THE MIDNIGHT SKY

THE MIDNIGHT SKY is a deeply derivative, mediocre sci-fi movie that will be utterly predictable and unsatisfying to anyone even half decent with the canon. It stars and is directed by George Clooney. He plays a scientist on a future earth ravished by some kind of non-specific disaster. Naturally he's also dying because Pathos. As is the way with these sorts of film, scientific geniuses are self-involved dicks, so earlier in his life he has turned his back on the love of his life and his daughter. So when in old age this dying scientist starts seeing a young girl called Iris in his arctic base, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that he's hallucinating his little abandoned girl. Together they travel to a different arctic base to send a signal to some astronauts not to come home, but to go back to a moon that is capable of sustaining life. Why does George need to travel to another base? So that he can turn in one of those Man vs Nature performances (think Leonardo di Caprio in THE REVENANT or Tom Hanks in CAST AWAY) that Oscar voters love. Except Clooney's performance is mediocre at best and the stakes really don't seem as grave as in THE REVENANT. There is no doubt he'll survive if only to connect with the astronauts. Also it really pissed me off that Clooney as director doesn't obey the rules of hallucinated little girls. If Clooney's character can't see her, we shouldn't be able to see her. Come on Clooney you should know this - you did star in that piss awful remake of SOLARIS!

By far the more interesting part of the film takes place on the spaceship that has discovered the new life-sustaining moon, per Clooney's predictions. It's staffed by David Oyelowo and Felicity Jones as a pregnant husband and wife research team as well as sidekicks like Kyle Chandler. His character exists to show the dilemma the scientists face upon hearing Clooney's news. Do you return home to try and find and admittedly die with your family? Or do you go to the new moon and try to "do better this time"? But even in this strand it all feels like stuff we've seen before, and the way in which space and moonwalks are photographed just cannot compete with superior films like GRAVITY and FIRST MAN.

The bottom line is that you would be better off watching any of the other movies that I have referenced in this review. 

THE MIDNIGHT SKY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 118 minutes.

FIRST MAN

Damien Chazelle's FIRST MAN is a superb return to form after the mis-step that was LA LA LAND.  He tells the story of Neil Armstrong's moon-walk with a series of strong directorial choices that create a very intimate, almost melancholy picture that nonetheless manages to be literally awesome as we step onto the lunar surface. It's a film that's assured, mature, and emotionally resonant while never being mawkish. One can just imagine what this project might have been like in someone like Spielberg's hands.

As the film opens, Neil and Janet Armstrong (Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy) are coming to terms with the imminent death of their little girl Karen from cancer.  Neil - a talented engineer and test pilot - applies for NASA's Gemini space programme almost as a distraction.  The couple and their 5 year old son will have to move town, and it will be, in Janet's words "a new adventure". As the years and test flights progress, we come to know and feel a camaraderie with Neil and his colleagues.  They all seem to live close by to each other, and when fatalities occur, they share that pain.  This film invites us to share not only Neil's journey but also that of his wife - apparently she really did drive to Mission Control to demand their turn her squawk box back on during a particularly perilous flight!  The impression we get is that Neil was always a pretty buttoned up guy - that he channelled his grief into his work - and found talking to his kids about the chances of him not coming back pretty hard. 

The beautiful thing is that these home-life scenes of quiet melancholy lay the foundations of the emotional payoff on the moon.  Those scenes are absolutely breathtaking - and even though we know the outcome - they still manage to be tense.  The first moment when we switch from the Super-16 grainy footage from Earth to the IMAX footage on the moon is a truly WOW! spectacle. But even then, there's something deeply personal and even introspective about it. The camera is on Neil's helmet - and so his reflected shadow on the moon - and we see him just take a moment to take it all in.  There's then a beautiful personal moment (apparently fictionalised but at this point who cares) that perfectly caps all that has come before.  And then we're home.

The result is a very moving film that pays tribute to the men who sacrificed their lives and didn't make it - and a film that does what I LOVE - which is to briefly but effectively open up its focus to events outside the bubble - to show the controversy of spending so much money on the space programme during a contentious war. It's also a film that uses music beautiful - whether weaving in the Armstrong's beloved but whacky theramin-heavy space track - or subtly referencing Kubrick with a waltz as a space-ship docks. 

