Source Code

Let’s return briefly to our previous review, Drive. There wasn’t space enough to add another pet peeve in the review and it felt wrong to add more negativity to the review. Also, it may have looked guilty of this particular accusation, but it wasn’t. Drive opened with the robbery sequence. Once the driver has managed to shake off the cops, he leaves the underground parking and, lo and behold, it’s time for the movie credits after all. We must’ve been in the cinema for about fifteen minutes by now…

The credits and the need to do away with them… do we have to blame Christopher Nolan for this? He’s definitely a culprit but at least he had good reasons not to start his movies with credit sequences: Batman Begins is a movie which leads up to the moment the caped crusader becomes Batman. To end your movie with the credits is, given the film’s theme and title, not bad. I’m not sure if Memento is also creditless at first, but that film was told in reverse anyway. Anyway, in such cases we understand the reason to leave out the opening credits. US television series are facing the same problem: the credits sequence seems to have moved to the beginning of the second part, so right after the first commercial break. The commercial suits have become so mortally afraid of someone hopping away to another channel that they seemingly ruined television for all the viewers. Gone are the days of wonderful teasers, a couple of minutes long, followed by the familiar credits and off the show went. Is this why it’s also done in cinemas? We don’t know. Is it done because otherwise moviegoers wouldn’t mind popping in a couple of minutes late and thus missing out on the commercials preceding the film? You can’t channelhop in a cinema after all. But for our entertainment value, unless it’s done for a good reason, a film needs to start with opening credits. As David Cronenberg once said, credits help you leave the real world and go to the world inside the film. Crazy, stupid, love had good credits: the under-table romance shots in a restaurant had told us the marriage of Carell and Stone was over before she asked for a divorce.

Source Code kicks off with credits – erm… yes, it took us 380 words to get to today’s topic – and they aren’t the most mindblowing credits out there, but at least they’re there. The film opens with an aerial shot going towards a train and a split second later Jake Gyllenhaal‘s character wakes up in a train. The cute woman in front of him calls him Sean, even though that isn’t his name. Worse even, the face in the mirror is not his own face. A little while later, the train explodes. Not good.

Turns out there was a good reason why the man didn’t feel like Sean: he isn’t. He is Colter Stevens, a soldier who’s working for a brand new experiment: apparently there are a couple of people whose brains can connect to other people just before a fatal movement, like a train explosion. Sliding between the real world and the unreal world isn’t so unpeculiar for the film’s director, Duncan Jones, who debuted in 2009 with Moon. Familiar territory for him then, but not for us, the viewers, and for Colter: he and we can’t understand why Colleen Goodwin (Vera Farmiga), the military woman at the other side of the experiment, reacts so cool. Never mind, viewer, all will be explained later.

Before “later”, Stevens has to return again and again to those eight minutes on the train which led up to the explosion: only when he’s found the bomber will this mission be over. However, because Stevens can walk freely in these eight minutes, the experience will be different every time. Not that we’re complaining: not only is it possible for Stevens to find the terrorist, we can also see more of Sean’s good friend Christina (Michelle Monaghan), the only character on the train that gets some character development.

That may be the best part of the film. The worst part… well, it seems as if Hollywood is now run by 14-year-old girls. Source Code ends in such a sugarsweet fashion we had to watch a Melissa Joan Hart Christmas movie afterwards or we’d faced a cold turkey. Not only is the ending awful, it doesn’t make sense. At one point in the film, the action pauses. Had the film ended there, it would have been a contender for our Top 10 [there is one film in the cinema and one film on dvd we still need to watch before we can give you the list of 2011, so stay tuned...]. Now it won’t be there. Oh, it’s not a bad movie, far from, but the only price this deserves is “tackiest ending of 2011″. If Duncan Jones can send us his details, we’ll send him our Golden Lump.

7/10

Superhero Schlock: Turkish Flash Gordon

I think we’ll make this holiday season even more festive by introducing you to Turkish Flash Gordon or Bay Tekin Fezada Carpisanlar. Two scenes on offer today and they’re equally mindblowing… just the right recipe for a Christmas bonus treat.

