The Fugitive (1993)

There’s a very underappreciated genre of movies that I feel has never quite gotten the modern recognition it deserves, and that’s the chase movie. Part of that might well be that this film did it so well and so perfectly that anyone else would inevitably find themselves compared to it but it’s such a rich potential ground for telling stories I’m really surprised there aren’t more.

It’s an incredibly simple setup for a film. Character A is on the run, Character B is chasing after them. Everything else can then be fleshed out afterwards. Why is Character A running? Why is Character B chasing them? From there the questions spiral down until we have two strong protagonists with good solid central motives and a driving end goal that moves the entire plot along.

In the case of the Fugitive Character A is Richard Kimble, brought to life wonderfully by Harrison Ford, who is actually about as un-Harrison Fordy as he gets while still playing a heroic character. He’s not a fighting man, he’s not snarky and blunt. He’s a determined man wrongly accused of his wife’s murder and singularly focused on clearing his name and finding her killer. In the pursuit of that goal he is willing to do almost anything, and it is from him that our driving narrative comes from, as he pursues clues and evidence that will lead him to the truth.

Character B is Marshall Tommy Lee Jones (real name not necessary) whose motivation is even simpler. Catch Kimble and bring him back to justice. This is the Inspector Javert archetype, who cares not for moral quandaries or the protagonist’s protestations. He is an officer of the law determined to enact the law. This provides a great foil to Kimble, as he now must be sly in his pursuit of the truth, because he cannot afford to be discovered by the Marshall. However it also plays well as the movie reaches its conclusion, because in making the Marshall a strong example of a Lawful Neutral protagonist it provides the perfect opportunity for him to join Kimble’s cause. He really doesn’t have to care about Kimble as a person, but when he encounters evidence of wrongdoing that he might correct, it is only natural that he would change his stance and aid his former prey.

The other thing a chase movie thrives on is setpieces for the chase to happen in. The Fugitive has enough to make it tense, while not so many it begins to feel unrealistic that Kimble could escape the most infamous is of course the leap from the dam, but almost as well known are the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and the opening train crash. And this shows another strength of the movie’s chase sequences. Each of them is resolved in different ways, with the leap from the dam or by hiding in the crowd or by simply running. This variety means the movie doesn’t feel stale at any point. It’s just about perfectly pitched frankly.

The final element of the Fugitive is the mystery plot that underpins the whole lot. And the film treats it with a curious detachment. It is of course fundamentally important to everything, explaining how Kimble ended up in his situation and why he cannot stop until it’s finished. But at the same time it’s not the plot of the film itself. In many ways what should be the central element is treated as a subplot, but that’s actually perfect for the movie that they were making. Kimble’s quest isn’t the point of the story, it’s the point of HIS story. And that’s a crucial difference to understand, especially for anyone wanting a crash course in what should and shouldn’t be subplots in your story. Ask yourself if the plot you want to be the central plot is the most important thing to the fictional world at large, or whether it’s just the most important thing to one of your characters in that world.

The Fugitive reportedly wasn’t meant to be anything special when it was made, then went on to be nominated for seven Academy Awards, making it one of the few action movies to be honoured in that way as well. And it’s not difficult to see why. There’s something about an uncomplicated premise being well executed that makes for a good movie without any need for frills. Simple setups allow you to dig down into the meat of the situation and the characters that you are exploring, and without needing to waste excess time on exploring grander philosophical concepts you can have a powerfully character driven piece that showcases the actors involved while giving space for the plot to be appreciated. It’s really a no brainer, and the Fugitive remains one of the greatest examples ever in cinematic history. It might still be a shame that few other people have tried their hands at chase movies, but at least we have this one to enjoy.

Frozen (2013)

I’ve asked this before but how do you even review a movie like Frozen? It became such a massive hit, then had such a pronounced backlash, and even today is still viewed as either a top ten best or worst Disney film depending on who you ask. Any opinion seems destined to divide and incite.

I’m going to lay my cards out early on this one and then talk my way back to this conclusion. Frozen is not one of the best Disney films ever, but it is far from the worst. It succeeds in some very crucial areas that were important at the time, but fails in others that it could have gotten right with a bit more work. I believe it will stand the test of time without being criticised quite as harshly as we now look back at the attitudes of some older films, but there will always be valid criticisms of it.

Firstly let’s address a part of the film that is often overshadowed, the music. In many ways it would be more true to say that Let It Go became the greater sensation that the movie itself, and I find it hard to criticise the song overmuch. It’s actually a really good Disney song frankly. Nice melody, catchy but not annoying, the orchestration was appropriate and Idina Menzel is a phenomenal singer. But after that boy the other songs don’t stack up quite as well. Thinking back to the classic Disney musicals often 3 or 4 songs would be considered great. Kiss the Girl, Under the Sea, Part of Your World and Poor Unfortunate Souls, all from the Little Mermaid. Just Can’t Wait to Be King, Circle of Life, Be Prepared and Hakuna Matata all from the Lion King. Friend Like Me, Whole New World and Prince Ali all from Aladdin. The older Disney films had a stable of strong songs. Frozen has Let It Go, Do You Wanna Build a Snowman and frankly not a whole lot else of note. Love is an Open Door is charming enough but has no real sticking power, the trolls song is so unmemorable I can’t even think of the title and while the Frozen Heart is good it’s so at odds with the rest of the musical that I forget it’s even in there. I know that this is a very subjective opinion and other people might think Frozen’s soundtrack is nothing but hits but as someone who makes a living by singing musical theatre and Disney music the only song worth doing from Frozen is Let It Go, none of the others had the same staying power.

