Schooled

Contains spoilers for Half Nelson

Peter Bradshaw in Tuesday’s Guardian (here) picks his favourite films about school (and you can too: simply go to www.teachers.tv/movies and do your thang), but very obviously leaves out one of the best (if not the best): Half Nelson. To be honest, I don’t share Bradshaw’s enthusiasm for the genre. However, he believes (rightly, I think) that the school environment lends itself brilliantly to big, significant themes. However, as we’re talking about kids and education here and all the dull worthiness that that can conjure up, the tendency is to make moralising old flap such as Dangerous Minds. As for Freedom Writers and Renaissance Man (which isn’t about school as such, but you get my drift), I’ve done my level best to avoid them. Films about school? No thanks, teach.

So why Half Nelson? Broken Social Scene contribute a hefty wedge of the soundtrack, so I was intrigued as to how the filmmakers were going to use already recorded songs (brilliantly, as it turns out). But the soundtrack is only a small part of what makes this film so good. Ryan Gosling plays Dan, a history teacher working in inner city Brooklyn – so far, so Dangerous Minds, but don’t run away screaming just yet. Dan’s major issue is that he is a major crack and cocaine user, a fact that strongly conflicts with his fiercely liberal ideals. When he is caught smoking crack in the school toilets after a basketball game by Drey (Shareeka Epps), a brilliantly subtle, elliptical relationship between the two develops. If we were in Dangerous Games territory, then this initial discovery would have played out in a rigid, three act structure with much sturm und drang plastered on like so much theatrical make-up. To Ryan Fleck’s and Anna Boden’s credit, they go absolutely nowhere near where you would expect a film like this to go. Even the plot outline on Wikipedia makes things seem a little more schematic and hard edged than it actually is.

The dynamic between Dan and Drey and the characters that enter their respective orbits is what keeps things moving forward here. Drey’s brother is in jail after selling drugs for Frank, a neighbourhood dealer – in his own way, Frank attempts to look out for Drey by recruiting her for his business, a fact that Dan takes exception to. The problem is, as Dan knows only too well, is that his stance is hugely hypocritical. After Dan is fired (a scene that takes place entirely off camera), Drey resolves to turn things round herself, without Dan's help, and most notably, without Frank's.

There’s so much in this film to enjoy (even the cinematography, which is defiantly rough and unfocussed in parts), it’s almost a crime. Sure beats watching Danny DeVito teach Hamlet, that’s for sure.

I am the Knight who says ‘Meh’

Contains spoilers for The Dark Knight

If an analogy for mainstream cinema is the three minute pop song, then The Dark Knight is a fifteen minute progressive rock epic, complete with harpsichord solo, spoken word interlude and a huge bag of whizz-bang pyrotechnics – with is another way of saying it’s very long. According to my bony backside (always a good arbiter of cinematic quality), its 150 minute running time seemed like five hours – too much dialogue, slow pacing, two endings, scenes that simply go on and on and on. To be honest, I’m surprised that any backside could take it (perhaps there’s a marketing opportunity here for the Chip Smith ‘Numb-o-meter’ – just don’t ask me how it works as I haven’t invented it yet).

So, The Dark Knight. Mark Ravenhill thinks this. On the other hand, John Truby thinks this. In all honesty, I suspect the reason this film has been so stratospherically successful is down to one thing: Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker. It really is a tour-de-force, as if Ledger has somehow managed to channel the craziest bits of Jack Nicholson through a dilapidated mental asylum. Not that either John Truby or Mark Ravenhill is wrong, of course: Ravenhill thinks there’s too much dialogue and not enough action, and he’s right; Truby believes that “The Dark Knight proves that a movie can be a huge hit because of theme, not in spite of it,” and he’s right as well. And yet strangely I find myself disagreeing with both of them.

Ordinarily, the more complex a plot, the happier I am, and the series of constant moral conundrums that The Dark Knight throws at you are more than welcome – this is a film that the term ‘blockbuster with a brain’ was invented for. However, this narrative and moral complexity tends to disguise the fact that there isn’t really a great deal of emotional content at the movie’s core. The narrative is technically proficient – perhaps overly so – but within its complexities, something gets lost along the way.

Compare The Dark Knight with Tell No One, a superb French film from Guillaume Canet, adapted from the novel by Harlan Coben. Although the narrative of Tell No One is complex, the central spine of the story is simple, and focuses on Beck’s frantic search for his supposedly dead wife. The Dark Knight has a complex narrative and a dizzying array of themes, the combination of which seem to squeeze all the humanity out of the film.

Interestingly, The Dark Knight is unusual as far as Christopher Nolan’s usual modus operandi goes, inasmuch as it’s told in a linear fashion. The narrative cut ups of Following and The Prestige are nowhere to be seen, mostly because things are complicated enough. However, what the linear narrative does expose here I think is the fact that at its heart, The Dark Knight feels a little empty. Unwind The Prestige and Following and you might even find something similar – that their complex narrative structures successfully disguise the fact that neither of them really entirely manage to engage the viewer on an emotional level. Don’t get me wrong, they’re both great films, but like The Dark Knight, the overall feel is of movies that have been ruthlessly designed, much like a Swiss watch or a formal garden where messy, unpredictable nature doesn’t really have much of a place.

The film’s politics seemed a bit skewed to me as well: mass surveillance of Gotham’s citizenry which is justified by the fact that a single terrorist might be caught at some future point (hmm, sounds familiar); the cover up of Harvey Dent’s crimes due to the fact that the people of Gotham ‘need a hero’. The Dark Knight doesn’t spend too long pondering these uncomfortable questions, which are arguably more interesting than the moral conundrums that John Truby points out.

Anyway, it’s probably pointless arguing with box office receipts in excess of $300 million. Let’s hope that Christopher Nolan does something outside of the Batman franchise next time out...

My New Favourite Film

Contains Spoilers for Session 9

This movie cropped up on the Sci-Fi channel recently, and what a little gem it is (something about the title rang a bell so I recorded it, only to discover later that Mr Arnopp recommended it on his esteemed blog last year – which means I’m only twelve months behind the curve).

