Abraham Lincoln: WTF Generator

Posted on June 21, 2012 by admiralneck

If you’re a subscriber to this blog, there’s a chance you wince whenever you get an email saying there’s a new post, or when you click the link to the main page and then scroll down to see how long it is, and scroll, and scroll, and scroll again, and head past a few images that haven’t even started to load yet, and then keep scrolling, and by now you feel like Ed Harris at the end of The Abyss, because you keep scrolling and Jesus Christ, the space-age lung goop is drying up or something, where are the glowing aliens with their magical water technology? Well worry not. You won’t have to dive too far. There’s not going to be much in this review of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, because there’s not much in the movie.

Based on Seth Grahame-Smith’s novel of the same name, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter creates an alternate history in which Abraham Lincoln becomes a vampire hunter. Now, I want you to ponder that idea. I want you to think beyond your initial reaction, which is probably, “I wonder what the hashtag game is”. Imagine now that you have to expand that, and come up with a story with three acts, antagonist/protagonist relationships, an inciting incident, and all the other important storytelling elements, extrapolating from that initial absurd collision of history and fantasy fiction.

I bet you come up with a story involving a tragic past, a quest for vengeance, a mentor with a dark secret, and some smattering of historical elements, adding plenty of winking references to the absurdity of the premise because it’s just so silly. You’ll start to write a synopsis down, and it’ll go okay for a bit, but after a while you’ll feel like you’re wasting an opportunity to do something with some oomph, and you’ll think that there’s possibly more to this idea than just some daft jokes. Perhaps there’s something deeper to be said, drawing a parallel between the mythical relationship between vampires and their prey, and the real-world relationship between Southern plantation owners and their slaves. Maybe there’s more to this story. Out go the jokes, in come the metaphors.

Which is what has happened here, though this can only be said with a million caveats. AL:VH has been reshot and recut so extensively that it’s impossible to judge it accurately with any confidence, because any clues to the filmmakers’ original intentions have been lost somewhere in the editing room. Alarm bells ring early on with some clumsy time-skipping and conveniently expositional voiceovers; they become klaxons midway through when Lincoln’s narration fills in large character arcs with a single line, and we go from Senate-debating Lincoln to president to civil war in the space of approximately 30 seconds.

So perhaps a longer cut, or an earlier cut, exists in which the connection between slavery and vampirism is made clearly, instead of here alluded to at times as some kind of equivalence, with slave traders sharing space with monsters who feast on the blood of the slaves — the merest hint of an idea, and not a particularly interesting one — but usually ignored in favour of generic monstery evil. Nevertheless, even if this metaphor worked more clearly — the repeated line, “as long as one man is a slave, no man is free”, is obviously meant to bear the weight of the imagined comparison — it’s still a miscalculation that cannot be fixed, at least as far as I can see.

This is not to say genre fiction cannot represent complicated and controversial themes. I’ve previously argued that genre fiction is often the best way to tackle such things. Artists freed of the obligation to depict real situations accurately — which never works out well and only creates discord between opposing sides of an issue — can tackle complex themes through metaphors that speak more forcefully than mere hectoring. Blade Runner‘s commentary on slavery, X-Men‘s metaphorical portrayal of the effects of racism and/or homophobia, The Handmaid’s Tale‘s horrific and timely parable about the subjugation of women, Attack The Block‘s depiction of protagonists ignored by society until they can only find self-respect through criminality, before finding a real cause by defending their neighbours against a force that, as one character says, “is so black you almost can’t see it” (I’m paraphrasing a bit from memory).

The genre fiction-as-gateway-to-truth argument doesn’t apply with AL:VH, and in fact detracts from it. The real Lincoln fought against slavery already (I think that’s a well-known fact), but instead of this being Abe’s own ideological conviction, albeit a more complicated position than is often depicted, now we’re presented with some needless alternate history in which he hates vampires more. Lincoln’s position, one which was controversial enough that it tore a country apart, was a brave one, and to depict it here as being as much an act of revenge against the vampires who killed Lincoln’s mother as an effort to right a disgusting injustice is incredibly problematic.

Even worse, it recasts real world tragedies as the consequences of inconsequential fictional events. The battle of Gettysburg is almost lost because of the presence of Confederate vampires who burst through the lines and massacre Union soldiers. The trade and abduction of slaves into the South is merely an appeasement gesture to keep vampires from invading the North. Lincoln’s mother Nancy died of “milk sickness”, and his son Willie died of typhoid, but here it’s because of vampires; in the latter case the boy’s death is an act of vengeance from the vampires who want to strike at Lincoln for opposing their plans to subjugate all of America.

Yes, not only is the actual death of the actual son of an actual president of the actual United States used as a manipulative plot point, his murder is avenged by Mary Lincoln, who shoots the murderous vampire with a silver bullet. A woman who in real life suffered from clinical depression caused by her grief is here cast as a vengeance-stricken action-hero-in-waiting, who gets to re-balance the scales of right and wrong with yet another tedious slow-motion mini-action scene. These people may be dead and may have no descendants, but even so, this was real tragedy, turned into a predictable dramatic beat in an undistinguished action movie. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding,” doesn’t even cover it. ^[1]

AL:VH is wrong on so many levels that by the middle of the movie I was openly saying, “What the fuck?” out loud at the screen in the hope that the manager would notice my anguish and set fire to the projector. ^[2] It’s possible that the movie would be easier to swallow if it played the premise for laughs, even though the central conceit would struggle to fill out a College Humor skit. That might mitigate the gratuitous co-opting of real-world tragedy, replacing the tasteless dabbling in humourless social commentary with plays on the action-horror genre, or by appropriating Grindhouse exploitation tropes in much the same way Tarantino managed with Inglourious Basterds — a cheeky riff on real-world events that so obviously existed within an alternate universe beholden to cinematic rules that Tarantino could shockingly assassinate Hitler at the end and miraculously pull the moment off.

But Timur Bekmambetov and Seth Grahame-Smith (and the one known re-writer, Simon Kinberg, credited on the poster but not in the film) don’t seem interested in trying to derive any fun out of that thin jokey idea, and instead doubles-down on the seriousness. Again, theoretically this approach could work, but only if dealing with a fictional premise. Grahame-Smith kickstarted this sub-genre of fiction with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and that may be easier to swallow. But it doesn’t matter that this doesn’t present itself as historically accurate (only an idiot would think it was, of course); using tragic historical events as raw material for a frivolous action movie made by people deluded enough to think they’re making a statement is a colossal misjudgement.

The end result is ponderous, derivative, dull, and nauseating. It’s not even interesting as a Timur Bekmambetov movie. He’s never made anything good, but he has a visual imagination that has its own pleasures. He specialises in hollow treats, but what treats they can be. Anyone hoping for something as delightfully silly as the Loom of Fate or bullet-bending a la miserable nerd wank-fantasy Wanted will be very disappointed. Those signature moments are few and far-between here, likely a consequence of the (relatively) low budget. Instead of his usual bravura set-pieces, there’s so much ramping that it should immediately be retitled Abraham Lincoln: Rampire Hunter.

And yet this could become the most beautiful unnecessary movie of the year. Whoever decided to hire Caleb Deschanel as the cinematographer deserves a medal, or censure; I’m not sure which yet. The last thing he worked on was Jim Sheridan’s appalling Dream House; two movies before that the ethically muddled My Sister’s Keeper. Both terrible, both luminously shot. It’s heartbreaking seeing him squander his talent on this chaff, and I hope that William Friedkin’s Killer Joe is a break from this trend. Deschanel’s work on AL:VH is flashier than his stunning, ASC Award-winning work on Roland Emmerich’s The Patriot ^[3], but there is pleasure to be derived from these autumnal colours, the American past repainted with a palette of auburn and rust, piercing blue moonlight serving as contrast.

It doesn’t matter, though, and neither does the commendably focused work from star Benjamin Walker ^[4], co-stars Mackie and Simpson, and underused acting titan Alan Tudyk. Even if you’re not troubled by the misappropriation of real events, there’s nothing else going on here. It’s not educational ^[5], it’s repetitive, and the use of vampire mythology is confounding. The vampires have magical rules about not killing each other that exist only to power a silly mid-movie twist (involving that hoary old trope, the vampire hunter’s trainer), they can be hurt by silver, and can walk around in daylight, meaning there’s no reason they can’t just take over the world. They’re barely even vampires, merely inhuman cannon fodder to be dispatched by our axe-spinning hero.

This is the kind of soul-deadening guff that defies mockery, though one outburst by Mary Elizabeth Winstead is a bad-movie-hall-of-famer. Otherwise it’s just an Underworld prequel with a silly punchline gimmick, less interesting than even the second Blade sequel, as competent as Scott Charles Stewart’s Priest but with a dodgy historical aspect, as poorly edited as an Uwe Boll Bloodrayne movie; just another crappy vampire movie that has no reason to exist, and probably no audience to desire it. The reason this one stings the eyes more than the others is that it thinks it has the right to play with tragic events that haven’t quite scarred America, because in order for the wounds of slavery and civil war to be scars they’d have to heal first.

Return 1. One example among many: the character of Joshua Speed, one of Lincoln’s circle of friends, is obviously meant to have mixed feelings about Lincoln’s urge to stop slavery; there are hints that this version of Speed (played by future Old Dependable Jimmi Simpson) has similar doubts to the real Speed, but this sub-plot has been utterly removed so that at one moment he’s seemingly hostile to Lincoln’s African-American friend William Johnson (played by current Old Dependable Anthony Mackie), and the next they’re besties. Ten seconds later, he’s gone from being oblivious to vampires to being a member of Lincoln’s mysteriously efficient vamp-killing gang, with one hasty line of exposition to paper over the poorly edited excision.

Return 2. For those clutching their pearls, don’t worry; the rushed release of this movie, which betrays the studio’s shame at making it in the first place, meant there was nobody sitting anywhere nearby. Or maybe the room filled up after I got in and they were struck dumb by the hypnotic monotony of this film’s familiar rhythms.

Return 3. A movie that also distorts history but only just enough to seem like truth, which is even more insidious and despicable than this gallumphing failure’s gauche error.

Return 4. I look forward to seeing Benjamin Walker play Young Bryan Mills in Taken Begins, because dang, he’s the spitting image of Liam Neeson in this, making me even sadder that the aging pretend-pugilist isn’t playing the actual non-vampire-hunting Abraham Lincoln in Spielberg’s forthcoming biopic.

Return 5. Actually, there is evidence that some effort has been put into depicting some elements of Lincoln’s life in a new context. In real life Lincoln put off marrying Mary, which some have thought to be proof that the president was gay, but here Lincoln’s reticence is borne of his fear of involving the woman he loves in his vampire hunting. As for William Johnson, the free African-American who acted as Lincoln’s personal valet, he just fills the role of Falcon to Abe’s Captain America, on duty for exposition-delivering needs, providing proof of Abe’s liberal credentials, and getting in a little bit of vampire hammering at the end. His actual history isn’t mentioned, and even his past is fictionalised; here he features in Abe’s past in order to dramatise the future president’s first encounter with slavery and vampires. The stories of slaves and even free men once more sidelined.

Listmania ’11! The Worst Movies Of The Year

Posted on January 7, 2012 by admiralneck

It feels like a hundred years ago that I published my Best Movies list, but it was actually only 8 days ago. This post has been delayed by attempting to understand the rules to Twilight Struggle. That is an ongoing project that could take a while. Meanwhile I was also rattling through more potential bad movie nominees, which led to me finding an extra dishonorable mention as well as the number three film on the main list.

