Rerun... Boyhood

Oh, thank God! Thank God you turned out beautiful!

 

"Unique" is one of these buzzwords that critics throw around when they mean to say "Something I wish I could see more of". However, that creates a problem for films that are genuinely unique to some degree, because, if they are successful in their uniqueness, they will immediately be emulated by other films and franchises, destroying that individuality. Think about it: The Avengers was a (mostly) unique endeavour - doing something that had never been done on that scale before and, more importantly, pulling it off. But Age of Ultron came out and the first movie became less of an individual animal. Soon, we'll have a Justice League movie and The Avengers will be made less special again. It's uniqueness is gradually degraded by people who try to copy it.

 

With Boyhood, however, a certain amount of future-proofing has been achieved. Richard Linklater set out to do something twelve years ago and, now that it's complete, you can be sure that there won't be another film to rival it's individuality for at least another decade. On a critical level, I find that fascinating. However, since this is going to be the film that, for a long time, will be "that film that was shot over twelve years", one has to hope that it is also an enjoyable film to watch. Now, unless you've been living under a rock during Oscar season, you'll probably be aware that most critics have said "Yes! It is! Why haven't you seen this film yet?!" Indeed, it is one of only eleven films to be given a Metascore of 100. But I'm going to take an unpopular stance. Unpopular because it goes against the grain of people who know this trade far better than I do. Unpopular because it contradicts the efforts of a project which I fully respect (trust me, cinema desperately needs more directors like Linklater, and more studios willing to take risks on projects like this). But mostly unpopular because, if you've read my recent Henry Poole is Here review, I'm about to be a hypocrite on the internet.

  You knew the rules when you started this! Now come out here and face us!

 

You see, I didn't really enjoy Boyhood because (deep breath) nothing much happens.

 

In terms of the plot, the film follows Mason (six years old at the movie's opening and eighteen at it's close - real-time for anyone who doesn't already know) as he grows up the child of divorced parents. It follows the struggles of his mother (Patricia Arquette) trying to support her children through the formative years of thier life, as well as entertaining a string of (almost comically) villainous husbands. Mason's father (Ethan Hawke) shows up intermittently throughout to play "cool dad who we hang out with at the weekends", gradually evolving to "mature family man but for a different family". Eventually, Mason grows up through high school and has to look towards college and the rest of his life. And...that's sort of it. The film shows that the formative years of boyhood (OH! That's why they called it that!) are extremely difficult sometimes. Your family generally loves you, but they've got their own pressures and problems. High school is scary. Not everyone knows what they want to do when they head off to college.

 

And I'm left thinking this: If I'm six, then I don't care. If I'm sixteen, then I don't believe this film actually represents me. If I'm twenty-six, then...well...I already know all that stuff that I just described. In a sense, and perhaps this is why the film didn't work for me, I think this film most applies to adults who have had to be on the outside of these experiences. As a visual medium, you are inherently left on the outside looking in, so maybe the film is for those people who have watched their children grow and learn and struggle and rejoice. Not for people like me who have just lived it.

 

On the positive side, the acting throughout is superb. It is unsurprising that of all the accolades that the film has received (and there are many - Wikipedia requires a completely seperate page to catalogue them), a considerable portion of them are awarded to the actors.

Twelve years? It's about. Damn. Time!

 

The acting spotlight is very much on Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke who manage the impossible by keeping their relationship and characterisation consistent over such a long project to the point that I'm surprised, looking at their unbelievable "family" chemistry on screen, that they never actually ended up together behind the scenes. However, the young (and then less young) Ellar Coltrane, who plays Mason, and Lorelei Linklater, daughter of the director, who plays Mason's sister, both hold up their ends admirably throughout the project. And while, yes, Mason's sullenness and his sister's brattiness get annoying at times, it never feels unreal or charicatured. And when the cast pulls together for the bigger emotional moments in the film (a particular example being when Hawke tells his son that he's sold his souped-up "midlife crisis" car, and Coltrane explains that he expected to get the car for his sixteenth birthday - the scene is played with such tension and emotion that we are just waiting for Hawke to turn a corner and yell "Kidding! Of course you're getting the car!" except that that's not how life works), they are very, very affecting.

 

That being said, the film still leaves me a little cold. While there are numerous individual moments that I could point out and say "that was well done" or "that was beautiful", the bits in between are still "that's kind of boring" and "does that really need to be in this film?" Yes, I know, that's exactly what life itself is like, and that's kind of the point of the film, but life is long, and this film is only a little under three hours, so with an average of fourteen minutes given to each year, there's just not enough time to engage. It's real but it doesn't make for a very interesting movie.

