The Girl with All the Gifts

Dir: Colm McCarthy

2016

****

It’s not quite accurate to say that 2016’s The Girl with All the Gifts was adapted from M.R. Carey’s celebrated novel as both film and book were in fact written at the same time. Being a cynic, I thought this would end up being a telling result of someone letting their career and opportunity come before creativity but it isn’t. Carey clearly has his ambitions, the novel and film are both rather different anyway and maybe he just didn’t want someone coming along and messing with his story, better to do it yourself for peace of mind and/or profit. The book looks at the lives of five characters and each chapter is seen through different viewpoints, while the film centres on just one, the girl of the title. The film itself is a zombie thriller at heart, set in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. It nothing the genre hasn’t seen before, although it feels more like a video game rather than a film. Indeed, it is uncomfortably similar to the Play Station 4 game ‘Last of Us’ which also features zombies born of a fungal infection that sprout spore pods. As in the film, the player can move about the crowds of zombies as long as they cover up their smell and are silent at all times. The main character in the game is a young girl, who may hold the secret to the cure, just like the film. It could be coincidence, but the similarity is striking. There are elements of Dawn of the Dead, Bodysnatchers and 28 Days Later but it is done well, is never predictable and is always entertaining. The idea is rather original though, as it centres around the children born from people who were 9 months pregnant at the time of infection. These children literally ate their way out of their mothers and were rounded up and captured by the authorities as their ability to act and think as humans makes them unique and could lead to a cure. The children are imprisoned in an old air base and taught under strict guidelines while also experimented on. Gemma Arterton plays the kid’s school teacher who becomes close and emotionally attached to the school’s brightest child Melanie. She is monitored under the watchful eye of Sgt Eddie Parks (played by Paddy Considine) who runs the unit under strict guidelines and Dr Caroline Caldwell (played by Glenn Close) who experiments and dissects the children in the hope of finding a cure. When the base becomes overrun by zombies, or ‘Hungries’ as they are known here, the four of them, plus a couple of solders, find themselves on the run and looking for shelter. When they learn that the bigger base in London has fallen they realise they’re on their own with Melanie their only source of survival but not in the way they had first imagined. It is fairly standard stuff as far as the zombie genre goes but it makes up for any formulaic familiarity with its rather clever and interpretive ending. The ending could be seen as both a happy one and a sad one, it really does depend on your point of view which makes for quite a unique conclusion. Arterton is convincing, Considine plays the part well and Close is her brilliant self, but it is newcomer Sennia Nanua as Melanie who steals the show. Her performance is perfect, when in all honesty it had to be for the film to have worked. The direction isn’t bad, some of the aerial footage was shot by a second unit in the ghost town of Prypjat, near Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. Colm McCarthy said "I was very interested in post-apocalyptic imagery and urban exploration. We wanted to surprise people rather than have people coming in expecting a studio level film. We sent a micro drone unit to Pripyat, Chernobyl to shoot helicopter footage with Pripyat doubling for urban London." And he succeeded for the best part of the film but here and there, the film suffered from looking a little too CGI, with the colours being often too garish to believe. McCarthy has stated that Gareth Edward’s 2010 film Monsters was a big influence on the film and he even spoke with Edwards before filming to ask his opinion on things. I can’t quite see it myself but he claims Monsters is the films main reference point, so I don’t know if this means he really achieved his goal or not, but I liked it all the same. It’s an easy watch with a pleasantly original ending and a brilliant debut from a future star.

