Last of the "winter" blockbusters
Movies seen winter 2011.
Originally written: August 2011
Super 8
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2
Captain America: The First Avenger
Invictus
Even when they are not sequels, or derived from the adventures of yet another comic hero, the big budget (northern summer) films from the studios seem to be either comedies featuring men-children (or in the case of Bridesmaids, their female analogs) or little risk Sfx movies, lately in 3D. They are all apparently aimed at the same young male demographic, with the exception of the Twilight films, which skew young female. I know that studios try to save their "quality" films for the (northern) autumn, closer to Oscar nomination time but it means that we have this hiatus in mid-year where kids' flicks dominate the cineplexes and even the arthouse cinemas are devoid of interesting fare. As a result, we dragged ourselves out rarely.
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The alien's out there
A couple or three decades ago, I wrote an essay on Steven Spielberg's fantasy films. My thesis was that Spielberg could direct about three-quarters of a great film before losing it at the end. At that time, I argued, his non-fantasy, The Color Purple, had been his only truly great film. JJ Abrams, the auteur who recently successfully rebooted Star Trek, has made a film that is clearly intended as an homage to the 1970s and 1980s Spielberg, particularly ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and The Goonies (which Spielberg wrote and produced). The resultant film, Super 8, takes homage to a new level: not only is it purely Spielbergian in its 1970s setting, in its use of a cast of teens, in its interesting and involving build up, in its acceptance of the presence of ET amongst us, and in the presence of malevolent military authority, it is even more Spielbergian in the way it goes off the rails towards the end and loses the string of its own logic in a messy ending. Just like ET, just like Raiders of the Lost Ark, just like CE3K. In Abram's story, a group of middle school kids are making a zombie movie for a local film festival during their summer vacation. They steal out late one night to film scenes at the local railway station. The central character is Joe, the make-up and model whiz, but the driving force is his best friend and director Charles. They have enticed a girl from the wrong end of town, Alice, one they both fancy, to act in their epic. While filming, they witness one of the great cinematic train crashes. Admittedly no elephants were hurt this time, but it knocks The Greatest Show on Earth's into a cocked hat. They are shocked to find that their science teacher has caused the crash and Joe suspects that something has escaped from the crash. Soon the army's secret squirrels are on the job, covering up the events connected with the crash and whatever they are hunting. Joe's widower father is a sheriff's deputy and, with the disappearance of the sheriff, he is left with the responsibility of looking after a frightened town. The antipathy between the fathers of Joe and Alice mean that their developing friendship needs to be clandestine. Soon the kids are investigating the mysteries, the deputy is trying to get information from the secret squirrels and the army is trying to keep everyone away from the creature that we know is out there. This part of the movie works well. The kids, especially Elle Fanning as Alice and Joel Courtney (Joe) keep the plot boiling along and Abrams keeps the alien under wraps. But he can't help himself towards the end. The disappearance of Alice precipitates a change in the movie. The nicely developing plot is disrupted by action scenes that destroy the mood, the creature is revealed and a few deus ex machinas are thrown in. The ending goes even further over the top. It's a shame that the ending doesn't quite live up to the rest of the film because Super 8 was almost a well-made Spielberg fantasy adventure.
Harrying Voldemort to death
If Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was very slow and had little in the way of plot development or action, then the second half of what should have been one movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 provides an interesting balance. And fascinatingly, for the first time in the eight movies, writer Steve Kloves escapes stifling cloak of Rowling's books, and cleaves a different and perhaps more interesting path towards the climax. After all the talk about Hallows and Horcruxes in Part 1, there is mostly action in Part 2: the raid on Gringotts, the searching of Hogwarts and the final battle all follow quickly upon one and other, compressed into a single day's action. This doesn't give much room for the actors and, with the exception of Ralph Fiennes, Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon, and a couple of nice one-liners for some of the others, that's how it works out. Even Harry, Hermione and Ron have reasonably short rations. Emma Watson misses a lot of the Gringotts' heist, with Helena Bonham Carter doing a nice job of an Hermione-infused Bellatrix. It's a nice cameo. Of the new comers, they must have run out of English luvvies because they go to Ireland and Scotland for Ciaran Hinds and Kelly Macdonald for the latest faces in small roles. Although only minor changes are made from the book during the Gringotts' heist, almost all of the Hogwarts scenes that follow are altered, including the search for the last Horcrux, the flight of Severus Snape and the fight for the school. The amount of destruction is greater - and I cannot imagine the book's Tom Riddle, one of the lost boys like Harry and Dumbledore, who found a home at the school, wanting to see his "home" so ruined - and the destruction of the Elder Wand was unnecessary and contradictory as well. Leaving those matters aside, the way the film has handled the central scenes, especially the Kings Cross Railway dream sequence, the death and back-story of Snape and the climactic battle between the antagonists, is superior to the same scenes in the book. As with the book, I would query the need for the anti-climactic nineteen years later scenes, but that's me, and the fans would have been disappointed had they not been there. The final film is a fitting farewell to the saga. Amazingly, the series has held up. Some films were better than others but, unlike, say, the casting of Mark Hamill and Hayden Christensen, in Star Wars 4-6 and Star Wars 1-3, respectively, the producers gamble on three young unknowns for the first film paid off. All of them, particularly Emma Watson, are genuinely good actors and have carried the burden through to the action sequences. Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom) gets a better chance to shine here and does so. The only real failure amongst the kids is Evanna Lynch, whose version of Luna still grates. She would be the worst actor in the series if it hadn't been for the magnificent work done by Roger Lloyd Pack (possible the world's worst actor in a variety of roles) in The Goblet of Fire. Given the source material it was always likely that the second part of the final episode would be action-packed, and a massive contrast to the first. The special effects are just so much better than they were when The Philosopher's Stone was made, and the dollars spent are seen on screen. We saw it in 2D. I suspect that whatever additional thrills might be available in 3D, the washing out of color and the sort of blurring in some of the action scenes that is a hallmark of the technology at the moment mean that 2D might have been the better choice (see the following review for more on 2D v 3D). This might be the last Harry Potter movie, but the series will be with us for many years to come, as new generations of younglings discover the magic of Hogwarts on the page, and on the screen.
