This is where I belong. As a giant girl’s baby doll.

Gulliver’s Travels

(2010)

A godawful nightmare adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire, Rob Letterman’s film is so limited in its resemblance to the novel I’m surprised they even carried the full title. Gulliver, or a more distancing Lemuel, would be the kind of dumb thinking a studio like Fox could be expected to embrace wholeheartedly. And, with Jack Black lending his particular brand of coarse tastelessness to the title character, you’d have expected him to rechristen the character as the more musically resonant “Lemmy”.

The movie flopped in the States, which suggests audiences occasionally can see a turkey coming. Strangely, it did quite well internationally (not enough to make up for its out-of-control budget – who makes a $100m+ movie and has Black star in it?). Either there are a lot of Swift fans out there, or… No, I’m at a loss, actually.

There’s no satire in here, needless to say and zero attempt to even try anything approaching wit. Right from the opening, where Black’s mail room guy is opining how he is one of the little people and those he delivers post to are the big people, you know this is more wrecking ball than sledgehammer in its thematic delicacy. The film sticks to the Lilliputian section of Swift’s book (with a brief interlude in Brobdingnag), but the raison d’être seems to be not-so special effects. Elements match up to the novel; Black pisses out a fire, is accused of treason, faces down an enemy fleet. But all of this is a backdrop to some very laboured comedy and an unconvincing romance plot that propping up the entire sorry sagging structure.

Black didn’t have the balls to ask out Amanda Peet in New York, but now he plays matchmaker to peasant Jason Segel and princess Emily Blunt (with Chris O’Dowd miscast as her hissable suitor and all-round bad guy). The comedy is tiresomely familiar. Black suggests song lyrics as a means to woo her. He also appropriates film plots as examples of his great adventures and has them staged for the town (which is very similar to another Black clunker, Be Kind Rewind). Jack struts through the proceedings in his fallback noisy prick mode. He can be an engaging performer (he’s great in School of Rock, amusing in Tropic Thunder) but asking him to draw on his Tenacious D rock-riffing is an invitation to disaster. Sure enough, the film’s mercifully slender running time is padded out with musical montages and ends with him leading the townsfolk in a cringeworthy song and dance routine. Oh, and Blunt cracks wise with his moronic vernacular. Black’s an embarrassment, but so is the whole film.

The mostly British supporting cast irritate (O’Dowd, Catherine Tate, James Corden) or fail to make an impression (Connolly, Blunt). Still, it could have been worse (unbelievable, I know!) Taylor Lautner was earmarked for Segel’s role originally. And to think, it’s this that prevented Blunt from playing Black Widow.

The wit and intelligence (and, yes, crudity) of Swift is replaced with boorish, banal attempts at humour and nauseous moralising. Who’s responsible? Rob Letterman (director) and Joe Stillman (co-writer) come from the variable Dreamworks animation stable. Nicholas Stoller revitalised The Muppets with Segel, and the two best buds have collaborated a number of times; nothing else they’ve done prepares you for how bad this is. So I blame Fox; given their track record, it seems a safe bet. Far from a snub, the lack of recognition for Swift in the credits should be seen as a blessing in disguise.

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No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

He is a brigand and a lout. Pay him no serious mention.

The Wind and the Lion (1975) (SPOILERS) John Milius called his second feature a boy’s-own adventure, on the basis of the not-so-terrified responses of one of those kidnapped by Sean Connery’s Arab Raisuli. Really, he could have been referring to himself, in all his cigar-chomping, gun-toting reactionary glory, dreaming of the days of real heroes. The Wind and the Lion rather had its thunder stolen by Jaws on release, and it’s easy to see why. As polished as the picture is, and simultaneously broad-stroke and self-aware in its politics, it’s very definitely a throwback to the pictures of yesteryear. Only without the finger-on-the-pulse contemporaneity of execution that would make Spielberg and Lucas’ genre dives so memorable in a few short years’ time.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

Another case of the screaming oopizootics.

Doctor Who Season 14 – Worst to Best The best Doctor Who season? In terms of general recognition and unadulterated celebration, there’s certainly a strong case to be made for Fourteen. The zenith of Robert Holmes and Philip Hinchcliffe’s plans for the series finds it relinquishing the cosy rapport of the Doctor and Sarah in favour of the less-trodden terrain of a solo adventure and underlying conflict with new companion Leela. More especially, it finds the production team finally stretching themselves conceptually after thoroughly exploring their “gothic horror” template over the course of the previous two seasons (well, mostly the previous one).

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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