Lessons of Darkness

Dir: Werner Herzog

1995

****

With Lessons of Darkness, Werner Herzog takes us to an Alien planet, where fairy tale characters behave in a bizarre and often cruel manner, cause harm to each other and behave illogically. The revelation comes like a sledgehammer to the face, wake up and smell the coffee, this is planet earth now, and we’re the ridiculous species, capable of unbelievable cruelty and destruction. War and devastation has never looked so beautiful but then it’s never been viewed quite like this before. Werner Herzog's sudo-documentary is shot in on 16mm film from the perspective of an almost alien observer and is an exploration of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait, albeit deconstructed and characterized in such a way as to emphasize the terrain's cataclysmic otherworldliness. It's a sort of companion piece to his earlier film Fata Morgana, and you could say that 2005's The Wild Blue Yonder completes the unofficial trilogy, that is a little bit like the The Qatsi trilogy in many respects, although with a totally different subject and viewpoint. Herzog again perceives the desert as a landscape with its own voice, which, without wanting to gush, is typical Herzog greatness. It is a meditation rather than an exploration, a poem on catastrophe, contextualized through the literary modes of science fiction and religion. The opening quotation by Blaise Pascal reads: "The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendour." And it sums up the film pretty well. The film is split into thirteen chapters: "A Capital City", "The War", "After the Battle", "Finds from Torture Chambers", "Satan's National Park", "Childhood", "And a Smoke Arose like a Smoke from a Furnace", "A Pilgrimage", "Dinosaurs on the Go", "Protuberances", "The Drying Up of the Source", "Life Without the Fire" and "I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night". The film is how you find it, we know it is the aftermath of the first gulf war – specifically the Kuwaiti oil fires but we are given none of the facts, the film features no politics, no geographical relevance and absolutely no narration. It is his aim for people to think about the situation without having their opinion swayed, as you would when seeing this delivered by a biased media with their own agenda. There is a lot more to see and learn by watching these events through the eyes of a visitor, Herzog stated that "the film has not a single frame that can be recognised as our planet, and yet we know it must have been shot here", bringing the truth of the situation to the surface, when it feels like a sci-fi dream. It’s an effective method. The imagery is matched with the roar of Wagner, Herzog’s favourite composer, and occasionally he asks a question that an alien onlooker might ask, such as "Has life without fire become unbearable for them?”. Indeed, why do we do these terrible things to ourselves? Sometimes you can learn nothing from a documentary stuffed full of facts and sometimes, particularly in Herzog’s films, you can learn everything without one fact uttered.

Supergirl

Dir: Jeannot Szwarc

1984

***

Supergirl’s first venture to the big screen was far from super, but there is a lot about it that I still adore. I was already Superman mad by the time it came out, I was, and still am, one of the few people you are likely to meet who will tell you Superman III is a brilliant film. I also like Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, but I’m not going to get into that now. After the commercial flop of Superman III (people are idiots), Alexander and IIya Salkind decided to concentrate on their other rights purchase, Supergirl. They hoped that Supergirl would freshen their franchise somewhat but they were wrong. It never occurred to the Salkinds that the problem with their franchise was them. Christopher Reeve’s Superman was due to make a cameo appearance in Supergirl but he declined fairly early on in the project, it would have been key in getting more viewers for sure and the film took a hit because of it before it was even released. It flopped, so the Salkind’s sold it to the only other guys who could mess up the franchise more so: Canon Pictures. To be fair, the only thing wrong about Supergirl, apart from Superman’s absence, was the god-awful story. It starts with the original origin story and then goes head-first into wizardry nonsense. Kara Zor-El (Supergirl’s real name) lives with her parents in the City of Argo. Argo is a Kryptonian City, saved from destruction by Zor-El, Jor-El’s brother. You see, Jor-El told his brother of the planet’s impending doom and he set about protecting his City by constructing a giant dome that surrounded it. There are many different versions in the comics but this version has the City floating in space. Kara is approached by Zaltar (Played by Peter O’Toole) and he shows her the Omegahedron, essential it is a mystical giant battery that powers the whole City. Zaltar had borrowed it without permission and then accidentally lets it float into space. Knowing that the City can’t survive without it, Kara decides to chase after it, working out that it probably landed somewhere in Earth – where she knows her super cousin lives. Her transformation into Supergirl is pretty disappointing for fans, one can only conclude that the people writing it had no will to look into her origin story at all. The Omegahedron meanwhile has fallen into the hands of a witch (played by Faye Dunaway), who lives in a ghost train ride on Coney Island with her feckless assistant Bianca (played by Breda Vaccaro). Somehow, she works out that she can use the mystery object to cast spells and uses it as an excuse to free herself from her relationship with a warlock called Nigel. It is as stupid as it sounds but made slightly better by the fact that Nigel is played by the great peter Cook, who was suggested by his old mate Dudley Moore who was offered the part first. Supergirl enrols herself in high-school, for no point at all, and ends up becoming friends with Louis Lane’s younger sister, again, for no point at all. The only thing that connects the films is Marc McClure as Jimmy Olsen, and is appearance is greatly appreciated. There is a pointless romance involving a boy called Ethan, who Selena the witch uses to entrap Supergirl and it is all very stupid and lacks good writing. Supergirl is then banished into the Phantom Zone but escapes with the help of Zaltar who has somehow ended up in there as well (it’s Peter O’Toole, they had to get their money’s worth). The last scene involves a castle, a giant shadow demon and a whole lot of nonsense but it’s still good, thanks to the wonderful Helen Slater. She beat both Demi Moore and Brooke Shields to the role and was by far the best thing about the film (even though the Salkinds openly admitted they regretted not going with Shields – but what do they know). It is a bizarre but brilliant cast when you think about it but funny how it was the unknown actor who ended up stealing the show. Maybe because she was the only one taking it seriously, who knows? The great Robert Wise was approached to direct the film but he unsurprisingly declined. Somehow it was decided that Jeannot Szwarc was a good second choice and the rest is history. I think I will always love the film because of just how bizarre it all is, as well as Helen Slater’s performance. It’s fairly odd though and makes you wonder just what they were all thinking. The opening credits cost almost $1 million dollars to shot, and yet the scene whereby Supergirl flies out of a lake was shot using a photograph of Helen Slater stuck to a plank of wood. That kind of tells you everything you need to know about how the film was handled. It’s awful, but I love it.

