Escape From L.A. (1996) - John Carpenter

The eight year old me was obsessed with Han Solo, so much so that all I wanted to do when I grew up was hang with a Wookie and say cool things like 'boring conversation anyway' and 'droids don't pull people's arms out of their sockets when they lose.' Punk may well have changed the cultural landscape for the kids aged fourteen and over in '77, but for us pre-teens the watershed moment was catching George Lucas' third feature film at the cinema. There’d be no more playing war in the school playground after that, for the next decade it was Star Wars and Star Wars only. There were always grumblings about who would play what character and so forth, but ultimately whoever I was supposed to be playing would immediately fade as soon as we started. I was Han Solo, as I suspect were loads of other kids that had been told to be a stormtrooper instead of the guy who’d made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.

That all changed one morning at Upminster train station back in the summer of ’81. As I ascended the stairs towards the exit I caught sight of a poster for Escape From New York. Kurt Russell’s head was floating above the New York skyline with helicopters flying all about it. It was at that exact moment that my loyalties towards Han fell away and my new obsession with the unknown fizzog in front of me began. Han may well have had a cape and thought Tauntaun’s smelt bad on the outside, but this new fella had an eyepatch and the best grimace on his face I’d ever seen. Plus he was called Snake Plissken. How fucking cool was that? Snake. Plissken.

I was way too young to actually go to the cinema and see Escape From New York though, and it would be years before I managed to rent a VHS copy of it. Despite the fact that over the years I'd built up massive expectations for it, it didn’t disappoint. From that opening synth line of the score all the way through to Snake’s kiss off at the end, for the teenage me it was total perfection. Writer/director John Carpenter was at the top of his game back then and his films with Kurt Russell were amongst the best things he ever did. The Russell & Carpenter partnership is up there for me with those great actor/director teams like Eastwood & Siegel or Mifune & Kurosawa. So with all that rambling prologue in mind you can imagine how excited I was when it turned out that Kurt and John were going to make another film together, and not just any film but a sequel to Escape From New York.

I saw Escape From L.A. on it’s opening week. I was disappointed. It was shit. I never watched it again… Until now. Me and a couple of John Carpenter fans were nattering away about some new pictures of John and Kurt posted on Facebook, and the conversation turned to Escape From L.A., and for the first time since ’96 I had a huge hankering to watch it. It couldn’t be that bad, could it? Maybe I’d had such high expectations first time ‘round that I’d been too harsh on it? Possibly? Maybe?

Well as it turns out Escape From L.A. is still an absolutely abysmal film. Shockingly so at times. The bulk of the problem has to be laid at John Carpenter’s feet, since the biggest stumbling block with the film is that it all just feels so damn lazy. Just like all the worst sequels this basically rehashes the plot of the original. So we get the ticking time bomb plot device, Snake having to retrieve something from no mans land and all the rest of it. The thing is Escape from L.A. was made fifteen years after the original, and if you’re going to wait that long to follow up your film you’d better have a damn good reason for doing so in the first place. Don't make something that feels like a cheapo thrown together straight to DVD release. The effects in this film are probably the worst I’ve seen in a major studio film from this period, worse than original Playstation graphics with multiple shots that look unfinished and then some. Maybe the money ran out? It sure looks that way.

On the plus side Kurt Russell is on top form and does the business as Snake, it’s a character that he can easily breathe life into and his growly sub Harry Callahan delivery always works. The rest of the cast range from okay (Stacy Keach, Cliff Robertson) to miscast (Steve Buscemi) to downright shite. Yes Pam Grier and Peter Fonda I’m talking about you. Fonda in particular is wince inducingly awful, cranking up his old hippie dude persona to nauseating effect. Most of the major touchstones of the original are present but in a lesser form, for example the fight to the death arena scene now involves shooting hoops on a basketball court. I kid you not. That’s how bad this is. The only thing that redeems Escape from L.A. a little for me are its last ten minutes which are as good as the original film.

So as far as I’m concerned I’ll hopefully never have the urge to watch this again. It’s awful, and made even worse by the fact that John Carpenter has it in him to put things together on screen in a way that few others can manage. I still hold out some hope that someone will knock up a script that will bring Carpenter and Russell back together, Carpenter would make an ideal choice for a decent comic book adaptaion for instance and Kurt Russell can do no wrong (don't mention Soldier that wasn't his fault all right). Let’s face it, they could never make anything worse than Escape From L.A. Could they?

