Tag Archives: film

In the movie ET, you may recall, the titular alien touched down in a forest bordering a suburban California sprawl, and was sheltered by an angsty tween from nasty men with guns torches. But what if he’d landed in Brixton instead? And wasn’t here to sniff out a hundred varieties of moss for the Betelgeuse branch of Notcutts?

That’s the premise of the new movie Attack the Block, written and directed by Joe Cornish – once of nineties Channel 4’s  Adam and Joe show, now of tens BBC Radio 6 Music’s Adam and Joe show, and it seems a proper grown-up film-maker.

The stars of the film are most certainly not grown up, though. They’re almost unintelligibly young, with their strange clothes and their loud music and HAVE YOU UNDERSTOOD A WORD THEY’VE SAID YET? These YOUNG PEOPLE, they don’t SPEAK PROPERLY these days. THAT’S NOT DANCING, THAT’S JUST JUMPING UP AND DOWN. Have I had my dinner, Doreen? I have, haven’t I? I have, yes. I thought I had. A lovely dinner. Ooh, it was a lovely dinner. What was it? Curry? I don’t understand curry. IT’S JUST MUCK. MUCK ON A PLATE. I’m given to believe she stands on a BOX.

Anyway. The urban dialect of the younger cast, all ya get me and allow it and isnit and teeth-sucking, takes a little adjustment for those like me unfamiliar with the patois. You have to hear your way into it, pick up the rhythm, feel the force flowing through you. Before long you’re jiving like a native – wicked, chum, comprendez? Booyakashah of Iran.

Incidentally I have just bought a hoody. From Her Majesty’s The Gap shop. I know. Fashion. Icon.

Anyway. The film! Yes, the film.

Attack the Block is a coming-of-age film. Well, more a coming-of-rage film. The main characters are a gang of rufty-tufty teens, led by a boy called Moses, who spend their evenings terrorising the estate with their bikes and parkas and knives. On bonfire night they encounter a most unusual visitor: not a bewildered American tourist, nor a taxi driver willingly south of the river after 10pm, but something far stranger and not of this world. Their turf – their estate, their block – becomes a battleground, a castle under siege from alien invasion. Their universe expands a little; they do a little growing up. Hijinks ensue.

The film has a refreshing lack of grown-ups wagging fingers. Most adult characters veer either to the stoner or psychopath ends of the spectrum, leaving the gang to tackle the unwanted visitors in their own special way. It’s a bit like a Famous Five movie written by William S. Burroughs.

Joe Cornish coaxed pretty impressive performances from the cast, even the youngest members. The dialogue was, apparently, checked and independently verified as accurate for the disaffected mopers of today’s Broken Britain. Give it ten years and it’ll need subtitles, mind. I can’t imagine it’ll play in the US without them, unless audiences are given crib sheets on the way in or screened for age.

It’s Cornish’s first feature film as a director, but you wouldn’t know it. All those years of bedroom-based film-making with Adam Buxton certainly paid off. It’s fast-paced, nicely plotted, and I expect a strong candidate for Best British Film next year. Ya get me?

Avaragado’s rating: curry

Aussie soaps were not originally a well-rubbed waypoint on the cobbled road to celebrity. Nobody from The Sullivans ever wore spandex over dubiously inflated muscles in a Marvel franchise, not even 1977’s The Amazing Spider-Man. All that has changed. Chris Hemsworth can, curiously, trace his casting as Norse totty Thor back to cigar’n’braces soap-enabler Michael Grade or his eighties vicinity, and the unexpectedly world-changing decision to buy Neighbours for BBC Daytime. For Neighbours begat Kylie, Jason, Guy, Alan and a few others, and let loose Home and Away on the UK, which spawned Hemsworth.

From Summer Bay and World of Cliché to Kirk’s dad and now Asgard, in but a few short tumultuous years. It’s like casting Adam ‘Ian Beale’ Woodyatt as one of the X-Men. Iceman, Phoenix, Wolverine, Black Pudding.

Thor has a tricky path to take: part action-adventure, part Norse Mythology 101, it needs to introduce a non-comic-gobbling crowd to a pantheon of “actual” gods it might remember only vaguely from school discussions about days of the week, and also deliver a coherent plot that isn’t something cheesily related like an apocalyptic Battle For Thursday.

