Sci Fi Through Space/Time: Push

It's a testament to the success and widespread acceptance of the superhero genre in recent years that David Bourla and Paul McGuigan's Push has been derided as a second-rate superhero movie and not a second-rate rip-off of Scanners and The Fury. To be honest the idea of a group of psychic-powered individuals hiding in plain sight from dubious governmental agencies certainly is a staple of superhero stories, but this feels more like the kind of thing Stephen King touched on in Firestarter, Carrie, or The Dead Zone. The major difference is that now we are able to leapfrog past the long set-ups of those late 70s / early 80s stories - as we already accept the conventions of this sub-sub-genre through over-exposure - and can instead tell stories with large and complicated mythologies. A billion comics, usually in lower-tier comic universes separate from the big two of Marvel and DC, have taken this approach, and now we see it in a brand new potential franchise.


The question is, have Bourla and McGuigan brought something new to the table to justify investment in that potential franchise, or will this fade into the background like some Hong-Kong-based Misfits of Science? The backstory, blasted through in hyper-exposition-mode during an inventively created title montage, sets out a humdrum universe of scientific experimentation into creating psychic soldiers, based on Nazi research during the war. The powered types can be divided into different groups based on their powers. From what I can remember, Pushers are able to manipulate people's minds (though not read them), Watchers can see the future, Sniffs have a kind of psychometric power that regrettably manifests only when they sniff objects (there's no way to make the act of intensely smelling something look anything less than stupid), Stitches can manipulate living tissue, Shadows are able to hide powered individuals just by hanging around them, and Bleeders have a scream that can demolish things (and makes their eyes go lizardy for no apparent reason). Thankfully most of this info is revealed as we go along, interspersed throughout the mostly dreary back-and-forth of much of the movie's running time. Here is a list of them if you're desperate to know more.


All of this is surface dressing on a predictable story about psychics on the run from the evil government psychic division, known as Division (not to be confused with the inept bureaucratic jerks in 24, also known as Division). This sort of thing has been done before, and I have to admit, I've been in two minds about seeing Push for exactly that reason, and not because it looks like Jumper, as pointed out by Masticator. That, too, had the plot of powered individuals chased by shady operatives of a mysterious organisation, which just goes to show that it is a very appealing kind of story on a deep level. Who hasn't fantasised that they are somehow special, and yet misunderstood and persecuted by a force greater than themselves? (Please don't tell me that's just me and a lot of Matrix fans!)


Luckily, Push has more up its sleeve than just having a bunch of photogenic people with Amazing Powers of the Brain trying to elude The Man. Those photogenic people with Amazing Powers of the Brain are also trying to elude a power-crazed Chinese gang who also have Amazing Powers of the Brain. The film tends to get rather busy with the powered people a la Heroes, though sadly we don't get those powers used willy-nilly as in Jumper.

Our hero, Nick, played by Chris Evans, is a loser whose psychic powers (he's a telekinetic, or Mover) have done nothing to stop him being a jerkoff dropout living in Hong Kong and getting into trouble with gambling debts, as people do in the movies (though they don't usually look as hott as Chris Evans). His loser status is attributed to the trauma of seeing his psychic father murdered by a dastardly member of Division played by Djimon Hounsou, wearing an evil goatee. Haunted by relentless Flashback Syndrome in times of great stress, Nick is a burnout, and to make things worse, his Amazing Powers of the Brain are actually very Mediocre.


Into his life comes Cassie, played by a pubescent Dakota Fanning wearing punkish gear and a skirt so short Canyon exclaimed in horror upon seeing the trailer. It fits the character, weirdly. She's older than her years, bossing people about and getting hammered on cheap booze to "improve her powers", though really she's just being a brat. Her past is also filled with that screenwriting staple of emotional pain caused by the fate of her parent, this time her super-Watcher mother, a woman of immense power who has been captured by Division.


Eager to save her, Fanning enlists the help of Evans in the search for Kira, a Pusher played by Camilla Belle (winner of 2008's prestigious Caruso Award for Most Improbably Styled Hair as well as a Worst Actress Dishonourable Mention, thanks to her mystifyingly poor performance in 10000 B.C.). Belle is on the run from Division after absconding with a MacGuffin; a syringe filled with a drug that causes Amazing Powers of the Brain, as well as Not So Amazing Side Effects of the Death, except in certain arbitrarily determined circumstances.

In order to prevail against the machinations of Division, Evans and Fanning enlist the help of various other psychics dotted about Hong Kong. Cliff Curtis, Ming Na, and Nate Mooney (as a nine-fingered sleaze called Pinky Stein) get dragged into the proceedings with varying degrees of enthusiasm. This sadly does not mean we get to see a lot of exciting action, but then the movie has other ideas on its mind. We also don't see the psychics here use their powers to help people, which I've banged on about before. Okay, so I'd argue this doesn't really count as a superhero movie, so these guys have no real narrative obligation to do it, but any conversations within the film about stopping Division from creating an army of super-soldiers seem even more feeble than usual when the two main characters are more interested in gaining some kind of leverage over Division in order to settle their old scores / parental issues.