Brazil (1985) - Terry Gilliam

Brazil had a huge impact on the teenage me, from the very first time I saw it I instantly got it. Whatever it was. The fact that my dad (who'd introduced me to Monty Python and subsequently by default - Gilliam) hated Brazil only made it even better. Here was something that only I understood, a film I'd found all on my own, a film that required a degree of decoding and more than a little effort to watch. But more than that it arrived in my life at just the right time, a time when I was starting to question everything around me, a time when I was supposed to be preparing for the rest of my life by knuckling down and doing well at school. Instead I was becoming obsessed with surrealism and the Dada movement, Chuck D, Roger Waters and The Edge were my musical idols, I'd just read 1984, The Catcher in the Rye and Naked Lunch for the first time and my head was abuzz with the ideas that would grow and inform who I eventually became. And right at the center of all of that was Terry Gilliam's masterpiece - Brazil.

I first stumbled upon Brazil on BBC2 back in the late eighties. The thing that drew me to it was the little blurb in the TV listing that stated it was by the person who'd made Time Bandits. That hooked me straight away, I'd loved Time Bandits as a kid and used to rent it on a monthly basis, this being in those dark days before ordinary people could actually own films. Brazil was the film that introduced me to the idea of auteur theory too, since after falling in love with it I started to link films together via directors rather than actors, which is what I had done before my epiphany.

So what is Brazil? Well it's a lot of things, almost all of them contradictory. For starters it's a very British film that just so happens to be directed by an American for a major Hollywood studio. It's also set in a dystopian future that has been set dressed with things from the past. But I'm getting ahead of myself here, so let's backtrack for a second and I'll try my best to write a brief synopsis.

Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) is a lowly bureaucrat in a world tied up in red tape. He has no ambitions, but he does have dreams, quite literally - he dreams of an ethereal girl whom he continually rescues by casting himself as a armored winged hero. A departmental error forces him out of the comfortable environment of his office and into the real world, where he bumps into the girl from his dreams - Jill Layton (Kim Greist). From there things spiral beyond Sam's control, he becomes mixed up with a subversive repairman (Robert De Niro) and his fantasy world and real world begin to overlap.

Brazil is an intricate film to say the least, and to really get the most out of it you need to have a basic grasp on what Britain was like during the mid eighties. Back then Britain wasn't so much swinging as sinking. The optimism of the sixties high had long since faded leaving behind a sense of defeat and mild betrayal. The country Napoleon once described as a nation of shopkeepers was now on the dole. Those that weren't unemployed were most likely on strike, teachers, nurses, firemen, coal miners, ship builders and factory workers had all downed tools at various times. The Conservative Government even tried (and failed) to send the army in against the striking miners in order to break their lengthy dispute. Add to that the fact that British industry was on it's knees, the shipyards were steadily closing and our car industry had folded, and you can tell things weren't rosy. To top it off the Government had decided to privatise key public assets starting with British Telecom. Public became private. If the key word of the sixties was LOVE, then for the eighties it almost certainly had to be GREED.

Also the IRA had stepped up it's bombing campaign, detonating a series of bombs around London. Anyone who lived through those times will remember the bombs in both Regents and Hyde Park as well as the bombing of Harrods during the Christmas season. Most famously though the IRA managed to bomb the the Grand Hotel in Brighton where the Conservative Party were staying during their annual get together. Fun times it wasn't.

It's all of the above more than anything else that runs through Brazil like letters through a stick of cheap seaside rock. Gilliam and his co-writers (Tom Stoppard & Charles McKeown) real masterstroke was to be able to get all of the above (and a whole lot more) up on screen, almost without people noticing. How? By placing it all within the framework of a Science Fiction/Fantasy flick. Even the greatest most political British directors of the time - Ken Loach, Mike Leigh and Alan Clarke - couldn't shoehorn all that into one film.

Phew! Right so history lesson over, let's get onto the film itself. Brazil is surprisingly enough set at Christmas. Sam spends most of the film receiving the same gift (an executive toy that makes decisions for you) from the people around him. Mrs Buttle (or is that Tuttle?) is reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol (the second greatest of all Christmas stories) to her children just before her husband is taken away for interrogation. In fact just before the police swoop in through the windows and down the hole drilled in the ceiling, one of her children asks how Santa will be able to deliver presents if they don't have a chimney? Even towards the end when Mr. Helpmann (the ever wonderful Peter Vaughan) visits Sam in his holding cell, he's dressed as Santa and has just stopped in on his way to entertain the orphans.

