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Movies on My Mind

Week Ending July 9 2016

Box Office

It’s the sure sign of a piss-poor movie summer (not that there’s been much sign of seasonal splendour in the firmament either) when you find yourself casting about for prospective movie offerings and coming up short. I’m clearly not alone, as aside from Finding Dory audiences have been determinedly unpersuaded by the slew of suckage at the US theatres, and internationally the prospects aren’t all that much rosier.

There’s a roster of movies that will have to settle for the $200m+ mark globally, nothing to be sneezed at if you’re reasonably budgeted, but something of a disaster if you’re a costly pic and one following a predecessor that made twice that amount (or more). So Alice Through the Looking Glass, Now You See Me 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Closet, follow The Huntsman: Winter’s War as more than a tad disappointing.

What isn’t so disappointing is that crap originals aren’t tempting cinemagoers to flock obediently to the follow-ups (anyone would think the great unwashed had taste, right?) It’s gratifying to see Seth Rogen’s boorish oaf failing to appeal in Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which has barely scraped $100m, and won’t finish up with half the original’s tally. Independence Day: Resurgence may top $300m, but that’s still half a billion less than its two-decades-old predecessor, while X-Men: Apocalypse comes in a good $200m short of Days of Future Past. Of those tarnished jewels, I’ve only seen the latter two, because none of the originals, or the advance word for their follow-ups, remotely enthused me.

And it isn’t just the sequels this summer, with Warcraft managing to provoke column inches over the power of the Chinese dollar (well, yen) but still looking too costly to merit further unexciting adventures in unMiddle Earth ($400m and stalling). Elsewhere, a property that might reasonably have been expected to double its total, given its brand recognition, Angry Birds Movie is only in the $300+ range, a modest result for an animation in the current climate.

Add to those ranks The Legend of Tarzan, the one I was mulling a look at during the last week and elected to refrain. It appears even less captivating than Greystoke, which at least had the unlikely prospect of serious, heritage-minded movie going for it. What Tarzan needed was to have the loin-clothed one fight dinosaurs, or troglodytes or some such. Give him something whacky to do, and pulpy, as that’s what he is, whacky and pulpy.

The BFG has also taken a bath, provoking some to suggest Spielberg has lost his touch. That may partly be it, but he also needs to get with a cinematographer who can provoke a childlike sense of wonder, rather than one who wants to get back to that serious-minded fare.

In weeks to come there’s the femme Ghostbusters, which I can’t get too excited about, although I rather like Kate McKinnon’s general turnout. I’m far from outraged over the gender swap; my nonplussed-ness is entirely down to finding the last one, 33 years ago, a bit of a snooze, and (sacrilegious to say) I didn’t actually LOVE the original. So this one doesn’t necessarily have to do a lot to win me over, other than actually muster me to go see it.

And then there’s Star Trek Beyond. Has a rousingly rejuvenated franchise ever soiled its goodwill so quickly? Simon Pegg (who is suddenly a Trekkie, but I could have sworn Doctor Who was always his bag, when it wasn’t Star Wars; it definitely wasn’t Babylon 5, which as we know was a big pile of shit) seems more fixated on Sulu’s sexual preferences than whether he’s concocted a decent story (interrogating the nature of the Federation may sound like a worthy subject to tackle, but you have to remember this comes from someone whose last writing credit was the underwhelming The World’s End and that the last serious minded Trek was one no one can recall despite having the estimable and Oscar-winning F Murray Abraham as the main villain). So while I’d really like Beyond to be beyond average, I’m not holding my breath.

The only bona fide big hits of the summer are the unstoppable Pixar and The Conjuring 2, and the latter looks to meet the first one for gross rather than turning into a latter-day Exorcist. The biggies (The Jungle Book, Civil War, Zootopia) all came during the spring season, and it rather speaks to a continued crumbling of traditionally carved-up periods where a designated box office sensation could berth.

The Secret Life of Pets looks to do reasonably well, but perhaps not as well as it might have if it had been truly inspired (although that hasn’t stopped Illumination before). Ice Age 5 may become another near-billion grosser or a take bit of a dip; I haven’t really familiarised myself with the fatigue factor of the franchise, but since this one has brought in UFOs, it may be that it’s getting into Police Academy desperate straits. And Ben-Hur is going to stink the place out. Pete’s Dragon may yet be the hit BFG wasn’t, but why would one appeal and the other not (everyone has nostalgic memories of the slightly rancid original)?

