Star Trek Movie Musings - The Wrath of Khan

Star Trek: The Motion Picture took the idea of a Star Trek episode and made it into a massive, bloated, over-ambitious movie too dependent on its - admittedly spectacular - effects to really stand the test of time. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a sequel to an episode of the Original Series (so much so that the film makes only sparse references to explain who and what Khan is) spun out into a genuine movie plot, and it is awesome.

Lewis Lovhaug, in his review of a less-than-stellar comic adaptation, ascribes the film's success to its containing no extraneous material, and he's pretty much there. The Wrath of Khan contains no padding whatsoever; no digressions, no over-extended effects shots, no tacked on love interests. It is as spare and precise a piece of film-making as you'll find anywhere, and not merely in SF. It foreshadows and pays off its foreshadowing; it conveys real emotion and depth, warmth and pain. It places its protagonists in real peril and gets them out of it convincingly and without contrivance. It has high stakes and lasting consequences for the characters.

It also created one of the most enduring concepts in speculative fiction: The Kobayashi Maru; a test that forces its participants to face a no-win situation.

I love this film. It remains my favourite Star Trek film, pending the release of Into Darkness, and I was somewhat disappointed to learn that Benedict Cumberbatch would not be bringing us his rendition of Khan Noonian Singh. On the other hand, the basic elements of Wrath seem to be present in Into Darkness, but reversed, with Kirk as the relentless pursuer, hounding an enemy even to his own destruction. The kind of did that with First Contact, but I'm interested to see how they manage with a more direct parallel.

Star Trek Movie Musings - Star Trek: the Motion Picture

So, with Star Trek Into Darkness out this year, I'm going to be posting some of my thoughts about the previous films, beginning with Star Trek: the Motion Picture

Having failed to launch a new Star Trek series, Gene Roddenberry got to make a film, and oh boy, what a film. It's huge, packed with special effects which still hold up pretty well and which, at the time, were clearly so good that they couldn't get enough of them, because while the film has some incredible moments, it also has some interminable quarter-hours while the camera pans around an effects shot to show us every imaginable detail and angle. You could lose an hour and not lose any story; possibly more, since this is essentially a hyper-extended version of an original series episode.

As an aside, it also features appearances by several members of the proposed cast of Star Trek: Phase 2, who all die, some in worse ways than others.

The story may be a little thin, but the visual effects are still almost worth the time lavished on them, and Jerry Goldsmith's score (including the theme tune originally intended for Phase 2 and later used for TNG, which also sounds a bit like the theme tune to The Vikings) is amazing. It also uses an instrument made out of magnets sliding around in a plastic tube, which is kind of awesome.

Man I love trivia about this film.

NEW Star Trek Into Darkness UK International Trailer HD (2013)

*bounces in an undignified fashion*

Looper

Warning: Contains spoilers

Looper is a film about time travel. And telekinesis. Sort of. And crime.

It has good and bad points in all of those categories.

Its time travel mechanic is one of variability. The future in Looper is in a state of constant flux, with past events affecting the course of post-history for those who travel back in time. The Bruce Willis version of the main character has a good description of the way it works: his memories between 'now' and the time he left from, he explains, are no longer memories; they are a haze of possibilities, the older the hazier, until the moment passes when they become clear again. This is as clear as the film gets, which is all to the good, as it is rarely helpful to go into too much detail unless the time travel is the point, and in Looper it isn't. Neither is the telekinesis, which makes it a little odd that it's in there, save to make a small child into a threat.

The point of the film is about sacrifice; what people are prepared to give up and for what. Young Joe starts off not wanting to give up his future comfort for a friend, while Older Joe will kill children to get his life and his wife back, but not to give her up to save her. By the end of the film, Joe gives up his life to give the future - and a child - a chance.

The performances are strong, with JGL and Willis presenting the two Joes with an balance which means neither comes off as 'right', or even significantly better than the other. Emily Blunt is always good, although special mention has to go to the kid, who is wicked creepy. On a technical note, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Bruce Willis make-up is a little creepy and I like the heavy use of practical effects. 