I’ll try to give you a flavour without going all spoiler-tastic on your ass, but it’s a hugely effective horror cum ghost story. Filmed almost entirely on location in a deserted mental asylum (Danvers State Hospital, now apparently torn down to make way for swanky apartments), the emphasis is very firmly placed on character and a slow sense of creeping dread that will scare the bajesus out of you (well, it did me). Even though it is shot on digital video, the cinematography by Uwe Brieseitz is stunning – there is certainly more than a touch of The Shining about it, but where The Shining was filmed on a series of huge, purpose built sets, every location you see in Session 9 is real – which makes the whole thing that little bit more frightening. The cast – including Peter Mullan and David Caruso – turn in stellar performances, and the script is a veritable mine of ambiguity, where the major sub plot may or may not have much to do with the primary narrative (the sort of thing that would have script readers the world breaking out in mass cardiac arrests). The director, Brad Anderson, went on to make The Machinist, so you know you’re in safe hands.

Even if you don’t like horror as a genre (and let’s face it, Session 9 is certainly not your usual horror flick), give this a go – I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised as well as severely creeped out – and who could want anything more from a film than that?

Funny Games US

Contains spoilers for Funny Games

Despite feeling as if I’ve been harangued by a bionic liberal, Funny Games is actually pretty enjoyable. That said, perhaps enjoyable is the wrong word to use. Just what is it that makes us want to watch violence on the big screen? Just exactly what is wrong with us?

Paul – one of a pair of white gloved psychopaths responsible for terrorising a wealthy young family – constantly breaks the fourth wall by addressing the audience directly; we are in absolutely no doubt that what we’re watching is a fiction (at one point, when the narrative veers into less choppy Hollywood waters, Paul grabs a video remote and rewinds the film so he can pre-empt the action). Reflexively post-modern it may be, but there’s more to it than Mark Kermode thinks (bearing in mind his interview with Neil Young on the Culture Show back in October 2007, I find it difficult to read anything by Mark Kermode: I’ve come here to New York to interview Neil Young. Now this is something of a surprise for me, because for years I’ve been telling people that I didn’t like Neil Young).

Not pandering to your audience’s baser instincts is a brave thing for any filmmaker to do – instead, Michael Haneke rubs our collective noses in the aftermath of violence without showing us any gore whatsoever. Ann (Naomi Watts) stumbles around in her underwear trying desperately to free herself from the parcel tape that binds her arms and legs; the body of her ten year old son lies on the floor behind her. ‘Entertaining’ is not a word that comes instantly to mind, and that’s the whole point.

Ann: Why don't you just kill us?
Peter: You shouldn't forget the importance of entertainment.

From a screenwriting perspective, I don’t think you’re going to find many aspects of Funny Games that conform to what we are all told a ‘good’ script should comprise of. If Haneke is guilty of lecturing his audience and making them feel lousy, then surely his off-handed dismissal of established screenwriting tropes is just as cynical (which is what made the film massively enjoyable for me). Character motivation as far as the two tennis-white wearing psychos are concerned is non-existent: there is no reasoning for what these people are up to here - no explanation, no complex back story, nothing. Paul and Peter even joke about the issue at one point. There is an extended riff on a non-functioning mobile phone: Peter accidentally (on purpose) knocks Ann’s mobile phone into a sink full of water. Later in the movie, Ann and her severely injured husband, George (Tim Roth) attempt to get the phone working – they try and try, but the thing simply refuses to function, a detail that only increases the sense of utter helplessness. Of course, in ‘normal’ screenwriting parlance the phone would work; the fact that it doesn’t is a real kick in the teeth, not only for George and Ann, but for the audience as well.

The knife on the boat is another case in point: George forgets about the knife that he has left on board his little sailing boat, only for Ann to come across it later when Peter and Paul proceed to sail off to find their next victims. She uses it to try and cut the ropes from her hands, but as her hands are tied in front of her, the two white gloved psychos notice immediately – Peter grabs the knife and throws it overboard: Ann soon follows. Funny Games really is an exquisitely cruel film to watch, not least because screenwriting itself gets a good kicking.

The Queen versus Norman Baker

Contains Spoilers for The Strange Death of David Kelly

I haven’t really seen it properly, but doesn’t The Queen strike you as a completely bizarre idea for a film? When I first saw it advertised in a cinema somewhere, I literally could not get my head round the fact why anyone in their own right mind would want to go and see it, but what do I know? I’m sure there’s a readymade American market that laps this stuff up, and who’s to say that’s a bad thing? Certainly not me.

Like The Last King of Scotland (another Peter Morgan script), The Queen mines a rich seam of unsympathetic protagonists in a study of tradition (represented by Helen Mirren, or as she is now better known: Her Maj) versus populism (represented by Tony Blair and his gang of gurning modernisers). Well, I’m guessing that’s what it’s about – I’ve seen it on three different occasions now and haven’t actually managed to see the whole thing, so no doubt there are huge gaps in my viewing experience. But bear with me.

A little while back, I wrote about the world of Spooks, and how I perceived that there had been a perceptible tonal shift in the ‘culture’ that made such a series possible. Although I liked Spooks, something about it seemed strangely reactionary – and the same thing struck me about The Queen.

The film portrays Blair the head cheese and his gruff, tabloid-wise sidekick, Alistair Campbell, as brave modernisers, wary and respectful of the old traditions, but recognising that by necessity, they must change. With the benefit of hindsight, Tony Blair’s premiership is not likely to be remembered for the Campbell-scripted speech he gave after Princess Diana’s death, but for an ill-advised, illegal and disastrous war.

Which leads me neatly onto The Strange Death of David Kelly, by Norman Baker, the famous Liberal Democrat windbag). This book is a thorough if at times rambling investigative study into the death of the Government weapons expert, David Kelly, found dead in suspicious circumstances in July 2003. The picture it paints of the Blair administration is not at all flattering, and to a certain extent this is to be expected. What is surprising, however, is the forensic diligence that Baker applies to the central question, which leads him to a startling conclusion: that Kelly was murdered by Iraqi intelligence operatives, and his death made to look like suicide, most probably by members of the UK intelligence community.