Pure Luck

Dir: Nadia Tass

1991

***

Nadia Tass's comedy remake of Francis Veber's La Chèvre (The Goat - or Knock on Wood as it was known in the UK) doesn't quite have the same feel of the original 1981 film, in the same way that no American remake of a French comedy ever does. What it does have however is the great Martin Short. I don't care what the film is, I love Martin Short, his mere presence is enough for me as I genuinely love that man. As Caryn James once put it "Martin Short can do anything, it seems, except find the right movies to star in." I can't think of anyone else who could have done Pierre Richard's character justice, although they're not quite comparable, both men make the role their own, where not many other actors could. He is brilliant at all kinds of comedy, particularly physical comedy, which I believe is something of a dying art. I'm not sure if Danny Glover could be considered America's answer to Gérard Depardieu but the actor loved the original and had a hand in developing the adaptation. It's not as if he could have played any other character in the film. Pure Luck was not popular with critics and I've never heard anyone say anything positive about it other than myself but it made money and I'm sure there must be someone else out there that likes it as much as I do. I don't think the film was as successful in Europe as it was in the states due to the original. La Chèvre became famous when it was the film showing in a cinema in Turin, Italy that burned to the ground, killing 63 people in 1983. 

 I liked the idea behind the story, it's ever so sweet and pretty hard to dislike in my opinion, although I do wish Martin Short would quit with the whole fat suit thing. Francis Veber was clearly impressed with Short's performance and had him in the lead role for his first and only American film Three Fugitives, which was a remake of his own film, again starring Pierre Richard and Gérard Depardieu. Sheila Kelley was also rather lovely in her supporting role and Harry Shearer's role is short but very sweet. An overlooked 80s film (made in the 90s) that I believe is far too adorable to hate, or indeed ignore.

