INCEPTION review
Jul 22
You’ve got to love a good old-fashioned rug. Perhaps a woollen one, faded with age, covering the long cold hall and preventing you from freezing your toes off on the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night. It’s not hard to become attached to rugs, especially such ancient, familiar ones; a good rug can be as comforting in the long dark tea-time of the soul as a good towel.
Christopher Nolan is not a man who shares my enthusiasm for rugs. He experiences some kind of perverse glee in yanking the poor things right out from under me, in fact. The first few times he does it, it’s like “Ha ha, good one, Chris, you sure got me.” Then, not merely content with watching me tumble head-over-heels half a dozen times, Nolan gets clever. He takes the woollen threads of the rug, when I’m not looking, and uses them to tie my feet to the rug. So the next time he yanks it out from under me, I find myself unable to disengage myself from the violently bucking antique carpeting device; I find myself entirely at the prankster’s mercy. Unfortunately for me, Christopher Nolan is one hell of a prankster.
Inception relies on your willingness to run headfirst into the practical joke over and over again. It’s not like Memento where you always knew your rug was in danger, but didn’t know quite how, like it was floating on top of a very unstable body of water; this time, Nolan knows his audience is wary (as a very important idiot once said, “Fool me twice … shame on you”). So with Inception, he comes up with new and exciting ways to disorient and confuse the viewer.
There’s no point discussing the plot of Inception; even explaining the title would spoil the first half or so of the film. Suffice it to say that everything you need to know is in the first teaser: reality experiences technical difficulties; mind-bending stunts and high-stakes action scenes ensue; Leonardo DiCaprio wears an “Oh Christ, not this shit again” expression for two-and-a-half hours; and you can expect to be engaged on cerebral levels not normally associated with the cinematic experience.
And that’s the other thing Inception relies on: its uniqueness. It rockets along so fast you can barely keep a grip on the fraying threads of the rug before it’s ripped out from under you for the umpteenth time; it moves so fast that you barely have time to register that it’s kind of like The Matrix, it’s kind of like that video game Psychonauts, and it’s kind of like that episode of Lost, “The Constant.” It moves so fast that it forces you to use that wrinkly grey sponge between your ears, and it banks on you not having experienced anything quite like it before – at least, not at the movies.
For the most part, the film works. It takes a while to get going, and spends an inordinate and ultimately superfluous amount of time building rules and disgorging exposition (albeit in innovative ways), but after about the halfway point, Inception kicks into gear and takes your flying rug into outer space.
Christopher Nolan is nothing if not a cinematic perfectionist. Every shot, every cut, every sound effect and musical cue is distinctly Nolan-ish: the sound design is sharp and punchy, the visuals are moody and gorgeous, the music is as subtle as a brick and twice as threatening, and the performances are exemplary across the board. In fact, the only real problem here is the script.
I’m all for taking the formula and breaking it over one’s knee; I enjoy an unpredictable and head-scratching romp as much as the next person (assuming the next person is, give or take, identical to me). But in order to make that work, there needs to be a constant sense of purpose for the characters; the audience needs to understand every single scene on an emotional level, at the very least – like how in Memento we were reminded at the start of every scene what was at stake, where we were, and what we had left to do.
Inception throws in too many elements for the narrative to work seamlessly (spoilers follow): the dead wife, the clunky exposition, the disjointed rollercoaster of a climax, it was all too much – by about the halfway mark, I was following Cillian Murphy’s character (instead of DiCaprio’s) as my primary narrative conduit. Then I had to switch back to DiCaprio – just in time to not give a damn about his peculiar and strangely un-compelling predicament. (End spoilers)
So Inception is a victim of its own ambition. There is so much going on that it’s sometimes hard to keep track of; too often, exposition is ladled out in frustratingly small packets so that you only just manage to keep abreast of why the characters are being shot at, and by whom. Conversely, the benefit of this over-ambition is exemplified in the much-anticipated topsy-turvy hallway fight scene (incidentally rugless): the film is so busy, so tight, and so frenetic, that this scene positively crackles with cinematic energy; everything that follows struggles to maintain that level of intensity.
One element that worked for me, and kept me interested throughout the film’s long (but brisk) running time, was the way the film’s narrative works as an allegory for filmmaking itself. Building false realities for people, suspending their disbelief, and using familiar geographical and characteristic archetypes to do it, all designed to channel the “victim” / dreamer towards a preordained goal or experience – doesn’t that sound a bit like filmmaking to you? Filmmaking in particular, but art in general, I suppose.
