You all have no idea what you're dealing with, do you?

Midnight Special

(2016)

(SPOILERS) Midnight Special sadly isn’t all that special. It seems those ‘80s movies that inspired him didn’t rubbed off enough to leave writer-director Jeff Nichols with a remotely affecting plot, let alone one eliciting a sense of wonder. A chase thriller that is only sporadically thrilling, and a science fiction mystery that turns out not to be so mysterious, there’s no doubting Nichols’ talent as a director, but I’m less convinced of his touch when embracing genre trappings.

The picture is at its most effective during the opening stages, with the encouraging decision to set the wheels of this road movie in motion midway through events; Roy (Michael Shannon), his son and prodigy Alton (Jaeden Lieberher) and state trooper Lucas (Joel Edgerton) are fleeing the arms of the law, and the cult that has been Alton’s enforced home, courtesy of its leader Calvin (Sam Shepard). We know Alton is special, we just don’t know quite how; the NSA is interested, as Calvin’s sermons have been dropping coded official secrets. Whatever is going on?

Intriguing as the set up is, the anticipation soon dissipates. Alton is some kind of next level, highly advanced indigo child, prone to bouts light streaming from his eyes (or having them merely glow in uncanny Village of the Damned fashion), an ability to touch others to their core (the details are vague) and an antenna that picks up signals (as such, his speaking in tongues is revealed as altogether mundane). Alton isn’t really all that fascinating beyond his party tricks, particularly since, like E.T. and (the main template for Nichols) Starman, he just wants to go “home” (and, as with Close Encounters, he must journey to a specific spot to do so).

There’s nothing wrong with the performances. Lieberher gives another strong showing following St. Vincent. Edgerton apparently stuffed himself with pies before arriving on set each morning. Dunst seems a bit haggard, no doubt in the name of her art. Shannon acts slightly mental (so no change there). But none of them have been given engaging characters. You expect some nourishment of backstory or character development for Lucas, justifying Edgerton’s presence, but it never comes. Llike the realm Alton is bound for, they are wilfully oblique, but not in that way that can sometimes be rewarding, where less is more because it invites you to speculate and piques the imagination.

As such, one rather gets the feeling Nichols had no ideas beyond the limited ones he voices. Hence the rather lame denouement, as Alton joins his people, the ones who live above us and watch us (effectively in a different dimension, co-existing with our own). It’s Tomorrowland redux, right down to the futuristic architecture and these more advanced beings’ blithe indifference to the fate of wretchedly average Earthlings. What’s Nichols trying to say with that? Has he thought about it? He doesn’t consciously seem to be invoking the Rand-ian reading Tomorrowand invited, but it’s still a bit whiffy.

Also in the equation is Adam Driver’s benign NSA agent, unable to rise above memories of similar ‘70s and ‘80s characters, be they played by Peter Coyote or Bob Balaban or… usually Bob Balaban. There’s the occasional strong, energised episode in its favour, such as the sequence where Alton is snatched back by Calvin’s minions, or a satellite falling to earth at a service station, or the climactic road block. There’s also a fine Carpenter-esque score, from regular Nichols composer David Wingo.

Unfortunately, the latter just adds to the feeling of unworthy homage. Midnight Special is as cap-doffing as JJ Abrams’ Super 8, but shamefacedly so, attempting to be a little more indie as a counterbalance (too often, Nichols mistakes mood for content, where the mood is mostly dead space). In doing so, he only highlights the picture’s essential emptiness. It’s as if he really wanted to make a sombre, downbeat movie, something closer to, say, The Dead Zone in chilly texture than the bittersweet warmth Starman, and found his intentions muddled by themes of family and transcendence. His last picture, Mud, was highly impressive, so perhaps Loving (also due this year, also with Shannon and Edgerton, but a straight drama) will see him regain his form.

Comments

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…

You’re never the same man twice.

The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
(SPOILERS) Roger Moore playing dual roles? It sounds like an unintentionally amusing prospect for audiences accustomed to the actor’s “Raise an eyebrow” method of acting. Consequently, this post-Saint pre-Bond role (in which he does offer some notable eyebrow acting) is more of a curiosity for the quality of Sir Rog’s performance than the out-there premise that can’t quite sustain the picture’s running time. It is telling that the same story was adapted for an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents 15 years earlier, since the uncanny idea at its core feels like a much better fit for a trim 50 minute anthology series.

Basil Dearden directs, and co-adapted the screenplay from Anthony Armstrong’s novel The Strange Case of Mr Pelham. Dearden started out with Ealing, helming several Will Hay pictures and a segment of Dead of Night (one might imagine a shortened version of this tale ending up there, or in any of the portmanteau horrors that arrived in the year…

I fear I’ve snapped his Gregory.

Twin Peaks 3.14: We are like the Dreamer.
(SPOILERS) In an episode as consistently dazzling as this, piling incident upon incident and joining the dots to the extent it does, you almost begin to wonder if Lynch is making too much sense. There’s a notable upping of the pace in We are like the Dreamer, such that Chad’s apprehension is almost incidental, and if the convergence at Jack Rabbit’s Tower didn’t bring the FBI in with it, their alignment with Dougie Coop can be only just around the corner.

Now you're here, you must certainly stay.