One of the great things about Brazil is the fact that it's hero - Sam - is actually quite detestable in his early scenes, he's so passive, ignoring the viciousness of the real world, in favour of his fantasy one. For instance when he has dinner with his mother and the restaurant is bombed, he's not alarmed and does nothing more than finish his meal - 'It's my lunch hour. Besides, it's not my department.' he explains to his fellow diners. He's only awakened to what is going on or able to feel any empathy once he comes into contact with people outside of his sphere. In fact it's two female characters (Jill Layton and Veronica Buttle) that force him to rethink the world he's living in. Sam only gets anywhere in his professional life thanks to his mother pulling strings for him, and only discovers Jill's name thanks to a little girl telling him it right after the gang of urchins set his Messerschmitt alight. Making Brazil one of those rare films where the women are more potent than the men. Which isn't such a strange concept when you consider who the British Prime Minister was at the time. There's a great visual gag when Sam's traveling home on the train and Gilliam pans the camera around the carriage of seated men to reveal a lone woman standing. Which in itself is quite unchivalrous, but just to add insult to injury the camera ends up at her feet to reveal that she only has one leg. It's these little moments that keep Brazil fresh even for the most ardent fan.

Being a film by Terry Gilliam you know it's going to have a wonderful look to it. Gilliam is very much an old school director, favoring image over words every time. Which isn't all that surprising when you consider his background in animation. His sets are stuffed to the gills with eye candy, most of which is only revealed upon repeated viewings. The numerous 'Loose Lips Sink Ships' style posters that are scattered throughout the film for instance. His use of locations is a delight too, Gilliam works best when on a limited budget, give him a stack of dollars and he'll build a set, hold back on the cash however and he'll find a set. So thanks to budget constraints we go from a working Oil Refinery through to strange modernist French housing estates and of course most famously the inside of a cooling tower. Creative solutions to problems rather than the usual money hose that Hollywood favours. His sets look lived in too, with a patina on the surface of everything.

Brazil isn't set in the future so much as an alternative now. If Blade Runner was Future Noir, then Brazil is Future Retro. The fashions for a start hark back to the fifties and that whole post WWII feeling - rationing coming to an end, clothes having more material, wider lapels and dresses that flowed, hats for everyone that kind of thing. The haircuts also date from that era as do the furnishings. The technology on show is a hodgepodge of bits and pieces from the past, all cobbled together typewriters and old valves, ducts everywhere. Of course none of it actually works, lifts, computers, toasters you name it, it's all on the fritz.

It's also a film chock full of film references too, from Casablanca ('Here's looking at you kid'), Battleship Potemkin (the fight on the steps towards the end of the film) and even The Empire Strikes Back (when Sam removes the Samurai's mask to reveal his own face). It's the shadow of Metropolis that looms largest over the whole film though.

Of course the thing that Brazil is most famous for now is the battle that Gilliam had with Universal head honcho Sid Sheinberg, who didn't care for Brazil at all and loathed it's downbeat ending. I've only ever watched the 'Love Conquers All' version once. It's interesting for anyone who adores the film enough to see just how it might have ended up. Thankfully for us Gilliam stuck to his guns and saw it through to the end, eventually winning his fight and having his cut become the default version. Speaking of endings Brazil has the best ending for a film that I can think of. It's up there with the greats - Citizen Kane, Dr. Strangelove and Some Like It Hot. It's a total shock to the system the first time you see it, and it's one of those that you'll never forget.

Jonathan Pryce will always be Sam Lowry for me in much the same way as Richard E. Grant will always be Withnail. Pryce really gives it everything and gets to show a lot of range from slapstick through to action hero. I couldn't ever imagine anyone else as Sam Lowry. Apparently Gilliam wasn't all that happy with Kim Greist's performance and cut down her role accordingly in the edit suite. You'd never know from watching the film though, she's feisty and hard to read all the way through. The rest of the cast is really a who's who of British acting from that period, Bob Hoskins, Ian Richardson and Jim Broadbent all get extended cameos yet manage to really stamp themselves onto the celluloid. Gilliam regulars Michael Palin, Ian Holm and Katherine Helmond get a bigger piece of the pie. All three are first-class, Palin is deliciously weaselly as Sam's best friend - Jack Lint, Helmond plays Sam's manipulative plastic surgery obsessed mother, a fantastic role that she doesn't waste. Best of all though is Holm who almost manages to steal the show as Sam's boss the sad and rather pathetic Mr. Kurtzmann.

Behind the camera Roger Pratt returned as cinematographer after having already worked on Gilliam's segment in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, as did editor Julian Doyle. I can't write about Brazil without a nod to Michael Kamen's sublimely odd score, which bounces between full on heroic strings to a bizarre symphony for typewriters, as well as several versions of Ary Barroso's Aquarela do Brasil. Weird but perfect.