There’s a good chance that was actually the worst film I’ve seen in a long time, but as with A Separation on my best films list — which I saw on the day I hit publish, and ended up at number 4 on the list — I’m not sure it would be fair to leapfrog over the two stinkers I had above it. Those were movies that have pissed me off for months, and I want the world to know how much I hate them.

But why do I need to do this, especially now that we’re firmly embedded in 2012 like a tick? Dan Kois recently wrote a lovely article in the NY Times about why top ten lists are so important to him, and some of his reasons tallied with mine. When challenged on the usefulness of something like this, in which I attempt to quantify art and trap it in a list, I’ve often pointed out that this isn’t really about the films. It’s a snapshot of me.

When I read Kois’ article and saw that he felt the same way I almost cheered. So okay, this is about me, and as the majority of visitors to this page don’t know me and wouldn’t give a damn about me if I was in front of them in a line for a lifeboat, that means this list may only be of worth to those who want to capture these images, but I’ve tried to add some value by being very mean about these movies. Because they really stank. I hope you enjoy my ire.

25. Trespass, Drive Angry, and Season of the Witch

One can only assume that the mighty Cage has Dr. Wesley T. Snipes as an accountant. Oh Nic, it’s been hard to be one of your loyal fans in a year that saw you star in three, maybe four (I haven’t seen Seeking Justice, and neither have most people) of the year’s worst movies. Trespass was possibly the least awful, mostly because King Cage expended some effort, and seemed energised by having famed Oscar-winner and part-time Auton Nicole Kidman as a co-star, but sadly this was a movie with two strikes against it: 1) it was ineptly directed by Joel Schumacher and 2) the plot depends on a twist generated by tricking the audience with a lie embedded in a flashback. Not cool. Drive Angry was worse, but at least had a spirited performance from Amber Heard and a very entertaining turn by William Fichtner. Otherwise it was an unconvincing attempt to utilise the Grindhouse aesthetic to make something consciously trashy. While not as bad as the fundamentally dishonest, misogynistic and generally loathsome Piranha 3D it comes from the same dark pit, where a nod and a wink is supposed to excuse the slapdash execution and contempt for the audience. And then there’s Season of the Witch, which was just boring boring boring. Even more boring than Gone In 60 Seconds, the previous mogadonian collaboration between Cage and director Dominic Sena. Three absolute stinkers, all desperate cash-grabs by a fascinating performer. The moral of the story is, don’t go crazy buying castles if you’re not ready to get your tax on.

24. New Year’s Eve

Last year gave us the saccharine delights of Garry Marshall and Katherine Fugate’s Valentine’s Day, in which a dazzling collection of stars from the Hollywood firmament (not an endorsement) gurned through a number of first/third act sub-plots about falling in love in LA. SoC did not like it. And look, here we are a year later to find Marshall and Fugate have hastily cranked out another shuffled pack of cliches, written in what feels like a few days and populated by a scintillating kaleidoscope of celebrities from Hollywood’s jewel-palace or some shit in an attempt to distract the audience from noticing that this depressing franchise is made out of recycled tin and bits of broken mirror. It’s a horrible, cynical rush-job that confusingly casts two actors from the first film — Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel — in new roles, meaning anyone not wasting time keep close track of these movies is utterly lost. Even worse, the other characters are introduced hastily and then treated as if they’re familiar to us. Look at how Josh Duhamel is dealing with the overly-friendly family! Hold on, why should I care? I’ve only known this guy for 5 minutes, and this simple juxtaposition isn’t enough to qualify as a joke. The laziness of this writing, and the sheer gall that such lack of effort will be accepted by the audience, is just one example of the cynicism of this exercise. Let’s hope that the mediocre box office means we won’t be treated to Thanksgiving, starring the leftover actors from TV shows that couldn’t spare a day’s shooting time for this film.

23. Priest

In 2009 FX expert Scott Charles Stewart co-wrote and directed Legion, in which Paul Bettany played an angel protecting Adrianne Palicki’s child because of the coming apocalypse. It was similar to Gregory Widen’s The Prophecy but with a bigger budget and Dennis Quaid flipping burgers. It was all right. I enjoyed it well enough. Seen worse. In 2011 SCS directed this adaptation of Min-Woo Hyung’s popular graphic novel, and it wasn’t all right. I didn’t enjoy it at all. Seen MUCH better. The problem is that by now the visual aesthetic and genre-mashing seen here have become so commonplace that there’s no point in making more of these direct-to-DVD-worthy sub-par SF actioners unless there’s something unique to add to the genre. Priest is exactly the movie you think it will be from the trailers; a bit of ramping, some posing with weaponry, a dollop of Western iconography, growly villains, unconvincing FX that mistakenly act like the laws of physics can be ignored, lots of long coats, etc. Seeing this moved to a mid-summer US release, three weeks after Fast Five and a week after Thor, and treated like an event movie in the same way as The Warrior’s Way in 2010, almost made me feel sorry for it. Seeing it fail in the South Korean market, much as Ninja Assassin and Speed Racer did despite the presence of superpopstar Rain, made me feel worse. Enduring Priest‘s slow trudge through a hundred recognisable and indifferently filmed moments pilfered from better movies ended that pity. I pray for a moratorium.

22. You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger

Seemingly considered to be the 14th Woody Allen comeback before he actually made a movie that could conceivably be considered a return to the form of, say, Alice or Shadows and Fog, YWMATDS saw the formerly great director return to London for hopefully the last time. This movie’s sacrificial lambs included those talented performers Josh Brolin, Naomi Watts and Anthony Hopkins, as well as Frieda Pinto and Lucy Punch, in a tale that admittedly has more bite than his recent films. Selfish intellectuals bicker and conspire to gain money or influence within the rarified world of Belgravia, their venality hidden behind a barely functional facade, before Allen springs one of his best modern finales, one that is unexpected and unusually tense, thanks mostly to the sterling work of Watts. Sadly that moment of frisson doesn’t make up for the inclusion of prostitute Charmaine; yet another of Allen’s vile caricatures of the unsophisticated women he considers beneath him, and who must be saved from their stupidity by educated and cultured men such as himself. This is nothing new, but YWMATDS‘s greatest crime is to suddenly make the viewer see, as if scales have fallen from his or her eyes, that this patronising fetish has been around for decades. Add this to Allen’s inability to get a good performance from Pinto, or to restrain the nigh-unwatchable clowning of Punch, and this movie lays to rest the claim that Allen is a filmmaker sensitive to the inner world of the woman. He’s just the King of Mansplainers. How sad.

21. Dream House

Bond fans now have another reason to be frustrated with the post-Quantum-of-Solace delay caused by MGM’s recent troubles; the long pause means Daniel Craig has plenty of time to appear in ill-advised projects like this one. It’s possible he was attracted by the pedigree of those attached; Jim Sheridan, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts and Caleb Deschanel are all present and correct. However, it doesn’t matter what talent gets thrown at a project like this, because if you’re filming a self-consciously tricksy Shyamalanian mystery as silly as this, you’re never going to win. Even the most innocent of viewers will suspect there is something up in Dream House‘s opening hour, as characters mysteriously walk away from conversations leaving questions hanging in the air, to the bemusement of Craig’s character; surely that can’t mean some key information is being ignored? That’s before we even get into the problem of his name – Will Atenton – which has never existed anywhere on the planet before, and gives The Number 23‘s brilliantly stupid Topsy Kretts a run for its money as the worst mystery name of all time. The eventual reveal at least comes two-thirds of the way through the story, but the final act has more than its share of risible plot twists and signposted surprises. Kudos to the talented cast for giving this creaky hogwash all of their effort, but it’s still piss-weak stuff, the kind of spec script that would have been rightly rejected as hokey by the producers of Tales of the Unexpected.

20. Larry Crowne

SoC is proud to call itself a pro-Tom Hanks blog. He’s so nice. We’d love to invite him over to play Ticket To Ride with us and Kevin Spacey. So it was with a heavy heart that we watched his second directorial effort with confusion. We assume it was an empowerment exercise for older folks, and a creditable attempt to make something old-fashioned that would appeal to a demographic ill-served during summer. That’s generous, and kinda shrewd, if it wasn’t for the fact that the finished product is so flaccid and studiedly inoffensive, so joke-free, so out-of-time. It’s almost endearing how baffled by and yet enamoured of today’s youth Hanks and co-screenwriter Vardalos seem to be; they go out of their way to prove that Larry can embrace new beginnings, but pairing him with poor Gugu Mbatha-Raw – who has to pretend to enjoy hanging around with a 90% acrylic man desperately trying to make the word “Speck-tack-alar!” into a catchphrase – is a kind of berserk cruelty. We haven’t even touched on the unpleasant performance from Julia Roberts, whose overplayed acidity is out of odds with all around her, including poor Bryan Cranston, here given the miserable task of portraying a man addicted to looking at chaste burlesque pictures of bosoms – nothing too racy to upset the elderly audience, eh Tom? It’s tempting to forgive this curio its trespasses just because it’s so bafflingly, uniquely wrong, but no. It’s the kind of movie you ponder for years, but never ever enjoy.

19. Sucker Punch

Poor Emily Browning. This year she was stripped naked and thrown around a room like a sexy frisbee by some sad old men in Julia Leigh’s self-consciously spartan Sleeping Beauty, but even the indignity of lashings of nudity and a bit of ugly-crying are nothing compared to the things she had to go through here. Zack Snyder’s Remedial Feminism for Nerds fell between two stools; too preachy for the fapping masses of the arrested adolescents, too lascivious (and stupid) for the righteous feminists. There’s a message about subverting the power of the Male Gaze here but it’s submerged in a sea of pop culture iconography, all made up of jumbled nerdobilia, so we get totes rad mash-ups with steampunk Nazis, robot samurai, pirate zombies, alien vampires, Jedi Vulcans, Cylons bitten by radioactive spiders, er… It’s as if a copy of Previews came to life. By seeking to be a one-stop shop of nerd culture, it actually insults us all, that we could only accept Snyder’s garbled and patronising message about respecting the hot chicks by dressing it up with dragons and Sailor Moon cosplay. Unfortunately for him, no one wanted to see his ambitious message movie, and so I guess nerds will carry on being misogynists despite his intervention. Well, I say unfortunately for him, when in fact he’s going to bring his “visionary director” (shurely shome mishtake – Ed.) shtick to the new Superman movie, which means tons of ramping and slow-motion. At least that gives us time to ponder just how intellectually hollow his approach is.

18. The Help

There is an incredible story to be told here, a bleak indictment of a terrible time in America’s history. Tate Taylor’s adaptation of the bestseller by Kathryn Stockett features numerous moments that will cut you to the core, made worse by the realisation that the segregation and open racism depicted here happened within the last 60 years, and never went away. It remains an open wound, and salt pours in every day. The scenes that capture that sense of desperation are the best things here, but are betrayed by various unnecessary plotlines. What could have been focused and righteously angry unfortunately bites off more than it can chew by taking on the less compelling troubles of affluent white women. A Mad-Menian attempt to depict the stirrings of feminism in conservative America is commendable, but here it has the effect of offsetting the social ostracisation of Celia (Jessica Chastain in unbearable ham mode) and protagonist Skeeter’s difficulty in finding a boyfriend with the assassination of Medgar Evers and the reality that African-Americans lived with the constant fear of murder. There’s not really an equivalence there. The leaden humour might make this bitter pill more palatable, and the movie’s box office success is testimony to that, but Taylor’s nervous directorial tic – in which the camera cuts to one of the white cast members mid-emotion whenever an African-American actor relates a horrific event from their past – betrays its insulting timidity. So yes, an essential story, diluted by wrong-headed nervousness.