 

Unless, as I mentioned at the beginning of the review, this film isn't for me. If this film is holding up a mirror to the people around Mason as he grows up (fathers, mothers, older sisters etc.) rather than to people like me (boys growing through the formative years of their life in the last twenty or so years who started out as introverts but ended up just, unbelievably talented and attractive), then perhaps the film works on a level that I simply can't appreciate.

 

Yet.

 

Given some time, with a few more experiences under my belt - maybe a family started and a career underway, perhaps this is a film I'll come to love on a second-watching. But I think I'll give it twelve years.

 

That's a wrap.



New this week (sort of)... Jurassic World Audio Spoiler Review with David Robertson

Audio review with David Robertson of Jurassic World. Strictly for those who have already seen it as we are discussing the film in light of all those things that would spoil it for those who haven't caught it yet.

Apologies for the mucked up audio on David's end. Was my fault with the equipment setup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzGLBXxnyuI&feature=youtu.be

The video that David refers to that I said I would link is as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-w-58hQ9dLk

Rerun... Henry Poole is Here

Why, yes, it is an indie arthouse film! How on Earth did you guess?

There is a genre of films which I adore but that I have real trouble talking to people about because my description of the genre is a bit off-putting: I love films where nothing happens. Now by this, I don't mean that the films are boring or that there is nothing said (indeed, they make up some of the most powerful pieces of cinema in existence, in my opinion). Rather, what I am referring to are films that don't feel the need to have big, fantastical set-pieces, but are content to limit the action to real people going through real life emotions and scenarios and, mostly, just talking about them.

I know, I really sold it, right?

My awful advertising aside, there are some truly brilliant films that fit the "Nothing really happens" genre: Garden State is perhaps the most famous. The Last Kiss or 50/50 are less well known. And then you get films like Henry Poole is Here. This is the kind of film that lives on these pretentious online lists of "Spectacular Movies That You've Never Seen" and I'm here to tell you (hopefully without pretentiousness) that I have seen it, and you should too. But you're going to need to be patient because this movie is about God.

 No, no wait! Only sort of! It's a thought piece! A thought pieeeeece!

Luke Wilson plays Henry Poole, a man who has recently discovered that he has a terminal disease and could go from perfectly healthy to dead at any moment. In his understandable despair, he decides to live out his remaining days in the last place that he can remember being truly happy: his childhood home (however, he is unable to get the exact house and has to settle for one a few doors down - isn't that the most wonderful image of the futility of man's machinations?). Henry is content to take the house as quickly as possible, specifically asking the estate agent not to worry about haggling or fixing the water stain on the outside wall, instead choosing to stay alone, wallowing in depression (and vodka). That is until his religious neighbour Esperanza (Adriana Barazza) thinks she sees the face of Christ in the water stain and that it is a holy miracle. What follows for the first half of the film is a gentle comedy which shows Henry's growing frustration at the ever expanding cult of Christians arriving at his door to see the "miracle" while he engages in a one-man-and-his-hose battle against the stubborn stain that refuses to disappear.

No, Mr Wilson, the camera is over there. Oh, forget it.

What happens around the midpoint of the movie, though, is a complete tonal shift to a deep, thoughtful and really quite emotional second half. Henry begins to fall for the woman next door (Radha Mitchell) and when her daughter, Millie (the almost too adorable Morgan Lily), who hasn't spoken in over a year touches the wall and whispers "Mommy", Henry begins to doubt his own cynicism and is left with the decision: Which is worse? To die never having experienced hope? Or to put your faith in something and have it not work?

The story really rather speaks for itself - you've probably already decided for yourself whether or not this film is for you. Where the film passes from "meaningful to some" and into "no, seriously, watch this movie" is in two things: it is a brilliantly scored film, and it has some of the most beautiful cinematography that I have ever seen on screen. Not flashy, not elaborate, just beautifully staged.

Of the music, one can only say so much in a written review. It has a host of soft indie tracks that work perfectly with the understated and mellow story. Badly Drawn Boy's Promises is a sterling example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=742uUWqB9AY There are songs in this film that give me misty eyes just listening to them, so when you add them to an emotional plot, well, you can only imagine,

Similarly, the cinematography has to be experienced, rather than explained. The example that I tell people about, however, because I think it might be one of the loveliest shots of cinema in the last ten years, is a shot from the viewpoint of the "face" on the wall on the night that Henry almost lets himself believe. Wonderfully acted by Luke Wilson, you can see how desperately he wants to touch the wall and have it heal him and so he reaches out to camera and stops just short, then slowly comes back to himself as he realises the absurdity of what he's doing. I can't do it justice, but trust me it's lovely.

