The bottle is more distinguished than its wine.

Movies on My Mind

Week Ending 11 June 2016

Box Office

With all my previous ragging on the box office prospects of Warcraft (reviewed here), I failed to even consider that it might eke out a wee niche somewhere in the world, one that could turn it from abject failure to franchise-spawning monster. That wee niche turns out to be China, where the game has a huge fan base, estimated at about half its global players, and the only country where movies can out-gross once-mighty US takes. Admittedly, the studios don’t see the same percentage trickling back into their coffers, but if there’s enough of a response – as in hundreds of millions – the market becomes highly lucrative. That was part of the thinking of one of the picture’s production partners, it seems, and if the movie can approach Furious 7 size returns ($300m+), a sequel is pretty much guaranteed.

It needs to be big, though; Terminator Genisys did rather well there, grossing over $100m, but it still wasn’t enough to justify the outlay in the face of critical and audience derision (a $440m worldwide gross, yet no sequel is on the horizon; compare that to the $400m tally for Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, its follow up Alien: Covenant currently filming). It will be interesting to see how all this washes out. Genisys made $90m in the US, and Warcraft won’t even get close to that, so has the potential of being a historic case where the US market is entirely incidental to a series’ fortunes.

Pacific Rim 2

Pacific Rim is another movie that had a sequel greenlit on the basis of Chinese box office, just nothing approaching the level of Warcraft, which was why it was touch and go for a while. Rim’s gross there ($111m) was only a little higher Warcraft’s first two days, but we’re still talking a quarter of the worldwide.

I’d like to say del Toro absenting himself from the director’s chair this is a good thing, but that would be assuming he’s doing something more worthwhile instead, so I can’t really. The first movie had some predictably strong visuals contrasted with appalling characterisation and consequently unconvincing acting. Can Stephen S DeKnight ameliorate such problems? I’d be more optimistic if he had a writing credit, having been a stalwart contributor to Joss Whedon’s Buffy and Angel, and more recently moving on to Daredevil (which conversely makes me slightly less convinced).

Instead we have an unappetising mishmash of del Toro, Zak Penn, Jon Spaihts and (heaven forfend) Derek Connelly. DeKnight cut his directing teeth on Angel and this will be his first big screen outing, which seems rather foolhardy, in terms of weight on his shoulders (and we’ve seen a number of first-timers fall out of high profile projects lately, including The Flash and Star Trek Beyond). Why John Boyega would sign up, other than because he’s a really nice guy, is beyond me, though. Perhaps he’s profoundly optimistic.

Trainspotting 2

I was a lot more invested in Danny Boyle and Ewan McGregor burying the hatchet years back, when it seemed like both still had untold filmic potential to offer. Boyle’s technically as proficient as ever, but the danger there is it leads the way if the material isn’t up to snuff; as impressive as aspects of Steve Jobs and 127 Hours are, he’s increasingly delivering dazzle over content. McGregor, alas, just hasn’t been the same since being passed over on The Beach and having Lucas drain away his childhood nostalgia in the Star Wars prequels.

As such, the highlights of both their careers occurred 20 years ago, with the one-two of Shallow Grave and Trainspotting. Going back to the well with Porno never seemed like a good idea (McGregor even said the novel wasn’t up to snuff), and with those two particularly, never wanting for work, it was something they didn’t need. John Hodge is attached as before, and the novel is apparently only a starting point, but well, some of his recent credits (The Sweeney, Trance) have been less than scintillating. I hope for the best, and with Anthony Dod Mantle on board as cinematographer, it’s bound to look nifty, but the key to Trainspotting was not simply its visual acumen, but how it affected you.

The Passion of the Christ 2

The Passion of the Christ didn’t affect me very much, beyond reconfirming my preconception of the lasting effects of a Roman Catholic upbringing. I did at least appreciate it as a snub to Hollywood assumptions that they know it all and can manufacture public tastes, though.

