I'm Jim Cameron, and here's the deal.

Aliens of the Deep

(2005)

The capper (so-far) to a Jimbo Cameron and the Underwater Adventures of the Ego trilogy, Aliens of the Deep reconfirms that, whatever his deficiencies as a dramatist, Cameron’s far better suited to expressing himself in that direction, with the medium’s accompanying bombast and overstatement, than inflicting himself on poor, unfortunate real people – some of them poor, unfortunate professionals just trying to do their jobs, rather than seeking adulation – and repackaging interesting and thought-provoking subject matter into ill-serviced chicken feed.

This one, co-directed with Steven Quale, is easily the best produced of the three (the previous entries being Expedition: Bismarck and Ghosts of the Abyss; there’s also Earthship. TV, a documentary featuring footage from his return visit to Titanic, but since this ought to be covered by Ghosts, I’m not really counting it as a separate directorial effort), but it’s also the most shamelessly tailored to his tastes, blending his twin obsessions of deep sea and off-world exploration to extrapolate how discovery in the depths of the oceans would benefit a similar expedition to (say) the moon Europa.

As per usual, then, there are some splendid visuals, but a resoundingly patronising tone and delivery accompanies them. If you want any serious dive into the subjects broached, you’d be best going elsewhere. It might also be better to watch with the sound off during some passages, particularly whenever Jimbo is centre stage, holding forth and martialling “his troops” as if this is another of his military campaign-style movie productions.

Generally, the “Wow!” factor makes for a particularly witless constant. Cameron tells us, “I love this stuff!”, finding it much more exciting than any Hollywood special effects. To prove it, he wrote a 40-page manual on launching the submersibles, which also marks him out as incredibly anal amid all that self-regard.

He may love this stuff, but he fails to dazzle us with his broad spectrum knowledge. Rather than offering anything informative about its general purpose or mission in life, he comes across “like, the ugliest fish in the world”. But I’m sure that’s detail enough for you. He occasionally drops in a fantastically annoying “technical” phrase (“That’s the most amount of biomass I’ve ever seen in my life”, of an inundation of tiny shrimp, topping it with a typically knuckleheaded pronouncement that their “party’s been going on down there in the dark for the last billion years”).

The more you see of Jimbo in these excursions, the less you want to. There are frequently interesting visuals captured, particularly when it comes to deep sea lava and hydrothermal vents, but Cameron’s idea of enlightening is to follow a photogenic marine biologist around and frame her in the most adoring fashion possible, rather than have her expound on the understanding she has accumulated.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

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Vampire Academy (2014)
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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…

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The Verdict (1982)
(SPOILERS) Sidney Lumet’s return to the legal arena, with results every bit as compelling as 12 Angry Men a quarter of a century earlier. This time the focus is on the lawyer, in the form of Paul Newman’s washed-up ambulance chaser Frank Galvin, given a case that finally matters to him. In less capable hands, The Verdict could easily have resorted to a punch-the-air piece of Hollywood cheese, but, thanks to Lumet’s earthy instincts and a sharp, unsentimental screenplay from David Mamet, this redemption tale is one of the genre’s very best.

And it could easily have been otherwise. The Verdict went through several line-ups of writer, director and lead, before reverting to Mamet’s original screenplay. There was Arthur Hiller, who didn’t like the script. Robert Redford, who didn’t like the subsequent Jay Presson Allen script and brought in James Bridges (Redford didn’t like that either). Finally, the producers got the hump with the luxuriantly golden-haired star for meetin…

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Darkest Hour (2017)
(SPOILERS) Watching Joe Wright’s return to the rarefied plane of prestige – and heritage to boot – filmmaking following the execrable folly of the panned Pan, I was struck by the difference an engaged director, one who cares about his characters, makes to material. Only last week, Ridley Scott’s serviceable All the Money in the World made for a pointed illustration of strong material in the hands of someone with no such investment, unless they’re androids. Wright’s dedication to a relatable Winston Churchill ensures that, for the first hour-plus, Darkest Hour is a first-rate affair, a piece of myth-making that barely puts a foot wrong. It has that much in common with Wright’s earlier Word War II tale, Atonement. But then, like Atonement, it comes unstuck.