Secondly let’s look at the characters. Everyone knows them of course, but I feel again as though the popular perception of this movie is different to the actual film itself. Elsa of course is one of the most recognisable Disney protagonists in recent years but she’s actually not as big a character as it first seems. The true central protagonist is Anna, surrounded by Kristof and Olaf. And again I can’t help but feel like the movie misses a trick here by focusing on them. We’ve seen the Anna-Kristof story before. Forced to work together, definitely no attraction or feelings but oh my goodness! Turns out there were all along! A lot of people praise this movie for featuring the ‘twist’ that the true love that breaks the curse at the end is the sisterly love between Elsa and Anna but the rest of the movie spends way more time developing the relationship between Anna and Kristof like any other Disney flick.

I’m going to spare a quick paragraph here for Olaf. He’s not as annoying as a lot of people make out in the film itself. Sort of like the minions in the first Despicable Me he’s not that overpowering a presence and is no worse or better than any other comedic sidekick in the Disney canon. Is he one of the best? Nope. Is he far from the worst? Totally. He’s actually pretty bland as sidekicks go. Made me chuckle once or twice with his antics and overall a solid B+. It’s only his proliferation after the film that makes him annoying, but that’s true of any big children’s movie release, especially nowadays.

Thirdly how about that plot? The way people talk about this movie and it dealing with feelings of depression and anxiety you’d be forgiven for thinking going in that it was a movie about Elsa but it’s really not. As mentioned above it’s basically the story of Anna, and frankly that story isn’t super interesting to me. Elsa makes for a far more compelling character and story arc and I really wish they’d explored it more. I understand it was more her story in the sequel but a. I haven’t seen it and b. that’s not what I’m discussing here anyway.

All in all I kind of wish Frozen was the movie everyone seems to think it is, starring Elsa in the protagonist role with songs of Let It Go calibre setting up an eventual resolution unlike any other Disney film where the bonds of familial love are given as much due as romantic love but it’s just not that film. Sure there’s a few moments of subversion, enough to make the media and tumblr of the era go nuts over how ‘new’ and ‘groundbreaking’ it was but that just doesn’t hold up to the actual film. It’s a completely standard, actually fairly boring Disney film with only a handful of standout moments. There was a chance for a real break from tradition here and they just didn’t take it at any point. The film’s not bad of course it just feels very much like someone punching in numbers on the Disney-formula. There was a chance for something genuinely new from the studio here and sadly they didn’t take it.

Friends With Benefits (2011)

What makes a good rom-com? What keeps a sex-based comedy from falling into totally puerile farce? What gives a sexy comedy a sense of heart and depth to make it more than popcorn filler?

I’m actually surprised it’s taken over 60 movies to get to the first proper ‘romantic comedy’ of my collection. I have a fair few, so analysing them is definitely going to become a recurring theme throughout the rest of these reviews. But this also brings up an interesting question which I’m going to start this review by trying to answer. Because technically Enchanted is a romantic film, and is also comedic. And Eurotrip is a comedy centred around a romance. But why aren’t those films romantic comedies in my eyes? What is it that sets apart a movie like Friends With Benefits or Two Weeks Notice or You’ve Got Mail as specifically a romantic comedy?

Some of it probably comes down to the formula of movies. Action movies typically start with action, then have the introduction of the big bad and the central plot, then two or three minor action scenes with henchmen and goons until the final big confrontation, hero gets the reward and walks off into the sunset. Boom, action movie. Disney films introduce a waifish heroine, in search of adventure and/or romance, wacky side characters, big musical numbers, villain thrown off a cliff. Boom, Disney movie. Rom-coms start with the introduction of two unlikely people to fall in love, show the establishment of their relationship, big Second Act misunderstanding, finale reconciliation. Boom, romantic comedy. As a genre it’s never exactly pushed the boat out on plot. The reason Eurotrip and Enchanted don’t ‘count’ therefore is because their central plots are closer to other genres, respectively the road trip movie and the Disney plot.

Romantic Comedies are frequently criticised as some of the most formulaic movies, along with Slashers and Disaster movies, so nowadays many rom-coms have tried to push boundaries and distinguish themselves more and more. Ironically, this often seems to involve using a very formulaic set of subversions. In the case of Friends With Benefits it focuses on the sexual relationship between the two characters developing before the emotional component.

Rom coms as a genre are obviously built on the chemistry between the lead actors. Without that spark there’s nothing more to hang the film on. You have to believe that these are two people who could realistically fall in love with each other and want to be together. And in this regard Friends With Benefits does a pretty good job. Both of our leads are sarcastic and fiercely independent, yet also both clearly longing for something more in their lives. Searching without knowing the answer. Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake have a pretty good amount of believable chemistry in their scenes together, and especially as the relationship obviously deepens into something beyond just the sexual connection it feels like its developing realistically. A falling down point of these sorts of movies is when the disagreement which forces our protagonists apart feels like it was shoehorned in just for the sense of drama and to me this movie avoids that. We see the issues that Timberlake’s character has with his family so it makes sense he’s downplay. We also know that Kunis’ character is much more open to emotional connections, so it makes sense that if she overheard that conversation she’d take it negatively. Sure there’s a small amount of contrivance in her being in position to hear that conversation without Timberlake knowing but that’s true of any genre of any movie so I can let it slide.