Which leaves some ifs (Nine Lives, The Founder) and a couple of sure things. Jason Bourne should rule August, unless it’s somehow rubbish. As for Suicide Squad, it has certainly made a dent in terms of public awareness, but David Ayer’s ability with material, tone, and general taste and flair is reliably variable. I’m expecting it to be rather a mess, which won’t necessarily preclude it from becoming a big hit. After that, it could easily be November (Dr Strange, Fantastic Beasts) before anything really tickles the public’s fancy.

Alien 5-ish

Given that Sir Ridley is firmly back in the land of aliens with Covenant, I’d have liked to think he had good sense and taste enough to send young jock Neill Blomkamp packing when he came in suited up in his replica Aliens power loader (he’s been redesigning it every movie he’s made), shouting about how he’s on an express elevator to xenomorph heaven, and mostly intends to make a sequel to Cameron’s not-quite-classic, mostly. Unfortunately, Sir Ridley has been deficit an ability to see a good screenplay for decades, even when it Glaswegian kisses him, and besides, Blomkamp probably had the ear of the same Fox bean counters who greenlit those AvPs.

Because this is a really bad idea. Not only to sweep two sequels under the carpet which, whatever their deficiencies, at least dared not to follow generic courses, in stark contrast to Blomkamp’s desire to do a direct, diligently bereft follow-up to a movie he still wakes up all sweaty about 30 years later. He risks alienating the very fans he’s trying to appeal to, the ones who wrote fanfic (or Dark Horse comics) about canoodling Ripley and Hicks, and grown-up Newt. The whole thing’s quite horrible really. And, while Sigourney’s in good shape, she is also in her mid-60s. As was Harrison when he proved returning to Indy was a bad idea, with a young inheritor who was an even worse one.

Blomkamp got lucky with District 9, basically. He’s a proficient technician but a dreadful scenarist, and Alien 3.1 stands to be as eviscerated as the AvPs and (slightly unjustly) Resurrection as yet another stillborn in the saga. Thank goodness (relatively) we have Scott unaccountably still carrying the torch for the franchise. He must just love Fassbender.

If you’d told me in 1988 that a talented action director would be steering a direct follow up in which Ripley’s new family packed punches against an alien hoard, I’d have been ecstatic. But I was young then, and knew no better. It seems Blomkamp still knows no better, but then that’s self-evident if you’ve seen Elysium or Chappie. We can but hope the audible backlash over this finds its way back to Fox, but they’ve never been a studio with professional pride, at least not since Murdoch’s been running things.

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

You were this amazing occidental samurai.

Ricochet (1991) (SPOILERS) You have to wonder at Denzel Washington’s agent at this point in the actor’s career. He’d recently won his first Oscar for Glory , yet followed it with less-than-glorious heart-transplant ghost comedy Heart Condition (Bob Hoskins’ racist cop receives Washington’s dead lawyer’s ticker; a recipe for hijinks!) Not long after, he dipped his tentative toe in the action arena with this Joel Silver production; Denzel has made his share of action fare since, of course, most of it serviceable if unremarkable, but none of it comes near to delivering the schlocky excesses of Ricochet , a movie at once ingenious and risible in its plot permutations, performances and production profligacy.

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.

People still talk about Pandapocalypse 2002.

Turning Red (2022) (SPOILERS) Those wags at Pixar, eh? Yes, the most – actually, the only – impressive thing about Turning Red is the four-tiered wordplay of its title. Thirteen-year-old Mei (Rosalie Chiang) finds herself turning into a large red panda at emotive moments. She is also, simultaneously, riding the crimson wave for the first time. Further, as a teenager, she characteristically suffers from acute embarrassment (mostly due to the actions of her domineering mother Ming Lee, voiced by Sandra Oh). And finally, of course, Turning Red can be seen diligently spreading communist doctrine left, right and centre. To any political sensibility tuning in to Disney+, basically (so ones with either considerable or zero resistance to woke). Take a guess which of these isn’t getting press in reference to the movie? And by a process of elimination is probably what it it’s really about (you know in the same way most Pixars, as far back as Toy Story and Monsters, Inc . can be given an insi

I can’t be the worst. What about that hotdog one?