The Avengers 4.1:The Town of No Return
The Avengers as most of us know it (but not in colour) arrives fully-fledged in The Town of No Return: glossier, more eccentric, more heightened, camper, more knowing and more playful. It marks the beginning of slumming it film directors coming on board (Roy Ward Baker) and sees Brian Clemens marking out the future template. And the Steed and Mrs Peel relationship is fully established from the off (albeit, this both was and wasn’t the first episode filmed). If the Steed and Cathy Gale chemistry relied on him being impertinently suggestive, Steed and Emma is very much a mutual thing.

He’s a good kid, and a devil behind the wheel.

Baby Driver (2017)
(SPOILERS) Pure cinema. There are plenty of directors who engage in superficial flash and fizz (Danny Boyle or JJ Abrams, for example) but relatively few who actually come to the medium from a root, core level, visually. I’m slightly loathe to compare Edgar Wright with the illustrious likes of Sergio Leone and Brian De Palma, partly because they’re playing in largely different genre sandpits, partly because I don’t think Wright has yet made something that compares to their best work, but he operates from a similar sensibility: fashioning a movie foremost through image, supported by the soundtrack, and then, trailing a distant third, comes dialogue. Baby Driver is his most complete approximation of that impulse to date.

How dare you shush a shushing!

Home (2015)
(SPOILERS) Every so often, DreamWorks Animation offer a surprise, or they at least attempt to buck their usual formulaic approach. Mr. Peabody & Sherman surprised with how sharp and witty it was, fuelled by a plot that didn’t yield to dumbing down, and Rise of the Guardians, for all that its failings, at least tried something different. When such impulses lead to commercial disappointment, it only encourages the studio to play things ever safer, be that with more Madagascars or Croods. Somewhere in Home is the germ of a decent Douglas Adams knock-off, but it would rather settle on cheap morals, trite messages about friendship and acceptance and a succession of fluffy dance anthems: an exercise in thoroughly varnished vacuity.

Those dance anthems come (mostly) courtesy of songstress Rhianna, who also voices teenager Tip, and I’m sure Jeffrey Katzenberg fully appreciated what a box office boon it would be to have her on board. The effect is cumulatively nauseating though, l…

Death to Bill and Ted!

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
(SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell, as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick.

Evil Bill: First, we totally kill Bill and Ted. Evil Ted: Then we take over their lives.
My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reeves in the summer of ’91 (inflatio…

Cool. FaceTime without a phone.

Sense8 Season One
(SPOILERS) The Wachowskis do like their big ideas, but all too often their boldness and penchant for hyper-realism drowns out all subtlety. Their aspirations may rarely exceed their technical acumen, but regularly eclipse their narrative skills. And with J Michael Straczynski on board, whose Babylon 5 was marked out by ahead-of-its-time arc plotting but frequently abysmal dialogue, it’s no wonder Sense8 is as frequently clumsy in the telling as it is arresting in terms of spectacle.

I frequently had the feeling that Sense8 was playing into their less self-aware critical faculties, the ones that produced The Matrix Reloaded rave rather than the beautifully modulated Cloud Atlas. Sense8 looks more like the latter on paper: interconnecting lives and storylines meshing to imbue a greater meaning. The truth is, however, their series possesses the slenderest of central plotlines. It’s there for the siblings to hang a collection of cool ideas, set pieces, themes and fascina…

Rejoice! The broken are the more evolved. Rejoice.

Split (2016)
(SPOILERS) M Night Shyamalan went from the toast of twist-based filmmaking to a one-trick pony to the object of abject ridicule in the space of only a couple of pictures: quite a feat. Along the way, I’ve managed to miss several of his pictures, including his last, The Visit, regarded as something of a re-locating of his footing in the low budget horror arena. Split continues that genre readjustment, another Blumhouse production, one that also manages to bridge the gap with the fare that made him famous. But it’s a thematically uneasy film, marrying shlock and serious subject matter in ways that don’t always quite gel.

Shyamalan has seized on a horror staple – nubile teenage girls in peril, prey to a psychotic antagonist – and, no doubt with the best intentions, attempted to warp it. But, in so doing, he has dragged in themes and threads from other, more meritable fare, with the consequence that, in the end, the conflicting positions rather subvert his attempts at subversion…

A man who doesn't love easily loves too much.

Twin Peaks 2.17: Wounds and Scars
The real problem with the last half of the second season, now it has the engine of Windom Earle running things, is that there isn’t really anything else that’s much cop. Last week, Audrey’s love interest was introduced: your friend Billy Zane (he’s a cool dude). This week, Coop’s arrives: Annie Blackburn. On top of that, the desperation that is the Miss Twin Peaks Contest makes itself known.

I probably don’t mind the Contest as much as some, however. It’s undoubtedly lame, but it at least projects the season towards some kind of climax. If nothing else, it resolutely highlights Lynch’s abiding fascination with pretty girls, as if that needed any further attention drawn to it.

Special Agent Cooper: You made it just right, Annie.
I also like Heather Graham’s Annie. Whatever the behind the scenes wrangles that led to the disintegration of the Coop-Audrey romance (and it will be rather unceremoniously deconstructed in later Coop comments), it’s certainly the …

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog