ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS.

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Digital is the way to go. I’ve been saying this ever since I saw Bee Movie and Blade Runner: The Final Cut on the same day at the all-digital Vue Cinema in Hull, in 2008. Odd double-bill you might think, and you’d be right, but they served to show the full range of possibilities made available to us by digital projection. The twenty-five year-old Blade Runner has never been sharper and the CGI Bee Movie had real sting. I’d never seen a clearer, richer, more detailed picture anywhere.

Here in Britain, we rarely get to see pristine prints of films. Even first-run films at big cinemas are often hurriedly mass-produced prints, or re-cycled ones from the States, so it’s rare to see a film at its absolute best, even on the big screen. Not a problem with digital. Every ‘print’ is as good as the original, no scratches, no cigarette-burns, no reel-ends missing. It’s exactly as the film-makers wanted it to be.

The only variables, then, are the quality of the venue you see it in and the aptitude of the person running the projectors. Ah, but there’s the rub. A custom-built system, calibrated and maintained to optimum levels and operated by a technician with experience and a real feel for his art (like at Hull's Vue), is as close to perfect as I ever expect to get in a cinema. However, a converted analogue screen, thrown-together simply to draw down some European funding and operated like some circus side-show by an incompetent orang-utan’s dumber, younger brother is, by contrast, only marginally less unpleasant than being force-fed crusty toe-nails by a grinning, gap-toothed chav with ferocious body-odour and a Mockney accent.

Which brings me back to Ice Age 3 (Or Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs to give it its full, non-sensical title). I didn't see this at a custom-built digital cinema. I saw this in the sadly more-common dodgy conversion.

The digital presentation I saw was flat and fuzzy and pallid in colour. It speaks volumes of the film that I managed to fight through this curtain of exhibitor-incompetence to actually enjoy it!

Our story kick’s off an elephant’s gestation period after the last film, we have Ellie and Manny the mammoths expecting the patter of, frankly, quite large feet, which makes Sid the surprisingly energetic Sloth just plain broody. He stumbles across a clutch of dinosaur eggs (dinosaurs … you know, those things which the first Ace Age (2002) correctly stated had died out millions of years before our mammal protagonists evolved) and, dubbing them Egbert, Shelly and Yoko, decides to adopt them.

Well, of course, the triplets’ real dino-mum arrives (and we all know how much we enjoy a CGI saurian, they were, after-all, CGI’s coming-of-age back in 1993), takes Sid along for the ride and leads the gang to a Pellucidar-type land of the lost where we meet this movie’s star-turn, a buckle-swashing one-eyed weasel called Buck. Voiced exuberantly by Simon Pegg, he is clearly this franchise’s attempt to cash-in on Puss In Boots from Dreamworks' other trilogy franchise: Shrek. He is their guide through the exotic flora and fauna of this subterranean world where pretty-much everything wants to kill you.

As with all of the sensible animations this year, the 3D here is used sparingly and with care, to give depth and detail to the landscape, to help create the magical, fantastical vistas the animators have dreamed up, with only the occasional cheap-thrill sequence designed to be turned into a ride or video-game, such as the spectacular pterodactyl dog-fight.

The slapstick humour is classic Looney Tunes tom-foolery, with the rat-a-tat one-liners reminding me of nothing so much as the Hope and Crosby Road films, while the musical score has all the scope and romance of a Korngold classic. I love the fact that today's animators draw inspiration from source-material so old that, in all likelihood, even the parents of the supposed target-audience kids won’t recognise it. All of which tells me that a good animated film’s roots are growing in soil far deeper and richer than that which spawns your typical, undemanding, lowest-common-dee-dum-dee-dum-dum kid flick. Seeing beyond the short-term demands of this year’s fashion is partly what gave John Lasseter’s Pixar its strength, and Katzenberger's Dreamworks has been wise to follow Lasseter’s lead, therefore it would have been the acme of foolishness if Blue Sky Studios (the makers of the Ice Age films and the backbone of Fox's animation division) had not followed suit.

So, is Ice Age 3 that rarest of things, an artistically successful and enjoyable sequel? Unequivocally yes! The film-makers know that bringing the dinosaurs back is nonsense (one character opines at one point “I preferred you when you were extinct”) but they are cartoon dinosaurs, in a cartoon world. After all, if we are untroubled by the notion that sabre-tooths (sabre-teeth?), woolly-mammoths et al can talk to each-other … in English … then having dinosaurs hidden away in a secret jungle shouldn’t cause us any problems.

If was good enough for Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Willis O’Brien … it’s good enough for me!
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Directed by: Carlos Saldanha & Mike Thurmeier
Stars: Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary, Simon Pegg
Dur: 94 mins
Cert: U
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Image © 20 Century Fox

BLU-RAY: GRAN TORINO

The Film:

Something mystical has happened to Clint Eastwood. Back in the eighties he was looked-upon as an ageing, increasingly-foolish has-been who was only worth a damn when packing a .44 Magnum. His habit of casting friends and, especially, lovers in his films made him a laughing stock and that was not greatly helped by his brief foray into local politics.

Every now and then he’d make a film like Pale Rider (1985) or Bird (1988), which would give everyone a moment of contemplative re-assessment, but it would then be followed by something like Heartbreak Ridge (1986) or The Rookie (1990) and he was right back there on everyone’s hit list.

Then came Unforgiven (1992), a film which won several Oscars (including Best Film and Best Director for Clint himself) and made both a popular and critical audience sit up and pay attention to him anew. Unforgiven looked back at the career of a violent man and counted the cost. It was, to most everyone’s mind, Eastwood nailing the coffin-lid on his own career as the death-dealing Man With No Name. It was his attempt at cleaning-up Dirty Harry, his shot at redemption and, as themes in Hollywood movies go, redemption is the biggy.

If his life were a movie, that would have been its final scene: Oscar acceptance speech, standing ovation, roll credits.

But his life isn’t a cliché-ridden movie and, remarkably, in the seventeen years since Unforgiven, as his early sixties rolled into his late seventies, where most directors and almost all actors would have hung up their spurs, he has gone on to do much of his best, most ambitious, most consistent and most personal work. He has finally proven that he’s vastly more versatile as a director than he ever was as an actor.

As with fifty-something directors like Spielberg and Little Ritchie Cunningham, seventy-nine year-old Clint has taken to making two films a year. Gran Torino is his second this year (and he already has his Nelson Mandela pic, Invictus in the can for next year).

Gran Torino is a story about … you guessed it … redemption … and it’s a Western. Yes, I know it’s set in modern-day urban Michigan, but its still a Western. Bear with me.

The film begins at the end … at the end of Walt Kowalski’s marriage, with him standing, statue-like at the side of his wife’s coffin, glaring disapprovingly at the family he simply doesn’t like. He sees what his granddaughter is wearing and growls. As his son observes: “There’s nothing anyone can do that won’t disappoint the old man.”

The truth is, he’s frightened and he’s alone and he responds to that like the old war-horse he is, by being aggressive. He glares despairingly at the Hmong Chinese family which have moved in next door to him and rumbles “Damn barbarians” not quite far enough under his breath for them not to hear. Yes, he’s a racist and yes, the fact that he’s of Polish extraction and therefore an immigrant himself, is significant.

His life revolves around his experiences in the fifties in Korea and now, without his wife to temper or distract him, the memories of the horrors he witnessed and perpetrated come back to overwhelm him fuelled, of course, by the Eastern faces he sees every time he glances over the lawn at his neighbours. As his padre ruefully comments, Walt knows more about death than life.

He also knows a lot about his 1972 Gran Torino which he never drives, save in and out the garage, and which sits on the drive where he can polish and admire it. It, like him, is a remnant of a different America. In this year or all years, when America finally wakes from its American Dream and puts a black man in The White House, when its automotive industry is experiencing the same meltdown as the rest of our economy, this wide-beamed gas-guzzler stands on Walt’s drive as a timely symbol of the passing of the ‘old’ vision of America.

As Walt comments, ruefully, he spent his entire post-military career building American cars (including the one he owns) and now his son sells Japanese ones. That encapsulates the generation gap in his family right there.

The culture gap between him and his neighbours is, surprisingly, an easier one to bridge. A scuffle on the Chinese family’s lawn spills over onto Walt’s and his response is pure Clint … the hairs go up on the back of the neck as he levels his rifle at the camera and growls out of one side of his mouth “Get off my lawn” a line which, delivered in that context, by the voice, accompanied by that squinty-eyed glare, will become another one of those Clint catch-phrases which develops a life of its own.

It’s a deliberate reference back to Unforgiven’s William Munny and, beyond that, to Josey Wales. It represents the way that the street gangs are something that Walt can identify with, a clear and present danger that he knows how to deal with. But this trademark, stereotypically Eastwoodian scene, will have repercussions because the boys he has shamed are the local gang. This matter will return to haunt him. But, meanwhile, the film shifts gear. The gratitude of the Chinese community and the sarcastic, honest intelligence of the neighbour’s daughter, Sue (Ahney Her), slowly melt the old man’s icy exterior and he slowly begins to realise that he has more in common with these “gooks” than with his own family.

This détente, through clever writing and intelligent performances, manages to stay just the right-side of daytime-TV-maudlin as the film’s middle act explores that age-old affinity between old-age and youth, between the old soldier and the grand-kids of the people he (almost) once fought.

The scenes Walt has with Sue and her shy brother, Thao (Bee Vang), are made all the better for the thin vein of humour that runs through them, which counterpoints the ominous shadow of Walt’s occasional coughing fits. Again, this stays just this side of melodrama because the dialogue is so economical and delivered with an unwaveringly wry, ironic tone. As I watched him in his tool-shed, affectionately patronising young Thao, I realised that Clint has turned into Walter Matthau, a loveable curmudgeon. Who’d’a’thought?

Walt’s wife’s last wish was for him to go to the church for Confession. But one has to be careful what one wishes for … because the redemption Walt has in mind is not what his wife, his priest or what we expect.

Like many a Western hero before him, he sits on the porch of his wooden house, with his dog, smoking and waiting for the bad-guys to turn up as, inevitably, they do. The build-up to the show-down is dealt with with an elegance and an eloquence of which John Ford would have approved. And, for a Western, however it dresses itself, I can think of no greater complement than that.

The Disc:

There aren’t a lot of extras on this disc but. Compared to the usual bare-bones first release Eastwood discs we get in the UK, there’s a veritable cornucopia.

The Eastwood Way: 20 mins

This is one of those shallow made-for-TV puff-pieces, which tantalises with a few hints at the process, but doesn’t get into any of the nitty-gritty.

The doc does discuss how Clint 'n’ Co. spent a lot of effort on fairly reflecting the Hmong culture, even though very little of that is there on screen for the uncultured eye to see. They also went to the trouble of casting Hmong actors from the very small Hmong community, which explains why so many of them are obviously not trained, professional actors which, in turn, explains why their characters come across as so genuine.

Even at 79 years old, Clint clearly isn’t scared of a new challenge, working on screen with so many untried first-timers but, behind the camera, it’s a very different story. Famously, there are no behind-the-scenes dramas on an Eastwood flick, because he is surrounded by a crew he has worked for decades, who therefore barely need any direction because they already know what he wants. This, of course, makes for fairly boring making-ofs, which is possibly why he rarely allows them.

Manning The Wheel: 9.20 mins

This is an interesting little think piece which discusses the way the motor car has become the American male’s expression of individuality. It underscores how the car is symbolic of Walt – and Clint – very polished, very impressive, very highly-regarded but, ultimately, an antique.

Gran Torino: More Than a Car: 4.00 mins

This is definitely the ‘and finally’ of the disc, being a montage of interviews with the men of the Woodland Dream Cruise … which is essentially a parade of vintage and muscle cars. Despite having deeper relationships with their cars than with human beings, several of these men come across as surprisingly articulate. They could still do with getting a life, mind.

And, for those easily distracted by shiny objects – I give this film a rating of: CCCC

Dir: Clint Eastwood

Writers: Nick Schenk, Dave Johannson

Stars: Grandad Clint, Ahney Her, Bee Vang, Christopher Carley

Dur: 116 mins

Cert: 15

Image © Warner Bros

TRANSFORMINATOR SALVATION

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The Absolutely Will-Not Stop Uncut Review (1,400 words)

A few years ago, when I was running a local cinema, I found myself having an argument with a representative of the BBFC about Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003) She had, some would say quite foolishly, offered herself up for a Q & A session at the Chichester Film Festival. My problem was with T3’s 12A certificate (I have serious concerns about the whole debilitating effect the 12A certificate is having on good cinema, but that’s another story).

You see, in the BBFC guidelines it clearly states that, in a 12A “violence must not dwell on detail. There should be no emphasis on injuries or blood … (with) occasional gory moments only” and yet, in T3, we have a scene where the female Terminatress sits in the back seat of a car, punches her arm through the body of the driver in front, seizes the wheel and drives along, with her victim’s blood and giblets dribbling off her arm. My question was “In what way can that be called ‘no emphasis on injuries or blood’?”. The BBFC woman conceded, with a shrug, “Yes, that was a bit of a 15 certificate moment in a 12A movie.” Well, I’ll get back to the various reasons that’s an infuriating and unsupportable response at a later date. For the moment, let’s just note that there is no such controversy surrounding Terminator Salvation (or T4 as I shall call it henceforth, for brevity’s sake) this is good wholesome end-of-the-world type stuff with no gratuitous sex or violence.