FIRST MAN is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 141 minutes. It is on release in the USA and UK.

MANCHESTER BY THE SEA - BFI LFF 2016 - Day 5

Kenneth Lonergan (MARGARET) has created a masterpiece in his tragicomedy MANCHESTER BY THE SEA, showing in what is turning out be an exceptionally good year at the BFI London Film Festival for bittersweet drama. The film stars Casey Affleck as Lee Chandler - a small-town boy who fled to Boston after a personal tragedy, but is brought back when his beloved elder brother Joe (Kyle Chandler - FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS) dies.  Joe leaves a detailed will making Lee the guardian of his teenage son Patrick (Lucas Hedges - THE SLAP) and the pair seem ideally suited.  The uncle and nephew have a genuine emotional bond and shared memories, delineated in flashback.  They share the same foul-mouthed sense of humour and seem to understand when the other needs space.  But they are fundamentally different.  Patrick is young and popular - he's on sports teams, he's in a band, he has a bunch of great friends and two girlfriends.  He great good humour make the few moments when we see his grief break through all the more powerful. But Patrick's ebullience also serves as a counter-point to Lee's almost ghost-like presence and a reminder of what he might have been like before his own personal tragedy.  The point of the movie - its emotional struggle - is to show whether Lee can somehow move beyond his past and become the father-figure that Patrick needs him to be.

CAROL - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day Nine

In 1952, Patricia Highsmith, author of THE TALENTED MR RIPLEY, wrote a novel called The Price of Salt, about a young girl and an elder married woman who fall in love and try to make a life together.  It was so controversial, not just in showing homosexual love but also not punishing the characters for it, that it could not be published under her name.  Nonetheless, it was a success, maybe because it was the only place people could read about such things.  But also, I think, because regardless of gender, it's a wonderfully authentic depiction of a coup de foudre, of falling in love and of trying to conform - which are all deeply relatable matters. Moreover, in Carol, Highsmith created a wonderfully charismatic character. Self-assured but sometimes nervous - tender but also uncompromising - a good mother but also self-aware enough to realise that she cannot be other than herself.  Few of us would envy Carol's position as a woman  divorcing her husband at a time when the odds were stacked against her, but many of us have come to admire her.  By contrast, the young girl Therese Belivet is perhaps closer to how we feel ourselves - unsure, grasping at self-knowledge, acting on a whim, and unwilling to let go the tide. 

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is crazy gonzo fun for about an hour.  And then it's still sporadically funny but the complete lack of character or indeed plot development starts to nag at you.  And while it's nagging you think, haven't I seen all this before, thematically at least, in GOODFELLAS and CASINO?  And then, in the final half hour of this over-long three hour film, you get the first indication of the dark side of the excesses of greed and addiction - the first actually profound exploration.  And it's just too late.

Which is not to say that Martin Scorsese hasn't achieved a great deal with this film. No-one depicts hedonism with his sense of energy, flair and superb synchronisation of music cues. And my god, Leonardo diCaprio and Seth Rogen really commit to their performances.  To see the two rookie stockbrokers sneak out the back of a restaurant, smoke crack and then go skipping and jumping through the car-lot like naughty children is a joy.  To see them, now super successful, crippled by quaaludes, bodies spasoming, fighting over a kitchen counter is physical comedy of the highest form.   To be sure the intervening two hours contain many a funny scene.  The serious discussion about dwarf tossing, referring always to the dwarf as 'it' is funny as hell.   But there's an uneasiness in the gonzo nature of this film, and Scorsese's resistance to any dark backing.  Surely it must be possible to make a movie about superficial greedy people that is not itself superficial and egregious?

Because, make no mistake, the tone of this film for the majority of the run-time is one of admiration for these charming gonzo folk.  It's swallowed the hype for the most part.  It makes zero attempt to show the impact of these swindlers on the ordinary folk whose money they have invested in worthless stock, while taking massive commission. The 'hero' has an earnest first wife who is dispatched in a divorce quickly and is never seen again.  What's even worse is that Scorsese clearly isn't actually interested in the con.

Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) was a real life broker who operated a 'boiler plate' scheme - that means you set up a call centre and randomly cold call dumb schmucks and get them to invest their money with you. It works because they are ignorant and greedy. The so-called investments are actually in worthless 'penny stocks' - companies so small that they aren't on the main stock market and so fly under the radar of the big investment banks.  And the real con, is that the brokers take 50% commission. So they take your $10,000, invest $5,000 in stuff  that's worthless, and keep the other $5,000.  In addition to this con, Jordan also ran two other cons. First, he would bring a new company to the stock market, but instead of selling the new shares in the market, he would pocket them himself, in secret, drive up the price and then sell.  Second, he was wholesale exporting cold hard cash to a secret bank account in Switzerland.

Scorsese barely tells you any of this. In fact, time and again in Jordan's speeches to the audience he says something like 'You don't understand what I'm saying, or care, so let's just flick to another picture of me snorting coke from a hooker's arse.'  I find this just as patronising as the original boiler plate scam - assuming the audience is as gullible and greedy for excess and dumb as the scammed investors.  Scorsese is truly giving a massive Fuck You to all of us.  Compare the approach taken here to J.C.Chandor's marvellous MARGIN CALL - the only movie to really GET Wall Street.  The tragedy here is not that Scorsese fails, as Oliver Stone did with WALL STREET 2 - the tragedy is that Scorsese doesn't even try.

So when you strip out any interest in Wall Street, and any interest in what's really behind all this excess psychologically, what you basically get is a gag-reel full of drug-fuelled pratfalls and brilliantly kitschy 1980s clothes.  It's funny but it's empty and too long given the paucity of its ambition.

But is it worth seeing anyway? Here I'd have to say 'yes'.  The Matthew McConaughey cameo is genius - as if anyone isn't already convinced that this is truly HIS time in the sun.  The physical comedy is fantastic.  DiCaprio's quaaluded-up attempt to get to his car is worth awards glory on its own.  But be prepared, amid these wonderful set-pieces, for boredom. And don't expect Scorsese to move beyond the thematic work that has, by now, become cliché - sudden wealth, hot wife, doofus sidekick, hubris, nemesis.  Where's the personal growth? Both on the part of Jordan Belfort AND on the part of Scorsese?

P.S. If in your publicity material you're making great claims for screenwriter Terence Winter's background in investment banking, don't show the tickers for Black Monday as GREEN when the RED was dripping on the walls, dumbass.

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET is rated R in the USA and 18 in the UK for very strong language, strong sex and drug use. The movie has a running time of 180 minutes.

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET was released last year in the USA, Canada, France, Albania, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Lebanon, New Zealand, Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. It was released earlier this month in Egypt, Argentina, Chile, Israel, Uruguay, Finland, India, Poland, Belgium, Denmark, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore, South Korea, Mexico, Romania, Sweden and Vietnam. It will be released on January 17th in the UK, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Pakistan and Spain.  It will be released on January 23rd in Australia, Italy and Brazil; and on January 24th in Japan; on January 31st in Norway and Russia; on February 7th in Russia, Estonia and Latvia; on February 13th in Hong Kong; on February 21st in Lithuania; and on February 28th in Turkey.

This review is available as a podcast. You can listen directly below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

THE SPECTACULAR NOW - LFF 2013 - Day Three

Director James Ponsoldt's THE SPECTACULAR NOW starts with such verve and pace and authentic humour that it feels almost like a great John Hughes teen comedy.  In fact, the lead actor, Miles Teller (RABBIT HOLE), seems to be channelling a young John Cusack with his portrayal of charming, fun-loving but troubled teen Sutter  - a kid who thinks he's the life of the party but is really just a nascent alcoholic who's letting his issues with his absent father cloud his relationship with his well-meaning but distant mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and his sweet new girlfriend Aimee (Shaileene Woodley - THE DESCENDANTS). The first half of the film stays firmly in that John Hughes vein, despite the growing unease about the amount of drinking Sutter does, and how in dating Sutter, Aimee starts sipping from a hipflask too. But we're still just in the mode of looking at a meet-cute, an odd-couple dating story, with wryly observed tales of still being drawn to your ex-girlfriend, and Prom. 

