TOP TEN OF 2011 - IMHO!

I don't usually rank films.  People ask me my favourite film ever, it changes.  Top five?  Okay, but I can't tell you the order.  Normally, I know which film I like most in a year ... But can rarely think of a top ten.  Last year, for some reason, I could.  So I did.  Here they are: The Ten Best Films of 2011 ... Official! 

10: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

 

It annoyed me when they changed the name a couple of months before release – from Rise of the Apes.  The added ‘Planet of the’ just seemed to make it all so unsubtle for me.  The film itself, thankfully, worked a treat.  It begins as a modern-day reworking of the Frankenstein story then develops into something far more spectacular.  The motion-capture work with the rightly-celebrated Andy Serkis is remarkable – especially facially – but you never forget you’re watching a CGI monkey.  Some of those facial expressions are heart-breaking … But you never think of him as a real ape.

9: THE RUM DIARY

Can’t explain why I liked this so much, because it is a minor work for all concerned.   People sing the praises of Thompson, yet all the great lines in this film (of which there are many) are Bruce Robinson’s, who Johnny Depp successfully dragged out of retirement to write and direct this.  The end result works well as a companion piece to both his Withnail and I and Depp/Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I can think of no higher complement than that.

8: SOURCE CODE

This is a real Rubik’s Cube of a fillum.  It’s a mystery you enjoy solving.  It takes the relatively unpromising premise of ‘let’s run the same eight minutes over and over again’ and manages to turn it into a compelling character-driven action-piece, one part Groundhog Day to two-parts Twilight Zone.  After (the superior) Moon, this will be Duncan Jones’ calling card for the States.  Expect exceptional things from him in years to come!  There's loads more info, plus an explanatory infographic for those who still don't get it, with my review here.

7: ATTACK THE BLOCK

This is a bravura opening volley from Joe Cornish’s feature-film career.  The film is unfairly compared to Shaun of the Dead because of the horror/comedy mix and the presence of Nick Frost.  The only similarity is that they both understand and have great fondness for their source material – in this case early John Carpenter movies – but have not allowed that to stand in the way of their own creativity.  I doubt if this will go down as well in the US as Shaun did, because they won’t understand much of the dialogue (if I’m honest, I didn’t understand all of it) and therefore won’t be Cornish’s hot ticket.  But he has already got a Tintin script for Spielberg under his belt, so he’ll do alright!

6: CAPTAIN AMERICA: The First Avenger

This film is a good-natured, beautifully-designed romp with an excellent central performance from Chris Evans, who impressed me for the first time in his career.  Yes, it’s a piece of mental chewing-gum, but it’s done with such panache – and is so loyal to the spirit of the 1940s source material – that it wins over the most cynical viewer.  Along with Hugo, it has the best special effects of the year!  And the best review of it, of course, is here.

5: X-MEN : FIRST CLASS

This film has a real panache, and looks to be Matthew Vaughn’s second stab at grooming a future James Bond (he gave Daniel Craig his first leading role in Layer Cake)  because Michael Fassbender is captivating as Erik Lensherr, the avenging angel.  A magical way of re-inventing the X-Men universe.  Now, if only they could make a Wolverine film this well!  For more info, my definitive review is here.

4: WARRIOR

The trailer did not sell this to me, neither did this unimaginative poster.  I just wasn't interested.  Then a few friends started telling me this was their film of the year.  Intrigued, I investigated further and discovered:  It is so much better than last year’s much-feted multi-Oscar-winner The Fighter.   This is the story of two estranged kick-boxing brothers who, independently (and rather improbably) entre the same competition with inevitable results.  It shouldn’t work.  The plot is ridiculous, but the performances are so committed and so involving, the writing, directing and editing so perfect that you can’t help being drawn in and mesmerised by it.

3: DRIVE

Some films are released.  Some escape.  I had to hunt this film down with bloodhounds.  It didn’t play in any multiplex in a fifty mile radius of where I live.  But it was worth the hunt.  This is a minimalist, chilly film with an extraordinarily controlled central performance from Ryan Gosling (Whose always interesting but easy to miss career really stepped up a gear in 2011).  Yes, the film is entirely spoiled by its contentious trailer, so don't watch that, watch the film instead.  To be fair, compared to Valhalla Rising (director Nicolas Winding Refn’s last film), Drive is as action-packed as a Transformers movie.

2: SUBMARINE

Came as a complete surprise to me, this did.   I rarely fall for the interesting, independent British films, I’m always seduced by the big, flashy Hollywood fare.  But this year was full of surprises for me.  Submarine is simply a delight!  If you haven’t watched it yet, treat yourself, pausing only to read my review, here.