These days, in the drive to create more and more kiddie-friendly by-the-numbers action movies, the Hollywood studios must find new ‘creative’ sources to exploit, since the bottom of their ideas barrel has long been scraped away. So, what do they now do? They approach the same old ideas from a slightly different perspective. You see, if you look closely, you’ll realise that some of our most treasured film franchises have, for want of a better term, gaps in them. We’ll call this The Wonderful World of the Back Story:

Star Wars referred to “The Clone Wars” early on, but we weren’t allowed to see them … until now. Star Trek often made reference to Kirk and Co’s past, but only now do we get to see it (wait for some genius to think up the revolutionary notion of Young Jean-Luc on the Stargazer). Much was made of Wolverine’s forgotten years … well, they’re forgotten no longer. I imagine plans are a-brewing in the Doctor Who production office at the BBC to finally do something with that oft-teased Time War. And, finally, The Terminator’s war against the machines … glimpsed and hinted-at for twenty-five years is now, finally, here for all to see.

And, do you know what … we’ve seen it all before:

The titles and slow-crawl from the beginning of T1: check.
Helicopter attack from Apocalypse Now: check.
Soldiers creeping through dark factory corridors from Aliens: check.
Human resistance run from a submarine as in The Matrix: check.
Grey, burned-out landscapes from Reign of Fire: check.
Our hero ‘adopts’ a mute feral kid in the wilderness, as in Mad Max 2: check.
Giant robots to steal some thunder from Transformers: check.
Dog-fight in a canyon from ID4 (ironically not a sequel): check.
Falling in love with a humanoid machine as in Battlestar Galactica: check.
Motor-bike escape from The Great Escape (yes, really): check.
Make Skynet Central look like Mordor: check.
Christ-like resurrection as in just about every quest movie made since Star Wars: check and check.
Golden Gate Bridge has seen better days as in Superman The Movie, The Core, Xmen 3 etc, etc: check.

Showdown in a foundry with loads of fire, steam and sparks as in T1 and T2: oh yes!

You can almost hear the seventeen listed producers (yes, seventeen) feeding their favourite scenes into the script-writing machines, checking off their wish-list as they assembled this, for want of a more accurate term, script. But don’t try and follow the story that strings together these elements because it simply doesn’t make a lick of sense. The first key-note assault simply doesn’t bear thinking about too much, just enjoy the utterly convincing special effects and flowing camera work as we swoop in and out of a flying helicopter and then stay in it as it crashes down in the shadow of a mushroom cloud. Well, if Indiana Jones can be immune to radiation, why not John Connor, hm?

Then again, one can only assume that the plutonium in the missiles we saw flying at the end of T3 must have had a particularly short half-life, since this film is set less than ten years in our future and, in-keeping with that 12A certificate, there is nary a reference to the ‘f’ word (‘fallout’).

The special effects, photography and particularly the work done on the sound is exemplary. The visuals are never less than impressive and are occasionally gorgeous; which does rather make one think that Bale’s now legendary tirade against Shane Hurlbut, the Director of Photography, might have been better directed towards whoever programmed the script-writing machines.

Director “McG” … real name Joseph McGinty Nichol … does what he can with the material at hand, and it is certainly a McFeast for the eyes if not the mind but, let’s be fair, his track record doesn’t really suggest he’s quite the man to tease brilliantly persuasive performances out of actors working at their best, since it consists of two hyper-kinetic bubble-gum no-brainer McCharlie’s Angels flicks and a remake of McRevenge of the Nerds … yes, a re-make … ye gods … thank-you, Hollywood, we are not worthy of such magnificence … what’s that? Oh, tragically, the film was cancelled half-shot and will now never see the light of day. I think I may die of disappointment.

Ahem.

Throughout T4, the dialogue (deliberately) echoes T1 and T2, as though the script-writing machines were somehow self-aware that they were simply lashing-together their narrative from the recycled bits-and-bolts of better films. But, all this backward-glancing reminds us how revolutionary and magnificent those films were and how intellectually and emotionally vacant this one is by comparison.

The notion of an American-encompassing war (so-called because the rest of the world doesn’t get so much as a mention, just for a change, like) waged guerrilla-style in the ruins of the old world order, is something we have all experienced first-person through games like Halo and Gears of War; therefore our expectation and experience is so much higher than it was a quarter-century ago when Cameron first had tank-tracks roll over human skulls. This film needs to work harder to engage our interest and disengage our sense of disbelief. Unfortunately, one’s disbelief needs powers of flight to stay suspended when our heroes take refuge in a building in the middle of a flat, featureless desert only to have a fifty-foot-tall multi-ton Transforminator sneak up on them. Ole twinkle-toes Transforminator! But, on the other hand, it does give birth to robot motorbikes which are ultra-cool. I want one!

As for the so-called humans in the film, Christian Bale has taken on the mantle of John Connor and portrays him as completely different from Bruce Wayne. He delivers most of his dialogue at the shout, the rest at the growl, and all of it with a frown … see, no resemblance to The Dark Knight at all! The only point when he breaks his bullet-proof shield of full-on one-dimensional acting is when he almost smiles while delivering the “I’ll be back” line.

Throughout the film, Sam Worthington’s story is much the more engaging and he comes across as more humane. I appreciate that the message the script-writing machines are trying to communicate is that, for Bale, the war against the machines has turned him into a machine, but didn’t Cameron make that point far more succinctly and effectively with the development of Sarah Connor’s character in T2? Yes, I rather think he did.

So, in summary, I’m conflicted about this film. Parts of it are just down-right appalling, while other parts are jaw-droppingly impressive and the whole thing looks gorgeous. Rumours abound that some 40 minutes were cut from the film to stop it running to Watchmen-like lengths and, of course, those rumours further postulate that said 40 minutes may be put back in for the disc release. Don’t hold your breath. I can’t pretend that I’m going to lose sleep waiting for the predicted second and third film in this despite-popular-demand second trilogy of Terminator films but I can say that I predict Shane Hurlbut (here in only his second job as DP) will have a long and lucrative career making indifferent movies look far better than they actually are. They just won't have Christian Bale in them.
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Dir: Joseph McGinty Nichol
Stars: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Bryce Dallas Howard
Dur: 115 mins

Cert: 12A (of course)

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The Hasta La Vista Short-Cut, Baby (600 words).

