I am a werewolf, not a Golden Retriever.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

(2013)

(SPOILERS) This might be the least glorious of the endless line of Young Adult fiction adaptations of late. Which is saying something, given their at best modest merits. Adapted from the first of Cassandra Clare’s fantasy series (of six), The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones sports a mish-mash of familiar destiny-based and more-than-human tropes, without ever once crossing into anything distinctive and individual in its own right. The at once over-portentous and underwhelming title says it all.

Tangentially, the subtitle also evokes memories of one of the Marvel Star Wars comics. Death in the City of Bone found the post-Empire Strikes Back rebels on the trail of Han Solo and encountering Mandalorian warriors (a much more interesting backstory for Boba Fett than the prequel trilogy came up with) and assorted bounty hunters (Dengar, Bossk). I digress, but I don’t think I can really be blamed.

Lily Collins, she of Phil’s loins and the enormous eyebrows, is Clary, who discovers the world she assumed to exist holds so much else besides when she begins seeing a strange symbol and feels the urge to draw it everywhere (this rune-obsession is about as memorable as the picture gets) Before long, she and dweeby best friend Simon (Misfits’ Robert Sheehan) are introduced to demon-slaying half-angel Shadowhunters (or Nephilim; let’s put it this way, neither Clare and screenwriter Jessica Postigo Paquette nor David Aronofsky make the most of mythic possibilities of the Biblical moniker) and an ex- of their kind who is after a special cup. Along the way, we meet witches, werewolves, vampires and… not an ounce of the wit or verve that Joss Whedon brought to Buffy (which is where the current form of the supernatural teen genre really begins) or even a sliver of the mopey introspection that fuelled the Twilight series.

This is basically a mixture of Buffy elements (nerdy best friend who secretly loves the oblivious/disinterested heroine, enough creatures for a whole season of that show, an English professor/mentor, a blonde haired British bad boy), Twilight (love triangle) and, weirdly, Star Wars (the is-it-or-isn’t-it incest between possible brother and sister – given that this seems intentional rather than the result of a rethink, it’s remarkably tepid stuff – and the long lost parent as uber-villain). There’s also a werewolf (played by the vampire from Being Human, Aiden Turner). The teen angst bullshit is by way of Lost Boys leathers; in fact everything looks wholly generic and appropriated. It should be little surprise that Harald Zwart, the guy behind Pink Panther 2 and The Karate Kid remake called the shots. I say called, but this bears all the signs of a movie (what there is of it) accumulated in the editing suite. Zwart seems to have little idea how to work in the widescreen format; there’s an absence of clear framing and staging, and when he’s in doubt he decides to place an emotional power ballad high in the mix, in the hope that uplift will carry him through.

His casting abilities are mostly bereft. Collins is no more of the next big thing than she was in Mirror Mirror. He’s picked two of the most preening and pouty English actors around, who just happen to be significantly short on real charisma, in Jamie Campbell Bower (really struggling with the rebel bravado) and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (he gets a lot of villain parts, so he really should have learnt how to play them by now). Some of the supporting players might have lent a bit of gravitas if the whole production wasn’t so choppy and shapeless. Jared Harris is always great, and threatens to bring a tortured soul to the proceedings (there’s an interesting idea that his curse of agoraphobia may be a product of his imagination but either it isn’t followed through or I’d lost interest by the time it was paid off). C. C. H. Pounder effortlessly dares anyone sharing a scene with her to rise to the challenge (no one can). Kevin Durand enjoys himself as a blockhead minion of Meyers. There’s also Lena Headey as Clary’s mum; one suddenly remembers she can play sympathetic characters.

Obviously the producers wanted sequels, and even with my faltering level of interest I could tell numerous threads are left unexplored. This seems more glaring than in some of the other doomed franchise-starters from last year (The Host, Beautiful Creatures) and the yen of the makers to get going on another caused them to get a little ahead of themselves, announcing a sequel (featuring Sigourney Weaver) before the receipts have even been counted on a movie few went to see and even fewer held in any regard. If the sums somehow make sense at some point (it’s difficult to see how, unless it sold a lot of rentals and made a bundle from TV rights) their best shot is to ditch Zwart and half the cast. Actually, scratch that. It’s yet another series that probably should have found a home on TV but, while there’s a chance that the next property might be a Hunger Games, they’ll keep on opting for big screen first.

*1/2

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I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You guys sure like watermelon.