First up this scene where the evil minions perform a most dastardly chant. Then the spaceship flies away in terrifyingly realistic special effects and our hero wakes up. Now we learn that Gaultier’s creations for Madonna weren’t that original.

But fear not, for there is more… in scene number two we learn that the spaceship’s driver is also the victim of the same tailor and Flash has to look at a most tyrannic distruction of, erm, some things… we reckon it must have taken the special effects crew a full ten minutes to create these scenes. Provided their coffee break was just in the middle of those ten minutes of course. Enjoy…

Drive

Merry Christmas, everyone! And to spoil the mood completely, let’s review one of the alleged best films of 2011. By “best” we mean it’s often praised, by “alleged” we are saying we’re not impressed.

As much as we try to avoid them, sometimes we cannot help it but catch a glimpse of trailers. Our cinema card allows us to print our own ticket, so thanks to meticulous planning, it’s possible to work out at which minute you have to enter the theatre to be just in time for the film and too late for the preceding commercials. True, this also means we’ll miss out on cinema trailers, but that isn’t awful for two reasons: you can also catch those at the film sites online and, even more important, they tend to suck anyway. In more cases than one, they are also misleading in order to goad as many whippersnappers to the theatres – (500) days of summer and Crazy, stupid, love being two recent examples. I did catch the trailer of Drive and didn’t really feel lured to go and see the film. Reason one: they actually managed to play the trailer twice in a row, which only adds to the annoyance. Reason two: oh look, it’s Ryan Gosling… again. Now there’s an actor we haven’t seen much of this year. Reason three: it looked quite like a dumb action movie.

Not very impressed then and the synopsis didn’t help much either. Gosling is a driver. He is a stuntman for movies, he works in a garage and he occasionally helps thugs as their getaway driver after another robbery. There is no specific reason as to why he does that, there’s hardly any character development: saying he’s two-dimensional would even be overestimating him. Actually, you can even catch that in the trailer. No, it’s not just a series of action-packed snippets from the film: that’s all there is to his character. There was hardly any reason why we wanted to see this film, was there?

Well, let’s digress. Ever since Stephen Moffat took over the Doctor Who wheel, the series has grown up. In a way, Doctor Who has become the equivalent of Harry Potter: Rowling also wanted the characters to grow up along with the readers, which is why the tone of the later books is allegedly – a term used here in the meaning of: don’t ask us, we haven’t ready any, we’re only quoting Wikipedia – heavier and darker. Even the earlier episodes in the Davies era which were penned by Moffat are our favourites and there’s hardly any character we’re fonder of – and yes, that does include all the Doctor’s companions – than Sally Sparrow of the brilliant episode “Blink”. Portraying her was one Carey Mulligan and guess who’s also starring in Drive…?

Ms Mulligan is Gosling’s next door neighbour and he cannot help but being intrigued by this woman. It turns out she’s a young mother and the wife of a convicted criminal. Not that this would be a surprise: the garageowner Gosling works for also has ties with local mob types. In fact, let’s just leave it at this: the entire city consists of criminals. Anyway, despite the fact that her husband is released from jail soon, Gosling and Mulligan grow towards each other, which doesn’t quite make her guy like Gosling very much. However, when Gosling returns home one day and find him bleeding on the ground with his little boy nearby and in shock, the two become BFFs and Gosling even offers to drive him to his final robbery – the debt the man still needs to pay for being safe in prison and the only way the local thugs wouldn’t harm Carey and their son. Things go wrong – ooh, surprise, surprise – and what follows can best be described as a brutal killing spree.

Which leads us to the biggest problem we had with the film: there’s no flow in the film whatsoever. You could argue that one hyperviolent scene can be followed by a softer scene because that’s how the storyline forces the film to change its pace, but because the characters aren’t developed, there are no reference points. And what’s even worse, sometimes the director inserted a couple of slow motion scenes. Nothing wrong with them, but they have to be used well: Confessions also had a couple of slow motion scenes but they helped to underline the poetry of the film. Drive isn’t poetic and as a result, the scenes feel out of place and only cause the film to appear even more random. Yes, some of the slow motion scenes look nice, but they didn’t help the film to change its pace: it was as if someone has accidently pushed the slo-mo button and noticed this after 20 seconds.