These days, in the drive to create more and more by-the-numbers action movies, the bottom of their ideas barrel has long been scraped away. So they approach the same old ideas from a slightly different angle. We’ll call this The Wonderful World of Back Story:

Star Wars referred to “The Clone Wars” early on, but we weren’t allowed to see them … until now. Star Trek often made reference to Kirk and Co’s past, but only now do we get to see it. Much was made of Wolverine’s forgotten years … well, they’re forgotten no longer. I imagine plans are a-brewing in the Doctor Who production office at the BBC to finally do something with that oft-teased Time War. And, finally, The Terminator’s war against the machines … glimpsed and hinted-at for twenty-five years is now, finally, here for all to see.

And, do you know what … we’ve seen it all before:

The titles and slow-crawl from the beginning of T1: check.
Helicopter attack from Apocalypse Now: check.
Soldiers creeping through dark factory corridors from Aliens: check.
Human resistance run from a submarine as in The Matrix: check.
Grey, burned-out landscapes from Reign of Fire: check.
Giant robots to steal some thunder from Transformers: check.
Dog-fight in a canyon from ID4 (ironically not a sequel): check.
Motor-bike escape from The Great Escape (yes, really): check.
Make Skynet Central look like Mordor: check.
Christ-like resurrection as in just about every quest movie made since Star Wars: check and check.
Showdown in a foundry with loads of fire, steam and sparks as in T1 and T2: oh yes!

You can almost hear the script-writing machines checking off their wish-list as they assembled this, for want of a more accurate term, script. The special effects, photography and particularly the work done on the sound is exemplary. The visuals are never less than impressive and are occasionally gorgeous; which does rather make one think that Bale’s now legendary tirade against Shane Hurlbut, the Director of Photography, might have been better directed towards whoever programmed the script-writing machines.

Throughout T4, the dialogue (deliberately) echoes T1 and T2, as though the script-writing machines were somehow self-aware that they were simply lashing-together their narrative from the recycled bits-and-bolts of better films. But, all this backward-glancing reminds us how revolutionary and magnificent those films were and how intellectually and emotionally vacant this one is by comparison.

Christian Bale has taken on the mantle of John Connor and portrays him as completely different from Bruce Wayne. He delivers most of his dialogue at the shout, the rest at the growl, and all of it with a frown … see, no resemblance to The Dark Knight at all! The only point when he breaks his bullet-proof shield of full-on one-dimensional acting is when he almost smiles while delivering the “I’ll be back” line.

Throughout the film, Sam Worthington’s story is much the more engaging and he comes across as more humane. I appreciate that the message the script-writing machines are trying to communicate is that, for Bale, the war against the machines has turned him into a machine, but didn’t Cameron make that point far more succinctly and effectively with the development of Sarah Connor’s character in T2?

I can’t pretend that I’m going to lose sleep waiting for the predicted second and third film in this despite-popular-demand second trilogy of Terminator films but I can say that, despite what Christian Bale thinks of him, I predict Shane Hurlbut will have a long and lucrative career making indifferent movies look lovely.

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image © Warner Bros / Columbia

BLU-RAY: VALKYRIE

The Film:

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As you probably already know, this film tells the true story of the conspiracy to assassinate Adolph Hitler during the Second World War … but, the problem is, you probably also know how successful it was. Fair enough, knowing the ending at the beginning didn’t do Titanic (1997) any harm but, with that, the spectacular sinking of the ship was almost incidental to the simpering love-story and the presence of lovely Leo, which drew so many teenage girls to the film and left nary a dry seat in the house.

This historical re-enactment features lots of wrinkly old men in uniforms talking about killing someone of whom the typical GCSE History student has never heard. I can’t imagine that will do much for the Hannah Montana/Twilight crowd, somehow.

As we know, whenever the Americans want to cast boo-hiss bad guys, they look to the Brits; well this film is set in a nation of boo-hiss bad-guys. So they’ve raided every theatre they could to assemble a veritable army of British thesps. All the usual suspects are there: Lord Sir Kenny Branagh (would any depiction of officious cruelty be complete without him?) Dame Bill Nighy (as twitchy as a violin-bow, and about as thin), the dictionary-definition of ubiquity: Tom Wilkinson and none-other than … Eddie Izzard? Oh, okay. Branagh compares Germany to Sodom … a place that is redeemable, if only one good man can be found there. Step forward the towering presence of … Tom Cruise … as Colonel Claus Von Stauffenberg.

I wonder what the Germans make of the Americans attempting to rehabilitate their history entirely with Brits and Yanks (with the single conspicuous exception of Hollywood’s favourite rent-an-Aryan, Thomas Kretschmann)? With any luck, they’ll remake The Great Escape(1963) with the Germans playing the prisoners and Bruno Ganz in the Steve McQueen role, then we can find out how they feel.

The most effective scenes in the film are when we see Hitler himself – played by TV bit-part specialist David Bamber with a stab at a German accent (credit to him, no-one else bothered) because there is actually a real sense of threat as he sits there in his torture-chamber office, surrounded by the twisted freaks of his High Command.

Despite its trappings, this is definitely not a war film. After the first few moments, there are no battle-field scenes at all and, as such, it probably fairly reflects the war as it was experienced by the officers who ran it from behind their desks. So, it isn’t a hot-war film but it isn’t really an effective cold-war conspiracy thriller either because, ultimately, the suspense evaporates through our knowing more than the characters do. Worse, we simply don’t care about them because they are, without exception, stiff-necked, officious, middle-aged nazis. Grey people with grey morals in grey uniforms.

Clearly, director Singer and Co’s intention was to inform the world that there was resistance within the German elite. But, since we know their endeavours were futile and since we can’t care about any of them as people – because they are all one-dimensional soldiers – then this knowledge seems hollow and insignificant.

Maybe if Stauffenberg’s family weren’t side-lined so quickly by the film, maybe if we’d seen events from the perspective of the women and the children who were not responsible for the self-inflicted plight Germany was facing in the dying months of the war, maybe then we might have given a damn.

Maybe Singer should have funded the production of a proper documentary about Stauffenberg and got Cruise to narrate it, then he could have spent two years getting back to what he does best – making efficient, grow-up movies that do know which genre they occupy.

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The Disc:

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The short-comings of the film itself are more than compensated-for by the cornucopia of extras presented on the disc which are a pretty-exhaustive lesson in the reality of The Conspiracy.

Firstly, we have TWO entirely worthwhile audio commentaries:

Commentary One: Cruise / Singer /McQuarrie

This, in-keeping with the tone of all the extras, is a serious and collaborative commentary. It doesn’t fall into the sycophantic “Oh, he’s wonderful … she’s amazing” habit that many commentaries do, instead it’s all about the truth of the conspiracy and the efforts to retain that truth in the film-making process. Interestingly, Cruise views the film, at this point, from his perspective as the producer rather than as the actor.