1: HUGO

 

My opinion of 3D is a matter of record, yet Hugo needs to be in 3D.  This is the only film yet made that made me upset that I can’t see in 3D.  It is an integral part of the fabric of the film – which is a delightful fantasy set in a magical, beautifully realised world.  You can feel the joy of discovery as the long unused parts of Scorsese's mind that once made him a genius, were fired into renewed life by the possibilities of this new medium.  This is almost perfect movie-making for me and is a film I suspect I will revisit often on disc!

CAPTAIN AMERICA - THE FIRST AVENGER (MOVIE)

This follows on from my review of the less-than-impressive Thor, which you'll find here.

Maybe we have reached the point in cultural history where we have used up all our originality.  I can’t help it, whenever I watch a film these days, I find it puts me in mind of one or more existing films.  Maybe the paucity of imagination in this summer’s movies is simply a symptom of a wider cultural malaise … Greater artists than we have today have used up all the good, original ideas.  There’s none left.  Maybe, from now on, everything will be a parody or pastiche of something else.  Maybe post-modernism really is the death of cultural evolution.

All of which is clearly not the fault of Joe Johnson or his team making Captain America here.  After all, this is an adaptation!  It must resemble something existing … Otherwise what sort of adaptation would it be?   The comic book Captain America was born in the 1940s and I'm glad they felt the need to keep him in his proper place which, inevitably, leads to some 1940s pastiche.  That's okay, it is a right and proper requirement of the story.

However, I began my viewing experience confused … For no immediately obvious reason the modern-day prologue of this film is a clear, unambiguous homage to the original 1951 The Thing From Another World.  That came from ten years after the origins of Cap, from a very different world, a world worried about The Russians and Nuclear War.  I suppose one could make the case that the thing they are chipping out of the ice is from another world – a world at war with Germany.

So we begin the film proper – By travelling back to Cap’s roots in 1942.  America has finally, reluctantly stepped-up and joined in the war.  Against this background, jobbing comic-book creators Joe Simon and Jack Kirby created Cap as a patriotic character, wrapped in the flag, partly to cash in on the immense popularity of Superman (first published in 1938) but also to inspire young Americans to support the war effort.  As such, he is clear, unashamed propaganda. 

This is very well represented in the film version, with a young, weedy, diminutive Steve Rogers constantly trying to enlist and constantly being rejected.  For a while, there, I was convinced they’d done an amazing job of finding an actor who looked just like an 8-stone version of Chris Evans, but eventually had to concede that they were doing some remarkably clever Benjamin Button-type stuff with the real Evans.  Remarkable.  This special effect version of Evans has to carry the film through its first act, whilst making Rogers human and believable.  What they can’t do these days!

When his steely determination to volunteer finally bears fruit, he is assigned to Tommy Lee Jones’ ‘Strategic Scientific Reserve’ unit.  Jones has great fun as the scenery-chewing Col. Phillips, the traditional officer who will never openly betray the respect he clearly has for Rogers’ bravery. 

These boot camp scenes are lovely, showing Rogers still being bullied, still coming last, yet being the smartest kid in the platoon and using his bravery and intelligence to win over the respect of his fellow recruits and the heart of Peggy Carter, the initially quite aloof Intelligence Officer.

He and his friend, the perfectly-normally proportioned Bucky Barnes take dates to the Stark Expo – which gave me a moment a joy … I love the way these Marvel Movie Universe films are all folding into each other … And we meet a young Howard Stark.  The relationship between Stark and Rogers will, I have no doubt, be the cause of much conversation in The Avengers next year … But enough wandering from the point -

Let’s mention the bad-guy:  Johann Schmidt, a Nazi officer with his own army within the German army – known as Hydra.  He is played with cold, creepy efficiency by Hugo Weaving – hot from his turn as Abberline in Johnson’s last movie – The Wolfman.  He is looking for “Odin’s Tesseract” (a gentle reminder of Thor, this summer’s other Marvel Movie Universe movie – Because, of course, whilst X-Men First Class is a movie based on a Marvel comic, is not set in the consistent Marvel Movie Universe … But then, neither are Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Blade ... Oh, it’s complicated, don’t worry about it … ).  This is a glowing cube – The Cosmic Cube for those of us who’ve read the comics – An infinite source of magical power to fuel Schmidt’s super-weapons.  “And” He laughs scornfully “The Fuhrer digs for trinkets in the desert”.  That isn’t the last Raiders reference we’ll get here, but it’s certainly the funniest.

World's easiest Rubik's cube!

