Author: Ben Browne

Murdered cop Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) miraculously comes back to life and chooses the life of the vigilante The Spirit to satisfy the injustice of being deadified. Meanwhile, The Spirit’s nemesis, The Octopus (Samuel L. Muthafuckin’ Jackson) seems to be embarking on another evil deed involving some chests. It’s up to The Spirit to save the day yada yada yada. If this plot summary seems lazy and vague, I assure you it’s intentional. Truth be told, the film’s plot is just that- lazy and vague. It meanders from one confrontation to another with all the grace and sure-footedness of a drunken toddler. As for the actors, Gabriel Macht was OK as The Spirit. Yes, he was a cardboard cut-out hero but that was the point- he’s the chiseled jaw, baddie punchin’ hero with kung-fu kick action and 17 points of articulation. Scarlett Johansson and Eva Mendes are merely used as a great set of breasts and arse respectively, with all meaningful dialogue being poorly disguised filler until the next gratuitous shot of admittedly very nice fleshy globes. Yes, they are parody characters too, but did they really have to be this boring? At least with the character of The Spirit some people got punched in the face. Anyway, what I really want to discuss is Samuel L. Muthafuckin’ Jackson’s take on The Octopus, a character only represented by a pair of gloves in the comics. In fact, I want to to about it so much I shall start a new paragraph…

He is diabolical. It’s genuinely painful to watch someone as cool as Samuel L. embarrass themselves this much. It’s hard to see the bulgy eyed, Bible quoting, awesomely afroed hitman from Pulp Fiction leaping around in some mud in a ridiculously large Stetson after smashing a toilet over The Spirit’s head. He’s what I feared the Joker would be like in The Dark Knight before I watched it- apparently zany and crazy with no likeability. In fact, The Octopus seems like a 60’s Batman villain with his silly costumes and over-the-top maniacal laughter. I kept expecting to see the classic Batman sound effect bursts like KAPOW! every time he got hit.

The Spirit actually put me in a bad mood. It’s a frustrating film. On one hand, it’s visually stunning, although nothing new is done with the style, with nearly all the memorable shots from Sin City being present here. It’s also brave in tackling so many elements at once. Is it a thriller? parody? comedy? satire? However, on the other hand these elements are awkward and don’t gel at all, giving the film a disjointed feel. One minute, there’s a serious occurance then the next there’s an arse joke. It’s all over the place in terms of tone. There was no set tone, which made it difficult and infuriating viewing.

The Spirit is an odd film. There are some really good and interesting ideas buried here. It’s just the thick layer of shittiness over the top that disguises everything. The visuals are pretty much the only thing I can recommend it for and you’ve got the far superior Sin City for that. Although the film’s strongest feature is its look, I believe that it was a mistake to shoot The Spirit in the Sin City style due to the fact that people will immediately draw comparisons with the Rodriguez flick. I can see why they did it, but people may sit down and watch this expecting the same sort of grit and depth that Sin City had, which definitely isn’t the case. All in all, The Spirit is pretty damn shoddy filmmaking.

Go into any local corner shop, supermarket or hide in the bushes outside some old folks’ home and you’ll hear the same phrases over and over again. “The World’s gone to hell” they say, “Wasn’t like this in my day” they gab, before stuffing their 5th slice of Madeira cake into their wrinkled, opinionated mouths. Well, Pleasantville takes that idea and takes two modern day teenagers and warps them back to rose-tinted (odd, considering it’s black and white) Commie hatin’ Americana-era America in an homage to smiley dreck like Leave it to Beaver, a show disappointingly not about what it sounds like.

“I don’t know if I ever told you this before, but I think you’re just about the keenest girl in the whole school!”

David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are your average 1990’s teenagers. He’s obsessed with a 1950’s show called Pleasantville and she’s a massive slag. So far so typical (!) Anyway, some weird shit goes down and both David and Jennifer are sucked into the television and right into David’s favourite programme. At first I thought that Pleasantville was going to be a poor man’s version of one of my favourite films, The Truman Show, what with both films being fellow 1998 stablemates and dealing with the squeaky clean nature of retro television. However, I was pleasantly surprised when Pleasantville started coming into its own and standing up as a film in its own right. Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon were both fine, with Maguire’s performance clearly being one of the main reasons he was cast as everyman nerd Peter Parker in Spider-Man.

Let’s just say this. Pleasantville is a beautiful looking film. The black and white aesthetic really works. When the colours start appearing, it is really something to behold, rather than just to passively watch. Let’s not forget it wasn’t the first film to do this (the first ever instance of colour in black and white being The Battleship Potemkin way back in 1925) and it won’t be the last. However, Pleasantville uses the colour to show changing attitudes and social revolution to great effect. The film is all about repression. The repression of women, sex and even anger. Everything’s a bit too nicey-nicey in the town of Pleasantville. So much so, it has an underlying creepy element to it. It’s like High School Musical without the songs and the irritating little fucksods that mime to them.

The stand-out performance for me was Joan Allen’s Betty Parker- the super housewife matriarch of the Parker family who undergoes a transformation from Stepford wife to liberated woman. The film shows us her journey without being too mawkish or vomit-inducing, which is a tough feat these days. Kudos to the film and the lovely Mrs. Allen, who shows a more sensitive side here than she does as dead serious Pamela Landy in the Bourne sequels.

