Source Code (2011)

Captain Colter Stevens, a US helicopter pilot serving in Afghanistan, wakes up on a commuter train headed into Chicago. He is disoriented, but small details immediately catch his attention. The passenger opposite knows him, but keeps calling him Sean. He has no idea who anyone is or how he got there and as he struggles to get his bearings, the train explodes spectacularly. Stevens wakes up in a strange, disorienting chamber, with only a small screen connecting him to the outside world. He is told that he is taking part in a vital scientific experiment, whereby his consciousness is projected into another person's body. The purpose? To find out who detonates the bomb that destroys the train, in order to prevent the bomber's next planned attack, a dirty bomb due to be detonated later that morning in downtown Chicago. Stevens must keep going back into Sean's body for those last 8 minutes of his life, to try to piece together what happened and prevent a much more deadly attack.

*****

Director Duncan Jones launched himself on the cinema-going public with 2009's "Moon", a fantastic sci-fi debut packed full of great ideas relating to identity and personhood. This, his follow-up, is thankfully blessed with similarly big ideas such as fate, destiny and the value of human life. Jones has been given a much bigger budget to play with this time and although Source Code is more expansive than Moon, it still focuses on and works with a small number of characters, allowing us to get under their skin and engage with them meaningfully.

Coming across as a kind of cross between Quantum Leap and Groundhog Day, Source Code finds Jake Gyllenhaal's Captain Stevens reliving the last 8 minutes of a teacher's life over and over, trying each time to piece together more of the clues as to who is responsible. His initial disorientation, well-conveyed by seasoned brow-furrower Gyllenhaal, gives way to a fierce sense of purpose and focus and at times some much-welcome light-heartedness, necessary to leaven the heaviness of the death and destruction repeatedly emblazoned across the screen. As the commuter and romantic interest across the carriage, Michelle Monaghan brings once again the charm and believability essayed so convincingly in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Mission: Impossible 3. If there is any justice in the world, she will continue to go from strength to strength and enjoy the increased success and profile that her considerable talent merit. Here, she has a considerably tougher role than Gyllenhaal, who is allowed to and indeed must develop, evolve with each successive leap. By contrast Monaghan had to play the same scene, with gradual variations, much straighter, without giving any indication in her performance that she is aware of the events of previous "leaps". It is entirely believable that despite having only just met her, Stevens would want to move heaven and earth to save her, such is her warmth and beauty.

Back in the control room, we find Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, The Departed) as Stevens main point of contact. She is initially business-like, keeping Stevens focused on the mission, but there is an underlying compassion and sympathy about her and the conflictedness this engenders within her is adroitly conveyed. Jeffrey Wright (Casino Royale, Ali, Syriana) is Farmiga's boss and the overseer of the experiment. Although he is ruthless and abrupt at times, he is no monster, simply a man desperate to see the success of his project and he is as well-fleshed out as anyone else here.

Just as with the peerless Groundhog Day, subtle changes and Stevens increasing ease within the experiment keep the repetitive story elements from becoming boring or predictable. A plot device means that Stevens can only visit the final 8 minutes of Sean's life, so the pace is kept ratcheting along, with Stevens following assorted potentially red herrings, false leads and futile efforts, before finally beginning to close in on the bomber. Gyllenhaal moves through the emotions, from confusion, desperation and frustration, into hope, determination and self-assuredness. The progression is gradual and believable rather than jolting and helps to draw us into the film and Stevens plight in particular.

As rammed-full as it is with great performances, big ideas and a compelling story, Source Code does eventually fall short of great sci-fi in general and the high water mark of Jones's work on Moon in particular. For reasons that are beyond me, Jones eschews the gut-punch and ambiguity of Moon, in favour of tidiness and pat resolutions. Perhaps the magic words, "studio interference" come into play here, with Jones paying the price (as Pegg & Frost did with Paul) for being entrusted with a stack of studio money by having to toe the line on various directives as to story resolution. It doesn't blight one's enjoyment of the film by any stretch of the imagination, as it remains intriguing and inventive. It's just a shame that it couldn't also have been daring. It's something that we don't seem to see so much of these days.

