were resolved in earlier movies. What’s strange is that it is relatively easy to please audiences of franchises by having certain characters say or do certain things again and again. Even if you were a die-hard fan of these movies, however, I’d tell you that there was very little to be gained from watching this fourth film. That, I think, says it all.

MASH

This is a film I’d never seen before. That is not to say, of course, that I knew nothing about it. You might have seen cropping up here and there articles by people who’ve never seen Star Wars, watching it for the first time (they are very rarely, by the way, people who were young kids at the time it was released). They might never have actually sat down to watch the films the whole way through, but that doesn’t mean they’re coming to it with a blank mind. The very act of sitting down to watch them presupposes a judgement already, and they will probably have seen clips and know about the general plot, characters and ideas from references by friends, family, and the media. Likewise with me and MASH. I decided to watch it because I’d already been told it was good. This is the first hurdle to get over when watching classics, if we can call them that. MASH is certainly a fascinating film, and the amount I would like to say about it (but can’t here), perhaps indicates its value alone. It is a mix of farce, black comedy and political satire, tragedy, poignancy, and pathos. The carefully choreographed ‘last supper’ sequence, and the poker game with the dead body being driven away in the background are scenes that will stick in my mind for a long time. I found the characters often offensive and rude, but I’m not sure if this is how I was supposed to see them. They are also brilliant surgeons who work hard, which seems to compensate in some way for their arrogance. The film is made up of episodes with little connection to one another, brought into a broad, but relatively meaningless, story-arc of the two surgeons’ brief service in Korea. Perhaps this is what gave the inspiration for a TV series. The film is like one already. However, the idea of tying things together too cleanly (such as the apparent intention to have the Korean boy reappear) would have been too neat. The film does work better as haphazard, irreverent, although the sport sequence towards the end of the film felt relatively redundant and out of character with the rest of the sequences. It’s interesting to read that there was tension between the actors and the director, and that some of the loud-speaker announcements were added later in order to try to build continuity. I haven’t seen many of Robert Altman’s films, and think initially that his method has to rely on exceptional acting, music and dialogue in order to succeed for me, but it certainly does that here.

Midnight in Paris

Expectation often leads to disappointment, perhaps never more so than in the case of Woody Allen films. This is doubly so. There are his fans, who live in the hope that he will recreate his classics of the 70s and 80s, and there are the people who have seen the trailer for a romantic comedy starring (in this example) Owen Wilson and Rachel McAdams, and hope it will be endearing and funny. So in recent years both types of moviegoer have been disappointed. Woody Allen’s films are not simple romantic comedies, nor are they recreations of his earlier classics. Both sets of expectations are frustrated. How, then, are we supposed to watch his films? The obvious answer is as someone aware of what to expect from Woody Allen, and yet not in anticipation of something similar to his films from the past. Midnight in Paris will not disappoint anyone who approaches it in this way. It is funny, rife with literary allusions, self-deprecation, and brilliant, real comic characters. It can undoubtedly be called ‘his best for years’, although this often-repeated phrase is somewhat patronising. Without wishing to ruin the film for those who haven’t seen it, it stars Wilson as a screenwriter visiting Paris with his fiancé and her parents. There is at times that awkwardness perhaps due to the script, or the direction of the actors, that I often feel in watching his recent films. The jokes, or literary references, are too stilted, or fall out of the actor’s mouths rather clumsily. It could only barely be maintained that Owen Wilson was doing an impersonation of Woody Allen (as most of his leading men have been). He does a good job of making his own character out of the heavy burden of being Allen’s mouthpiece. There are great, poetic moments in this film, finished with a perfect ending. You should see it.

Invictus

I had to double-check halfway through this film: was it really directed by Clint Eastwood? There is so much potential in the material, cast and director, I can only think it was a very rushed production. It is a big disappointment. The great lines and speeches are delivered robotically, without any real conviction. The film isn’t about any one thing. It tries too much and too little. A film centred around Francois Pienaar might have been better, having only glimpses of Mandela, but there were greater problems than just this. It is as if the writer(s) was too afraid to elaborate, or imagine anything new at all. Like all biographical and/or historical films, the writer has to create artificial highs and lows, sometimes exaggerating what took place, or emphasising certain issues that perhaps weren’t important at the time. Otherwise you end up with this: a flat, unexciting picture. There were moments of great potential, such as the confrontation between Mandela’s security guards and the old, white presidential security team. But nothing is ever delivered, no arguments or speeches, nothing happens and the confrontation peters out and ultimately falls flat. What is more, the film is about Mandela alone for a good while before we see anything about rugby, as if they were afraid to make a sports movie. Then, towards the end of the film, the rugby takes over almost completely, large amounts of time are dedicated to the game, with no dialogue given. The complexities, tension and excitement of the final are attempted in brief highlights (for someone like me who enjoys rugby I found it hard to follow). What was a great match was drained of its enjoyment, rather than being emphasised, and there are awful lines of exposition, characters explaining to other characters something they obviously would have known (for example, the basic format of a knockout competition). More use could easily have been made of the poem, which gives the film its title. Instead we only hear a mumbled narration of it by Morgan Freedman. This is one of those mysteries in the film world – everything is in place for it to be a good, Oscar winning movie, and yet it fails. It is important to learn some of the lessons as to why.