All that aside, I wouldn't criticise anyone for saying that Henry's moodiness drags on for just a little bit too long in the first half of the movie and as the need for plot progression ramps up, so do the miracles, becoming more and more difficult to explain, which detracts significantly from the careful ambiguity that the film tries to maintain. And by the end, the film's main theme of "religious or not, all you need is hope" get's pretty heavy-handed. Also, it is a completely fair question (of this film and the Christian religion in general) to ask: if this is God, then how come he's looking after a few white people again, rather than, you know, those millions of needy Africans, for example? (I direct you Tim Minchin saying this better than I ever could. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeWPScnolo)

But for all that is good or bad about the film, what I think is most interesting about it is that, in my opinion, you need to be somewhat on the fence to really enjoy the film. Staunch believers will be too mystified by the miracles (which many, I suppose, wouldn't even question) to notice the film's fairly explicit message of "belief is what you make it", and hard atheists will be too busy googling the possible medical and psychological explanations for the "miracles" to accept the film's even more explicit message of "not everything needs an explanation". It is, perhaps, one of the few niche films for agnostics (though if you are a Christian or an Atheist and feel I've been unfair there, I'd relish the chance to hear your opinion of the film). I think this point is illustrated very clearly in the critical reception of the movie which ranges from "cute and quirky" to "downright abhorrent" which seems to be based mostly on the individual critic's perception of how religious the film is intending to be.

And finally, because I know you're wondering: yes, you see the wall stain from many different angles and, no, I won't tell you if I think I can see the face. You'll have to decide for yourself whether the power of Christ resides within this powerful, interesting and underrated movie. I hope to God you get it right.

Egotistical to suggest that a deity reads your blog? Naaah...

That's a wrap.

New this week... Jurassic World

Disney's tactics for actors who run from the Marvel Universe are ruthless

Twenty-two years ago, Bill Clinton was president, Beanie Babies had just hit the market, and everyone was talking about one movie: Cool Runnings. And Schindler's List. And Groundhog Day. And Nightmare Before Christmas. Man, 1993 was a good year for movies... Anyway, amongst all of these classics, there was one film that showed the world something it had never seen before. This film took practical effects to new heights, it changed the very landscape of what we thought possible on film. It brought monsters to life before our very eyes.

Sometimes science truly can go too far

And also, Jurassic Park came out.

Jurassic Park was, and remains, one of the most ambitious projects in the history of cinema. After creating an almost perfectly realistic horror monster out of Bruce the Shark in Jaws, Stephen Spielberg wanted to up the ante again and create realistic dinosaurs using (mostly) practical effects. Not only did he manage, but those effects still hold up by today's standards. Throw in the fact that it has a legitimate environmental message and is terrifying to boot? There's no prizes for figuring out why this film is so successful.

Fast forward to 2015 (walking swiftly with lowered heads past the two failed sequels) and we find ourselves back on Isla Nublar again to see if we can invoke that same awe and spectacle as the original. The park is now up and running, but audiences are no longer impressed with your bog-standard T-Rex anymore, so InGen has created a bigger, badder dinosaur which they hope will thrill their paying customers (wow...I wonder what that might be a reference to?). Of course, the dino goes rogue and slaughters half the park (so, maybe not, then?).

Jurassic World is, unfortunately, one of those films that you can't really review without spoiling things, so as far as answering, "Is the movie good?", I'll say this: It's mostly fantastic. You should absolutely check it out. If you have any love for the Jurassic Park franchise, or action adventure movies in general, then you can add this movie to your collection, I'm certain. Perhaps, though, the more interesting question that I could explore in this spoiler-free review (spoiler-full review to follow) is "Do I need to have watched the first three movies to enjoy this one?" The answer to that is "No, not if you just want to enjoy this film. However, you absolutely must see them if you are going to catch the many, many, subtle nods and winks that this film pays to the franchise as a whole."

Dinosaurs aren't great at subtle winks...