My biggest gripe with the movie is the way Nolan concerns himself more with the rug than with the people on it. The “twist ending,” in particular, reeks of his reluctance to provide satisfying emotional closure to any of his characters’ journeys. I get it — it’s cerebral, it’s subtle, it makes clever use of cinematic techniques to subvert your expectations — I get it; it just doesn’t work for me.
Ultimately, these few small flaws recede into the shining surface of the film, a monolith that exhibits almost magisterial power over its audience: you’d be hard-pressed to find yourself bored with Inception. Some elements may not engage your interest as much as others (such as Marion Cotillard’s character, for me), but there’s enough variety and energy to keep most viewers glued to the screen even as Nolan builds up his next exercise in rug-torture. My only wish is that the film tied itself together, instead of contenting itself with pulling the rug out from under you just one last time.
Inception
KNIGHT AND DAY review
Jul 19
Knight And Day is a lot like a James Bond movie told from the perspective of the Bond girl — a very special Bond girl, with an actual personality and more than a skerrick of charisma. Knight And Day is ultimately June’s (Cameron Diaz) story, and as such it easily sidesteps most of the pitfalls of espionage flicks, focusing as it does on the victim rather than the perpetrator. It’s still got its flaws, and they work extra hard to undermine the film’s solid footing, but there’s a lot more to Knight And Day than initially meets the eye.
The film chugs along with total efficiency – efficiency that borderlines on abruptness. Some scenes have been top-and-tailed to within an inch of their life, rendering them almost unintelligible without some prior experience viewing similar scenes, experience Knight And Day assumes you has.
And that’s the core of Knight And Day, both the beating heart and the rotting apple. One minute, the film will take your expectations and play with them in unpredictable ways, offering moments of pure cinema; the next minute, it’ll forget that you’ve watched movies like this before and shove clichés and plot holes in your face with gleeful abandon, abusing the trust it previously earned. The soaring highs serve to highlight the humdrum lows, and Knight And Day’s secret weapon is thus also its greatest flaw.
I don’t care what anyone else says, Tom Cruise is a great actor. If you could separate the man from his off-screen deeds – couch-jumping, Scientology, etc. – you’d probably agree with me. Here, his creepy charm is put to perfect use as the mysterious and kooky spy Roy Miller. Half the fun of the film’s first act is wondering what the heck Roy’s deal is, and wondering what crazy territory he’ll plunge us into next.
Serving as the audience’s window into Roy’s world is Cameron Diaz, who takes a well-written character and manages not to drop the ball in any spectacular fashion. June is meant to be ordinary when compared to Roy, and Diaz pulls off the girl-next-door thing pretty well; they say it’s easier to play crazy characters than “normal” people, so you have the give the woman credit for that.
Then there’s the photography, almost a character in its own right. Writing about the second trailer, I spoke of “handsome composition and eye-catching use of colour.” The gorgeous shallow-focus CinemaScope shots are present and accounted for, and they absolutely sing on the big screen; stunts, visual effects and explosions pop wondrously, and the action packs a visceral punch. The colours seem a tad muted and a bit too bronze, and some of the green-screen keying is a little hokey, but I guess you can’t have everything, can you?
Lending yet more character to the movie is its music. It moves organically between genres from scene to scene, but maintains a core style throughout; it flits fretfully between jazz, flamenco, and horn-driven film score stuff with ease, and helps to subconsciously sell the film’s international settings to you without rubbing them in your face.
Then there’s the exemplary sound design. Early on, Diaz and Cruise are talking, just chatting to each other on a plane; a routine interstate flight, on a garden variety jumbo jet. But somehow the scene is leaden with dread. I felt uneasy, and I couldn’t immediately pinpoint why.
The close-ups were borderline extreme, boxing the characters rigidly into their respective sides of the frame, but that wasn’t it – that’s a technique commonly employed in fluffy romances, too; there’s nothing creepy about that. So why did I feel so uneasy? I eventually realised – just after the scene finished – that it was the sound design that was doing it. They’d taken the general rattlings of luggage on a jumbo jet and made them sinister, adding an invisible layer of pure dread to the proceedings. Such attention to detail is a sure sign that a director has taken painstaking care of his baby.
