Rio Rancho Film Reviews: Danny Boyle

Films of the Decade: Science-Fiction

Thursday, March 25, 2010

It hasn’t been a particularly great decade for science fiction. The Star Wars series limped along, the Matrix trilogy imploded and both Star Trek and Avatar were colossal disappointments. Despite this, a few films came along to brighten the gloomy skies.

Top Five Sci-Fi Films

5. District 9

The first half of District 9 is an interesting take on racism and intolerance and the second half is a no holds barred action movie. The two sides of the movie could have perhaps been blended together better (a la RoboCop), but it’s still a wonderfully realised movie.

4. Moon

A fantastic old-fashioned science fiction film that brings back memories of films like 2001, Silent Running and Alien. The film has a very real, physical feel. It’s a world that you can reach out and touch – it’s a great move to use lots of physical effects. It’s also a film that plugs into corporate and technological paranoia. Will technology set us free or will it enslave us? The ending is perhaps too glib but it’s an amazingly powerful and thoughtful film.

3. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

Up until the final sequence, A.I. is an excellent movie – dark and strange, it has the heart that is sometimes lacking in science fiction films. But the final few minutes descend into sludge. However, this is easily forgotten when you can enjoy the exploits of sex bots and suicidal boy robots. The scene where the mother abandons her android child in favour of her toolish son is wonderfully done.

2. Sunshine

If it weren’t for the highly formulaic final act, Sunshine would actually be one of the best sci-fi films of all time, instead of just one of the best of the decade. What precedes it is so imaginative and so gripping that you can’t help but be disappointed to see it turn into some horror nonsense. But the scene where the astronauts have to fix the heat shield is easily one of the best of the decade.

1. Children of Men

A gritty apocalyptic science fiction fable about the collapse of civilisation after the female population becomes infertile. Filmed in long takes and with lots of sudden violence, it’s a scary look at a slow rot of an apocalypse. Humanity here will not destroy itself over night. It’ll just violently limp on for a few decades before going out with a whimper. Of course the right place to set this film is Britain. Only us British could try and establish some sort of normality and order in the face of humanity’s extinction. Right to the end we shall be moaning and queuing. But Theo’s heroic, selfless effort to preserve a single piece of hope and innocence in this apocalyptic wasteland gives the film its power and beauty.

Five Worst Sci-Fi Films

5. Signs

The creepy atmosphere that’s generated is immediately ruined by the fact that a bunch of aliens who are allergic to water decide to invade a planet rich with the stuff and not wear suits. Never mind a glass of water, what would have happened if it had rained? ‘We’re baddasses! We’re badasses! Wait a minute, what’s that? Oh, bugger, I knew I’d forgotten something…’ Plus would the existence of psycho aliens really help you rediscover your faith in god? It’s doubtful.

4. Planet of the Apes

A bland hero. An ending that defies logic. Burton’s film is a colossal failure. The only bright spot in an otherwise dismal film is the make-up, but that’s hardly a reason to watch it.

3. Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith

Attack of the Clones was a piece of shit, but Revenge of the Sith was even worse. Basically we find out that Vader didn’t become evil because of some sort of complicated inner conflict. No, he became bad because he was a weak-minded emo. ‘How could this happen to me? I’ve made my mistakes. Got nowhere to run, the night goes on.’ Noooooooooo!

2. AVP: Aliens vs. Predator

As a teenager I thought there would be nothing cooler than an Aliens vs. Predator film. How wrong I was. Paul W.S. Anderson manages to both piss and shit in the mouth of two science fiction franchises. Well done, sir!

1. Mission to Mars

An incompetent attempt at making a modern 2001. It removes the mystery and complexity of Kubrick’s film and adds boring action sequences and awful CGI – the Martians look ridiculous. Plus Gary Sinise goes through the whole film seemingly wearing eyeliner, making him look like a square-jawed, pointy-eared Robert Smith.

