Cloud Atlas (2012)

The Fountain.
Magnolia.
Adaptation.
Synecdoche, New York.
A Cock and Bull Story.
The Hours.
Memento.

Look, I admit it – I’m a sucker for cinematic experiments in metafiction and form. Such movies tend to attract critics’ comments like, “All this self-referentiality, not-too-subtle thematic interlinking, and chronological jumbling are mere gimmicks; once you’ve solved the superficial puzzle-box, there’s little of substance to them. They’re not really as profound or interesting as they think they are – they exist only as exercises for writers and directors to smugly say, ‘Look how clever I am!’”

But for me, that clever-clever self-referentiality, not-too-subtle thematic interlinking, chronological jumbling, and puzzle-solving is exactly what wins me over. (Usually.) And it certainly worked in the case of Cloud Atlas!

I have not read David “Not The One From Peep Show” Mitchell’s novel Cloud Atlas, but before going to see the film, The Fountain was the reference point I had in mind. And sure enough, of the above examples, The Fountain is the film that it most resembles, in its cross-cutting between vastly different time periods in order to emphasise symbolic links between events and characters.

I enjoyed the film very much. The 2144 segment was always going to have the most immediate appeal for someone primarily interested in this film because of the Wachowskis’ involvement, and it’s a relief to see that they have lost none of their flair for action direction. (If, indeed, it was the siblings and not Tykwer who directed that segment’s action scenes: the end credits suggest that they did, but interview comments¹ suggest that the credits give a misleading impression of how distinctly the film’s directorial responsibilities were divided.) However, all the stories had something to recommend them (the humour of the 2012 segment; the conspiracy of the ’70s thriller; the interaction between Ben Whishaw and Jim Broadbent’s characters in the 1930s), so that I was rarely disappointed when the film interrupted a story I was enjoying to switch to another one. The abruptness of the transitions between the different stories’ tones and genres was also something that appealed to me rather than a disorientating irritation. Overall I found it a very well-paced movie, flowing along about as well as any non-linear three hour movie ever could. (Although I could have done with a few less solemn, pseudo-profound statements about interconnectedness in the voiceovers.)

Many people have complained of being distracted by the make-up, and Tom Hanks’ attempts at certain accents – it’s true that I was distracted by those things too, but with only a couple of exceptions, keeping an eye out for the different roles each actor took on was an enjoyable distraction.

Hugo Weaving has said in interviews that roles in mainstream blockbusters no longer really appeal to him as an actor. If that means he won’t be doing any more of them, then at least we have Cloud Atlas to represent the ultimate culmination of all his villain-portraying! (Although: yeah, he does resemble the Hitcher from The Mighty Boosh at one point…)

[4 out of 5]

¹ See Lana Wachowski’s comment in this AV Club interview:

We keep trying to explain to people that, first of all, the credit you see in the movie was this kooky thing invented by the Director’s Guild, because they couldn’t understand how three people could direct a movie together. And they have this convention that the only way directors can be multiply credited on a film is if it’s an anthology, so they invented this bizarre credit to allow their rules to make sense for our film.

Iron Man (2008)

This film happened to start on TV shortly after I’d finished rewatching The Iron Giant, and it amused me to make a double-bill of two such similarly-titled films.

The key to the movie’s success is, of course, the casting of Robert Downey Jr. He delivers offhand jokes, almost to himself, in ways that make it feel like he’s improvising while everyone else is sticking to a screenplay,* and it’s simply a lot of fun watching him on-screen – especially in scenes alongside Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. Terrence Howard makes a much better Col. Rhodes than Don Cheadle did in the sequel; it’s much more believable that he’d be Tony Stark’s friend.