Schmidt has an opposite number – a good German scientist, played by the fatherly Stanley Tucci, who plays his stereotypical German, Dr. Erskine for all he’s worth.  It is Erskine who brewed the first Super Soldier Serum

Schmidt has a secret – one that the trailer and much of the pre-release hype has spoiled but, in case you’ve avoided it all, I’ll play along … He was the first subject for the Super Soldier Serum (you know – the serum they gave to Tim Roth in The Incredible Hulk a couple of years ago … See, these films are slowly all heading in one direction!)  The serum had strange side-effects on Schmidt, but it has since been perfected and now it is safe … Safe for a weedy little volunteer like Steve Rogers.

It is said that the serum ‘amplifies’ the person who receives it … So it made Schmidt even more ruthless and egomaniacal; with Rogers it will accentuate his determination and his unwavering decency.  That’s always been the key trait with Cap, no-matter the situation, however vexing the problem, he approaches it with an absolute, unshakeable moral code.

Foreplay completed, the film proper begins with Roger’s transformation into the bulked-up, rippling form of the real Chris Evans who is, distressingly, not CGI’d … He really is that fit.  Bastard.

"I'm up 'ere, luv."

From here on in, it’s pretty-much action-scene after action-scene.  The film jumps from incident to incident, hopping around the world, and we follow it because they have invested in creating such interesting characters in that long, careful first act.

The transformation of Steve Rogers Super Soldier into Captain America is dealt with beautifully – entirely in-keeping with the period and presented as a musical number!  Inspired!  Such a clever way of introducing the iconography of the comics!

The costume he finally wears is taken from the much more contemporary Ultimate version of Cap, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Bryan Hitch; but that was specifically designed to look believable and wearable in the real-world; so they were wise to borrow it!

See ... Casual yet practical.

In the middle of one battle sequence, we get a glimpse of a tell-tale bowler hat and I let out an impromptu cheer – for there they are:  The Howling Commandoes!  Never referred to as such in the film, but that’s who they are, Dum-Dum Dugan, Falsworth and the rest.  And wouldn’t Tommy Lee Jones have made a brilliant Sgt. Fury, if things had gone another way?  There’s a thought!

Anyway – the movie’s numerous action set-pieces are smoothly and economically constructed, with a minimum of plot between them; but each sequence leads logically and inevitably to the next so we, the audience, feel like guests along for a ride rather than customers being shepherded from one fair-ground attraction to another.

If anything, they are too economical – hurtling past with no time for us to feel any sense of danger.  So, yes the sequences are thrilling, but you never feel that anyone is in peril.  Of course, that may be a deliberate ploy to lull the viewer into a possibly false sense of security.

There are several hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moments in here; Such as the first time he throws that shield and catches it again.  I got a buzz out of that comparable to the first time Hugh Jackman snikt his claws in that cage in the first X-Men movie.  I also loved the more-understandable-than-The-Thing reference to Powell and Pressburger’s Matter of life and Death.

This film works like a clock, every sequence perfectly designed and machined to work perfectly with every other sequence.  Every detail is there for a purpose.  I just love the design, from Cap’s final costume to the art deco motorbikes ridden by the Hydra thugs and beyond.  The film looks lovely – every bit the follow-up to The Rocketeer that I’d hoped!

Which offers me the perfect opportunity to feature one of my favourite posters of the last twenty years.

Captain America is that rarest of things – a tent-pole summer movie that could have done with being longer!  I would have liked more character development and more dialogue scenes between the fights.  I’d have liked the Howling Commandoes to get more screen-time – and, in the flip-side, Toby Jones’ Dr. Zola also needed fleshing out more.  Maybe in the BluRay.

One sour note that rang wrong as the film’s credits were rolling … Simon and Kirby are not afforded a credit in the main titles … But Stan Lee is!  Yes, they are named in the credits roll, but not in the main sequence.  The bad blood that exists between Marvel and now Jack Kirby’s estate is a matter of record - particularly in this extensive article from The Comics Journal - and it is sad that the corporate giant can’t just bury the hatchet once and for all.

Indeed - since writing that paragraph, the battle has raged on, as detailed in this recent piece from Hollywood Reporter.

Of course, I only noticed this because I was sitting through the credits, waiting for the inevitable post-titles sequence.  I wasn’t disappointed – there it is:  The first teaser trailer for next year’s The Avengers.  With fair fortune and a following wind … I’ll be assembling on May the 4^th!

"See, Chris, you CAN appear in a good Marvel movie ... Even if you are only after the credits."

BLU-RAY: SUBMARINE

This is a film (based on the novel of the same name) about a teenager called Oliver, awash on a sea of hormones and confusion.  This is not, it’s fair to say, unexplored territory.  From Catcher in the Rye via The Breakfast Club to Juno, you will find many brilliantly observed and painfully true depictions of the terrible teens.

There are so many rites of passage films depicting the shedding of childish things that you’d be forgiven for thinking there was nothing new to say about it but, as with silly love songs, we don’t seem to have had enough.  And I am grateful for that because Submarine is wonderful!

