I don't want to talk about time travel because if we start talking about it then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.

Looper

(2012)

(SPOILERS) Expertly structured and enthrallingly directed, Looper nevertheless comes up slightly short by failing to fully explain its internal logic. The admittedly entertaining scene between Bruce Willis and his younger self Joseph Gordon-Prosthetic in a diner half explains the realities of altering the timeline but clearly also thumbs its nose at going into any detail on the conventions adopted here. While Back to the Future Part II etched out its theory with the aid of a blackboard, Willis essentially informs us that it’s all a bit complicated and what we’re really here is for the thrill of the ride.

And it is a thrilling ride. Rian Johnson blipped a bit with the enjoyable but slight Brothers Bloom. This is back up to the level (if failing to surpass) of his debut Brick, which Gordon-Levitt also starred in. He plays with narrative in a manner entirely appropriate to the material; the repetition of the Looper’s daily routine of blowing away the victims sent back from the future, the sudden, initially disorientating pitch into the timeline experience by his Willis self. And his skill with escalating tension marks him out in a genre that is too often only interested in overblown visuals instead of storytelling. He knows the best way to tell this kind of story is to keep the audience guessing, attempting to put together the pieces of the puzzle. And even when those pieces are connected there is still the question of how events will resolve themselves.

Johnson’s low-tech, dystopian future is effectively conjured on a limited budget. With the emphasis on decayed cityscapes and dust belt countryside, it’s not a particularly appealing 30 years hence. The sparingly sprinkled future tech (including hover bikes that have functionality issues – the visualisation of these is the one area that the limited budget is obvious) works in a “necessity is the mother of invention” manner, while taking its cues from behemoths like Blade Runner and Brazil. Although the location shooting in China received a lot of press (originally planned for France, as is referenced by the plot) it remains only a tantalising glimpse of the 2070s.

The action sequences are staged with the confidence of a master, when they appear. The centrepiece sees Willis taking on that Gat HQ, and it’s a rousing moment. As mentioned, the bike scenes are less effective.

In terms of missteps of execution, I’d suggest that Johnson only goes awry with the presentation of the Rainmaker. Introducing telekinetic powers as a plot device is dubious enough in itself; with recent movies like X-Men and Push covering the subject comprehensively, you should probably only go there if you have something new to say with the concept. To this credit, Johnson seizes on a classic SF philosophical conundrum and has the balls to run with it (if you knew a child would grow up to be Hitler, could you kill that child). But his over-emphasised choices for representing said child “hulking out” are close to derisible and certainly derivative. All starey-eyes and psycho close-ups, you’d be forgiven for thinking this had suddenly become a Stephen King adaptation, or a ‘70s De Palma film (or both). The visual effects are solid (floaty objects and people) but it feels a little like Johnson has over-egged the pudding. He was doing so well with his characters and nugget of philosophical enquiry up to the point of Damien child. What follows rather overpowers that richness that preceded it.

Then there’s the time travel. The early sequence of Paul Dano’s older self realising what has befallen his younger version is outstanding, and quite horrific. It does a good job of explaining the time travel conceit adopted here, even if that conceit doesn’t stand up to a great deal of enquiry; any change in the character’s “present” will take effect on his future self in a parallel time frame. So Dano gradually finds himself limbless, while Willis blinks out of existence instantly. Johnson takes a very direct approach; the protagonist remains at the centre of events that do not account for the butterfly effect ripples each and every action may result in. Which is understandable, as he needs to tell a coherent story. Nothing is fixed, except in terms of that which is central to Willis/Levitt in that instant; thus the directions Willis has etched onto his arm occur instantly, but whatever future that has been lived differently between Levitt as he is in the present becoming Willis is never accounted for (for example, wouldn’t the antagonists deal with the situation differently knowing the different course that Looper-Levitt took?)

And, when we reach the climax, the paradox seems accepted but never addressed. Which is a cheat for a film with this premise. Willis can blink out of existence, but shouldn’t the timeline he interfered with also change? Shouldn’t he never have come back because he never would have existed. It throws up the same kinds of questions that Terminator and Back to the Future did before it, and the journey it takes us on is engrossing, but ultimately it comes up short in never satisfyingly showing its smarts by wearing its paradoxes on its chin and addressing them. Johnson says that he decided to commit to the effects of time travel, the paradoxes and the way it alters the world. But a flawed narrative convention doesn’t become less flawed through repetition. Apparently a lot more explanation was originally included in the café scene, but it was decided that it wasn’t need. At that point, maybe not, but since Johnson admits that old Joe’s theory was that if he had succeeded he would never have been sent back (and what happens at the end essentially means Joe could never have been sent back), something further than a shrug and “What do you expect? It’s a paradox” would have been gratefully received.