Okay, sorry, bugbear rant over. As I was saying, in addition to the cliched shady operative antagonists, our heroes also have to contend with a ruthless clan of cliched Chinese gangsters who are desperately seeking the MacGuffin. The number of confrontations between good and bad guys is minimal, which is probably down to the low budget (about $38m; it looks fantastic for the money), and is thus understandable. Instead, for the most part Push features our photogenic heroes meeting a variety of powered people to find other powered people who will help them find their MacGuffin in order to something something. One of the posters for this movie shows someone using telekinesis to blast a car into the air. Trust me, no cars get blown into the air. There are lots and lots of sarcastic conversations, but that's a little harder to dramatise in a poster. Also, who wants to watch a film like that? Other than me, obviously.


There are a couple of action sequences, but sadly they're cut with such a shockingly poor understanding of how editing should work that I silently raged in my seat. McGuigan does such a piss-poor job of cutting these sequences that he makes Quantum of Solace look like it was directed by Tarkovsky. Any joy I might have had at the sight of faceless goons getting thrown through the air with telekinesis was totally scuppered. This scene, from the big finale, is cut and shot so unclearly that you can't tell who is getting hurt, and how. Are the light FX denoting energy in the punches, or deflections? I've watched it a number of times and I just don't know what the hell is going on. I do know it looks as goofy as hell, though.


What does set Push apart is that it evolves into a peculiar hybrid of the usual psychic runaway blah blah as described above, and stern Ocean's Eleven-style con job japery. Again, this is very hard to communicate through trailers and posters, and so I was taken aback as the final half of the movie becomes a chaotic and barely logical series of tricks, counter-tricks, and final act twists, except here the con is complicated by the various superpowers of all the major players. And believe me, when I say complicated, I really really mean complicated.

Complicated is fine if the con has been worked out properly, but regrettably the con makes very little sense. Our heroes -- who, in a nice touch, are not all that great a bunch of psychics compared to the professionals -- need to get hold of the MacGuffin, but not only do they need to figure out where it is, they also have to do so without alerting the various Watchers who are monitoring the future for signs of alteration. The precognition powers are the ones given the most attention and exposition, which was gratifying. Most tales featuring precognition tend to fudge the details of how such powers would affect the actions of everyone involved, or get tangled up in messy continuity. For the most part, Push gets it right, setting out some solid ground rules early on, and sticking to them for much of the film.


Especially interesting is Fanning's explanation of how the future is so malleable even talking about her predictions can often change the future again. So often people hear about their destiny and either do nothing about it, or make it come true through their attempts to avoid it (a million bad stories have ended that way). Push at least accepts that the future is not set in stone, which creates new storytelling opportunities, as every move they make changes something in the future, until at some point they seem doomed thanks to the intervention of a super-Watcher, a Chinese gang-member who apparently has no name, if IMDb and Wikipedia are anything to go by.

This Watcher, focused only on our band of sarcastic heroes, is predicting every move they make, so they have no hope of changing their destiny. Bourla has decided that the future actions of a person can be deduced as soon as they make a decision to do something. It's as if their precognition is linked to some kind of telepathy. It's this conceit that allows Evans to come up with his too-complicated con plot, which involves giving sealed instructions to his group of psychics and then getting his memory wiped so as to confound The Pop Girl (seriously, that's what she seems to be known as). As no one knows what they are going to do right up until the moment they are going to do it, The Pop Girl can't predict what is going to happen.


That's a pretty cool idea, and seems to make some kind of sense within the parameters set out earlier (as well as making the most of the heroes' ingenuity in the face of superior brainpower), but the execution is confusing. Evans' mind gets wiped after three of the envelopes are opened, which seems to contradict those rules. Even weirder, The Pop Girl is already sketching her vision of the future when this happens, and then makes a big fuss about losing that image.


What, she can't remember what she was drawing two seconds earlier? I guess that's the downfall of this new sub-sub-sub-genre; cons work fine onscreen when it's all crafty hand-offs, rigged props, and Matt Damon in a fake nose. As soon as you bring metaphysics into the equation, that flow of set-up / con / "prestige" falls apart.

There's also a lack of rigour to it, especially as the twists and deus ex machina of the final act start happening. One is kinda clever: Fanning is saved from the death she has been predicting since the start of the movie by the intervention of the creepy brainsuck guy who has been hovering around in the background for a while. He has been hired by Fanning's mother, who has seen so far into the future that she can maneouvre people into place years in advance. It's a cute twist, though having an offscreen character influence the plot in such an extreme way inevitably feels like a cheat, no matter how well it has been set up.


There is also a lot of back and forth between Evans, Belle, and Hounsou about whether Belle was his former girlfriend or a sleeper agent from Division that goes through several complicated twists, all of which contradict each other. The only way the final scene could possibly work is if you fanwank like crazy, assuming that Fanning's previous vague predictions were suddenly incredibly precise, or Evans' written instructions to Belle were very complex and called for her to Push Hounsou the moment she meets him, though even that would require yet more contrivance and fanwanking.

That final scene seemed very clever when I first saw it, but by the time I had returned home it had started to fall apart with even a tiny bit of scrutiny. Much of the rest of the film seemed hollow too, suggesting the script wasn't thought through enough during writing, and the filmmakers figured no one would notice, or there were reshoots and rewrites that rendered some of those twists incomprehensible. It's a shame, because the idea of creating a movie like this is very appealing. Yes, I like to see psychic action scenes, but this felt like there was a fresh idea trying to break out from all of the intense concentrating, elaborate gesturing, and eye-morphing effects.