The sound is similarly brilliant throughout, with great use of stereo panning and incidental noises like traffic, water and even the bubbling of champagne used to tell the story surprisingly well. There are a couple of lines of ADR that were carelessly thrown in to make sure the less-cognitive audience members could keep up with some of the nuttier plot twists, but that only happens three or four times, and it’s easy to overlook despite its noisy expediency.
It’s clear that director James Mangold is fluent in the language of cinema. He conducts the ballet between screen and speakers, actors and audience with startling precision. The way he uses incidental things like music and sound, and a throwaway shot of Tom Cruise being told by a video game “You Are Dead” – a notion that becomes increasingly important to the plot as time progresses — indicate a potential master at work.
But Knight And Day is not his opus. Too frequently he borrows or subverts phrases from other works, and his own voice gets lost in the disappointing third act, in which screenwriter Patrick O’Neill chooses to bring the least compelling elements of Knight And Day’s narrative – namely, Spanish gun-runners – to the fore, rather than focusing on plot elements closer to June’s heart – perhaps ex-boyfriend Rodney (Marc Blucas) should have played a larger role in the film after his amusing appearance in the first and second acts.
The film is, like so many winter blockbusters, top-heavy: the front half is packed with tight chase scenes, explosive action set-pieces and breathless half-scenes of exposition, but the pace simply can’t last. It keeps a couple of aces up its sleeve for later in the piece – Paul Dano’s chuckle-worthy performance is a highlight; and my jaw hit the floor when Dale Dye made an impromptu appearance – but the story loses steam faster than I’d have liked.
Knight And Day will struggle to find its audience. The fact that it features a realistic and compelling female protagonist in addition to having larger-than-life action scenes means that it should be consumed by men and women equally, but it’ll probably come across as too-much-like-the-other for either audience to really buy into – which is a shame, because Knight And Day is a fair sight better than your average by-the-numbers Hollywood flick.
Knight And Day’s biggest flaws are a couple of plot-holes, a reliance on recycled techniques, the irritating tendency for characters to spill their life-story at the drop of a hat, and a too-cute-to-be-true character arc for the central character. Its strengths – technical proficiency, originality, complex and satisfying layers of narrative, great performances and adrenaline-pumping action scenes – could easily get lost in the mix; but it’s all rather moot, really, because everyone’s going to see Karate Kid instead.
James Mangold is a director worth watching, and I can’t wait to see where he takes us next on his whistle-stop tour of film genres – Roy Miller told me (through June) never to lose my optimism, so my fingers are crossed for science fiction – but in the meantime, you could spend your time on worse things than Knight And Day.
Knight And Day
Reinventing THE KARATE KID with the same beats… and Kung-fu
Jul 14
SPOILER WARNING for those who haven’t seen the original Karate Kid
(and shame on you…)
Like many who cherish their childhood films from the 80s, I was bemused to hear there would be a remake of the 1984 classic The Karate Kid, starring Will Smith’s son Jaden Smith in the lead role, and Jackie Chan playing the Mr. Miyagi character.
Arriving at the cinema I was quickly reminded of it being school break here in Australia (hence the cleverly delayed release of this film). The kids were everywhere. I was reminded one last time that this was definitely targeted at kids when the rows of families around me had to verbally read out the action that was happening on screen for their young… I was in for a loooong session.
Maybe it’s not a complete remake? I thought. Maybe it’s a total re-envisioning and they’ve just used the same title? I hoped. Jaden and his Mother arrived in China. So far, so different. Jaden met the maintenance guy—he was a mysterious Chinese man shooing a fly with his chopsticks… Uh-oh… Then Jaden started showing off for a popular girl (and I bet he gets beaten-up by guys who don’t appreciate that) and he got beaten-up by guys who didn’t appreciate that… and so it went. Almost the entire film, in terms of character beats, unravelled exactly the same as the original. Without a doubt, The Karate Kid 2010 is a beat-for-beat remake of The Karate Kid 1984, right down to the final fight, the injury, the healing, and the triumphant return… It’s all just been revamped for a new generation. The set-pieces were shot close on annoying shaky cam and tightly cut, the punches boomed in Dolby 5.1 and the music was lifted from any 12-16-year-old’s current playlist on iTunes.