Danny Boyle

Films of the Decade: Horror

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Torture movies, zombies and vampires came to dominate the horror genre this decade, taking over from the teen slasher films that were in vogue at the end of the 90s. While the zombie trend was pleasing, producing a handful of decent films, the torture movies produced the Saw franchise and a couple of Hostel flicks. These films tried so hard but achieved so little. When it’s all there on the screen and no time has been taken to develop characters with more than one dimension, it’s hard to feel anything but contempt.

Top Five Horror

5. From Hell

The accents are terrible and Heather Graham is woefully miscast as an Irish prostitute, but From Hell is still an excellent film. The photography, the set design and the atmosphere are incredible, and Ian Holm is superb as the Ripper. His performance (along with Robbie Coltrane’s) manages to erase the syrupy ending and some of the less successful performances.

4. The Mist

A great idea magnificently executed – a mysterious mist descends upon a town and a group of people hole up in a supermarket; bugs then emerge from the fog and attack. What follows is a test of nerves and spirit – some of the group descend into aggressive religiosity while others try to rationally find a solution to their predicament. It’s yet another horror film that shows that people are the biggest monsters of all. Oh, and the bleak ending is a killer.

3. 28 Days Later

There are many reasons why 28 Days Later shouldn’t be as successful as it is – some clunky writing and shaky performances being the main examples – but somehow the whole film comes together as a marvellous whole. It’s gritty, it’s frightening and it has characters you care about. It’s the work of one of Britain’s most versatile directors firing on all cylinders.

2. Let the Right One In

Fuck Edward and Bella in their nubile, little arses. Let the Right One In is the vampire film of the decade. About a young boy who unknowingly befriends a bloodsucker, it manages to juggle sweetness, humour and horror with expert skill.

1. Audition

Audition is a slow burner. It begins as the rather sedate story of a widower looking for a new bride. With the help of a filmmaker friend, the man sets up a series of ‘auditions’. Through this he finds a beautiful young woman. However, she’s very quiet. She seems like she’s holding something back. Not giving a damn about this, the widower falls in love with her, not realising that she’s the sort of woman who likes to keep men in sacks. There then follows an excruciating torture sequence. Pitch black with lots of twisted psychology, it works on all sorts of levels that films like Saw and Hostel could only dream of.

Five Worst Horror

5. The Cell

I guess to enjoy this film you need to like the visuals, so integral are they to the fabric of the film. Personally, I thought they were awful. It was like watching a Madonna video that went on for a couple of hours. All the attempts to be kinky and edgy are more amusing than chilling. And then the clichéd ways that try to add depth to the killer. Oh no, he was abused. Oh yes, there is a little bit of good in him but he’s too damaged. Maybe if it didn’t feel like you were watching MTV and if the lead was a better actress than J-Lo and if you didn’t have the silly virtual reality concept and if you genuinely explored the fractured mind of a psychopath without silly gimmicks and music video visuals, then you could have a decent film on your hands. As it stands it’s a pretty shitty entry in the serial killer canon.

4. Saw

A cheap knock off of Seven that spawned a monster of a franchise. The film, quite simply, is awful. Camp and hysterical, it’s so overripe that even the most horrific scenarios are rich with humour. Just take the scene where Cary Elwes has to hack his own leg off. It’s a laugh riot (‘You have to die. I’m sowwy. My family’). And then you have Danny Glover running about and shouting like a lunatic, and a villain who seems remarkably indestructible for a cancer patient. None of it is believable and none of it is scary.

3. The Happening

Another so-called horror film that plays as a comedy. People suddenly start killing themselves for no reason. My favourite is when a man lies down so that a lawnmower can run over him. Hil-arious. But again it’s another M Night film with a moronic twist. So what caused this? Twas the trees. Quick, run away! Catch a rocketship to Mars! The leaves! The branches! The horrible, fucking branches! Oh how we’ve raped Mother Nature. We’re paying for it now with hair pins in the neck and lawnmowers on the back. We’re sorry for the polar ice caps!