Commentary Two: McQuarrie / Nathan Alexander

I love writer commentaries! I particularly love collaborative ones, where writers discuss the sculpting of a script, the moulding and remoulding to find the shape we now have. Here, they both talk about the truths behind the elements they included and discuss some of the elements they elected to leave out. Fascinating.

The Journey to Valkyrie – 16 mins

As with everything else on this disc, this documentary is more serious-minded and detailed than the usual making-of puff-pieces you can sometimes get on the more lazily-prepared discs. Say what you like about Cruise, no one will ever charge him with being lazy and, appropriately, there’s nothing lazy about this disc.

The documentary points out that Singer has dallied with war films in the past – given the background of Apt Pupil (1998) and the opening moments of X-Men (2000) but they weren’t war films and this isn’t either.

As you would expect, everyone sucks up to Cruise. I don’t know, maybe he genuinely does inspire and deserve this depth of affection and fealty in those he meets in person but for those of us who’ve never fallen under his spell, it still feels vaguely distasteful and deeply suspect.

For example, they do discuss the well-publicised problems that the production had when shooting in Berlin, but don’t even approach addressing the press’ allegations that this was because of Cruise’s religion. Inevitably, there’s no mention at all of the ‘S’ word … but then, the press stories could well be a lie, in which case - why should his religion be a matter of discussion? Well, because something that exists in the popular imagination needs addressing especially if it’s wrong. This isn’t.

All the behind-the-scenes interviews talk of their striving for authenticity – and the effort they went to is genuinely impressive – but, once again, the elephant in the room is the absence of German voices in the film. All that authenticity is completely undermined by the British and American cast.

The Road to Resistance – 9 mins

This guide to the real locations used in the film begins by reiterating the point which is made several times on this disc – that all Germans were not Nazis. They didn’t all join Hitler’s party, they didn’t all believe in his politics.

Point made, we have a brief travelogue, rather like something you might expect to see as a package on a magazine programme, where Stauffenberg’s grand-son gives us a guided tour of some of the real rooms The Conspirators met in, some of which are now museums, some of which the film actually used.

The point this short makes again and again is about how important it was for Berliners that this story be told right. Which brings me back, again and again, to my problem with them using Brits and an A-list American rather than genuine Germans. Surely, if they were so committed to the story, they wouldn’t worry about trying to turn it into summer block-buster and would have made it in German!

The African Front Sequence – 7 mins

This concentrates on the brief battle scenes at the film’s beginning, which I was amused to see were shot in The Mojave Desert (“Which look more like Tunisia than any place on Earth … except maybe Tunisia!”). This is ultimately about explosions, but has its place.

Taking to the Air – 7.30 mins

This short talks about the use of real vintage aeroplanes in the film’s opening moments, rather than the expected CGI planes added afterwards. Blah-blah-authenticity. Thing is … CGI is inevitably cheaper, so why did they go to all the time and trouble? Well, when you see trained-pilot Cruise actually landing one of the vintage Junkers and then walking around with a grin a mile wide, it all becomes clear … they were toys for Tom to play with. Bless.

Recreating Berlin – 7 mins

Part of the reason this film comes across as quite so cold and stark is because of the architecture and locations … which are, as often as not, genuine. The very walls around the actors exude the chilly reality of the period.

The film-makers admit that shooting in Berlin (rather than further East in the tax-advantageous ex-Soviet countries) cost more … but we already know why they made their decision.

Singer talks about how determined he was for his film to not look black and white but be vibrant with colour. I just wish he’d told his colour-grading staff that, because the film they produced is a subtle mix of blue, grey and green with the occasional shock of a red flag. Brrr.

The Valkyrie Legacy – 115 mins

The disc’s real surprise is this almost-two-hour film by prodigious making-of documentarian, Kevin Burns, which is hardly referred to on the packaging but is, in some ways, better argued than the case made in the main film itself.

Being an American documentary, it does feel the need to have music playing perpetually in the background because American documentarians seem to think that their viewers are incapable understanding verbal communication without a piece of music underscoring it to tell them how to feel about it.

Never-the-less, the film maintains a dispassionate tone and concentrates on the facts of the period, explaining the wider perspective of how Hitler came to power and why some of his own citizens might want him dead. Thankfully, it uses subtitles rather than dubbing the interviewees (another technique American documentaries are, unfortunately, likely to employ) and is altogether far more grown-up than the documentary channels of satellite TV have taught me to expect American documentaries to be.

This feature-length extra is better than the main feature and is the most compelling reason to buy this feature-packed disc.

92nd Street Y: Reel Pieces.

This is an on-stage interview between the 92nd Street Y Cultural Centre’s Annette Insdorf and Tom Cruise and Bryan Singer. Although Dr. Insdorf is clearly in the thrall of Cruise and directs the lamest of questions at him, as often as not Singer answers them.

As with everything else on this disc, the discussion does strive to be serous, with references to Truffaut establishing a certain level of cred.

In the interview, Singer makes the point that it was important to the real Conspirators – because they believed it would be important to Germany - that Hitler be brought to book by Germans. Well, surely, if that was the case, if they are truly honouring the memory of those conspirators … they’d have allowed Germans to be in their film.

Alright, point made. I’ll get off me soap-box now.

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And, if you really need everything spoon-fed to you, I give this a Cellulord Rating of: Film: CC Disc: CCCC

Dir: Bryan Singer.
Stars: Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Tom Wilkinson.
Dur: 121 mins

Cert: 12A

BLU-RAY: THE WRESTLER

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The Film:

Darren Aronofsky is a director who isn’t scared to take risks. Hiring Mickey Rourke, when no one else would take his calls, that was a risk. It resulted in his promised budget evaporating to just $6 million.

Consequently, the aesthetic of The Wrestler is that of the cinema verité documentary, all hand-held-cameras and available-light in existing locations rather than beautifully-lit custom-built sets. Mixing real people in with the actors, that’s always a risk, because that can go either way. The set-piece scenes seem thrown hap-hazardly together as though the film were being assembled on the fly. Turns out a lot of it was. Now that’s very risky!

We spend an inordinate amount of time behind Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson (Mickey Rourke, on career-best form) as he stomps, huffing and puffing down poorly lit corridors. When he talks, his expressions range from pained to confused to just plain depressed and he genuinely seems to have no idea what he’s going to say next, which is, let’s face it, the defining characteristic of anyone not reading from a script. In fact, the only thing that this film lacks to make it a real documentary bio-pic is Nick Bloomfield deliberately getting himself in shot as much as possible.