Small man makes good
Marvel Comics films have been very hit and miss, with maybe a few more misses than hits. Daredevil, Electra, The Incredible Hulk and Fantastic Four are among the former and the Iron Man and X Men franchises amongst latter. The two most recent characters selected for filming are Thor (which I have not seen, nor have much interest in) and Captain America: The First Avenger, which we saw the other day in the absence of anything else to see. This film is somewhere in the middle, neither hit nor miss. From the contemporary discovery of an alien-looking airship, we are soon back in WW2 and getting to know Steve Rogers, the archetypal 98-pound weakling, and his antagonist Johann Schmidt, The Red Skull. The film takes a long time to get to the creation of Captain America, using the time to establish the sympathetic character of Rogers, who will be transformed into the hero, as well as his intelligence. It is a shame then that as the film develops, it becomes less intelligent (as apparently does the hero) and shallower, as the action scenes become the only rationale for the story. Similarly, The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving getting to play another scenery-eating villain) becomes more cliched and less interesting. We meet to members of Captain America's military team, who are never properly introduced and remain ciphers. One of the film's major problems is that the most interesting character is Stanley Tucci's scientist/inventor and he is out of the scene within the first hour. Chris Evans does well as Rogers in the first part of the movie, and the makers have done well with the use of Sfx to make him appear puny (except in one scene in a car, where they get the proportions all wrong). Sadly he's not asked for much in the second half and a stunt double could have done (and maybe did) most of the "acting" in the action scenes. Tommy Lee Jones adds some gravitas as the Colonel and Dominic Cooper, playing Howard Stark, the Iron Man's dad, does OK as the boffin who helps with the gadgets. Hayley Atwell has the romantic lead but the part is poorly defined and she mutates from an efficient and effective agent to the woman waiting on the side while her man goes to war. The film ends with a long anti-climax that brings the hero back to contemporary America and sets up the next Marvel adventure, The Avengers, where he will unite with Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk and others in an attempt at mega-box-office success. We saw a 3D version of the film and it has a number of the problems you might suspect would emerge: particularly blurring at the edges during the action scenes and some dulling of colors. I remain agnostic about the effectiveness of the 3D technology, but my interests in films remains the narrative and the characters. After a good start Captain America fades. It fails to make its mind up whether it is a character study or an action film. Good but no cigar.
Seen on DVD
While I am not convinced that Clint Eastwood is the best director since sliced bread, he's damned good and his best films create a tension that is palpable. Invictus is not amongst his best films, although it is still a pretty good one. The film never quite makes up its mind whether it's the story of Nelson Mandela's first year or so as President, or whether it is a National Velvet film, about how Francois Pienaar, inspired by Mandela, leads his underdog Springboks to beat the All Blacks in the 1995 Rugby World Cup and thus unite a divided nation. The first half of the film centres on Morgan Freeman's uncanny impersonation of Mandela and his assumption of power. His decision to take up the cause of the national Rugby team (after all Rugby is the Afrikaaners' game and football the Blacks' game; and any segregated black spectators at Springbok games were wont to support the opposing team) is an effort to try and find common ground between the former enemies. Enter Matt Damon as Pienaar. This is a nuanced performance of a sportsman coming to grips with his admiration for a man whom he is supposed to distrust. The scene where the team visits Robben Island, Mandela's prison for many decades, is a central one. The interaction between the politician and the rugby player and Pienaar's efforts to inspire his players are very good and drive the film forward until the last quarter, when the narrative grinds to a halt and we are immersed in a rugby final, with too many cliched shots of elements of the crowd and of those outside listening to and following the game. There are two stories to tell here and Eastwood doesn't quite nail either. He does however elicit magnificent performances from his leads and films the best rugby scenes since This Sporting Life.
[Note: Information about the movies mentioned, including cast and crew lists and all sorts of trivia, is available at the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).]