Brazil is without a doubt for me Terry Gilliam's masterpiece. His follow up The Adventures of Baron Munchausen tried to do everything that it's predecessor had done, but ultimately failed. Tales of overspending, of sets being destroyed and of general on set chaos only fueled the legend that Gilliam was a difficult director, a perfectionist that would do almost anything to achieve the vision in his head. Gilliam managed to pick himself up after the debacle of Munchausen (which I like a lot by the way), and even managed to make successful films (12 Monkeys, The Fisher King) without ever losing sight of his distinctive vision. Since 12 Monkeys however he has struggled to get projects off the ground, and seems to have lost the momentum that was so essential in making Brazil.

Ultimately Brazil can be read a number of ways, at it's core it's a love story, but it's also about the bureaucracy of modern life, the suppression of the masses by the few and the technological revolution and how it's failed us. In hindsight though maybe more than any of that it's about a director standing up to a giant studio system and saying 'No'.

Storage 24 (2012) - Johannes Roberts

We Brits have a long history with that often maligned film genre - Science Fiction. Don't laugh it's true. From the crew on the original Star Wars films (and director of Return of the Jedi), through to classics such as The Man Who Fell to Earth, Alien, Blade Runner, 2001, Brazil and Things to Come we've always had a strong pedigree for intelligent Sci-Fi. Lately we've had Danny Boyle knocking out a half decent effort with Sunshine, and Joe Cornish writing and directing one of last years best films - Attack the Block. Let's just leave Prometheus out of this for now shall we?

So it's always interesting for me when a new Brit Sci-Fi flick hits the multiplexes, and I almost always end up giving them a whirl. Storage 24 was written by and stars Noel Clarke, who let's not forget wrote the still excellent Kidulthood. A plane crashes in central London, causing half of London to be locked down (oh yes I know my military jargon). Meanwhile Charlie (Noel Clarke) and best mate Mark are on their way to the titular storage facility to pick up Charlie's possessions after his recent split with girlfriend Shelley (Antonia Campbell-Hughes). Upon arriving it turns out Shelley is also there along with two friends (Nikki and Chris). Sparks fly and conversations get heated but they all need to learn to get along since (drum roll, here comes the high concept bit), they are locked in the warehouse with… an alien. And said alien is a bit miffed.

It's a reworking (or direct steal depending on how nice you're being) of Alien. Except without the defined characters, twists, stunning cinematography, genuine hands over the face scares or any of the other things that make Alien the landmark film that it is. What they have managed to half inch is the idea of being trapped in a confined space with an extra terrestrial, and having a set that consists of lots of corridors. Corridors that you can get your cast to run up and down for most of the films duration in fact.

I wasn't impressed I have to say. The script is one of those scribbled on a fag packet jobs, it's full of holes and is also just so bloody unoriginal. The effects were nasty in the wrong way, the cast felt like they were waiting for the lunch bell and the direction was both uninspired and flat. All in all well worth giving a miss, go and see Dredd instead. You'll thank me in the long run I promise.

Paul (2011) - Greg Mottola

 

I wanted to like this, I really did. I've had a soft spot for Simon Pegg and his bestest friend in the whole world Nick Frost, ever since seeing them in Spaced all those years ago. Paul isn't actually a million miles away from that TV show, it's chock full of references to those Science Fiction films we grew up with, especially those made by the beard brothers - the original Star Wars trilogy, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The thing is peppering your script with nods to other films might have worked well in a sit-com ten years ago, but all these years later it just smacks of being a bit of a one trick pony.

It's this that made me not really enjoy Paul quite as much as I would have hoped too. The story itself is Starman by way of E.T., alien crash lands on Earth and needs a bit of human help to help him get home. Pegg & Frost are a couple of British comic com type über nerds, you know fluent in Klingon, film quote tees and all that. They're in the States on a road trip taking in various UFO hotspots when they bump into Paul (the aforementioned Alien). Now Paul is on the run from The Man and our duo have to help him, while having adventures and learning valuable life lessons on route. It's nothing you haven't seen a million times before.

Paul himself is totally CGI and and looks fine and you quickly just accept him as being real and alive. He swears and is cruder than the rest of the cast, it's a joke that is amusing at first, slightly less so twenty minutes down the line. Being a road movie we pick up various characters on route, there are some laughs but in general I found myself nodding when I picked up on in jokes/film references, rather than rolling around on the floor trying to wipe the tears from my eyes. That sounds a bit harsh though, I did laugh a fair bit at first but Paul suffers the same thing that most big comedy films do. Which is about half way through the comedy gives way to the drama that is needed to propel the film forwards. That's not to say there aren't laughs at the end, it's just that they don't come quite as thick and fast as they do at the start. On the plus side though both Frost & Pegg have a natural chemistry which doesn't need time to grow, it's there from the very first minute of screen time. That's what you get from working together so often, which is a huge plus.