The story is by Mark Protosevich and Babylon 5 overlord J. Michael Straczynski, with a three-author screenplay that suggests development Helheim. The film takes place bang in the middle of the Marvel universe (movie franchise edition), with noob-tolerant, fanboy-wetting references to S.H.I.E.L.D. and Tony Stark. But fanboys beware: movie Thor’s not comics Thor. Of course you know that already, you’re a fanboy; you probably already wrote a capped green exclamated thesis on the matter. Less foamy Thor-comic fans will be happy that certain aspects of the comics are preserved (though not all).

Some of the early scenes in Asgard feel draggy at the time: I thought they were trying and failing to be quick expositional backgrounders, but they turned out to be plot. Asgard itself is beautifully realised by director Kenneth Branagh (I know, right?). Kirby loved a wide galactic smear and that’s what we see, with a world full of godly fixtures and fittings and implausible furniture. No pixel is left unbuffed. The Midgard Earth scenes are a great counterpoint, a dreary dustbowl of diners and utterly ungodlike fatsos.

The main human characters are nothing to Bifröst home about. Natalie Portman plays the standard scientist/love interest role; no Oscar noms here. She has a sassy wisecracking girly sidekick and a weathered, Viking-like colleague with whom to enter and exit sundry scrapes. All very comic-like, in fact.

Aside from eight-packing Thor and his massive weapon Mjolnir, gods include but are not limited to dad Odin, portrayed by barely not-Welsh Anthony Hopkins, and brother Loki, played by Michael Sheen Loki-likey Tom Hiddleston. Other deities are available.

Hemsworth scrubs up well. Seekers of flesh will perk up for one brief scene and instantly divide into mary and contrary camps. I’m on the mary side: he’s overly muscled for my tastes. But I still wød.

As you might expect, there’s nothing to stop further films with at least some of the same cast. Indeed I see The Avengers (no, not Steed et al) is in production for 2012 – presumably drawing together the various strands from several Marvel movies. I confess a low-grade squee at this: different movies, different characters, one consistent(ish) universe. It all makes the constantly rebooting Batman and Superman franchises look like dinothors.

Yeah, sorry about that one.

Avaragado’s rating: one tub of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey

One of the few non-spoilers I can relate about the new Duncan Jones film Source Code is that it’s not released under the GPL. Oh, and it has a 12 certificate rather than an X.509 certificate. Even so, I imagine someone from the smoking remains of Caldera/SCO is already, Terminator-like, reaching an immortal hand from a lava lake in a bid to claim that certain lines of the screenplay are copied verbatim from its priceless intellectual property – where by “lines” they mean “words”, such as “include” and “the”.

The truth is that Source Code is undoubtedly inspired by at least one other copyrighted work, as subtly acknowledged by one particular casting choice and a line delivered by that character. It’s part Groundhog Day, part Quantum Leap.

The Bill Murray/Scott Bakula role is taken by Jake Gyllenhaal’s big blue eyes. Other characters probably appeared. I found only two flaws in his performance: he was occasionally off-screen, and he kept his clothes on. I trust he can learn from this experience and rectify it in future roles.

… sigh …

Sorry. Drifted off there briefly.

The Quantum Leap part: Jake-sigh wakes to find himself seemingly in another person’s body. But why? How? And then for reasons unknown he’s suddenly somewhere else, with the equivalent of the Quantum Leap character Al – some woman or other. It becomes evident he must go back, Groundhog-like, and repeat himself. We discover what’s going on as he does; indeed the film starts with no preamble bar some city-swooping scene-setting in the opening credits – we’re straight into the story, as confused as Jake.

As with Duncan/Zowie Jones/Bowie’s previous film, Moon, the screenplay doesn’t spoon-feed you or festoon the sets with neon arrows honking at plot points. It toys with you a little: a misdirection here, a surprise there. It’s more moving than you might expect. It’s an intelligent film that treats you as more than the slack-faced drooler Hollywood usually targets. And I’m pleased to say that it’s resplendent in all two of the traditional, sufficient movie dimensions.

One of the few nits I can pick in the film – ignoring Jake’s lack of lack of clothes – is the title. I’m sure no-one will settle down with their popcorn expecting ninety minutes of emacs pr0n or even Linus Torvalds’ life story (well, if they can make a film about Facebook), but it feels as though they couldn’t think of a better title. It’s not wrong, exactly, but nor does it feel entirely right. On the other hand, perhaps it puts off the droolers – who’d last about fifteen minutes before ejecting overpriced confectionery and bleating about the lack of nudity black and white hats.

Jones is quickly earning a reputation for intelligent, entertaining, genuinely thought-provoking movies. I look forward to seeing how he trumps this one with his next film, which I understand will be a subtle allegory about the Vietnam war called Underfloor Heating.

