Yeah, keep walking, you lanky prick!

Mute

(2018)

(SPOILERS) Duncan Jones was never entirely convincing when talking up his reasons for Mute’s futuristic setting, and now it’s easy to see why. What’s more difficult to discern is his passion for the project in the first place. If the picture’s first hour is torpid in pace and singularly fails to muster interest, the second is more engaging, but that’s more down to the unappetising activities of Paul Rudd and Justin Theroux’s supporting surgeons than the quest undertaken by Alex Skarsgård’s lead. Which isn’t such a compliment, really.

Jones cites M*A*S*H’s Trapper John McIntyre and Hawkeye Pierce as his inspiration for Cactus Bill (Rudd) and Duck (Theroux), noting their capacity for being very cruel to those they didn’t like. Rudd in particular has gone all out to take this literally, growing a massive Elliot Gould moustache and sporting a howling Hawaiian shirt. He’s a ringer. If Trapper John were a knife-wielding maniac with serious anger issues (but a daughter he adores). The refashioning of Donald Sutherland’s character as a disarming paedophile with an Owen Wilson blonde mop is an even greater leap, however.

As queasy as Duck’s narrative line is – I tend to think you need very good reason for pursuing this sort of subject matter in genre movies, or you run the risk of seeming glib or manipulative, and Jones doesn’t really pass that test – there’s a degree of astuteness going on in the characterisation of Bill realising Duck’s predilections and his subsequent warnings to him. Unfortunately, when the picture reaches a climax in which Duck takes off with Bill’s daughter, it moves into the kind of territory Bruce Robinson cited as troubling (“I don’t want to see a child in jeopardy as a piece of entertainment” he said of Neil Jordan’s reworking of his paedophile serial killer screenplay In Dreams).

Theroux does a very good Owen Wilson, it has to be said (you can tell Duck’s a bad seed as he has a penchant for unassuming cardigans), while Rudd’s metamorphosis into an extremely threatening villain is nothing short of a revelation (I’d never have taken him for convincing in that area). It’s perhaps unsurprising then that they effortlessly wrest any glimmers of attention from Leo (Skarsgård), as pretty much everyone here does likewise; also seen fleetingly are Robert Sheehan as a transsexual cabaret act, Dominic Monaghan as a geisha with a room full of sex-ware, Dudley-Moore-in-Foul Play-style, and Noel Clarke as an obnoxious Brit.

The Amish mute of the title, Jones’ bartender-cum-amateur detective protagonist is that exact two-word description – the Amish mute bit – in search of a character. Skarsgård has nothing to work with – his romance with Seynbeb Saleh’s Naadirah isn’t sufficiently engaging to make his hunt for her dramatically compelling – and even when Leo’s on the rampage (taking out a club full of Russians with a big stick) there’s a sense of something missing. It doesn’t help the overall tone of the piece either that Naddirah turns out to have been murdered by Bill, emphasising the dearth of good reasons to enter this less than salubrious world.

Mute didn’t start out with a sci-fi backdrop, so it should come as little surprise to learn there’s no point at which it feels remotely relevant. Sure, it’s nice to see Sam Rockwell as Sam Bell(s) again (“Lunar Industries ex-employee questioned by panel in presence of scores of his clones” announces a TV bulletin), but that’s the thinnest of motivations. The Amish-technophobia element could as easily have been applied to a present-day setting, if it came down to it, so that’s not really selling it either. Essentially, Mute offers art direction in search of cause. And costuming too, which appears to be entirely indulging Jones’ ‘80s retro-future obsession (shockingly coloured hair, new romantics, neon). The Berlin underworld is equally unnecessary but better finessed (it gives Bill and Duck an appropriately jaundiced fish-out-of-water quality; they’re refugees of the perpetual Afghan conflict).

The movie invites inevitable comparisons to The Shape of Water for its vocally-challenged lead character, but Leo never comes close to matching Elisa’s affecting presence. And if Guillermo del Toro’s picture is about outsiders’ mutual acceptance of each other for their differences, the decision to return Leo his speech is a baffling one, not least because Duck’s reasoning completely fails to translate (he wants him to apologise for killing Bill?!)

It’s worth noting the director’s departing dedication to his dad and nanny, but as a paean to surrogate parenthood the picture feels as half-baked as the idea that the Amish proverb opening the picture announces its theme (“In order to mold his people, God often has to melt them” – I don’t know if that’s an actual Amish proverb, but okay). Mute’s underwhelming reception will surely be particularly gutting for Jones, given the personal traumas that preceded and accompanied its production.

He’s reunited with Moon cinematographer Gary Shaw and composer Clint Mansell here, but the further we move away from the director’s commendable debut, the more worrying becomes the thought that he might have wowed us with a one-off. Source Code came with a string of positives, but it was very much made to order, while Warcraft was simply an overblown, unwieldy dud. Mute is better than that, at least, but there could be a lesson here that there’s sometimes good reason for failing to get a cherished project off the ground. Fingers crossed that isn’t crystallised when Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote arrives in a few months’ time.

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

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

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.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

You ever heard the saying, “Don’t rob the bank across from the diner that has the best donuts in three counties”?

2 Guns (2013) (SPOILERS) Denzel Washington is such a reliable performer, that it can get a bit boring. You end up knowing every gesture or inflection in advance, whether he’s playing a good guy or a bad guy. And his films are generally at least half decent, so you end up seeing them. Even in Flight (or perhaps especially in Flight ; just watch him chugging down that vodka) where he’s giving it his Oscar-nominatable best, he seems too familiar. I think it may be because he’s an actor who is more effective the less he does. In 2 Guns he’s not doing less, but sometimes it seems like it. That’s because the last person I’d ever expect blows him off the screen; Mark Wahlberg.

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

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