But then something happens about half-way through the film that totally undoes its balance.  The lovely Aimee persuades Sutter to find his father, and casting Kyle Chandler against type, we can a lovable selfish drunk, who makes Sutter so self-loathing that he puts Aimee and himself in danger.  I won't say more for fear of spoiling the film, but it really bothered me that there were no consequences - whether emotional or external - to these events.  Worse than that, it broke that feeling of integrity and authenticity to the movie, and I was progressively less and less engaged with how it all worked out. I'm not sure whether that sharp right turn into nonsense is the fault of the original author, Tim Tharp, or the screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber (500 DAYS OF SUMMER). Either way, it's a real shame because it undercuts the great work done in the movie's first half. 

THE SPECTACULAR NOW has a running time of X and is rated R

THE SPECTACULAR NOW played Sundance, where it received the Special Jury Prize for Acting, SXSW and London 2013. It opened in the USA and Canada earlier this year and will be released in Australia on December 5th.

ZERO DARK THIRTY

It's taken me a while to get the necessary distance to review Kathryn Bigelow's controversial but critically acclaimed CIA procedural thriller, ZERO DARK THIRTY. The movie is meant to be an account of how US intelligence tracked down Osama Bin Laden, ending with a recreation on the fatal raid on his house in Abbotabad.  But it goes further than just being a fiction inspired by facts, as Tony Kushner would claim for the scrupulously researched LINCOLN.  Rather, Bigelow's movie opens with a statement of aggressive alignment with the truth, before playing real telephone calls from the Twin Towers.  So, before we even see an actor on screen, Bigelow has asked us to take her movie as THE definitive truth, and emotionally manipulated us by playing harrowing real audio from Bin Laden's most devastating terrorist attack.

We then move into the first two hours of the film, which is basically a standard police procedural, except that it features copious quantities of torture, which are shown to provide the information that leads directly to Bin Laden. Jessica Chastain is perfectly cast as Maya. She looks vulnerable and slight and this nicely contradicts her determination to the follow a slight lead despite her superiors' scepticism, even to the point of participating in graphically and unrelentingly depicted torture.  Of course, one can see Bigelow's not too thinly veiled metaphor for a female director's struggle in Hollywood, and every scene of genuine peril or tension is offset by the scenes of clichéd struggle against The Man. Did the real Maya theatrically and childishly use a marker to chalk up how many days the CIA knew about Abbotabad and refused to act?  Would a character as senior as Mark Strong's director really unleash a standard macho shouty tirade at his team?  It all felt rather written by rote. This was most evident in the sequence where a colleague of Maya's arranges a meeting with a potential lead - a meeting that is built up to be tense but where I was always aware of its dramatic purpose and obvious consequences.

The part of the movie that worked best for me was the final half hour, where Bigelow meticulously depicts the raid on Abbotabad, showing great technical accomplishment in her use of night vision equipment in conjunction with standard camera lenses, working in zero natural light.  I also respected the discretion with which she hinted at, but did not show the death and body of Bin Laden. And perhaps the  most finely judged dramatic moment of the film is the final shot, where Maya, mission accomplished, is left with the horrible existential, deeply political question "where do you want to go?"

The problem is that ZERO DARK THIRTY only deals in such political and moral sophistication in its final scene.  Up to that point, we are in no doubt that it is torture that produces the information that leads to Bin Laden.  For Bigelow, and her screenwriter Mark Boal, to suggest that they are just neutrally depicted "what happened" is disingenuous.  This is problematic.  Not only because it severely streamlines and simplifies a very complex issue, but because movies do not exist in a social and political vacuum as pure works of art with no consequences.  I am unsurprised to see the CIA measured but clearly angry denial that this is an accurate portrait of the hunt for Bin Laden, and to say that the content of this film will be inflammatory in certain quarters is an understatement. 

ZERO DARK THIRTY is on release in the USA, Spain, Canada, the Philippines, Taiwan, Portugal, Macedonia, France, Juwait, the Netherlands, Singapore, Finland, Ireland and the UK. It opens on January 31st in Belgium, Argentina, Australia, Germany, Israel, New Zealand, Lithuania, Sweden and Turkey. It opens on February 8th in Denmark, Italy, Estonia, Iceland, Norway and Poland. It opens on February 15th in Brazil and Japan; and on February 22nd in Chile, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Russia and Bulgaria.

ZERO DARK THIRTY is rated R in the USA and has a running time of 157 minutes.

