You may have seen a meteor shower, but you’ve never seen a shower meatier than this.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

(2009)

Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s big screen debut, whenceforth they have conjured box office gold from all manner of unlikely properties (a Johnny Depp TV series, Lego). Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was a surprise hit for Sony, successful enough to spawn last year’s sequel (and no doubt another beyond that). It’s one that failed to pique my interest. Maybe it was the trying-too-hard title, or the anonymous style of animation. Why, I didn’t even realise Bruce Campbell voiced a character. And… the movie’s… okay. If you’re a fan of CGI cheeseburgers, you probably can’t go far wrong here, but if you want to see an animated feature with mouth-watering food, stick to Ratatouille.

Lord and Miller adapted Judi and Ron Barrett’s children’s book (first published in 1978; it’s really old, kids – ancient!) in which raining food is not the result of genius boy scientist’s dabbling and does not solely constitute junk food. And when said comestible deluges become uncontrollable they have to move to a more customary precipitationary environment. There’s a moral in there, I think, since the townsfolk must discover how to obtain food in the usual way. Not having read the book, I presume the usual way is the tried and tested capitalist route – so most of their needs are met by cheap labour in third world countries – rather than grown locally, in gardens, allotments, or surrounding farmland.

In the movie version, the one everyone will remember from now on, inventor Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is responsible for the fast-food flurries. His mono-browed, with matching moustache, widowed father (James Caan) wants him to join the business (selling sardines), and his constant companion is a monkey called Steve (Neil Patrick Harris). Flint’s reputation for failed and problematic creations precedes him, so when he conjures up food on tap it’s an enormous surprise and one the mayor (Campbell) gets fully behind.

Just to make sure all the necessary boxes are ticked, there’s TV weather girl Sam (Anna Faris), who used to be a nerd and of whom were informed reverting to type (cosmetically) is a good thing (well, it gets the science nerd hot under the collar); “This is the real you”. Actually, isn’t it just Flint’s idea of the real her? That’s right, allow others to tell you who the real you is; it amounts to about the same as peer pressure conform to some beauty myth. At least Lord and Miller are intent on giving kids conflicting messages; way to really mess with their heads. Flint grows up convinced he is different and that he has something unique to offer the world, a contrast to the resolutely un-special Emmett in The Lego Movie.

There are vague rumblings of economic commentary in here, but it is unclear to what end. When the local cannery closes, the townsfolk must subsist off sardines; Flint’s invention is a result of his attempts to aid the populace in their plight, but gets out of control. There’s a “perils of science unleashed” theme in here, except that it is only the greed of the locals for more and more that causes the mutations that blight their prosperity (so science unshackled from the constraints of market forces will be wholly beneficial?) Alternatively, one might see the rain of junk food as a metaphor for homogenous branded outlets destroying local communities’ identities and self-sufficiency; they provide a quick fix until it is realised there’s nothing left. Which means Flint is the big corporations (the science nerd made good), apparently serving our needs but actually massaging his own ego and bank balance. The ever-expanding mayor, the politician pressing after votes rather than a better life for his constituents, is the incarnation of greed and profit itself.

Yet there isn’t anything really daring or intriguing or surprising about this movie. Nothing more than a lesson kids are told anyway; junk food is bad for you (I’m not sure that “Sardines are super gross” is entirely fair, however; I’ve always rather liked them). Free junk food is bad also. Just like junk food you have to pay for. It makes you fat. There might have been room for a The Man in the White Suit lesson in the perversity of a profit-based system, where the invention of something that removes the need for labour and toil (and jobs) is rebelled against, because it undermines the familiar system (Tesla; see below). What if Flint had created unlimited supplies of nourishing food instead? How would the cartoon corporations react to the promise of free food for all, an end to starvation? Nah, it’s just a kid’s film.

The asides the directors and their animators throw in are more engaging than the plot itself. Posters on Flint’s wall depict Alexander Graham Bell and Nikola Tesla (Hollywood has come round to bigging up the latter, but what chance of shedding a light on his less accepted ideas; not much, I suspect, although Flint’s lab is modelled on Wardenclyffe Tower, site of Tesla’s curtailed experiments with wireless electricity transmission). The only requirements for a weather girl are to be cute and “super perky”. A sardine, breaking free of Sardine Land, shouts for joy only to be carried off by a passing seagull. A cello made of jello. “I need a celery. Stat.” There’s also the occasional full-on portion of weirdness (for a movie with giant food stuffs plummeting from the heavens, the picture surprising lacks any real spark or distinctiveness); Flint and his pals are surrounded by a platoon of plucked, headless chickens, straight out of a David Lynch film. Gummi bear “gremlins” cause havoc on the wing of a plane. However, the third act action food storm spectacle, as Flint attempts to save the day (to right the mess he made, essentially), is little more than a de rigueur series of CGI toonery action set pieces.

Lord and Miller are funny guys with an untarnished Midas touch. I particularly look forward to seeing what they do with one of my ‘80s TV favourites, The Greatest American Hero (how to fill the gap of the unassailable Robert Culp, that’s the big challenge). They took on Cloudy after it had been in development for several years at Sony, and delivered something watchable and occasionally witty, but it lacking the style and personality of the best animation fare. That slickness is evident in The Lego Movie too; the appeals to the heart or delivery of moral lessons (they really just wanted to make a disaster movie here) are prescribed within the family movie formula, rather than elements they have nurtured and care about.

