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2009 Films LXIV-LXIX
LXIV: Moon (Duncan Jones, 2009)
A film of distinctly two halves - initially I described it as the Charlie Kaufman version of Solaris, but there are elements of Dark Star, 2001 and Silent Running in there too. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the one employee on the Moon, supervising the mining of Helium-3 for Earth energy. His only companion is GERTY (Kevin Spacey), a computer which supervises his movements. As he comes to the end of his three year poster, he is growing tired, and can't always believe the evidence of his senses. On a trip out to check one of the mining vehicles, he has an unfortunate accident...
And at that point the smart audience member waits for the character to play catch up with them; a certain degree of suspension of disbelief is required, of the mechanism underlying what is going on, but hopefully by then the film has won your affection sufficiently to grant it. Up to this point, the futrue has looked lived in - the four mining vehicles are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, although Luke has been relabelled Judas, GERTY is covered in post-it notes and holds a coffe mug (although this buggers the contunuity), and you get the sense that a man has lived here alone for three years.
It is perhaps cheeky for a film with some dodgy model shots to have a character build a model of his own town, but perhaps that adds to a certain degree of irreality that the film needs. There's also a sense of waiting for the sound track to start including "Ground Control to Major Tom>"
Even allowing for the preposterous last ten minutes, this is easily the best new sf film I've seen this year - and probably for a couple of years. I think it deserves to be a classic of realist sf cinema, even sf cinema.
LXV: Paycheck (John Woo, 2003)
Rewatch for article. Ben Affleck is hardly stretched save for the stunts in wrong man chase thriller where the contents of an envelope helps him out of scrapes. Paul Giamatti steals his two or three scenes, and I'd rather be reqtching Sideways.
LXVI: Impostor (Gary Fleder, 2002)
Rewatch for article. Gary Sinise is the star is wrong man chase thriller where the entire security force of a country has to fail to catch him, repeatedly. Based on a classic PKD story, and reasonably faithful, with added twist.
LXVII: The Time Traveler's Wife (Robert Schwentke, 2009)
Listen: Henry has come unstuck in time.
His mother dies in a car crash. So it goes. But Henry (Eric Bana) time travels out of there, and is reassured by his older self that he will be fine. Pweete woop. Years later he meets Clare (Rachl McAdams), who knows him, and takes him out for a meal and lets him know she knows his secret. The two marry and she gets pregnant, but the foetus has become unstuck in time and dies. So it goes. Can their marriage survive the stresses?
Another film of a novel I haven't read, but it strikes me that for a film with wife in the title the husband gets more of the screentime, and more of the emotional trip. There's also the sense that he's let off the hook - she at one point claims that he seduced her, but of course she also seduced him, and it is the first time for both of them. There is an awkwardness about the age gap, but this is largely smoothed over.
And yet, and yet - the film can't quite work out how to structure itself. It does begin with his first jump and ends with his last jump, or perhaps his latest jump. Sometimes it is following his chronology, and sometimes it is following hers - she marries an older version of her husband, she has sex with a younger version, he sees the child version of her - so that it risks becoming a little bag in the narrative structure. There is a repeated insistence on how things cannot be changed (we are told he's witnessed his mother's death many times, but I think we see it just the once), and yet there are parts of his life he doesn't see until other things have happened, as if his traveling (ahem) is dictated by the requirements of suspense.
The mechanics of the time travel are somewhat underplayed, and perhaps wisely, but there is suggestion that it is genetic (so why did they think having a kid would be a good thing?) and that it is triggered by electromagnetic fields. But the character of Dr Kendrick (Stephen Tobolowsky) is a little under used.
The ending ... well, make sure you have your kleenex with you, but it is incredibly manipulative, and distinctly has its cake and eat it. Consolation, naturally, wins out.
LXVIII: Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935)
The first of the Grant/Hepburn pairings, although here Hepburn has top billing. Sylvia Scarlett (Hepburn), disguised as a bar, travels from France to England with her embezzling father Henry (Edmund Gwenn) and meets Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) on the boat. Monkley sabotages Henry's smuggling of lace, then the three of them enter into a series of con tricks, and then taking a performing troupe on the road. Much gender confusion follows.
It's no Bringing up Baby, but this has its moments of gender play - whether it's a woman or a man finding Sylvester attractive. It doesn't move to the expected conclusion, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, Grant's cockney accent... oh dear... (
LXIX: The 24th Day (Tony Piccirillo, 2004)
Big screen version of what is obviously a two-handed play. Tom (Scott Speedman) brings Dan (Jmes Marsden) back to his flat but resists the pass Dan makes. Dan realises he has been there before - and then is knocked out as Tom takes him hostage: Tom had had a one night with Dan some five years earlier, and blames him for the HIV status of his wife. If Dan is positive, then Tom will kill him.
The sort of tense, debating, no moral high ground, play that David Mamet would write, with the occasional shots outside the flat being both a distraction from the main action and an insult to the audience's intelligence. Personally I think the claustrophobia would have been better. In the end, though, casual sex, indeed any sex, is held to be dangerous, and Tom seems a tad naive as to think that Dan is the only possible source for his HIV. I even wondered whether the roles might not be reversed - that Tom could have given it to Dan. Still, brave casting.
