Ang Lee is a capricious talent, capable of misfiring (Hulk), but when on top form there is almost no film-maker in the world today to touch him. His masterful adaptation of one of those supposedly unfilmable (pfft) novels has overcome the obvious technical challenges with possibly the best use of 3D and most realistic CGI animation yet put on screen. Such things will, in time, be surpassed; but what won't fade with the years is the virtuosic rendition in light and form of an apparently simple fable, but one shrouded in delicate layers of humanity and spirituality.
The central adventure and survival tale, ravishingly shot and stunningly acted by newcomer Suraj Sharma, is bookended by initially innocuous scene-setting and reminiscing sequences that gently, imperceptibly, shift the meaning from the story being told, to the meaning of the telling of the story. A sublime meditation on faith and the power of belief... with a stonking great tiger.
Rating: 5/5
Monday 31 December 2012
Sunday 30 December 2012
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Baggy, never-ending goings on, going on in Bag End, give way finally to a surprisingly spritely adventure for such a behemoth of a movie. The tone (teetering between light kiddlesome adventure and LOTR darkness) takes a while to find its feet; the excellent cast however, hit the ground running. It's pleasing to see just how much care Jackson and team have put into giving the dwarves a rounded and meaty set of personalities, there's nary a hint of Time Bandits silliness that could have derailed a less respectful adaptation (something that Gimli's overtly comedic turn in Return Of The King pointed worryingly to).
The Hobbit doesn't yet engage with the same depth of emotion that made the Fellowship such an astounding achievement from the off. With the shoehorning in of much peripheral material from the Tolkien archives there may be issues with getting the right balance of looming threat and moral imperative that LOTR had running through its heart; yet these are but early days, and it will undoubtedly take the telling of the entire saga to conclude if this trilogy can measure up to the extraordinary achievements of its predecessor.
I was deeply sceptical of the move to three lengthy films being wrought from such a slim source, and while I remain to be wholly convinced, this first episode has much to enjoy; and once the languorous opening act was dispensed with, felt far tighter and more event-filled than the running time would suggest.
A gentle tale, lovingly told, and with the grimmer and bad-assier stuff still to come, there is hope of greatness yet.
Rating: 4/5
The Hobbit doesn't yet engage with the same depth of emotion that made the Fellowship such an astounding achievement from the off. With the shoehorning in of much peripheral material from the Tolkien archives there may be issues with getting the right balance of looming threat and moral imperative that LOTR had running through its heart; yet these are but early days, and it will undoubtedly take the telling of the entire saga to conclude if this trilogy can measure up to the extraordinary achievements of its predecessor.
I was deeply sceptical of the move to three lengthy films being wrought from such a slim source, and while I remain to be wholly convinced, this first episode has much to enjoy; and once the languorous opening act was dispensed with, felt far tighter and more event-filled than the running time would suggest.
A gentle tale, lovingly told, and with the grimmer and bad-assier stuff still to come, there is hope of greatness yet.
Rating: 4/5
Monday 26 November 2012
Argo (2012)
The Ben Affleck career renaissance continues apace with this masterfully measured and understated piece of directing, which adapts the so-bizarre-it-can-only-be-true story of a fake movie used as cover for a CIA rescue operation, into an old-school '70s-style political thriller laced with shades of self-reflexive Hollywood satire. Argo successfully balances scenes of seat-gripping tension and joyously grouchy humour that feels effortless but takes a sure hand to pull off. Minor historical inaccuracies have to be swallowed along the way for the benefit of snappier pacing. But overall this remains a fascinating true story, delivered with great performances, pin-sharp dialogue and award-winning facial hair, and would make a fine double-bill with the underrated Charlie Wilson's War. The new Eastwood? ...maybe.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Sunday 4 November 2012
Troll Hunter (Trolljegeren ) (2010)
Post-Blair Witch found footage faux-doc shenanigans meets old-Norse fairytale mythology in this delightfully fun romp of a movie which attempts to address that age-old philosophical dilemma, "if a Troll can smell the blood of a Christian, can it detect a Muslim?".
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Friday 2 November 2012
Frankenweenie (2012)
Tim Burton resurrects his pet project
In 1984, Tim Burton, a young animator / director working at Disney, made a thirty minute short about a boy who brings his dead dog back to life. His employers took one look at his mutant creation and promptly showed him the door.
Nearly thirty years on, and "Disney Presents" his feature length stop-motion reworking of that nascent project, and, after the wobbles of Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows, it's the most charmingly Burtonesque feature he's made in some time. Featuring all the hallmarks of his instantly recognisable style (crazy angles, spindly-legged bug-eyed protagonists, chiaroscuro lighting, all set against a fat-bottomed, shock-haired variant of 50s suburban Americana) writ large in animated form, but at the service of a simple, sweet-natured slice of gothic fantasy.