As you may have picked up on in my brief plot summary, Jurassic World is extremely meta. I'm not kidding, if this film were any more self-aware, the new hybrid-dino would be called the Spielbergadon. Jurassic World, while desperately trying to craft itself as different enough to be it's own animal, is more desperately digging through the remains of the previous Jurassic Park films for the things that audiences loved and hated (including a scene where they literally dig through the remains of the previous Jurassic Park). This attempt at recreating the good and parodying the bad of the franchise makes the film into something of a paradox: what it gets right it gets really right, because it pays such due reverence to what made its predecessor great. On the other hand, what it gets wrong, it gets really wrong, because it is so hasty to make the "Hey, look! The scientists are cutting corners and ham-fistedly upping the stakes! Just like we did in those two sequels, am I right?", that it fails to notice that there are scenes in this film which are just as ham-fisted and ridiculous as anything out of movies two and three.

Examples: When practical dinosaurs are used, rather than CGI, they look fantastic. There is one scene in a particular in which Chris Pratt holds a dinosaur's head in his hands and the weight of the thing is obvious on screen. Beautifully done but impossible to do realistically with CG. Also, they really nail the "hidden things lurking in the bushes" thing that was so, so great in Jurassic Park.

£10 says your brain read that in his exact voice,

On the other end of things though, when the CGI is abused, it looks seriously stupid. A particularly bad offender is the scene (which is in the trailer) of the Pteradons escaping their pen. The CGI helicopter smashes through a CGI glass ceiling past a swarm of CGI pteradons and crash lands with a CGI explosion in front of a CGI dinosaur. And it all looks so fake. Now, I know what you are saying, "Jamie, this film is about dinosaurs, of course it looks fake". But I direct you back to the above GIF. That raptor looks real. It looks scary. Granted it doesn't look particularly clever, but my point stands.

In all, Jurassic World is an incredible romp for those of you who just want a popcorn muncher movie. It is a wonderfully funny and self-aware nostalgia trip to any fans of the franchise. But to those of you who were genuinely looking for this film to rise above Lost World and Jurassic Park 3, and reclaim the lofty heights of the original? This film will be an emotional rollercoaster. Jurassic World displays the best of what is good about this franchise, some scenes are on par with the first film. But it also displays the worst of what is bad about the franchise, with some scenes so ridiculous I could only laugh at the absurdity of it. And it oscillates so wildly between these two extremes that your hand will be jumping back and forth between covering your mouth and slapping your forehead.

It balances out to a movie that I would absolutely call good, but I'll tell you the problem with the movie that you're screening here: uh...it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read the screenplays that others had done and you took the next step! You didn't earn the franchise for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility...uh, for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew it, you had. So you, uh... patented it and packaged it and slapped on a plastic lunchbox and now, well, you're selling it, you want to sell it. And with a sequel already in the works, you can't help but think that Hollywood was so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they never even stopped to consider whether or not they should. Food for...uh...thought.

That's a wrap.

Was that in cinemas?... Deep End

A challenge for you: Go and find someone who was watching movies in the 1970s.

They shouldn't be too hard to spot.

Now ask that someone whether they've ever seen Deep End. The reaction you will get will either be A. "No, I've never heard of it." or B. "Oh my God, how on earth did I forget about Deep End and where on earth did you come across it!?" You see something quite interesting happened in 1970 when this film was released. Critically acclaimed upon its opening, the film garnered a significant following, tiered alongside the works of Roman Polanski. Even David Lynch, dead set against the use of colour film, went so far, in one particularly wordy interview, as to name Deep End directly as the only film that he considered acceptable in colour. It was, in every way, set to be a classic cult film of the 70s.

And then it disappeared.

Big Twist: Kevin Spacey was David Lynch the entire time.

The film completely dropped off the map, for seemingly no reason whatsoever and has only recently resurfaced with a remastered edition released in 2011 which I present for your consideration now.

That "coming of age" movies have universal appeal is so obvious that it barely needs saying. There is not a single person on this planet who didn't go through the awkward, confusing, sometimes wonderful, but mostly just really, really, awful years of puberty and sexual awakening. It is this universal experience that draws us towards films concerning this period of development. We might turn to Peter Pan or Big in our pre-teens to contextualise frightening thoughts of adulthood that we don't understand. Then American Pie and its peers drop by to help us laugh away the fear of sex. Finally, once everything settles down and we are able to start thinking about what's actually important, movies like Garden State or Dead Poets Society are there to guide us along.