The drama of Friends With Benefits also has some good ideas in not focusing it entirely on the two central characters, introducing the element of Timberlake’s character’s father having Alzheimer’s or Dementia. It gives an unexpected twist of far more serious fare than you might normally expect out of a romantic comedy, turning it in those scenes into a far more typical drama, and the movie understands that the type of humour in those scenes needs to adjust accordingly. All in all it does a very competent job of walking the tightrope between drama and comedy, while also delivering a feel-good ending that feels deserved and earned at the end.

So how about some negatives to balance this out? Primarily my issues with this movie come from the tone of it feeling somewhat off. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting to inject real drama into a romantic comedy, but you have to be very careful about handling a tonal shift like that. In the end for a rom-com Friends With Benefits definitely feels a whole lot less com for the rom. It might have done better as a straight romance movie with comedic elements, dropping the formula and pretensions of the rom-com structure entirely and trying something different. In this regard, treating the sexual relationship between the characters with a greater sense of realism, showing perhaps the difficulties in going back and forth between being sexual but trying not to allow any feelings to develop, then struggling with those feelings when they arise, might have aided it greatly. As it stands the light-hearted tone with which the relationship between Timberlake and Kunis is treated clashes quite harshly against the scenes featuring the father with dementia. And I definitely don’t think that making the father’s dementia more comedic would be the right call here.

In the end Friends With Benefits is a good movie, and interesting to anyone who enjoys rom-coms for the ways in which it does try and subvert the formula. But frankly for my mind it sticks too closely to that formula when it really matters. When a proper subversion of the happy ending or the neat and clean way everything ties up might have made for a far more satisfying movie, if much less funny.

Finding Nemo (2003)

Finding Nemo is a difficult film for me to review because despite it having once been a mega hit and that I genuinely do enjoy it, when I reflect back on it and try to think of things to say about it I actually find it quite middle of the road as films go. If Cars 2 stands as the nadir of Pixar compared to Toy Story 2’s dizzying peak then Finding Nemo for me sits basically at the exact middle point between the two. Not to be described in any way as bad but lacking anything in particular I can put my finger on to recommend it or praise it for.

A basic breakdown is probably the only way I’m going to be able to find anything to say about this movie so lets hit my usual favourite point of plot, character and delivering on the central idea.

The plot is entirely simple and almost entirely summed up in the movie’s title. Nemo goes missing, his dad has to go and find him. Thus the central thrust of the movie’s plot is finding Nemo, funny how that works. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with a simple plot. It keeps the narrative driving towards a defined end goal that doesn’t need to waver and provides plenty of scope for expanding the world around the characters. And as far as character driven motivations go Finding Nemo delivers. Marlin is an overprotective father. We know why he’s overprotective of his only surviving sympathise and agree with his reasons for being overprotective, even if we can see how he has gone too far. It makes sense for this character to do what he does, and to go to such extremes to do it. The movie doesn’t outstay its welcome by dragging out the actual finding too much (although there is a little padding here and there) and the bulk of the action is then made up by the misadventures Marlin and Dory get into during the finding. So far so standard.

I already mentioned Marlin’s motivations but the rest of his character is also quite endearing. He has a twitchy jumpiness to him that works very well as a natural result of his paranoid nature and his utter determination makes him very endearing. All in all a very good straight man to hang the movie’s wackiness around. His utter single-mindedness in pursuing his son gives us that sense of clarity when the cast of weirdos around him is in danger of pulling us off message. And speaking of weirdos, his partner in crime Dory! Who is obviously now somewhat of a cultural phenomenon all by her lonesome. And she is well portrayed in this movie, not so overdone as to become grating, she provides humour in key moments, surprising gravitas when discussing her mental condition more seriously, and is a good counterpoint to Marlin’s unflinching dourness. They’re a very good example of how to do a movie pairing without resorting to the tired old ‘by the book stuffy paired with wacky goofy wildcard.’

And where would a Pixar movie be without a supporting cast of loveable potential toys? I mean characters. And boy oh boy does Finding Nemo have a supporting cast. When I was talking about Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader I talked about the nature of quest stories that comprise many visits to wacky sidequest land and Finding Nemo has a lot of that feeling. Each little self contained group is fun in their own way, but there is the sense of something lacking a little as we only spend brief moments with each group. The sharks exist for their scene and are then forgotten. The turtles are fun, but only for five minutes. They hover around even being characters. The sharks are just there as an obstacle given some personality, the turtles could be skipped entirely aside from giving Marlin a small bit of advice. the closest thing this movie can really be said as a supporting cast is Nemo and the tank bros. But they aren’t given enough time on screen to develop beyond shallow caricature. An argument could be made that a more interesting movie would have dealt more strongly on Nemo’s time in the tank, struggling to adapt from being an ocean fish while learning about the lives of the fish he is in captivity with, occasionally cutting back to Marlin and Dory escaping personality-less sharks or sailing the currents with silent turtles.

All in all Finding Nemo delivers as a perfectly functional Family Movie. Not just a children’s movie because adults should find plenty to enjoy along with their little sprogs, and yet it isn’t so wink wink nudge nudge as to start verging into inappropriate territory for all but the youngest. And yet I really can’t say more about it than that. There are glimpses of the usual Pixar brilliance here and as I started my review by saying there’s nothing to really single out as being so egregiously bad that it bears commenting on. There might be worse films, animated and otherwise, but there are for sure better ones.