It wasn't all bad, though. Chris Evans has long been a favourite in our house, thanks to his pitch-perfect work on the otherwise risible Fantastic Four movies, as well as his charming performance in Cellular and his intense grouchiness in Sunshine. Watching him turn up in forgettable dreck like The Nanny Diaries (as, I swear to God, Harvard Hottie) has been dispiriting, and then appearing in an underpromoted action film like Push makes things worse. When is he going to hit big? Does anyone else even care? His Wikipedia page hasn't even been updated with the news that he's going to be playing one of the evil ex-boyfriends in Edgar Wright's adaptation of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Am I going to have to join to update the damn thing myself? I could be Keeper of the Flame, I guess.

He's predictably terrific in Push, playing a stock character (the lovable and acerbic loser) with much charm and conviction. Even better, he's paired up with Fanning, who does a great job as the old-beyond-her-years Cassie. Plagued with visions of her own death, she's a nihilist and alcoholic 13-year old who sasses everyone. I gather I'm supposed to dislike her because she's precocious, and yes, I usually have a problem with child actors, but I thought she was one of the best things about War of the Worlds, and the same thing applies here. Her chemistry with Evans is one of the things I enjoyed the most about Push, their snarky paranoia tempered by growing affection and concern.


Much of the supporting cast are entertaining too. Cliff Curtis can be variable, depending on the movie he is in. I was deeply disappointed by his work in Fracture and Die Hard 4, but he was great in Three Kings and Sunshine. Here he's light and charming, which is a nice departure from his more serious roles. Nate Mooney, as Pinky, is also very likable, and won over the group of teenage girls sitting at the back of the cinema when I saw it. Everything he said was greeted with a delighted cackle. Ming Na gets little to do other than be cynical about everything, which was a bit of a waste. Hounsou glowers a lot. There's not much else for him to do, I guess.


In an improvement on her performance in 10000 B.C., Belle adds a third expression to her repertoire. As with the caveman movie she has happy and scared down-pat, but now she has intense focus mastered too. At this rate, she'll be a watchable actress in about 30 movies. She was recently featured in a Glamour magazine photoshoot of up-and-coming talent pretending to be icons of fashion and female empowerment, for which she should thank her publicist with diamonds and unicorns and suchlike. Nothing she has done on film to date has warranted any attention. Maybe there are hidden depths there, but they are really really well hidden so far.


(N.B. I appreciate that picking on Belle for being out of place in that photoshoot is a bit rich, as the equally micro-talented Hayden Panettierre, Alexis Bledel, and Odette Yustman are also in there too. Basically, except for the inclusion of America Ferrera, the whole thing is an embarrassment.)


McGuigan may fluff the action scenes, but there is other stuff to enjoy there. The Hong Kong location shooting is interesting, only occasionally succumbing to the temptation to postcarditise the city. I also liked his use of pastel colours. It's possible he did that annoying thing of using colours like this because that's what comics do (seriously, only Warren Beatty made that work in Dick Tracy, and only because he went all-out), but nevertheless, it made my eyes very happy. The annoying flashy over-editing irked, though, and not just in the action scenes. At times it feels like Slumdog Millionaire, if Slumdog was about psychics and not implausible fairytale gamepieces.


One decision he has made doesn't work as well as he would have hoped. Turning his back on digital effects (except for where they are necessary), McGuigan fills the screen with physical effects, with the powers having a visceral effect. When people are being thrown around using wirework, that decision pays off, but a floaty gunfight between Evans and Hounsou's Mover right-hand man (played with silent scowly menace by Neil Jackson) rapidly become ridiculous. Seeing two guns hover through the air, obviously stuck to the end of green sticks removed in post, is unintentionally hilarious. Seeing one gun pressed against Hounsou's temple totally broke the spell. I didn't bother to check the credits to see if there was a gun-pole wrangler, as his/her work was terribly unconvincing.


So is it worth watching? As a rental, maybe so, even though that labyrinthine plot is contrived and filled with illogicalities, and the finale hints at future installments that will almost certainly not happen (even with a small budget, it's not going to make a profit, unless there was an amazing deal made for post-theatrical rights). Considering the interesting additions made to the stock plot, it still feels humdrum, and would only really appeal to fans of Chris Evans, psychic-story completists, and people who enjoy seeing things fly through the air because some guy is gesturing like someone infected with Ultra-Vogue Fever. So that's probably just me and three excitable girls who liked Pinky. I will say that even though Franklyn was an underdog film with lots of ambition, I got more out of this psych-heist flick, though again that's mainly because I get a thrill from this kind of thing. Nevertheless, I'm not going to lie to myself and everyone else and act like it's a good movie. It's not even as good as Jumper. I can imagine that anyone reading this it not about to rush out and rent it now. Oh, Chris Evans! Forgive me!