2. Hostel

Horny American teenagers with no brains turn up at a hostel expecting to get snatch aplenty and then get tortured to death by sadistic businessmen. The film has no suspense and no terror, and that’s because the characters are all so irredeemably stupid. So when they eventually get abused, it’s hard to care or to feel frightened for them. It’s just graphic violence for the sake of graphic violence, and as a consequence the film is deathly dull.

1. Dreamcatcher

An anal obsessed horror film that features yet more aliens that want to explore our buttholes. But even though it must be terrible to sit on a toilet and have a gen-u-ine alien burst from your colon, must it really look like a teeth-filled vagina worm? Is the film trying to say something as the alien worm munches on the cock of a urinating man? Is it an anti-gay polemic (most of the men in the film seem obsessed with their privates, keep away from women and like to write the names of boys in the snow as they piss – are the alien vagina worms annoyed that these men will never procreate)? Or is it just a dumb, nonsensical, trashy, splatter fest? It’s probably the latter. Oh and did I mention that one of the lead characters gets possessed by an alien and then suddenly begins talking with a posh English accent? Yes, because that’s what you fucking do when you get possessed by a motherfucking alien. You start talking like Prince Charles! Aaaargghh! [head explodes]

Danny Boyle

Slumdog Millionaire

Thursday, June 04, 2009

It’s kind of strange that Slumdog Millionaire was marketed as a feelgood movie. Yes, it has a fairytale ending, but it’s a story filled with violence and misery. There’s a lot of shit to crawl through.

At one point the film takes this literally. There’s a scene where the hero, Jamal, has to wade through loads of excrement in order to meet a film idol of his. With poo dripping off him, he’s the one person who manages to get an autograph. I’m guessing the movie star admired his determination.

And it’s Jamal’s determination to hold onto his dream that allows him to overcome all the obstacles that face him. He won’t let anyone get in his way.

Of course, as in most ‘feelgood’ movies, the dream is a beautiful girl. Jamal is obsessed with Latika, and throughout the movie we see his mind flash to a recurring image of her standing at a train station and smiling up at him. He plays it over and over in his head. Getting the girl is all that matters to him.

Even fame and wealth don’t matter. But in a curious twist of fate, Jamal ends up on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? – it’s his final attempt to win over the woman he loves.

And the game show is an excellent framing device for the movie. At first I was concerned that it might be too gimmicky or just plain dull. How interesting can a game show be? But instead it works superbly, serving as an imaginative way of telling the character’s life. All the questions and all the answers somehow reveal something more about the man.

Another concern I had about the framing device was the fact that the film begins with Jamal’s torture for doing so well on the game show. Therefore, knowing that he’d got the questions right, the game show scenes would have little tension. But thankfully the filmmakers have a couple of tricks up their sleeve.

The first trick concerns the game show host. At one point, when Jamal is in the bathroom, he gives Jamal the answer for a particularly tough question. Is the game show host helping him or trying to screw him? We already know that Jamal gets the question right, but we don’t know whether he goes with the TV personality or against him. As it turns out, the game show host is pissed off with the fact that Jamal may become a bigger star than him and tries to fuck him over. Thankfully Jamal trusts his instincts and ignores the host.

Before I go on, I must point out how annoying the game show host. He’s a right smug bastard. But he’s annoying in a good way. He helps us identify with Jamal even more – we want him to beat his smarmy sparring partner and go home a rich man. And all the casual insults and mentions of him being a ‘chai wallah’ tell you a lot about this society. Yes, the economy may be exploding and skyscrapers might be replacing slums, but equality is still a long way off. It’s still the haves against the have-nots.

But back to the game show…

The second trick is the way that Jamal gets through his torture unscathed and then has to return to the television studio to finish the game. Finally, at the very end, we have a question where the outcome is unknown. And the tension in this scene is palpable. I haven’t been on the edge of my seat like that in a long time.

