nysalor Reviews

Interstellar (2014)

No mere law of physics shall stand in the way of a good tearjerker

[6/10 · 8 November 2014]

What to say about Christopher Nolan's space travel blockbuster? Well it covers very familiar ground, and in some ways is a pastiche of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (with more than a touch of Yukinobu Hoshino's '2001 Nights'). But it's 2001 with Cliff Notes and endless explanatory voice-overs. Which don't help one bit. And despite some great visuals and set pieces, its as much mawky melodrama as serious science fiction.

The script is terrible: flat, bloated, uber-hokey and at times laugh-out-loud. The four (four!) repetitions of Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle" don't help. Characters are thinly-developed and white, middle class stereotypical. There are more teary goodbyes than a full season of Teletubbies. There is almost nothing in the way of character agency or development. Matthew McConaughey is forgettable, despite playing the all-American everything who saves the universe (or does he?). Anne Hathaway impresses, doing a decent job with terrible material. Michael Caine features as himself.

Matt Damon appears in an interlude that is both jarring and confused, a (necessary?) concession for the action crowd that adds to nothing bar the running time.

The worst thing about Interstellar is the science. Now as a Kubrick tragic, I thought I'd long ago covered all the superlatives for 2001, but after watching Interstellar I came up with a new one: Integrity. Kubrick and Clarke totally respected the science. Interstellar's plot is based upon 'the science', yet abuses it absolutely. I mean, it's *Star Trek* bad. No mere law of physics is going to stand in the way of a good tearjerker. Black holes, degree of relativity, radiation, gravitational tides? Who cares! For a movie that pretends to set the bar high, it's a fatal flaw.

It's a Nolan film, so the gadgets are great. The dust bowl blight background is well thought through. The cinematography is stylish and the restrained CGI extremely effective. Other characteristic Nolan foibles impress less - dialogue has never been his strong point, the on-screen philosophising is banal, and the music - organs swells and vibrant cello stringing - often drown out the scene rather than supporting it.

I'm still thinking about Interstellar (a good sign in itself). I'm now offering it grudging respect, Respect for its coherence in the face of the multiple conflicting demands it faces as a blockbuster. Respect for the bits it does well: the human loss involved in space travel, the tensions of family versus greater good, even its cheek in criticising the dumbing down of American culture while contributing to it. What really stands out is how it is all bathed in a retro futurism: a longing for a lost America of pioneers and visionaries, that mythical age when science mattered as the film describes a farmer-hero, tech-hating proto-fascism.

The weaknesses of the script are its undoing, however, and its sad to think that the relativistic tragedies and three planet problem could have been portrayed without ludicrous deus-ex-singularis anti-science.

So. There were some great bits. There were some terrible bits. Its messy, poorly plotted, and three hours long. On balance though, I'd recommend you see it. Once. What saves it from a fate worse than Prometheus is the overall coherence. There is lots of discussion to be had over plot holes, ontological paradoxes, and (of course) how we'd do it better. Just know what you're getting yourself into.

Cthulhu (2000)

Determined amateur's zero budget effort

[3/10 · 21 September 2012]

Cthulhu is an amateur production shot in Canberra, Australia in 1996 and '97. It has shown at a number of festivals, but has never been released to theatres. A burn on demand option is available through Amazon. This production should not be confused with the commercial 2007 U.S. film of the same name.

Cthulhu is an an amateur production shot with a single 16 mm camera using tails and excess film stock. It has no professional actors (you can often see them reading their lines), no closeups, little story coherence, no colour matching, and (it seems) no second takes. Apart from some gunshot squibs and and an exploding car, the SFX comprise single screen hand-drawn monsters and extremely crude polarization effects. The claim made on IMDb that it had a $100,000 budget is wishful thinking of the most extreme kind.

Cthulhu's plot is a pastiche drawing on the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft; in particular the tales 'The Thing on the Doorstep', 'The Dunwich Horror', 'Shadow over Innsmouth' and 'The Call of Cthulhu'. Coherence is sacrificed as so many elements are crammed in.

The most interesting aspect of the film is its use of Canberra locales, including the now demolished Canberra Hospital as Arkham Asylum and The Australian National University as Miskatonic U. The results are often unintentionally hilarious, such as a Belconnen second-hand bookstore selling rare occult medieval manuscripts. The exploding car has nothing to do with the story, but was the result of the SFX consultant mentioning how it might be done. The catering budget was emptied to buy a $200 car shell from a wreckers, and the director went door-to-door to farms outside Canberra asking for permission to blow up a car in a paddock.