An amiable riff on the classic Frankenstein tale, the story of young Victor and his re-animated beloved pet doesn't really offer much meat to put on the bones of his short story. But it does deliver a sympathetic portrait of childhood out of whack with the mainstream and all the healthier for it (no doubt somewhat autobiographical, in feel at least if not in the corpse-meddling details). There's plenty of fun to be had soaking up the loving homages to the likes of Universal Studios 1930s back-catalogue, a classroom full of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney lookalike kids chief among them, leading to a small-scale monster mash that takes much the same route as Wallace & Grommit's Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, and to similar grin-inducing effect. Ghoulish fun.
Rating: 3/5
In 1984, Tim Burton, a young animator / director working at Disney, made a thirty minute short about a boy who brings his dead dog back to life. His employers took one look at his mutant creation and promptly showed him the door.
Nearly thirty years on, and "Disney Presents" his feature length stop-motion reworking of that nascent project, and, after the wobbles of Alice In Wonderland and Dark Shadows, it's the most charmingly Burtonesque feature he's made in some time. Featuring all the hallmarks of his instantly recognisable style (crazy angles, spindly-legged bug-eyed protagonists, chiaroscuro lighting, all set against a fat-bottomed, shock-haired variant of 50s suburban Americana) writ large in animated form, but at the service of a simple, sweet-natured slice of gothic fantasy.
An amiable riff on the classic Frankenstein tale, the story of young Victor and his re-animated beloved pet doesn't really offer much meat to put on the bones of his short story. But it does deliver a sympathetic portrait of childhood out of whack with the mainstream and all the healthier for it (no doubt somewhat autobiographical, in feel at least if not in the corpse-meddling details). There's plenty of fun to be had soaking up the loving homages to the likes of Universal Studios 1930s back-catalogue, a classroom full of Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney lookalike kids chief among them, leading to a small-scale monster mash that takes much the same route as Wallace & Grommit's Curse Of The Were-Rabbit, and to similar grin-inducing effect. Ghoulish fun.
Rating: 3/5
Thursday 1 November 2012
Skyfall (2012)
When, just a few years ago, Bond was stunningly re-invented with Casino Royale (new Bond, new grittier, leaner style, and starting over with his career chronology from year dot), there was but one element carried over from the bloated tail-end of the Brosnan era: Dame Judi Dench's powerful, acerbic, matriarchal "M". How Sam Mendes and his team behind this latest adventure must be thanking their lucky stars for that decision, for without her there could be no Skyfall. This is a story, more than any other Bond before in all its 50 years, that doesn't revolve around 007. He is the hurricane of action that revolves around her, the eye at the centre of the storm.
After the unmemorable and confusing mess that was Quantum Of Solace, it takes about two seconds to establish that we are back in safe, familiar Bond territory, with a blistering opening chase, leavened by touches of sly wit. What then follows is a confident, pacey, well handled thriller, that front-loads most of the big set-pieces and espionage shenanigans in the first hour, before stripping down in a surprising but effective change of mood to something simpler, starker and emotionally more engaged.
Worthy of high praise indeed is Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography. This is almost certainly the most stunningly photographed of any Bond movie. Segments set in Shanghai (or soundstages purporting to be Shanghai) are bathed in a rich, noirish black and orange glow and framed with gobsmacking detail and poise. One particular standout fight, brief and brutal, is viewed entirely in silhouette against a languorously drifting illuminated backdrop from a single near-motionless viewpoint. His camera moves with such effortless elegance it's almost mocking the post-Bourne shaky-cam intensity that all other action movies now feel they somehow have to ape.
Daniel Craig seems less of a revelation this time round, but this is no bad thing. He's utterly comfortable in the role now, and we are comfortable with him. It's astounding to remember now the controversy and vitriol that accompanied his casting in the role not so long ago. The supporting cast is about the strongest a Bond movie has ever been blessed with, so much so that it's occasionally a tad disappointing that some of these characters don't get more time to shine (The wonderful Naomie Harris in particular gets relegated to the background far too soon), but hopefully this sets up one or two for good use another day.
But performance wise, it is Dench's "M" that anchors Skyfall. She's central to the most significant scenes and gets the meatiest and most touching dialogue. Hard-edged, bold and feisty, but with subtly evinced layers of regret and vulnerability, she gives this movie its beating heart.