Not that the monetary outcome is of any importance. The important thing is that Jamal manages to get the girl. But of course, a few million Rupees won’t hurt.

The one disappointing thing about the film is the chemistry between the adult Jamal and Latika, or lack thereof. Sparks don’t fly. Some of the little moments between them just feel a little flat. Thankfully, though, you have Danny Boyle on hand to inject the film with loads of visual pyrotechnics to make you forget the fact that the love story is actually a little bland. The train station scene, for instance, is so fantastic because of the energy that is injected into it by the director.

In fact, the directing is so energetic that sometimes it’s on the verge of schizophrenia. Nearly every shot is a crazy Dutch angle. But for some reason, it works really well. The characters never get a chance to see the world straight on – their viewpoint is always skewed, their reality a little distorted.

For me the best scenes are the ones that focus on the characters as children. In particular, I love the sequence where the two brothers are on the train. They tie themselves to the roof and spend their time stealing and grifting. Even though they’re thieving, the sequence is filmed with such an exuberance and innocence that you can’t help but think of them as loveable little tykes. This is really the only way they can survive.

But mere survival isn’t what these characters long for. Each wants a part of the new Indian dream. Jamal’s brother is a casualty of this, falling into the trappings of easy money and criminality, but Jamal somehow manages to overcome his slumdog origins and fulfils his destiny. It’s a fairytale ending but getting there is hell.

Directed by Danny Boyle
Written by Simon Beaufoy
Produced by Christian Colson
Original Music by A.R. Rahman
Cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle
Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto and Anil Kapoor

Running Time: 120 mins

Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language, you chai wallah!

Christopher Eccleston

Shallow Grave

Tuesday, September 02, 2008

There’s something grimly enjoyable about watching wretched people tear themselves to shreds. And I think a lot of people would agree with me. How else to account for the success of reality TV programmes such as Big Brother and Survivor? We all like to sit back and watch people stab one another in the back as we tut-tut from our sofas. If anything it makes us feel better about ourselves. Yes we may stumble home late at night and vomit in the baby’s crib because we drank 15 pints of lager at the pub, but at least we’re not animals.

The three central characters in Shallow Grave have to be amongst the most despicable in cinema. They’re big-headed, they’re obnoxious and they’re bullies. In short, they’re wankers. But worse than that, they’re yuppie wankers. They live in a large flat, they all have decent jobs and they probably all earn a decent wage. But they still need another flatmate to help pay the rent.

The opening sequence sees the three yuppies humiliate, embarrass and toy with a bunch of prospective flatmates. Already you can feel the hate swelling inside your stomach. You want one of these people to stand up to these smug bastards. But no one does. Everyone runs off with their tail between their legs.

And then Hugo enters the picture. Played by Keith Allen, he’s a cool customer who isn’t intimidated when he enters the yuppie sanctum. He just casually walks around and talks about a novel he’s writing. And then when he comes back for a second interview, he doesn’t bat an eyelid when poindexter accountant David (Christopher Eccleston) asks him whether he’s ever killed anyone. It’s a strange line of questioning; a bit different from asking whether he has any pets or if he has a steady income. But Hugo simply says no, gets the flat and then promptly dies. They don’t even get to find out whether he leaves the toilet seat up or not.

As you’d expect, the three flatmates aren’t exactly crushed that their new pal has snuffed it. Ghoulish David is fascinated by the dead body, Alex (Ewan McGregor) is excited at the prospect of having a story in his own flat and Juliet (Kerry Fox) is perhaps perturbed for a second or two, but then a suitcase full of money turns up and she’s all smiles again. She can get over the fact that she’ll never add a Hugo-shaped notch to her bedpost once she realises that she has ready cash to keep her warm at night.

Even though the characters in the film are complete scum, the film is funny, and one of the funniest images is of the main characters going about their lives as Hugo rots in his room. How fucked in the head do you have to be when you can eat your breakfast and watch TV as a man decomposes in his bedroom? And then there’s the wonderful line when David confronts Juliet about the body and she gleefully says that she’s getting used to having him around. The complete disregard for the sanctity of human life is astounding (and amusing).

But eventually Hugo begins to get a bit stinky – Alex seems exasperated by this; their wonderful new flatmate is being awfully inconsiderate. Therefore they have to dispose of him. The initial idea is that everyone will take part in the disposal, but they all get cold feet – they want the money but they don’t want to get their hands dirty. So they draw lots. And would you believe it, the timorous accountant is the one who pulls the short straw. He has to do everything.

But what constitutes everything? Well, he has to saw Hugo’s limbs off and then he has to smash his teeth out. And the scenes that deal with this are wonderfully grisly. We don’t actually see any graphic detail, but the noises are horrendous. We hear the saw cutting through bone and then we hear the hammer smashing Hugo’s teeth. It really does make you wince.

Needless to say, David isn’t quite the same after this experience. When he’s having dinner, he says that food tastes different now. Yeah, I think chopping someone into little pieces would do that. But even more worryingly, he moves into the loft. He takes time off work and spends his days switching a torch on and off. He seems fascinated by smothering the light. Obviously what little light there was in his dull, weasely body has been extinguished.

But although the body disposal is incredibly grisly, there are other horrors in the film. From time to time we see a couple of men torturing various individuals in order to gather information – they’re after Hugo and the money he has. And the scenes with these guys are magnificently nasty. The first time we see them they ram a man’s head into a cash machine. Although I do have to say that this scene makes me laugh somewhat – it’s filmed from the cash machine’s perspective, so the ramming of the man’s head into the camera is rather comic.

Other scenes, though, are decidedly unamusing. There’s a scene where the two men drown a guy to obtain the information they need. They have his hands tied behind his back and the water is full of blood, and after a long interrogation he eventually succumbs. Then the men walk off and begin laughing. The scene is ice cold. And speaking of things being ice cold, there’s the scene where they put a man in a freezer. They wear him down until he talks, and then they put ice on top of the freezer lid so that he can’t get out – he’s far too weak to push it off. For some reason I always consider it one of the worst screen deaths I’ve seen – it’s just the thought of it.

Therefore it’s somewhat satisfying that they meet David and he kills them. For the briefest of moments, you like the yuppie bastard.

But one thing still bothers me about the two men. We see them gathering information, but then they somehow stumble upon Hugo’s dumped car – Alex pushes it into some water earlier on in the film. There was no one there when he did it, so how did the two men end up finding the vehicle? But maybe it’s best not to think too hard about that and some of the gaps in logic. The movie would unravel quite badly if it was put under really close scrutiny. What matters is that it works as a black comedy.

The thriller elements, though, aren’t always as successful as the dark humour. Some of the scenes are really tense – anything to do with the two murderers – but the fight at the end is clumsy as hell; the choreography is poor and the score is atrocious. Thank Christ then that the end has such a great twist. The vile Juliet, who throughout the movie aligns herself with every alpha male (she starts off with Alex, but moves into David’s loveshack in the loft when he becomes the boss), hammers a knife into Alex’s shoulder and takes the money. Girls are really doing it for themselves, aren’t they?

But her joy doesn’t last for long. Magnificently scored to Andy Williams’ ‘Happy Heart’, we find out that the suitcase is full of newspapers. We then see that Alex has the money under the floorboards. Yes Alex is a complete wanker, but at least the most charismatic and joyfully disgusting of the lot has got the money. You know that he won’t become a better person because of this experience, but because he has the wits that the others lack, you end up not begrudging him his blood money. He ended up earning every penny.

Alex Garland

Sunshine (2007)

Monday, January 14, 2008

Sunshine shouldn’t really work. It’s like someone has taken the elements of 2001, Alien, Event Horizon and Silent Running, stuck them in a jar, shaken them about and put it on film. But even though Sunshine is derivative, for the most part it works exceptionally well.