Rachel Gets Married In Magnificent Style

When I posted my Best Movies of 2008 lists, I had a little rant about release schedules, and how making a list before seeing some potentially great movies got released made a mockery of the whole thing. Canyon argued very persuasively that we wait for a little while longer, but the thought of posting a Best Of list at the end of March (the earliest we could see Synecdoche, New York, which is released on Region 1 DVD two months before it gets a UK release) was anathema to me. I love lists like Picard loves Earl Grey, so there was no way I could put off blurting out my picks.

To be honest, I thought that the final few big contenders might not get on the list. Synecdoche was the big hope, praised by some whose opinion means a lot to me but dissed by some hardcore Kaufman fans, so I couldn't be sure. Doubt looks promising, especially if you're a fan of Viola Davis, guilt, ACK-TING, and/or Joe Vs. The Volcano. The Reader could appeal to the Winslet enthusiast in me, even if it sounds like a potentially mind-shredding mixture of worthy ingredients and themes baked into Seriousness Souffle.


Other than that, there was Rachel Getting Married, which Canyon had been excited about since The AV Club went a bit mental about it. Even though it was great to hear that Jonathan Demme, a director I had once been crazy about, was back on form after some dodgy efforts, I was less enthused than Canyon, thinking I would like it well enough, but surely not more than I had liked the perfect crowd-pleasingness of Iron Man, or the complex power struggles and martial arts mastery of Red Cliff: Part One, or Colin Farrell's eloquent profanity and existential misery in In Bruges.

And yet I did like it. More than Iron Man. More than The Wrestler. More than In Bruges. More, even, than Kung Fu Panda, a film that makes me cry when watching just because I love it so much. We went to see it last night (finally released in the UK months after its initial US release), and I was floored by it. The only film of 2008 that I liked more was The Dark Knight, though Rachel Getting Married gives it a run for its money. Sadly for Demme and his amazing cast and crew, their excellent film still lacks Ledger and Eckhart, the Batpod, and the boat dilemma, so it could never be top of my list.

I cannot overstate how happy I am that Demme has made a movie that feels so much like his earlier work, even if the shooting style (handheld cameras and a home movie feel) is so different from anything he has ever done before. Demme was renowned for making movies that feel like they're full to the brim with life and unpredictability even though, formally, his movies were often very stylised and structured. Even something as potentially uncinematic as a Spalding Gray monologue was rendered visually lively in his movie Swimming to Cambodia, and yet all he was doing was filming Gray at a desk.


His post-Corman movies all felt like parties with plotlines, bristling with energy and quirkiness, and even if they weren't all perfect, they were still a lot of fun. Something Wild is possibly the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie, generating so much goodwill in the audience that even the much-discussed third-act detour into thriller territory doesn't derail the good times. Married To The Mob is possibly the oddest and most lovable gangster movie yet made, with Dean Stockwell doing a great job of being funny and threatening at the same time. Stop Making Sense is the classic concert movie, a playful celebration of not only the music of Talking Heads but the idea of live music as theatre. Melvin and Howard, coming across like a lost Hal Ashby movie or the brother of Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, is in dire need of reappraisal. Even something as compromised as Swing Shift had the spark of something made outside the restrictive studio system despite the interference of people who just didn't understand what he was aiming for.

The only other filmmakers from that period who managed to fill their films with such energy (at least that I can think of) were Jim McBride and Martin Scorsese. McBride regrettably disappeared after the failure of Great Balls of Fire (one of the most infectiously anarchic mainstream movies ever to fail miserably at the box office), and Scorsese has been chasing Oscars with some uninspiring prestige movies for a while now, cranking out shadows of his former great work. That said, I totally don't begrudge him winning, and even shed a tear when it happened. Look at him! I want to give that man a hug.


(An aside: There is also former Demme collaborator George Armitage, responsible for the gleefully unorthodox Miami Blues and Grosse Pointe Blank, but sadly he too came unstuck with The Big Bounce, a deeply frustrating project that hinted at, if not greatness, then at least some light-hearted and good-natured fun.)

That ossification of their exuberant style is similar to what happened to Demme. In a complete left-turn that still baffles me to this day, he made Silence of the Lambs, his biggest hit and an award magnet even though it is wilfully peculiar, bleak, and filled with idiosyncracies. It was a strange triumph for his brand of unorthodox and imaginative storytelling. However, for the longest time it was his last great hurrah. Philadelphia did a great job of raising awareness about HIV and AIDS, but it's not a particularly good movie. It's the first Big Theme movie of his career, and signalled that awful time in an Oscar-winning director's career when they lose whatever it was that made them interesting in the first place. It doesn't happen all of the time. Spielberg made Minority Report and Munich after winning two Oscars, and Bob Zemeckis followed his Forrest Gump win with performance-capture experiments of varying quality that were, however, still bold and fascinating on a technical level. However, how many interesting films has Barry Levinson made since Rain Man? Or Bernardo Bertolucci?