As Tony Stark’s buddy Film Crit Hulk once pointed out, it’s nice that here’s a summer blockbuster in which the action is the least interesting part. In that blog post, the all-caps critic also says, “EVERYONE SEEMED LOVE THAT IT SPENT SO LONG BEFORE TONY ACTUALLY BECOME ‘IRON MAN’ SO THEY GET EXPERIENCE ALL THE GREAT CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT TO GET THERE. EVERYONE LAUDED THE FUN SENSE OF ADVENTURE THAT CAME FROM HIM ACTUALLY BUILDING THE SUIT”, and I completely agree: the section where Tony gets back to the US and carries out his first experiments with building the suit is perhaps my favourite sequence in the movie. (Yeah, OK, I admit that a lot of it has to do with the way it appeals to the gadget-nerd techno-fetishist in me.) All good superhero origin movies should contain a scene where our hero first experiences the joy of what their superpowers allow them to do (see for example Superman running alongside that Smallville train, or even Neo grinning as he spars with Morpheus), and the test flight of the Iron Man Mk. II suit is one of the very best.

Something I find interesting is the way that the film both has its cake and eats it: it’s based around the idea of a warmonger coming over to the side of the peaceniks, and yet also contains gleeful scenes of t’rr’rist-slaughter which are pure right-wing hawk revenge-fantasy. (I admit I do find some of the film’s depictions of the Bad Brown People fairly uncomfortable at times.)

I do wonder if the little bit of non-linearity that opens the film was only included because of a belief that the audience would grow restless unless the movie opened with a bang. Whatever the reason: I’ve always found that little piece of “how we got here” flashbacking very effective. The high-altitude icing problem setup and payoff also works similarly well (it’s to the film’s benefit that it’s not the final thing that defeats the villain), even if it’s not exactly subtle.

I’ve never read it, but the most famous Iron Man comics storyline is Demon In A Bottle, which tackles Stark’s alcoholism. The Marvel Studios movies haven’t adapted this on-screen yet, and it doesn’t sound like they will do any time soon. This makes a nice change from the way Fox approached X-Men 3 and Sony approached Spider-Man 3: rushing to hit the most famous comics storylines and characters as soon as possible, then getting greedy and cramming too many of them into one movie. Having said that, we do get several sequel-setups: Rhodey’s “Next time, baby” line is a little too cheesy for me, the Ten Rings hints are OK, and as for that post-credits epilogue… I can’t remember if it had been spoiled for me in advance of seeing the movie back in 2008, but I remember thinking that although it was a fun tease, it was something that would almost certainly never come to pass. It’s really quite wonderful to think that the thing set up in that cameo not only happened at all, but actually matched my very high expectations!

[4 out of 5]

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* OK, admittedly Downey mumbles a lot of the best lines so you could easily miss them. But its nowhere near as bad as his mumbling in the Guy Ritchie version of Sherlock Holmes – inaudible dialogue from the lead character is pretty much all I remember of that movie…

Skyfall (2012)

Obviously Skyfall was never going to surpass From Russia With Love as my favourite of the series (what could?), but I was hopeful that it could rank alongside my other favourites: GoldenEye, Casino Royale, and OHMSS. Judging by this first viewing, I’d say it does – which means that The Living Daylights is finally edged out of my top 5. (Sorry, Timmy!)

Spoilers below.

Moonraker (1979)

(Rewatched 11 August 2012)

Sometimes I wish Roger Moore would come back
With an underwater car or some kind of jetpack
Or a hover-gondola and a Union Jack

– Joe Cornish, “The Something of Boris” (an Adam and Joe’s Song Wars entry)

As Cinebro’s review illustrates, “silly” is the operative word when you’re talking about this film. But there’s nothing wrong with silliness; silliness can be very funny, if it’s done well. So although I remembered Moonraker as being by far the worst Bond movie, this time, I went into it hoping to be able to judge it more generously – approaching it with some optimism that it would succeed as a daft spy comedy rather than fail as a spy adventure.

Unfortunately, I think very little of the comedy in this is done well. Forget comparing it to The Naked Gun – this isn’t even Spy Hard.

I’ll start with some positives. The cable car action sequence is good (even if at first, the camera positions in the wheel house set confusingly make it look like Jaws is following Bond and Goodhead down from the top, rather than coming up from the bottom on the opposite car). And I like the look of Drax’s construction facility as Bond flies over it at the start of the film. In fact, Ken Adam’s sets are consistently one of the best things about this film – although I may just be saying that because twenty years later they inspired the brilliant Aztec mission in the GoldenEye videogame!