One of the reasons why the film works is the central concept. I love the idea of a crew having to journey to the sun. There’s something extraordinarily powerful about the idea. After all, in the absence of a god, the sun is the next best thing. It’s the source of life on our planet – it’s what sustains us. Without it we’re nothing. So therefore the journey to the sun becomes a spiritual quest. It’s both a journey within and a journey to the source of creation.

And the film works magnificently when it touches upon these themes. There are some beautiful moments, the best one being the scene where the crew get to see Mercury pass in front of the sun. It’s a reminder of how insignificant we are but how glorious life is. Simple things like this allow us to assess our place in the universe – it allows us to forget our petty concerns and gain some perspective. In the end we’re all circling this star and if its not there to shine its warmth upon us, we wont even be allowed to have our problems and our differences – our existence hangs on a thread.

I also like the scene where one of the characters visits the Earth room as a form of therapy. Here we see what all the characters are trying to preserve – the forests, the oceans; all the simple things that bring joy to our life. Yet this is what they may all be sacrificing for the greater good. They might not come home from this trip. They may never again feel the sun’s warmth from the safety of a few million miles. Therefore this may be the closest they get to be being back home. And there’s a nice little scene where Murphy’s character sends a message to his family. He tells them that if they wake up one day and it’s a particularly beautiful day, they’ll know they made it.

Another great scene is the one where the Captain perishes. The scene starts off as a kind of standard spacewalk sequence (characters fix things and speak lots of technical jargon) but as things go wrong and the Captain gets consumed by the sunlight it turns into something more than that. It becomes the most emotional part of the film. A lot of the credit for this has to go to the music, which is superb, but there’s also the way that the Captain looks into the sun. He knows he’s going to die and he knows he can’t look into the sunlight for more than a split second before going blind, but looking directly at the star, bare and unprotected, is the closest he’s going to get to looking into the eye of god. And so therefore it’s more than understandable that he does it. And the psychologist on board even asks him what he sees. Of course, even if he survived the Captain wouldn’t be able to answer, words wouldn’t be enough, but the moment is wonderfully filmed and played. Along with the Mercury scene, it’s one of the highlights of the film.

However, even though I love the first two thirds of the film, it goes downhill in the final act. All the interesting questions that the film raises are jettisoned in favour of a slash and stalk finale that is generic in the extreme.

But having said that, things start off promisingly enough. I like the use of subliminal shots of the dead Icarus 1 crew when the astronauts enter the ship. It helps build the tension and sense of unease. I even like the revelation of the burnt surviving member – he stands in the observation room, light streaming off of him like he’s a demon or something. But in the end he just becomes another religious madman with unbelievable cunning and resources of strength. And it’s even sillier in the face of the fact that he’s burnt to a crisp. Apparently getting charred gives you superhuman strength.

And it’s here that the film just basically becomes Event Horizon. In light of what comes before, it’s deeply unsatisfying. People get stabbed in the dark and the blood flows. Nothing new to see here. There’s even a wink to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece when one of the characters says that they might get picked off one by one by an alien. Yeah, I don’t really want a serious film to wink at me. And besides, if the last third of the film was as imaginative as the rest, there’d be no need for nods and winks as it wouldn’t be covering old ground. But even though it’s disappointing, Boyle is strong enough of a director to at least make the finale entertaining. However, you can’t help but feel that everyone involved didn’t have a clue how to end the film and that this is the result.

Another minor gripe is some of the acting. Chris Evans is pretty bland and square and Rose Byrne is even worse – she’s so incredibly wet. But such is the strength of the film’s visuals, its effects, its music, its production design and its ideas that the lacklustre ending and a couple of mediocre performances don’t impair it too seriously. It’s a very good film that could have been a great one.

Films of the Decade: Science-Fiction

Films of the Decade: Horror

Slumdog Millionaire

Shallow Grave

Sunshine (2007)

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