Baker grinds through a variety of scenarios – even a few that sound positively demented – and emerges with a thesis that is logical and well argued, even if there are a few unavoidable leaps of guesswork. It’s a persuasively and passionately argued book that leaves few stones unturned – a book that, in adapted form, would give a valid counterpoint to The Queen.

Conspiracy theories may well be a little old hat these days, and have almost certainly been overtaken by the imprecisions of ‘historical fiction’. But when a film as reactionary as The Queen pops up, I often wish there was something that could stand alongside it to give an opposing point of view.

As above, hindsight is a wonderful thing – The Queen is set in the initial days and months of Blair’s premiership, where anything seemed possible. Blair and Campbell are matey iconoclasts, all too aware of what they perceive as being the ‘right thing’, and what they need to do to achieve it. However, in The Strange Death of David Kelly, Blair and Campbell are obsessed with the retention of power; their treatment of David Kelly was disgraceful at best, and their political hobbling of the BBC and the ensuing Hutton enquiry were the breathtakingly arrogant actions of men convinced that they were right (and what is particularly galling about the whole episode is that it was the BBC that was right all along).

The Queen is undoubtedly a work of fiction – where politicians strive for the common good, how could it be anything else? Discounting the obvious guesswork that Baker’s conclusion necessarily demands, The Strange Death of David Kelly seems anything but, a world where the good guys get killed and the bad guys get the million pound book deals. Maybe I’m a bit weird, but I know which one I’d rather pay money to see.

The Unsympathetic Protagonist

Contains spoilers for The Last King of Scotland

‘Adaptation’ seems to be the buzz word of the moment wherever you’re lurking in the ‘scribosphere’ (someone, please – come up with a better term than this to describe what writers do on the internet – I’ll pay good money to see a new non-cringe worthy term). What with Lianne’s Adaptation group convening on 26th February for a spot of cake flinging, adaptation fever is everywhere, and on UFP it’s no different. Okay, so it took me a year to get round to it (after reading a great review on the now sadly and apparently defunct Film Flam), but after having watched The Last King of Scotland I feel the need to go off on yet another wild and rambling tangent. Oh yes.

My wife’s reaction on having sat through Nicholas Garrigan’s (James McAvoy) exploits in TLKOS was, “The bloke’s a twat.” It’s hard to disagree, and therein lies the problem. Although he doesn’t instantly come across as a twat, it doesn’t take Garrigan long to settle into a twat-like groove – and the first three scenes send him down this route quite nicely, thank you. Admittedly, the first three scenes are fantastic: the character of Garrigan – a newly graduated medical student – craves stimulation, excitement. To escape the suffocating clutches of his parents, Garrigan spins a globe in his room and jabs a finger at it in a random effort to find somewhere – anywhere – to run to: he doesn’t care where. Well, he does a bit, as his first choice – Canada – is rejected in favour of Uganda.

Within ten minutes of setting foot in country, he is cheerfully rutting with the citizenry and putting the moves on Sarah Merrit (Gillian Anderson), the wife of the doctor who runs the medical centre where Garrigan is supposed to work. His words about wanting to help seem increasingly empty, especially as Uganda is a place that he knows absolutely nothing about – not that he particularly wants to. The spin of the globe sets this all up superbly. We know that Garrigan doesn’t really care – a fact that is driven home when he absconds from his duties at the medical centre to become Idi Amin’s (Forest Whittaker) personal physician and sidekick. Dazzled by uniforms and medals, Garrigan is essentially a naive lout. As the brutal truth regarding Amin’s dictatorship is made apparent, Garrigan belatedly realises that he’s bet on the wrong horse. His punishment – his retribution – is bloody and terrifying.

This is all well and good, but the central problem still remains: the bloke’s a twat. The writers Peter Morgan and Jeremy Brock have certainly crafted a memorable enough character, but as George Lucas points out (I’m paraphrasing here), writing an unsympathetic character is easy – all you have to do is make him/her kick a dog: job done. Garrigan’s journey sees him travel from naive simpleton to naive simpleton who’s had a bit of a slap – not much of a character arc there, if that’s what you’re looking for. The spin of the globe is brilliant screenwriting – but making us care for a character whose sole function appears to be pursuing his own mostly hedonistic pursuits is probably a draft too far in this case...

...which all seems very strange when you start comparing Giles Foden’s book with the screenplay. In the book, Garrigan is more of a clueless prat than the gung-ho know-nothing McAvoy portrays him as. Due to this, there are several scenes in the film that jump out due to their incongruousness. Whilst treating Amin for a hand injury, Garrigan grabs Amin’s own handgun and shoots an injured cow that is ‘ruining his concentration’. Garrigan’s pursuit of Sarah Merrit is portrayed in a soft romantic focus that lacks the harder edge of the book, where Garrigan misreads the situation and is unceremoniously rejected, a scene that partially speeds his journey to Amin’s side. The script manoeuvres him quickly out of the medical centre, which only reinforces the idea that he’s a naive simpleton overly impressed by power and shiny medals.

I guess you could make the argument that Garrigan actually wants to help, but this is rather swamped by his starry eyed admiration for Amin. In this case, expecting us to follow Garrigan for two hours does rather try the patience, not least because the story is told almost exclusively from Garrigan’s point of view. His ignorance becomes our ignorance; he knows nothing about the history – post-colonial or otherwise – of Uganda, and so neither do we. To expect any film to do something like this is a tall order, so the script relies upon the larger than life character of Amin to deliver this aspect of the narrative. Does it succeed? Sort of. However, you have to negotiate round a bone-headed protagonist in order to see it properly.

There’s nothing wrong with unsympathetic protagonists of course – look at Taxi Driver, which juggles with this issue brilliantly – the problem with Garrigan is that he doesn’t appear to possess much humanity in the first place. The spin of the globe tells you all you need to know.