The movie’s pre-title sequence is based around a fantastic parachute stunt sequence – which, unfortunately, is undermined when it concludes with a wacky bit involving a circus big top, and a bizarre transition into the film’s opening credits (falling umbrellas WTF!). Jaws’ appearance in this opening also undermines the later scene in which he’s introduced by walking through a metal detector, which is genuinely fun (an example of the film succeeding in the tone it aims for), and would have made a much better introductory scene for the character. Speaking of Jaws, I have to admit I’m quite fond of the two moments in the film where Bond and Jaws meet and acknowledge each other with a smile before they begin fighting.

What surprised me on this viewing is just how little talking there is over the course of the film. There are large sections of the movie that play out in silence. Surely this must be the Bond film with the fewest lines of dialogue? What dialogue is there gives us some of the comedy that does work, in a few brief but memorable lines:

- “His name is Jaws, he kills people.”
- “Look after Mr Bond. See that some harm comes to him.”
- “Mr Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you.”
- “At least I shall have the pleasure of putting you out of my misery.”
- “You missed.” “Did I?”

Note that most of the above examples are spoken by the film’s villain, Hugo Drax – but apart from a few lines like those, he’s played very flatly as Bond-villain-by-the-numbers, and isn’t very memorable.

I remember the Moonraker novel being one of my favourites of Fleming’s books, but the film bears almost no resemblance to the book (unless you count the Minister of Defence’s very brief reference to playing Drax at bridge). Bond’s following of clues throughout the film is not at all interesting and not particularly logical, and Drax’s initial attempts to kill 007 seem to be motivated not out of any concern that Bond might discover his plans, but simply because he’s a Bond villain and trying to kill Bond is what Bond villains are required to do. That centrifuge sequence is OK, but comes across rather like a repeat of the rack exercise scene from Thunderball.

I’ve always enjoyed the posts on each of the Bond movies on the “I Expect You to Die!” blog, and that site’s writeup of Moonraker lays out the movie’s flaws particularly well. I like its summary of the similarities between Moonraker and its predecessor The Spy Who Loved Me:

TSWLM: Teaser involves ship being mysteriously stolen, the girl Bond is macking with tries to have him killed, and the teaser climaxes with a Bond parachute stunt.
MR: Teaser starts with a ship being mysteriously stolen, the girl Bond is macking with tries to have him killed, and the teaser climaxes with a Bond parachute jump.

TSWLM: The plot involves an insane billionaire who believes humanity has become corrupt; he wants to eliminate all humans and start over from his undersea base.
MR: The plot involves an insane billionaire who believes humanity has become corrupt; he wants to eliminate all humans and start over from his satellite base.

TSWLM: The main henchmen is a mute giant named Jaws.
MR: The main henchmen is a mute giant named Jaws (with added bonus: a mostly mute Japanese henchmen!!)

TSWLM: The Bond girl is a Russian spy!
MR: The Bond girl is an American spy!

TSWLM: A special Bond vehicle comes out of the water onto dry land, as tourists and animals do double takes.
MR: A special Bond vehicle comes out of the water onto dry land, as tourists and animals do double takes. Except in this one, we get lots more double-takes and reaction shots. Lots more.

Add another example: The Spy Who Loved Me contained a musical clip from Lawrence of Arabia; this one quotes the notes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind (heard THREE TIMES, just in case you didn’t notice!) and also contains the theme from The Magnificent Seven. Not to mention the Romantic Meadow Run that Jaws and his girlfriend get to do…

Oh, didn’t I mention? Jaws gets a girlfriend in this movie. Also, Bond wrestles a terribly fake-looking python (but it’s played straight, as if it’s meant to be genuinely threatening), and pigeons do double-takes, and the movie’s climax takes place IN SPAAAAACE.