HMV & Blockbuster - signs of the times

News breaks this week that HMV will be closing 60 of their stores, leading to large-scale redundancies. The focus is inevitably stated to be shifting towards online services. Recently, Blockbuster in the US hit financial problems, leading to it filing for bankruptcy.

None of this is especially surprising, given the shifting landscape of DVD/film viewing, renting and buying. I am not qualified to offer any purported insight into the financial intricacies of HMV or Blockbuster, however I would like to proffer some thoughts on how they have reached this inevitable predicament and where we go from here.

Before the advent of DVDs and online sales/rentals of DVDs or videos, our only option was to go into the local high street branch of HMV, Woolworths or WHSmith or visit our local independent video store and buy or rent our chosen film. This was in fact a lot of fun. Although I am showing my age a little, as a sixth-former in the early to mid-nighties, there was little I enjoyed more (when my timetable threw up an afternoon off school) than popping into my local video store and finding something to rent and watch. Likewise, when a birthday or Christmas left me with a few quid to spare, or even better, HMV vouchers, I would travel into London and visit the HMV on Oxford Street to peruse its incomparably wide range of films and buy something suitably violent and entertaining. It was great to work along the aisles, seeking out an obscure gem, hunting an unexpected bargain (Casablanca, remastered special edition on VHS for £5.00!) and generally enjoying the prospect of stumbling upon something great (or picking up another Steven Seagal slap-fest).

It goes without saying that those days are long gone. I have not rented a DVD since June 2010 and only then because I had a Blockbuster voucher. I have not bought a DVD from a shop in as long as I can remember and I cannot name a single independent DVD rental outlet that I know to still be in business. The Blockbuster near where I work has closed and been replaced by a Frankie & Bennys and I suspect that the local HMV will go the same way. It is inevitable that this would happen. VHS tapes were always too fragile and heavy for cheap postal and therefore the rise of DVD coupled with the explosion of online traders renders conventional shops increasingly obsolete. Without the overheads of hefty lease payments for high street shop fronts and large numbers of staff, online traders can drive prices down, needing only to cover the cost of basic warehouse space and a couple of members of staff to process payments and dispatch purchases. For a product like a DVD or Blu-ray, where you don't need to try it on, see if it fits, measure it up or sit on it for a comfort-check, online purchases are perfect and in a culture where competitive pricing is key, the cheapest price gets the sale.

I'm not so naive as to get all misty-eyed and nostalgic at this point. I'm not launching a one-man crusade to save HMV stores and independent DVD rental outlets. I bought numerous DVDs for family and friends before Christmas and found the cheapest online price I could for every one. I have signed up to yet another free trial with an online DVD rental provider and will cancel it before I have to make any payments. I am as cynical and financially-driven as anyone on this subject but I do still wish to offer some contrary perspective.

It is still hugely enjoyable to peruse a DVD shop or rental store. When you suddenly fancy watching a certain film that night and don't want to wait for it to arrive in the post, it is good to be able to pop into HMV or Blockbuster (other suppliers, shops and outlets available) and buy or rent it. I like being able to surprise my kids by coming home with a DVD and some popcorn for a family DVD night, organised on short notice and it just doesn't feel as exciting when you're merely waiting for something family friendly to come through from your online rental wish-list. I miss popping out to the video shop to see whether they had some mindless straight-to-video effort that I hadn't seen and fancied a stab at and I miss the family video nights of my teens, when we would rent four films, mum would get in some pizzas and Coke and we would sit up until the small hours.

As technology has advanced, even the "fancy watching something at the last minute" argument cannot hold up. Streaming of films on demand, downloads on iTunes and similar, BBC iPlayer and the like - they all cater for our impatience or lack of forward planning, filling the gap created by our increasingly impulsive natures.

So, this is not an elegy. I do not wish to revert to the sentimental "good old days". I like being able to buy cheap/free DVDs and my own buying and renting habits show I am as much a part of this recent trend as anyone. As someone who went through a redundancy experience last year, I sympathise with all those whole will lose their jobs in the new upheaval at HMV. It is a grotty situation and I hope all of those affected will be okay in the long run, but it had to happen. The changes in the market are forcing businesses to adapt or perish.