The plot follows American student Matthew (Michael Pitt) and his adventures in France. Through his love of cinema he meets brother and sister combo Theo (Louis Garrel) and Isabelle (Eva Green). He is eventually drawn further and further in to their bizarre relationship when he moves in with them over the summer. The story itself is pretty good, with enough attention paid to each of the three main characters to keep them fresh and interesting. I thought all the actors put in great performances and played off each other well.

Right, apart from Eva Green getting her Algerian Love Knots out (I’m determined to make one of these work as a joke) the other big thing this film is known for is the incest angle. It’s not as black and white as all that. I liked the way that the film presented Theo and Isabelle as co-dependent, having an almost symbiotic relationship. It’s not trying to be controversial for controversy’s sake, it’s purposefully taking a rare path (I’m pretty sure there’s innuendo here, so shut it) to further explore these characters. I warmed to the film almost immediately as after the flashy titles, there is a love of cinema presented from the off. Much like the characters in the film, I am usually saying lines from movies and expecting my long-suffering friends to answer what film that specific line is from with the same eager enthusiasm that I delivered it in. However, I normally get a gruff “bugger off”. I really liked the use of clips from films like the 1939 film Scarface and Tarantino favourite Bande á part.

However, could we please, please, please stop having films set in the 1960’s that are packed with all the clichés that people think of when they think of that decade? As soon as the date appeared on the screen, we cut to a protest, eliciting an “Ah, fuck…” from me. Yes, this is historically accurate, but I’m just sick of seeing the ’60s portrayed in such a glossed-over way. I wasn’t around for the ’60s but logic tells me that during this decade of great change there wasn’t a protest on every street, there were people who didn’t like Jimi Hendrix’s music and there were people who thought that the “free love” atmosphere was just an excuse for dirty hippies to get their leg over. This isn’t exclusive to The Dreamers and in fact, it stays away from most of the over romanticised pitfalls but not far away enough for my liking.

I thought the ending was a bit of a cop-out too. (Invisotexted) Having Isabelle gas them made sense- not only was she carrying out what she said she’d do if they were discovered, but the three of them would be united in death, a romantic fantasy mainstay. I was all ready to applaud the film for this bold ending when the film seemingly loses its bottle and goes for a much more ambiguous ending which didn’t do anything for me.

So, that was The Dreamers. It’s a well-directed, well-written piece that could have been really good if it stuck to its guns and been a bit more daring.

A young James Tiberius Kirk (Chris Pine) runs wild after his father heroically dies on the Starship Kelvin. Vulcan Spock (Zachary Quinto) is an outsider because of his human mother. Both end up at Starfleet Academy and blah de blah de blah. Truth is, I don’t want to spoil it for you. The plot is fantastic for one reason. We are made aware that what we are seeing is not part of the regular Star Trek canon. We are seeing something different. The Kirk we’re seeing may or may not grow up to be The Shat’s Kirk in the same way that Spock probably won’t end up being Nimoy’s pointy-eared logic spewer. Is this making any sense? No? Well, see the film and it will. I just wish Mr. Lucas had thought about doing the Star Wars prequels this way, the franchise killing, white bearded fuck.

Put simply-this is how you do a reboot. You keep all the established stuff established and you take the characters in new directions. I thought Chris Pine was great as Kirk, adding just enough swagger and arrogance to the character to not upset even the most hardcore of Trekkies. The stand-out for me was Quinto’s Spock, who is pitch-perfect. I thought the two had good chemistry between them which bodes well for future films (which there will be considering Star Trek has made enough money to buy the country of Japan.) Eric Bana was also brilliant as Romulan baddie Nero, who isn’t just a bastard for the hell of it, he’s a bastard for a reason. The one thing I loved about all the actors is that they played these well known and well-loved characters with the right degree of impersonation. For example, no-one can deny that when Pine’s Kirk sits down in the captain’s chair that he is influenced by Shatner’s cocky take on Kirk.

Back to the Kobyashi Maru. Many ordinary people will know that Kirk was the only person in the history of Starfleet to pass the devious and supposedly impossible test. In this film we see how he does it- he reboots it and basically cheats. This seems like a deliberate reflection of what director J.J. Abrams feels like he’s doing, but it works in the same way the film does.

When most people say “family friendly” I think of stupid, bright cartoon characters singing about how it’s okay to be you and how everyone is special in their own way. However, Star Trek is none of that and is still suitable for a family trip to the ol’ picture house (and I do recommend you see it in the cinema). It’s accessible and fun, which is infinitely more than can be said for the more recent cinematic Trek outings. I can guarantee that you will grin wider and wider as each famous character turns up (especially Simon Pegg’s Scotty), it’s like a school reunion you actually want to go to.

My main problem with Star Trek would probably be some peoples’ idea of a strength. It seemed like every single Star Trek cliché was put into this film. We have everything from Scotty whinging about the engines to Bones’ oft quoted line “I’m a doctor, not a…”. Whilst I understand why they’re in the film (great liberties are taken with characters and indeed, planets) I don’t think they needed so many. They kept taking me out of the film, although I don’t think the twatracket behind me who laughed at every single little reference helped. I liked the subtle nods though including the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance of a Tribble and of course, a Red Shirt death. Oh, and the (Invisotexted) romance between Uhura and Spock comes out of nowhere. It just seemed a bit tacked-on to me.

Star Trek is a lot of fun. I enjoyed it immensely and I’m tempted to call it my film of the year, even though we’re less than halfway through 2009- it’s that good. Just go and see it, sit down in those comfy cinema seats and set your faces for stunned. (I’m so, so sorry)

(P.S. Shout-out to Lily, the future Mrs.Chekov)