“Bond goes into space” is usually cited as the biggest, most memorable thing that went wrong with Moonraker. But strangely, in principle I don’t have a problem with the idea of Bond (at least Roger Moore’s Bond) in space. Just as The Matrix Reloaded has more fundamental problems than the fact it concludes with that speech by the Architect, just as The Phantom Menace has more fundamental problems than the presence of Jar Jar Binks, I’m less annoyed by Moonraker‘s overblown space station climax than with most of the other problems earlier on in the movie. I wouldn’t have been bothered by a comic relief CGI Star Wars character if it had actually been amusing; similarly, I would have no objection to a wacky, campy, over the top, tongue-in-cheek Roger Moore Bond movie if only it had been funnier.

[002 out of 005]

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)

I haven’t seen many of the Star Trek films: First Contact, the 2009 reboot, and Wrath of Khan (plus Search for Spock, too long ago for me to remember any of it). Prior to watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture, pretty much all I knew of it was that it had some links to a failed attempt to resurrect the TV series in the ’70s, that it was directed by the director of The Day the Earth Stood Still, and that it contains lots and lots and lots and lots of very slow and elaborate special effects sequences.

That point turned out to be very true. We really do spend a very long time admiring the Enterprise, wormholes, and the movie’s Big Dumb Object, which tends to cause reviewers to use words like “interminable”. Now I’m someone who’s a big enough SF/SFX nerd to have watched all the raw model shot footage included on the Red Dwarf DVDs (and found it interesting!), but even I’ve gotta admit that as lovely as all these sequences look (and sound), they don’t half go on a bit. It felt to me as if the lesson Robert Wise took from watching 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Douglas Trumbull took from making it!) is that the key to making a science fiction movie seem Serious is to slow all your special effects down to a glacial pace!

They’re very good special effects, though – even given the fact that I watched the original version, and not the Director’s Cut with its CGI additions. I imagine that if the film was remade today, a lot of the special effects shots would look broadly similar, but would just be achieved using different methods. Sets and shot compositions are nice, too.

I’m all in favour of more science fiction movies about exploration of weird alien phenomena, rather than action-packed battles against conventional baddies. But here, the plot’s a fairly thin version of the Mysterious Alien Artefact Threatening Earth of countless sci-fi tales: trim down the special effects sequences, speed up the pacing, and the whole thing could quite comfortably be told within a 45 minute TV series episode. The film’s not as smart as you’d hope from something that includes Isaac Asimov’s name in the credits. However, towards the end of the film the true nature of said Big Dumb Alien Artefact is revealed, and I found it a fairly surprising and effective twist.

There’s lots of potential in the conflict between Kirk and Decker: the question of whether it really is in everyone’s best interests for Kirk to take charge of the Enterprise, or if he’s just nostalgic for the thrill of command. Unfortunately, not much is made of it: presumably it would’ve helped if the Decker character had been played more forcefully by a better actor. Like so much else, the idea of Kirk’s nostalgia for being a Captain rather than an Admiral was handled better in Wrath of Khan.

The film spends some time reuniting the crew. Athough I’ve only seen a very small proportion of the original series episodes and feature films, I am fond of these characters, and their rapport is good to watch, so there’s a genuine sense that something feels very wrong – a piece of the puzzle’s missing – when Spock turns up acting even more brusque and unemotional than usual. There’s a good line from McCoy (“Why is any object we don’t understand always called a ‘thing’?”), and the very first thing that the character of Ilia dues upon meeting Kirk is emphasise her oath of celibacy – which I took to be a self-referential joke about Kirk’s reputation as an alien ladies’ man!

Unfortunately, there’s not really enough of that sort of thing. Most of the scenes on the bridge consist of the crew standing around either watching special effects, or formally issuing and reacting to commands. DeForest Kelley in particular gets almost nothing to do; as Stephen Rowley put it*, “Bones always did hang around the bridge too much (probably because that was the only decent set), but this becomes particularly embarrassing here.” In its attempts to challenge 2001‘s claim to the title of “proverbial ‘really good’ science fiction movie“, Star Trek: The Motion Picture removes a lot of the fun ’60s-ness of the TV series.