So, needing to convince the Western world that a kid from Detroit can learn Kung-fu in a matter of weeks and ultimately win a Chinese Kung-fu tournament, Jackie Chan was clever casting. We all know who Jackie Chan is and we all know he could kick your ass for real. Even the swarms of kids at the screening today knew who he was. Unsuspecting Mothers who were clearly dragged along by their kids were murmuring “Oh wow, I think that’s Jackie Chan… I didn’t know he was in this...” and just like that, they were convinced. So was I. While his character was extremely slow to unravel (I’ll rip into the pace in a moment) when I finally saw Chan do what he does best – martial arts – I was reminded at just how damn entertaining the man is to watch. Mesmerising.
Aside from the fighting and mentoring, Chan also got to work on his dramatic side and actually delivered a heartfelt performance in his lead role. It got really soulful and emotional there for a moment, before the kids were, like, what the hell?! And the film quickly switched gears back to its premise: ASS-KICKING KUNG-FU!! Chan’s performance was also aided by the fact that he drew the occasional chuckle with his dry, straight-faced jokes; the kind of one-liners found in the Rush Hour films. Hey, they co-starred an immature black kid, too…!
Jaden Smith looks like his Dad. There’s no mistaking it. So often I was reminded of Will Smith during this film; it’s actually quite exciting to think about the kind of potential that may lay ahead for Jaden if he decides to take it seriously. Really seriously. There was evidence of effort in his role as fish-out-of-water Dre, and it’s hard to be critical of a kid who’s new to the craft and still very green (plus, he’s 12), but, there was much room for improvement. There were moments that lacked believability and some wise-cracking that wasn’t so wise. Not that any of my fellow audience members noticed. They were just lapping up how cute and cool and funny he was. I was probably the only one there deliberately scoping out things like shot selection, blocking and performances– which is not a smart thing to do while watching a cash-grab kids flick.
To his credit, director Harald Zwart tipped his hat to the original film often, which was a nice touch and sort of harked back to the theme of both films— win or lose, always show respect and you’ll ultimately earn the same. For instance, when Jaden first met Jackie Chan, he was shooing a fly with his chopsticks. During montages of martial arts growth, Jaden assumes the famous Crane Kick stance from the first film (not used in the final fight). And, while watching Jaden practice his moves, Jackie Chan often waxed his car, paying homage to wax-on, wax-off.
Speaking of wax on, wax off—it was gone. And it was a problem. Replacing it was ‘jacket on, jacket off, jacket on floor, pick jacket up, repeat’, of course resulting in Jaden practicing Kung-fu movements without realising he was doing so (I told you, beat-for-beat remake). What was missing was the result of all the hard work he puts in. In the original Karate Kid, Daniel Larusso uses the wax on, wax off technique under instruction of Mr. Miyagi and evidently polishes a series of cars and the entire decking of Mr. Miyagi’s garden. He has something to show for his hard work. In this remake, the only result (next to his improved kung-fu abilities) is … he’s able to… I dunno… put his jacket on faster?
What made the remake harder to endure was the fact that, for whatever reason, they’ve taken those same beats and stretched them out to a challenging 140 minutes. Almost 2-and-a-half hours is a damn long time to wait for something you know is coming. I timed a good 45 minutes where the antagonist bullies were nowhere to be seen while Jaden got close with the girlfriend love interest (who was the reason for the bullying in the first place). The fact that their bad-ass teacher demanded they not bully Jaden so he could train for the tournament shouldn’t have mattered. The original Karate Kid was clever enough to let the beats of these plots overlap and let the film unfold naturally. The remake was segmented into sections like meeting the girl, getting beat up, meet Jackie Chan, learn to fight, romance the girl, etc. It was jarring and it held the film up considerably.
That being said, it was hard not to shed a smirk as the kids cheered for Jaden whooping ass in the final tournament. I knew what was coming from before the first act was through, but it was nice to hear them really getting into it the way my generation would have for the original film. For today’s audience the film definitely worked. And let’s be honest—how many kids have seen (or will ever bother to see) the original Karate Kid?
No matter how much today’s audience might dig the new Karate Kid, it didn’t have the same charm as the original—and I really don’t think that’s just nostalgia talking. Seeing the new, revamped approach—with the extra slow motion, the whipping cameras and the lacklustre score (almost nonexistent—and not in that good way), made me sad that films have been forced to go the way they have, catering to the ‘now’ generation. The majority of the film had that corporate, plastic feel to it. There were some truly original cinematic moments in the original Karate Kid, and those kinds of moments could never be matched in a copycat remake like this.
The Karate Kid (2010)
PREDATORS review: who forgot to invite Arnold to the party?
Jul 08
Predators is a movie about a diverse bunch of assholes (one of them is even a woman – how inclusive!) getting their butts kicked by giant dreadlocked lizard men from space. It comes with Oscar-worthy pedigree in tow – in the form of Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne – and was produced under the auspices of cult hero / filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. So is it any good?
The short answer is “yes.” The long answer is “mostly, yes, but …” You see, for everything Predators does right in the first act, it does something wrong in the third act.
The opening is strong: relative newcomer Nimrod Antal has crafted some genuinely interesting character beats with which to introduce his diverse cast of bullies. Each actor brings something unique to their role, and the simple set-up allows for lots of potential wiggle-room later in the film.
The performances are all — miraculously for this type of film – passable at least, and great at best. Adrien Brody stands out, of course, but Laurence Fishburne’s Apocalypse Now-informed performance as a bloke who’s been on the wrong planet for too long is refreshingly fun to watch.
Topher Grace fares pretty well as the conspicuously clean doctor character, Danny Trejo can growl and dual-wield machine guns with the best of them, and Alice Braga understands how to tilt her head to get her hair to fall just so – the cast is well up to the challenge of breathing life into the characters, and this goes a long way towards making Predators fun.
Antal wisely opted to follow in the footsteps of the original, Arnie-fueled Predator, and holds back on the big monster reveal until just the right moment. He also knows exactly when to inject character moments and sci-fi ideas to best effect – some of the third act material in particular gave me pause for thought and cause for reflection, something I wasn’t expecting from such an action-oriented outing.
The joy of watching a movie like this comes in constantly wondering “what next?” Antal plays with this well (for the most part), delivering tense moments and climactic throwdowns with skill and style; there’s one match-up in particular, towards the end, that left my jaw on the floor, but I won’t spoil it for you here.
The film isn’t all good news, though. As is standard for digital photography these days, the image is stylishly desaturated, and therefore hard on the eyes. One of the best things about Predator (singular) was that the first two acts took place in broad daylight. The alien seemed so much more menacing because it didn’t hide in the shadows – it hid in plain sight. Predators (plural) takes place during some never-ending twilight shade, and this undercuts some of the tension (and is, of course, visually bland to boot).
The film’s focus on characters, while initially a good thing, becomes a bad thing when Predators falls off the rails somewhere in the second act. Characters whose motivations were solid and relatable suddenly do strange things for no good reason other than to provide a more desirable ending; I won’t say more for fear of spoilers, but I wish the characters had stayed true to themselves through to the end, rather than bending over backwards for the sake of expediency.
The other main problem with the film is the ending. Several different plot threads and ideas become entangled for the finale, but none of them is dealt with correctly. Aside from the characters’ motivations suddenly changing at the drop of a hat, some of the plot devices arbitrarily introduced early in the piece become very important very quickly – but don’t make a lick of sense. Again, I won’t spoil it, but you’ll know what I mean when you see it and go “huh?”
The best things about Predators for me were the solid first act, the focus on character, and the sci-fi ideas hinted at throughout the film. Some of the alien design work is great; a throwaway shot of a hominid skull really added to the Predators’ menace (they’ve been doing this hunting thing for millennia); and the film’s reliance on 80s-style stunts and physical effects added significantly to the film’s credibility.
On the flipside, the third act is a wreck, the movie runs about 20 minutes too long, and some of the characters don’t quite get what they deserve. A lot of the early tension is squandered in the dead-end finale, and (fun though it was) the middle-act Laurence Fishburne diversion could probably be cut completely and the film wouldn’t suffer for it.
Nevertheless, for a big dumb action flick, Predators isn’t half bad. Propelled by Nimrod Antal’s surprisingly strong direction and Adrien Brody’s thoroughly credible performance, with just the right amounts of humanity and conjecture, it’s a solid, if not amazing, time at the movies — even without Arnie or a choppah to which he must get.