Final Fantasy: Advent Children

It’s not really come up so far but I am a massive videogame player. Have been since I was a child and got my first GameBoy Colour and copy of Pokemon Blue (just to also hammer home how old I am.) And I loved me some Final Fantasy games when I was younger. I played IX first and it remains my favourite, followed by VIII and then VII. Which to any fans of the Final fantasy series is going to sound like sacrilege that I might consider anything other than FFVII to be the greatest videogaming experience of all time but we like what we like and just because I might prefer other FF games I will also happily acknowledge that FFVII is an incredible game and well deserving of its place in the pantheon of videogaming history.

That said, what about the Compilation? And specifically what about this movie?

I like it.

Sort of.

A little bit.

The dangers of something like the Final Fantasy compilation for me mainly come down to the amount of time that they allowed to go by between the original game releasing and becoming the cultural phenomenon that it became, and deciding they would release further stories in that universe. Because what that allowed to happen was for expectations to raise, and also for fans to do exactly what fans do. They came up with their own theories, and interpretations, and expectations of what they wanted to see that didn’t necessarily line up to what would be best for the series as a whole.

I’m going to potentially invoke some ire with the next few comments. Fans should be the last people in the world that should be listened to as to what is best for a series. Because while they might not be blanketly wrong, and in the aftermath of bad storytelling decisions fans might be able to pinpoint very well what did go wrong (looking at the Star Wars sequels here), they are usually very devoted to the original product, and are unwilling to see changes made to it. And that’s bad, because it leads to things becoming stale, which is a legitimate criticism of FFVII: Advent Children. It’s a bit of a catch 22 for creators, because of course they want to deliver on what people enjoyed before, but they also want to expand and develop the story that they want to tell, and it’s a very fine line to walk. Advent Children is a fascinating example because it somehow managed both simultaneously, and is all the messier for it.

Let’s start with our protagonist for a great example of this. Cloud in the original game was a snarky, brash, arrogant wreck who fell apart mentally and had to rebuild himself into a new more genuinely confident persona. He was also dorky, socially awkward, and frankly a bit weird. What he wasn’t was a nervous ball of angst and guilt. And yet for a variety of reasons this is how the fans of Final Fantasy VII have come to think of him, so in Advent Children this is what he becomes. And that’s not just me jumping to conclusions about why they turned up the angst dial in AC. The directors and writers admitted that part of the reason they made him like that is because they thought the fans wouldn’t recognise him otherwise. At least they did put in the effort of coming up with an actually pretty good reason as to why he is a lot more emotional and guilt ridden, and it ties in thematically with both the original game and this movie. Which is more than a lot of pandering projects do, so it earns some points back in my book. It’s just also a shame that those reasons for Cloud’s increased guilt aren’t properly explored in the narrative. So two steps forward and one step back seems to be the order of the day.

And that’s actually a pretty recurring problem with Advent Children. Every change it does make is then lost because they don’t explain it properly, or don’t take the time to develop the themes, or immediately change it back so that things are normal again. It walks a very odd line of both pandering to the crowd and changing things and somehow doesn’t manage either one successfully. It would be easy to describe Advent Children with the old ‘if you liked the original game you’ll like this’ but I’m honestly not sure if you would? I enjoy it (quite a bit actually) but I can’t help but wonder who exactly this is for. The fanservice is so slavish and devoted that no one who wasn’t a fan of the original game would be able to understand half the plot, let alone get emotionally involved, but the things that they did change are exactly the things that die hard fans are going to get upset about. If you’re going to pander, go all in. Reunite the original band and have them all have a badass fight against the original villain culminating in them defeating him in some spectacular way. Or change everything, have Cloud happily settled down into a guiltless, angst free domestic life that is upset by a new threat that he must rise up against and relearn how to be a hero.

Pandering is always a risky proposition, and making any sort of sequel to a beloved property increases in risk with every year that passes and the original property becomes more beloved in the fanbase’s eyes. Advent Children is not a good example of how to do a sequel to a beloved property from either end of the spectrum. If it was going to tell a new story it needed to really commit to telling a new story. And if it was going to be a fanservice bonanza it needed to lean more heavily into it. This middle of the road approach satisfies no one and although I enjoy it and can at least recommend the fight scenes as being great examples of the sort of bombastic Final Fantasy combat realised without the restraints of PS1 era graphics, I can’t recommend it for anything else or to anyone else.

Face/Off (1997) – Review

What happened to movies?

Seriously, I’m not even being facetious at this point. What happened to an industry that used to give $80 million to projects like this? Creative and weird concepts that no-one ever asked for but people ended up loving nonetheless? Why must we now sit forever in the shadow of Disney and Marvel as they monopolise the entire action movie industry (not to mention most of the general movie releases outside of that as well)? It feels like nowadays, with Disney making such reliable bank on those cookie-cutter churned out lowest-common denominator popcorn flicks, we should be seeing more of the weird stuff, even from big budget studios, because surely they have enough money to take those risks, and maybe just maybe they’d find something really new and fun that people would like? But instead there just aren’t big-ticket movies like this anymore. Face/Off was the 11th highest grossing film of 1997, nowadays it would be Netflix’s 40th most watched movie people watch in between Facebook binges. I try really hard to not be one of those ‘things were better in the old days’ curmudgeons and I think there are some fantastic projects on the streaming services, but I do wish someone somewhere would take a chance and be daring again. No one would ever claim that Face/Off is a better film than Captain America Civil War, but I was more excited and engaged in watching it than I have been for a Marvel movie since Thor Ragnarok.