I have to say that the whole thing doesn't look great either, Mottola with mega bucks doesn't have the visual flair that Edgar Wright had with a miniscule TV budget. So while the script may riff on Star Wars the camera work never does, which feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. It's also generic to the point that when Paul brings a dead bird back to life and is asked if he's ever managed to do that to a human, you just know that someone is going to snuff it at the end and be resurrected before the credits roll. In summing up I'd say this is well worth watching once, but I'll be surprised if it manages to hold up to multiple viewings. Oh and the Wild Geese nod made me grin from ear to ear.

Monsters (2010) - Gareth Edwards

Hmm, I'm a little torn as to what I actually thought of this film. On the one hand I thought it looked proper nice, Edwards is a visual effects bod and for a first effort this is quite a calling card. It looks a treat and given his background it's no surprise that the effects are top notch, the sort of CGI that supports the story rather than driving it. With everything effects wise being nicely integrated into the background of the film, instead of the in your face attitude of most directors. But Edwards' weakness is the story itself, which is so full of holes that it ruins the film somewhat. But we'll get to that later…

Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy, and yes that's Scoot, not Scott) is an American photojournalist working in Central America. He's told to make sure that Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able) makes it to the local port so that she can catch the ferry back to The States. Since she's the boss's daughter he has little say in the matter, so off they go. For various reasons they don't make it onto the boat, so they have to travel back home via Mexico instead. Fair enough, except this is set in the nearly future and Mexico is now a huge quarantine area, a total no go zone since it's populated by aliens. You can see where it's going can't you? Young couple, him rough and ready, her a princess, thrown together, roughing it in the wild, trying to get home. It's The African Queen, but with giant squid monsters instead of Nazi's.

Which is all well and good, but I think calling it Monsters and having a poster campaign that is very nudgey nudgey winky winky to District 9 is only asking for trouble. This isn't War of the Worlds or Cloverfield, it's far more about how the two leads fall for each other. Well that and the oh not at all subtle metaphor of aliens in Mexico, trying to get across the American border. So I think this is going to rile a fair few people that are expecting something more action packed.

Anyway onto those plot holes, and this might be a good place to look away if you haven't seen the film. For a start why not just fly home? Surely even flying to Europe from Central America and then on to The States from there beats walking through a war zone, doesn't it? Then there are a myriad of other oddities, such as why the guy who sets up their trip through the forbidden zone accepts a diamond ring in lieu of $10,000, when he'd already turned down a camera? Why did Andrew have her passport? Why did the girl that nicked it, not have it on her toes with his camera too? Why is there a Mayan pyramid in a jungle on the American border? Why did the huge great wall on the border have a road running through it? And so on.

Despite the above points though I still really enjoyed this, it's a silly film that could have been so much better with just a little more attention paid at the script writing stage. The two leads are fine, but quite unbelievable, a photojournalist with a conscience who when he does get the chance for that once in a lifetime photo, decides to stand there open mouthed in awe at what is happening in front of him. Hmph. Still if Gareth Edwards ever gets his hands on a decent script there'll be no stopping him.

The Terminator (1984) - James Cameron

Being eleven when this was first shown in cinemas, meant that I didn't have a chance in hell of seeing it until it landed in my front room on clunky old VHS years later. So nostalgia being what it is, I couldn't turn down the chance to finally see this on the big screen almost thirty years later. Now some films get better and better with each passing year, not this one though. What was once inspired, smart and exciting is now a bit tatty looking. Sure the concept is still great, the whole time travel paradox is always fun when done well. Providing not only a reason to return to the film, but also the chance for little kids like myself to natter about it in the playground until the cows come home.

Can there actually be anyone out there who doesn't know the plot of this film? Just in case there is, here it (briefly) is. In the future, after that old dystopian sci fi staple a nuclear war, machines are at war with the human race. A cyborg (the terminator of the title) is sent back in time to present day 1984, to kill one Sarah Connor, a waitress having a permanent bad hair day. Why kill her? Well the thing is she will at some point in the future give birth to the guy who will lead the human resistance. Pretty neat huh? The humans manage to send someone back in time too, to try and protect Sarah against her would be killer.