The movie that I was mostly put in mind of is Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl (1981).  And that’s about as fine a complement as I can pay a British teen movie.  Part of the reason for the comparison is that Submarine seems to be set in the eighties.  There’s nothing that overtly tells you this … But the absence of mobile phones and laptops and the presence of video tapes and Paddy Considine’s mullet would seem to suggest that!  Also, it is that point in the eighties when some people still hadn’t quite got over being in the seventies.

Thing is, that’s the time I was trudging through the ignominies of teenage.  So, unlike y’r modern teen who LOLs and LMFAOs their way through life, experiencing everything vicariously through their constantly updating social networks whilst growing a thick skin of cynicism; I remember having to make my mistakes myself and having to figure out how and why I’d made them alone.

We were a sadly solitary lot, the teenage boys of the 1980s.  Similarly, Oliver (Craig Roberts) lives in an isolated world largely of his own imagining.   He agonises about being invisible to girls but, in his mental experiments, he imagines being dead would be a good career move because he would then, in his absence, become the centre of everyone’s attention.

Rather like Adrian Mole (also from the eighties) Oliver is well-read and erudite but has no life experiences to elucidate with his wide vocabulary … So, in the absence of an incident-filled life, he makes things up.

As children will, he tries a bit of everything.  Tired of being bullied, he tries a spot of bullying himself, just to see if it agrees with him and will impress Jordana, the girl on whom he fixates.  He has the ability to rationalise any behaviour to himself – including spying on his parents to the point when he knows, to the day, when they last had sex … Some seven months previously.

So far, the film probably doesn’t sound especially new or unusual … But writer / director Richard Ayoade (who you will, of course, know as Moss in the I.T Crowd) has created a beautifully visualised depiction of mundane alienation.  There is a clever economy of shooting here and Ayoade even allows the editing to carry the gag occasionally.  That shows real maturity but, it’s worth mentioning, whilst this is Ayoade’s first movie, it isn’t his first time in the director’s chair:  His first screen credit, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was as co-writer and director as well as co-star!

Whilst the whole film is seen from Oliver’s perspective, making him very much the centre of things, he is surrounded by great oddball characters:  His rigid, perpetually-embarrassed middle-class parents (played by Noah Taylor and Sally Hawkins), Graham, the mullet-wearing Ninja neighbour (Paddy Considine) and, of course, the frosty presence of Jordana herself (Yasmin Paige).  All of these characters are layered and complex and portrayed with the lightest of touch by an inspired cast. 

Visually, the film is full of unobtrusive but beautiful tracking shots, with the camera flowing effortlessly through the wintery Welsh wilderness, making it look quite magical; even if this does lead to some rather self-conscious referencing of Francois Truffaut.  Hey it’s nice, for once, for someone to not be referencing Spielberg or Tarantino!

Oliver’s eccentric, experimental relationship with Jordana, conducted almost exclusively out-of-doors in duffle-coats, is made up of perfectly conceived vignettes, often gathered together in delightful little montages.  Like any miniature, the details are absolutely crucial in this small film, the humour is gentle and heartfelt but the themes, they’re universal, and here played out to the accompaniment of Alex (Arctic Monkeys) Turner’s simple, soulful songs.

As the film progresses into its third act, we do begin to lose sympathy with Oliver.  His rationalisations become quite cruel and self-serving, but this is because he is still a child, unfamiliar with and unsure of how to cope with the emotions he feels.  It is quite brave of the film to not gloss over this and not try to idealise Oliver. 

What about that title, then: Submarine?  Well, apart from the submarine Oliver has painted on his bedroom wall, this is mainly a reference to his discovery of sonar.  Using sonar we can detect what is going on inside a hard metal object.  Oliver’s fear is that there is no sonar for people, no way of being able to detect what is going in on in the human heart.  Of course, we do develop that sonar: It’s called empathy.

One has to experience teenage traumas in order to develop that empathy.  That is the point of a coming-of-age story and that is the key difference between a child and an adult.  We can enjoy the humour, understand the human drama and be moved by the emotions precisely because we have been through that rite of passage and can now empathise with those who are still struggling through it.

Fortunately, watching this film is very far from a struggle.  It may just be my film of the year!

THE EXTRAS:

Audio Commentary – This is the best extra by far.  Featuring Ayoade, of course, as well as the original novelist, Joe Dunthorne (I love it when novelists get this involved in a movie adaptation) and Director of Photography, Eric Wilson, who does extraordinary work with the seemingly impossible task of making midwinter Wales seems like a place you actually want to be.  A great excuse to watch the film again straight away!