Even the soundtrack has this problem: there’s one recurring track (“A real hero” – see below) underlying the mysterious relationship between Gosling and Mulligan, but it sounds quite different from some of the other tracks, which once again doesn’t help the film find some unity.

The mobsters, the violence, the mysterious protagonist… it felt as if this film wanted to bring the Japanese movie culture into a western movie. As the United States are not Japan, the result simply feels unjust. Another director who is a self-professed fan of Japanese cinema, is our good old friend Ta****ino (a.k.a. The Thief) and Drive is one of those films which was praised as similar to the Thief’s style. Much like Locks, Stocks and we all know how many masterpieces that director made later in his career. In 2011, even the Thief’s star isn’t what it used to be: the internet gave us many of the films he copied and his “unique style” is only still mentioned by those reviewers who stay away from older cult movies as if they were viral.
By comparison, the violent scenes (the bathroom and elevator scenes immediately spring out here) don’t really go together with the rest of the film. True, this is a movie about tough guys, but those scenes don’t underline that, they give you the feeling of a naughty infant shouting “look at what I there”. Don’t you see how edgy I am?

Well, frankly, the answer is no. But as it’s Christmas and we don’t want to spoil the mood completely, the very best scene in the film is an emotional one between Gosling and Mulligan. They stand near each other (as you can see on the still around these words). Nothing much happens, but Mulligan’s breathing reveals the intensity. That is the sort of tension the movie tried to create at the beginning but failed to do so when the story speeds away from the starting blocks. Anyway, that’s the Avenue’s opinion. Apparently the rest of the world claims this is a masterpiece. Even the presence of Ron Perlman and Christina Hendricks couldn’t save this film for us, so all we’re left with is a scene with an actress breathing heavily. Still that’s something and one day, when we grow up, we’ll probably like this film – according to a much liked comment on the YouTube page for the song below: “Drive is a grown up film. All you children stop commenting on how boring it was. Grow up and maybe you’ll one day understand this masterpiece of a film.” Please excuse us, it’s now our time to play on the seesaw…

4.5/10

The curious case of the anti-piracy announcement

If you’ve ever bought a movie on dvd, you must have seen the announcement that downloading movies is bad. Very bad. We’re even funding terrorism by grabbing a free copy of a blockbuster. Because nothing says the truth more than a statement that isn’t in the least exaggerated. Anyway, quite often you can’t even fast forward these messages which is quite annoying: in an earlier post we mentioned that they become so annoying it’s even tempting to grab an illegal copy of a movie off the internet because that allows you to go straight to the movie. Because, again, nothing says the truth more than an exaggerated statement.
And anyway, aren’t these announcements barking up the wrong tree? Who is being targetted here? The people who actually made the effort to buy a dvd. Wouldn’t a message applauding these people for their efforts be more welcome, more to the point and, why not, shorter?

But that is only the introduction. In the Netherlands a composer was asked to make some background music for an anti-piracy campaign for a film festival. The man was nicely paid by the anti-piracy organisation. Case closed. Ermm, no… some time later the man inserted a dvd into his player and, lo and behold, there was the same message… including his tune. As Private Eye would say: shurely shome mishtake?

The composer contacted the organisation. After all, didn’t his contract specify he was the tune’s owner for national and international territories? Plus, he had composed the tune: surely they’d forgotten he was the rightful owner of the track, even if they used a message for a film festival on another medium… ermm no, the Dutch anti-piracy organisation felt it was their message and therefore their plaything.

So the composer looked for a lawyer to take up this curious case. Not only that, a tv network heard about the story and jumped on it as well. A conversation between the lawyer and one of the anti-piracy guys was recorded and included a most memorable moment: this guy claimed that he was known for his pitbull attitude and he would make sure the composer would be paid after all. Of course, sinking your teeth into something costs some money and the man suggested a nice little fee of one third of the money would go to him for his effort and the composer could get the rest. And after all, two thirds of a sum is still better than nothing, eh?