Avaragado’s rating: swiss cheese

The single man from A Single Man as the Duke of York/George VI! Mrs not-Miggins from Sweeney Todd as the Duchess of York/Queen Mum! Dumbledore as George V! The girl from Outnumbered as Princess Margaret! The Master as the Archbishop of Canterbury! Him off Auf Wiedersehen, Pet as Churchill! Mike from Neighbours as the Prince of Wales/Edward VIII! How could The King’s Speech possibly disappoint?

Two speeches bookend the film. The first, the duke’s disastrous closing speech at the 1925 British Empire Exhibition. The second, his far more important broadcast to the Empire and the world as king at the outbreak of World War 2 (if you consider that a spoiler, I recommend you resign from the Internet immediately). The filling between those speech-slices shows how Bertie – the duke’s first name was Albert, not George – struggled to overcome a severe stammer with the unconventional help of aussie speech therapist Lionel Logue, played by Hollywood’s default Bruce, Geoffrey Rush.

The two meet after the Duchess of not-Miggins, quack-hunting, finds Logue in a dingy office on Harley Street. He and Bertie don’t immediately get on, not least because Logue insists on calling him Bertie. It seems that despite having married a commoner – not-Miggins wasn’t royal by birth – Bertie rarely interacted with the lower classes other than on a purely genuflective basis; unlike today, when you haven’t truly come of age until you’ve poked the Duchess of Cornwall in the ribs.

The turbulent relationship of Bertie and Logue is set against the ever-growing backdrop of the scandal of the day – Mike from Neighbours and That American Woman. In passing we also see our own dear present Queen in princess form, virtually mute for some reason; Princess Outnumbered, pre-gin and pre-fags-on-sticks, gets all the lines.

The film covers Dumbledore’s death and Mike’s accession, and we learn how both plum-tongued toffs played a part in perpetuating Bertie’s stammer. His authoritarian father took a shouty “just say it” approach to therapy, akin to the well-known “just cheer up, ferchrissakes” treatment for depression. His playboy party animal elder brother taunted him, calling him b-b-b-Bertie. Oh Mike, how could you? You were such a nice boy in Erinsborough.

Mike’s subsequent abdication and relocation to the Bungle Bungles with Her, though constitutionally a barrel-load of ZOMG! at the time that rocked the Windsors to their very core (somewhere in Bavaria?), was in hindsight the best possible outcome. Mike was far too chummy-chummy with the Austrian painter then wowing Germany with his hypnotic moustache; had he hung on to the throne through 1938 and 39 we might all be sporting that moustache today.

That’s not to say that Bertie, as king, was perfect. The film ignores the uncomfortable truth that he was entirely relaxed about Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler at Munich, and indeed favoured Halifax over Churchill when Chamberlain evacuated himself from Downing Street in 1940. But it’s true that Bertie, in contrast to his elder brother, was a fighter not a quitter. Although unprepared and untrained to be king – “I’m a naval officer,” he says in the film – he knew his duty. As Duke of York, despite his stammer, he stood before thousands and spoke – unconfidently, haltingly, with endless, excruciating pauses, with uneasy, embarrassed crowds – at event after event. And as king during the war he was seen as a symbol of Britain, a great strength, a huge asset to morale. Perhaps some of that was down to his Australian therapist and his apparently dodgy but effective techniques.

A few of the film’s visuals stand out: the original, partly-uncovered Wembley stadium is nicely recreated, and a balcony scene at Buckingham Palace is very effective. Mostly London is enveloped in budget-friendly smog.

With the exception of the cliched and slightly comic cigar-fatty Churchill impersonation of Timothy Spall, performances are universally good. Geoffrey Rush is entirely convincing. Derek Jacobi looks more and more like a barn owl with every movie. Mike from Neighbours has a tough job: not just doing toff, but the toff whose voice we all know from regular outings of the abdication speech (which he performs in the film).

Colin Firth’s Bertie, of course, dominates. This is no p-p-p-pick up a Penguin acting: it’s a real, raw, painful stammer. More than once I realised I was holding my breath as he spoke, my heart racing. In the final outbreak-of-war speech we will him on, fight with him, and cheer at the finish (not actually, we’re British, but we do fidget a little and exhale with a faint smile).

It’s a great performance, and a great film. Firth for the Oscar.