The Mummy

Dir: Alex Kurtzman

2017

***

Alex Kurtzman’s adventure horror is the latest in a long line of reboots that The Mummy has endured since Karl Freund’s 1932 classic and is to be the first film of a series of reboots centring around Universal’s Monster collection of classic Gods and monsters that they are calling the ‘Dark Universe’. They are indeed creating a universe in which these monsters are real, ‘universe’ being the common word for franchise films these days but I can’t help but think they thought up the name because it is close to Universal – indeed, the titled graphics merge their classic title graphics into the new one. I see what they’re doing, very clever I’m sure, but these classics should be more than a gimmick and treated with a little more respect if they want anyone to actually see them or take them seriously. I’ve noticed many critics and reviewers suggest, incorrectly, that this is a reboot of the Brendon Frasier series of Mummy films. It’s not, and any critic suggesting as much has no business writing about film. However, Universal clearly wanted to recreated a little bit of the magic that the first Brendon Frasier Mummy film had (that the second, third and fourth Brendon Frasier Mummy didn’t). This was their first mistake. 2017’s The Mummy has not received much praise, but to be fair, a lot of people wrote it off before it even premiered but it is true that it suffers from a few silly mistakes. Firstly, Tom Cruise, as good as he is, is not right in the lead role. It is well known that the film went through several directors during pre-production, with Len Wiseman leaving in 2013 and then Andres Muschietti leaving the year after. Alex Kurtzman does a reasonably good job but he’s under qualified having only directed one film, the awful People Like Us in 2012. However, I think Cruise might have been the real problem. He’s obviously got loads of experience but just after he joined the project in Nov 2015, it was reported that he had been given excessive control over the film and firm control of nearly every aspect of production and post-production, including re-writing the script and editing to his specifications, telling Kurtzman how to direct on set, and enlarging his role while downplaying Sofia Boutella's character – the Mummy itself. Universal contractually guaranteed Cruise control of most aspects of the project, from script approval to post-production decisions. Essentially, a film that should have been about the Mummy became something of a vanity project. Cruise, while being himself, was also trying his hand at being Chris Pratt. Chris Pratt would have been perfect in the role, typecast as he is becoming, but Pratt or someone like him would have been a much better actor in the role. Sofia Boutella is a beautiful lady, she is not a monster. Sure, it makes sense that an Egyptian mummy should look Egyptian but I personally prefer my Mummies to be somewhat zombie like, slow moving and wrapped in bandages, you know, like mummies. Here she looked as beautiful as she always does, just covered in dust and tattoos. Monsters should be scary and she wasn’t scary at all, and this was their introductory monster? I’m not knocking Sofia Boutella, I get it, it is all in her eyes, but thanks to the Cruise, she gets second billing, not even, in fact she gets forth billing. The direction doesn’t always work either, some of the catacomb set pieces look amazing but then some of the more day to day locations look like cheap theatre sets. I honestly didn’t know Russell Crowe was going to be Dr. Henry Jekyll before watching and it came as a nice surprise, however, that initial surprise turned into bitter disappointment once Mr Hyde finally made an appearance. Turns out Dr. Henry Jekyll looks just like an overweight Russell Crowe, while Mr Hyde looks like an overweight Russell Crowe painted grey. Not the same grey as the Mummy, but similar. There are times when everything looks grey in Kurtzman/Cruise’s film to be honest but there are aspects of the film I did like, nearly even loved. I wanted creepy dead zombie-type mummies and, thankfully, there are some. These mummies aren’t technically mummies but they are near as damn it. The action tends to get in the way of what is actually a really good horror but some of the visuals are brilliant, they needed a big orchestral score to go with them, but they did impress. I thought the updated story was very clever, mixing in realistic situations and current events quite intelligently. I liked the American Werewolf in London-style twist to it too and I liked how the characters were written. It really only needed a few tweaks. A few tweaks, a different cast, a better score, more mummy, more bandages, a massive Mr Hyde and less Tom Cruise. I’m intrigued by the whole Dark Universe thing and I’m even more intrigued by the fact that Bride of Frankenstein is to be the next film but they desperately need to learn some lessons from The Mummy before they continue. Ditch the awkward humour, it doesn’t work and is nearly always badly timed. Pump up the horror and keep up with the up-dated story. 2014’s Dracula Untold was meant to be the first film of the Dark Universe but no one liked it and it has been brushed under the carpet by Universal. It’s shocking that they’ve almost made the same mistake, I’m still intrigued but they really have to up their game.

Rakka

Dir: Neill Blomkamp

2017

****

I like Neill Blomkamp and I stood by him through 2013's Elysium and 2015's CHAPPiE - which I thought was brilliant actually. I don't want a samey Alien film a samey AI film or just another action film. Blomkamp always brings a real human element to his sci-fi films that give them the edge over other contemporary films in the genre. You may not like Die Antwoord but the fact of the matter is that Ninja and Yo-Landi Visser brought something new to the table, they felt authentic and real, and they were the right kind of performers instead of just beautiful actors made to look like cyber-punks. I thought it was great anyway, a future cult-classic, mark my words. So when Blomkamp was announced as the new Alien director I was pretty pleased. Alien was Ridley Scott's baby, fair enough, if he wasn't finished with it then so be it but Prometheus was stupid, he should have left it there and, in the fine tradition of Alien films, a new director should have been handed the baton and Blomkamp was, in my opinion, the right director for the job. What's done is done. Blomkamp clearly hasn't got the alien thing out of his head though and his short film Rakka feels like a 'Look at what you could have had' tease. While the concept doesn't strike me as particularly original, its realism certainly hits home - disturbingly so. A hostile alien invasion, if it were to ever happen, would be unimaginably horrid and Rakka goes a long way in visualizing just how horrid it could be. It's pretty dark. Computer games have been playing with this idea for some time and it looks as if film is about to catch up somewhat. If you're still not sure whether Rakka is Blomkamp making comment on his Alien dismissal then the inclusion of Sigourney Weaver might just convince you. Again, her appearance makes the story feel somewhat unoriginal but I would argue that Rakka goes some way in give the audience something new as well as a bit of what the fans want, and indeed, expect. I was thrilled, I want to see the feature length version and lots of sequels. I'm not sure which direction these shorts will go or even if another short is expected (I think I read somewhere they'll be more) but I certainly like what I see. It certainly feels like an introduction into something that could be big with many possibilities so I await the next instalment with enthusiasm.