In the case of Demme, while I would be eager to see his early movies, I have little interest in seeing The Truth About Charlie (despite having Joong-Hoon Park, aka the Korean Marlon Brando, in the cast), and zero interest in Beloved, which looks like a deeply flawed interpretation of Toni Morrison's book. Plus, who wanted to see a remake of The Manchurian Candidate? It has all the elements of a potentially good movie, except that it serves no purpose. The updating of the story to satirise the nefarious motives of Big Business was potentially interesting, but garbled by horrible plotholes and inconsistencies. Flashes of Demme's quirky eye for detail or image broke through from time to time, and the performances were a joy to watch, but it was a dispiriting experience, seeing Demme making movies that were a world away from his earlier films, all of which looked and felt like they were made on Planet Demme. His earthbound projects just didn't inspire me at all. (N.B. I wrote this paragraph a couple of days ago, but a quick look at The AV Club's New Cult Canon feature on Married To The Mob features the phrase Demmeworld. He really does make movies unlike anyone else.)

In recent years his documentary work, such as Jimmy Carter Man From Plains, The Agronomist, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold, were critically praised, but their releases were so badly organised that, with my new apathy towards Demme, I couldn't muster the energy to chase them down. I never thought it would come to that. And now, that period has passed. Rachel Getting Married did many things to my brain and heart and soul, but first and foremost it's made me excited to watch his movies again. Those documentaries are definitely getting tracked down as soon as possible.


Rachel Getting Married has been described as being Altmanesque simply because it features a large ensemble cast that talks a lot, and the subject matters echoes that of Altman's A Wedding. Other than that the connection between Demme's work here and that of the great man is not as definitive as has been noted. The use of naturalistic speech patterns have more to do with the way the movie is filmed, with hand-held cameras and natural sound, than with some stylistic tic appropriated from elsewhere. Cleverly the movie is filmed in the same style as a wedding video, as if an invisible visitor to the ceremony was recording everything. At times the film cuts to the PoV of a guest who is recording everything, and other than the film stock you can barely tell the difference in style. Altman's overlapping dialogue was intentional and often overdone to the point of parody. In Rachel Getting Married, it's a natural consequence of Demme letting his actors loose without rehearsals, hence lines are stepped on and come at the wrong moments, much as with real conversations. Check out this press kit for more information about Demme's shooting style.

Saying the movie is realistically filmed is one thing, but it would still ring false if the performances and script were not up to scratch, but they are all nigh-on perfect. Jenny Lumet's debut script is an absolute marvel, superbly managing the tricky task of juggling tone and revelation and pace without giving away her structure. Love McKee though I do, it's hard to watch a lot of movies as learner writers show their act breaks too obviously, using McKee's work as a strict manual filled with compulsory rules instead of a guidebook of advice, which is how it should be treated. Lumet's script flows like real life flows, with unpredictability and awkwardness and accidents, but is structured perfectly. You just never notice until you pick it apart later. Of course, I shouldn't have to praise her for doing something that any writer worth their salt would do, but she does such an amazing job in a world where even this basic competence seems rare that I feel obligated to mention it.


That said, even an amazing script would suffer without a great cast to add life and natural flow to it, and Rachel Getting Married has a superb range of performers who seem to have been in rehearsal forever, so seamlessly is everything played. One memorable scene, which could easily have turned into a stagy shoutfest, is conducted almost entirely through calm, acidic asides and vicious accusations delivered in quiet but furious voices, the protagonists moving from room to room while Anna Deavere Smith hands out plates of melon. Seeing the incomparable Bill Irwin desperately trying to hold his family together as the tragedy in their past threatens to bring everything crashing down is one of the most affecting things I've seen in film for years, and would not have worked if we were watching big meltdown moments.

The only scene containing sustained histrionics, the climactic showdown between Kym and her feckless mother (played with odious brilliance by a perfectly cast Debra Winger), earns those screams. The fight we see has been in the offing for years, and when it comes it starts with almost no warning. I can't remember the last time a scene alarmed me more. Well, a scene that didn't involve a Batpod, exploding bodies, or some kind of monster on a rampage.


The music, something obviously very important to Demme, plays a huge part as well. He's done more to champion African music than any other US filmmaker, and without it his narrative work of the past few years has felt incomplete. As the movie's form demands no non-diegetic music be used for fear of breaking the semi-realist spell, Demme fills the wedding with musicians, used diegetically, throughout. Demme has said he was eager to present a wedding that reflects his life experiences and circle of friends, which is why Sister Carol East and Robyn Hitchcock turn up to perform (this is explained away by having Bill Irwin's patriarch conveniently working in the music industry). There is much African soul and funk in later scenes, and classical-ambient noodling throughout earlier scenes. We even get to hear Tunde Adebimpe, in the role of groom Sidney, sing to Rachel (an excellent performance by Rosemarie DeWitt), which was a lovely touch.

Sadly, that amazing soundtrack by Donald Harrison Jr. and Zafer Tawil's gets no Oscar nomination. Neither does Bill Irwin, or Jonathan Demme, or even (and this really disgusts me) Jenny Lumet. This despite it being widely admired, though I guess that means little when you have the moneyed likes of Harvey Weinstein running around strong-arming voters into praising illiterate Nazi movies. Much of our post-movie debate (conducted over amazing food at the West End branch of super-restaurant Tsunami, food fans!) was spent bemoaning Slumdog's recent SAG Awards win for Best Ensemble Cast. I can think of a number of movies more deserving of that award than the indifferently performed Slumdog, and none more so than Rachel Getting Married, which features a large and talented cast at the peak of their powers.