The exploding car is a highlight of the film. (This says everything that needs to be said). A second highlight is the hordes of student extras morphing into inbred Innsmouth locals by the use of absurd Middlesex accents; "The trees they be a rustling'.

Cthulhu is not without its guilty pleasures, but they fall firmly into the so-bad-it's-good category. With the application of large amounts of popcorn, it might be enjoyed as a rehearsal take for a Hammer horror send up as directed by Ed Wood. Today, similar or better results could be obtained using a mobile phone.

However, the original music by Jason Sims is exceptional.

Cthulhu is a tribute to first time producer-director-scriptwriter Damian Heffernan's determination and passion to create something from nothing. I salute him. If you ever have a chance to see it, bring popcorn.

The Last Samurai (2003)

A Hollow, Confused Vanilla Epic

[3/10 · 26 January 2004]

Why did they bother? What a shallow, confused, obvious and ultimately chaotic mess.

I love samurai films. I have a love of Japan and a love of Japanese films. I can watch even a bad Japanese film because the minute of the Japanese environment can captivate and engross. Yet the Last Samurai is so stripped of meaning, detail or subtlety that I came away wondering why they bothered.

The Last Samurai runs an epic, humourless two and a half hours. it seemed much longer.

The Meiji Restoration is a fascinating period of Japanese history. The Last Samurai examines it with all a finese and insight that can only come of producing it entirely in New Zealand. Japan looks a lot like Middle Earth. Come to think of it, the badlands of Little Big Horn look a lot like Middle Earth. No amount of blue tinting can disguise this basic, unsettling visual impairment. In the first battle sequence, you are expecting bands of orcs to come grunting out of the forest. Instead, you get samurai in *medieval* armour. Welcome to 1876.

Confused? Don't worry, you're not alone.

In The Last Samurai, for all its bushido posturing, Japan and the Japanese are a mere afterthought.

They got the US flag wrong too. And San Francisco. Given this, you don't have much confidence in their treatment of the history and politics of the period, or the intricacies and beauty of Japanese culture. Luckily, there's almost none. It mighty as well be Arrakis as Japan. The Last Samurai is a fantasy.

This is a nothing so much as boys own adventure, and brings the very best and worst of the genre. There are few women, in fact only one who counts, and she is...uh huh got it in one. Tom Cruise is Nathan Algren the curiously centreless, ammoral hero, a character without subtlety, who of course out-samurais the samurai in just a few months. Whitie wins again.

Cruise can bring little of the necessary gravitas to the role, little to make Nathan anything more than a action figure who can talk and bend.

The next paragraphs contain spoilers, an odd term in this context because there is very very little in the plotting to surprise.

American comes to Japan to fight rebel samurai. American is captured. American lives with samurai. You can guess the rest. Everything is perfectly two dimensional - noble rebels, complete with rebel leader who is really uh huh, grudging tough guy warrior who uh huh, and beautiful widow who uh huh. Its join the dots fantasy, rarely rising above stereotype... weak Emperor, two faced politicians, amoral Europeans. There's the obligatory 'use the force, Luke' scene, a few token culture clash scenes, and of course, the meat of the movie, lots of noble, chop-suey style battle scenes. Well choreographed, drawn out and messy, they are the heart of the film, and the measure of its appeal or lack thereof. The bushido way is death before dishonour, but heck, there's always a hollywood exception, right?

The entire effort is curiously humourless, even given the serious themes and supposed dramatic depth of Cruise's character. The film has one good joke, completely out of genre, that takes us into Kevin Smith territory. (What was the name Ethan gave to his minder?)

Billy Connolly makes an all-too-brief appearance as Nathan's loyal NCO. As the film dragged on, I kept thinking what a much more satisfying movie this might have been if it was Zebulon who was captured and whose story we followed. There would have been a film of much greater humanity, sensitivity and humour, if less macho posturing. Alas.

What troubled me most of all was the moral confusion at the heart of the film. What was the message again? A generation on, those bushido values led to the Japanese invasion of China, Pearl Harbor, and beyond.

Kurosawa, at least, never forgot that.