No, unlike Mr Bloomfield, both Aronofsky and Rourke demonstrate an almost painful lack of vanity in this project. When Ram tells his daughter “I'm an old broken down piece of meat and I deserve to be all alone. I just don’t want you to hate me”, tears roll down his rough red-raw cheeks and you feel as though it is Rourke himself speaking to us, the viewers, from the heart.

Then we come to the careworn flower of Cassidy, as played by Marisa Tomei. Like Randy, she takes her clothes off to entertain others. She, like him, performs under a pseudonym. Their key connection is that they have both seen better days. Tomei, like Rourke, is perfectly cast. These are roles which have been waiting for these performers to be ready for them, which helps you see through the clichéd nature of the story because, after all, clichés are clichés for a reason … mostly because they are recognisable as truth!

I wonder, when he signed on the line, if Mickey Rourke knew quite what he was letting himself in for. Did he, in his heart, think this was his big shot at an Oscar? If nothing else, The Wrestler has offered Mickey Rourke the chance to successfully demonstrate to a cynical world that he really is the fighter he has always believed himself to be.

All of which brings us to the fight scenes themselves. These are clearly hard work for Rourke (who is now well into his fifties, let us not forget) but then that just adds to our empathy with the suffering of Ram.

But the film isn’t about the fighting, it’s about the fighters and we particularly feel for them during the rightly notorious ‘Hardcore Deathmatch’, where the combatants hit each-other with furniture and various house-hold implements, most of which are wrapped in barbed–wire.

This sequence is quite shockingly brutal. There is considerable bloodletting, reminding us of the visual and metaphorical similarity between fighters and raw-meat. What we have is the reality of the WWE-type pantomime we happily let our kids watch on TV. This is the brutality that exists one-step away from the TV cameras. These are the gladiators who are, quite literally, being sacrificed for our entertainment.

The Disc:

You get the film in dizzying 2.35 wide screen but I must mention that, being as it was shot under documentary conditions, it doesn’t really benefit all that much from the hi-def of Blu-Ray. The extras included aren’t numerous, but they are telling …

Within The Ring – 43 mins. A no-nonsense ‘making of’ made by Niko Tavernise, the stills photographer on the main film. It’s a genuine, honest behind-the-scenes document similar, in some ways, to Vivian Kubrick’s Making The Shining.

It features talking-head interviews with film-makers for whom the gloss of show-biz has worn off. They don’t want to maintain the pretence of glamour. They want to talk about shooting a film with no money in the depths of winter on New Jersey.

The real-life wrestlers who feature in the film are all erudite and softly spoken, in their tights and tattoos. “Necro Butcher” (sic) comes across as an affable sort of chap who will likely have a career in after-dinner speaking when he’s too rickety to be jumping off ladders onto people’s heads.

The main impression you get from watching this documentary is how important the subject of wrestling is to Aronofsky who, as a child, went to many matches with his dad. Film-making at this level should be personal and it should be passionate.

And speaking of passionate:

Mickey Rourke Interview – 15 mins. Rourke gave so many painfully honest interviews during The Wrestler’s extraordinary awards season that there’s very little in this one that’ll come as news but, as with all those interviews, he is shamelessly honest.

He talks about rewriting some of the key dialogue to make it more personal and then ruminates, quite movingly, on the lives of real sports people who, once their routine and career is over, are lost souls. Well, every moment of this disc tells you that Mickey Rourke’s soul is found.

And for those with attention-spans so short they can’t even be arsed to read the review – I give this a Cellulord Rating of: CCCCC

Directed by: Darren Aronofsky.

Written by: Robert Siegel.

Starring: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood and John D’Leo.

Cert: 15

Dur: 109 mins

Images © Optimum Releasing in the UK.

ANGELS & DEMONS

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Full-size cathedral version (1,200 words)

“What a relief, the symbologist is here!”

- Stellan Skarsgård's Commander Richter

Even as the plenitude of corporate logos are appearing at the very beginning of this film, the music – by Hans Zimmer – is telling us that this is going to be a huge, important, MASSIVE experience! Then we hear the male-voice choirs - à la Miklós Rózsa’s Ben-Hur (1959) and King of Kings (1961) – and we realise we are being told that this isn’t just an epic … it’s a Biblical epic!!

But no, no dimple-chinned Americans in togas and sandals here. As anyone who’s slid effortless through Dan Brown’s book will know, it addresses the Religion versus Science dilemma in a very modern setting (and, as such, should really be called Angels and Antimatter, I suppose). Director, Ron Howard addresses this binary opposition early-on, very succinctly, through a simple lap-dissolve from a communion wafer to the entrance of CERN, connecting and contrasting them in a simple, elegant stroke that shows just what a skilled, mature film-maker little Ritchie Cunningham has evolved into.

Although CERN, Europe’s premier mad-professor-emporium, plays a far greater role in the book than in this film, the immense amount of publicity that was generated earlier this year by the Large Hadron Collider’s brief cough and splutter of life was, if you’ll pardon the pun, a God-send for this film. For that matter, Pope John Paul’s shuffling off this mortal coil so recently will have reminded a whole new generation of the process of replacing Popes. It’s fair to say this film has found its moment.

Story-wise, it’s a race against time as the apotheosis of Science – the creation of Antimatter – threatens to destroy the capitol city of the Catholic Religion on the day that its Cardinals are voting for a new Pope. Hanks’ Langdon is brought in for … well, no clearly discernible reason … but proves invaluable since he’s seemingly the only person in Rome who understands the place and, fortunately, is completely indestructible, as his escape from many implausible certain deaths clearly attests.

One has to give credit to Howard and his crew for the visual exuberance of this film, a lot of work has been put to good purpose finding and fabricating stand-ins for the Vatican City locations (I don’t imagine the Catholic hierarchy will have welcomed them in with open arms after all-but declaring war on them over The Da Vinci Code – 2006). I can hardly think of a more picturesque locale for a film about running around and shouting.

The book is a really quite interesting alternative-travelogue, delving into the reasons that the Vatican City and the capital city around it evolved, drawing into play the personalities, beliefs and conspiracies of the Artisans and Architects (ooh, there’s another alternative title) who built it. The film ejects all but the barest bones of that and concentrates on the running and shouting.

Never-the-less, Hanks and Howard are old hands at this and bring a real lightness of touch and even a wry sense of humour to events. The former manages to make a hair’s-breadth escape from certain death in a library (yes, really) delightfully funny through his mime acting (it’s easy, these days, to forget that he spent the first ten-or-fifteen years of his career as a comedian); while the latter even finds time for a few moments of subtle commentary … such as the wonderfully humanising moment when all the cardinals are handing over their mobiles and cigarette packets before entering Conclave; or a close-up of a tea strainer being squeezed by the bad-guy, which deliberately reminds one of censers used by the bishops in their ceremonies; or the cutaway which shows the perfect, alabaster skin of a devotional statue whose pious, peaceful face melts away in a fire, to reveal the rough-hewn stone beneath. In all the decedent splendour of Rome, it is worth remembering that even the saints have feet of clay.