Christian-minded businessmen have been attempting to replicate its phenomenal success ever since, but where pictures like God’s Not Dead and Heaven is Real can make a pretty packet in the US, they have minimal export potential; Passion made 40% of its money internationally. Major studios’ attempts to tap into the religious ticket have either been laughably inept (Exodus: Gods and Kings, where agnostic disdain isn’t the best way to woo devout cinemagoers) or abrasively unyielding (Noah – perhaps being an atheist isn’t the way to win an audience for a $100m+ movie; that it did as well as it did is most surprising). The Narnia series only succeeded up to a point, ultimately hamstrung by makers who didn’t care enough about the material, looking over their shoulders at Peter Jackson’s success as a reference point, and who weren’t savvy enough to adapt it to best effect.

I’m intrigued to discover what Mad Mel will do with Passion 2. Bereft of the blood, lashings, impalations and general misery, he’s left staring down the barrel of an antithetically optimistic tale, possibly too optimistic for one of his furrowed demeanour to get the most from. I’m sure he can have a great old time with Thomas, but the main fascination will be how he engages with material when he can’t fall back on viscera (which is all Torture Porn of the Christ was, really). Does he have anything to say about his ostensible faith beyond the ephemeral? Besides which, of course, Gibson is a first-rate filmmaker, and on that basis alone Passion 2 merits attention.

Murder on the Orient Express

Sir Ken most decidedly isn’t a first rate filmmaker, of course. Occasionally, his penchant for Dutch angles and epileptically swirling camera moves has suited the subject matter (Thor) but more often (Dead Again, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and yes, Hamlet) it has been a detraction and/or laughably out of place. That’s because as a director he’s a good actor, in the same way as a director Chris Carter makes a decent producer. Sir Ken lacks Gibson’s instinctive grasp of filmmaking. And, while the ensemble is bound to be the talking point of this Murder on the Orient Express remake, I doubt he can assemble a roster of talent as notable as Sidney Lumet did for his, Finney-d up film (the first of the thesps confirmed to don period frocks looks to be Angelina Jolie).

Which isn’t to say I have any objection to its existence; I just doubt that it’ll make a lasting or definable mark, in much the same way as Ken’s remakes/updates of Cinderella, Sleuth and Jack Ryan didn’t. I can also make an educated guess that Branagh’s Poirot will be closer to Finney’s deranged performance than Ustinov’s marvellously good-humoured incarnation. Express’ real appeal will be in exposing Christie’s most famous whodunit to a current generation ignorant of its outcome, though.

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

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…

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.

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…

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.

And you people, you’re all astronauts... on some kind of star trek.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
(SPOILERS) Star Trek: First Contact (also known as plain First Contact, back when “Star Trek” in the title wasn’t necessarily a selling point to the great unwashed. Or should that be great washed?) is probably about as good as a ST:TNG movie could be, in as much as it actively rejects much of what made the TV series what it is: starchy, placid, smug, platitudinous exchanges about how evolved humanity has become in the 25th century. Yeah, there’s a fair bit of that here too, but it mainly recognises that what made the series good, when it was good, was dense, time travel plotting and Borg. Mostly Borg. Until Borg became, like any golden egg, overcooked. Oh, and there’s that other hallowed element of the seven seasons, the goddam holodeck, but the less said about that the better. Well, maybe a paragraph. First Contact is a solid movie, though, overcoming its inherent limitations to make it, by some distance, the best of the four big screen outings with Pic…

So you made contact with the French operative?

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features opted to change the title from The Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a nourish, dour, subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

Don’t get tipsy. We can’t have you hiccoughing in the coffin.

The Avengers 4.2: The Murder Market
Tony Williamson’s first teleplay for the series picks up where Brian Clemens left off and then some, with murderous goings-on around marriage-making outfit Togetherness Inc (“Where there is always a happy ending”). Peter Graham Scott, in his first of four directing credits, sets out a winning stall where cartoonishness and stylisation are the order of the day. As is the essential absurdity of the English gentleman, with Steed’s impeccable credentials called on to illustrious effect not seen since The Charmers.

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…

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…

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.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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