Indie Game: The Movie (2012) - Lisanne Pajot & James Swirsky

Kickstarter funded documentary about the world of independent game developers. Right from the off I have to say that I thought this was an extremely absorbing watch, for a start I’m not a gamer, it’s not that I don’t enjoy playing them it’s just that I find they tend to suck the hours out of life like nothing else on earth. There’s heroin addiction and just a little lower down the ladder there’s game addiction. I just don’t need either in my life. That said I still found this documentary enthralling and informative, directors Pajot & Swirsky manage to walk a novice like me through the world of gaming without me ever feeling like I’m watching an episode of Sesame Street.

Pajot & Swirsky focus on two games, one near completion - Super Meat Boy, and one that has been in development for so long (Fez) that its creator (Phil Fish), seems to have lost sight of what he is doing. As well as these hopefuls we get input from the developer behind the über successful Braid (Jonathan Blow), on the highs and lows of actually getting a game out into the marketplace. As with King of Kong before it Indie Game is watchable even if you couldn’t pick out a Wii in a police line up. Like any good gaming documentary Indie Game focuses on the human drama rather than the pixels.

Right from the off I was hooked, I remember Francis Ford Coppola once saying that the best way to start a documentary was to put your best footage right up front, even before the title card and then build the documentary up towards that point. That’s exactly what Indie Game: The Movie does. So what on paper sounds like possibly the least exciting documentary ever, actually turns out to have tension and drama aplenty.

Edmund McMillen (tats, weird facial hair and a natty line in Metal tees) and Tommy Refenes (worry, male pattern baldness and more worrying) are very easy to root for, they come across as a couple of regular types and you'll find yourself wanting them to be a huge success by the time their game is launched. Phil Fish (Wolverine hair and chops) is a little different though. I actually found myself hoping that someone would rescue the poor guy, who all the way through this seems to sink further and further under the pressure of living up to what his game promises to be.

The difference between indie and major in the gaming world seems to be one of artistic control over your product. Indie games are more quirky and warm, less inclined to want the whole world to hook up and play at the same time. That’s the plus side, the downside however is that usually a tiny group of people have to do what hundreds of programmers manage at the major studios, and on a miniscule budget to boot. This causes games to take years to arrive, and this can really take it’s toll on the poor sods that spend every waking hour working on them. So imagine then what it’s like if that game sinks without a trace, or even worse never even sees the light of day. These are the sort of things that Indie Game deals with.

I didn’t cry, I didn’t laugh and I didn’t want to play computer games after watching this either. But I did go straight on-line afterwards to see what had happened to the three main people in the documentary, and that’s good enough for me to think that this is well worth an hour and a half of your life be you a gamer or not.

Tron: Legacy (2010) - Joseph Kosinski

I'm old enough to have seen the original Tron at the cinema as a film mad nine year old. Back then it ticked pretty much every box for me, since all I required was something that zipped along at a reasonable speed and looked great (and in the era of Pac Man Tron really did look the balls). I had no real interest in story lines or heaven forbid story arcs, or any of that other stuff that makes films so watchable for me now. In fact in later years having rewatched so many of those beloved films of my pre-teens, I have wondered if I even understood what was going on up on the screen. Somehow I doubt it. I liked seeing Bruce Lee and Clint Eastwood kicking the bad guys arse, all the rest of it was padding until they did it again I'm guessing. Anyway when Tron came out on DVD I got all excited having not seen it for almost twenty years. Settling down to watch it I was kind of shocked just how poor the film was, and just how great it looked. I haven't ever bothered watching it again since then, some things are better left in the past. So cut to the here and now, and Tron is being heralded as having predicted everything from the internet to just about anything else involving digital technology. Which quite frankly it didn't, what it did do (or at least tried to) was harness the potential of computer graphics in films. And that's pretty much it.

So here we are almost thirty years after the original with a much belated sequel playing at our multiplexes. In 3D no less. Now I'm not going to bang on about 3D and how little respect I have for it as a revolution in film culture, well not too much. Let's just see how it goes shall we? I approached watching Tron: Legacy with more than a little caution and without massive expectations. All I wanted was some good looking excitement, if it had a decent story too, well that would be a bonus, but not necessarily something I expected.

I'll say upfront that it didn't really cut the mustard for me. I don't really want to go into what the whole film was about, not for fear of spoiling anything for people that haven't seen it, but more for the fact that beyond it being a father and son story there wasn't much else going on. Sure there are plenty of gobbledygook phrases and terminology bandied about to try and pretend that some deep thought has gone into the script, look Jeff Bridges is all zen and everything, but it's all nonsense, the story is pitiful.