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 9 - ARGO

This time last year I called THE ARTIST for Best Oscar solely based on the grounds that Harvey Weinstein had personally introduced it at the London Film Festival, indicating that the Karl Rove of Academy campaigns was putting his not inconsiderable weight behind it.  It didn't, of course, hurt that the movie did the two things that Hollywood absolutely loves: a) cast a nostalgic eye back to its own history and b) make us laugh, make us cry but with a outer casing of Profundity to make us feel less superficial while we get our kicks.

This year, on the same logic, I'm calling ARGO for Best Film.  Harvey isn't involved this time, but they flew out EVERYBODY for the red carpet PR fest last night, not to mention the fact that The Hollywood Reporter is already running front cover articles on Ben Affleck's comeback.   And, per my second rule, this movie is an exceptionally well-made crowd-pleasing thriller.  But because it's based on real events in Iran, it makes us feel like we learned something too.  

In short, ARGO is not a film we're going to remember in ten year's time - it's not a movie that remakes the boundaries of the cinema.  But that's okay, we here at MOVIE REVIEWS FOR GREEDY CAPITALIST BASTARDS are all about genre movies that aren't ashamed of what they are, do the job well, and make piles of phat cash in the process.

The basic history is that in 1979, the US embassy in Iran was stormed by pissed-off Iranian revolutionaries and the staff taken hostage.  The Khomeini revolutionaries wanted the despotic Shah of Iran returned from his asylum in the USA to face charges, which evidently wasn't going to happen.  Meanwhile, 6 embassy staff had managed to sneak out and were hiding out in the Canadian embassy. The CIA's specialist "exfiltrator" Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) created a cockamamie plan to get them out: create a real life Hollywood production company with a real life script and pretend the embassy staff were the film crew were scouting locations in Iran.  He flies in alone, gives them their cover stories, and flies out with them through an airport crawling with revolutionary guards.

The genius of a movie like ARGO is that, if done well, even though we know the ending, every time our band of civil servants goes up against a checkpoint, we are completely nervous about whether they're going to make it. This kind of tension relies upon perfect pacing and editing, and performances good enough that we like and care for the characters.   Moreover, with a movie like this, where the stakes are so high but the cover story so ludicrous, it takes a special kind of director who can keep the balance between laughs and tension.  

In this film, the ensemble cast is superb - with small parts for the likes of John Goodman, Alan Arkin and Bryan Cranston to name but a few.  It's a movie in which no-one carries the film, although I'd like to give special props to Scoot McNairy (KILLING THEM SOFTLY) who surprises his fictional colleagues and us with a last minute character turnaround that has us whooping with joy on the inside.   But really, the success of this movie is down to Ben Affleck's direction - his choices, his ability to handle the tonal shifts and intercut scenes of madcap Hollywood with absolutely grave images of hostages, his ability to make us care and have us on the edge of our seats.  The proof of that - if proof I needed - was when the plane took of Tehran airport and left Iranian airspace and the audience watching the movie burst into spontaneous applause.  That really is proof of how good this movie is.

Like I said, ARGO is "just" a factually based thriller.  But it's about as good of a thriller as you are likely to see. It shows the hidden courage and patriotic service of a handful of Hollywood insiders and CIA men, and the public courage of a handful of Canadians.  It makes us feel good about ourselves, and doesn't hide the contemporary relevance and grey shading as to why the Iranian revolutionaries were so angry at the Americans.  Kudos to all involved.

John Goodman, Ben Affleck and Bryan Cranston.

ARGO played Telluride, Toronto and London 2012 and is currently on release in the Ukraine, Canada, Colombia, the USA, Argentina, Serbia, Australia, New Zealnd, Russia, Singapore, Japan and Spain. It opens on November 2nd in Finland, on November 7th in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Brazil, Ireland, Norway and the UK. It opens on November 15th in Hong Kong and Slovenia and on November 23rd in Sweden.

SUPER 8

SUPER 8 is a supremely self-indulgent movie, and whether or not you enjoy it depends on how far you share the nostalgia of the film-makers. Writer-directer J. J. Abrams and cinematographer Larry Fong grew up in the 1970s, making amateur genre movies on Super-8mm cameras, and obsessing over the movies of Steven Spielberg, whose movies were themselves self-indulgent. After all, take away that sense of visual wonder - the spaceship in E.T.; the pirate ship in THE GOONIES; the effects work in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS - and every Spielberg film is basically the same. They are movies that document the struggle of kids growing up in working-class middle-America in an era when mum and dad are divorced, both parents are at work, and the kids are pretty much left to their own devices. The world of Spielberg is full of peril, but the plucky kids always pull through thanks to friendship and smarts. And when they do, well, their previously uncomprehending, distant parents show up with a big hug and a few tears. These are movies of alienated children creating a sense of family where there was none: through their friends - and finally by forcing their parents to notice them. The aliens, the sharks, the pirate ships - these are basically just super-dramatic MacGuffins.

Of course, every genre film has its subtext. Zombie movies from the 60s and 70s are really depicting society's fears of Soviet infiltrators, or the rise of consumerism. So it shouldn't be surprising to find that E.T. is really about divorce. But what I do resent is how Spielberg allows what should be sub-text to dominate his movies. I don't mind it getting a little dusty in the cinema at the end of a movie but I do resent the infantilisation of the audience that characterises his work and the emotional manipulation that swamps the final act in every Spielberg movie - and absolutely ruins A.I. This is, after all, the director who felt it necessary to pick out a little girl being swept into the Warsaw Ghetto in a red coat - as if the tragedy of the Holocaust were not enough. The audience had to be directed to the tragedy. The result is that SCHINDLER'S LIST - in some ways an admirable film - is irredeemably kitsch.

All this may seem a little off the point, but once you understand that SUPER 8 is a love-letter to Spielberg - not a pastiche, but often containing elements of pastiche - it makes more sense. J.J.Abrams and Larry Fong want to take us back to their childhood - to create that same sense of wonder at the magic of celluloid - to a time before the meaningless CGI and fatuous camera angles of Michael Bay. The nostalgia is even wider. The opening shot shows us a sign in an "employee-owned" steel mill - and the film-makers want us to appreciate that this was an era where America made things; where greed wasn't good; where gas was cheap; towns were communities; where kids still called adults Mr. and Mrs; and the most trouble you could get into was to smoke a little pot. In essence, J.J.Abrams and Larry Fong are taking us back to an era before irony and slick production values. Maybe that's why Abrams directorial style (insofar as he has one outside of making Spielberg flicks) is creating lens flares. Lens flares are typically seen as a mistake - as amateur - as something to be avoided. But according to an interview in American Cinematographer magazine, for Abrams "Flares can be purposeful and addictive, and at the right time they remind me, in a good way, that I'm watching a movie. It doesn't take me out of it. I think it draws me in deeper." In other words, Abrams is in love with cinema, and he wants to be reminded that he's watching a movie every once in a while. He is in love with his childhood and he wants us to be too.

The movie takes place in the 1970s in Spielbergian mid-town working-class America. A bunch of school-kids are making a Super-8 zombie movie, sneaking out to film late at night. They witness their school science teacher deliberately derail a military train - an event that triggers their town being taken over by sinister military types looking for the train's cargo - cargo that is messing with the town's electricity, scaring its animals, wreaking havoc with its machinery and abducting its people...With so much real-life Area-51 type activity, the kids at first treat it all as a great opportunity to film some real-life special effects, but when their friend Alice goes missing, the adventure really begins.....

When the film works best, it's showing us the wonder of kids obsessing over celluloid. You get a real sense of camaraderie and fun from the young ensemble cast, and I particularly loved the soft satire of directorial obsession that is Riley Griffiths' Charles asking the photo-developer for a rush job (three days!) and screaming "production values". I also loved the nascent love story between young Joe (Joel Courtney) and Alice (Elle Fanning). The gory special effects are fun - Larry Fong obviously had a lot of fun re-creating the amateur look of the kids' Super 8 film (shown over the credits) - and Ryan Lee as the pyromaniac Cary pretty much steals every scene he's in. J.J.Abrams does a great job in keeping the monster off screen for as long as possible, building up tension, and Larry Fong brilliantly recreates the look and feel of both CLOSE ENCOUNTERS.