Although this review sounded really negative, I did enjoy the movie: I was curious to know the answer to the central mystery of what V’Ger really was, there were plenty of likeable individual moments throughout the movie, and most of the sci-fi ideas were solid even if they were underexplored.

Also, my interest in movie special effects meant that I found it interesting to look at examples of 1979′s state of the art optical techniques, even when they seemed to be done for the sake of it, rather than because they served the story. Judging by this film, my tolerance for interminable FX sequences is very high!

[3 out of 5]

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* His review of this film and quite a few others seem to have been removed from the current version of his site.

Drunken Master (1978)

Although Jackie Chan’s best known for his incredible death-defying stunts, he started off in martial arts movies that take place firmly on solid ground. Drunken Master is still the only film from that period of his career that I’ve seen, and it’s a good one. The main character is a Chinese folk hero called Wong Fei-hung, probably best known from Jet Li’s Once Upon A Time In China movies, but in Drunken Master Jackie Chan plays him as a rebellious prankster. Have a read of this review of the film for a good summary of why this was such an original portrayal at the time.

Make no mistake – the comedy in this film is broad. Very broad. So broad, it makes the eighth series of Red Dwarf look like PG Wodehouse. Now I’ve nothing against slapstick pratfalls (I wouldn’t be watching a Jackie Chan movie if I did), but there are lots of lowest common denominator gags that make me roll my eyes and question why in the world I’m watching it at all. Fortunately, those bits are balanced out by plenty of humour that works: it’s impossible to resist the scene where cartoonish bumps appear when one character gets bonked on the noggin, and I’m oddly fascinated by another character’s exaggerated teeth – but best of all, the smash cut to the “PAY OR DIE!” sign is brilliant!

The film improves as it progresses: the scenes where Jackie Chan’s character plays pranks at his father’s school are a bit tedious, but the movie really picks up when the elderly Beggar Su turns up and begins training him. This martial arts master is played by Yuen Siu-tien, the father of the film’s director/choreographer Yuen “The Matrix” Woo-ping. The training scenes are great; any fan of the Pai Mei training scenes in Kill Bill vol 2 should watch Drunken Master to understand the sort of thing that Quentin Tarantino was aiming for.

Some time after the first training sequences, the drunken fighting style itself is introduced, which is everyone’s real main reason for watching the movie!

The effect of wine on characters who have mastered the secrets of the Eight Drunken Gods is rather like the effect that spinach has on Popeye the Sailor. It’s incredible to watch the characters staggering around, constantly looking like they’re teetering on the edge of falling over, but actually in complete control of their balance. Their off-kilter motions give an absolutely unique look to the fight scenes, making them fascinating to watch – so it’s a shame that the titular fighting style is introduced pretty late in the movie, only after we’ve seen several fairly standard kung fu fights.

Finally, late in the film that drunken kung-fu is put into practice in two excellent fight scenes: first against the “King of Sticks”, and then against our evil baddie, taekwondo expert “Thunderleg” (Hwang Jang Lee). These two fight scenes are among the best “straight” fights (as opposed to those making heavy use of stunts and props) of any Jackie Chan film – right up there with the one that concludes his 1999 film Gorgeous.

The film could do with being a bit shorter: as I said, I would have liked some trimming from the first half’s standard kung fu fights so that the much more interesting drunken style could have been introduced earlier. Also, there’s a good scene where Jackie Chan’s character is humiliated by the villain, but then as soon as it’s over he thinks back to what happened and we see what he remembers – causing the whole scene to be immediately repeated almost identically, pretty much in full! Sure, it conveys Jackie’s humiliation effectively enough – but the film has great editing in the fight scenes, so it’s a shame that that tedious bit couldn’t have been trimmed down a little as well.

So in conclusion, the film’s length and the broadest, stupidest bits of lowbrow comedy are really the only reason I’ve limited my rating to three stars. If you can look past those moments, there are three very good reasons to watch Drunken Master: the training scenes, the bits of physical comedy that do hit the target, and the incredible choreography of the drunken kung fu fight scenes.