Avaragado’s rating: a pound of gobstoppers

The glossy, exorbitantly priced Tron movie preview magazine was a frequent flyer in the 1982-3 edition of my school bag. Its scuffed blue and red pages, all neon, polygons and exclamation marks, spent many cycles amongst the wallpaper-wrapped exercise books and text books. I was the living embodiment of the target demographic for the film: an obsessive teen geek.

The original Tron’s CGI wouldn’t trouble the average modern smartphone but it was ground-breaking in those heady post-Falklands days. The visual design embraced and transcended the technical limitations. The neon-effect, the glow of the costumes – made using a hugely tedious and manual rotoscoping process – set the film apart. Its storyline was novel and imaginative, if not exactly plausible, and contained enough geeky references to keep me happy. A character called Bit who could only answer yes or no! A Master Control Program character, or MCP, whose name wasn’t a million nanometres away from that of a prominent OS of the day, CP/M! And Pacman, chomping away as an Easter Egg in the background!

Skip forward 28 years. CGI is ubiquitous, unnoteworthy – and undetectable in most films by most people. We’re all networked – even our mums have email – and words like modem are not the arcane terms of a malodorous minority; they’ve passed through common usage and now begin to seem antiquated and quaint. Geeks have inherited the Earth.

And along comes Tron: Legacy. How could it possibly seem as new and different as its forebear? Of course it couldn’t. But surely there could be an interesting untold story to tell: a subtle or not-so-subtle allusion to social networking, network neutrality or crowdsourcing, or at least a recognition that several billion more people have come online in those 28 years.

No. Let’s just have a bunch of set-piece chases and action scenes, per usual. Oh, and let’s do it in 3D, because it’s teh future, innit.

The film starts, ludicrously, with what I can only describe as release notes. The gist: “Yeah, well, not all of it is 3D. It’s like totes deliberate, stop your moanin or summin or nuffin.” It turns out that scenes set in meatspace are in 2D, so we spend the entire first act doing Buddy Holly impersonations in our specs for no reason whatsoever. But come on! It’s like UI: if you have to explain it, it’s broken. I suppose we should be grateful that the film-makers took care to make it as realistic in that respect as most software.

That first act opens with a whole bunch of exposition for those unfamiliar with the first film. But I’m afraid I wasn’t paying much attention as the dialogue was washed out by a nerd in the row behind fumbling through his bag to find what sounded like a blaring radio. And visually my brain was going: Welcome to Uncanny Valley! Because here’s where we first see the much-hyped de-aged Jeff Bridges, in a flashback scene. But although we can do CGI buildings, CGI vehicles, CGI water, CGI animals, CGI hair and CGI fur, CGI people still look like freaks, animated zombies, utterly unreal.

An unchallenging plot ensues in which grumpy but doable super-rich implausible hacker totty Sam Flynn, son of Jeff Bridges’ character Kevin, plays at being Batman outside and inside the computer with the all-too-predictable assistance of a ladyprogram I shall call Ruby off Rails.

No, actually, Sam is more of a Luke Skywalker character since Kevin is plainly Obi Wan, Ruby is Leia and Clu – Kevin’s program alter ego – Vader.

Or you could look at it as a Spaghetti Code Western, since the white hats all glow blue/white, and the black hats all glow red.

But even this was too complicated for one nearby patron of the cinema, a dozy cow who spent most of the film annoying her nerd boyfriend (and the rest of us) asking him what was going on. Pay attention! Shut up! Pay attention!

The film is almost entirely devoid of humour. I saw no Easter Eggs; no puns, visual or aural, about the net or computing. There are a few nerdsnickery moments when you see (in Real World scenes) glimpses of a Linux command line, but they don’t count: someone typing “ps -ef” is never funny, unless you type it on Windows. The only intentional comedy is in the obligatory appearance by Michael Sheen, playing a gay nightclub host program (don’t ask) as an odd mash-up of David Frost and Graham Norton: Frost/Nortron, I suppose.

I did enjoy some aspects of the film. The soundtrack by Daft Punk is excellent, and the visuals are superbly realised – modulo uncanny valley. But overall the film offers nothing new, nothing ground-breaking. And, you might wonder, why haven’t I mentioned the Tron character himself? Yes, you might wonder that. I’ll say no more.

There is a film to be made melding the concepts and originality of the original Tron with the seismic changes seen since those primitive days – the expansion of online life, the loss of privacy and secrecy, the slow death of long-cherished business models, the scrambling for control – but Tron: Legacy sure ain’t it.

Avaragado’s rating: greenbeans.exe