17. The Resident

Nice of Hammer Films to give a small role to Christopher Lee in their first release in so long; a nifty way of maintaining some continuity with the past. Shame nothing else here respects that heritage. Even if you think the output of Britain’s primary horror studio was a bit shonky, that’s nothing compared to this low-rent bit of sub-Sliver tedium, which seems to be almost entirely composed of shots of Jeffrey Dean Morgan weeping in dark rooms, or Hilary Swank explaining every single thing she thinks and feels in order to save the writer and director from working out any elegant method of dramatising her predicament. Seeing this Oscar-winning actress forced to stumble backwards and forwards through gloomy crawlspaces for what feels like a week while thudding music desperately tries to generate some tension is one of the most dispiriting experiences of the movie-going year. What could have been a very dull 45-minute horror anthology installment becomes a double-dose of sheer boredom injected straight into our eyeball, offering no frisson, no deeper point, no imagination, just barrel-scraping woman-in-jeopardy horseshit, with plenty of creepy rape terror lazily offered up as if we were watching some straight-to-DVD offering from a disreputable cheap-ass studio who have no intention of treating the genre seriously, or the audience with any respect. Hammer Films may have returned, but this is the worst statement-of-intent imaginable. Consign it to the toilet where it belongs.

16. Cars 2

Fans of Pixar’s many great movies were understandably frustrated that their annual dose of CGI magic would this year be a continuation of John Lasseter’s ode to driving. While it has its defenders, the first Cars movie still feels off-kilter compared to their other efforts, but at least it’s about something – the slow death of towns along the roads that cross America, now neglected due to the introduction of freeways. Cars 2 might represent the first subtext-free Pixar movie, and no, the irritatingly-rendered crisis of confidence experienced by Mater doesn’t count. Though it’s refreshing to see a sequel pick up a different character’s story instead of complicating the emotional progress of the original’s protagonist, that means we’re stuck with Larry the Cable Guy’s irksome shtick, as the redneck tow-truck gets to do them fancy things whut thuh city folk does; i.e. get embroiled in an incongruous espionage plot. That out-of-place idea is a redirection too far from the original, which was pleasantly innocent. Rather that movie’s yearning for simpler times than this movie’s charmlessness, scenes of car torture/death, and confused environmental message. And if there was any doubt that this was made to capitalise on the incredible success of Cars merchandise, check out the scene where Mater transforms into a number of different paint jobs; there’s five more Mater toy variants that your kids are gonna bug you about. Thanks Pixar.

15. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

The first two sequels to Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski’s surprise smash hit Pirates movie were pilloried for being cynical cash-ins, but Shades of Caruso always thought they were quite the opposite. The attempt to create an entire fantasy world deriving its rules and laws from those of nautical myth was, in the end, far too ambitious to succeed, but for a while there it was exciting to see writers Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio go for broke with their plots, counter-plots and counter-counter plots. As if to prove this blog’s point, the fourth Pirates movie sloped into view to show what a cynically produced Pirates movie looks like, and it wasn’t pretty. Or funny. Or coherent. Or energetic. Or anything, really, other than a colossal, expensive, tedious waste of everyone’s time and talent. Rob Marshall deserves a lot of the blame for this. The inertia generated by his unimaginative direction infects the actors, who behave like the cast of a parochial pantomime at the end of its run. Fans of Elliott and Rossio might want to argue that it’s the listless editing that did the most damage to the movie, as a few clever plot payoffs near the end make a case that there were greater treasures there that could have been plundered with a bit more discipline. But let’s be honest, this was one of the most blatant cash-ins of the year. No amount of spreadsheets and revised drafts can convince Shades of Caruso that anyone involved gave a crap about making a good movie, merely a profitable one.

14. The Three Musketeers

Well, at least it’s better than the last Resident Evil movie. That can be attributed to two things; the uncharacteristic lightness of some of the jokes here (I’d like to think that the amusing running joke about fashion is down to co-screenwriter Andrew Davies), and plot elements that are unchanged from previous incarnations of Dumas’ novel. Sadly, this is a Paul W.S. Anderson movie. He has been called “the worst storyteller in the world” by a fairly reliable source (scroll down to number 2), and I’m inclined to agree. This classic tale had to be sullied by his filthy fingerprints, and the result is the inclusion of some listless steampunk nonsense and wirework for Lady DeWinter, here reinvented as crinoline-bedecked cat burglar and assassin Milady and played by Mrs. W.S. Anderson using her trademark acting scowl to full effect. That’s the least of this idiotic movie’s problems, though. The addition of flying ships and anachronistic booby-trap sequences only serve to make a fun story tedious; the face off between the Musketeers and evil Rochefort – conducted on different sets – is some of the laziest filmmaking of the year. The contempt Anderson has for his audience is astonishing, expending as little effort as possible to churn out his standard lowest-common denominator dreck. And I haven’t even mentioned James Corden’s charmless mugging, insulting the memory of Roy Kinnear’s work as Planchett in Richard Lester’s classic version. Unforgivable.

13. Straw Dogs

More on this ill-advised remake in a forthcoming post (there’s too much to say here), but suffice to say, Rod Lurie takes an already problematic (though bold and questioning) movie and remakes it in such a way that its most controversial moment ends up being even more objectionable than the original was thought to be. And it totally wastes acting titan Walton Goggins. An unforgivable crime.

12. The Hangover Part II

Yes, Part II, just like The Godfather had a Part II. Todd Phillips has proved so inept at directing comedy that it’s hard to tell if the title is meant to be a joke or a statement of some weird intent, that this is something that the filmmakers are proud of. Because that’s a bit hard to swallow considering the script was written by taking the first movie’s screenplay, hitting Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-O, Ctrl-V, Save As – thehangoverptIIlulz.doc, find = Vegas, replace = Bangkok. And why Bangkok, pray tell? For the ladyboy jokes, of course. In fact, I had a bet with myself as to how long it would take for a transsexual to show up for the gay panic jokes, and it turned out to be about 51 minutes. I’m surprised it took that long. Thailand is here treated like a stained fuckhole where the lowlife are insane and the rich are stuck-up assholes waiting to be told how to live by the Americans. Those fratboy Yanks sure know how to par-tay, right, and those boring jerks will rue the day. And at the end, when a guy loses a finger and possibly damages his career chances he’s just fine with this because he got drunk once. Life lesson learned! And the adoring women laugh as the men bond, even though Alan is now near-sociopathic, (oh Zach Galafianakis, please get out of this malignant franchise), Phil is becoming worrying violent (Bradley Cooper deletes any good will earned from his turn in Limitless), and look who’s back! Everyone’s favourite rapist thug Mike Tyson! THP2 is pure hatred, depicting male friendship as a gnarled, hostile parody of the real thing.

11. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One

For the past few years Shades of Caruso blogposts have received numerous one-star ratings from Twi-Hards as we railed against the world’s worst franchise and screenwriter Melissa “Dexter” Rosenberg’s preposterous insistence on faithfully adapting those awful event-light books. Three movies have already been adapted from the equivalent of about one and a half acts of a short story, padding out hours of yearning stares with dull love triangles, poorly defined clan squabbles and many shots of wet forests. We’re approaching the merciful end of this interminable saga, and yet this penultimate chapter offers up nothing but more forestry, more pouting from Jacob, and seemingly endless scenes of poorly-acted angst. This might actually be the best of the series so far, thanks to a modicum of sustained low-level tension, but even so, barely anything happens, with only the hint of some Grand Quignol reproductive horror at the end providing even a hint of dramatic power. Other than that we have a hilarious growly werewolf summit, a couple of shots of lovely Michael Sheen gnawing on scenery, and way too much of Stephenie Meyer’s dodgy gender politics. On an aesthetic level the tedium of Bill Condon and Rosenberg’s adaptation is shocking; on a political level, Meyer’s concept of the passive womb-carrier that is Bella, punished with death for her lust even within wedlock, and redeemed by a return to chastity (here depicted by a hallucinogenic shot of a flower closing as she becomes a vampire), is truly odious.

10. No Strings Attached

Amazing how tone and energy can make such a difference to a movie. Will Gluck’s Friends With Benefits uses its irreverent script as a springboard for all sorts of frank and funny conversations about the complications caused by casual sex between friends. Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are endearing and uninhibited, their relationship made appealing in both before and after forms. In Ivan Reitman and Elizabeth Meriweather’s movie, the first scene depicts two young teenagers (Emma and Adam) awkwardly flirting, at the end of which Adam asks Emma if he can finger her. And with a glum clang, the movie is lost. From then on the tone is alienating, as Adam and Emma’s reason for delaying their inevitable romantic relationship is revealed to be pain and personal anguish, and their casual sexual relationship is depicted as an unfortunate consequence of their dysfunction. This makes No Strings Attached a darker experience, not helped by Portman’s choice to play Emma as dour and seemingly traumatised. That’d be fine if this was a character piece that had something to say about damaged individuals, but as it keeps throwing in lazy romcom staples like wacky friends, broad villains and inconvenient complicating relationships (complicationships!), Kutcher’s listlessness and Portman’s spikiness is out of place. As a comedy the jokes don’t land, but as a drama it’s too flippant; errors compounded by Reitman’s soporific direction. What we’re left with is overlong, charm-free, and too cowardly to realise its full dramatic ambition.

9. The Dilemma

Readers of SoC who checked out last year’s worst movies list may have noticed the high placing of The Switch, the truly dire reproduction comedy that featured the accidental insemination of Jennifer Aniston by Jason Bateman. That sprang from an article by Jeffrey Eugenides, then adapted by producer and writer Allan Loeb, who failed to explore the ethical quandaries involved, preferring instead to make baffling joke-flavoured noises about the subject. This year Mr. Loeb posed another, far less pressing question; should you tell your friend if you saw his wife cheating on him? The answer is yes, you should. And now I have saved you from having to watch Vince Vaughn wrestle with this problem for 100 minute of padding, improbable obstacles, cartoonish caricaturisation, and yet more of these now trademark LoebJokes; lines delivered like humour but otherwise unrecognisable as comedy. The result is a mystifying experiment. Who greenlit this movie? What was Ron Howard thinking? What was anyone else thinking, for that matter? You know you’re in trouble when the audience is grateful for the appearance of Channing Tatum to alleviate the tedium. For once he’s the only person in the movie to stay awake; a total reversal of the usual state of affairs. Epic poems will be written about SoC’s battle to get to the end of this unnecessary film. We only hope that whichever studio head/producer won the bet for who could make the most boring movie of 2011 donated the money to an orphanage.

8. The Change-Up

As if foisting the noisome Hangover onto the world wasn’t bad enough, screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore also poured this fetid waste over the heads of the 12 cinemagoers masochistic enough to sit through two hours of Jason Bateman robotically saying, “I’ll ruin that bitch” over and over again. SoC is no prude, but this miserable fashion for R-rated comedies triggered by the success of Judd Apatow’s recent adult-themed movies has completely lost sight of the fact that his movies understood and sympathised with humans, and were more frank than profane. The Change-Up is a miserable experience by comparison, bereft of compassion or empathy, as phony as any knock-off Prada handbag, as mechanical as any mass-produced soon-to-malfunction off-brand gadget. The formula here is that single Ryan Reynolds and married Jason Bateman swap bodies and see how the other half lives; Freaky Friday for Nuts readers. The least director David “Wedding Crashers” Dobkin could do is slot the relevant story parts into place with some form of competence, but he can’t even keep the characters consistent. Reynolds’ sex-mad slacker begins the movie as a foul-mouthed loser; an hour later, in Bateman’s body, he’s a noxious, sociopathic piece-of-shit who should be euthanised. And don’t get me started on Leslie Mann and Olivia Wilde, forced to be little more than signifiers of virtue and lust respectively. Sitting in a bath of cyanide-laced horseshit would be preferable to watching this empty, cynical enterprise trail slime across the finish line.