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Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)
(SPOILERS) The belated arrival of the Ant-Man sequel on UK shores may have been legitimately down to World Cup programming, but it nevertheless adds to the sense that this is the inessential little sibling of the MCU, not really expected to challenge the grosses of a Doctor Strange, let alone the gargantuan takes of its two predecessors this year. Empire magazine ran with this diminution, expressing disappointment that it was "comparatively minor and light-hitting" and "lacks the scale and ambition of recent Marvel entries". Far from deficits, for my money these should be regard as accolades bestowed upon Ant-Man and the Wasp; it understands exactly the zone its operating in, yielding greater dividends than the three most recent prior Marvel entries the review cites in its efforts at point scoring.

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Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
(SPOILERS) The cliffhanger sequel, as a phenomenon, is a relatively recent thing. Sure, we kind of saw it with The Empire Strikes Back – one of those "old" movies Peter Parker is so fond of – a consequence of George Lucas deliberately borrowing from the Republic serials of old, but he had no guarantee of being able to complete his trilogy; it was really Back to the Future that began the trend, and promptly drew a line under it for another decade. In more recent years, really starting with The Matrix – The Lord of the Rings stands apart as, post-Weinstein's involvement, fashioned that way from the ground up – shooting the second and third instalments back-to-back has become a thing, both more cost effective and ensuring audiences don’t have to endure an interminable wait for their anticipation to be sated. The flipside of not taking this path is an Allegiant, where greed gets the better of a studio (split a novel into two movie parts assuming a…

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The Avengers 5.12: The Superlative Seven
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The Falcon and the Snowman (1985)
(SPOILERS) I suspect, if I hadn’t been ignorant of the story of Christopher Boyce and Andrew Daulton Lee selling secrets to the Soviets during the ‘70s, I’d have found The Falcon and the Snowman less engaging than I did. Which is to say that John Schlesinger’s film has all the right ingredients to be riveting, including a particularly camera-hogging performance from Sean Penn (as Lee), but it’s curiously lacking in narrative drive. Only fitfully does it channel the motives of its protagonists and their ensuing paranoia. As such, the movie makes a decent primer on the case, but I ended up wondering if it might not be ideal fodder for retelling as a miniseries.

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Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
(SPOILERS) Avengers: Age of Ultron’s problem isn’t one of lack. It benefits from a solid central plot. It features a host of standout scenes and set pieces. It hands (most of) its characters strong defining moments. It doesn’t even suffer now the “wow” factor of seeing the team together for the first time has subsided. Its problem is that it’s too encumbered. Maybe its asking to much of a director to effectively martial the many different elements required by an ensemble superhero movie such as this, yet Joss Whedon’s predecessor feels positively lean in comparison.

Part of this is simply down to the demands of the vaster Marvel franchise machine. Seeds are laid for Captain America: Civil War, Infinity Wars I & II, Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok. It feels like several spinning plates too many. Such activity occasionally became over-intrusive on previous occasions (Iron Man II), but there are points in Age of Ultron where it becomes distractingly so. …

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The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
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I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

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The Avengers 5.11: Epic
Epic has something of a Marmite reputation, and even as someone who rather likes it, I can quite see its flaws. A budget-conscious Brian Clemens was inspired to utilise readily-available Elstree sets, props and costumes, the results both pushing the show’s ever burgeoning self-reflexive agenda and providing a much more effective (and amusing) "Avengers girl ensnared by villains attempting to do for her" plot than The House That Jack Built, Don't Look Behind You and the subsequent The Joker. Where it falters is in being little more than a succession of skits and outfit changes for Peter Wyngarde. While that's very nearly enough, it needs that something extra to reach true greatness. Or epic-ness.

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