I first saw Face/Off on tv when I was definitely too young to see it. I remember how old I was because I ended up writing my first ever book largely by ripping off the plot, and I know I wrote my first book when I was 12. So I acknowledge that this movie has a special place in my heart. But even I can pick it to pieces if I wanted to. Really this movie hangs on two things, the strength of the incredible action scenes, and the genius performances from John Travolta and Nicolas Cage, who do such a good job at imitating each other at times that it can be genuinely difficult to remember that they didn’t actually switch faces. But if you’re going to hang a movie on anything then it’s definitely better to hang it on something like that as opposed to the paper-thin plot or weak characterisation of the supporting cast. This movie had the potential to fail miserably and be little more than a B Movie action thriller. A D-list Schwarzenegger rip off forgotten in a month. But I really do think it just about hangs together. Just.

Obviously the entire central point of this plot is the fight between Travolta and Cage (there’s really no point using their character’s names, is there?). As such it is essential that they really sell just how perfectly each has become the other, and both actors give it their all. There are very few actors I can think of who can convincingly mimic that specific brand of Cage-esque manic intensity, but John Travolta really does pull it off. And Cage for his part manages an oddly restrained performance imitating Travolta. It’s often easy to forget, especially in this day and age, that Cage is an Oscar winner, and only a year before this performance. I would honestly recommend this movie to anyone who wants to see two actors trying to replicate the other because both men really hone in on a very particular energy that gives their performances a ring of authenticity. It doesn’t feel like Travolta and Cage doing a rough impersonation of the other, it feels like they really took the time to understand the other’s style of acting, and how that other actor was building the original character they played (boy this sentence was a trip.) I would love to have seen a behind the scenes of how they got into character. Did they watch each other do takes and then replicate? Did they film as the opposing character first then their original? How did the process of getting into character as each other come about?

The action barely even bears discussing. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s so phenomenal it may well be the greatest example of stylistic movie gunfighting ever. Yes there’s something very satisfying about the more realistic style of John Wick these days and the Matrix’s gravity defying stunts are obviously the culmination of what the Heroic Bloodshed genre was always building to, but for that impeccable combination of just-inside-the-bounds-of-reality yet also clearly stylised to comic-book levels, and all captured with the most gorgeous cinematograph, this film has I don’t believe ever been beaten. There are three major gunfights in the film, and you could practically only watch them and still have experienced the full movie. John Woo goes above and beyond to build character into every second of action. The way Cage and Travolta’s characters hold their firearms speaks to who they are, the ways that they both mirror and differ from each other shows their history. If there can be one aspect of cinema that John Woo can easily be said to have perfected beyond all other directors it was in using a fight scene to create and explain character in a completely wordless way.

In the end it’s obvious why films like this stopped getting made by major big-budget studios (beyond that major big budget studios now basically means Disney and Disney alone) It is weird. it is a house of cards waiting to blow apart the minute you try and impose even the slightest grain of logic to it. And yet it is also oddly compelling. The performances of the two leads have such an earnest commitment to them that it’s impossible to look away and the plot while bonkers still manages to hold itself together as long as you are able to shut off your brain just a little bit. This is the epitome of a movie where you can say ‘if you shut your brain off you can enjoy it’ because it isn’t so full of plotholes and lacking in coherency that you’d have to have recently undergone brain surgery in order to enjoy it. And the action is so gorgeously sublime that you can always just shut up and enjoy the pretty gunfights.

Matt Damon did an interview with Hot Ones where he explained that movie making changed when DVD sales became less of a thing and I think this movie is a perfect example of that. It comes from an era where it could afford to be made because the DVD sales would carry it even if the box office didn’t, and it also functions in many ways as a perfect DVD movie. It’s a bit too silly to really entice people to the cinema for more than morbid spectacle, but it would be just right for a movie you grab to watch on a Friday night, possibly with some friends to enjoy all together. It is in every way a throwback to an older era of filmmaking that in todays glut of committee produced and market-research plotted mass appeal blockbusters I find myself struggling to say wasn’t legitimately better.

Eurotrip (2004)

There’s something fundamentally odd about the teen-sex-comedy, if not for nothing simply because the phrase teen-sex-comedy describes an entire genre that was for a time staggeringly popular, and not a few weird movies that will only show up on bootleg VHS tapes from the 90s. But the teen-sex-comedy did indeed dominate the late 90s and early 00s, beginning with the seminal American Pie and spawning many many imitators, of which at the time Eurotrip was easily dismissed as just another example of the somewhat puerile genre.

I think it’s fairly obvious where this is going.

I like Eurotrip, and I think it’s better than a lot of the other imitators, and frankly I prefer it to American Pie, if for no other reason than that gross-out comedy was never that funny to me. There’s several things about this particular movie that I think elevate it, but at the most basic I think this movie displays some heart that just wasn’t present in many of the other teen sex comedies of the era. This combined with a fun plot and an approach to comedy more reminiscent of a movie like Airplane gives it an edge that still holds up today.