But the film is let down by its need to recreate the emotional schmaltz of a Spielberg film. I understand why Joe's bereaved father, deputy Jackson (Kyle Chandler) is distant from his son. But poor Ron Eldard didn't have any time or room to establish why Louis Dainard was such a drunk, why he was so mean to his daughter, Alice, or why he improbably became so caring by the end of the film. Worst of all, I felt it was rather too convenient that anyone who touches the monster creates a "psychic connection". That convenient little plot device allows for a last-act redemption and touchy-feely blast off that is utterly emotionally unearned. The overall verdict is the same as for any Spielberg flick - great camaraderie among the kids, and amazing visual effects - but all ruined by improbable reconciliation and schmaltz at the end.

SUPER 8 was released in June in Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the USA, Ukraine, Canada, Taiwan, Vietnam, Belarus, Greece, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Russia, South Korea, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Qatar, Sweden, Turkey, Armenia and Japan. It was released n July in Israel, Belgium, Denmark, Portugal, Finland and Norway. It was released this week in France, Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, Mexico and the UK. It goes on release next week in the Netherlands, Brazil, Colombia and Paraguay. It will be released in Spain on August 19th and in Italy on September 9th.


Comment by Blog Contributor Daniel Plainview: Let's be honest about it - it was a piece of fluff fan-fiction BMX-ing late 70s homage to big Steve. But having said that, it was fun while it lasted. You wouldn't touch it with a barge pole on DVD, for all the reasons you've stated. But spending a tenner and seeing it at the cinema was inoffensive, fun, and stupid at the same time. 

I think the only reservation I would have to add to that is that the schmaltz doesn't work. As you say, it is emotionally unearned - we feel no depth of reconciliation with the wee lassie and her father, and frankly we don't care enough about the central character to mind what happens to him. In fact, had the monster given them some fucked up disease, or just killed them all, I would probably have laughed maniacally rather than being upset. Instead, it set up a psychic connection by fingering them, which is gay in so many different ways.

Still a fun movie though

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (2008) - An inconvenient remake

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL was a lean, simple sci-fi movie about an alien in human form who tries to warn humankind against continuing on its destructive path. Released at the start of the Cold War, the movie had a strong agenda - against realist inter-state politics and for liberal internationalism as mediated by the United Nations. The movie also contained a lot of Christian imagery, with Klaatu as the saviour of humankind come down to earth to point out the error of our ways. The message was large and profound but it was made through argument rather than special effects. Klaatu - the alien - ponders the words of The Lincoln Memorial and debates politics with an eminent scientist. It was a remarkably quiet and thoughtful film.

The new remake is a rather different beast. For a start, it's replete with big-budget special effects and it's self-consciously grandiose. The message is also different. Klaatu (Keanu Reeves) isn't here to save us from ourselves but to save the Earth from human-kind. Maybe in a post-modern world full of failing states and discredited supernational institutions, the film-makers thought appealing to liberal internationalism wouldn't fly? But it's a real shame. In the year of the Obama landslide, I could easily imagine a film that earnestly professed belief in the redemptive power of liberal democracy striking a chord.

The one constant is the Christian iconography - Klaatu walks on water, raises a man from the dead, and in a closing scene seems to take the agents of death out of the Bensons and into himself - thus taking away the sin of the world.

I rather like the bleak message and I also liked the special effects. But I didn't buy into the human relationships that power the plot. In the original film Klaatu strikes up a warm relationship between a single mother and her son who happen to live in the same boarding house as him. Through spending time with them he realises that humans have good qualities and deserve the chance to change. In the current movie I was never sold on the relationship between Klaatu, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly) and her stepson Jacob (Jaden Smith). Maybe it's because Helen is cast as a high powered scientist, and the relationship between Helen and her son is now rather complicated. Somehow it detracts from the relationship with Klaatu. At any rate, I didn't buy that in the course of a rather cursory relationship, Klaatu would change his mind about humanity.

So, for my money, stick to the original movie. Not least to avoid any fanboy disappointment at the omission of the most famous line of the original movie.

THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is on release in Belgium, France, Norway, Thailand, Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, the UK, the USA and Venezuela. It opens in Japan on December 19th; in South Korea on December 24th; in Australia on December 26th; in Egypt on December 31st; in Argentina on January 1st; in Brazil on January 9th; and in Poland on January 16th.