Source Code

As this film is a concept movie that achieves most of its success on a first viewing, that right from the very first scene involves a puzzle that you, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, have to unravel, I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to give away much of the plot. I can say though there is not just one puzzle but at least three almost buried inside each other that we have to try to unpick. The problem, though, like most puzzles, is whether once you’ve solved it you want to keep watching, and/or ever see it again? Undoubtedly you want to see how this film ends. It is intriguing, thought-provoking, well-written and acted, and nothing is solved until the last minute, when perhaps even then questions are left unanswered. There are always logical flaws in this type of film, the question is whether they are obtrusive enough, or covered over cleverly enough. In a very similar film, Deja Vu, the viewer is just about convinced. In Source Code, however, the flaws I think are too many, or the one main flaw is too large. You finish the film thinking about that, rather than what the film means, which I think is a failure. It is a cross between Groundhog Day, Vantage Point, Deja Vu and a host of other sci-fi films, as well as perhaps a touch of Quantum Leap. Jake Gyllenhaal is excellent, and the film isn’t claustrophobic as it might seem if I were to describe the plot to you. It is compelling and tragic, but at the same time it is only a concept movie, a genre which is limited in scope by its very nature, and can only point to one inevitable ending which when it is avoided by the director/writer, the viewer feels slightly cheated. Without a doubt, Duncan Jones is a director to keep an eye on, and this is a promising second movie (although I'm wondering if he'll ever move away from sci-fi or not), but there will I hope be better to come.

Super 8

It seems at first that this film sits uncomfortably between several genres or approaches: it mixes elements of horror, emotional drama, comedy, sci-fi and the monster movie, is aimed at adults and kids, and is both postmodern whilst being nostalgic.  This doesn’t appear to make any sense, and yet it does. J. J. Abrams has created something almost entirely new with this film, but I don’t think it’s an experiment that can be repeated. This is like a kids’ film for adults. Or rather, a film for adults who were kids when these movies came out: E.T., Flight of The Navigator, Explorers, The Goonies, and The Last Starfighter. It follows similar lines to these yet obviously ironically, now being set thirty years in the past where those were contemporary. It is also a far more serious, and at times frightening film. Like those films, like indeed all great action films, the main drive of the movie is the emotional development of the characters. It overtakes the terrifying events around them and very neatly, perhaps too neatly, provides a resolution to the whole drama. What I did miss was how the small scale charm with which the film starts, following its predecessors, is swept away, especially towards the end. This is the temptation of the relative ease of modern special effects, perhaps. Like all monster movies, the suspense is better than the explanation. I also regretted how the role of the Super 8 film itself became relatively insignificant, when it could have been (and perhaps was originally intended to be) the crucial element of the movie. Anyway, I don’t know what people who haven’t seen those original films might think of this, but for those of us who have, it’s unmissable.

The Fantastic Mr Fox

I am usually the first person out the door when a new Wes Anderson film is released, but when this movie was in cinemas last year I was hesitant. In fact, when I had heard about its production I already knew I probably wouldn't see it straight away.Why is he making a children's film? I thought. In fact, having now seen the movie, I wonder if anyone under the age of 18 and/or not familiar with Anderson's previous films could have enjoyed this at all. There is so much aimed at adults, and so much Andersonian techniques and trademarks, that with only a few changes it would closely resemble The Royal Tennenbaums, or Bottle Rocket. This in itself is both a good and a bad thing. Anderson's films are an enjoyable indulgence but, like Tarantino in a way, I begin to wonder if he'll ever make a 'serious' film, or deal with real issues. This is perhaps a fictitious division, it could be argued everything in life is real, everything is serious, but there is something undeniably light in Anderson's films that, given his incredible talent and vision, I wish he would turn to drama. The Fantastic Mr Fox is hilarious, surprising and heart-warming, but sadly it is nothing we haven't seen before. I've no complaints if he keeps on making such films, but would feel a tinge of regret each time he did.