As I say as a concept it's great, and back then this film was the bees knees for me. There was so little decent science fiction in the early eighties, it was all aimed at kids. For more adult themed films you had John Carpenter, a handful of rental titles (Blade Runner, Soylent Green and um The Omega Man) and that was about it. So when The Terminator rolled up I was on board straight away. So what's changed? Well for one it looks shoddy, proper low budget, which it wasn't. The effects (with the exception of Stan Winston's actual T-101) all look quaint at best. It's all rubber guns, bad dummies, acting that is less than convincing and dialogue that is unintentionally humourous. Cameron directs with a heavy hand, leaving no room for the film to breathe. So nothing new there then.

More than all that though is the fact that T2 manages to make the original redundant. T2 does everything that The Terminator does, but better. This film still has a certain charm and it's very much of it's time, there's future Cameron players Bill Paxton, Lance Henriksen and Michael Biehn all of whom are wonderful. Then there's the future Mrs Cameron herself Linda Hamilton, to be fair this isn't her finest hour, and like Arnie she'd be much better in the sequel.

As I sat in the cinema I kept thinking that what was my generations Matrix, is now nothing more than a cult film. The film that kickstarted a franchise that no one really wants anymore. Perhaps it would be fairer to compare it to Planet of the Apes in that way. Before I sign off on this I have to mention Brad Fiedel's soundtrack, which sounds like it wanted to be as cool as Carpenter's scores from this era, but actually ends up sounding like an instrumental version of early Human League. Oh and I'd give anything not to have to see the sex scene in this film ever again. Top tip for budding film makers, if you are going to have a sex scene in your film, never add music. Never ever ever. It will always end up being utter rubbish at best, porn at worst.

Metropolis (1927) - Fritz Lang

I'd been itching to see this almost complete version of Metropolis ever since the announcement that a copy had turned up in Buenos Aires back in 2008. This Argentinian footage was heavily scratched and in an awful state, and proved impossible to clean up since it was transferred from the original negative complete with all of it's imperfections. Doh! So by stitching lost footage from the new found print into the gorgeous looking restored version, we've ended up with a Frankenstein's monster type of affair. It's easy to spot just what is new footage and what isn't, since the newer scenes have not only what appears to be a barcode running through them (well lots of black lines at any rate), but are also in a smaller aspect ratio. This newer footage is kind of like scars on a body, or wrinkles on a face inasmuch as each scratchy frame reminds the viewer of the ongoing saga of this silent masterpiece. There are still portions of the film that are missing, although hopefully they'll turn up in some box in someones garage at some point before I snuff it.

So what is added to this version of Metropolis then? Well there are a fair few small trims (reaction shots and the like, some just a few seconds long), they don't add much but of course it's always good to have things back to how they were supposed to be. The real find are the scenes that show what the Thin Man gets up to, and quite a bit of extra footage from the end of the film. This adds so much to the film, The Thin Man section is a whole subplot that was chopped out, the extra stuff at the end makes the ending so much more expansive, it's just more of everything, from the riots to the floods and the eventual saving of the children. It's all there in it's scratchy slightly smaller aspect ratio glory.

Metropolis is the most expensive silent film ever made in Germany, costing 5,000,000 Reichsmarks. Lang as was his wont was meticulous with everything to do with the film, taking forever to get it into the cinema. Unfortunately upon release it was a massive flop, taking a mere 75,000 Reichsmarks in Germany. This is why the film was hacked apart in the first place, it was shortened and fucked about with right the way up to the first version I ever saw, the 1984 Giorgio Moroder version. Now when it comes to proto house disco anthems Giorgio is your man. However when it came to rejigging a silent epic he proved to be a bit of a fuckwit. Colourising it and bolting on a jarring eighties soundtrack became the last nail in Metropolis's coffin. Cheers Moroder. After this the restoration process began, and that brings us bang up to where we are now.

Now I'm sure you don't need me to go through what the storyline of Metropolis is, do you? Okay deep breath here goes, dystopian future world, the rich lording it up, while in the depths of the city the workers kill themselves to keep the cogs of society moving. There is no bridge between the two, the central message of the film is the need for the workers to unite with those that run their world. Into this are weaved biblical allegories, effects galore, some of the hammiest silent screen acting ever, mad scientists, revolution, epic sets, a touch of that famous German expressionism, and a (wo)man machine. Metropolis is a beautiful film to watch, but it feeds the brain as well as the eyes. There are ideas galore, and it's a great way to waste a few hours of your life. Lang was at the peak of his powers and it shows, his next four features would be the last of this golden age for him. After 1933's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse Lang would flee Germany for America, where he would struggle to make anything approaching his German masterpieces. To say that Metropolis has had an effect on the world we live in would be an understatement, films, music, books and so many other things have been touched by this flop of a film, and the funny thing is that despite being the obvious masterpiece it is, it's not even Lang's best film, which of course is 1931's M.