You may notice that, with varying degrees of seriousness, the vast majority of these films are attempting to show the positive side of this period of our lives. These films want to show as that, even though you might feel strange and awkward, it will pass! There are bigger things on the horizon. Everything you are feeling is normal and safe. There is (and this is one of these facts that you never quite realise until confronted with it) a significant lack of films that portray just how dangerous a person can become if they pick up the wrong ideas during this period in their life.

Enter Deep End. The plot concerns a 15 year old boy, Michael, fresh out of school and starting his very first job as a swimming bath attendant in the men's changing room. Here he meets Susan, attendant in the women's, played by the gorgeous Jane Asher, who informs Michael that there is a fair amount of money to be made in tips if they occasionally swap roles: her servicing the horny men and him the randy women. While Michael isn't entirely comfortable with this, the whole thing is played as relatively harmless and, as Susan delicately puts it, they are simply "playing along with the gag".

Pictured: Harmless

However, as time goes on, Michael becomes more and more infatuated with coy and flirty Susan and as the concept of sex and relationships begins to surround him more and more, Michael's obsession starts to become dangerous. And I'll spoil no more.

The major strength of the film is its subtlety. I'm not sure I could tell you exactly the point at which Michael's obsession tips over from a naive crush to a dangerous infatuation, and Asher's performance is wonderfully low-key, simultaneously switching from mother to teacher to lover figures with a word or a sideways glance, and the dialogue itself is completely natural, never feeling scripted (which makes a lot of sense, given that the actors were encouraged to adlib throughout filming). Furthermore, the film avoids identifying any kind of moral compass point. It's hard not to feel sorry for Michael, even with his twisted view of sex, because his first encounters with the concept are so completely warped that one cannot imagine him ever growing a healthy attitude towards the subject. Similarly, Susan's promiscuity and sexiness cannot be judged entirely, as the impression is strongly given that for all her world-knowledge, she too is a little naive. The film frightens an audience, not because we don't understand what we are seeing, but because we understand it all too well. Every person, man or woman, will watch the mistakes being made in this film and will say of one of them "Perhaps I didn't go that far, but I have definitely been there."

Now, the film is in no way flawless. It appears to be set in a universe where every single person on the planet is at the peak of their sexual charge at all times, which does become a little ridiculous (though I'll let you ask your own mothers and grandmothers how true to life this was in the 70s). Also, John Moulder-Brown, who plays Michael, while nailing the naively innocent aspects of his role, is less successful when he needs to act childish, erring more on the side of an 8-year-old's tantrum than a 15-year-old's sullenness. Finally, the second act of the film is very slow. Granted, it's clearly aiming for a slow build to an incredible third act, but it overdoes it.

But the third act is worth the wait. Early screentesters apparently missed the point of Deep End's conclusion, asking the director in a Q&A why he ruined a perfectly good film in the last five minutes. The director's response? "I made the film for those last five minutes."

If you have any interest in an old film which is every bit as relevant today as it was when it was popular and that deals intelligently with sex and growth in puberty in a thoughtful, if frightening, way, then this is one for you. Not to mention, it's a great unknown classic to pull out when you want to sound like you know way more about movies than you actually do.

Not that I'm doing that. I know that I'm talking about...

Deep End comes from a different era of cinema. Today, we are flooded with movies that mean nothing and have nothing to say. That are, for lack of a better pun, shallow. Deep End is not.

That's a wrap.

New This Week... San Andreas

What do you mean "This isn't actually the Grand Theft Auto movie"?

We're going to start by playing a game. I'm going to give you a brief plot set up, and you're going to tell me what movie I'm describing. Ready? Here we go: There is a brave, down to earth, family man with a certain expertise in geological calamities. He's having marital problems and would like nothing more than to patch things up with his estranged wife and child (who are about to move in with mum's new boyfriend). However, in the midst of all this, a natural disaster occurs unlike anything the world has ever seen! There is a scientific group who knew it was coming and tried to warn us, but nobody listened until it was just too late. Our hero, learning that his family is trapped somewhere in this chaos, realises that with his knowledge, he is the only person who can save them and put his family back together.

Have you got it? Well if you said, "That's basically Twister, Deep Impact, Dante's Peak, Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow or The Core", well you would be exactly right! However, if I added that the movie I'm talking about is basically a series of set pieces edited and spliced together from that list of better films, then you would say "Well that's easy, you're talking about 2012".

Then I would get frustrated, decide that this was a stupid game and tell you just to look at the bloody title of the post.