Through The Prism – 16.00

This is the self-help video that Graham T. Purvis (the Ninja neighbour) flogs at his ‘seminars’ and parts of which we see peppered through the film.  It is essentially Paddy Considine improvising in character.  A bravura performance, to be sure, but the joke does wear thin.

Message From Ben Stiller – 2.00

A heartfelt pep-talk video from Ben Stiller, sitting in sun-kissed LA, sent to the film-crew entrenched in Wales in the rainiest month on record.  He certainly feels their pain.

Interviews – 24.30

EPK (Electronic Press-Kit) interviews with all the main stars.  Feel free to add your own questions then howl with laughter as the cast answer a completely different question.

Deleted Scenes – 9.40

One of the joys of the film is its cracking pace and economy.  These scenes would, almost without exception, have slowed things down.  They do, however, fill-in some of the details about Oliver’s dad who is, to be frank, only sketched-in as a character in the film.

Extended Scenes – 4.50

Ditto

London Comedy Festival Q&A – 10.00

Seemingly shot by an iPhone, this gives an impression of what the Festival screening must have been like, for those people trapped at the back who couldn’t hear.

Glasgow Film Festival Q&A – 11.40

This one is better and more coherent, although Ayoade does seem to be a bit nonplussed at being asked questions about his film.

Camera Test – 3.50

This is a run-through of the key under-the-bridge scene, with different hair and an unattractive mack instead of the duffle-coat.  Those tiny details really do matter!

Piledriver Waltz Video – 3.20

The video for one of Alex Turner’s songs, made up of seemingly unused montage material from the film.  Quite delightful!

BLU-RAY: THE LINCOLN LAWYER

So, you have an opinion on Matthew McConaughey, don’t you!  Everyone does.  After the better part of a decade appearing in films which are, at best, undemanding and, at worst, just plain awful, he has become something of a joke around Hollywood because he just can’t seem to keep his nipples off screen. 

Now, aged 42, McC (as I’ve decided to dub him) clearly thinks it is time to be taken as seriously as he fifteen years ago so, once again, he has slipped into a lawyer’s loafers for The Lincoln Lawyer.  Mick Haller is a slick, cynical wheeler-dealer of a defence lawyer whose office is the back seat of his thirty year old Lincoln Town Car (with the number plate NTGUILTY) because, like the shark he resembles, he has to keep moving and all his clients, whether they did it or not, walk free after hiring him.

Except one.  The one case that will come back to haunt him is that of Jesus Martinez, who was found guilty of a brutal murder and was destined for Death Row before Haller’s manoeuvrings had him committed for fifteen years instead.  He considers that a result, initially, but events eventually make him reassess.

And when I say ‘eventually’, I mean it!  Boy, does the first hour of this film drag.  We spend far too long being introduced to his complicated life and the wide range of characters who live in it with him.  The film is written in such a way that every single incidental character and every single off-hand line of dialogue will come in handy during the film’s second half.  The problem with that is that the astute viewer or experienced fan of courtroom dramas will know where and why a lot of this detail will matter.

"Wow, you mean you don't have to take your shirt off in this one, either, Marisa?"

But worse than the confusing structure of the first hour is the fact that McC plays Haller as a total dick throughout.  Then at the mid-point, when he gets his epiphany (right on cue) he changes; he realises he made a big mistake with the Martinez case and has to do something about it.  Problem is, we’ve spent a whole hour not liking or not caring about him, so McC suddenly has to work doubly hard to earn our sympathy.

TV shows like Shark and Boston Legal and, before that, The Practice, have shown that you can take the overly-familiar trappings of court-room drama and turn them out weekly, yet still make them compelling.  A major motion picture has to step-up to this high bar and get over it in pretty impressive style.

The twist is that Haller so dislikes his client that he actually wants to lose the case, but still has to do his best work.  Hang on, though, wasn’t that also the case with Al Pacino in … And Justice For All and, for that matter, Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar?

So, you see, with McC struggling to be taken seriously and the story struggling to feel original, it’s an uphill struggle.  It’s to his credit that we do give a damn by the film’s closing act!  And it could all be saved if they could just pull off that moment we wait for in all court-room dramas, that tingle of excitement you get when the canny cross-examiner springs his trap: The ‘You Can’t Handle the Truth’ Moment.

Do they manage it?  Almost.  Does this lift this film above the mediocrity of being just another mid-list drama?  Not quite.  Is the revelation worth two hours of watching Marisa Tomei wandering around in the background wondering what she’s there for?  No.  Is it worth it for the brief glimpses of Michael Paré (who, apparently, isn’t dead after all), or William H. Macy or Bryan Cranston without his beard; or even for another one of John Leguizamo’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-him cameos?  No, no, no and no.