7. One Day

Early reports that Lone Scherfig and David Nicholl’s adaptation of his global megaselling novel was not that great were generous, to say the least. What could have been the tragic romance of the year is in fact indistinguishable from some kind of unhinged parody, and for that SoC is grateful. Any possibility of emotional connection between character and audience is ruined by the gimmicky structure, leaping through time from one improbable event to another as we see two poorly-realised caricatures do and say things you only find in badly-written books. Every possible cliché of the romance genre is crammed in, leaving no room to explore a thought or express an emotion; everything here is exposition, a cacophony of out-of-tune notes blasted at a disbelieving audience. It’s hard to say what is the funniest thing here; the movie-wide overacting, the overwrought plot twists, the dearth of honest feeling, Rafe Spall’s godawful caricature of a nerd — apparently Nicholl’s mockery of himself, but dangerously close to being an assault on my brethren. This bloodless monstrosity is the kind of thing that the British film industry could do without; a pompous confection for a middle-class audience who, sadly for these patronising filmmakers, saw right through its micron-thick sheen of “classiness”. It’s regrettable the same audience also focused their ire on Anne Hathaway and her wandering accent, ignoring the fact that she’s the only person in the cast to give a performance with any modulation or imagination.

6. Mars Needs Moms

The year’s most notorious flop is the kind of movie that SoC likes to champion. It’s critically reviled, it’s sci-fi, and it’s made using performance capture, a technique that we’ve previously defended. But despite interesting production design by Doug Chiang and a fun score by John Powell, this is a project riven with flaws. Simon Wells’ parable is technically assured but also joyless; these are the sorts of problems that should be addressed before committing $150m to its production. The rash decision to forgo revision means ImageMovers Digital are either the dream production company for allowing Wells to go forward without intervention, or they’re idiots who signed off on this, which would make their subsequent closure a little easier to take. Either way, it seems they approved of the movie’s hateful anti-feminist message, where those goddamn castration-happy lesbo Martian feminazis conspire to discard all of the poor fun-loving men who didn’t help with the childcare because they just wanted to enjoy life, thus leaving the kids to be cared for by machines; you know, like today with the TVs and those video games. As if that pissy comment on single mothers and their “responsibility” for the breakdown of society isn’t enough, the movie ends with the Martians embracing the nuclear family unit with a sense of obnoxious wonder, before learning life-lessons from a hippy in a sitcom. More baby boomer worship and hatred of modernity, then. In that case, its box office failure is a success for progressive ideals. Which is nice.

5. W.E.

Upon leaving the screening of this memorably silly biopic, SoC wiped tears of giddy mirth from its eyes and began proclaiming on Twitter that it had seen the worst movie of the year. It’s a farrago! It’s a catastrophe! It’s Showgirls meets The King’s Speech, written by Jackie Collins and directed by a distaff Oliver Stone! Though SoC has not changed its mind on those damning comparisons, it has grown immensely fond of Madonna’s vanity project, as much for its peek into her questionable taste in subject matter and what it says about her self-image as for its hilariously off-kilter direction and sub-Mills-and-Boon writing. Many long and dreary days since have been enlivened thinking about Andrea Riseborough dancing the twist while while wearing Gary Oldman’s Herr Dracool wig, or James D’Arcy’s visit to a Welsh town filled with stuttering, worshipful peasants, or Richard Coyle’s eye-watering turn as the whiskey-swigging abusive cad who torments poor virtuous Abbie Cornish, or any number of staggering moments of bad-movie genius. Of course it also features a hasty bit of apologia for Wallis and Edward’s pro-Nazi behaviour, not to mention a scene featuring a fake Mohammed Al-Fayed intended to draw a parallel between the Windsor’s treatment of Wallis and Diana Spencer, and numerous other problematic choices, but the main thing to remember about W.E. is that it’s the best kind of terrible; a frenetic camp melodrama with no concept of its own ineptitude. I can’t wait to see it again.

4. Restless

Even the best directors have off days, but how many have taken their critical reputation, set fire to it and thrown it off a cliff into a lake of petrol-soaked faeces? Even die-hard fans of Gus Van Sant, who have previously defended his choice to make Good Will Hunting – a project that gave him enough clout to make the clout-evaporating Psycho remake — cannot even begin to explain the thinking behind this catastrophe. Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska play a Harold and Young Maude-esque couple who face the prospect of death with an onslaught of twee role-playing, Indie™ mumbly dialogue, excellent but wasted Harris Savides photography, cutesy philosophising about mortality, and the addition of a ghostly Japanese kamikaze pilot who facilitates many many life lessons. It’s like a sick joke from Van Sant, a weird art project in which he burns his credibility to the ground in order to build it back up somehow. Sadly this is more than just burning something to ashes; this is salting the ground and casting a hex on it too. It’ll take approximately 3 Gerrys, 6 Elephants and 9 Paranoid Parks to restore Van Sant’s Artistic Power Bar back to full strength. If you do have to watch this godawful, lightweight student-film parody, make sure you carry a syringe full of insulin, otherwise you may succumb to its claustrophic, relentless sugariness and expire, photogenically, in a cloud of reality-defying magic dust, after which your friends will learn valuable lessons about embracing life and laughter. Carpe fucking diem.

3. Blubberella

Thin-skinned artistic colossus Dr. Uwe Boll and his crew of cinematic titans last year filmed Bloodrayne: The Third Reich in Croatia, and much as the cast and crew of Little Shop of Horrors cranked out their movie in two days on a free set, Boll took advantage of his shooting schedule to make this knock-off piece of excrement. Let me list the crimes: Adolf Hitler (played by Dr. Boll) playing Risk with a blacked-up, jive-talking ally and repeatedly invading Africa to annoy him. Holocaust jokes. Michael Paré being turned into a vampire after being forced to drink Blubberella’s breast milk. A torrent of predictable fat jokes. A bitchy, effeminate gay man called Vadge Isil who has very little physical strength. An onscreen credit that explains Blubberella lives in “The Jew-y part of town”. Rape jokes. A fantasy dream sequence spoofing Precious, with Blubberella making food for her abusive mother, here played by a white man in blackface and drag. That fucking title. Attempts to explain away the awfulness by explicitly referring to said awfulness. The end credit, “Extra special thank you to Adolf Hitler for making so many great movies possible”. There’s an argument for irreverence and cocking a snook at civilised behaviour, but this overblown, ill-advised DVD extra is definitely not it. Enduring this childish, sniggering prank, which barely counts as a movie, made me feel like the audience watching the opening number of Springtime For Hitler. Boll might think he’s daring, but in fact he’s just a belligerent idiot, and an unclassy one at that.

2. Green Lantern

For a committed Green Lantern fan, this was a difficult viewing experience. The characters were present and correct, the mythology of the Green Lantern Corps was rendered fairly accurately, and considering the fringe nature of the comic franchise, some effort had been made to bring it to life. Perhaps the fans should be grateful for that, but considering that this debacle felt wrong on every other level, perhaps not. How can something so costly look so cheap? How can a reliable – sometimes surprising – director like Martin Campbell create something so flaccid and hollow? Every aspect of Green Lantern is either, at best, slightly off or, as is too often the case, disastrously wrong.

Who thought that a big mid-movie showdown between the hero and one of the main villains — which amounts to two men lying on the floor touching each other’s foreheads — would make for compelling summer cinema? Who could imagine that pitting a rubbery-looking superdouche against a wafty shitcloud would suffice as a rousing finale? Why is Sinestro evil at the end, other than as a patronising sop to the fans and a lazy set-up for a sequel that no one wants? Why are the Guardians of Oa stuck to their pointlessly high chairs, like intergalactic toddlers in a restaurant that has no tables?

Come to mention it, why does the Corps disappear for the majority of the movie when they’re obviously the key selling-point of the franchise? Couldn’t we have sidelined a couple of characters — including Hal’s obnoxiously anti-fun comedy flatmate — in order to get us some quality-time with Ganthet, surely one of the most important characters in the GL canon? Does the fact that Hal Jordan learns how to take down the supervillains in something like an afternoon count as a kind of space-racism against the alien Green Lanterns who have been training for years and yet are about as helpful as a green ring light-construct in a custard factory? (#Nerd)

Why did no one with any objectivity speak up about the ghastly neon lighting scheme, or the comically-bad CGI costume, or the castastrophic miscasting and misinterpretation of Hal Jordan as a glib wiseacre when portraying him as the more interesting and dramatically valid stoic grouch of comic lore might have meant fewer misfiring jokes but would have at least grounded the tone of this confused jumble? What could have been DC’s Iron Man is instead another Supergirl. The wonder of the beloved comic is here translated into a listless, ugly farrago, an embarrassing and obscenely expensive failure that irrevocably taints something wonderful. Please, please let the movie franchise end here, so the promising animated series can try to repair the damage done to this amazing character.

1. Atlas Shrugged: Part I

The long process of adapting Ayn Rand’s bloated novel is testament to the enthusiasm of her acolytes, which is why it’s especially delicious that the only reason we saw an Atlas Shrugged movie in 2011 is not because someone just said, “Fuck it, I’m putting up my money for this because the world needs it,” but because the novel’s rights were about to lapse and it was this or nothing. Considering how strenuously Rand’s ethos denies the beauty of life, merely the glory of money and selfish achievement, it’s fitting that this movie — a movie so opposed to the notion of organic life that one of the publicity photos on IMDb is of a bridge that isn’t even in it – was borne of pragmatism and not passion.

And what a perfunctory, half-arsed effort it is, something so ugly and soulless that producer and co-writer John Aglialoro might as well have linked together pictures of the first 2916 pages of that inhuman block of hate with a flashing caption saying, “Will this do?” Of course the uncinematic nature of Atlas Shrugged is likely because the movie’s budget ended up being much smaller than Randfans hoped, with only Aglioloro funding it, and a five-week shooting schedule that didn’t allow for errors, but hey, at least he got it made, and he got to adapt it. That, to me, feels like he’s desperate to ride on Rand’s coat-tails, but that’s not how Randians behave, right?

It’s perhaps wrong to say that this wretched movie’s worst crime is to render Rand’s vision as this prosaic procession of meetings and stern conversations, when the daft asshole-empowering nutter’s book is already repetitive, overlong, and devoted to reducing humanity to its most unappealing characteristics, but as pointed out to me by Anne Billson and Daisyhellcakes, you only have to look at King Vidor’s improbably entertaining The Fountainhead to see that the one thing Rand’s writing had going for it — a demented grasp of the epic — can be used as raw material to create vivid and appealing cinema. Vidor took Rand’s screenplay and went nuts with it, casting iconic actors Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal to embody Rand’s almost godlike protagonists. The Fountainhead still has that miserable, compassion-denying message at its heart, but it works as a compelling movie; just look at that brilliant final shot.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I would barely pass muster as a 90-minute Powerpoint presentation. Co-writer Brian O’Toole has pooh-poohed criticism of the low budget and the unstarry cast (all of whom will forever reside on SoC’s shitlist for agreeing to work on this), saying that the ideas are more important, but sadly Rand’s ideas are so… well, counterintuitive is the nicest way of saying it, though antithetical to the human spirit is closer to the truth… that the movie needed to be super-extra-compelling to work as propaganda for the glory of the 1%, and Atlas Shrugged: Part I really doesn’t count.