Let’s address the first part of the teen sex comedy. Teen. This movie features (supposed) teenagers, or at least characters who are teenagers. It’s a classic high school setup, where the teens in question are trying to respectively find true love (Scott, our protagonist), get laid (Cooper, best friend), enjoy Europe (Jamie, nerd), and motives uncertain until the end (Jenny, the girl). Unfortunately for Scott the object of his affections is in Germany and has blocked his e-mails due to a misunderstanding where he thought she was a man trying to do odd sex things to him (maybe a little iffy, but it’s actually not directly homophobic and is certainly a lot better than the other movies of the day.) Thus begins our European odyssey where the Americans culturally clash with just about everything they meet along the way. And the teens are good in this film. They actually do feel like teenagers and react as teenagers might. The idea of dropping everything to fly to Europe in order to pursue a potential true love is something that just doesn’t work as well with adults to my mind but teenagers can still have that naïve optimism and it feels natural and right. They also plan very badly and don’t do a great job of their continental trip, which also feels very in keeping.

Now onto the sex part. Eurotrip scores some points for me over other films by having a fun approach to sex, by which I mean it treats it as a fun thing, not the be all and end all of a teenager’s existence (looking at you American Pie.) Discussing sex scenes in movies can often end up feeling quite clinical but I think Eurotrip does a lot with the rating it has and makes the most of it to provide a collection of nudity and sex that manages to feel plot relevant without being completely gratuitous, or at least not more gratuitous than simply having a teen sex comedy at all. Sex in movies should always be in aid of the plot, not just thrown in for titillation, and I really think Eurotrip manages to keep it mostly relevant, and even has some naked guys in there, so kudos for some measure of equality at least.

And finally, comedy. The hardest and most subjective thing to write about. Eurotrip’s approach is as I mentioned earlier closer to my mind to the older style of comedies such as Airplane rather than other teen sex comedies of the 2000s. it relies on a lot of sight gags, quick humour passing by so fast that if you don’t find one joke funny the next one will hit in a minute so you don’t have to wait too long. The humour is denser and wackier than a lot of other teen sex comedies (tscs? I’m getting bored of typing it out fully every time) which are often more grounded in reality. Eurotrip gets a lot of mileage out of cultural stereotype humour, but it does so in a very lighthearted way that I can’t see anything malicious in. They make enough fun of everyone, including Americans, without it ever being mean spirited enough to come across as hateful. English football hooligans, snobby French people, hard-living Eastern Europeans, but all carried across with an attitude of gentle ribbing, not attack. The only joke for me that falls flat today is Cooper’s sexual assault halfway through the movie, which does have some quite unpleasant undertones in hindsight.

In the end the explosion of the teen sex comedy is obvious. VHS tapes gave movies an opportunity to make their budgets back through sales and rentals after the cinema release, and an easy way to guarantee sales and rentals is to appeal to a crowd that would love to get their hands on images of naked women with a veneer of acceptability in that you’re watching a movie with a plot rather than just getting a porno vid or a girly magazine. It was a unique phenomenon that could only have existed in that brief window between VHS rental becoming popular but before the internet truly took hold. We will likely never see anything like it again, although some Netflix films certainly seem to have a little of that old spirit of cheaper budgeted movies designed to do anything to get people to watch. In the end the majority of the films from that era will be consigned to the trash heap of history as churned out borderline softcore porn with the thinnest plot stretched between the nude scenes and a focus on cheap thrills. Eurotrip is not that, and whether you have enough nostalgia for the old days of the teen sex comedy, want a time capsule look into a curious moment in cinema, or just want to enjoy a well-balanced, neatly paced, well-acted film with good comedy and some funny sexy content then Eurotrip still holds up far better today than most of the rest of its ilk.

Equilibrium (2002) – Review

The Es are so far presenting a lot of cases of ‘I shouldn’t like this movie as much as I do.’ In this case because boy that symbolism is heavy handed and those action scenes are absurd and the entire central premise is oh so flawed but damn it if this movie doesn’t lean into it just enough to make it look stylish and cool in that way that still grabs the fifteen year old in my brain, shakes him away and makes him whoop like a howler monkey.

Let’s break it down.

Equilibrium is a movie with exactly as much subtly as you’d expect of a movie that contains karate gun fighting. The emotional content police literally burn the Mona Lisa in the first five minutes just in case we don’t get the message that ‘these guys are bad for destroying history and culture.’ They take a drug so blatantly named after Valium, Prozac and Librium in order to maintain their city state literally called Libria all about balance. They shoot puppies and can’t understand why people might want to take care of them outside of being a food source. Do you get it yet? The bad guys are evil!

And yet the movie kind of makes it work? It’s a movie about extremism and totalitarianism after all. If you made a movie in which the bad guy thought a certain race was bad and so he’d killed over 6 million people of that race you might criticise it for being heavy handed yet the rather obvious history of the world ought to set straight why that might not be so impossible. And there are small moments that speak to a wider context to the world of Equilibrium. The movies mention items rated EC-10 for emotional content, implying a rating system that might in the early days have been more fair, to ease people in slowly. Whenever we see dystopias in fiction it always does well to remember that we often aren’t seeing the establishment of the evil regime, it’s almost always been chugging along for decades and everyone has just kind of getting on with things, which is how it happens in real life. Yes if tomorrow a government said it was going to burn down the Louvre to stop people getting so emotional then we’d think they were insane, but if a government was to ban particularly graphic examples of torture porn cinema outside of restricted contexts then we might think it’s censorship going a little bit too far, but would any of us be shocked? Certain movies are rated NC-17 or even go unrated all the time, yet we don’t cry that this is the first step towards fascism (well alright maybe some people do but you take my point).