Actually, make that four good reasons: no ’70s martial arts movie is truly complete without a few crash zooms into characters’ faces, accompanied by DRAMATIC audio stings, and you certainly get your money’s worth of those here!

[3 out of 5]

The Dark Knight Rises and the Trilogy Trend

Here’s a little thing I noticed – spoilers regarding something that The Dark Knight Rises has in common with the third parts of other movie trilogies…

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

RIDDLER: Riddle-me-this, Gothamites! What just-released movie about our Batty arch-nemesis has numerous annoying inconsistencies; strains believability irritatingly frequently; is not as good as either The Dark Knight or Batman Begins; is undeniably very flawed… but nevertheless contains some tremendously well-done, spectacular and uplifting individual moments and sequences? My friends and I will attempt to solve this quandary.

Spoilers below.

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969)

(Rewatched 22 July 2012.)

The first time I saw most of the Bond films was when ITV showed all of them over consecutive weeks in 1999, in the run up to the release if The World is Not Enough. However, even though I videotaped OHMSS at that time, it went unwatched for several years. I really regretted that, because when it was finally viewed, it turned out to be one of my favourite of all the 007 movies.

If there are three things that most people remember about OHMSS, it’s that it was George Lazenby’s one and only portrayal of James Bond, that it features one of the only instances of fourth wall-breaking in the entire series (“This never happened to the other fellow!”), and that it concludes with THAT ending. However, the movie has a lot more to recommend it than just those three things.

George Lazenby has come in for a lot of stick for his Bond performance, although both he and the film as a whole seem to be better-regarded now than when it was first released, when there was no-one but Connery to compare him to. I don’t claim to be the world’s best judge of good and bad acting, so I won’t call him “flat” – I’d say “deadpan”, I suppose. I like him in the role – particularly in his scene with Miss Moneypenny, and also in the movie’s final scene. I think that at least part of the negative reaction to him is that he spends a good proportion of the movie dubbed, which is extremely distracting and means that for that period of the film we can’t tell how Lazenby himself is delivering the lines.

There are two elements of the movie which take a backward look at all the Bond movies so far: the hourglass-themed title credits, and a scene in which Bond (in his office at MI6!!!) browses through mementos of previous cases (with accompanying musical stings). They prefigure the nostalgia-fest of Die Another Day, and seem to be included to say to viewers: “We know you don’t like losing Sean, but this guy’s still the same character – honest!” There are Bond fans who absolutely hate that cute souvenir scene, but I quite enjoy it.

Even if Lazenby himself didn’t re-invigorate the series, the screenplay (one of the closest to Fleming’s original novels) and the direction certainly did. The film is home to some of the 007 films’ best action sequences, several of which (as well as Bond’s run-in with a polar bear!) are shot in an unusual way for the series: lots of quick close-up shots of flailing limbs, each of which zoom into even closer close-ups. It’s a distinctive, energetic and exciting approach to fight scenes, even if it’s not the clearest for seeing exactly what’s going on. In addition, the climactic bobsleigh action scene is excellent, with rear-projection shots that look much less silly than the ridiculous speeded-up hydrofoil scene at the end of Thunderball.

Ski chases are a recurring breed of action sequence in the Bond series, and in this film we get not one, but two of them, both of which are brilliant. In the second of them, Blofeld brings down a flippin’ avalanche on not just our fleeing heroes, but three of his disposable underlings as well! Speaking of villains: although Irma Bunt comes across as Rosa Klebb-lite, Telly Savalas is probably the best of the Blofelds (or at least the best of the fully-seen ones; I have to admit that my primary image of the character is still that of the unseen, Dr Claw-esque, cat stroking SPECTRE Number One).

The scheme that Blofeld uses to hold the world to ransom is reminscent of the use of hypnosis in The Ipcress File, and is a lot more creative than a standard “hijacked nuke” or “space-based weapon” plot. The fact that Bond has been on the trail of Blofeld ever since the previous movie’s events, and yet Blofeld does not recognise Bond upon their meeting here, is a good example of the Bond series’ fast and loose approach to continuity – and is also a relic of the reversed order of OHMSS and YOLT when compared to the novels.