That cast is Demme's secret weapon. By casting friends and family, filming them constantly, and ensuring that a party atmosphere prevails, Rachel Getting Married, feels fresh and new and exciting, just like Demme's work from decades ago. No other film of recent years is as vibrant and life-affirming as this, even while it deals with tragedy and pain and some of the worst behavioural impulses imaginable. The sense of real celebration, real love and emotion bursting from the screen, is palpable, even though Lumet's script goes to extremely dark places and stares down pain and loss and grief without blinking, and even though Demme is not afraid to have scenes play out to uncomfortable or tedious length.

And yet it is almost totally ignored by the Academy, with numerous nominations given to less worthy movies instead. Of course, that includes my current bête noire, Slumdog Millionaire. Apologies for banging on about this yet again, but after seeing Rachel Getting Married, we were furious about the nominationariational state of play. Danny Boyle's movie purports to be an upbeat celebration of life and love, but at heart it's a hollow, ugly, fake trinket, a cubic zirconium blob of contrived uplift and phony sentimentalism. Rachel Getting Married is often painful to watch, but it feels real, and earns all of the emotions it generates in the audience. It serenades humanity in all its forms, whereas Slumdog is an inconsequential hymn to Hallmark-card simplicity. Despite all of its distracting flash it's little more than escapist Mogadon. As many fans have pointed out, it's not trying to be anything more than escapism, and that wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so ugly and boring and aggressively stupid. Rachel Getting Married is a thousand-times the movie Slumdog is, and seeing Boyle and his cohorts pulling in awards and rapturous praise while Demme's movie is treated as little more than a competent amuse-bouche is driving me into paroxysms of rage.

Of course, Rachel Getting Married did get one nomination. A Best Actress nod went to Anne Hathaway, whose phenomenal career-best performance earns her a prestigious Shades of Caruso free pass.


I don't care if she goes on to make The Devil Still Wears Prada, or a series of Bride Wars sequels that rival the Bond films for longevity. In Rachel Getting Married she is incredible, playing Kym, a messy neurotic bag of hostility and guilt, to perfection. I've heard some people say her tics annoyed them (including at least one loyal reader of this here blog), but I didn't notice that. Perhaps it's because I know Kym, or at least someone who went through some similar life experiences and, sadly, came out of it just as angry and unhappy as her. Hathaway reminded me of that period so much that it freaked me out for long stretches of the movie. But in a good way. For a start, it gave me an insight into why people try to help family or friends who are going through horrible internal strife. Obviously, it's because you love them no matter what. A no-brainer answer, really.


So yes, my lists (all four of them) are now all skewiff. The number two spot on my best films list goes to Rachel Getting Married. Anne Hathaway does the incredible and knocks the Unstoppable Winslet Machine out of the Best Actress spot. Rosemarie DeWitt and Bill Irwin get on my supporting lists. Jenny Lumet gives Martin McDonagh a run for his money for the Best Screenplay spot (I watched In Bruges again this week and I think it remains number one, but only just). Christopher Nolan remains my favourite director of the year, but Jonathan Demme is right behind him.


Oh, Demme. Film buffs are still patiently waiting for the second coming of Woody Allen (or third, or fourth; I've lost count), and two weak-to-average movies have been treated like the equals of Crimes and Misdemeanours and Husbands and Wives, even though Match Point was a silly mess and Vicky Cristina Barcelona is kinda dull and obvious. We're not getting another Manhattan, or Hannah and her Sisters, or even Broadway Danny Rose ever again, and we should just accept that and treat his late career projects as mildly diverting exercises in mannerism and waffling. Demme, however, hasn't just made something better than The Manchurian Candidate. He's not just made his best film since Silence of the Lambs. He's made his best film since Melvin and Howard. Maybe even better than that. It's not a return to form, or the late-blooming of a failed but interesting director (his early movies are too good for that insulting appelation). It's vindication for his fans, proof that the man was an important and fiercely intelligent artist all along, and was just having a bad run that would end one day when the right project came along. In 2008, it finally did. I simply cannot praise it enough.

Listmania! The Films of 2008, Part 4

I think this shall represent the final purging of the trivia rattling around my brain from 2008.

Welcome Miscellaneous Events of the Year: Nicholas Stoller and David Koepp making good use of Russell Brand and Ricky Gervais


I'm not really a fan of either British comedian, but in Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Ghost Town both were great, playing to their strengths and their public personas perfectly. It's even made me like them a bit. It's miraculous.

Honourable Mentions:
Kate Beckinsale's strong performance in Snow Angels. So much better when not modelling rubber pants.
Seeing RADA-trained Shakespearean actor Adrian Lester playing a gun-toting hardass in Doomsday and seemingly relishing it.
The arrival of Rebecca Hall as a formidable screen presence.
Tim Roth's excellent performance as Emil Blonsky in The Incredible Hulk (usually I'm not a fan of his).

Unwelcome Miscellaneous Events of the Year: Fox being the biggest assholes in the world for trying to ruin the release of Watchmen. Will there be a boycott of X-Men Origins: Wolverine as a result? I'd like to hope it happens.