The Prestige - Adaptation & Beyond

This post contains spoilers for The Prestige

After an interesting post on what makes a good adaptation over at Lucy’s recently, I thought I’d weigh in with my two cents – which is that one of the best recent screen adaptations I can think of is Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s The Prestige.

The Prestige was adapted from a novel by Christopher Priest, which is well worth a read in its own right. However, looking at what was added and/or jettisoned from the novel gives a series of what I think are valuable lessons, not only in screenwriting, but what makes for a good adaptation.

For starters, the book has four protagonists, not two – a proportion of the narrative takes place in the present day as the descendants of Angier and Borden struggle to come to terms with the feud that their ancestors were engaged in. The Nolans obviously made the decision to expunge all elements of the present, focussing instead on the eminently more dramatic (and interesting) historical feud. If the screenplay had been a faithful adaptation of the novel, the historical feud would have been viewed from the present at arm’s length (even worse, it probably would have been written as a series of flashbacks). The central narrative threads of the novel – Borden and Angier’s feud and the gradual revealing of their respective secrets (some banal, some not so banal) – are maintained in the screenplay, but by expunging all present day elements, the Nolans provide a tighter focus for the film.

What is also interesting is the way that the Nolans tie Borden and Angier together very early on in the screenplay. In the book, Borden disrupts a fake séance that is being led by Angier, an event that marks the start of their bitter feud. However, as we follow both Angier and Borden through the climbs in their respective careers, this feud takes a long while to ramp up. In comparison, the screenplay hits the ground running: the Nolans make a drastic change inasmuch as Borden and Angier are working together as assistants to the same magician. A supposedly untried knot used in a dangerous trick featuring Angier’s wife goes horribly wrong, and the feud begins with a real sense of urgency and intensity.

Another major departure from the novel is Borden’s arrest for Angier’s murder, which I think illustrates a major pitfall for any adaptation (and one that The Prestige deftly avoids). In the novel, Borden accidentally interrupts Angier’s show by shutting down the power to his teleportation apparatus – this has the effect of creating two Angiers: one weak and sickly, the other transparent and (apparently) immortal. To faithfully adapt this for the screen would require a great deal of tricky exposition – thankfully, the Nolans made the decision to expunge the more fantastical elements of the novel, and to keep Angier’s secret up their sleeve until the very last moment. As with Chris Weitz’s adaptation of The Golden Compass, the more fantastical the narrative, the more exposition you have to shoehorn in to explain it. In the screenplay, instead of disrupting Angier’s performance, Borden is deliberately set up by Angier, which ultimately leads to his imprisonment and conviction.

The major factor that the novel and screenplay have in common is the treatment of the concept of protagonist and antagonist. This is from a Christopher Nolan interview at about.com:

“...when we were trying to figure out how to sell this film to a studio early on, it's like what story paradigm is it? Are (there) very few... two-hander story paradigms? The Sting is one of them. There are others where there's no good guy, bad guy, so it's very tricky. I mean, Michael Mann's Heat is another one... They do exist, but they're few and far between. The Sting is quite a close one. Sleuth is another one.”

The Vanishing and American Gangster are good examples of this story paradigm, but the treatments are obviously completely different to that of The Prestige. However, unlike The Vanishing (where the roles of protagonist and antagonist are clearly demarcated from the outset), The Prestige does something altogether different: throughout the course of the film, the roles of protagonist and antagonist are in constant negotiation – your sympathies are batted back and forth until you come to the conclusion that both Borden and Angier are as obsessive and misunderstood as each other. Mix in a huge dollop of misdirection and two essentially unreliable narrators, and, in my opinion, you have one of the best adapted screenplays of recent years.

Christmas with Stanley Tucci

Contains spoilers for The Devil Wears Prada and Lucky Number Slevin (also contains a gratuitous Kylie Minogue insult).

After watching that absolutely godawful Kylie Showgirl Live thing that was on over Christmas (La Minogue’s voice sounds as if someone is doing something unspeakable to a small mammal with an out of tune clarinet), I decided to watch nothing but films featuring the great Stanley Tucci – not that I had a choice in the matter. This Christmas, whenever someone turned on the TV or slapped on a DVD, there he was, as ubiquitous as Elvis.

The Devil Wears Prada, directed by David Frankel, adapted from the novel by Lauren Weisberger by Aline Brosh McKenna. This is about the fluffiest piece of fluffy fluff it’s ever been my pleasure to sit through – not that I object to films like this, but the word ‘inconsequential’ seems specifically apt here. If you were being particularly cruel, you could describe the whole thing as a Disney-fied Shopping and Fucking. It goes without saying that Stanley Tucci is the best thing about it.

Curiously, although the screenplay feels adequately developed (inasmuch as you can see the 'stake in the ground' three act setbacks telegraphing themselves from about a hundred miles away), in several areas it felt lopsided and uneven. For instance, one crucial turning point (where Andy - the protagonist - has the belated realisation that the fashion industry isn’t quite her bag), revolves around the fact that she made a choice earlier in the film that supposedly demonstrated she was as hard-nosed and career oriented as her psychopathically driven boss, Miranda (Meryl Streep). Problem is, this so called ‘decision’ was forced upon Andy by Miranda herself, so in effect, it isn’t really a decision at all – this has the effect of making the conclusion to the film seem weirdly illogical. With a movie like this, you half expect the screenplay to be machine tooled to gleaming perfection, but instead all you get is a half whittled piece of wood.

That said, who cares about a coherent narrative when there are fabulous dresses and fashion shows to enjoy (good god, I sound like Liberace)?

Shall We Dance? – directed by Peter Chelsom, adapted by Audrey Wells from an original screenplay by Masayuki Suo. What is Peter Chelsolm – the writer and director of Funny Bones – doing heading up this garish load of warmed-over remade flapdoodle? And since American Gigolo, Richard Gere’s oeuvre has consisted almost exclusively of scripts that have had all the fun, subversion and joy surgically removed by unsmiling movie executives with hearts of coal. Shall We Dance is no exception. It even has Jennifer Lopez in it, not exactly your benchmark of quality. However, it does feature Stanley Tucci, who, of course, is fantastic.