The film starts with a disclaimer that not all of the film is in 3D which was a bit of a downer. However it soon becomes clear that the real world is presented (mainly) in 2D, and the digital world in the 'much heightened 3D everything looks weird and fake but were in a computer so it makes sense' style. Which does make sense, and for the most part works well. What doesn't work is any sort of emotional relationship between any of the characters on screen. Bridges plays Kevin Flynn (aforementioned father) and Clu (a digital version of himself in the digital world), Flynn is a flimsy 2D character, when he meets his son for the first time in twenty years there is no massive emotional scene, we just get the back story of what happened to him. It's all a little odd since as I said earlier the whole crux of the film is this whole father son thing.

Still where it does work is the glorious eye candy that is literally thrown at us from the screen. I wouldn't say it's particularly well directed (set pieces would have benefited immensely from a master shot just to give us a clue of where we are), but it does look lush. It also sounds great, the soundtrack by Daft Punk really comes alive when heard at maximum volume in a cinema. Their cameo in the film was the only moment that made me feel any twinge of excitement. Which is a bit of a worry, since if there is one area that Tron: Legacy should deliver it's excitement. The little ten year old chappie that I sat next to, calmly munched away on his popcorn throughout the film. I kept waiting for him to go mental from the sheer rush of coolness he must be feeling via his 3D glasses, but we might as well have both been watching Cocoon: The Return.

The acting in Tron: Legacy is woeful, Bridges seemed to be on autopilot and the much talked about digital version of a young Jeff wouldn't fool my cats, especially on a big screen where his lifeless eyes are so huge you can't help but see that he's not human. Michael Sheen admittedly has some fun mixing together Ziggy Stardust and Alex Delarge, he's very over the top and incredibly camp. In other words perfect for this film. Shame this ended up being my first cinema trip of 2011, still it could have been worse, as the trailers I saw before the film (Green Lantern, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Fighter) all proved.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010) - Edgar Wright

Wow, let me kick this off by saying that despite reservations that I wouldn't like this, I came away thinking it was pretty neat. I don't read comics or play computer games anymore, which is more down to the fact that I have other things to do, than thinking it's childish or anything like that. So I was thinking that this film wasn't aimed at me at all, since I hadn't even heard of Scott Pilgrim until it was announced as Edgar Wright's next film. Edgar Wright I have heard of, and despite the fact that I think he's a bit of a goon, and far too full of himself, he has done enough to make me at least interested in anything he decides to direct. Spaced was great and at the time felt like a much needed shot in the arm for British comedy. Not only was it funny but it looked so bloody sexy, next up was Shaun of the Dead, which gave Wright the chance to really go for it in terms of style and for the most part it worked. Hot Fuzz was such a bloated effort I'm amazed that any of the humour made it through, it was overlong, over complicated and had about four endings too many.

So with the above in mind you can imagine why I wasn't all that bothered about Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I probably would never have bothered seeing it either had it not been for the fact that a few people (Daniel Bergman take a bow), who's taste in film I really trust told me that I would like it. So for those who are like me and have never been touched by the world of Scott Pilgrim fear not, for despite all the visual madness (oh and there is plenty of that, more of which later), the film is about the baggage people carry around with them from relationship to relationship. Something everyone who is old enough to see this can relate to.

Visually this is out there, but in a good way, it doesn't burn your eyes or leave you reaching for the painkillers. I don't think there has been a term coined for this style of film making yet. It's the equivalent to film what post rock is to music. Post Cinema just sounds well wrong, so hopefully someone bigger and brighter than me will name this genre at some point. But you know the sort of thing I'm talking about, Oliver Stone really went for it with Natural Born Killers and Fincher ran with it on Fight Club to a degree, but Wright really cranks it up a notch with Scott Pilgrim. It's very kinetic, perfect for a generation weaned on fast cut late eighties fluff, those who have the language of computer games firmly lodged in their underused brains. But the visuals are just the dressing, the actual theme running through the film is that of ex girlfriends/boyfriends and all that.

So the basic plot of the film is this, Scott Pilgrim regular geek, plays bass in a band with two other geeks, meets a girl (Ramona Flowers) falls for her, and as happens in these situations she has a past that our hero should be happy to not know about, but unfortunately (for him) he can't help but be curious about her exes. And so since this tale is not tied to the real world but rather that of the comic it's based on, Scott has to battle Ramona's seven exes. Now this is where I thought I would tire of the film, since the idea of having a least seven fight scenes to get through was not something that made me punch the air and cry 'HELL YEAH'. This is where Wright's real skill as a director comes into play though, since he was able to make each fight scene different from the previous one, and at the same time wring comedy from them and move the plot forwards. In this way I'd say his closest peer is Stephen Chow (the genius behind both Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle), in terms of both style and the way they both have no qualms about pushing things just that little too far. The best thing is the evenness of the film, most films like this tend to wilt a little around the hour mark, the humour dries up as the real drama of the film comes to the fore. Not here though, right the way up to the last frame I was laughing and just couldn't wait to watch this again. So this ends up as one of the best films of the year for me. Which is quite strange, but that's life innit?