Dishonourable Mentions:
The incomprehensibility of the action scenes in Quantum of Solace and Eagle Eye.
The truly disheartening career choices of Al Pacino.
Taraji P. Henson's bizarre stereotypical acting choices in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
George Lucas's decision to make the character of Ziro the Hutt a weird lisping cross-dresser with Truman Capote's voice in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. An entire planet says, "WTF?"

Best Poster: The Dark Knight



Worst Poster: Bangkok Dangerous


Best Advertising Campaign of the Year: Cloverfield


After the trailer from last year, the campaign never really put a foot wrong. By the time the movie came out, there was no way even the worst reviews would have stopped us watching it.

Worst Advertising Campaign of the Year: The Incredible Hulk

Slender trailers, a couple of crappy TV spots, an inability to control the grouchy star (other than a funny bit on Jimmy Kimmel), and eventually, just before the release, a huge emphasis on the appearance of Robert Downey Jr., and the end of the movie being re-edited to give that tiny scene more prominence. No wonder the movie didn't make as much money as hoped. It all made the movie look like this rush-job trying to find an empty weekend during the busy summer season, but even a cursory look at the extras on the DVD show the astonishing amount of hard work and thought that went into it. Such a shame. Anyway, here's the Kimmel thing. It's the only vaguely good thing to come out of the shockingly mishandled campaign.



Least Discreet Advertising Campaign of the Year:


Wanted's many trailers gave away pretty much every WOW moment of the film. As the plot (minus the crazy Loom of Fate and exploding rats stuff) was very similar to the comic, it felt like a waste of time actually sitting through the movie. I can see that the movie was a tough sell, but couldn't they have kept some more stuff back for the film?

Coolest and Most Apt Cameo Sadly Relegated to a Deleted Scene on a DVD: Ghostface Killah in Iron Man

Most Deliriously Batshit Action Movie of the Year: Rambo


Honourable Mentions: Vantage Point, Eagle Eye, Chocolate

Vocal Sound Effect of the Year: “Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” (Clint Eastwood - Gran Torino)

Catchphrase of the Year: "Let! Us! Fuck!" (Zack and Miri Make A Porno)

Most Welcome Trend of the Year (Other Than The Grudging Critical Respect Aimed At The Superhero Genre): The New Horror Renaissance


It's been going on for a while now, but even so, this year we were lucky enough to get Eden Lake, [Rec], The Orphanage, Let The Right One In and, arguably, the interesting adaptation of Scott Smith's horror classic The Ruins, all of which were of varying degrees of quality but definitely in the "very good" column. I feel like adding Neil Marshall's hugely entertaining Doomsday to that list, for being in such debt to John Carpenter, James Cameron, and George Miller, who all know how to make a suspenseful or horrifying movie. Marshall has shown he can duplicate those talents with ease. If I'm going to add that, I'll even make a case for Stuart Gordon's excellent Stuck, which is macabre, ghoulish, nail-biting suspense, as well as being a terrific comment on poverty and the pressures put on the working class, and features an excellent performance from Stephen Rea. It's been a long time since I was excited by the horror genre, and it's an odd feeling.

Least Welcome Trend of the Year: Post-Modern Cinema-Verite Movies about the War in Iraq

Don't get me wrong, it's vital we keep our eye on that war, and never forget that people are suffering there in simply horrible ways, but whereas documentaries like No End in Sight, Taxi To The Dark Side, and Standard Operating Procedure do their best to illuminate by giving voice to as many different observers as possible, Nick Broomfield's Battle For Haditha and Brian De Palma's Redacted try to create a different kind of "truth" by either recreating an atrocity or by staging a po-mo video collage of a fictional atrocity based on a real one. Both movies come from an honest place but mangle the truth through their different approaches; Broomfield with his docu-drama retelling, De Palma with his formalist tricks (fake French documentary footage, YouTube videos, CCTV, hand-held camera shots from soldiers documenting the events). Both movies intentionally feature non-actors playing unconvincing characters (more like avatars) saying clunky expositional dialogue, and featuring some bizarre choices.

For instance, Broomfield invents a composite character who is a major protagonist during the horrifying massacre of innocents. If you don't see the accompanying documentary (the name of which eludes me, regrettably) then you wouldn't know this, and you would assume that somehow that person had given his consent to Broomfield that he could show him in the film, or had had some hand in telling Broomfield what he was thinking and feeling throughout. As he didn't, all of that is now suspect, and whatever horrors the film presents are dulled by that knowledge. Just as annoying, Redacted is not based on a real event, due to legal difficulties, and as such seems like little more than a remake of Casualties of War. Even though we know there was indeed an incident similar to this, the film just muddies the waters and makes it harder for the viewer to figure out what is really going on over there.


As for the hand-held camera, it's not a convention I usually object to. I just think it really only works in movies like Cloverfield and [Rec], where using the participant frame as a method of generating new ways of delivering shocks to the audience is far more tasteful than, say De Palma's use of it. Even more annoying is that is has been proved that a docu-drama can be made that hews as close to the objective truth as it is possible to. Paul Greengrass' astonishing United 93 should be a template to follow, made with as much attention to detail and first-hand accounting as it is possible to. Admittedly Broomfield couldn't get the same level of access to the real participants as Greengrass, but still, there are avoidable choices made that damage his movie.