One of the unusual things about this Bond movie is that it’s the only one other than Dr No to feature an instrumental theme tune. It’s a fantastic track – good enough to be rearranged by the Propellerheads and then used by Pixar in their teaser for The Incredibles. As an action accompaniment, it’s at least as exciting as “The James Bond Theme” itself or John Barry’s “007″ theme. (However, I always find it a shame that in these early Bond movies, the original recording of “The James Bond Theme” is simply overlayed onto the action. I would have liked to have heard more of John Barry incorporating tweaked rearrangements of the theme into new, bespoke scores for each action scene, as subsequent composers did.) The film also has a second theme song: Louis Armstrong’s classic “We Have All the Time in the World” was written for this movie.

And then of course, we have the tragic, inevitable ending. It’s extremely effective (especially thanks to the preceding scene, which includes some great little moments from Q, M and Moneypenny), and is easily Lazenby’s most noteworthy moment; he plays Bond’s devastated reaction well. Unfortunately I can’t help but feel that the sombre tone is undermined by that triumphant blast of the Bond theme over the “JAMES BOND WILL RETURN” message.

There are some mis-steps – the aforementioned dubbing, a couple of the one-liners (like the one Lazenby dubs in after the bobsleigh fight with Blofeld), and several plot holes (which are analysed to death here, if you don’t mind a bit of excessive bold and italics usage).

But for the most part the movie is excellent fun that occupies a solid position near the very top of my Bond rankings. Incidentally, when it comes to Christmas action movies, I’d say that this one is second only to Die Hard! (Do you know how Christmas trees are grown?)

[4.5 out of 5]

Blade (1998)

(Watched for the first time, 16 June 2012.)

It’s easy to split the history of superhero films into two eras: “Before Batman & Robin”, and “After Batman & Robin”. Broadly speaking, after the excellent first Superman movie there was a gradual decline through successive Superman and Batman sequels, until Joel Schumacher hit the absolute nadir that was his second Bat-Film. (You might say he deconstructed the genre, ha ha.) After that, the Modern Superhero Film began to rebuild itself. First, it sheepishly tried to distance itself from its origins with things like X-Men (“What would you prefer, yellow spandex?”), but then, as it became the decade’s dominant action film genre, it gradually learned to embrace and take pride in its own comic bookiness, until we hit The Avengers fourteen years later.

The starting point of that revival was 1998′s Blade.

Watching it for the first time now, it’s an OK action film. A few memorable images (such as the blood shower scene at the start), some decent action sequences (nice payoff with Blade’s booby-trapped sword), some dated special effects, lots of gratuitous swearing and gory executions (“See,” it tries to say, “this isn’t your average funny-book movie!”) and lots of bog-standard exposition. It’s also far too long.

Blade himself isn’t a particularly appealing character – the way his plight is portrayed here isn’t much more nuanced than it was when the character appeared in the ’90s Spider-Man cartoon series. N’Bushe Wright’s haematologist is a far more sympathetic protagonist.

I think I’ve been spoilt by the likes of Buffy/Angel and Being Human, because the “vampire factions in-fighting and talking about how people are cattle” in this movie didn’t interest me in the slightest.

There are lots of dated flashy speed-ramping editing tricks throughout. Unfortunately, although Wesley Snipes can no doubt handle the martial arts perfectly well, he’s let down by some ridiculous undercranking in several of the action scenes (even more obvious than the sparring scene in Equilibrium).

The movie’s climax, involving blood from a sacrifice running along stone channels into a giant circular room in order to resurrect an apocalyptic demon, reminded me of the first Hellboy movie. (Which was, of course, directed by Guillermo del Toro, the director of Blade 2.) It would have had even more in common with Hellboy’s climax if, instead of concluding with martial arts combat, it had gone with the “Lovecraftian monster” battle that was originally shot for the film.

2.5/5