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

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

One final thing I have to do, and then I’ll be free of the past.

Vertigo (1958) (SPOILERS) I’ll readily admit my Hitchcock tastes broadly tend to reflect the “consensus”, but Vertigo is one where I break ranks. To a degree. Not that I think it’s in any way a bad film, but I respect it rather than truly rate it. Certainly, I can’t get on board with Sight & Sound enthroning it as the best film ever made (in its 2012’s critics poll). That said, from a technical point of view, it is probably Hitch’s peak moment. And in that regard, certainly counts as one of his few colour pictures that can be placed alongside his black and white ones. It’s also clearly a personal undertaking, a medley of his voyeuristic obsessions (based on D’entre les morts by Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac).

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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