It's doubly frustrating because these are stories that need to be told and, especially in the case of Haditha, were done with such incredibly good intentions. This article by Broomfield shows how committed he was to telling this story to the best of his abilities. Unfortunately, in the telling of them, by blurring the lines of fact and fiction, and by filling the characters' mouths with words that no normal person would ever say, they have inadvertently distanced the audience from the real horrors. They're still essential viewing, though.

Most Relentless Use of Religious Imagery in a Science Fiction Tale: Dante 01


Dishonourable Mention: Wall*E

Best Hair: Viggo Mortensen's face fuzz (Appaloosa)


He looks like a bit of a dandy but he will fuck you up, for reals.

Worst Hair: Nicolas Cage (Bangkok Dangerous)


Does using shampoo ruin his deadly assassin's aim or something?

Most Improbably Styled Hair: Camilla Belle's pristine dreads in 10000 B.C.


Apparently we're descended from Rasta Valley Girls.

Best Use of Kristen Wiig: Ghost Town


Worst Use of Kristen Wiig: Cutting her entirely out of the cinema release of Forgetting Sarah Marshall



Adorable Screen Couple of the Year: Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow (Iron Man)


Honourable Mentions:
Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (Zack and Miri Make a Porno), Mos Def and Melonie Diaz (Be Kind Rewind)

Crap Screen Couple of the Year: Vin Diesel and Mélanie Thierry (Babylon A.D.)


Dishonourable Mentions: Shia LaBeouf and Michelle Monaghan (Eagle Eye), Hayden Christensen and Rachel Bilson (Jumper)

Inappropriate and Just Downright Creepy Screen Couple of the Year: Kåre Hedebrant and Lina Leandersson (Let The Right One In)


"Oh Man, At Last!" Couple of the Year: Harrison Ford and Karen Allen (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull)


"Jesus, Just Split Up Already!" Couple of the Year: Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel (The Happening)


Dishonourable Mention: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road), Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (The Strangers)

Most Awkward and Unconvincing Couple of the Year: Edward Norton and Liv Tyler (The Incredible Hulk)


Utterly Improbable Couple of the Year: James McAvoy and Angelina Jolie (Wanted)


Dishonourable Mention: Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth (21)

Most Gratuitous Kissing Between Two Hotties Just So The Director Can Get His Rocks Off: Penelope Cruz and Scarlett Johansson in Vicky Cristina Barcelona


Worst Ending to a Relationship: Kate Beckinsale and Hott Sam Rockwell in Snow Angels


Dishonourable Mentions: Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (Revolutionary Road), Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (The Strangers)

Likeable Manic Pixie Dream Girl of the Year: Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis - Forgetting Sarah Marshall)


Honourable Mention: Chloë - (Clémence Poésy - In Bruges)

Unlikeable Manic Pixie Dream Girl - Valentina (Natalya Rudakova - Transporter 3)


Dishonourable Mention: Fox (Angelina Jolie - Wanted)

Convincing Lust Object of the Year: Daniel Craig (Quantum of Solace)


Honourable Mention: Javier Bardem (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)

Unconvincing Lust Object of the Year: Al Pacino (88 Minutes)


Dishonourable Mention: Kate Bosworth (21)

"Kate Winslet In Little Children" Award For Least Believable Unattractiveness: Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler


We're supposed to think Tomei, as stripper Cassidy, looks so old that no one wants her to dance for them? Bullshit. She's looking as good as ever, though kudos to her for selling that plot point.

Most Amusing Critical Crush of the Year: Stephanie Zacharek's potentially compromising soft spot for Jason Statham

At the end of the year, Stephanie Zacharek, film critic for Salon, had her end of year list (somewhat smaller than mine), with a big list of honourable mentions. Among the usual suspects, there was also The Bank Job and Transporter 3, two movies that really are just not that good. When we had a closer look at her reviews for both movies, we found out why: Stephanie + Jason 4evah!


Hilariously, her reviews for both movies (and Death Race, which she was also easy on), were basically mash notes to the Brit Bruiser. Here are some highlights:

"Statham is sexy all right, with that beefcake-pinup chest, but the sexiest thing about him is what's going on upstairs, and his voice alone is delectable: It sounds like a cat's tongue feels." (Transporter 3)

"The look in Statham's eyes reassures [Keeley Hawes] more than his words ever could -- they have a melting quality that counterbalances the rough, masculine raspiness of his voice. In the press notes for "The Bank Job," Donaldson says that Statham reminds him of a British Steve McQueen, and the comparison makes sense. In "The Bank Job," Statham is a sex symbol with a soul..." (The Bank Job)

"Anderson's camera [casts] its unapologetically erotic view on Statham's perfectly chiseled mug -- his stubble is so artfully dappled it could have been painted by Carravagio... There's no doubt he makes a fine physical specimen in any picture: His muscles have that mysterious filmic quality of looking both rock-hard and pillowy at once... Statham moves with such easy grace that you don't have to work hard to believe him. And if he can stand up to Joan Allen, melting her predatory stare with his own molten gaze, then it's clear he's not just the prettiest guy on the prison block, but also the toughest." (Death Race)

I wish she had reviewed In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale as well. I'd wager she definitely owns it.

Okay, I reckon that should be enough. Normal service can be resumed now.