"Don't complain, John - At least this isn't Repo Men ... At least you weren't digitally removed!"

Are the extras on the disc worth it?  Well, let’s have a look, shall we:

EXTRAS:

To their credit, the extras concentrate on Michael Connelly, the writer of the source novel, and he is a fascinating individual … Not quite as eccentric as Eddie Bunker or James Ellroy, but heading that way!

Making The Case: 13.30

This is an interesting but fairly standard telling of how the novel became the film which considers the age-old problem of turning a 400-odd page novel into a 120 page script and how much of the novel must be lost.  McC has a nice way of encapsulating this when he says the film is like the ‘greatest hits’ of the novel.

Is it just me, or does Michael Connelly look like an older, scarier Mark Kermode?

Michael Connelly – At Home on the Road: 10.00

This accompanies Connelly as he drives around his beloved LA, introducing us to the locations that inspired the book (as well as the apartment that he bought because Raymond Chandler once lived there).

McC and Connelly – Face to Face: 5.30

This is a smarmy love-in which is almost as uncomfortable to watch as Connelly clearly feels about being in it.

Deleted Scenes: 4.40

Although these do explain why Earl, Mick’s driver, disappears in the middle of the film, and where the rap music we keep hearing actually comes from, these don’t add much especially important to the film.  Sadly, they aren’t the only scenes that should have been deleted from this overly-long, overly-formulaic drama.

Over-all, then, the extras are nothing to write home about.  There’s no audio commentary, very-little on-set footage and very little insight into the process.

And for those keeping score:  McC Nipple Count: 1!

BLU-RAY: BATTLE LOS ANGELES

Whatever you call it - Battle: LA, Battle Los Angeles, World Invasion: Battle LA – this film delivers an over-developed sense of the importance of LA.  Practically the opening line of dialogue is “We must not lose Los Angeles!”  Why not?  What’s so special about LA that isn’t special about New York or Paris or Rome or, for that matter, Milton Keynes?

Nothing, it turns out, because this particular version of Los Angeles was shot in the other LA – Louisiana.  But, of course, its any-street-in-any-city aesthetic is really meant to put us in mind of Baghdad, of The Hurt Locker and Green Zone and the slew of other films that have established the iconography of the modern war movie.  We can now add to their number Battle Los Angeles.

Everything starts off traditionally enough, like any Irwin Allen disaster movie:  Burnt-out Staff Sergeant, who’s decided he’s too old for this shit?  Check.  The soldier who’s due to get married?  Check.  Incompetent CO who sacrifices himself?  Check!  Feisty Hispanic chic with the big gun?  Check.

Fortunately, these cookie-cutter clichés are put to one side when the aliens start crashing to Earth.  It is mentioned, in passing, that they are invading cities like Tokyo, Paris, London, Hong Kong, even San Francisco … But none of that’s really important – all that matters is that we don’t lose LA.

Once it gets going, this film never stops and it really is a totally convincing and immersive depiction of urban warfare.  The aliens are purely a maguffin to kick-off our gritty cinema verité look at how America could so quickly be reduced to a ‘Third World’ country, roads cluttered with rubble and burning cars, air thick with smoke and tracer bullets.  To reinforce that, the whole film is shot in hand-held wobblycam, so it has something of the feel of Cloverfield about it!

The running gun-battles are chaotic and claustrophobic and suitably reminiscent of the movie that every modern war film aspires to be: Black Hawk Down.

 

And that’s what this film has to offer that Independence Day and War of the Worlds and, more recently, Skyline didn’t – a depiction of on organised, strategic invasion by a superior force, seen from the ground level.  You rarely get a good look at the aliens and that makes them scary.

Keep watching the skies ...

Aaron Eckhart’s Staff-Sergeant Nantz is the hero of the piece, battle-hardened and ready for anything.  He is the one who gets up close with the monsters to learn what makes them tick.

As our heroes proceed from set-piece to set-piece, you notice that the environments are changing and the aliens are getting progressively more numerous and more heavily-armed … Very much as one experiences when proceeding through the levels of a First Person Shooter.  There’s the siege level in the police station, the fire-fight level on the freeway and the stealth level down the sewers, and so on …

So, whilst video games designers are striving to create games which have the level of maturity and involvement of a good Hollywood movie (look at LA Noire, for example), Hollywood is, at the same time, producing ever-more simplistic, one-dimensional, shoot-em-ups.

As a sheer seat-of-the-pants spectacle, this film is excellent.  But its story arc and characters so familiar, it really is An Invasion Movie For Beginners.

Sound-wise, this DTS-HD 5.1 mix is intended to turn your living room into a battleground with interesting detail surrounding you both up close and in the distance.

This film looks and sounds as good as it possibly could.  

... For this sort of thing!