I still miss the experiences of my teen years, but we all have to move on as technological advances transition us into a new era.

Up (2009)

Carl, an elderly loner, having grown old with and then lost his wife, decides to head off on the adventure they had always planned but never embarked upon - a trip to South America to visit Paradise Falls. He takes his house, care of thousands of helium balloons and, unwittingly, a stowaway in the shape of young Russell, a Wilderness Explorer keen to complete his set of badges with one for helping the elderly.

*****

I came to Up knowing quite a lot about it. It was supposed to be for the most part a little inferior to more recent Pixar high water marks as Wall-E and Ratatouille and apparently contained an opening montage as heart-breaking and affecting as anything in modern cinema. What I found with Up was what I feel to be an almost peerless achievement in modern animation. Rarely have I enjoyed a film as moving, involving and, yes, heart-breaking as this one. For sure, some of the pacing once Carl and Russell arrive in Venezuela is a little off and although the concluding airship/biplane set piece is exciting enough, it falls sort of the spectacle and adrenaline wallop of the finales of Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Toy Story to name a few. But that is entirely beside the point. Firstly, the protagonist for the final showdown is in his 70's, making it unlikely that he is going to be sprightly enough for terribly physical confrontation. The physical exertions and slips, falls and fights are entirely in keeping with the characters, which is part of what makes it so compelling. Rather than a hero of limitless strength and ability, we have a relatively frail man, straining every sinew to prevail. Secondly, the film is not intended to be a set-piece showcase. It is intended to be about a man enjoying a long-postponed adventure and giving a young boy a sense of belonging and being needed. On these points it emphatically succeeds.

That opening montage, as we see Carl and his wife Ellie meet, fall in love, marry, find they cannot have children, settle into domestic life, decorate their house, constantly postpone their trip to Venezuela and culminating in Ellie's death is indeed moving in the extreme. Not a word is spoken, yet everything is so effortlessly portrayed. It is not sentimental or saccharine, rather deeply and enduringly affecting. It is quite simply one of the finest sequences of animation ever committed to the screen.

Beyond the montage the film is packed full of great ideas - dogs with collars that translate their thoughts into speech ("squirrel!", "point!"), moving house by helium balloon, a crazy, chocolate-loving bird called Kevin, the "collar of shame", on and on we go and yet there is no sense of showing off, no halting of the flow of the story to wink and show us how funny and creative they all are. It is seamlessly woven into the fabric of the film, making you smile the whole way through until at the end, as Russell receives his one missing badge and looks around in vain for his always-travelling father, Carl steps up behind him and says "I'm here for him". Your hearts breaks and melts at the same time, you cry and smile in equal measure. A truly incredible achievement from an already peerless studio.

Monsters (2010)

A photo-journalist is tasked by his boss with escorting the boss's daughter back to safety in the US, a journey which involves traversing the infected zone, an area of the southern USA and northern Mexico inhabited by aliens who have begun to breed and spread following a crash-landing NASA probe. As they travel, they connect, encounter aliens, witness devastation and come face to face with death.

*****

Debut feature director Gareth Edwards handles scripting duties, cinematography, direction, production and SFX and considering all that he has taken on it is remarkable that any film at all emerges, let alone one with much to commend it. It is well-known that the budget was minuscule, that Edwards and his two (count them) cast actors filmed on the hoof with whatever backgrounds and locals they could find to play along and that the two principals were (and still are) a real life couple. The relationship that plays out between them is well played and develops with admirable naturalness, given the extraordinary back-drop. They connect over an evening's eating and drinking, share a night at the home of kind-hearted Mexicans, travel by boat together into the heart of the infected zone and spend a night atop an ancient pyramid. As they come to love one another, it feels organic, unforced and authentic.