But all of this subtlety and nuance is undermined every time Hanks et al open their mouths. For the film’s first thirty minutes or so, they rarely speak save to tell each other things they already know, purely for the audience’s benefit, and the plethora of historical terms they employ are always followed by a word or twelve of explanation. Seriously, guys, I didn’t need twice telling that The Preferiti are the preferred candidates for Popedom. It’s kinda obvious.

Equally obvious is why they persuaded Ewan MacGregor to get off his motorbike and back onto a film-set to play the Camerlengo, the man who is caretaker of The Church in-between Popes (as they explained to us several times), because he radiates pious, wide-eyed innocence convincingly, even if his supposedly Irish accent was a tad cosmopolitan.

With the CERN scenes mostly missing, Langdon’s companion, Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer) serves no purpose at all, save that of, say, a Doctor Who companion; namely to be the sounding-board to whom the know-it-all protagonist patiently explains everything, so that we, the audience, can feel like we’re still in the loop.

And yet, ironically, there are so many things that are only partly explained. Where the book could develop tension and had the time to explain in great detail the intricacies of the conspiracies, here we have little time, so the explanations are incomplete, the leaps of logic Langdon makes are inexplicable and , with the cat-and-mouse game ranging all over Rome, the film lacks focus. Maybe they should have played a little faster and looser with the novel’s text, carefully filleted out some of the layers of conspiracy and concentrated all their attention on the Vatican itself. Maybe that would have made it a more successful, more satisfying adaptation.

So, all in all, I feel this film is more successful as a piece of cinema than The Da Vinci Code was, possibly because it lacks the weight of expectation and reverence that film bore; but, ultimately, Angels & Demons is a less satisfying yarn than the novel on which it is based.

You see, the script only works intermittently because it is written by one of the patchiest genre script-writers working in Hollywood today, David Koepp (The Shadow - 1994 - and Jurassic Park: The Lost World – 1997 - both excellent, Snake Eyes - 1998 - War of the Worlds - 2005 - both shockingly poor) teamed with Akiva Goldsman, a man who should have a restraining order keeping him at least one hundred yards away from any kind of word-processing equipment. He it was who inflicted the legendarily awful Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) on us and he it is who bears sole responsibility for the atrocity that was (shudder) Lost In Space (1998). When it comes to the inevitable film version of The Lost Symbol, the new Dan Brown / Robert Langdon adventure, please, please, please leave these guys at home unravelling a ball of wool and get a Steven Zaillian or a Frank Darabont on board, y'know, someone who's proven they can adapt. Prosecution rests, m’lud.

Dir: Ron Howard

Stars: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgård, Ayelet Zurer

Dur: 138 mins

Cert; 12A

More modest parish church version ( 500 words)

Anyone who’s slid effortless through Dan Brown’s book Angels & Demons, will know it addresses the Religion versus Science dilemma in a very modern setting (and, as such, should really be called Angels and Antimatter, I suppose).

Story-wise, it’s a race against time as the apotheosis of Science – the creation of Antimatter – threatens to destroy the capitol city of the Catholic Religion on the day that its Cardinals are voting for a new Pope. Hanks’ Langdon is brought in for … well, no clearly discernible reason … but proves invaluable since he’s seemingly the only person in Rome who understands the place.

One has to give credit to Howard and his crew for the visual exuberance of this film, a lot of work has been put to good purpose finding and fabricating stand-ins for the Vatican City locations. I can hardly think of a more picturesque locale for a film about running around and shouting.

Hanks and Howard are old hands at this and bring a real lightness of touch and even a wry sense of humour to events. For example, they make a hair’s-breadth escape from certain death in a library (yes, really) delightfully funny through Hanks’ mime acting (it’s easy, these days, to forget that he spent the first ten-or-fifteen years of his career as a comedian).

The problems arise every time Hanks et al open their mouths. They rarely speak save to tell each other things they already know, purely for the audience’s benefit, and the plethora of historical terms they employ are always followed by a word or twelve of explanation. Seriously, guys, I didn’t need twice telling that The Preferiti are the preferred candidates for Popedom. It’s kinda obvious.

Ironically, there are so many things that are only partly explained. Where the book could develop tension and had the time to explain in great detail the intricacies of the conspiracies, here we have little time, so the explanations are incomplete, the leaps of logic Langdon makes are inexplicable and , with the cat-and-mouse game ranging all over Rome, the film lacks focus.

You see, the script only works intermittently because it is written by one of the patchiest genre script-writers working in Hollywood today, David Koepp (Jurassic Park: The Lost World – 1997 - excellent, War of the Worlds - 2005 - shockingly poor) teamed with Akiva Goldsman, a man who should have a restraining order keeping him at least one hundred yards away from any kind of word-processing equipment. He it was who inflicted the legendarily awful Batman Forever (1995) and Batman and Robin (1997) on us and he it is who bears sole responsibility for the atrocity that was (shudder) Lost In Space (1998). When it comes to the inevitable film version of The Lost Symbol, the new Dan Brown / Robert Langdon adventure, please, please, please leave these guys at home unravelling a ball of wool and get a Steven Zaillian or a Frank Darabont on board, y'know, someone who's proven they can adapt. Prosecution rests, m’lud.

STAR TREK

The Writer’s Cut (1,500 words):

Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born in, of course, the middle of an interstellar fire-fight.

The original Star Trek telly programme has always been a bit of an oddity. Almost uniquely among SF TV (at least until quite recently) it’s a show that has always attracted female fans. By which I don’t mean beer-swilling would-be-boys with breasts or timid, transparent teenagers with no friends … I mean women with lives and families and, presumably, lots of better things to do.

I’ve seen them at Star Trek conventions, dressed in Star Fleet uniforms, with their normal looking families in tow. I’ve been to many different types of cons … Eastercons, Comic Cons, Anime Cons, Dr Who cons, a Worldcon … and I’ve never seen noticeable numbers of families anywhere … except Star Trek cons.

In-keeping with that, the release of the new Star Trek movie has generated a palpable buzz of excitement among civilian women and among people who, ordinarily, don’t get excited about films. There’s just something about Star Trek that has got under the skin of normal, healthy, well-balanced people.

I suspect this isn’t because J.J. Abrams has promised to thoroughly ‘re-boot’ the franchise, it isn’t because they all went to see MI:III (2006) and so are expecting something equally kinetic, it isn’t because of the vast sums that Paramount has spent on marketing the movie … it’s purely because it’s Star Trek.