EXTRAS:

Command Control:

This is one of those picture-in-picture deals, with regular pop-ups offering interviews, behind the scenes stuff and info on everything you could ever want to know about the film and its characters.  As is usually the case with these things a lot (but not all) of this is simply re-presenting the content of the accompanying documentaries.

Behind the Battle – 6.40

This is essentially a montage of sound bites and money shots giving you a behind-the-scenes glimpse of “a documentary war film … with aliens”.

Directing the Battle – 6.30

This is a profile of director Jonathan Liebesman and tells of the extraordinary lengths he went to when auditioning for this film.  He has now set a new benchmark of just how determined aspiring directors have to be to get aboard a big film like this.  And, surprise, surprise, his major influence is video-games!

Aliens in LA – 18.00

This is the most in-depth piece offered, detailing the huge amount of work which went into rationalising, designing, building and animating all the aliens and their craft, which you then see fleetingly in the distance.

Preparing for Battle – 5.15

This shows how the actors, by and large, did their own stunts – and the film certainly benefits from that!

Boot Camp – 10.18

This is perfectly self-explanatory, following the actors through a few days of intensive basic training to get them familiar with their roles, their uniforms, their weapons and, above all, each other.  Eckhart clearly loved the discipline of this and enjoyed being Staff Sergeant, openly admitting that, by the end of training, the other actors all hated him.  The highlight of this is Michelle Rodriguez complaining about having to do “girl push-ups”.

And the Jenette Goldstein award for Best Vasquezalike goes to ...

Creating LA – 5.45

This gives an indication of how easy it is to recreate downtown LA just about anywhere … And then cover it in a blanket of ash.

The Freeway Battle – 5.15

Again, does what it says on the tin: Explores the film’s biggest set-piece, for which they were allowed to close down a Louisiana main road for two straight weeks.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Professor X discovers his telepathic powers are controlled by a small switch on his forehead

Not a big fan of prequels, me.   Not simply because George Lucas inoculated us all against them, but because they are, by definition, back-story; the salient points of which will have been included in the front story … So they are, by and large, padding.  Alternatively, they ignore the continuity of the thing they are prequelising and therefore become nonsensical – and, yes, Star Trek Enterprise, I’m thinking of you.

But they are the fashion of the hour, especially after the inexplicable success of X-Men Origins: Wolverine two years ago, so (whilst acknowledging with gratitude that this one is at least in 2D) in we go:

X-Men First Class begins with two boys; one privileged and lonely, distanced from his parents even though he lives under the same palatial roof as they; the other poor and abused and separated from his parents by the bars and barbed-wire of a Nazi re-settlement camp.  Both have extraordinary powers.

But, thanks to the flashbacks in X1 (2000), we already know this … What we don’t know is what took these two men from their respective origins to the point we first met them in the persons of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen.  That, then, is the task of this film, to be the filling in that particular information sandwich and the challenge, therefore, for director, Matthew Vaughn, was to make this interesting and different and surprising.

He succeeds.  Very much against the odds! 

There are six credited writers on this film and it is a well known fact (made up by me) that any film with more than three credited writers is in deep trouble.  It is all-but impossible to draw together the threads from so many different tapestries and make a coherent picture.  Films with too-many authors become disorganised, compromised messes.  First Class doesn’t.  So, credit to Vaughan and his tame writer, Jane Goldman, for pulling it all together so well.

Moving on from some early Photoshop abominations, these later character posters are excellent, filled with drama and echoes of the future ...

... And, in Erik's case, shrouded also in the horrors of the past - demonstrating, in a single image, just how tragic the character is.

The film is set in 1963 which is, as all good Marvelites know, the year Marvel Comics launched the careers of The Amazing Spider-Man, The Avengers (‘Earth’s mightiest super-heroes’) and The X-Men (‘The strangest super-heroes of all!’)  It was also the year of The Cuban Missile Crisis – the point when President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.  Oh.  Hang on.  That was actually ’62.  Kennedy was shot in ’63 but, unless they were going to suggest that that was a mutant conspiracy, that wasn’t really useful for the story they wanted to tell.  Cuba was much better!

So, as with Bryan Singer’s original X-Men films, there is a political subtext to this movie, comparing the stand-off between East and West to the coming stand-off between mutants and humans.  When Chris Claremont took control of the X-Men comic in 1976, he gradually began to include issues of identity and difference and the political aspect of groups in society.  He used the X-Men very successfully to hold up a mirror to society and its attitudes towards, race, sexuality and difference.  It is only right that the films do likewise.