The camera is located in exactly the worst place in every shot, the palette is murky, the performances muted, the craziness strangled. It needed starpower, glamour of some kind. Instead we get Michael Lerner, the captain of the Kahana from Lost, and An Actress as Dagny standing awkwardly in some brown rooms. Some have complained that the movie has failed in not featuring the character of Richard Halley, the artistic genius rejected by the fad-obsessed mediocrity-praising critterati of the day, but his absence is telling; I doubt the team behind this artless farrago ever found Rand’s discussions of culture as interesting as her pro-money defence of rapacious capitalism. What piece of art is as beautiful (to these robots) as a bank statement from the Cayman Islands?

To make matters worse, Aglioloro, O’Toole and director Paul Johansson haven’t even stayed true to the book. The version of Dagny Taggart seen here does not resemble the character in the book. She alternates between confidence and hesitance, stoicism and irrational emotion, begging banks to give her loans to invest in the John Galt line and actually willingly responds to Hank Rearden’s sexual advances instead of fighting him off until he has to take her by force. I mean, that’s good because yay less rapey weirdness, but it’s not how Rand sees the world. How would she feel if she knew her sub-dom fantasies had been replaced with a chaste smoochy scene? Even Vidor didn’t shy away from Howard Roark’s dominance of Dominique Francon, and that was during the time of the Hays code. So much for respecting the audience’s ability to take on even the most unpleasant aspects of Rand’s book.

But to be honest these complaints about the uncinematic nature of the movie, the inability of the “creative” team to breathe life into this project, the cheap and nasty visuals… they’re missing the point. The worst thing about the Atlas Shrugged movie is that the Atlas Shrugged movie exists. Rand’s thinking has played a key role in making this world into the volatile, unjust hellhole that it currently is, and any attempt to celebrate or popularise her philosophy — which boils down to, “Thou shalt pay no taxes to the looters because thou art totes awesome” — instantly puts my back up. I mean, for fuck’s sake, she paints a picture of a world where regulation and nationalisation of the rail system is to be dreaded, and yet I live in a country where privatisation of the rail service has been one of the most scandalous disasters ever to befall it. So much for her vision.

To hear actors talking about the evil of generosity, or claiming that self-interest is the highest ideal, or howling in horror at a burning oilfield not because of the environmental impact but because oilfields themselves represent something beautiful… these are things that make me sick. Isn’t life hard enough to get through without having to endure the automaton-like moneymen of the world promoting a philosophy that reduces us to little more than sentient bank accounts, with PINs for souls? This is a movie treated like an event by the Koch Brothers — the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of Perdition. Inviting their Archon followers for dinner and the equivalent of a spreadsheet convention; if only they considered that the punishment that I felt it to be.

The book Atlas Shrugged is a vile thing partially redeemed by the rubberneck value of seeing an author’s scarred psyche and bigotry transformed into a meticulously thought-out yet repellent philosophy that denies the existence of abstract beauty or humanity. Reading it is an alternately hilarious and disturbing experience, but it helps you understand the workings of the moneymen who arrogantly and incorrectly assume that their blind luck and ruthlessness in gaming the system is evidence of their Übermenschian superiority over the riff-raff.

Atlas Shrugged: Part I can’t even get that right. It’s incoherent and tedious, as soulless as the people who find value in it, and yet mundanely evil. It advocates the worst behaviour, it celebrates the worst of our species, it gives Wall Street psychopaths an argument for their pillaging, and it’s proud of its ethical crimes, like Hannibal Lecter gloating in front of the families of his victims. This is the worst movie of the year. This is the worst thing of the year. This is the nadir of cultural history. Avoid as if your soul depends on it.

Dishonorable Mentions:

I Don’t Know How She Does It: ”It” being getting nits, stumbling over chairs, talking to the camera as a lazy narrative device, and agonising at length over the literally hours she spends not being in happy montages with her children. As for the women in the movie who don’t want kids or men, don’t worry! By the time the credits roll, you’ll fucking get them and you’ll LIKE IT. Can’t wait for the sequel; I Don’t Know Why We Gave Those Chicks The Vote.

The Rite: Mikael Hafstrom’s dreary horroresque dramatisation of reportedly true exorcisms is notable for featuring such a dramatic gulf in talent between its leads. Anthony Hopkins gets to unload a heaping pile of acting tics all over poor unprepared Colin O’Donahue, who looks alternately perplexed and sleepy. Other than that it’s a sucky morass of cliche: call it William Peter Crappy’s The Exorshit. Or The Rong.

In Time: Andrew Niccol’s metaphorical use of time as a currency is an ingenious one (don’t sue me, Harlan Ellison), making a salient and timely point about wage inequality, corruption and the 1%. That’s the first act. Then it becomes an increasingly unfocused Bonnie-and-Clyde narrative with Justin Timberlake badly miscast as a rebel without a pause (geddit). By the end all the potency is gone, and we’re left with sub-Equilibrium posturing. Disappointing.

Bad Teacher: For once, SoC bête noire Cameron Diaz makes some effort as the teaching equivalent of Billy Bob Thornton’s Bad Santa. This movie, however, features a last-act conversion to sociability that makes no narrative sense; a dreadful cop-out that undermines the unpleasant build-up. This also features 2011′s other unwatchable Lucy Punch performance; a vortex of desperate gurning in need of stronger direction. Between this and The New Girl, what’s Jake Kasdan playing at?

Conan The Barbarian: “Conan, what is worst in life?” “To see a popular character treated to der vurst kind of brainless simplification, to be saddled viz a cliched revenge plot that even John Milius treated viz more delicacy, to feature incoherently shot action scenes furder ruined by der awful post-conversion 3D dat makes der movie too dark to vatch, and to hear der lamentations of der fanboys.”

More to come, and yes, I’m aware that it’s now practically the middle of 2012 and I’m still going on about last year.

It’s Burke’s Law!

Posted on November 9, 2009 by admiralneck

Last Friday, while attempting to write yet another lengthy post about the London Film Festival, I was repeatedly distracted by Twitter. This is nothing new. However, one of the people I follow whose name escapes me now (sorry) linked to an article posted on the film discussion site The Auteurs. I’d heard of it before but stayed away as I thought it had something to do with the dreary Luke Haines band, but in fact it’s a nice way to completely waste hours of your time, rating and “favouriting” movies to create a Profile for yourself, complete with representative movie still selection so you can have an iconic image next to your name (I went with Gene Hackman in The Conversation). It was pleasantly pointless, though I did take enormous pleasure in giving Slumdog Millionaire and Happy-Go-Lucky one star each, and Kung Fu Panda the five stars it so richly deserves. Take that, Sight and Sound subscribers.

The article that directed me to this site via Twitter was this lovely little prose poem half-heartedly giving Michael Bay some credit while referring to “fascism” and suchlike. This is possibly the only even vaguely positive critique of Bay’s work I’ve seen on the Internet that hasn’t been written by a teenager with an apostrophe allergy, and as such deserves to be preserved in amber. It might never happen again. As I said earlier this year, my opinion of Bay is torn between fascination and revulsion, the latter becoming more pronounced after the casual (but no less odious) racial insensitivity of Transformers — with the breakdancing jive-talking African-American parody known as Jazz getting killed in the final act, as is sadly the norm in movies — “transformed” into the full-on indefensible racial stereotyping of Skids and Mudflap. Shades of Caruso reader and former Transformers fan Lindywasp (one of her noms de Net) once sent me a very passionate disavowal of the sequel after an upsetting experience at a screening where the audience went from excited to silence once the extent of the caricature settled in. I was concerned by Bay’s decision before, but after reading her heartfelt condemnation, I became furious.

Though I’ll not be able to think of Bay without thinking about that incredible cloth-eared arrogance, I have still long been fascinated — as Daisyhellcakes can attest, having listened to me go on about it at length — by his public persona as the Fratboy DeMille, a man who stomps around like an over-excited teenager while making canny backroom deals for profit points, keeping the cost of his (sill expensive) movies down with obnoxious product placement, and buying effects houses such as Digital Domain. This bravado is ripe for parody, most brilliantly by the faux-Twitterer Fake Michael Bay (sample tweet: “Dammit, if I had a dollar for every time I dropped my iphone out of a helicopter doing a barrel roll…”), though I suspect he’s in on the joke.

Even more fascinating to me than Bay the Man/Douchebag is that signature style of his. Like haphazardly edited two-hour-long trailers, his films are plot-light endurance tests; a relentless swarm of images that he hurls at the audience, seemingly not caring why image B must follow image A. As long as the barrage of glowing, flashing, swirling pictures and the cacophony of multi-tracked sound effects keeps audiences pinned to their seats, Bay seems to think “Job done!” and then returns to his swanky Bay-Cave to drink Crystal and watch Total Wipeout. Is this good filmmaking? Hell no, and as I’ve attempted to explain before, I would never be able to argue that it was (though Danny Boyle’s similar everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach wins critical approval and Oscars). However, he does create an experience that no one else has the studio backing, the technical know-how, and the obnoxious confidence to be able to pull off.

Examples: Transformers ends with a city being pulverised, complete with epic firefights on a main street that totals buildings and blows up cars. The destruction-gasm setpiece in Pearl Harbor — a wretched film of enormous ethical dubiousness — contains the single most expensive shot caught on film, which is ghoulish, wasteful, and logistically impressive all at the same time. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is capped off with a huge scene where an Egyptian village gets mashed into the ground, pretty much (I’m sure it was not a real village, but if it’s fake he still managed to get it built before blowing bits of it up). He shows aircraft carriers getting split in half as if it ain’t no thing. These are stereotypically big and dumb crowd-pleasing moments that I’m sure Eric Rohmer’s fanbase would consider utterly vulgar, but they look impressive in slices. It’s not in Bay’s interest to coral these images into a coherent narrative other than “Man go from point A to point B while the world explodes.” It’s enough for him to hint that there is a goal that his heroes are trying to achieve, and as long as it seems there is some kind of forward momentum while he stages bravura visual orgasms containing complicated visual and physical effects, that’s enough for him.

Again, I’m aware that this is not technically artistically valid on a large-scale level, but on a micro-level, I cannot look away. Every dumb populist miscalculation like his nasty treatment of women, or his blindness to the wrongness of using racial stereotypes for stupid lowest-common denominator jokes, or his infantile reliance on slapstick and screaming instead of nuance and character growth, or any number of other admittedly dreadful habits, run parallel to his facility with composition. There are so many shots he has created that make my eyes wobble with pleasure that I cannot forget them. His reliance on patriotic button-pushing aside, he can create stirring moments just through imagery in a way that would probably make propagandists salivate. That ability to capture an emotion through manipulative visuals, aided by the pounding music of Hans Zimmer or Steve Jablonsky, is unparalleled. He truly is Leni Riefenstahl with a baseball cap and a collection of sports-cars in his Beverly Hills mansion.

And yet, despite this facility with imagery — perhaps the one thing I think even his detractors should accept, even if really really really grudgingly — he is treated like the Boogeyman. Numerous people accuse Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen of being the worst film of the year. Granted, it’s not very good, but I’ve seen far far far worse movies released this year. Just a cursory flick through the Auteurs site sees a number of forum threads based around hating him, including Why is Michael Bay on Criterion?, Is Michael Bay the worst director of all time?, and Reasons to *HATE* Michael Bay. The thread NAME THE FILM MAKERS YOU THINK SHOULD RETIRED OR SHOULD NOT BELONG TO THIS INDUSTRY AT ALL is filled with calls for Bay’s immediate withdrawal from the film industry. I get the feeling that this is a running joke, though it is borne of genuine frustration at his movies and his success.