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) (SPOILERS) It would have been a merciful release, had the title card “ The End ”, flashing on screen a little before the ninety-minute mark, not been a false dawn. True, I would still have been unable to swab the bloody dildoes fight from my mind, but at least Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been short. Indeed, by the actual end I was put in mind of a line spoken by co-star James Wong in one of his most indelible roles: “ Now this really pisses me off to no end ”. Or to put it another way, Everything Everywhere All at Once rubbed me up the wrong which way quite a lot of most of the time.

We could be mauled to death by an interstellar monster!

Star Trek Beyond (2016) (SPOILERS) The odd/even Star Trek failure/success rule seemed to have been cancelled out with the first reboot movie, and then trodden into ground with Into Darkness (which, yes, I quite enjoyed, for all its scandalous deficiencies). Star Trek Beyond gets us back onto more familiar ground, as it’s very identifiably a “lesser” Trek , irrespective of the big bucks and directorial nous thrown at it. This is a Star Trek movie that can happily stand shoulder to shoulder with The Search for Spock and Insurrection , content in the knowledge they make it look good.

I think World War II was my favourite war.

Small Soldiers (1998) An off-peak Joe Dante movie is still one chock-a-block full of satirical nuggets and comic inspiration, far beyond the facility of most filmmakers. Small Soldiers finds him back after a six-year big screen absence, taking delirious swipes at the veneration of the military, war movies, the toy industry, conglomerates and privatised defence forces. Dante’s take is so gleefully skewed, he even has big business win! The only problem with the picture (aside from an indistinct lead, surprising from a director with a strong track record for casting juveniles) is that this is all very familiar. Dante acknowledged Small Soldiers was basically a riff on Gremlins , and it is. Something innocuous and playful turns mad, bad and dangerous. On one level it has something in common with Gremlins 2: The New Batch , in that the asides carry the picture. But Gremlins 2 was all about the asides, happy to wander off in any direction that suited it oblivious to whet

We’ve got the best ball and chain in the world. Your ass.

Wedlock (1991) (SPOILERS) The futuristic prison movie seemed possessed of a particular cachet around this time, quite possibly sparked by the grisly possibilities of hi-tech disincentives to escape. On that front, HBO TV movie Wedlock more than delivers its FX money shot. Elsewhere, it’s less sure of itself, rather fumbling when it exchanges prison tropes for fugitives-on-the-run ones.

He’ll regret it to his dying day, if ever he lives that long.

The Quiet Man (1952) (SPOILERS) The John Wayne & John Ford film for those who don’t like John Wayne & John Ford films? The Quiet Man takes its cues from Ford’s earlier How Green Was My Valley in terms of, well less Anglophile and Hibernophile and Cambrophile nostalgia respectively for past times, climes and heritage, as Wayne’s pugilist returns to his family seat and stirs up a hot bed of emotions, not least with Maureen O’Hara’s red-headed hothead. The result is a very likeable movie, for all its inculcated Oirishness and studied eccentricity.

He's not in my pyjamas, is he?

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) (SPOILERS) By rights, Paul Mazursky’s swinging, post-flower-power-gen partner-swap movie ought to have aged terribly. So much of the era’s scene-specific fare has, particularly so when attempting to reflect its reverberations with any degree of serious intent. Perhaps it’s because Mazursky and co-writer Larry Tucker (also of The Monkees , Alex in Wonderland and I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! ) maintain a wry distance from their characters’ endeavours, much more on the wavelength of Elliott Gould’s Ted than Robert Culp’s Bob; we know any pretensions towards uninhibited expression can’t end well, but we also know Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice have to learn the hard way.

There is a war raging, and unless you pull your head out of the sand, you and I and about five billion other people are going to go the way of the dinosaur.

The X-Files 5.14: The Red and the Black The most noteworthy aspect of this two parter is that it almost – but not quite – causes me to reassess my previous position that the best arc episodes are those that avoid tackling the greater narrative head-on, attempting to advance the resistant behemoth. It may be less than scintillating as far as concepts go, but the alien resistance plot is set out quite clearly here, as are the responses to it from the main players.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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