NOWHERE BOY review: all you need is love
Jul 03
It’s hard to know what to expect from a film about one of the world’s greatest musical geniuses that will never actually show an inkling of his fame and fortune. It takes some serious balls to make a film about John Lennon and not mention The Beatles. Indeed, the director of Nowhere Boy has no balls: she’s a woman. Sam Taylor-Wood has bravely delivered a wonderfully rounded film about a rock icon in her directorial debut.
I know plenty about John Lennon as the guy who fronted The Beatles. There’s plenty about his character to keep people fascinated for generations to come: his smart-arse responses to interview questions, the music, the poetry, his glasses… but I didn’t know much about the life John Lennon had growing up. This helped my experience of Nowhere Boy a great deal. What’s special about the film is, even if you’re not slightly interested in the music or the man himself, the story will still work. You’d still be taken on an intriguing journey- as I was- that continued to fascinate at every beat.
I sat and munched my popcorn, sipped my coffee and continually sank deeper and deeper into late 195o’s Liverpool, where rock n’ roll was still taboo and record players were designed for classical records. This is effectively a story about a young boy dealing with his family issues just moments before becoming a man. The boy just so happens to be John Lennon, and the story goes a long way to explaining how he found his talent. It’s the make-up of a genius.
The first thing Nowhere Boy got right was the staggering performance of Aaron Johnson as a fifteen/sixteen-year-old John Lennon. It’s one thing to look like Lennon at that age (which he does) it’s another to completely nail the accent and bring forward the attitude John Lennon had at that time. He was rough and tough, obnoxious and defiant, and desperately seeking acceptance in a family; either his own real, immediate family, or one he had to create himself (The Quarrymen—the band before The Beatles). Johnson becomes John Lennon in an unforgettable transformation that deserves every bit of praise coming his way. I can’t believe it’s the same kid from Kick-Ass. I’m glad I saw Kick-Ass before I saw Nowhere Boy, because I think that comparison helped underline how spectacularly perfect his performance is.
An intriguing part of the story was the meeting of Lennon and McCartney and watching their friendship grow from scratch. This, and the recruitment of George Harrison to The Quarrymen, are the closest thing to The Beatles the film provides. Thomas Sangster delivered his best performance to date and heightened his stock as a matured actor in the process (you might know him best as Liam Neeson’s son in Love Actually). His portrayal of McCartney may not be spot-on, but it didn’t need to be. His performance delivered the emotional support to carry Lennon through a tumultuous third act—everything a support actor needed to be, both as an actor in this film, and a friend to Lennon in real life.
Delivering equally fine performances were Kristin Scott Thomas as Lennon’s Aunt and guardian, Mimi, and Anne-Marie Duff as Lennon’s mother. They were each heartfelt and sorrowful while maintaining an ire of dishonesty that encapsulated Lennon’s world. His family was messed up from a very early age, and the twist his Mother and Aunt deliver to him is filmic gold. If you think you’ve guessed it, you haven’t. And I urge you not to find out if you plan on seeing Nowhere Boy.
Man, it’s no wonder his music wound up so fucking good.
Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey did a fantastic job of keeping the film honest for its setting. I felt like I had been plucked from my seat and secretly plopped down in 1956-8 to watch the story take place—there’s no heightened digital crispness and no fancy set-piece sequences with unnecessary camera angles. All colours are appropriately loud when necessary and otherwise suitably neutral.
I was also impressed with the decision to exclude any timeless Beatles songs from the soundtrack, despite how tempting it must have been to include at least one or two. The only one heard is the demo recorded by Lennon, McCartney and George Harrison with The Quarrymen not long before The Beatles as we know them came into fruition. It was a fitting way to close out the film.
What was important (and impressive) about Nowhere Boy was the fact this could have been told about anyone. The message that propels the plot is one of longing, love and family. All this young man wanted was to be loved and needed; accepted into a family without fuss or ridicule. He eventually found it in his mates, Paul MacCartney, and the bands he would form. It’s a sad and tragic childhood that was essential to the making of a genius. With a story like that backing a film, I’d assume it’d be difficult to go wrong. Thankfully Nowhere Boy captured the essence of Julia Baird’s memoirs (John Lennon’s sister) and didn’t turn them into a second-rate TV movie.
A unique film to experience about a unique artist and man, Nowhere Boy was worth my time.