Disaster movies pose a problem for reviewers because they are, in essence, all identical. The most successful and well-known disaster flicks are the ones that took huge leaps away from the format (Armageddon: Why don't we have the experts actually be complete numbskulls?; The Day After Tomorrow: Why don't we have the stranded family actually know what they are doing?). So at the end of the day, the reason that San Andreas and most other disaster flicks are barely worth a sideways glance is because they fit a paint-by-numbers formula which you can predict a mile away. Extra points of you can tell me the punchline to the following set-ups:

• The scientist says that "The biggest earthquake ever measured was a 9.5. That would be hard to top."
• The asshole step-dad says that he "never had kids because his buildings are his babies. Especially this one in the heart of San Francisco"
• The junior scientist says to the senior scientist: "We're reading a bunch of small quakes near the Hoover Dam. We should get the equipment up there, because, as they are only small, they won't cause too much damage."

So...job done right? Review can end here, you've seen this film a thousand times before and done better at that, so what else needs to be said?

Clocking off early from a job no-one pays you for is still a victory...right?

Well, the fact that San Andreas is derivative is enough to make it missable. What bears discussion, however, is that the movie descends from missable, into bad, into truly awful in a way that would be impressive, if it were not so painful - even for a disaster flick.

The stereotypical characters that appear in almost every disaster film are made laughably ridiculous in this movie. Dwayne Johnson as Ray, the overly-capable dad is, here, made so multi-talented that it is enough to believe that he could solve all the problems of this major natural disaster with one hand, while curing cancer with the other and doing a sudoku with his toes. He has complete mastery of every vehicle known to man (an individual set piece is given to him each behind the wheel of a car, helicopter, aeroplane and a speedboat), he has a strategic knowledge of the city of San Francisco even when flooded, despite being from L.A., and he has an apparent psychic connection with his family which allows him to know exactly where they are and how to get to them. Seriously, add a cape to this guy and you're looking at a full blown superher...WAITAMINUTE!

This is just another goddamn origin story, isn't it!?

The asshole step-dad/new boyfriend who is predictably killed off halfway through the movie is a full-on psychopath in this film. Played by Ioan Gruffudd, who is clearly there simply for the paycheck, rich architect Daniel Riddick not only does the standard cowardly boyfriend act of running away from everything from an earthquake to a heart murmur, but he also leaves his daughter-in-law for dead, trapped in a car (have fun explaining that one to mum), and actively pushes a complete stranger into the path of an oncoming tidal wave for literally no reason whatsoever. I suppose that it's supposed to build up to some kind of a catharsis when he is eventually killed off, but by the time he is dispatched, we haven't seen him for over an hour and is death is so quick and unceremonious that you can't help but think that the scriptwriters had simply forgotten he existed until the final few pages.

Finally, the "I saw this all coming" scientist, played by Paul Giamatti is A. not connected to the main plot of the film in any way except as "the guy who saw it all coming" and B. literally does not have a single line of dialogue which is not scientific exposition (with one exception: in the final few scenes of the film, he does take a moment to congratulate himself on a job well done for knowing what was going to happen, while surrounded by TV screens filled with the tens of millions of people who died because it happened anyway). I understand that you need to unload and explain phrases like "Seismology", "aftershock" and "tectonic plates" at some point, but there are more subtle ways of doing that than having a CalTech geology student put their hand up in a lecture to all but ask what an earthquake is.

These are particularly horrid offenders in the film, but are to say nothing of the delightfully British love interest who has very little to do except be delightfully British, his little brother who is there to be vulnerable (also, for any Game of Thrones fans wondering what Rickon Stark has been doing in his absence from the show - he's been hitting puberty with a crowbar and taking precisely zero acting lessons), and Carla Gugino as "Mom", who is there to wonder how on earth she could ever think to leave Dwayne Johnson.

On the subject of Dwayne Johnson, let's address the elephantine Samoan in the room. As the first ex-wrestler to ever make a real impact in the world of Hollywood, Dwayne Johnson has been trying throughout his career to be taken seriously as an actor. Unfortunately, his imposing physique and his, dare I say, cabaret background, have left him filling less respectable roles than he might of hoped.

In fairness, this came out alongside The Hurt Locker, so it only missed the Oscar by that much.

I, however, have always been a staunch defender of Johnson's acting chops and I think with more recent examples, such as Pain and Gain, he has shown that he really has come into his own as an actor. And while San Andreas will not be going on his showreel any time soon, his terrible outing in this film is less to do with him as an actor, and considerably more due to one of the worst scripts I have heard in a long, long time.