Oz the Great and Powerful

Warning: Contains Spoilers

Oz the Great and Powerful is on many levels a very good film. There's a decent sparkle to the dialogue, the performers are all excellent and the visual effects and costumes are simply gorgeous. The plot is straightforward and follows the titular carnival 'wizard' from Kansas to Oz and his first clash with the Wicked witches thereof. There are a few elements drawn directly from the books of L Frank Baum (in particular the China People), but the overall aesthetic and structure echoes the film The Wizard of Oz more than the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While nothing hugely original, the story primarily charts Oz's journey from superficial coward to honoured leader of Oz, by way of the usual trials of self-discovery and love.

The latter of these brings in the film's major problem. Oz is introduced as a somewhat vain womaniser whose one true love, after years of waiting at home in Kansas for him to achieve greatness, has just decided to accept the proposal of an honest farmer, John Gale (one presumes, therefore, that she is the mother-to-be of Dorothy Gale). Fleeing from an angry rival (not John Gale, but the lover/husband of one of the women he is shown to cynically seduce on a regular basis), he is swept into a tornado and - after a scene of relentless peril reminiscent of segments from director Sam Raimi's Evil Dead movies, crash lands in Oz and immediately seduces the beautiful, innocent witch Theodora, essentially because he can. This seduction leads directly to Theodora becoming the Wicked Witch of the West - twice as angry and twice as deadly as her sister, the original Wicked Witch.

Meanwhile, Oz meets Glinda, the Good Witch (as in the movie, there is only one Good Witch), who is the spitting image of his lost love and ultimately his love interest for the movie, and therein is my problem. Ultimately, Oz is reformed and redeemed, and at the end of the film his reward is not merely rule of Oz but the love of the princess (which Glinda is revealed to be). While he owns to his fault in breaking Theodora's heart and recognises his need for friends and family, the fact that he is still able to move on without a pause to the blonde who happens to look like his sweetheart leaves a lesson vitally unlearned in what is essentially a story about learning to be a better man. In life, that might be what happens, but this is a movie and it felt to me like something of a cop out; that the 'right' ending would be the one in which the Wizard simply devotes his life to protecting the evil that he created, without 'reward'.

It is also an ending which fits very oddly with the ending of The Wizard of Oz, in which Oz can hardly wait to return to Kansas and Glinda is hardly bummed out to find him gone.

My Oscar Thoughts

Best Picture - Argo
I've not seen it, but would quite like to. Ben Affleck, like so many recent leading men, seems to be much better at everything cinematic that isn't being a leading man, so that's promising.

Best Actor - Daniel-Day Lewis (Lincoln)
Fair. He's a very good actor and this was a performance I enjoyed. I liked that they showed him slightly strained as a public speaker, and most comfortable as the rambling storyteller. It would have been easy to go bombastic.

Best Actress - Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)
Not seen it, but she is good.

Best Supporting Actor - Christopher Waltz (Django Unchained)
I can't recall if I posted my thoughts on Django, but regardless, this is a deserved award. While I won't say Tommy Lee Jones wouldn't have deserved it, he was essentially playing Tommy Lee Jones in Lincoln, and Waltz was superb.

Best Supporting Actress - Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)
Seriously; with the screen time she had and the impact she made, totally deserved. Also, having watched her in light romantic comedy last night, the range she has now shown is amazing.

Honestly, I would have liked to see Pirates! win best animated feature. I liked Brave more than many seem to have done, but I _really- liked Pirates!. Ang Lee's best director nod was earned in Life of Pi, and seriously if anyone else but Anna Karenina had got costumes, I would have called fix.

Oh, and Best Animated Short going to Paperman is something that makes me happy. I'm interested then that Wreck-it Ralph wasn't up for best animated, but I guess they put the nominating muscle behind Brave.

I'm glad that Les Mis didn't win best original song, because that one was the weak spot of the entire film for me.

Cloud Atlas

At the end of last month, I took a trip down memory lane, as +Johanna Scott-Bennett and I went to Huntingdon Cineworld to see Cloud Atlas (it wasn't showing at Cambridge Cineworld and the travel cost was less than two tickets at Vue).

It's a film that's had a very mixed critical reception, but I liked it a lot. The performances are all excellent; even Halle Berry was good, and having not seen Monster's Ball, that is something I have never seen before. The transformations through the ages were astonishing (especially Hugh Grant as a neo-savage cannibal); Tom Hanks - who, Academy Award and all, tends to play a variation of Tom Hanks in most of his films - was on especially fine form.