NOWHERE BOY
TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE review: by the numbers
Jul 01
The Twilight Saga is about a young white girl whose affections are torn between an extremely old white man and a relatively youthful tanned fellow. The old dude glistens in the sun and wears make-up that makes him look like Data from Star Trek, while the young guy spends most of his time shirtless (even in the snow!), glowering, flexing his pecs, or being a wolf (for reasons unknown).
Data hates the Wolf-Boy, but, being the comfortably sub-standard person she is, the young white girl leads both of them on in an eternal struggle to keep tween girls reading the books no matter how long or stupid they get. Julia Gillard makes an appearance in the film as well [non-Australians: our new PM has red hair], as the series’ primary antagonist, whose sole purpose in existence is to something something (I didn’t watch the first film) kill the young white girl.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is a vast improvement over the last installment in the series, but that isn’t saying much; as I scientifically proved in my numerals-based review of New Moon, the second Twi-flick is one of those rare abominations of cinema that isn’t even so-bad-it’s-funny. To keep some semblence of continuity, I’ve employed the same technique of criticism here.
Some of these categories are new, and some of them are holdovers from last time, but the idea is the same: every time the movie broke my suspension of disbelief, I ticked a box. At the end of the movie I tallied the ticks in an effort to quantify the film’s worth (or lack thereof). As I said, the results are surprisingly positive, but don’t be fooled — it’s easily the best Twilight movie, but it’s a long way from being “hands the whole time.”
6 – Number of times the soundtrack doesn’t match the emotion of the scene
New director David Slade wisely eschewed the pop-heavy soundtrack style of New Moon and opted for a more symphonic, if hopelessly derivative, film score. This helps the film enormously. What few pop songs he does include, though, sound like mid-album filler from a record that wouldn’t even have been popular in the 80s. Oh, and there’s a Muse song, too; I may have counted that twice.
9 – Number of times Edward says or does something stupid
Last time, Edward crushed a phone with his bare hands, spouted second-hand one-liners and generally acted like a git, scoring himself 16 marks; this time around, Edward significantly improved himself and receives a mere 9 — some of the things he says even make sense this time. But not that hideously creepy proposal scene — I just wanted that to end.
10 – Number of times I laughed out loud during serious scenes
Eclipse, as with the previous Twilight flicks, exhibits the level of subtlety and logic a videogame script would be proud to call its own, and as such, is completely nonsensical and difficult to watch. Some of the scenes, though, are too much to bear. I tried to respect the people in the cinema around me, but sometimes the sheer inanity of it all got the better of me.
11 – Number of times Jacob says or does something stupid
Again, Jacob significantly improved himself from New Moon and scored a paltry half of what he earned last time, but there are still some head-scratchingly awful moments featuring the Wolf-Boy. It doesn’t help that Taylor Lautner’s delivery is about on par with what you’d expect from a 21st century George Lucas film.
12 – Number of times Bella says or does something stupid
Bella earns the big gold star this time around. She doesn’t try to kill herself once, she doesn’t launch into conversations with questions like “HAVE YOU TRIED NOT BEING A FREAK, YOU MONSTER?”, and she stays well away from her Apple Macintosh; dropping all the way down to 12 from 63 — 63 — is a feat worth celebrating. There’s still the small matter of her silly and unnecessary voiceover, and the fact that she tries to force Edward to have sex with her, and the fact that she is completely devoid of life and character, to prove that she, too, still has room for improvement.
15 – Number of times the laws of physics are wantonly ignored
This is a new category this time, and one that pops up early, and frequently thereafter. You know the kind of cartoon physics where someone back-hands another person across the room, or when people are shown to be running at regular speed but the landscape zooms around them like they’re some kind of pouty Superman, or when someone sustains horrific injuries to one side of their body but doesn’t even exhibit a bruise on-screen — Eclipse is full of that crap. I sort of get that Vampires are supposed to be, like, super strong, or something, but even if you could throw a guy across the room, at least make it look like you’re putting some effort into it — otherwise it looks like you just did it with kung-fu wires.
18 – Number of times the dialogue made me cringe
“I could care less” is one of those classic Americanisms that never fails to incite infernal rage in grammar-pedants such as myself. (The correct phrase, of course, is “I could not care less,” indicating that your apathy is total and all-consuming.) I began to wonder, especially in the early scenes of Eclipse, whether the filmmakers didn’t just decide to shoot the first draft and call it a day; a lot of the dialogue could easily have been fixed up with a second pass. Then again, maybe the script is just being faithful to the books. In that case, the books must be awful.