TV networks tend to have the time to broadcast material and the interview was shown on the Dutch telly (discerning enthusiasts could hear the full interview on the network’s site). The anti-piracy movement promptly decided it was best for the man to stay low and removed him from his current job. Several weeks later, the composer got a wonderful offer: he would be paid the royalties for each dvd on which his tune was present as long as these were Dutch dvds (sometimes a dvd is published in several countries with a various display of subtitles – for those dvds the composer couldn’t be paid, of course, even if the music was featured there) and on the condition that he wouldn’t contact the press anymore. The composer did not agree to these conditions. For the record, we would like to point out that the Dutch anti-piracy organisation clearly states that their guy didn’t do anything wrong and that the network took certain words out of context.

Nevertheless, apparently a composer might not get paid for his work for an anti-piracy organisation (and probably not for any international releases). It just seems like a most curious case.

At least they’re not funding terrorism…

(P.S. If you understand Dutch, a short summary of the case can be watched here. It’s part of the year in review episode (16 Dec) as of 11:45 and is featured in several earlier episodes.)

Simon Werner a disparu

Having the soundtrack for your debut feature made by Sonic Youth… how cool is that? Never mind that gimmick, is Simon Werner a disparu (or Lights out, which is – for some reason – the international title) a good film? Let’s review and find out.

The original title says it all: Simon Werner, student, has disappeared. Or has something happened to him? The film opens with a party to the tunes of Love Like Blood. After all, the film takes place in the early nineties. Because the film offers more than one perspective on what’s happened, Killing Joke‘s song features a couple of times – yet it didn’t get the same amount of press as Sonic Youth’s tracks. Not unsurprisingly so, because the band actually compared a full album of instrumental tracks for the movie. At the time of release who could predict Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore would break up and Simon Werner A Disparu OST might become the final Sonic Youth release?

Maybe I’m noticing this because my upcoming novel also exists of multi-perspective angles, but this seems to becoming quite the rage (I better hurry then with the rewrite or I’ll be accused of jumping on a bandwagon – never mind my having started working on it in 2009). Truth be told, unlike some of these movies, Simon Werner doesn’t always have the strongest stories for them to be retold again, but at its core there’s something much more frightening than the disappearance of a young man: teen anxiety. Set in an obviously not very poor neighbourhood, it’s all about being part of the group here. Thus for some, the school becomes a place with nice hideouts.

All that leads to only question: what has happened to Simon Werner? It looks quite likely that he hasn’t just disappeared, but if that’s the case, who knows more about the disappearance and possible murder? At the end of the movie, you’ll know this, but the ending left a lot of people with an uncomfortable feeling. Cult fans (especially those who’ve watched a giallo or two) will not be surprised that it isn’t always the most likely suspect who’s responsible for a (possible) crime. If that worries you, Simon Werner says more about you than about the 1990s. There’s lots of gossiping in the film and eccentric or asocial characters are just ready to be served as scapegoats. (Just like Alice seems born for the role of femme fatale.) And that is the true story behind Simon Werner’s disappearance. A simple whodunit, this is not.

Good movie, good soundtrack and a fair bit of nostalgia for the previous century. Are we content? Yes, we are. Have we mentioned that the film also looks good? No, not yet, but I’m sure you can come to that conclusion just by looking at the trailer below.

7.5/10

Cults – Abducted

One of the best videos of the year is this oddball, which is quite reminiscent of David Lynch‘s work. In a good way, unlike Drive (more about that later this year). As an inbetween update, enjoy the video and don’t forget to look below to see when we’re posting next:

Update schedule:

10 December – postponed until 18 December (Simon Werner a disparu)
15 December – today’s update: Cults
20 December – here’s a teaser
25 December – something will be posted, but nobody knows what it’ll be

Great Moments in Cinema: Cool as ice

It’s hard to define the best scene in Cool as Ice, the film that turned credible rapper Vanilla Ice into a credible actor. That this movie wasn’t worth a single Oscar or didn’t win the Palme d’Or can only be seen as a crime against humanity. In the film tough guy Vanilla Ice manages to win the heart of a posh rich girl and… erm, no, that’s about the entire plot.