ER – straight after Shall We Dance, I caught the trailers for the new series of ER, which prominently feature Stanley Tucci. I think the man is stalking me (albeit in a weird, audiovisual kind of way).

Lucky Number Slevin, directed by Paul McGuigan, written by Jason Smilovic. Apart from having the worst title in living memory, this isn’t half bad. Admittedly, in tone it’s a total Tarantino knock-off, replete with smart arse dialogue (that is way too smug for its own good), and the by now ubiquitous pop/cultural references (this time they're yakking pointlessly about Bond movies).

However, on the plus side, although the narrative takes an absolute age to get up and running (is it just me, or does the first act conclude at the fifty minute mark?), it's a surprisingly emotional ride – a quality that QT seems incapable of or simply unwilling to surrender to. Also, it looks mad – the production designers have seemingly trawled through a warehouse chock full of seventies wallpaper in order to decorate a series of retina scorching interiors.

And of course, Stanley Tucci is great – anyone who can effortlessly glide from high camp to corrupt cop gets my vote (and I bet he sings better than flippin’ Kylie as well).

The ‘Oh Gawd, It’s Christmas’ Factor

Christmas – the time of year where I get dragged to the cinema to see a whole bunch of films I would usually cross the street to avoid...

The Golden Compass – ‘written’ and directed by Chris Weitz. Wanna know why this is currently bombing in the States? Go see it. Or rather, don’t. You have been warned.

How the flaming heck did Chris Weitz get this gig? It can’t have been on the basis of his adapted screenplay, which is so chock full of clunky exposition it actually made me want to punch myself in the face. Granted, material like this is difficult to adapt, as there is a lot of intricate back story and plenty of unfamiliar concepts for an audience to get its head round (and to be honest, I tend not to be a huge fan of the whole ‘fantasy’ genre, if that’s what you want to call it). But starting out with an explanatory voiceover which only really adds to the ensuing confusion is the ideal way to make me start chucking stuff at the screen.

Major characters appear and disappear for no good reason. At least half of the dialogue is exposition (the other half simply being unintentionally funny: Do you want to ride me? Hello! I thought this film was rated PG). Nicole Kidman is about as menacing as a tin of Quality Street. An hour in, I wanted to gouge out my eyes and throw them at people just so I had something entertaining to do.

Stardust – this is one of those films that has you alternately shouting, ‘Huzzah!’ and ‘Oh Gawd!’ ‘Huzzah!’ for the quite amazing Robert DeNiro, who completely steals the film as a cross dressing whoopsie pirate – ‘Oh Gawd!’ for the appearance of Dexter Fletcher. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a good actor, but ever since he played a Yank in Press Gang, there’s something about him that makes me go, ‘Oh Gawd!’ No idea why, but there we are.

A load of marvellous old nonsense and about a hundred times better than The Golden Compost.

Enchanted – like, wow. I loved this, and what made it better is the fact that I wasn’t expecting to even like it (to be honest, the omens were not good: the writer – Bill Kelly – was responsible for that pure flapdoodle Sandra Bullock vehicle Premonition).

That said, there appears to be a much darker, naughtier story lurking just below the surface here, which seems to me to suggest that Disney has managed to plane off a few of the sharper edges from Kelly’s screenplay. No matter, it’s still great fun.

That said, my wife laughed at me callously for crying most of the way through (I’ll cry at anything, which is why I can’t watch The Secret Millionaire or any Cancer Research TV advert). However, Sarah managed to spill the entire contents of a cup of latte over the cinema floor, which meant that a throng of super-efficient cinema employees descended on us, making her feel incredibly daft and not a little embarrassed. Vengeance is mine! Or something.

Chung Hing Sam Lam

This post contains spoilers for Chungking Express

Chungking Express, written and directed by Wong Kar-Wai, is one of my favourite films, and here are a few reasons why:

* The set up is brilliant – all you need to know about where the film is going is covered in the first two and half minutes. Wong Kar-Wai then goes crazy and follows this with an almost completely inconsequential two minute phone conversation. The general screenwriting rule about phone conversation is – don’t do it! But in Chungking Express, as it forms part of the film’s theme of loneliness and disconnection, it works.

* It has four voiceovers! Four I tell you (guaranteed to get all script readers the world over frothing at the mouth with the imminent onset of madness)! The two cops in the film – #223 and #633 – have a voiceover each. However, not to be outdone, the mysterious drug dealer who #223 sidles up to into in a bar, and Faye – the bonkers waitress who rearranges #633’s flat without his knowledge – both have their own voiceovers. And what’s more, it works.

* The use of music throughout is positively demented. Specific pieces of music are used to announce the arrival and reappearance of key characters, so much so that by the fourth time you’ve heard California Dreamin’ by the Mamas and Papas you’re laughing out loud (although it has to be said that prolonged exposure to this song has been scientifically proven to turn people into head swivelling psychopaths).

* It isn’t afraid of being sentimental. This is from a book called Nonconformity by Nelson Algren:

Q: What is sentimentality?

Algren: Oh, it’s an indulgence in emotion. You want men and women to be good to each other and you’re very stubborn in thinking that they want to be. Sentimentality is a kind of indulgence in this hope. I’m not against sentimentality. I think you need it. I mean, I don’t think you get a true picture of people without it in writing.

I think this passage sums up the whole film.

* The cinematography - by Christopher Doyle - throughout is extraordinary. The chase sequences in the first half are thrillingly impressionistic riots of neon. There’s a scene in the snack bar where Faye has forgotten to pay the electricity bill, which means the whole place is lit by candlelight – it looks extraordinary – more an accident than by way of design I suspect, but who cares when it looks this good?

* It tackles a subject you seldom see in the movies – loneliness – but does it in such a way that is original and funny without losing one iota of charm or poignancy. Both #223 and #633 deal with their loneliness in different ways. #633 talks to the objects in his apartment - this is what he says to a well used bar of soap: You've lost a lot of weight, you know. You used to be so chubby. Have more confidence in yourself. #223 obsesses about the sell by date on tins of pineapple as a way of coming to terms with the break-up of a relationship, which culminates in a cracked discussion with a harrassed shop clerk.