21 – Number of scenes that don’t make sense, lose their way, or are otherwise intolerable
This is the big one, the thing that drags Eclipse down from reasonable okay-ness to mediocre dross. The whole first half of the film is rambling and wishy-washy, and, just like last time, individual scenes often find themselves derailed for the sake of exposition. Some examples of bad scenes:
- The Cullen clan keep tabs on a local upstart Vampire group by watching the evening news. Because the evening news is infallible and extremely thorough, isn’t it?
- We are treated to a few extraneous but not unwelcome flashback scenes during the course of the movie, and one of them ends in implied rape. The atrocious crime is treated so flippantly the character in question might as well have been mugged and robbed — there’s no need to bring such a serious issue into such an incompetent entertainment.
- The movie cuts frequently to a secondary antagonist whose purpose and identity remain frustratingly unclear. Also, I still don’t understand why Julia Gillard wants that silly young white girl dead.
- The film spends an inordinate amount of time rehashing what happened in New Moon. The first few scenes are made up of “Remember we can’t do this because of this,” and “So how do you feel about what happened in the last movie?” character moments, and they drag on well into the second act.
- As in New Moon, there are a few editing non-sequitors on display here, as well. The most notable of these takes place early in the film, where some creepy vampire fellow breaks into Bella’s house and sniffs her sleeping dad. Bella walks into the middle of the scene and — surprise! — dad’s suddenly awake. I know the scene was designed to put me on edge, but it didn’t work. Not even a little bit.
- The worst of these scenes was near the end, and as such qualifies as a spoiler (not that I care, or anything): a little girl vampire is thrown over to the Volturi (the buzzkill jerks from New Moon) and faces an unknown fate. Will they rip her head off, turn her into some kind of Vamp-slave, or what? The scene cuts dramatically to black before the fate is revealed, and that cheapness is both annoying and disorienting.
There are plenty of other examples of scenes just like this — but I’ll let you to discover them for yourself.
86 – Total number of offences
For a film that runs 120 minutes, 86 illusion-shattering moments of ineptitude are enough to break the experience for me. This is far less than last time, but it’s still one big goof every 80 seconds, and that’s a little too frequent for Eclipse to carry itself over that fuzzy line between “absolute trash” and “good enough.” To be fair, though, it does have its moments, which is why I have devised a totally new category especially for this review:
5 – Number of scenes that are actually good
I was as surprised as anyone that Eclipse had any good scenes at all, let alone 5. That’s one every 24 minutes! Faint praise at best, but praise nonetheless. The main thing that elevates Eclipse over the dreary, never-ending New Moon is the biffo. The action scenes at the end almost make sitting through 100 minutes of mopey angst bearable – almost. Watching people’s heads and arms get ripped off is surprisingly cathartic after spending so long treading water, and for that, I congratulate Eclipse.
Other good scenes include a fuzzy but accurate Valedictorian speech given by that annoying girl from Up In The Air, an almost genuinely touching moment between Bella and her mother, and a sincere and — dare I say it — amusing interchange between Edward and Jacob in a tent on some mountain somewhere (or something); best of all, Eclipse (unlike New Moon) actually finishes, coming to a logical and satisfying conclusion.Much as I didn’t mind watching these scenes, though, they still couldn’t erase the dullness of all the others crowded around them.
It remains for me to quickly touch on the technical side of the film. As with New Moon, Eclipse features some half-decent photography absolutely ruined by a shallow grade; the film benefits greatly from its leaner running-time; Slade’s command of narrative logic is less tenuous than Chris Weitz’; and, as always, the performances are perfunctory but utterly un-convincing.
Just like the character named Bella, Eclipse knows it isn’t good enough, knows it isn’t everything it could be. Unfortunately, just like Bella, Eclipse doesn’t care that it isn’t good enough, and wallows comfortably in its own inadequacy.
So, in the end, Eclipse is just more of the same — another Twilight movie. But to be fair, it is the best so far (that is to say, it’s the least bad). If they’re going to keep making these movies — and believe me, they will — then it pleases me to know they’re actually trying to make them better. Maybe by the end of the series they will have learned to put together a genuinely good movie — maybe.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
OPINIONS COUNT