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.

Watchmen (2009) - Zack Snyder

I used to have a really nice leather bound edition of the Watchmen graphic novel. Like a mug I punted it out on E-Bay and spent the money I made on early Sarah singles. I kind of regret doing that now (still I do love those singles), but that's life I guess. What I'm getting at is that I haven't read Watchmen for well over a decade. I always felt that had it been a 'proper' novel, rather than a graphic one then it would be held up alongside those other modern classics that all teenagers read, The Wasp Factory or The Dice Man for example.

Unfilmable. That was always the cry that went up whenever news would seep out from Hollywoodland, that some poor unfortunate was about to spend the next few years of their life trying to figure out how to bring this to the screen. Which isn't all that surprising when you look at just what Watchmen is. The story itself is incredibly dense, with stories within stories (even a whole separate comic tale being told parallel to the main event), it takes place over a period of fifty years (so lots of jumping back and forth through time), it's very violent and wouldn't take to being toned down in any way, so it would have to be marketed towards adults (which in those pre Dark Night years felt far too risky for major studios). Plus it would be expensive, really expensive. Oh yeah and the threat of nuclear war hangs over the whole thing like a huge wet blanket. Happy stuff then. Summer blockbuster? Yeah right. There was more chance of Terry Gilliam making Don Quixote, than Watchmen ever ending up at the local Odeon.

So you get the gist, with even Gilliam deeming the book unfilmable, after circling it for a year or so and eventually giving up. After all just making Dr Manhattan (huge naked blue bloke) come to life was enough of a headache to keep most people away from attempting an adaptation. However roll forward a decade or two, and the leaps in technology now meant it was possible to make a faithful version of Watchmen. Enter Zack Snyder, a man who is able to make films that on paper sound woeful, remaking the classic Dawn of the Dead for instance and actually turning in a finished film that I enjoyed, when all I really wanted was to hate it. That impressed me. He followed that with 300, yet again I was more than ready to despise it and once again I liked it, even if it was as empty as an English church. So for me it wasn't a problem that he was going to be the person to bring Watchmen to life.

There was always only going to be two ways of making this film. First you either cut it down to the bone, throwing away all the little sub plots and have it as a straight ahead murder mystery. Or you go with the second option, just go for it, film everything, leave nothing out and have a huge flabby beast of a film. I'm glad Snyder did the right thing and went for the later option. It was trimmed for the theatrical version, to a mere 162 minutes which was all over the place in terms of pacing. So you can imagine what the version I watched was like coming in as it does at a whopping 215 minutes. Oh yes it's the full bells and whistles edition, they don't call it the ULTIMATE CUT for nowt you know. It staggers forward, and after a while you just settle in and watch it in much the same way you would a decent mini series. There is no real momentum to the film, it starts and then drifts along at it's own pace until it ends. I can't see how it could be any different and still be faithful to the source novel though.


The actual story itself is set in a slightly alternate reality, where superheroes exist but have been outlawed, Nixon is president despite the fact that it's 1985, and the cold war is very much raging with the threat of all out nuclear war hanging over the film. But as I said earlier there are multiple storylines taking place in various periods in time, throw into the mix an animated pirate tale and you have the sort of mess that only someone like Robert Altman could pull off. But Snyder manages it, and it really comes across that he is a fan of the original story. Alan Moore who scribed said original story didn't want anything to do with Watchmen, after watching Hollywood wreck two of his other babies, From Hell and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Hopefully he'll calm down and see just what a service Snyder has done to his pride and joy. There are shots and dialogue that come directly from the pages of the original. The casting is spot on, Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach is particularly memorable, kind of like Dirty Harry played by Ewen Bremner. As I said I can't see how it could have been better. Maybe the awful sex scene could have been cut, but that's about it. Oh and some of Snyder's music 'taste' is dubious at best.

Okay so far so positive. Now for the negative stuff, well there is that sex scene which is just so horribly tacky. It made me squirm and I was sitting there alone, it's a painful watch. Then there is the fact that Snyder doesn't really have any style as a director, he's good at what he does, but not once in any of his films do you feel that you are watching a Zack Snyder film. He is at the top of that tree of the new breed of generic directors that use slow motion because it looks good. There doesn't seem to be any thought beyond 'what would look awesome'. Maybe I'm being mean, I don't think so though. Stick any of them next to a Kurosawa or Lean and they'd become as transparent as their films. But maybe it's the fact that Snyder doesn't have a unique vision that that has allowed this film to be so close to the comic it was based on.