And there are other subtleties in this movie which I think escape a lot of people’s notice. Like for example how a lot more people are implied to be off their medication than it first appears. Preston is shown to be enjoying tactile sensations by removing his glove and holding onto a metal rail, yet he is inspired to do so by a woman ahead of him doing the same. Is she off her medication? People criticised this movie for having the enemy agent Brandt be so obviously emotional even while he condemns Preston for feeling emotion, but isn’t that kind of the point? A throwaway line establishes that his dose of the emotion suppressant might be incorrect, and when we meet the man in charge of the dictatorship he outright states that he feels. As in other corrupt world governments that expect their people to adhere and conform to certain ways of life, the leadership and those in power don’t hold themselves to the same standards. It’s a level of real world hypocrisy being represented I would say quite well in this otherwise very silly and over the top movie.

As for the action scenes, of course they’re stupid. Of course everyone knows you can’t really stand in the middle of a hail of bullets and not get hit while whipping your arms around really fast. But this is where the old suspension of disbelief mantra comes in, and I really don’t think it breaks too badly. In order to do something like that you’d have to be literally fearless, and our hero is due to his emotions being literally suppressed. You’d have to have trained obsessively, which they are shown to be doing, and really if you find no enjoyment in anything what else would you do in your spare time? And the most important thing from a viewing perspective: no matter how silly the core concept might be, the scenes are very very well shot. They’re well framed, the action is given suitable weight and punch. It doesn’t feel like the floaty ethereal combat of something like Ultraviolet, it still has a very grounded feel, helped by the smaller budget of course meaning that a lot of it had to be performed practically.

Equilibrium is an example of a very hard movie to review. Because in the end it’s a solid 7/10. Heavy handed symbolism and metaphor that require a couple of watches to find some real subtlety buried deep beneath the surface paired with some very well shot if slightly implausible action scenes that will of course push some people out of the experience. The only thing I can conclude with is to say that if this movie had had worse actors it would all fall apart, but the earnestness and seriousness with which everyone approaches this movie does manage to elevate it past the bounds of the script and setting.

Enchanted (2007) – Review

God I’m a sucker for a happy ending.

Enchanted is an interesting movie to review because it manages to fall into two categories, both of which make me enjoy it. The first is that I find it a genuinely good movie. it’s fun and it lampoons a lot of tropes while never getting overly meanspirited about it and managing to still have a sweet and engaging love story between characters who have real chemistry and feel natural together. At the same time though it holds the same appeal as movies like Alien 3, in which I can see the other movie that it nearly was still shining through, which is almost more interesting for the road not taken.

Enchanted began life as a far more pointed and satirical strike against Disney movies, specifically the princess films. And while some of this more adult theming comes through in certain scenes, a lot of it has been rather dialled back and sanitised for a younger crowd, not necessarily to the movie’s detriment, but it might have been good to see how this darker fantasy would have played out. For example one scene that just barely managed to slip by the censors comes from the moment when Giselle first experiences anger, then very swiftly transitions into another emotion when faced with Robert wearing a bathrobe. It seems very obvious that in the original script this would have been the scene where they first slept together. And in the original movie this would have thrown up a lot of interesting questions. A princess like Giselle from a Disney movie might obviously have no understanding of sex, and indeed can seem childlike in a lot of ways. So what would sleeping with her at this point in the movie have led to? For one thing it would have made Robert far less sympathetic as he would have been actively cheating on his fiancé, but also would Giselle’s childish nature have been accommodated for? A dark question yes, but not entirely unreasonable.

There is of course no way to reconcile these two different movies completely. This is only one example, but there are more. Nancy getting upset about the ‘grown up girl bonding time’ and much of the Giselle’s introduction to Manhattan were obviously much darker in the original film, and given how early those scenes are in the film it is impossible to know how much they would have changed the eventual outcome. The more interesting question to ask might be whether the darker story would genuinely have been a better one. This movie was criticised at the time for not going far enough, and for skewering tropes that were either already old hat, or had never really existed in the first place. You can criticise it also for being hypocritical, trying to lampshade these tropes while at the same time serving up a fairly generic love story between a fish out of water girl and an only sane man type trying to deal with her.

But the issue with making this movie darker is that it runs the risk of becoming something very unpleasant. To take some examples already mentioned. Giselle in Manhattan could have been mugged and potentially assaulted. That crosses a line out of parody and satire and into something very dark. It removes any potential comedy from the moment. Robert could have slept with Giselle and her childlike nature would have made for some incredibly disturbing implications either rendering him into something of a predator or turning that moment of the movie into an abrupt loss of innocence narrative. And what exactly would the movie gain from this? There’s black comedy yes, but to try and jam it up against a Disney movie would probably end up ruining both, and not for nothing leave this movie with a very very small audience. I’m not saying that you can’t have a very dark take on Disney princesses, and that it could very well work by transplanting a Disney princess into the real world and seeing how she fares, but the simple fact is that the story that gets told that way has to be utterly divorced from the idea of doing a Disney movie. if you want to make a bleak hopeless tale about a Disney princess who came to the real world and got utterly crushed by it, destroyed by her lack of understanding and inability to connect with real people then by all means get to it, but I can’t imagine that movie being much fun.