Totals: 69 - [Cinema: 19; DVD: 47; Television: 3]
A film of distinctly two halves - initially I described it as the Charlie Kaufman version of Solaris, but there are elements of Dark Star, 2001 and Silent Running in there too. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is the one employee on the Moon, supervising the mining of Helium-3 for Earth energy. His only companion is GERTY (Kevin Spacey), a computer which supervises his movements. As he comes to the end of his three year poster, he is growing tired, and can't always believe the evidence of his senses. On a trip out to check one of the mining vehicles, he has an unfortunate accident...
And at that point the smart audience member waits for the character to play catch up with them; a certain degree of suspension of disbelief is required, of the mechanism underlying what is going on, but hopefully by then the film has won your affection sufficiently to grant it. Up to this point, the futrue has looked lived in - the four mining vehicles are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, although Luke has been relabelled Judas, GERTY is covered in post-it notes and holds a coffe mug (although this buggers the contunuity), and you get the sense that a man has lived here alone for three years.
It is perhaps cheeky for a film with some dodgy model shots to have a character build a model of his own town, but perhaps that adds to a certain degree of irreality that the film needs. There's also a sense of waiting for the sound track to start including "Ground Control to Major Tom>"
Even allowing for the preposterous last ten minutes, this is easily the best new sf film I've seen this year - and probably for a couple of years. I think it deserves to be a classic of realist sf cinema, even sf cinema.
LXV: Paycheck (John Woo, 2003)
Rewatch for article. Ben Affleck is hardly stretched save for the stunts in wrong man chase thriller where the contents of an envelope helps him out of scrapes. Paul Giamatti steals his two or three scenes, and I'd rather be reqtching Sideways.
LXVI: Impostor (Gary Fleder, 2002)
Rewatch for article. Gary Sinise is the star is wrong man chase thriller where the entire security force of a country has to fail to catch him, repeatedly. Based on a classic PKD story, and reasonably faithful, with added twist.
LXVII: The Time Traveler's Wife (Robert Schwentke, 2009)
Listen: Henry has come unstuck in time.
His mother dies in a car crash. So it goes. But Henry (Eric Bana) time travels out of there, and is reassured by his older self that he will be fine. Pweete woop. Years later he meets Clare (Rachl McAdams), who knows him, and takes him out for a meal and lets him know she knows his secret. The two marry and she gets pregnant, but the foetus has become unstuck in time and dies. So it goes. Can their marriage survive the stresses?
Another film of a novel I haven't read, but it strikes me that for a film with wife in the title the husband gets more of the screentime, and more of the emotional trip. There's also the sense that he's let off the hook - she at one point claims that he seduced her, but of course she also seduced him, and it is the first time for both of them. There is an awkwardness about the age gap, but this is largely smoothed over.
And yet, and yet - the film can't quite work out how to structure itself. It does begin with his first jump and ends with his last jump, or perhaps his latest jump. Sometimes it is following his chronology, and sometimes it is following hers - she marries an older version of her husband, she has sex with a younger version, he sees the child version of her - so that it risks becoming a little bag in the narrative structure. There is a repeated insistence on how things cannot be changed (we are told he's witnessed his mother's death many times, but I think we see it just the once), and yet there are parts of his life he doesn't see until other things have happened, as if his traveling (ahem) is dictated by the requirements of suspense.
The mechanics of the time travel are somewhat underplayed, and perhaps wisely, but there is suggestion that it is genetic (so why did they think having a kid would be a good thing?) and that it is triggered by electromagnetic fields. But the character of Dr Kendrick (Stephen Tobolowsky) is a little under used.
The ending ... well, make sure you have your kleenex with you, but it is incredibly manipulative, and distinctly has its cake and eat it. Consolation, naturally, wins out.
LXVIII: Sylvia Scarlett (George Cukor, 1935)
The first of the Grant/Hepburn pairings, although here Hepburn has top billing. Sylvia Scarlett (Hepburn), disguised as a bar, travels from France to England with her embezzling father Henry (Edmund Gwenn) and meets Jimmy Monkley (Cary Grant) on the boat. Monkley sabotages Henry's smuggling of lace, then the three of them enter into a series of con tricks, and then taking a performing troupe on the road. Much gender confusion follows.
It's no Bringing up Baby, but this has its moments of gender play - whether it's a woman or a man finding Sylvester attractive. It doesn't move to the expected conclusion, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, Grant's cockney accent... oh dear... (
LXIX: The 24th Day (Tony Piccirillo, 2004)
Big screen version of what is obviously a two-handed play. Tom (Scott Speedman) brings Dan (Jmes Marsden) back to his flat but resists the pass Dan makes. Dan realises he has been there before - and then is knocked out as Tom takes him hostage: Tom had had a one night with Dan some five years earlier, and blames him for the HIV status of his wife. If Dan is positive, then Tom will kill him.
The sort of tense, debating, no moral high ground, play that David Mamet would write, with the occasional shots outside the flat being both a distraction from the main action and an insult to the audience's intelligence. Personally I think the claustrophobia would have been better. In the end, though, casual sex, indeed any sex, is held to be dangerous, and Tom seems a tad naive as to think that Dan is the only possible source for his HIV. I even wondered whether the roles might not be reversed - that Tom could have given it to Dan. Still, brave casting.
Totals: 69 - [Cinema: 19; DVD: 47; Television: 3]