* The whole film teeters on the brink of a weird kind of incoherency, probably as a result of Wong Kar-Wai writing it as he went along (it was written and filmed during a break in production from the epic Ashes of Time). Vast swathes of it appear to be improvised, but it’s directed and edited with such a strong hand, you barely notice. Also, the two halves of the film are connected, but only in the most tenuous and random of fashions - does this matter? Not really. Chungking Express isn't hung up on providing a neat knot of resolved plot lines at its conclusion, and so feels fresh and original as a result.

Too bad that Wong Kar-Wai followed this up with a series of films that seem less and less consequential. Fallen Angels certainly has its moments, but perhaps would have been better off as the third part of Chungking Express (which was apparently the original intention). In The Mood for Love put me into a week-long coma, and as for 2046: I literally cannot bring myself to watch it, as the title reminds me too much of Code 46, Michael Winterbottom’s disastrous excursion into sci-fi. So, hey, I’m shallow: but I knew that anyway.

Decency Will Out

I’ve seen so many bad films recently I was in danger of actually self-combusting, so I thought it was about time I watched something decent:

The Vanishing, directed by Georges Sluizer, written by Tim Krabbé (the original Dutch film silly, not the godawful re-make with Kiefer Sutherland) (and thanks to Tom for pointing out that Belgium and Holland are NOT the same country. All I can say in my defence is that it's about time my medication was changed).

What a marvellous film this is. The first thing that strikes you is the fact that visually, it’s uncluttered, which is a perfect fit for the unpretentious way the film unfolds. The non-linear structure is beautifully handled, and in Sluizer’s hands is massively unshowy (imagine what would have happened had Tarantino got his hands on it – the thing would have announced itself with a deafening orchestra of bells and whistles). The two central performances – from Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu and Gene Bervoets – are great, although Bervoets does tend to chew up the scenery when it’s not really needed (Johanna ter Steege is certainly worth a mention as well). The Vanishing is also a superb example of what can be done with two protagonists (The Prestige is another, albeit more complex, example of this), which makes it formally interesting as well. And what an ending - brrr....

Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ehren Kruger – avert your eyes purists, as this film is better than the Japanese original -and that's official! Perhaps it’s more culturally specific and therefore easier for my hopelessly westernised mind to tune into, but it’s genuinely frightening and more than a little more disturbing.

Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, written by Steve Knight – whilst it’s certainly not as good as A History of Violence, this is still a serious, sinuous piece of cinema. However, there was something about the screenplay that seemed a little overwritten, a little convoluted. One of the best things about A History of Violence for me was the elegantly simplistic way the narrative unfolded: coupled with Cronenberg’s unhurried direction, this made for absolutely riveting viewing. With Eastern Promises (what a terrible title, by the way), things are a little different. Without Cronenberg’s direction, the film would indeed resemble a feature length episode of The Bill, as Peter Bradshaw wrote in The Guardian – I think this is entirely due to the screenplay. Not that you’d immediately notice that it was overwritten or contrived, as Cronenberg’s expertise behind the camera keeps the whole thing firmly on the road without any danger of the wheels falling off.

Back to the movie landfill territory soon, as I have to sit through Vacancy. Zoiks!

Full Metal Jacket – Structure-A-Go-Go

This post contains spoilers for Full Metal Jacket and Hidden.

I’ve always loved Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, so when I had to choose a subject for my MA 'effort' a few years back, it was a pretty straightforward choice. My title? The Use of Visual and Narrative Symmetry in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Catchy, eh? (OK, probably not). Rather than reproduce the whole thing here (and believe me, if you read it you would thank me a million times over), I thought I’d go over a few of its points just for the sheer fun of it...

First off, there is an excellent Kubrick resource here – it doesn’t look as if the site has been updated since 2002, but as far as on-line resources go, you can’t beat it. However, the one thing it doesn’t seem to cover in its discussion regarding FMJ is just how completely obsessed with structure this movie is – not just in the screenwriting sense of the word (where 'structure' usually means three acts, i.e., set up, conflict and resolution), but in its visual and narrative constructs as well.

I don't think it matters whether you regard FMJ as possessing two acts or the more traditional three, it is immediately apparent that the film is split into two very distinct halves – the Parris Island boot camp and the second part which takes place in Vietnam itself (which in fact is an abandoned gasworks in North London). Other than the apparent switch in location, the two halves of the film have very distinct visual identities: the Parris Island segment is ‘clean’, symmetrical, ordered. In the Da Nang segment, this symmetry has all but disappeared. The tension of the first act has almost completely dissipated and the film almost appears to drift, as if it is in search of a suitably involved narrative.

Some critics identified this as a major flaw of FMJ, but I think this is the whole point of the film. The Parris Island segment is structured around the figure of Sergeant Hartman, who stalks the boot camp within a variety of almost perfectly symmetrical shots. When Pyle kills Hartman, this pivotal figure is removed from proceedings altogether, and the ambience of the film drastically changes. To my mind, Hartman is the structural ‘core’ of the first part of the film, inasmuch as his words and actions provide meaning and organisation to what the recruits are experiencing. With Hartman dead, meaning and order evaporate, leaving the recruits to fend for themselves – hence the decidedly marked visual differences between the two halves.

There was a Kubrick interview in Newsweek around the time of FMJ’s release in which Kubrick stated that his intention with FMJ was “to explode the narrative structure of film”. Kubrick did this in FMJ by using structure to literally break up the narrative to the extent that the traditional notion of character is subsumed by structure itself. For example, the parade ground sequences demonstrate the rigid structure that the Marine Corps imposes on new recruits. Watch Pyle as Joker assists him in many aspects of Pyle’s basic training – initially, Pyle doesn’t get the hang of things at all. These sequences are shot from right to left, and show Pyle effectively going backwards. When Pyle starts doing better and responding to Joker's attentions, the sequences shift to left to right. In the first half of the film, character is expressed partially via the way that entire sequences are constructed. It’s probably the reason why FMJ has such a weird, unsettling ambience – the more formal elements of filmmaking have been brought to the fore, whilst the more traditional staples of narrative and character development are stripped back, leaving a film that is almost the diametric opposite of Platoon’s trite ‘war is hell’ message.