But we’re in the 60s.  It’s all groovy and happening.  Man.  As well as not quite being the year of the Cuban Crisis, 1963 is also not quite the year the James Bond hit the screens (with Dr. No, 1962) but they haven’t let that deter them from making the first act of their movie into a shameless Bond pastiche.  Michael Fassbender is already being talked of as the next Bond (as though Daniel Craig had somehow announced his retirement) but I can absolutely see why – he comes across as very suave and very dangerous in the film’s opening scenes and, it’s worth noting, Matthew Vaughn already has a track record of spotlighting future Bonds (he gave Craig his breakthrough role in Layer Cake - 2004).

Is that a Walther PPK I see before me or a Luger of the mind?

This film is owned by, initially, Fassbender and, later, McAvoy.  It is very much their story, tracing the trajectory of their friendship to its inevitable conclusion.  The choice of title means that they must literally find a first class of mutants to teach – lots of fresh-faced 16-24s of various ethnicities to tick those all-important demographic boxes - but Banshee, Darwin, Angel and Havok are very much window-dressing, just there to make up the numbers.  Their getting-to-know-you scenes in act two are the only slow moments in the movie.

I can see why Kevin Bacon was drawn to play Sebastian Shaw, apart from the fact that he gets to play entire scenes in German and Russian, which is always fun; because he really is a fascinating character.  The first leader of the mutant uprising and, in many ways, the role model for Magneto, he affords Bacon some deliciously evil Bond-villain doings.  And sideburns!

Not quite the full Ken Adams, but there's still some lovely set design at Shaw's evil lair!

As for Bacon’s baddies, Riptide, the human whirlwind suffers from too great a similarity to Looney Tunes’ Taz, but Azazel, as played by Jason Flemyng – once again unrecognisable under hours of prosthetics – cuts quite a figure.

All the women are wearing 60s style fashions, but I notice that their miniskirts have a very contemporary look about them, they aren’t wool, as a lot of clothes were in the 60s, but much more modern, stretchy materials and, similarly, their hair-styles aren’t sculpted with rock-solid hair-spray.  The colour palette throughout is very contemporary (to now, not then) and the style of photography like-wise.  So, Vaughn isn’t doing a simple pastiche of the period – this film is neither Mad Men, nor is it Austin Powers – the period detail is worn lightly so as, frankly, not to get in the way.

Sadly, one of the elements which is just as contemporary today as it was then, is sexism:  Rose Byrne plays CIA agent Moira McTaggart (this is in the days before SHIELD took over the whole Marvel universe) but she is quickly reduced to doing her job in her undies.   Similarly, Zoë Kravitz’s Angel Salvadore also has to disrobe constantly to show off her wings.  Messrs Fassbender, McAvoy and Bacon stay fully clothed throughout.  Just saying.

Oh, I see, diamond hard skin ... Maybe that's why she has to prance around nearly nude all the time.

The film trundles along at a fair old lick, with the showdowns spaced out enough to give the plot time to breath and, importantly, the set-pieces all rise logically and consistently from the plot.  There’s no obligatory car-chase in the third act, for example, which shows me that Vaughn had real confidence in and control of his material.  Some people have bemoaned that the (almost) two-and-a-quarter hour run-time is self-indulgent, but I really didn’t feel that.  Apart from the few scenes with the first class themselves, the film loses neither focus nor velocity.

Cleverly, Vaughn has cast actors, even in the smallest roles, who bring gravitas and complexity.  Almost without exception, the authority figures in the film are played by actors like Ray Wise and Michael Ironside who typically play bad-guys.  This serves to make everyone morally ambiguous – because this is not a film about black and white hats, here everything comes out in shades of grey.

Sadly, as usual, the trailer gives away a lot of the ending and the personal achievements attained particularly by Fassbender’s Erik so, if you haven’t seen it yet, don’t.  Fassbender’s performance is so powerful because it is tinged throughout with the inevitable tragedy of his character arc.  McAvoy is less serious as Xavier and, therefore, slightly less engaging.  I was also disappointed that he didn’t at least try to impersonate Patrick Stewart.

As you know, Stan Lee gets to have a walk-on part in most of the Marvel movie adaptations – all starting with X1 – but not this one, however there is one absolutely delightful cameo!  Nuff said.

Overall, the film is clever, classy, epic and, like X1 and 2, steeped in real political and philosophical issues.  Some of which are dealt with in this excellent series of interviews from Emory University:

This second interview looks at the way The Big Bad in popular culture has evolved from being a simple nuclear threat to a more complex genetic threat ...

Here, Prof. Paul Root Wolpe talks about the parallels between the reality of 'bioethics' and society and how that was reflected in comics.

Finally, The Prof looks at the reality of the future of genetic manipulation and the ways of creating the Homo Superior:

Dir:  Matthew Vaughn

Stars: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne

Dur: 132 mins

Cert: 12A