And that’s why I don’t have a hamster.

The Fault in Our Stars

(2014)

(SPOILERS) Big C chic for teens, The Fault in Our Stars at least begins with admirable intentions. Perhaps setting out its store so forthrightly, that this is not your classic chocolate box movie romance where everything turns out alright in the end, was unwise. Inevitably the picture pitches headlong into another renowned variant on the genre, the doomed love story, where it becomes difficult to distinguish from its bedfellows.

If John Hughes had tackled terminal illness, it would probably have ended up resembling this adaption of John Green’s young adult novel. That is, the John Hughes who was just past his-teen nostalgia faze and trying his hand at more meaningful ruminations (see She’s Having a Baby). Obviously, I’m not the target audience for Josh Boone’s picture, and I have studiously avoided the annual arrival of a new Nicholas Sparks adaptation. I was curious about this one, though, mostly due to its part Shailene Woodley’s arrival as the next J-Law. She hasn’t yet ascended to such heights, but she’s probably the better actress (certainly, she made Divergence watchable, while Lawrence only really has to show up and Hunger Games works like clockwork around her). True to form, Woodley’s the best thing here.

I can’t speak to the book, but there’s an overwritten broadness to Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber’s screenplay that works in the overwrought world of, say, The Breakfast Club (where kids’ conflations of a harsh world of harsh parents and harsh teachers and bullying peers seem appropriate to their notion that they are centre of the universe), but here is frequently in danger of appearing too much like smug cleverness (which makes sense, given they also penned 500 Days One Summer). The movie so consciously pushes buttons, be it in set pieces, music montages (and Hazel has the cheek to call out the use of Peter Gabriel songs in the romantic slush of yesteryear!), shocking twists of fate, or simply smart-mouthed exchanges, that its notional attempt to serve the reality of terminal illness ends up wrapped in cotton wool. Or rather, in cinematographer Ben Richardson’s cosseting capturing of suffering.

Woodley is also splendidly aided by the various production departments. Every teen girl dreamer will be hoping that, should the writing be on the wall, they will look as adorable as she does. With a stylish cannula ever in place and the most desirable of this season’s haircuts, Hazel Grace is the thyroid cancer sufferer du jour. She is certainly a worthy usurper to Debra Winger’s unassailable throne.

If Hazel starts off being a little overtly witty and knowing, she’s thrown into sharp relief when Ansel Elgort’s Gus (Augustus) arrives at her support group. He’s lost a leg to bone cancer, or the special effects department, but otherwise looks as robustly healthy as only an ex school sports star can be. He’s also possessed with the kind of cocky dream guy confidence that only exists in the movies. When he turns up in a limo to whisk Hazel away to Amsterdam, it’s clearly a rather lame homage to John Cusack with his ghetto blaster.

And, of course, a formulaic romance needs a third wheel, the geeky guy (see Anthony Michael Hall and Jon Cryer in Hughes’ movies), Nat Wolff’s Isaac is on the verge of blindness and replete with “hilarious” anger management issues. Laura Dern (can she be that old now?) is immensely winning as the over-protective mum (True Blood’s Sam Trammell is less persuasive as dad). The soundtrack is precisely tailored, and exactly the kind of thing Hughes would pick were he still alive and making movies (M83, but of course).

The film can’t just be about one, or both, of them dying (and of course it’s not the one we expected, except that as this is fiction for girls, it is really), there has to be a goal in mind. So Hazel dreams of meeting the author who wrote her favourite cancer lit, An Imperial Affliction. Which means travelling to Amsterdam.

Even the great Willem Dafoe cannot salvage the avalanche of clichés that is scribe Peter van Houten. Perhaps Green intends van Houten to be a toxic version of himself, but that’s no excuse (there are parallels to the inspiration for the novel, and they share extremely self-important titles).He’s an abrasive, reclusive drunk. Isn’t that how all authors are? The one saving grace of the character, I thought (or hoped), was that we were going to be left without an explanation of why he was so negative and twisted. It would have given the movie a smidgeon of credibility in not spoon-feeding its audience. Instead, van Houten only goes and rocks up at the end – at Gus’s funeral no less - full of explanations. The character is only as unsubtle as the movie generally, but this displays particularly overt cynicism.

And the movie in general is much more involving before the Amsterdam jaunt. It’s in Amsterdam that the forced dramatics take over. There’s a bizarre and wholly inappropriate scene where the Hazel and Gus kiss for the first time – in Anne Frank’s house. Even the weird endorsement of applauding onlookers can’t banish the conviction that this really wasn’t the time or the place for such shenanigans.

Later, there are the “cute” capsule scenes. Such as egging Isaacs’ ex’s auto, which we’re supposed to get behind but actually shows that cancer victims can be arseholes too. And the pre-demise eulogies, so the ill-fated can listen to what’s in store for them. The latter particularly preys on teen wish fulfilment, and credit to John Green as he has clearly tapped a vein of teen angst to winning effect. But an actual attitude, rather than a skin deep one, might have been more fitting. The early scenes at the support group suggested the picture might have a caustic Fight Club-lite attitude to the manufactured apparatus that surrounds sufferers of terminal illnesses. Instead, it indulges Romeo and Juliet star-crossed fantasies. That’s fair play, of course. This is a teen romance, and it would be self-defeating to turn off the readership with gruesome details and unfettered despair. But it also means The Fault in Our Stars is nothing special, aside from Woodley’s tremendous performance.

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.

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.

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…

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.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

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.

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

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

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.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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