The Brown Bunny

Dir: Vincent Gallo

2003

**

I absolutely adored Buffalo 66 when it came out and I suddenly found myself watching and listening to anything and everything that Vincent Gallo was attached to. His music is amazing, I still listen to it quite regularly, but I think he might just have reached his peak with Buffalo 66. I read the same stories about how mean he was to co-star Christina Ricci, how he had shouted at her and said if she couldn’t get her lines right he would replace her with a fat truck driver in a blond wig etc, and I still loved him and his work. The he made The Brown Bunny and I started to go off him. Years later, he listed his own sperm to his website’s online shop – One million dollars for a jar or free if you want him to insert it himself. I no longer make much of an effort to see what he’s working on next, but I digress, The Brown Bunny was hotly anticipated by me and a legion of fans and it came as a bitter disappointment. I think his ego finally got the better of him, the direction and story are great, I even liked the predictable ending, it just didn’t quite click for me. It’s filmed in 16mm which was then blown up to 35mm which is very effective and suits Gallos style. There is of course ‘that’ scene which has caused much debate. Credit it for Gallo for writing, directing, acting, producing and editing it all by himself though. It’s quite a simple premise; Bud, a motorcycle racer, drives across the country from one race to another, starting in New Hampshire and ending in California. He stops off in various towns and cities, including Massachusetts, Ohio, Missouri, Utah and Nevada, and meets several ladies along the way. He meets a girl at a gas station and asks her to join him but speeds off when she goes home to collect some clothes for the trip. He comforts a distressed woman he meets and kisses her passionate before running away again. He cruises the red light district of Las Vegas for prostitutes and picks one up, only to take her for a meal in McDonalds, rather than back to his hotel room for sex. He also goes into a pet shop to ask the owner what the life expectancy of rabbits is, which I still don’t understand the relevance of. He becomes more and more distressed throughout the film, clearly unable to progress with romantic or physical relationships following a break up with his previous girlfriend Daisy. He visits Daisy’s mother but she doesn’t remember him. He steals her stuffed brown bunny from her bedroom, giving the film its title. Daisy (played by Chole Sevigny) eventually turns up smoking crack at his California hotel room. They argue, she gives him fellatio and the truth behind Bud’s mental torture is revealed. It’s a great conclusion, very clever but a little predictable. However, it is ruined by the aforementioned fellatio scene. It’s no wonder both Kirsten Dunst and Winona Ryder left the project, one can only wonder whether it was this particular scene that saw them off. Sevigny pretended that Gallo’s appendage in the film was a prop but no one really believed her. Later she admitted that the scene was tough but Gallo was sensitive, gentle and the pair had been intimate in the past anyway. Her casting agent dropped her like a ton of bricks but she was back on her feet in no time and it doesn’t seem to have damaged her career. New York reviewer Manohla Dargis said: “… it's genuinely startling to see a name actress throw caution and perhaps her career to the wind. But give the woman credit. Actresses have been asked and even bullied into performing similar acts for filmmakers since the movies began, usually behind closed doors. Ms. Sevigny isn't hiding behind anyone's desk. She says her lines with feeling and puts her iconoclasm right out there where everyone can see it; she may be nuts, but she's also unforgettable”. I couldn’t disagree more. I would have way more respect for her if she had kicked Gallo in his manhood at the very suggestion, rather than to suck it for the sake of art. The actors have history, I get that, but she was clearly suckered in by his manipulative nature, as have many. The film is nothing more than an ego-trip, a self-indulgent load of nonsense, pretentious is an overused and often misunderstood description but I think it’s rather suitable in the case of Brown Bunny. Roger Ebert and Gallo had quite a public spat about the film, Ebert suggesting the original cut was the worst thing to have been shown at Cannes. Gallo retorting by calling Ebert a "fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.” Ebert responded with, "It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny." Gallo then claimed to have put a hex on Ebert's colon, cursing the critic with cancer. In response, Ebert quipped that watching a video of his colonoscopy had been more entertaining than watching The Brown Bunny. Fairly nasty stuff really, the product of a worthless film in my opinion. The later cut of the film fared better than the original but it still contained ‘that’ scene. It’s a shame really, as there is some beauty within the film – the performances are strong, it looks awesome and it has a strong sense of Americana about it but I think Gallo’s ego ruins it. I worry about the sort of person who would gladly perform a ‘downstairs act’ on another person on camera but I worry more about the guy who asks them to and wants people to watch it happen. I’m no prude but I found the film to be too grubby to love.