They’re not the only ones who dislike him, of course. Mainstream critics are revolted by his movies, and even on a site oft-visited by the people you would think comprise his most ardent fanbase (Ain’t It Cool News), Bay is treated like a pariah. “Damn You Michael Bay” is a long-running Internet joke that has become a mantra. Bay hatred appears to be reflexive, the last word in an argument. Why accuse any other filmmakers of crimes against decency? Isn’t it obvious that Bay is the worst of the worst, representing everything that is debased and evil about modern cinema? He’s an unpleasant man with poor taste who appeals to the slack-jawed yokels and the hoodies and the youths with their popcorn and their knives and their mobile phones and suchlike and so on and so on etc. ad infinitum.

He’s the Hitler of films. Mike Godwin postulated that the overuse of mentioning Hitler in online arguments was sadly inevitable (“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”) Well, I reckon that there is another law we can accept as fact by now. “As an online discussion about film or culture grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Michael Bay approaches 1.” I don’t think this law should be associated with my real life name, which doesn’t have the Ooomph that “Godwin” has (that’s the kind of name that belongs in front of the word “law”). Therefore I propose we refer to this as Burke’s Law, named after the TV series from the 60s that was revived in the 90s. Why Burke’s Law? Because I always hear that phrase said in the same way as in the 90s title sequence, i.e. with this voice…

…and there is nothing more awesome than that. Sex up that show title, Sexy-Voiced Lady. (Here’s the first part of a full episode, just to show it in amazing context.)

So yeah, whenever a discussion about sucky film directors inevitably begins to focus almost exclusively on the vapidity of Bay’s destructo-porn epics, feel free to mention Burke’s Law. If Bay is what people think represents the true nadir of modern filmmaking, that’s up to them, but if they’re not willing to expand their search to other far less talented individuals out there, then I just can’t take them seriously. I see Dr. Uwe Boll get mentioned a lot, and he’s certainly a candidate. He’s made a shit-ton of laughably awful movies in the past — many more than Bay — and he has now tried to make himself seem classier by making a film about Darfur. However, he’s filming real rape victims re-enacting their own rape for his camera. Making fun of his shitty output suddenly doesn’t seem so funny.

If we’re going to talk about directors who create deafening, poorly storyboarded and edited action scenes that substitute crashing, clashing cacophony for flow and plot momentum, how about Stephen Sommers? He combines Bay’s inability to understand the clear, unambiguous narrative progression of a movie or an action scene with a flat eye for visuals, as evidenced by the busy but tedious G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra? Or Rob Cohen, a man who has yet to make even a half-way decent action movie? Though I’ve not seen his most recent movie — Fast and Furious — I did endure Stealth (where some of the best visual effects ever committed to film were wasted on a farrago of galactic proportions) and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, which actually managed to be the worst film in the Mummy franchise. It takes a special kind of witless hack to out-Stephen-Sommers Stephen Sommers. I’d rather watch a Bay action scene than something by either of these guys any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

I’d also like to make the case for Robert Luketic, who keeps pumping out the most artless dreck, seemingly with no understanding of what cinema can do. His last three films were lifeless committee-borne crowd-pleasers that couldn’t even be bothered to do anything pleasurable, rendered even more unbearable by being presented in a lifeless cavalcade of wretchedly awful compositions. As a bonus they also featured either reductive, retrograde gender-politics (Monster-In-Law and The Ugly Truth) or ethnic white-washing (the utterly worthless 21). Or what about Jon Avnet, aka the modern day Ed Wood? His last two movies — Righteous Kill and the incredible 88 Minutes — were among the most catastrophically misjudged movies I have ever seen, made by someone without a single artistic bone in his body. It’s so bad that I suspect he doesn’t even understand the scripts he adapts. No matter how hard he tries, he will never be able to come up with a single memorable or inspiring image in his entire career. Not counting this one with Leelee Sobieski taking aim, that is.

If you’ve thought long and hard about it and have come to the conclusion that Bay is less talented than these directors, or that he represents something far greater than just bad filmmaking (i.e. he’s a mascot for the debasement of the culture at large), or that his Platinum Dunes production company is committing a terrible crime by making bland remakes of great horror movies, or that the compositions I love are just ugly but shiny commercialised parodies of actual art, or that he’s the worst kind of patriotism-spouting pro-military arrested adolescent, or even that he’s just an obnoxious douchebag (James Cameron without the brains or the talent), that’s perfectly understandable. I’m cool with that, if you show me your calculations. But don’t just say, “Michael Bay is the worst director ever” because that’s the accepted wisdom. That’s not film criticism. That’s letting someone else do your thinking for you.

…Where I Try To Defend Michael Bay, And Can’t Even Convince Myself

Posted on June 23, 2009 by admiralneck

Daisyhellcakes once asked me if I defend Michael Bay just to be difficult and controversial, and I admitted that the most all-caps-boldiest exclamations that I trot out are just nonsense. If I were to rank directors in a huge list from good to bad (don’t tempt me to do that. I probably would if prompted), he’d be nowhere near the top, but more importantly he’d be nowhere near the bottom either. He’s lazily blamed for everything that is stupid and awful about spectacular Hollywood product, and for tainting the cultural well so much that the whole world suffers. The hatred aimed at him is startling. I halfheartedly defended him on the AV Club once, and was told by another commenter that I obviously knew nothing about cinema, and should keep my opinion about everything else to myself. I’ll admit I’m no Bordwell or Thompson, but my opinion on Bay is a little more nuanced than, “Me like when hot broads dance and the house blow up”.

Any filmmaker who becomes successful enough to achieve name recognition status is bound to attract critical dismissal, and that will intensify if the filmmaker has annoying quirks that are overused. For example, Paul Haggis’ inability to keep subtext subtextual, instead making his characters voice motivation or revelation out loud, drives me up the wall. Even his rewrite work on Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace makes that mistake. Tarantino’s magpie tendencies irk a lot of critics, especially when he steals from disreputable pop culture artifacts that they already dislike. Spielberg has had his knocks many times in the past. I can imagine he’s never going to invite Henry Jaglom around for dinner, as the guy has been bitching about him being a poor filmmaker for decades now.

Bay is a different beast altogether. He’s directing movies by a set of rules he has made up for himself, and that style bears only a passing resemblance to the work of others. As if brought up watching nothing but early Tony Scott movies, he seemingly has no idea of how the big picture will flow, choosing instead to focus on each individual shot, making them pop as much as he can. As a result, it’s not just the whole movie that doesn’t flow. Even relatively short scenes are haphazardly paced. This car chase from The Rock has great individual moments, but stops and starts with no understanding of how jarring that must be for the viewer.

I would never think to defend Bay as a man who makes great films in entirety. Even my favourite Bay movie, Armageddon, is full of embarrassing, and indefensible, flaws. Even so, he’s no Robert Luketic, or Shawn Levy, or Jon Avnet, three directors right off the top of my head who have never been responsible for even a single memorable shot, let alone scene or film. Of course, he’s also not James Cameron (I make this point because True Lies is on ITV2 right now, and, as shaky as that film is, the action scenes are almost perfection). I think Bay’s movies are fascinating, and with regards to the criticism he draws, Drew McWeeny brilliantly (and, obviously, accidentally) summed up how I feel about him in a Tweet I just spotted.

[To another Twitterer] How can you rail against the excess? Bay is what we have PAID Hollywood to evolve into. We reward the escalation of the absurd, then cry about it when it reaches its logical conclusion.

In the interest of not misrepresenting McWeeny, I’ll point out that he later adds that he doesn’t think he’s the best action director in Hollywood. Neither do I, but he is the most spectacular director in the whole world, a Cecil B. DeMille with subscriptions to Guns & Ammo and FHM. When Bay gets to do his thing right, you are getting to see something that no other filmmaker on Earth would or can do. He shoots fast and loose and spends his money on the outrageous stuff, and can conjure up images that sear themselves into your brain.

As McWeeny says, this is not the same as saying he’s a good filmmaker. He’s just a unique one, and I feel an obligation to articulate my conflicted feelings, especially considering almost all critics are dismissing his movies with such kneejerk vehemence that they’re not even bothering to fact-check, which is often a sign that the reviewer considers the movie beneath contempt. I’ve reviewed films in an almost professional capacity before, and I’ve had press packs, so I know most of these errors can be avoided*. (Though being annoyed by overly complex plots that make little sense are another thing: see below for my own problems with T:ROTF.)

So I was desperate to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, mostly because I was hoping he would get right the things he got wrong in the first one. As those flaws were the usual things (pacing mistakes, clunky humour, Jazz being a terrible racial stereotype, etc.), I was basically hoping that this would be Bay’s best movie, removing some of the clutter but keeping the crazy. That’s the key: keeping the stuff that he does better than anyone. Even though I want other filmmakers to create coherent movies with a steady, escalating pace, I want Bay to do what Bay does best. The worst thing he could do would be to play into the hands of those critics who say his movies are all BOOM and no plot, racing from one scene to another without a pause, doing nothing more than amping up every moment with no concern for character development. Sadly, that’s exactly what he has done with T:ROTF, and the result is a deeply frustrating experience.

For the first ninety minutes, I was absolutely amazed at what I was seeing. Even more so than the shocking and ramshackle Bad Boys II, Bay is throwing the kitchen sink at the audience (and then shooting it with a sabot round). The first scene in the movie features a tribe of Cro-Magnon fighting early Cybertronians, for crying out loud. Okay, so they look more like they should be hanging out with Zoolander than hunting bison, but still, kudos to the man. For the next section of the movie, the film throws so many peculiar and outrageous visuals and concepts, that I drove Canyon crazy with my various quiet exclamations of joy. By the time Megatron and Starscream hang out on one of the moons of Saturn (seriously), I was convinced that this was going to be my favourite movie of the summer.

And then it all goes horribly wrong. The moment that the action abruptly shifts to Egypt, the movie slams into neutral, with scene after scene falling flat. The novelty of the early scenes disappears, replaced by a tedious crawl across numerous deserts, seemingly to showcase the cars that have been mostly missing by this point. Several scenes could be excised completely, and should have. It was nice to see Deep Roy as the ha ha ha so tiny border guard, but the movie would have been so much better without it. This is not the first time he’s made this mistake, but usually he doesn’t put so many of these extraneous and excruciating scenes in the final hour.

In fact, the endless trek from Egypt to Jordan and back again (I think that was the route) seems to only be there because, for some baffling reason, Bay and the writers thought that having the characters just appear at the Pyramids for the big finish would somehow be unbelievable, so we have to see their full trip. Why is he getting squeamish about this now? I don’t care how they get there, especially if the trip seems to have been filmed in real time. If I want a travelogue, I’ll watch a Michael Palin show. This is a Bay movie. If you’re going to use a “Space Bridge” to teleport the main characters to Egypt, then teleport them to the exact spot needed to maximise the action. And yet no. Because audiences have been clamouring to see National Lampoon’s Egyptian Vacation.

The desert setting also steps on the toes of the earlier film. Transformers had a perfectly fine and short action scene set in a desert, as the survivors of the opening base attack fight against Scorponok. It was about five minutes long, had Tyrese bellowing “BRING THE RAIN!” into a walkie-talkie, and featured a bunch of exploding buildings. Those wide open spaces worked well for a mid-movie action scene, and made the final city scenes even more exciting, as we got to see a bunch of robots fighting in contrasted dark and cramped streets with no respite. That scene remains one of my all-time favourites.

The finale of Transformers 2 just looks like a bigger version of that desert scene, with little of the original’s intensity, though it does have some fun stuff involving the Pyramids¹. Sam and Mikaela make their way very slowly through a village, with intercutting of Josh Duhamel looking frustrated. No one says BRING THE RAIN!, though it does crop up on a napkin or something earlier on. Everything seems to move at normal film speed, which is like half Bay-speed. At this point in the movie my ass was really hurting from sitting in the crappy Waterloo IMAX seats, and instead of being riveted I just kept fidgeting. Yes, I use my ass as a guide to how exciting a movie is.