So, what has Jeff served up for us? Well, not inappropriately, Star Trek starts right at the beginning of something big … an anomaly is opening up, a giant multi-coloured storm-cloud in space. Now, you’d think Star Fleet would recognise a worm-hole when they see one, but no, and out of this gaping hole in space-time heaves a gigantic spaceship, one part V’Ger to two parts Babylon 5 Shadow Ship.

It seemingly doesn’t come in peace as there promptly ensues a lot of explosions and the sort of crash-zoom wobbly-camera-work that has been the signature of Battlestar Galactica’s space-born battles.

Meanwhile, as with any canny film-maker, Abrams contrasts this story of rending steel and flashing phasers with a human story. Within the spiralling innards of the USS Kelvin, George Kirk has to take command of the ship during its death-throes while his wife, Winona, is giving birth to their son who will, surprisingly, be named James. The adult Kirk is very much his son’s father, he makes the decision his son will make sixty-odd years in the future (at the beginning of the film Generations – 1994 - confused yet? I am. But then prequels do that to me …) he opts to put his navy’s interests before his own.

So, typically for protagonists in films like this, young James grows up without a father. We see this in just one scene – the one featured in the trailer with him stealing a car. An extraordinary moment, designed to give Star Trek ‘cred’ in its opening moments with high-octane editing all set to the pounding guitars of The Beastie Boys’ Sabotage.

Where Kirk’s mother is called Winona, half a universe away on Vulcan, Spock’s mother is played by Winona. Winona Ryder. An odd choice to play Spock’s mum since she is only six years older than Zachary Quinto. Not sure if that was just one of the in-jokes that pepper the film. The ones that definitely are in-jokes are all dealt with with a very light touch throughout the film. For example, when the crew of the Enterprise make planet-fall, the first person to die is wearing red. This isn’t dwelled upon, it’s just there for you to notice or not. And, if you don’t know why that’s a Trek in-joke, that’s fine, you don’t need to.

Then we fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it - the first of several he'll lose during the film - on his way to picking up the Rick Deckard belt for film's finest fumbling fist-fighter) and bumping in to Commander Pike who points out that his reckless, rudderless lifestyle is a waste of potential: “You like being the only genius-level repeat offender!” Pike then dares Kirk to join Star Fleet and be a better officer than his father was, knowing full well that, like his father, Jim couldn’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.

Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Quinto, can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.

So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana), reappears and wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.

Ignoring the cheap, nasty product-placement. Ignoring the fact that the music eschews all the themes that we know and love in favour of a score which just rumbles along largely unnoticed. Ignoring the fact that no one thinks to ask “So where exactly has Nero been hiding for the last twenty-five years?” Ignoring the fact that Spock having Kirk ejected from the ship, rather than throwing him into the brig, is just flat-out illogical. Ignoring all that - this film barrels along at break-neck pace. Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat.

The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan Noonien Singh are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!

As can the audience. We get slapstick, snogging, melodrama, swearing, chaotic action sequences, over-lapping dialogue, loads of wobbly camerawork, tasteful lens-flare, terrible hair-cuts and no time to think about anything we’ve just seen.

The major action set-pieces are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight all inter-cut with earthquakes, explosions and rescues. And it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.

This hysterical sense of pace carries you through the experience with your disbelief duly suspended. Only in the plot-line involving a major figure from the past/future and a pretty sizeable bright red maguffin (which no one troubles to explain) does the film lose it’s way. But only for a few moments. Otherwise, what great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.

There has been much debate among the fans, during the years of pre-release hype, about whether or not this film would conform to the ‘rules’ already known; whether it would, in other words, be cannon. Well, it isn’t. Not really. But the characters openly discuss the multi-verse theory and state that they appear to have branched off onto an alternate path. So this film is set up to launch a whole new alternative universe cannon wherein … well, literally anything goes! No foregone conclusions now, no sacred cows. It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.

Dir: Jeffrey J. Abrams
Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Simon Pegg.
Dur: 126 mins
Cert: 12A

The Short Cut (500 words):

Where’s Captain Kirk? Well, as this new Star Trek ‘prequel’ begins, he’s being born, in the middle of a fire-fight.

Fast-forward to grown-up Jim, aged twenty-two, played now by Chris Pine, picking a bar-fight (and losing it) and bumping in to Commander Pike who dares Kirk to join Star Fleet, knowing full well that he can’t possibly refuse a dare. So he’s in.

Fast-forward again and, in his graduation year, Kirk divides his time between trying to seduce Uhura (Zoe Saldana), developing a real antipathy for Spock (who, as played by Zachary Quinto can make the line “Live long and prosper” sound like a threat) and cheating on the Kobayashi Maru Test.

So, within fifteen or twenty minutes of screen-time, the Star Trek universe has been re-established on a slight kilter to what long-term fans already know; and the major players are being assembled, including a hypochondriac McCoy (Carl Urban), a barely legible Chekov (Anton Yelchin), a frankly arrogant Sulu (John Cho) and a played-just-for-laughs Scotty (Simon Pegg). All just in time to take their part in a cannon-altering adventure as the rebel Romulan, Nero (Eric Bana) wages war. Kirk goes from stowaway to first officer, Spock is made captain and the eyebrow raises … to just the right angle! Fascinating.

The characters we know don’t need much introduction. The characters we don’t simply don’t get any. Nero is only loosely sketched out as a villain, so his obvious similarities to Khan are never over-come. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that the whole film is very much modelled on The Wrath of Khan (1982). Abrams has shaken up the Star Trek universe with the same wonderfully irreverent attitude that Nicholas Meyer brought to the director’s chair. Both film makers have shown that Trek is not, as many fans wrongly think, holy writ carved in stone, it is a robust and fascinating set of toys with which a good, ambitious, talented film-maker can have a lot of fun!

Abrams burns through set-pieces, hurtling from incident to incident so fast that you can feel the g-force even as you sit there in your cinema seat. The major action set-pieces here are just barmy. There’s no other word for it. A parachute drop into a planet’s atmosphere segues into a simultaneous sword-fight and fist fight and it all takes place in less time than this description took to type.

What great Star Trek moments there are here to enjoy. My personal favourite being the Enterprise rising majestically out of Saturn’s rings … a moment that immediately took me back to The Mutara Nebula, James Horner’s screaming brass and Ricardo Montalban’s huge, shiny man-boobs. Absolute bliss. There is just something deeply, fundamentally satisfying in seeing that big, clumsy, stupid-looking spaceship dropping out of warp, all guns blazing.

It is a whole new Star Trek for a whole new generation and for that, Abrams has to be congratulated … he has taken on the big, unwieldy beast of Star Trek and boldly gone where blah-blah-blah, yacketty-schmacketty.