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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…

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

If this is not a place for a priest, Miles, then this is exactly where the Lord wants me.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)
(SPOILERS) Sometimes a movie comes along where you instantly know you’re safe in the hands of a master of the craft, someone who knows exactly the story they want to tell and precisely how to achieve it. All you have to do is sit back and exult in the joyful dexterity on display. Bad Times at the El Royale is such a movie, and Drew Goddard has outdone himself. From the first scene, set ten years prior to the main action, he has constructed a dizzyingly deft piece of work, stuffed with indelible characters portrayed by perfectly chosen performers, delirious twists and game-changing flashbacks, the package sealed by an accompanying frequently diegetic soundtrack, playing in as it does to the essential plot beats of the whole. If there's a better movie this year, it will be a pretty damn good one.

I am so sick of Scotland!

Outlaw/King (2018)
(SPOILERS) Proof that it isn't enough just to want to make a historical epic, you have to have some level of vision for it as well. Say what you like about Mel's Braveheart – and it isn't a very good film – it's got sensibility in spades. He knew what he was setting out to achieve, and the audience duly responded. What does David Mackenzie want from Outlaw/King (it's shown with a forward slash on the titles, so I'm going with it)? Ostensibly, and unsurprisingly, to restore the stature of Robert the Bruce after it was rather tarnished by Braveheart, but he has singularly failed to do so. More than that, it isn’t an "idea", something you can recognise or get behind even if you don’t care about the guy. You’ll never forget Mel's Wallace, for better or worse, but the most singular aspect of Chris Pine's Bruce hasn’t been his rousing speeches or heroic valour. No, it's been his kingly winky.

There's something wrong with the sky.

Hold the Dark (2018)
(SPOILERS) Hold the Dark, an adaptation of William Giraldi's 2014 novel, is big on atmosphere, as you'd expect from director Jeremy Saulnier (Blue Ruin, Green Room) and actor-now-director (I Don’t Want to Live in This World Anymore) pal Macon Blair (furnishing the screenplay and appearing in one scene), but contrastingly low on satisfying resolutions. Being wilfully oblique can be a winner if you’re entirely sure what you're trying to achieve, but the effect here is rather that it’s "for the sake of it" than purposeful.

It is the greatest movie never released, you know.

They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (2018)
(SPOILERS) They'll Love Me When I'm Dead, Morgan Neville's documentary on the making of Orson Welles' long-gestating The Other Side of the Wind, is much more interesting than the finally finished article itself, but to be fair to Welles, he foresaw as much as a possibility. Welles' semi-improvised faux-doc approach may not seem nearly as innovative nearly fifty years on – indeed, in the intervening period there's a slew of baggage of boundary-blurring works, mockumentaries and the whole found footage genre – but he was striving for something different, even if that "different" was a reaction to the hole he'd dug himself in terms of bankability. On the evidence of the completed film, he never quite found the necessary rhythm or mode, but the struggle to achieve it, as told here, is fascinating.

You kind of look like a slutty Ebola virus.

Crazy Rich Asians (2018)
(SPOILERS) The phenomenal success of Crazy Rich Asians – in the US at any rate, thus far – might lead one to think it's some kind of startling original, but the truth is, whatever its core demographic appeal, this adaptation of Kevin Kwan's novel taps into universally accepted romantic comedy DNA and readily recognisable tropes of family and class, regardless of cultural background. It emerges a smoothly professional product, ticking the expected boxes in those areas – the heroine's highs, lows, rejections, proposals, accompanied by whacky scene-stealing best friend – even if the writing is sometimes a little on the clunky side.

Have you ever looked into a goat's eyes?

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
(SPOILERS) There was probably an insightful, sensitive movie to be made about the World War II experiences of conscientious objector Desmond Doss, but Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge isn’t it. It’s unsurprising that a number of reviewers have independently indulged the wordplay Hackneyed Ridge, an effective summation of the ridiculously over-the-top, emotionally shameless theatrics Mel indulges, turning a story that already fell into the “You wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t true” camp into “You won’t believe it anyway, because it’s been turned up to 11” (and that’s with Gibson omitting incidents he perceived to be “too much”, such as Doss being shot by a sniper after he was wounded, having given up his stretcher to another wounded man; certainly, as wrung through Mel’s tonal wringer, that would have been the case).

Perhaps Mel should stick to making subtitled features, the language barrier diluting the excruciating lack of nuance or subtlety in his treatment of subject m…

Never compare me to the mayor in Jaws! Never!

Ghostbusters (2016)
(SPOILERS) Paul Feig is a better director than Ivan Reitman, or at very least he’s savvy enough to gather technicians around him who make his films look good, but that hasn’t helped make his Ghostbusters remake (or reboot) a better movie than the original, and that’s even with the original not even being that great a movie in the first place.

Along which lines, I’d lay no claims to the 1984 movie being some kind of auteurist gem, but it does make some capital from the polarising forces of Aykroyd’s ultra-geekiness on the subject of spooks and Murray’s “I’m just here for the asides” irreverence. In contrast, Feig’s picture is all about treating the subject as he does any other genre, be it cop, or spy, or romcom. There’s no great affection, merely a reliably professional approach, one minded to ensure that a generous quota of gags (on-topic not required) can be pumped out via abundant improv sessions.

So there’s nothing terribly wrong with Ghostbusters, but aside from …

Oh man, they wronged you. Why they gotta be like that? You exude a cosmic darkness.

Mandy (2018)
(SPOILERS) Sometimes you're left scratching your head over a movie, wondering what it was about it that had others rapturously raving while you were left shrugging. I at least saw the cult appeal of Panos Cosmatos’ previous picture, Beyond the Black Rainbow, which inexorably drew the viewer in with a clinically psychedelic allure before going unceremoniously off the boil with a botched slasher third act. Mandy, though, has been pronounced one of the best of the year, with a great unhinged Nic Cage performance front and centre – I can half agree with the latter point – but it's further evidence of a talented filmmaker slave to a disconcertingly unfulfilling obsession with retro-fashioning early '80s horror iconography.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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