In the scene you’re about to see the director manages to interweave in a most subtle manner Ice’s coolness on the bike with the sexiness of a girl riding a horse. The slow motion, combined with wonderful music (read: scratching – we know this coz we is hip), gives us the best proof of why cinema needed to be invented. It also taught me that the best way to win a girl’s heart is to give her a concussion. Actually, the only reason why this film isn’t shown more often in trash nights is because it’s downright unbearable to sit through the entire film without contemplating genocide.

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

In the olden days comedies were great. Remember the screwball comedies from the late thirties like Bringing Up Baby or His Girl Friday? The witty dialogues, the fast speed, … The Preston Sturges movies were great too: long before Aki Kaurismäki there already was a director whose comedies made you cry rather than laugh. Sadly those days seemed to be over. Comedy had turned into something else. One of the most-loved comedies of the nineties featured a girl who mistook sperm for styling gel. The film was There’s something about Mary and people seemed to love it for some reason. The other highlight was a man who got his penis stuck in the zipper of his trousers. How superior was that movie to the days of building up a movie around a couple of mistakes whilst the characters fired oneliners and double entendres at each other… The twenty-first century seemed to wallow in comedy dirt: the offspring of Bringing Up Baby seemed to have been conquered by the worshippers of Animal House. I seem to be alone in this, but I was heavily disappointed by The Hangover – maybe because I’d expected more from Ed Helms, one of the few Daily Show alumni who were able to combine high-brow and low-brow jokes.

Steve Carell was the first Daily Show “correspondent” who left the successful ship for a career in movies (and The Office). The 40 Year Old Virgin was his claim to fame so far. I said so far… 2011 gave us a comedy called Crazy, Stupid, Love. (CSL, from now on). From the first scene onwards, the movie shows it knows how to build up a joke. We sit in a restaurant and observe people’s shoes making out underneath the table, all the way to the worn-out sneakers of Steve Carell and the uninterested shoes of Julianne Moore. No further introduction needed, here’s a loveless marriage. The meal is almost over and Steve Carell’s character Cal Weaver decides that he and his wife should both say simultaneously what they desire: he wants a crème brulée, she opts for a divorce.
Intercut with the scenes of the couple splitting up, we’re also introduced to their son who’s caught with his hands under his sheets by the babysitter (“For what it’s worth, I think of you when I do it.”) and to some slick guy in the bar who seems to be successful with the ladies. Jacob Palmer is played by Ryan Gosling (does he live in studios these days?) and the previous sentence wasn’t completely true: his smooth tactics don’t work on law student Hannah (Emma Stone), mainly because she’s inches away from a degree in law and because her boyfriend is so happy with her he’s preparing her from that “very special” day.
While Jacob overcomes this cold shower by going to the very next single lady in the bar, he can’t help but spot Cal who’s telling everyone his ex-wife was having an affair with an office colleague (Kevin Bacon). Gosling feels sympathetic towards the lonely man and offers him a makeover, which will change the lives of everyone involved.

You see? That’s the setting for an ambitious comedy and make no mistake, CSL is just that. The film even goes for a climax like the ones from the screwball era: so much happens at the same time and it would be a shame to ruin any of the many plot threads.
Apart from this… the movie isn’t over after the climax. Which I must admit felt odd. After lingering on for a couple of minutes, the film prepares itself for a second climax (still odd) and, even worse, it seems like we’ll end the film on one of those Hollywood moral lessons. Oh boy… and while this may be the case to a large extent, the film manages not to end on a completely happy end and even has one or two snaps ready that you wouldn’t see in a traditional comedy with high morals (i.e. the envelope).

Naysayers will complain that the good old days will never return and that anything from the olden days is infinitely better than anything made today. Put those people in quarantine and enjoy this film: it’s witty, it manages to have two climaxes which work and there’s lots of oneliners. Add to that talent like Steve Carell, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei and Kevin Bacon and you have a modern day comedy that manages to look decent next to old screwballs. Sure, there is the occasional faux pas: the scene at the parental night at school looks very much staged – it’s quite odd to think there’s only two chairs for the next parents and that they’re both put on opposite sides of the classroom, but it looks good on screen.

One of the better movies of the year is a comedy. We must be ill.