The dialogue doesn't bear much analysis. This film clearly cares much less about the writing than the action set pieces, so it is almost unsurprising to get vomit worthy lines such as: "We checked the data. Then we double checked it. Then we reset the equipment and triple checked it.", and "Things are getting really bad out there, aren't they./ Yes. Let's go." The dialogue is actually so bad in parts that as I sat in theatre, I could actually feel my command of the English language going not good to where I can't even do words now.

"But, Jamie!", I hear you cry, "If I want dialogue, I'll watch The Godfather, if I want original characters, I'll watch Fight Club. All I want is to see some landmarks get destroyed by a natural disaster!" Well, tragically, the film falls short on this as well. The one thing that a disaster flick must do well is the action set pieces, and San Andreas has none which are particularly noteworthy. Granted, an earthquake is not the most interesting of spectator events anyway - you can only watch so many skyscrapers melt into the Earth before it gets boring - but even then, I had a hard time connecting emotionally to anything that was going on in this film. One of the things that is generally quite effective in disaster films is that there is so much carnage going on that it is nothing short of a miracle that our heroes are surviving it all. What you then get, in the later scene when a side-character does die, is a sense that everyone is susceptible to the machinations of fate. If Chad Floodknower had been the last one to climb out of the car then he, not Ernest Bitpart, would have been the one to get swept away by the tidal wave.

We'll never forget you, Ernest Bitpart...

But this is completely nullified in San Andreas, as our heroes face numerous catastrophes that are blatantly unsurvivable. I'm not talking outrunning a tsunami here, I'm talking about driving up the side of tsunami in a speedboat. Once every lead character has arisen unscathed from a scene in which the audience thinks "Well, there's no way you wouldn't be dead now", there is simply no weight to the scenes where the audience is supposed to think "Ooh, I don't know if they can survive this one!" Not to mention, that it only makes more pointless the aforementioned millions of dead who were killed off in exactly the same situations that the heroes survived, simply because they weren't blessed with first names.

On top of this, the CGI is fairly lackluster. I'll admit that seeing the film in 3D didn't help, as every actor-on-greenscreen becomes actor-six-feet-in-front-of-greenscreen, but there's just no rush, no threat, no excitement.

I was, until the final moment of the film, bored. And that is really what kills this film: it is predictable, it is silly, it is boring. And for these sins alone, you should skip it. However, I wasn't bored when I left the theatre - I was angry. And I wanted to finish the review by explaining to you why. The film ends with our heroes looking out over the smoking wreckage of the Golden Gate Bridge, safe at last. Gugino turns to Johnson and asks "What now?" and Johnson responds "We rebuild". This uninspired and brainless line is representative of the film at large, but then we cut to something hanging from the wreckage of the bridge. It slowly unfurls itself and begins blowing in the breeze. It's an American flag. Fade to black. Credits. That's right people, for the last dying gasp of desperation of a rubbish film, they pull the patriotism card. Because, not satisfied with standing defiant in the face of foreign dictators and intangible concepts, America is now declaring war on Mother Nature herself. And I got angry. I got angry because it is wrong of the studios to think that they can bombard us with plagiarised stories, bad CG effects, unsympathetic characters, awful dialogue and uninteresting action scenes, and then believe that we'll be so mystified by the pride of 'Murica that we'll forget that what we've just watched was crap. Not all of us live there. Not all of us care. Most importantly, not all of us are as stupid as you seem to think we are.

"Of course you aren't! Hey, thanks for your money, by the way."

So if you do go and see this movie, and you do inevitably hate it, I want you to remember: It's not your fault. It's not my fault. It's not even Dwayne Johnson's fault. It's the San Andreas fault.

That's a wrap.

Was that in cinemas? Martyrs Audio Review with Dr David Smith

Today to change the pace a little, we're doing a podcast version of Rosebud is a Sled! Horror movie aficionado and psychology professor Dr David S Smith joins me in a discussion of Martyrs, directed by Pascal Laugier as we examine the true meaning of torture porn, and whether or not horror can go too far. Find the podcast on youtube at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ft6F618DDE
Enjoy!