I like the movie that Enchanted is. It knows when to poke fun and it knows when to laugh at some of the wilder aspects of Disney princesses but it also understands that you can occasionally just make a gentle parody rather than needing everything to be jammed so far up itself in deconstructing every little facet. Match that with some genuinely standout performances from all of the main cast and a really wonderful song in That’s How You Know’ and you have a really solid parody movie. one that doesn’t need to get nasty about the subject matter in order to still make fun of it. Which is why Enchanted will also be more likely to stand the test of time in the end. Any excessively dark movie runs the risk of falling deep into audience apathy or distaste, and while the zeitgeist for a time might be against a particular style of genre, sooner or later people always end up rediscovering at least some of the charms of a previous era, when it’s not being so endlessly pushed in front of them. And that’s why a gentle mocking tone paired with actual heart and divorced from nastiness will always win out in the end.

Dredd (2012) – Review

I cant for the life of me remember why but the first time I saw Dredd I really wasn’t that impressed. Possibly I was just in the wrong head space but I remember coming away thinking I was going to chuck the DVD right after watching it. In the end I’m glad I didn’t, because although this movie definitely has its flaws it works very well as an action thriller. Although I am starting to question my own mental health given just how many stylish artistic ultra-violent films are in my collection.

The thing that sticks out to me the most while watching Dredd is Karl Urban’s movement. There’s a physicality which I really appreciate, beyond the obvious limitations of having to bring across a character’s emotion without full facial expressions. But everything about Dredd’s movement in this film is fantastic. He moves with a solidity and purpose most of the time that really does an excellent job of bringing across the strength and assurance of this character, and that’s very important in a character like this. Dredd is someone who is utterly and completely dedicated and certain that he is in the right, that the law is the only thing standing between good people and rampant crime, and that as a judge it is his entire life to uphold the law. And bringing that across purely through the way Dredd walks is no mean feat as an actor.

It is of course also a challenge to make such a character sympathetic. Especially with characters such as the judges, empowered to kill on sight and working in a brutal and fascistic regime. It would be all too easy for Dredd to come across as a noble demon of some kind, utterly purposeful in carrying out his task, but with his task being in itself monstrous. Karl Urban walks a fine line here, as sometimes Dredd can veer a little close to that line, but all throughout we get a sense that there is a human being behind that mask, and he can understand subtlety and nuance in situations, even as he manages to balance that with upholding a potentially deeply unfair rule of law.

Something must be said of course then for the script and the direction, in allowing that flexibility of character. It comes across in small moments, such as when Judge Dredd allows for a vagrant to be given time to move on instead of being automatically imprisoned. While he veils it behind the idea of needing to prioritise a more pressing crime, we see obvious evidence that other judges wouldn’t be so lenient, and that Dredd approves of his rookie for showing these small mercies. A similar moment comes when Dredd non-lethally takes down two teenagers who try to attack him instead of killing them, and at the end when he clearly approves of Anderson’s decision to let the hacker go.

Character is a hard thing to do well in a movie like this, which focuses so much more on action and dramatic set pieces than it does on character driven narrative or focus, but Dredd does provide many examples of how to do it properly, which other filmmakers should take note of. It’s often in very small moments, that can be placed into the combat scenes or loud moments. As mentioned above, Dredd sparing the lives of teenagers even while he brutally guns down any adult who draws on him shows that he is capable of restraint when he feels the situation merits it. His rigid adherence to the law gets him and Anderson into difficulty when he refuses to execute a hostage. His utter contempt for the corrupt judges who attack him. All these little moments, many of which as only a few seconds long, or pass in the blink of an eye during an exciting battle, help to show us who Judge Dredd really is.

The movie does well with its other characters as well, largely by keeping the cast small and thus allowing each one to have their moments. We see Anderson’s hesitation gradually becoming self-assurance as the movie goes on, again the small details. Her hand not shaking on her gun by the end, the way her movement begins to in some ways mimic the deliberate methodical nature of Dredd’s. She is becoming like him, and becoming a judge in her own right. Similarly Ma-Ma’s villainy is established easily, but also her intelligence and her psychotic devotion to achieving her own end goals. People often forget that the good action movies are good not because of their impressive action, but because of the characters allowing us to become invested in that action. You can have the flashiest most explosive plot with dozens of high octane fight scenes, but without proper characters driving that action and facing peril in those fight scenes your audience will forget everything as soon as they leave the cinema, and your movie will be only so much popcorn filler. For a great example of someone losing sight of what people actually liked about their movies compare Michael Bay’s earlier works with a greater characterisation (The Rock being a standout) against something like the latest Transformers movies. Big budget spectacle is only as good as the character that we connect to in it.

And in Dredd those action scenes are great. The use of a drug to explain the slow-motion is perhaps a little bit silly, but it’s more than a lot of movies do to try and connect the audience to exactly why they’re seeing things in slow-motion, so I can appreciate it. And the violence and brutality is never skimped on or toned down. Like the old Robocop movies Dredd uses violence to establish world and setting. We don’t need to be told that this world is a brutal fascist dystopia, we see it every time a law enforcement officer is allowed to pass instant judgement and execute a subject with a high-explosive grenade round to the face.

Dredd is a great action film. And if you can stomach ultra-violence then it’s one of the best examples of it. Propped up by strong world-building and excellent characters, it is a genuine shame this movie never got the attention it deserved and never managed to secure the sequel everyone wanted.