The Irishman aka I Heard You Paint Houses (2019)
(SPOILERS) Perhaps, if Martin Scorsese hadn’t been so opposed to the idea of Marvel movies constituting cinema, The Irishman would have been a better film. It’s a decent film, assuredly. A respectable film, definitely. But it’s very far from being classic. And a significant part of that is down to the usually assured director fumbling the execution. Or rather, the realisation. I don’t know what kind of crazy pills the ranks of revered critics have been taking so as to recite as one the mantra that you quickly get used to the de-aging effects so intrinsic to its telling – as Empire magazine put it, “you soon… fuggadaboutit” – but you don’t. There was no point during The Irishman that I was other than entirely, regrettably conscious that a 75-year-old man was playing the title character. Except when he was playing a 75-year-old man.

So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman.

Casino Royale (2006)
(SPOILERS) Despite the doubts and trepidation from devotees (too blonde, uncouth etc.) that greeted Daniel Craig’s casting as Bond, and the highly cynical and low-inspiration route taken by Eon in looking to Jason Bourne's example to reboot a series that had reached a nadir with Die Another Day, Casino Royale ends up getting an enormous amount right. If anything, its failure is that it doesn’t push far enough, so successful is it in disarming itself of the overblown set pieces and perfunctory plotting that characterise the series (even at its best), elements that would resurge with unabated gusto in subsequent Craig excursions.

For the majority of its first two hours, Casino Royale is top-flight entertainment, with returning director Martin Campbell managing to exceed his excellent work reformatting Bond for the ‘90s. That the weakest sequence (still good, mind) prior to the finale is a traditional “big” (but not too big) action set piece involving an attempt to…

Poor Easy Breezy.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)
(SPOILERS) My initial reaction to Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was mild disbelief that Tarantino managed to hoodwink studios into coming begging to make it, so wilfully perverse is it in disregarding any standard expectations of narrative or plotting. Then I remembered that studios, or studios that aren’t Disney, are desperate for product, and more especially, product that might guarantee them a hit. Quentin’s latest appears to be that, but whether it’s a sufficient one to justify the expense of his absurd vanity project remains to be seen.

You're skipping Christmas! Isn't that against the law?

Christmas with the Kranks (2004)
Ex-coke dealer Tim Allen’s underwhelming box office career is, like Vince Vaughn’s, regularly in need of a boost from an indiscriminate public willing to see any old turkey posing as a prize Christmas comedy. He made three Santa Clauses, and here is joined by Jamie Lee Curtis as a couple planning to forgo the usual neighbourhood festivities for a cruise.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

We’ll bring it out on March 25 and we’ll call it… Christmas II!

Santa Claus: The Movie (1985)
(SPOILERS) Alexander Salkind (alongside son Ilya) inhabited not dissimilar territory to the more prolific Dino De Laurentis, in that his idea of manufacturing a huge blockbuster appeared to be throwing money at it while being stingy with, or failing to appreciate, talent where it counted. Failing to understand the essential ingredients for a quality movie, basically, something various Hollywood moguls of the ‘80s would inherit. Santa Claus: The Movie arrived in the wake of his previously colon-ed big hit, Superman: The Movie, the producer apparently operating under the delusion that flying effects and :The Movie in the title would induce audiences to part with their cash, as if they awarded Saint Nick a must-see superhero mantle. The only surprise was that his final cinematic effort, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, wasn’t similarly sold, but maybe he’d learned his lesson by then. Or maybe not, given the behind-camera talent he failed to secure.

On a long enough timeline, the survival of everyone drops to zero.

Fight Club (1999)
(SPOILERS) Still David Fincher’s peak picture, mostly by dint of Fight Club being the only one you can point to and convincingly argue that that the source material is up there with his visual and technical versatility. If Seven is a satisfying little serial-killer-with-a-twist story vastly improved by his involvement (just imagine it directed by Joel Schumacher… or watch 8mm), Fight Club invites him to utilise every trick in the book to tell the story of not-Tyler Durden, whom we encounter at a very peculiar time in his life.

When primal forces of nature tell you to do something, the prudent thing is not to quibble over details.

Field of Dreams (1989)
(SPOILERS) There’s a near-Frank Darabont quality to Phil Alden Robinson producing such a beloved feature and then subsequently offering not all that much of note. But Darabont, at least, was in the same ballpark as The Shawshank Redemption with The Green Mile. Sneakers is good fun, The Sum of All Our Fears was a decent-sized success, but nothing since has come close to his sophomore directorial effort in terms of quality. You might put that down to the source material, WP Kinsella’s 1982 novel Shoeless Joe, but the captivating magical-realist balance hit by Field of Dreams is a deceptively difficult one to strike, and the biggest compliment you can play Robinson is that he makes it look easy.

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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