Another thing I wondered about, purely from the perspective of the premise; How long does this operation run from transplanting criminals from the 2070s to the 2040s? Let’s say it began in running around 2030 (Levitt was a kid when he was first recruited); would that make the first time it was used in the future 2060? It seems like the timelines run in parallel (they don’t keep sending hits back to the same year), so would you eventually reach a point where Loopers are being employed in 2060, with hits sent back from 2090? Which would make no sense. Most of it doesn’t when you try to interrogate it. Also, surely it would be more logical not to send a Looper back to be hit by his younger self; get another Looper entirely to whack him and there’s significantly less chance of it going wrong.

The performances are all-round excellent, Gordon-Levitt in particular gets the Willis tics and makes the prosthetics, which seemed like an encumbrance in the trailers, seem very natural. Willis gets to do his hard man act, which is always fun to see, but also really sells a man pushed to the point where he will kill small children in the name of love. Strong supporting work too from Emily Blunt and Jeff Daniels.

Looper’s up there as one of the most accomplished films I’ve seen this year. I can’t fault it in its exploration of the same character 30 years apart, in some respects having grown so much wiser but in others still flailing about with misplace values and principals. In that sense the resolution chosen by Johnson is both satisfying and appropriate. But the film as a whole falls short by assuming an audience will merely be satisfied with the time travel element as window dressing, and that hitting the marks as a character study and thriller excuses it from internal coherence.

****

The minotaur isn’t even history. He’s mythology!

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (2013) The long awaited, some might suggest past-its-sell-by-date, return of Ron Burgundy doesn’t begin well. It pretty much confirmed my fears this was a sequel with no reason to be, one that weakly rehash the gags and set-ups from the first movie. It isn’t until the gang gets back together that Will Ferrell and Adam McKay hit their groove, by which I mean there’s a higher hit than miss ratio to the jokes. Many of the ideas that come with the central concept are soft connects, but the more absurd The Legend Continues gets, the funnier it becomes, leading to a final act (if you can call it that) so glorious in its silliness that much of what fails before becomes virtually irrelevant. Anchorman 2 was on-again, off-again for quite some time before it finally got the green light, with a stage musical even considered at one point. It seemed to me to be messing with a good thing; the inspired lunacy of the first picture had already shown

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Twenty dwarves took turns doing handstands on the carpet.

Bugsy (1991) (SPOILERS) Bugsy is very much a Warren Beatty vanity project (aren’t they all, even the ones that don’t seem that way on the surface?), to the extent of his playing a title character a decade and a half younger than him. As such, it makes sense that producer Warren’s choice of director wouldn’t be inclined to overshadow star Warren, but the effect is to end up with a movie that, for all its considerable merits (including a script from James Toback chock full of incident), never really feels quite focussed, that it’s destined to lead anywhere, even if we know where it’s going.

Ziggy smokes a lot of weed.

Moonfall (2022) (SPOILERS) For a while there, it looked as if Moonfall , the latest and least-welcomed – so it seems – piece of apocalyptic programming from Roland Emmerich, might be sending mixed messages. Fortunately, we need not have feared, as it turns out to be the same pedigree of disaster porn we’ve come to expect from the director, one of the Elite’s most dutiful mass-entertainment stooges, even if his lustre has rather dimmed since the glory days of 2012.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

I’ve had enough of this 2012 Alamo bullshit.

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016) (SPOILERS) Not The Secret Private Military Contractors of Benghazi , as that might sound dubious in some way, and we wouldn’t anything to undermine their straight-shooting heroism. That, and interrogating the politics of the US presence in Libya, official and unofficial, and involvement in the downfall of Gaddafi (Adam Curtis provides some solid nuggets in his rather sprawling HyperNormalisation ), is the furthest thing from Michael Bay’s mind. Indeed, it’s a shame 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi bears the burden of being a tale based on (murky and disputed) facts, as it’s Bay’s most proficient piece of filmmaking in some time. So, you’re not going to find out what the CIA was actually up to in their Benghazi base (most likely, the dodgiest conclusion you can reach will be the right one). You’ll only be informed that a brave team of ex-military types were there to protect them, and stepped up to the plate, ju

It looks like we’ve got another schizoid embolism!

Total Recall (1990) (SPOILERS) Paul Verhoeven offered his post-mortem on the failures of the remakes of Total Recall (2012) and Robocop (2013) when he suggested “ They take these absurd stories and make them too serious ”. There may be something in this, but I suspect the kernel of their issues is simply filmmakers without either the smarts or vision, or both, to make something distinctive from the material. No one would have suggested the problem with David Cronenberg’s prospective Total Recall was over-seriousness, yet his version would have been far from a quip-heavy Raiders of the Lost Ark Go to Mars (as he attributes screenwriter Ron Shusset’s take on the material). Indeed, I’d go as far as saying not only the star, but also the director of Total Recall (1990) were miscast, making it something of a miracle it works to the extent it does.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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