I wish that I was watching... South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut

I should begin by explaining why the "I wish I was watching..." topic exists. As I've mentioned before, I don't really believe that the worth of a movie can be quantified simply, which is why I try to steer clear of more typical "criticism" (it's got nothing to do with the fact that I have no idea how to intelligently criticise a movie, I swear). That being said, I have for a long time held that if, while watching a movie, you ever think to yourself "Man, I wish that I was watching [insert better film]", then the movie has failed on a fundamental level. For example, while watching The Expendables, I thought to myself "Hmm...I've not seen Die Hard in a while, I really want to watch that film again." By my own law, The Expendables (a watchable, if not incredible movie) fails because I could have just watched Die Hard to begin with. I call it the Tibbetts Test. Patent Pending.

It followed then that if I was writing a review of a movie that fails the Tibbetts Test (all rights reserved, copyright 2015), that I should shed a little light on the movie that my brain favoured. Thus the birth of "I wish that I was watching..."

However, anyone who has ever been a party with that guy who is just desperate to tell you about a movie he likes, will know that it is very rarely of interest to hear someone waffle on about "This movie that, oh my god, you totally have to see!"

Weirdly, I've never met that guy at a party...

So that being said, these will be shorter bites of movie appreciation. Lighter on the in-depth analysis, but hopefully not too heavy on the lavishing praise. And our first client is South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut, which I couldn't help but wish I was watching instead of Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny.

Now, you might be thinking that the South Park movie is a different animal entirely from the Tenacious D movie, but they actually have a lot in common.

For example.

Both movies rely on gross out and shock humour throughout. Both movies think that you can hit comedy perfection by finding the exact right number of F-bombs. Both are musicals aimed directly at the kind of audience who would reject even the notion of singing in films (God, what I would give to be able to see the reaction of the first Bro to witness Stan Marsh singing his little heart out). Both films even have the main characters encountering Satan. So why did watching Tenacious D have me pining for South Park? What does the latter do that the former can't?

Firstly, the comedy in the South Park movie is a lot more subtle (wait, wait, hear me out). No, South Park is not exactly known for it's subtlety and the movie is no different - one can hardly commend the song "Shut Your Fucking Face Uncle Fucker" for its use of subtext (oh and, yes, parents, it's another sweary one - sorry). But despite that, there is a lot of humour that does live below the surface of the film. Even on this umpteenth viewing, I was spotting background gags that I'd never seen before - the operating room schedule in the hospital in which Kenny dies lists item one as "Disembowel Kenny" and item five as "Kill Bond", with doctor "No" assigned to it.

Oh...and spoiler? Sort of?

On top of this, while The Pick of Destiny endeavors to say...very little, really, Matt Stone and Trey Parker are sticking to their tendencies of filling their projects to the brim with attacks on everyone in sight - fans and detractors alike. It actually takes the brain a while to settle into the numerous layers of meta criticism being thrown about. The movie makes clear that anyone who so much as giggles at the potty humour or bad language is merely occupying the mind of immature pre-teens. But to not have a sense of humour about the whole thing is to occupy the reactionary minds of the local PTA grown-ups. Defend a cause? You're crazy! Shirk responsibility? You're a coward! And just as you, the viewer, are about to jump to your feet and scream exasperatedly at your TV "Do you want me to support your show or not!?", the movie says "Hehehe...Satan is gay with Saddam Hussein...LOL!". So you sit back down, suspicious, confused, and pretty confident that, somehow, the joke is on you. But who cares? Because the joke is really goddamn funny!

...What do you mean you don't do that? 

Moving on...the music is also phenomenal. Like the Tenacious D movie, one could easily listen to, and enjoy, the South Park soundtrack in isolation, but unlike the other movie, South Park's songs are all there to back up the story. There is no greater proof of this than with the Les Miserables pastiche towards the movie's climax which mashes up most of the score into one medley, bringing the main opposing forces in the story together into one song which, for an immature animated comedy about four boys learning to curse, is simply astonishing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LonKGuS9uuQ

Finally, when the South Park movie tries for pathos, it nails it. Satan suffering in an abusive relationship (and his touching song about how he wishes he didn't have to be evil all the time); Stan's lovesickness; Kenny giving up his life to save his friends. It all has a genuine effect which one simply doesn't expect from a South Park franchise - it is a true curveball.

Before the rise of Superhero movies, this and Elephant Man were the most shocking unmaskings in cinema history.

In the end, I don't know that I've managed to avoid giving South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut a severe tongue-bathing. However, I've hopefully evidenced that there is a genre of what I've now decided to call Brosicals (think Sweeney Todd, Avenue Q, and Matt Stone and Trey Parker's own The Book of Mormon) and in this genre, there are better and worse examples. South Park is one of the better examples - and we must truly respect its authoritah!

That's a wrap.