The sights they see as they travel are extraordinary - a large boat half way up a tree, a rusting fighter jet lifted out of the water than dragged down by dark tentacles, bloody hand prints on the side of a stricken ship, pulsating electro-luminescent egg-sacks on the trunks of trees and then finally what is perceived to be an alien attack on a convoy of vehicles that shows just how powerful and dangerous these strange tentacled creatures really are. Edwards uses his money shots sparingly and this is surely of necessity, lacking the budget for War of the Worlds style set pieces. Nonetheless the film never feels cheap and he deliberately makes the film a road trip about a growing relationship in the context of an alien invasion, rather than an alien invasion film with a romantic sub-plot. There is not much to criticize about the acting, script or Edwards' ambitions - these are all relatively accomplished. What seems to be missing is a greater sense of pace - of propulsion for their journey. Despite the apparent danger posed to them by travelling through the infected zone, they rarely seem to feel any sense of peril. To an extent that may be Edwards' point, that the creatures are more benign than the US authorities would have them believe, but it does at times feel that the creatures could benefit from being foregrounded a little more. As convincingly rendered as the central relationship is, the film itself is at times sluggish and the emotional heft of some of what are clearly meant to be key scenes remain less affecting than intended. An abrupt conclusion is more frustrating than anything else and left me a little disengaged.

*****

Nowhere near the masterpiece many have hailed it as, but impressive in scale given the budget Edwards worked under. The core relationship is well played but excessively foregrounded amidst pacing issues. A promising debut by multi-tasker Edwards, but no without its flaws.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a successful theatre director. After an acclaimed production of Death of a Salesman, he receives a seemingly limitless bursary, which he puts towards a lavish production in an endless warehouse facility in New York. The production? His life, including life-size sets. As he puts it, "something true, something tough". As time goes by, he casts himself, his now estranged wife and daughter, his production assistant, who then go on to cast further versions of themselves. The sets grow bigger and the lines between life, performance and dreams become blurred.

*****

It is impossible to categorise or pigeon-hole this film, other than to say it is from the mind of Charlie Kaufman, acclaimed writer of Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and directing here for the first time. As always, Kaufman has no interest in cliche, predictability or convention, crafting instead a genuinely unique piece of work that is confusing, rewarding, moving, affecting and human. In different hands, we might have subtitles or subtle colour-coding to mark the passing of the years or the shift between "real life" and "performance". Instead, we have nothing more to go on than our own concentration and the gradual receding of Cotard's hairline. We find ourselves watching a scene, suddenly realising that we must be a decade or more on from the last scene and yet the experience is not frustrating or disconcerting. As you immerse yourself in the film, you simply lose yourself in the experience of overlapping realities and subjectivity.

As mentioned in the synopsis, Cotard casts someone as him in the play of his life, but that person then starts to play the role of a director, casting someone else for him to direct. Cotard's wife leaves him, taking their daughter to Germany and all of a sudden the daughter is grown up. Cotard's new partner, who goes from manning the box office to being his production and casting assistant, buys a house that is on fire, though we are never told why. Cotard begins a romance with the actress cast as his production assistant, although she also has eyes for the actor cast as Cotard. If this all sounds hopelessly confusing (and I have probably got some of it wrong, which won't help) then it is and it isn't. It can at times be difficult to keep track, but that is sort of the point. We are supposed to be unsure as to what is real and what is not, as Cotard himself takes a role in the play, as a cleaning lady.

In the end, this is a film to be seen and experienced rather than explained. Just as it is hard to explain the effect of watching Nolan's back to front Memento, so is it hard to explain the effect of Synecdoche, New York. It is like dreaming, but also like experiencing the harshness of real life. It is melancholy, but so touching and affecting. Hoffman's performance, like every other performance in the film, is beyond over-praise. He is simply sensational. After breath-taking performances in Happiness, Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Hoffman has exceeded even his own peerless standards. How he did not even get nominated for an Oscar is beyond me. He should have scooped up every award going.

I have only seen the film once and will need to see it again, perhaps a few times. It is superb, one of the best of the last few years. As Cotard himself says, Kauffman has crafted "something tough, something true".

Burke & Hare

Burke & Hare are from Northern Ireland and find themselves in Edinburgh in the early-ish 1800's, trying to eke out a living. Edinburgh physicians are beginning to make great progress in the study of anatomy and fresh corpses therefore become very valuable to them. Hare (Andy Serkis)'s wife runs a guest house and when one of the residents dies in the night, he and Burke (Simon Pegg) make a quick £5 from Tom Wilkinson's Dr Knox for the body. Although they manage to come across a few opportunely dead bodies for further revenue, Burke has fallen for Isla Fisher's Ginny and wants to finance her ambition of putting on an all-female version of The Scottish Play, requiring considerably more income than the odd dead body hear and there. Burke & Hare therefore embark on a scheme of mass-murder in order to keep food on the table and increase Burke's chances of wooing Ginny.