More exasperating than the inappropriate locale, even though Bay’s movies have not been known for their well sketched character arcs, the finale is littered with momentum-robbing scenes such as the whole “I love you” thing between Sam and Mikaela (really? This is a big deal?), Kevin Dunn telling his son to go and do the right thing (an emotional beat that makes no sense as Dunn, at the start of the film, couldn’t care less about his son leaving), and Sam’s “death”, which reflects the big “death” midway through the movie (I won’t spoil it). Why does Bay suddenly care about these things? I can barely remember The Island, and maybe there was an arc in that, but I don’t even think there was one in Pearl Harbor, the most conventional movie he has made. I expect tonal errors from Bay, but this was worse than usual.

Only after leaving the cinema with a deflated heart (it sounds like a deadly condition, but the only symptom is whining on the internet) did I realise that there was a lot more wrong with the movie than just the broken finale. McWeeny recently hinted that the first sentence in his forthcoming HitFix Motion/Captured review would be, “I have never felt more like a third nipple than I did, as a screenwriter, while watching Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen.” I can’t wait to find out what he means by that, though I think it might have something to do with how the excessive plot — and I do mean excessive — is crammed into about three five minute-long scenes filled beyond breaking point with insane amounts of exposition, while huge stretches of the movie would probably, on paper, look like a list of fight scenes. It’s that rare kind of movie that is simultaneously overcomplicated and embarrassingly simplistic.

Instead of just trying to come up with a simple way to orchestrate some robot fighting, we get tons of backstory. Cybertronians have visited Earth before, and one of them was going to destroy us in order to harvest energy, but a civil war broke out and then there were a bunch of Primes, and they are magic or something, and the All-Spark is in Sam’s head, or it’s something else, and there is a key, and a cipher, and a Matrix of Awesomeness, and an afterlife, and probably a bunch of elves, and… It’s absurdly complicated stuff, with one very silly plot-thread (Megatron demanding the world hand over Sam so he can extract his brain, or something) that takes over the latter half of the movie. For every quirky moment and fun concept, there’s ten stupid complications that mean nothing. By the time Jetfire turned up for his shot at the Exposition Of The Year award, I had completely lost the plot, not helped by my efforts to guess the identity of the British actor playing the elderly robot².

To me, these are big problems, even when taking Bay’s singular style into account. However, it’s becoming clear that the biggest problem people are going to have with the movie are Mudflap and Skids, the comedy relief duo who shuck and jive through much of the finale. Why am I using this outdated African-American phrase? It seems apt considering that these two robots are the most startling racial stereotypes I’ve seen on the big screen since Crash, only this time they’re meant to be funny and not “educational”.

While sitting in the cinema I had huge difficulty reconciling what I was seeing with what I thought Bay was trying to do (have a couple of affable idiots break up the tedium of the cross-country trek with their wacky exploits), and for a while after I wondered if they were meant to be a spoof of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence from Bad Boys (a Bad Boys II poster is on display in one character’s room, and their banter is as forced as that between Smith and Lawrence). Now, with hindsight, that I realise that’s even worse than just two racist caricatures. Is he personally attacking two people he has worked with before? And the guy doing the voices for them is white? We’re talking about Jar-Jar Binks-esque wrongness on an epic scale.

The disconnect I suffered during the movie was similar to the shock I felt during Star Wars: The Clone Wars when Ziro the Hutt appeared, but my overall opinion of that character is astonishment that Lucas could have thought that was all right. With Mudflap and Skids, I was uncomfortable during the movie, and now I’m outright pissed off. It’s made the dreadful caricaturing of Jazz in the first movie (a black Transformer that breakdances and then gets ignominiously killed in the final act) seem even more glaring. Bay deserves the shitstorm that’s heading his way.

I mean, it’s becoming fairly obvious that he has a real problem with women, so much so that you could almost forget it’s happening until the camera shoots so far up plastic “hottie” Alice‘s skirt that it qualifies as a proctological exam. Megan Fox does little more than pout and get dragged around the desert by LaBeouf and Duhamel, not even getting a hero moment like she did in the first film³. Other than Fox and Isabel Lucas, the only other female characters with any dialogue are the holographic women on the transforming motorbikes (ZOMG is Bay saying women are bikes?), and Sam’s mother, played by Julie White.

Being the only non-simpering non-hottie in the film, she has to do several unglamorous things, usually involving pratfalls. One scene with her getting high on hash brownies is particularly uncalled-for. Nevertheless, she deserves all the credit in the world for managing to make these stupid moments work. She might give the best performance in the film. Maybe, in future, Bay should consider giving more roles to women who have talents beyond looking orange and pouty.

So, it was a washout, right? Except that for a while, as I said earlier, the film flies. Even with the inclusion of the awful Alice subplot, and lots of shenanigans involving kitchenbots, there is a lot to enjoy. The new set-up for the Autobots, working in conjunction with the humans to fight rogue Decepticons, is hugely promising, and the opening in Shanghai is astonishing and ambitious. Even better, the forest fight between Optimus and three Decepticons is one of the film highlights of the year, especially as it is filmed in full IMAX.

Seeing Optimus to actual scale is something I won’t forget any time soon. Much is made of Bay’s direction of action, and how the rapidly moving camera and quick cuts serve to render all of his scenes incomprehensible, but there are many worse action directors out there. Considering how overwhelmed I was by the terrible action in Eagle Eye, or by the much better but still swooshy Star Trek (both of which I saw on IMAX), this didn’t upset me at all. That was something I was not expecting.

There is even some evidence of playfulness from the notoriously grouchy man. Considering his parodic sense of patriotism, it amuses me greatly that he manages to destroy Paris again (the first time was at the end of Armageddon, a scene that got a cheer here in England each time I saw it on the big screen), and I can imagine all sorts of noses being put out of joint by his destruction of a library about an hour in. If you’re responsible for some of the most successful movies of the past fifteen years, you can afford to poke fun at your image like that.

As I’ve said, I did like a lot of it. I saw one person lazily Tweeting this morning that they thought this was as bad as Batman and Robin. Don’t believe it for a second: this has much much more to recommend it, even if just as an occasionally exhilarating aural and visual assault. Also great: Glenn Morshower returning, this time as General Morshower (seriously); Tony Todd doing some great voicework as The Fallen, a robot with a fantastic gangly design; trying to catch sight of the cast on poor Shia’s hand in early scenes; terrific sound editing, far better than critics are saying; a greater sense of the robots as actual characters, especially Starscream and Megatron. Plus, even if the finale is not perfect, it does feature some mind-boggling moments. I’m really hoping that the previous Academy snub of the Transformers effects team is not repeated. They’ve topped themselves this time out, especially as they’re operating in IMAX for some of the most complicated moments.

Even so, it’s a movie that wouldn’t let me like it as much as I wanted to. If I’m going to defend Bay in future, the guy has got to meet me halfway. The awful Ebonicbots and the Auton women have got to go. Right now, I’d rather he tried to make another movie in the more sober style of The Island than keep this lower-than-lowest common denominator stuff going. It’s becoming hard work waiting for him to grow up, but then, if we lose the racism and misogyny (which I’m sure he doesn’t see as such), will we lose the rest? And is “the rest” worth keeping if the man is going out of his way to perpetuate bullshit jock philosophy like this? All of a sudden those Bay films in my collection look a little less appealing. Let’s hope his next movie is either an adaptation of The Beauty Myth or a remake of Amistad.

* In fact, one of the first movies I ever saw at a press screening was Bad Boys. Maybe that’s why I’m forgiving of Bay’s films.

¹ Full disclosure. As soon as I saw the first trailer with shots of the Pyramids, my heart sank. A project I have been working on for some time had a big finale in the shadow of the Pyramids, and so I guess I have to scrap all of that. A shame, as it would have been so awesome that brains would have melted while watching it, even though the project involved a C-list comic character that no one likes. Nevertheless, my disappointment with the finale was not rooted in this, as I got over that frustration a long time ago.

² Amazingly, it’s Jon Turturro.

This means he spends a lot of his screentime arguing with himself.

³ Though, to be honest, LaBeouf gets little more to do other than run into danger and get blown up. Another flaw of the film: adding human characters and not really knowing what to do with them, which particularly irks when you like LaBeouf, as I do.

ETA: Here is McWeeny’s review of T:ROTF. Of all the reviews I have read in the past few days, this might be the only one that actually addressed specifics of what the film is like. Trust someone as perceptive and fair as McWeeny to watch the movie and review what he is seeing instead of just scribbling “Michael Bay is a douchebag” in his Moleskine a thousand times.

Listmania! The Films of 2008, Part 1

Posted on January 5, 2009 by admiralneck

Later than just about every other best movies list in the world, here is my overly elaborate take on 2008, completed now in frustration over yet more bullshit release date nonsense which means, in addition to never having the time to see everything, many promising movies won’t come out in England until mid-Jan to late Feb, if we’re lucky. Especially annoying is that, apart from a couple of truly terrific and left-field movies (I’m thinking primarily of The Wrestler here), the stuff we get early is the sub-Miramax tripe that openly begs for Oscar attention, especially if it stars Kate Winslet. Meanwhile Rachel Getting Married, Frozen River and Synecdoche, New York (for example) are delayed until an annoyingly late date or not given a release date at all.

This renders list-making a futile exercise, as some truly great films end up on UK screens long after the rest of the world has moved on from them. A couple of UK press end of year lists that I read this week featured No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two films from 2007 that got released here way too late to get on UK lists. Even worse, two movies I definitely would have put on my 2007 list (Sweeney Todd and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) came out here too late for me to see them. Though I thought both films were stunning, I won’t put them on my 2008 list as I would feel bad for dropping two recent films out of the list. For the record, Sweeney Todd is Tim Burton’s best film since Ed Wood, and Diving Bell should have swept the Oscars. And now I can relax about it.

Of course, I could have delayed this even more, and Canyon was lobbying for a further delay until we’d finally caught up, a plan completely ruined by the news that Synecdoche’s UK release has been changed from February to, get this, FUCKING MAY (!!!!!!!!!), but even if it was coming out soon, after a couple of weeks of insane movie-watching marathons I’m just about spent, and the delay has been exacerbated by illness. Sorry, newly-released Che and The Reader, and sorry other missed movies such as Standard Operating Procedure and Seven Pounds and Changeling and the potentially coma-inducing BBC Films costume drama trio of The Other Boleyn Girl, The Edge of Love and The Duchess, you’ll all have to wait. Consider this list the almost definitive one for 2008, with the proviso that if Synecdoche and Rachel Getting Married are as good as we hope, this list is subject to change. Further to that, if we see any turds from 2008 that have yet to be released, my worst lists might change as well.

N.B. Yes, I know I’ve cheated by shoving eleven movies into my top ten, but The Wrestler completely ruined my original list by being absolutely amazing. Blame Darren Aronofsky and his wonderful cast and crew for excelling themselves. Also, there are a lot of Honourable and Dishonourable Mentions, but I’ve tried to match them up so there are an equal amount of each. It makes sense in my head. Please just indulge me and my listophilia.

Best Movies of the Year:

1. The Dark Knight – L.A. Confidential featuring a man dressed as a bat, a psychopath in makeup, and a fallen hero with half a face. Nothing else this year could top the thrill of seeing the superhero genre show its potential for complex emotional and intellectual storytelling.