One of the most useful things I took from FMJ is that by suppressing or entirely doing away with the more commonly articulated elements of narrative, you can create space for interesting questions to be asked – a potentially far more intriguing state of affairs than the current obsession with McKee’s Story. Look at Michael Haneke’s Hidden – where a character’s ‘arc’ often describes a journey from non-awareness to enlightenment, Hidden does the opposite – a supposedly progressive liberal discovers that at the core of his being lurks an unpleasant, reactionary conservative – Georges’ ultimate reaction to where his ‘journey’ takes him is that he is more than comfortable with the way things are, a state of affairs that threatens to endure with the film’s famously cryptic and interminable closing shot.

All of which is very long winded way of saying that there can often be more to structure than meets the eye. The problem with discarding major narrative building blocks is that you’d better have something pretty compelling to put in their place, otherwise your script will look like an exercise in form for form’s sake – something that Last Year in Marienbad comes dangerously close to becoming. Alain Robbe-Grillet talks about his intention with Marienbad to "construct a purely mental space and time – those of dreams, perhaps, or of memory, those of any affective life – without worrying too much about the traditional relations of cause and effect, or about an absolute time sequence in the narrative." It all depends on the sort of script you want to write, and the types of themes that you want to explore.

Two Little Beauties, Babel and the Back Story Four

No, nothing to do with Jordan’s oversized attributes, but two superb films coincidentally directed by men called Paul (plus Babel and a crap sequel but you can’t win ‘em all).

Warning! This post contains spoilers for Black Book, Babel and The Fantastic Four – Rise of the (Crap CGI) Silver Surfer.

Black Book – directed by Paul Verhoeven. Black Book clocks in at well over two hours, but it moves at such a terrific pace, you hardly notice. The narrative is tightly wound around an act of betrayal, but there are so many different shades of grey that, come the end, your moral compass is spinning all over the place like an epileptic windmill.

But then again, Verhoeven is good at this sort of thing. Look at Starship Troopers (Look! It’s Doogie Howser dressed as a Nazi! Pure entertainment) – Black Book is similar inasmuch as the narrative subverts our assumptions about who is supposed to be the good guy, but does it in such a way that by the time we realise who’s who, it’s too late to switch allegiances.

There’s an extraordinary scene near the end of the film where the drugged up heroine jumps out of a window into the waiting arms of a cheering crowd past the man who has just tried to kill her. Do yourself a favour and see this film.

United 93 – written and directed by Paul Greengrass. The Bourne Ultimatum was, as everyone in the civilised world knows, unmitigated flapdoodle. United 93 is altogether different. You can tell it’s the same directorial hand at play, as the same edgy camerawork and off-centre framing are all present, but here it serves a dramatic purpose. Screenplay wise, United 93 is a masterful exercise in mounting tension – coupled with a defiantly documentary style (a lot of scenes look improvised, but from the actor’s and director’s point of view), this approach packs an huge emotional punch without being manipulative in the slightest. I guess that Greengrass is working with a story that we all know the ending to, but even so, this is a very skilful piece of writing that, whilst not necessarily rejecting the usual three act structure, goes a little way in showing that there’s more than one way to tell a story like this (in comparison to the atrocious made for TV Flight 93, United 93 is a masterpiece).

Babel – directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. Maybe I’m just being bloody minded but I quite enjoyed this, if only for the fantastic visuals and the relaxed way the narrative seemed to unfold. I’m not sure if there was any point in the scenes that featured a schoolgirl flashing her bush at all and sundry, which reflects just how opaque (and unnecessary) the Japanese section of the story is. The film may have pretensions at being truly global, but if that’s the case, it would be nice if this disparate strand actually linked back into the wider theme in a more convincing fashion.

I’m going to stop moaning now, because if I go on long enough I’ll talk myself out of liking this film at all (if you look at the film essentially as brainless arthouse, you can’t go wrong).

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. What a load of arse. Even though this is a sequel, there is an absolute landfill of back story that we’re made to sit through before anything remotely interesting happens (a classic case of starting your script too early, as the Dragon Lady might state). A rubbish CGI Silver Surfer presides over a storyline that threatens to drown everything in a tsunami of utter nonsense. Sub-plots breed like rampant bunnies all over the shop only to go nowhere fast. Three villains (two entirely CGI generated) – why isn’t one bad guy enough any more? Come the end, I was more than happy that the world was going to be destroyed, if only for the fact that if it was there wouldn’t be a second sequel to this franchised pile of old dog toffee.

On the menu for the new few days:

Ring (the remake – this may sound like heresy, but I prefer the American remake to the original) – The Frighteners – Hidden (again) – Shooter (got to watch it I’m afraid, if only to get the damned thing out of the house) – The Marine (WTF? Has anyone apart from my nephew heard of this film?)

London to Brighton – The Ubiquity of Ideas

Warning! This post contains spoilers for London to Brighton.

First off, let me say that I have absolutely nothing against London to Brighton – all round, it’s a pretty decent film (with one major lapse of narrative logic, but you can’t have everything).

The thing that really intrigued me however, was the ending – despicable gangster Stuart Allen drives tart with a heart Kelly and her ward Joanne deep into the Sussex countryside with the express intention of having them killed by his gormless foot soldiers – Derek and Chum. Whilst Derek and Chum get busy digging a shallow grave, Kelly and Joanne plead for their lives, convinced that they are going to be killed. However, when the moment of truth arrives, Stuart’s cronies’ guns are aimed at Derek and Chum, and Kelly and Joanne are freed. It’s a great scene, full of menace, and the switch is cleverly played out.

There was just one problem for me – it all seemed a little familiar. The reason?

A few years back, I wrote an almost identical scene.