There's been some controversy, as you'd expect, over the use of Caucasian (and Black) actors made-up for Asian roles in order to maintain the continuity of casting. I suspect that it would have been more jarring to me if I hadn't automatically parsed them as Vulcan (and if I hadn't been reeling from Tom Hanks' Mockney gangster and 'Jim Broadbent' roles.)

I also wonder whether the make-up was really necessary given the futuristic setting. This is Neo Seoul in 2044 and there's no real reason that the population would be 100% ethnic Korean, especially as the racism in the segment is 'real' vs cloned. I also note that there is far less brouhaha about the black and Asian actors who are made up to play white characters.

But anyway, I enjoyed the film. I liked the central premise of a dharma history stretching into the future, and its themes of hope and enduring love; the power of selflessness and the consuming nature of self-interest. I found the performances, as noted, excellent, and despite the use of six entirely different styles and genres - 19th century historical, 1930s period drama, 1970s detective thriller (almost blacksploitation), contemporary-set Ealing-style dark comedy, dystopian SF action, and post-Apocalyptic adventure - the transitions never seemed jarring, and the integration of the earlier stories is managed superbly. I also liked the fact that they mixed things up with the cast, so that the same actors weren't always playing the same kind of roles; apart from Hugo Weaving and Hugh Grant, of course, who are apparently all the villains in history and in one case at least, the Devil.

I will add a review to Iconomicon when I've read the book.

The site Scene Stealers provided this fine infographic of the transformations and themes. I don't agree 100% with the analysis, but this does show the changing faces.

Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters

I went to see Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters with +Johanna Scott-Bennett last week, which was both less interesting than I hoped and more so than I had expected. There was a fair bit of swearing which sort of covered for actually doing anything really daring, and it was extremely black and white (there are good witches, but only the bad ones turn ugly). There wasn't much explosive anatomy of Dredd or Django, but it worked hard for its 15 rating and I am beginning to wonder if 12A isn't becoming the kiss of death for films not marketed at children.

Besides the obvious stuff - some effective action, lots and lots of unlikely weaponry, and two hot leads in black leather - there were some interesting twists. The fact that we have two hot leads who are both implied - prior to the film at least - to be virgins was a minor thing, but unusual. Their social inexperience was not shown as a strength, or as tough attitude, but largely as genuine awkwardness. I also liked the fact that Hansel, as a result of his initial experience with the gingerbread house, suffered from diabetes. I'm not sure how many diabetic action heroes there are out there; probably fewer than there are virgin action heroes.

There is also an awesome troll, who reminded me of The Storyteller.

Fantasy Mission Force

Fantasy Mission Force is a film I've seen a few times now. In it, a group of high-ranking Allied Generals during WWII are captured by the Japanese during the invasion of Canada. Only an elite squad of thieves, con artists, mace-wielding Scots-Chinese and Jackie Chan can save them from the Japanese Nazi Muscle Car Club!

No, really. I can't explain it more clearly.

Honestly; see for yourself.

This film is completely mental and, like much Hong Kong cinema, veers almost uncomfortably between broad farce and deeply unpleasant slaughter. It is, in addition, almost entirely incomprehensible.

Why 'My Life as a Doge'?

Long ago, in the magnetic age, my family possessed a VHS cassette on which was recorded Lasse Hallström's semi-autobiographical film, My Life as a Dog. After the third time we opted to watch something else instead (while it was well-regarded, a subtitled Swedish film is not ideal casual viewing for a family of five), it became a sort of in-joke to suggest and reject it every time we watched anything.

After a while, it attained a sort of mythic status, such that however good it might be, it could never possibly meet our expectation.

I have never yet seen My Life as a Dog, and I probably never will.

And it's 'doge' because 'mylifeasadog' was taken.

My Life as a Doge

Welcome to my cineblog, which for historical family reasons and because of the shortage of available names in blogspace, I have chosen to title such as to claim rulership of the Venetian city state during the Renaissance.

My intention is to use this space to record my thoughts on the films that I watch, in part for my own reference.