2. Kung Fu Panda – A love letter to a genre and a culture, a beautiful spectacle, an inspirational tale, and a perfectly pitched comedy. Repeated viewings have not yet dimmed its good-natured genius. And when I say repeated viewings, I mean obsessive-level rewatching.

3. In Bruges

Martin McDonagh’s debut feature, a perfectly constructed blast of cynicism and optimism, made me laugh harder than anything else this year, before sending me to the edge of my seat in the final act and keeping me there until the credits rolled. McDonagh has very definitely arrived.

4. Red Cliff: Part One – John Woo’s return to form, a glorious big-screen blend of heroism, romance, and trademark uncynical bromance, is a perfect crowd-pleaser. China now has its Lord of the Rings, and if you’re lucky enough to see the uncut original, so do you.

5. Gomorra – Five tales intertwine to explore the extent to which organized crime in Italy corrupts and destroys everything around it. The palpable sense of moral and physical decay pours from the screen. A staggering achievement.

6. Redbelt

Mamet’s pared-down classic, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor at the height of his powers, generates suspense through mundane threats to the life of an honest, honourable man, and resolves them in an outrageously exciting fashion. The final ten minutes had me alternately gasping and cheering.

7. Speed Racer – THAT’S RIGHT!!! Delirious, kaleidoscopic, overwhelming, sincere, thrilling, and like nothing you’ve ever seen before. Building from a hectic, information-packed opening to a breathtaking climax, the Wachowskis rewrote the rules of cinema and yet the public spat on them for their efforts. Ingrates.

8. Pineapple Express – Just like Hot Fuzz before it, the maligned action genre is sent a mash note in the form of a comedy. Also like Hot Fuzz, I expect to be rewatching this and finding new funny moments for a long time to come. As Seth Rogen says several times during the movie, “Nice!”

9. Iron Man – If The Dark Knight is a vision of the future of the superhero genre, Iron Man is the perfect encapsulation of what the old school can do when it’s done right. The best Marvel adaptation since X-Men 2, and the perfect delivery vehicle for concentrated bursts of Downey Jr. genius.

10.= The Wrestler – Some critics who have written about this movie have complained at how much it depends on redemption story sub-genre clichés, but seriously? Have they even seen it? The most uplifting depiction of bleak despair of recent years, beautifully performed and shot, and deeply moving.

10.= Eden Lake

Where the hell did this come from? Borne of the raging torrent of fear and mistrust that infests Mail-reading England, James Watkins’ debut feature recalls Straw Dogs and Deliverance, but still feels utterly modern. Horror movie of the year, with a kickass finale too.

Honourable Mentions:

Hellboy II: The Golden Army
Man On Wire
Hunger
Wall*E
[Rec]

Worst Movies of the Year:

1.= 21

Formulaic, anodyne, sickeningly white-washed, unambitious, boring, stupid, poorly cast, and just plain offensive. When people bitch about Hollywood product being trash, this is the film they are imagining in their head.

1.= Cassandra’s Dream – The worst and most inept student film about morality ever made, with terrible amateur dramatics and shaky production values. Except it’s not a student film. It’s by the director of Manhattan, and is made by professionals. How does this happen?

2. 88 Minutes – Something this wrong-headed achieves a kind of perverse beauty. It’s not the only film on this list that I love for being bad, but it’s possibly the one I had the most difficulty believing existed (see also: Jon Avnet’s follow-up Pacino project Righteous Kill)

3. Slumdog Millionaire – I have more to say on this sorry excuse for a movie below. Much more.

4. Bangkok Dangerous – Bad Nicolas Cage movies are often a thing of pure joy. This, however, is a boring, poorly-made chunk of pointless junk. Depressing, predictable, inept; how did this get made? Why did this get made? My environmentally conscious self weeps for the landfills bloated with unwanted copies of this tripe.

5. Happy-Go-Lucky – It’s beloved by many. It’s sure to get Oscar nominations. It also features a starring performance of technical brilliance that is, nevertheless, almost unwatchably annoying. The phoniness of Leigh’s appalling movie made me gag with revulsion, but it’s the almost blanket critical praise that aggravates my soul the most.

6. Mamma Mia! – As I am not a middle-aged woman with very low standards, I did not enjoy this film at all. Pierce Brosnan’s singing haunts my dreams. Still, the studio made enough money to pay for my therapy, right?

7. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

More on this in a forthcoming post, but, as with 21, the archetypal mindless spectacle used as an example to justify hatred of populist cinema by pseudy asshole critics who think King of Phonyland Mike Leigh is an artiste.

8. The Happening – Watched with the right people, it’s one of the most entertaining films of the year. In the cold light of day? A startlingly ill-conceived mess. Even then it’s still somehow lovable. But, you know, shit.

9.= In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale – Dr. Uwe Boll brings the pain. A hero called Farmer (because he’s a farmer), acres of pure ham from the bad guys, hectic and incomprehensible action scenes, and respected actors openly cashing a paycheck and sullying their careers horribly? I feel compelled to keep watching it.

9.= 10000 B.C. – Usually I don’t care if a movie plays fast and loose with historical truth, but even though we don’t know much about life 12000 years ago, this is still amazingly improbable. Makes Independence Day look like the original Day The Earth Stood Still.

10. Babylon A.D. – I feel bad adding this to the list. Fox’s usual army of mindless film-wrecking idiot accountants sabotaged the project, but even so, it’s tough to get through without lots of depressed sighing. And yet the director’s cut just got released on DVD. So I want to see it. Though I refuse to give Fox any more of my money. What to do? What to do?

21 and Cassandra’s Dream are at the top of the poll as 21 made me angriest of all the films I’ve seen this year, but Canyon, who considers Cassandra’s Dream the worst and most poorly made movie of the decade, made a compelling case for it to get to the top spot. Who am I to argue? Ah, but why are 10000 B.C. and In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale vying for the coveted ninth place? Because of an imminent Face/Off post that I’ve been planning for months now but never got around to. Will I manage to in the near future? Probably not. There’s a drum peripheral and a game of Civilisation IV calling out to me. If I get around to it, all will be made clear.

Most Disappointing Movie of the Year: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

As with the announcement of all of David Fincher’s movies, anticipation for it rendered me almost unable to function as a productive member of society for the majority of 2008, which makes its mediocrity all the harder to bear. Ambitious, sprawling, beautiful to look at and technically an award-worthy marvel, it’s also a million years long, mawkish, and rendered absurd by some third-act character decisions that defy logic. Comparisons to screenwriter Eric Roth’s previous work on Forrest Gump have not been made idly. Several beats are similar/identical, the main characters are innocents dragged across the historical events of 20th Century America like a bouncing ball on a karaoke lyric screen, and sentimental visual motifs crop up in the final scenes (a feather in Gump, a hummingbird in Button).

The same reliance on dire platitudes and cutesy asides, and a similar structure are bad enough, though we entertained ourselves by finishing every sentence in the movie with the phrase “box of chocolates”. Also amusing to us was that the movie spent most of its length showing what happened to Benjamin between the 1920s and the 1960s, skipping the last few decades of his life. Of course, Roth had already covered those years in Gump, and didn’t need to go over it again. We reckon his next script will be about a three hundred year old man, and Roth can pick over the first two hundred years of American history.

It’s especially galling as I wanted to embrace a Fincher movie that was so different from his other movies, hoping that a whimsical tone would work just as well as the cynical tone of some of his better movies, but sadly, I now feel like the archetypal outraged internet ranter bitching about how Fincher “pussied out” because he didn’t make Seven II: The Sevening or whatever. It’s not that at all. If anything Button is less sentimental, more cynical than Gump, though not by much. It just never kicks into a higher gear, and then, after idling for two hours, stalls completely. Still, a lot of the performances are great, and the effects are the best of the year. I spent the first ninety minutes muttering, “How? Seriously, how did they do this?” So it’s got that going for it.

Dishonourable Mentions:

Tropic Thunder (not funny enough)
Transporter 3 (not exciting enough)
Hancock (a frustrating mess)
Son of Rambow (charming but frustratingly slight)
Choke (about as cinematic as a table reading)

Overrated Movie of the Year: Slumdog Millionaire

For the majority of the year I was convinced I would be having another rant about Mike Leigh in this post, but I get to put the boot into Danny Boyle instead. Currently topping innumerable critics polls, Slumdog Millionaire has captured the imagination of the audience in such a complete way that I strongly suspect there is some witchcraft involved. Did no one see what a hollow and tedious mess it is? Did the astonishing ugliness not make anyone want to vomit? Is no one bothered by the bewilderingly fatuous script? I gather the numerous illogicalities, contrivances and insultingly two-dimensional characters have been explained away by many as conventions of a fairy tale, which Slumdog Millionaire, despite paying lip-service to the terrible poverty of India, most certainly is, but that defence is a huge insult to the writers of actual fairytales. The Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen were better writers than this. The other comparison made was that the film is Dickensian. Again, why do people suddenly think Charles Dickens was an idiot?

My biggest problem with Danny Boyle’s directorial style in the past is that he has no impulse control, and no understanding of how shots should relate to each other, approaching even the most unassuming shot with the intention of making it as kinetic and unusual as possible. Slumdog Millionaire is the worst example of this so far, with almost every shot on a Dutch tilt, lit with garish colours, usually with characters on different focus planes, and then made even more ugly with rapid-cutting and the same kind of fractured and smeared slow-motion that occasionally ruins Peter Jackson’s otherwise pristine films. After a couple of minutes I had a terrible headache, made worse when I concentrated on the deeply unlikeable characters, piss-poor performances, and embarrassing hokey plot.

That’s even before we considered the patronising treatment of Indian poverty, the simplistic understanding of human nature, the childish humour, and, worst of all, the fact that this film is produced by Celador Films. Celador is the company that makes Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, so please don’t tell me this movie is about opening Western eyes to the terrible conditions in Indian shanty-towns, or a celebration of Bollywood conventions (the few times that genre of movie is directly addressed are horribly awkward and poorly done, especially the crappy dance number over the credits). It’s an advert for a TV show, which means Boyle has done this kind of shilling twice (the first time was Millions, a film about the UK National Lottery funded by proceeds from the UK National Lottery Fund).

Just to really annoy me, I’d finally embraced the guy after Sunshine, the only film he’s made (other than Shallow Grave) that matched the style with the substance and created a beautifully choreographed suspense experience, where his worst impulses were ignored. Slumdog Millionaire is, sadly, a return to form, and we’re worse off for it. If it does indeed become the dark horse contender at the Oscars, I expect a slowly dawning realisation not long after that that Boyle has made this year’s Crash. At least, I hope that does happen.

Dishonourable Mentions:
Happy-Go-Lucky, Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Underrated Movie of the Year: Speed Racer

I won’t bang on about it again, but the blanket critical dismissal of this movie has become an almost impregnable barrier to reappraisal. Nevertheless, fans won’t be silenced, and talkbacks and comment sections still feature outbreaks of praise for the Wachowski’s insane vision. May time absolve it of the imaginary sins against cinema it has supposedly perpetrated. This, Danny Boyle, is how sensory overload is done.

Honourable Mentions: Pineapple Express, Be Kind Rewind, Blindness, Forgetting Sarah Marshall

That’s a lot of bitching about movies. And there are two more posts to go! Hell, I watched over eighty movies this year, almost a personal best, so I’ve got a lot to say. Expect kudos for Robert Downey Jr., and an unwanted award for The Bandit himself, Mr. Burt Reynolds.

Adventures in WTF?! – Casting Dr. Uwe Boll’s Far Cry

Posted on April 30, 2008 by admiralneck

Shades of Caruso

Circuit interruptus.

Category Archives: Dr. Uwe Boll