My script was set in south London circa 1974 and focussed on a timid accountant who gets drawn into a violent criminal underworld. The scene I wrote featured the accountant digging what is supposedly his own grave, only for it to become the final resting place for the big bad gangster’s psychotic rival. Without labouring the point too much, the scene in London to Brighton is almost identical.

And what’s more, that’s cool.

I am not for one moment suggesting that plagiarism of any sort has occurred here (my script did the rounds just as the British gangster movie was about to explode messily all over the place, so it got lost in the noise I guess). I think what this episode shows is that some ideas are simply ubiquitous – they possess a weird form of common currency. The fact that I wrote an identical scene a few years back means nothing. And besides, there are so many damn scripts out there all jockeying for attention, at least of few of them are going to share a lot of unintentional similarities.

On the other hand, a friend of mine got understandably upset a little while back when a British feature came out that seemed to borrow entirely from one of his own scripts. To add insult to injury, my friend had actually sent the script to the lead actor’s agent a few years before, only to see the idea apparently recycled wholesale into a starring vehicle. I think he consulted an entertainment lawyer but from then on the trail went cold (the film bombed big time anyway, so a law suit is pretty pointless when no-one has any money available to compensate).

Whether or not this was a similar situation was difficult to tell. There was a certain ubiquity in the idea, and, as we all know, you can’t copyright an idea (believe me, I deal with this sort of crap every day). You could launch an action based on a like-for-like comparison of the two scripts side by side, but if that test fails, you’re screwed. It’s all in the specifics – the idea/concept is obviously important, but what counts in an instance like this is the execution (there are other issues to consider here of course: unless you have a compelling case, try finding a media lawyer who would take this sort of thing on for free, not to mention the damage it would do to any career if litigation was a first port of call).

Anyone can have an idea for a screenplay – it’s not difficult. The difficulty comes when you have to actually write the damn thing. How many times have you seen someone on Shooting People announce that they have a drop dead brilliant idea for a script, but what they really need is for someone to write the thing for (or ‘with’) them? In the next breath they start talking about confidentiality agreements just in case you think their diamond studded, gold plated idea is worth stealing. Pah. It’s the execution that matters.

My solution to this? Be original. What I took from London to Brighton is that I’m not being original enough (must try harder). If nothing else, being original gets you remembered.

And that lapse of narrative logic in London to Brighton? When Derek and Chum happen across Kelly in her friend’s house in Brighton, they order everyone (a bunch of dozy dope smoking slackers) out of the house at gunpoint – the slackers then promptly disappear! Hang on a minute – crazy pimp with a shotgun holding two women hostage? Quick! Call the cops! On second thoughts, don’t bother. We’re all pretty laid back here in sunny Brighton, so when crazy pimps start waving shotguns around, we all go, ‘Meh – been there, done that.’ Besides, I think I’m getting a bit autistic about narrative logic (which in the case of London to Brighton seems to be directly related to how much money was left in the budget). I need to relax a bit, I think.

Three Duds and a Diamond

The bad film quotient round Chipster Towers has skyrocketed since my wife’s nephew moved in, bringing with him an armful of garishly covered DVDs (or ‘boy’s films’ as my wife likes to call them). On the odd occasion, he’ll drag me to the cinema (I haven’t yet forgiven him yet for the dross that was Hannibal Rising) for more of the same – although, that said, we caught a real gem of a movie last night in the shape of:

Shoot ‘Em Up – I don’t tend to disagree with Peter Bradshaw very often, but when he described Kill Bill as ‘deliriously exciting’, all I could think of to say was ‘Uh?’ If you want to see a film that is pointlessly, stupidly exciting, go see Shoot ‘Em Up. Character development? Pah! Narrative coherency? Get a grip! Intriguing sub-plots? Don’t me make me laugh! Unremittingly daft from the get-go, Clive Owen blasts away at twelve shades of bad guys whilst Paul Giametti chews up the scenery and spits it out in great big chunks. The thing is so delirious and daft, it’s hard not to grin. That, and Motorhead on the soundtrack as well. This may well be boy’s film territory, but what the hell.

By the way, Peter Bradshaw describes it as being wearyingly crude and calculating. You be the judge.

Unfortunately, after the ludicrous high point of Shoot ‘Em Up, it’s business as usual:

The Butterfly Effect 2: not having summoned up the energy to watch the first Butterfly Effect (is Ashton Kutcher really an actor? I always figured he was some sort of spokesman for Action Man or Colgate or something), I settle down for a bowl of warmed up leftover sequel.

Forty minutes in – can someone explain to me how people have sex through their clothes?

Fifty minutes in – uh, what the flaming arse is going on here?

Fifty five minutes in – the screenwriter has the good grace to answer my question above via a clunking great wedge of exposition – thank Christ for that. The lead character gets richer and progressively unhappier – I suspect there’s a message here but it’s so trite and simplistic I just can’t be bothered.

Eighty five minutes in, and we’re done. It’s passable, but it’s just too drab for me. Instantly forgettable.

Perhaps my nephew will stop bringing this type of film home if I give him money? (that said, The Science of Sleep was my choice).

1408: is all right, but probably more pointless than Wolf Creek. I mean, why bother? As it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, alarm bells should start ringing before you even set foot in the cinema for this one.

The Science of Sleep: ten minutes in, and my wife’s bored already.

‘Fucking art students!’ she laughs, and flounces off to watch John Nettles in Midsomer Holby Witness or whatever the shag it’s called. That said, she’s got a point – the whole thing does look like it was made on some foundation art course on a budget of twelve quid and a mountain of the insides of toilet rolls.

However, lurking underneath the ‘wacky’ (how I hate that word) and deliberately low budget effects is a very conventional, none-too-impressive three act script – you know the sort of thing: boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, they ride off into the sunset on a life-size cloth horse.

I gather that The Science of Sleep is meant to make your soul ache/flutter/keel over and shrivel up with romantic yearning or some such old toss. All it made me do was say, ‘Meh’. For something that may as well be an extended pop video, it’s all right. That said, the two leads are both as annoying as only art students can be (this, coming from a former art student – go figure).

I still can’t bring myself to watch Shooter. Maybe next time.