*****

Critical opinion has been divided on John Landis' return to the realms of black comedy. Some have lambasted it as witless, some have enjoyed its jaunty tone and the easy rapport of the principal actors. Whilst it undoubtedly cannot compare to either the comedic quality of Landis' Trading Places, Coming To America and Animal House, or the horror/comedy blend of An American Werewolf in London, it is unfair to write it off simply because it is inferior to some genuine masterpieces. It goes without saying that black comedies are exceedingly tough nuts to crack. Plenty have succeeded (Dr Strangelove, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Shaun of the Dead, Bad Santa, Slither and Fargo to name but a few), but that still leaves films like Observe & Report, Very Bad Things and Nurse Betty that are either pitched wrongly, or cannot work out how to see their premise through. Burke & Hare in no way belongs in the exalted company of the former category, however it does at least keep the tone even throughout, maintaining laughs, plenty of gore and bone-crunching and even raising a smile during the final exchange, which follows a public hanging.

These are not easy balances to maintain and that Landis manages it at all is commendable. Where he perhaps fails is in not grabbing our attention, our interest or our sympathies. It becomes difficult to care one way or another about their enterprise, aside from generally frowning on mass murder as a money-making scheme. Pegg is endearing and genuinely funny, but I found it difficult to get past indifference as to whether he won Ginny or not. Hare, who by all accounts was a genuinely unpleasant man (this is after all a true story) is well played by Andy Serkis, who always has a glint of the devil in his eye when he smiles, but there needs to be sense of the tension within them, that as good as it is to be making money, there is something innately wrong in what they are doing.

In the end, Landis clearly isn't interested in making a judgement call on Burke & Hare, which is fair enough, but with historic characters rather than a fictitious one (like, say Tyler Durden) something more than simply "this was them, this is what they did" is needed. Even in a film intended to be a fairly slapstick comedy, we need something a little less superficial.

In the end though, this is good, entertaining stuff. Not a classic by any stretch, but not a turkey either. You will laugh and occasionally wince, but probably forget why you did a few days later.

Red (2010)

Bruce Willis is Frank Moses, a retired CIA black-ops agent who livens up his week by ringing up pensions administration, pretending not to have received his cheque and then casually flirting with the clerk on the other end of the line. One day, some fairly intimidating men in black jump suits come to his house intent on killing him, setting Frank on the run to find out who wants him dead and how to stop them succeeding. He hooks up with Mary-Louise Parker, the afore-mentioned clerk, as well as several of his also-retired CIA buddies, including sniper Helen Mirren, lunatic John Malkovich and cancer-ridden Morgan Freeman. They track a cover-up leading to the highest levels of government and a conspiracy of silence best completed by killing them all.

*****

Red is (either as or despite what you have heard) a lot of fun. It's not going to make history, it doesn't have anything sensationally new to offer, but what it does, it does well. The plot is pretty conventional stuff and although some of the action sequences go for relatively unfurrowed ground (shooting an incoming missile, stepping out of a car as it spins out of control), it is mostly a lot of what we have often seen before. But that is no bad thing in this case. The film has a relaxed ease about it, with the main actors interacting effortlessly, performing well within their considerable acting expertise. There's a terrific punch-up between Willis and Karl Urban's rising CIA star, a very funny face-off between the retirees and Richard Dreyfuss' corrupt defence contractor and Ernest Borgnine almost walks off with the whole film as a mild-mannered CIA record keeper.

It wasn't a film that left me checking my watch, wondering when it was all going to end, it was well-paced, well-acted, well-executed and kept me entertained throughout. Of course anyone could name several similarly-themed films that are much better, but that is beside the point. Red (Retired: Extremely Dangerous) is a great watch for a Friday night, fairly forgettable in the long run and gives us Malkovich shouting, "Old man, my ass" after blowing up a rocket-launcher wielding middle-aged woman. Which is a good thing.