Moon (2009) - Duncan Jones

Duncan Jones has a famous daddy, let's try and do what everyone else fails to, and not mention it shall we? Right now that's out of the way, let's get on with singing the praises of this little marvel. This is only the second time I've seen it, but it was just as good this time round as it was the first. Originally I had reservations about bothering with it at all. It sounded a bit naff, and was talked up just a wee bit too much for my liking. So I passed on it at the cinema. After all the majority of science fiction films are a huge let down nowadays anyway. All style, no substance I normally find. More fool me however, since this is both stylish, and quite substantial (well for a modern multiplex film anyway), and would have made for a decent cinema experience. Ho hum.

Essentially it is a one man show, and that man is Sam Rockwell, proving that his turn in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, wasn't just a one off. Here he plays a regular Joe spaceman called Sam Bell, who is coming to the end of his three year isolated stint working on the Moon, and is looking forward to heading back home to his wife and daughter. I don't want to say much about the plot since it would be very easy to spoil what is actually a decent little story. Safe to say that this owes more to Silent Running and 2001: A Space Odyssey, than Sunshine or the recent Star Trek reboot. It doesn't quite live up to it's peers though. Too much of the film is familiar from other entries in this genre. Long white hexagonal corridors, a computer that talks and has a personality, space workers that owe more to truckers than astronauts, it's a bit of an amalgam of various sci fi clichés. Which is a shame since it is a good little film. I'm always fascinated to see what bits of our film culture make it past the fifteen year barrier and are embraced by the next generation of film addicts. Will this be remembered? I hope so, but I also doubt it, since it lacks that something to set it apart from everything else.

Duncan Jones' direction is very confident and resists the urge to show off in the way that most new directors do. He also opts for a fair bit of model work instead of going the usual CGI route, which is one of the things that endears this film to me. Although having said that, there is the obligatory CGI lens flare that is in every single bloody effects laden epic nowadays. In fact here's an idea for a new drinking game. Take one bottle of vodka, pop any big summer CGI fest film from the past year or two in the DVD player, take a shot every time there is some lens flare on the screen. I'll warn you now wear some big man nappies if you are going to watch the aforementioned Star Trek, since by forty minutes in you'll be reduced to a baby that needs changing.

Anyway I'm drifting. If you haven't seen this then please do, it is thought provoking, but maybe not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Solaris or 2001 it ain't. However any film that can play Chesney Hawkes' The One and Only, not once but twice, and have me wanting to watch it again has to be worth a punt.

Paprika (2006) - Satoshi Kon

Whatever way you look at it I'm always behind when it comes to watching films. It can take me years to get around to watching something that I ordered with the express purpose of watching as soon as it landed on my doormat. Plus how on earth are you supposed to justify watching one film over another? Just what is the criteria for choosing a film to watch when you get in from work? There have been times when I have spent half a day wondering what to watch when I get in, only for me to change my mind as I'm about to put it in the DVD player and stick in a Laurel & Hardy film instead.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that I love anime, Japanimation or whatever it is the hipsters are calling it this week. This was recommended to me years back by a friend who is up on all of this stuff (along with jungle/desert based action films), and here we are all this time later and I've only just watched it, and of course it was every bit as good as he said it was.

As per usual with this genre it's as mad as David Lynch and Terry Gilliam on hallucinogens, and then some. Marching frog band? Check. Wheelchair bound bloke moving around the room with plant roots instead of legs? Check. Nudity, but no sex organs? Double check. In a nut shell it's all about some little gizmo called a DC Mini, that allows you to share your dreams with friends. Now in time honoured tradition said gizmo is half inched by some wrong man mental, who wants to destroy the world/create a new world/or something, I didn't quite catch what his dastardly plan was in the end. So plenty of 'are we dreaming or aren't we?' shenanigans crop up along with some massively far out visuals. The weird thing for me is I was able to follow the plot without the slightest difficulty. I say weird since I find anime pretty hard to follow since I tend to allow it to wash over me and just sink into the glorious images. So much so that when something happens that needs my brain to be firing on all cylinders, I get caught out and feel more than a little stupid.

Now you know you are onto a winner with a film when it finishes and you wished you had the time to just put it back on and watch it again. Even better than that is when you're only half way through and you start to think about when you can squeeze another viewing in. That's exactly how I felt when watching this, and of course the only down side to this film was the fact that now there is another director on that already huge list of mine, whose films I need to see. Oh well, one door closes while another opens I guess.