Nobody understands the Cloud.

Sex Tape

(2014)

(SPOILERS) As Michael Mann recently discovered with Blackhat, tapping into the zeitgeist is no guarantee of success. Even if Sex Tape had been released in conjunction with Jennifer Lawrence’s Cloud-snatched nudie pics, it’s highly unlikely it would have mustered any more interest than it received last summer. It doesn’t help that the movie is crummy, of course. Yet that hasn’t prevented any countless of clueless comedies from reigning supreme at the US box office (Neighbors, for example). It also didn’t stop the picture doing reasonable business internationally.

One might hope even great unwashed viewers know desperation when they smell it. An in-your-face title like Sex Tape is begging to be shunned. Perhaps the lure of seeing Cameron Diaz’s arse held sway. It might not be as momentous as it was in its prime, but Diaz is holding up well. She has retained a quality of Goldie Hawn goofiness into her fifth decade, just as Hawn did. She’s very nearly the only saving grace of this tiresome affair.

Very nearly, because, for a brief section, this tale of a couple who make the titular “tape” on an iPad in a bid to rekindle their dwindling marital mojo threatens to actually be, you know, funny. It’s probably not coincidental that this passage of the picture has precious little to do with said home movie, other than it where a potential viewer of their indiscreet escapade lives. They visit the home of Diaz’ prospective boss (hubby Jason Segel’s a radio DJ, she’s a professional blogger; tat’s the only-in-Hollywood level of the movie), who is played by none other than Rob Lowe. He of the infamous ‘80s sex tape the vast majority of viewers will either know nothing of or have long since forgotten (so not a great in-joke, then).

Lowe’s been honing his comic chops of late, particularly with his insanely OTT turn in Californication. He’s good here too, but the main chuckles come from Diaz doing coke (Lowe: Where is your husband, Diaz: I don’t know. Where is that fucker?) and hubby Jason Segel fending off a German Shepherd through extreme violence. Yes, it’s the comedy of excess so beloved of Segel patron Judd Apatow, but for a few minutes the picture musters some smiles.

Jake Kasdan, son of Lawrence, is trying to replicate the success of his earlier Diaz hit Bad Teacher. But that movie’s title spoke to its content in a good way. There was much potential there. Here, it’s a case of “So they make the video. What happens next?” 90-minute comedies should be embraced for cutting the fat, but only if they’re half decent. Kasdan’s writers (Kate Angelo of The Back-Up Plan, Segel and Stoller, who, with Gulliver’s Travels and Muppets Most Wanted are going all out for supreme stinkers lately) have no idea what they’re doing or where they’re going with the plot, which is why the interlude with the coke and the dog occurs.

Then they have Rob Corddry’s kid (Corddry seems to be in everything at the moment; I’m not quite sure why) blackmail Segel, having run out of steam with the “hunt the iPads” thread. It isn’t remotely convincing, as developments go, And then they are manoeuvred into visiting Jack Black’s pornlord. Who offers them sincere marital advice. It’s that bad.

The weirdest thing is, this is a Sony movie that’s one long advert for Apple. From its amazinfg camera quality to its durability (“Man, the construction of these things is just unbelievable”), this is clearly a device no one can do without, even a rival electronics company.

The only well-observed moment in the movie comes very early, when Segel’s daughter asks why they keep having all these days, then going to bed at night, then repeating it over and over again. And on and on. Pointless, continuous, like Hollywood comedies. Moments later we learn she has put her finger in her butt. Which is Kasdan and Segel’s preferred level. Sex Tape’s marginal merit is that it its superior to Zach and Miri Make a Porno, with boorish oaf Seth Rogen. Segel looks awful, by the way. Like he’s about to peg out. Diaz dazzles in roller-skates and is in Hawn’s position of convincingly co-starring with a guy nearly a decade her junior. As with Hawn, though, she needs to martial her career more wisely.

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.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

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.

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.

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

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.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Haven’t you ever heard of the healing power of laughter?

Batman (1989) (SPOILERS) There’s Jaws , there’s Star Wars , and then there’s Batman in terms of defining the modern blockbuster. Jaws ’ success was so profound, it changed the way movies were made and marketed. Batman’s marketing was so profound, it changed the way tentpoles would be perceived: as cash cows. Disney tried to reproduce the effect the following year with Dick Tracy , to markedly less enthusiastic response. None of this places Batman in the company of Jaws as a classic movie sold well, far from it. It just so happened to hit the spot. As Tim Burton put it, it was “ more of a cultural phenomenon than a great movie ”. It’s difficult to disagree with his verdict that the finished product (for that is what it is) is “ mainly boring ”. Now, of course, the Burton bat has been usurped by the Nolan incarnation (and soon the Snyder). They have some things in common. Both take the character seriously and favour a sombre tone, which was much more of shock to the

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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