Less successful perhaps are the machinations of Javier Bardem's full-tilt baddie. He can of course play unhinged, disturbing full-on wrongness better than just about anyone alive, as No Country For Old Men easily attests, and is great fun in the role. But the motivations and logic behind the events leading to the third act feel unfocussed and ill-conceived, making the stakes seem perhaps a touch less perilous than in the best Bonds of yore.
Overall though, none of these minor misgivings really surfaced until sometime after leaving the cinema. For a near two-and-a-half hour movie, Skyfall barrels along just fine, delivering thrills and cool in equal, well-balanced measure, and booting you out at the end with a big smile on your face. Job done.
Rating: 4/5
After the unmemorable and confusing mess that was Quantum Of Solace, it takes about two seconds to establish that we are back in safe, familiar Bond territory, with a blistering opening chase, leavened by touches of sly wit. What then follows is a confident, pacey, well handled thriller, that front-loads most of the big set-pieces and espionage shenanigans in the first hour, before stripping down in a surprising but effective change of mood to something simpler, starker and emotionally more engaged.
Worthy of high praise indeed is Roger Deakins' beautiful cinematography. This is almost certainly the most stunningly photographed of any Bond movie. Segments set in Shanghai (or soundstages purporting to be Shanghai) are bathed in a rich, noirish black and orange glow and framed with gobsmacking detail and poise. One particular standout fight, brief and brutal, is viewed entirely in silhouette against a languorously drifting illuminated backdrop from a single near-motionless viewpoint. His camera moves with such effortless elegance it's almost mocking the post-Bourne shaky-cam intensity that all other action movies now feel they somehow have to ape.
Daniel Craig seems less of a revelation this time round, but this is no bad thing. He's utterly comfortable in the role now, and we are comfortable with him. It's astounding to remember now the controversy and vitriol that accompanied his casting in the role not so long ago. The supporting cast is about the strongest a Bond movie has ever been blessed with, so much so that it's occasionally a tad disappointing that some of these characters don't get more time to shine (The wonderful Naomie Harris in particular gets relegated to the background far too soon), but hopefully this sets up one or two for good use another day.
But performance wise, it is Dench's "M" that anchors Skyfall. She's central to the most significant scenes and gets the meatiest and most touching dialogue. Hard-edged, bold and feisty, but with subtly evinced layers of regret and vulnerability, she gives this movie its beating heart.
Less successful perhaps are the machinations of Javier Bardem's full-tilt baddie. He can of course play unhinged, disturbing full-on wrongness better than just about anyone alive, as No Country For Old Men easily attests, and is great fun in the role. But the motivations and logic behind the events leading to the third act feel unfocussed and ill-conceived, making the stakes seem perhaps a touch less perilous than in the best Bonds of yore.
Overall though, none of these minor misgivings really surfaced until sometime after leaving the cinema. For a near two-and-a-half hour movie, Skyfall barrels along just fine, delivering thrills and cool in equal, well-balanced measure, and booting you out at the end with a big smile on your face. Job done.
Rating: 4/5
Tuesday 2 October 2012
Looper (2012)
In the near future, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, suspiciously made
up to resemble a young Bruce Willis, is living a grimy, hollow life as a
low-grade hit man, offing mob targets pushed under his trigger from a further,
time-travel enabled future, when who should show up at the wrong end of his
cannon than... bugger me, it's Bruce Willis!
Take one dollop of Source Code, mix in some 12 Monkeys,
add a dash of Terminator, and then serve with a somewhat unexpected side order
of Stephen King-style paranormal chills, and you're some way towards concocting
Rian Johnson's pacy and highly entertaining science-fiction adventure. JG-L is
pretty impressive in the lead role, channelling a young John McClane in a
leather jacket and ending up more than half-way James Dean, which is just about
right for the noirish '50s undertones of the heavily narrated first act. What
follows doesn't stand up to too much close analysis, but this really doesn't
matter once the chase kicks off. Looper delivers solid thrills, without going
overblown and losing focus on its engaging central characters. Not the smartest
temporal tale out there, but terrific fun while it lasts. Note: Also features
Jeff Daniels in beard.
Rating: 4/5
Monday 17 September 2012
City Of Life And Death (Nanjing! Nanjing!) (2009)
There are a rare few films that have found a way to tackle some of the greatest atrocities ever committed by and upon the human race with such searing, unflinching emotional honesty that they move beyond the categorisations of drama or war movie to something that can best be described as bearing witness. Come And See and Schindler's List belong to this exclusive group, and so too now must Lu Chuan's extraordinary and harrowing City Of Life And Death.
It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.
Events are told in a masterful intercutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the frontline with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.
The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, handheld and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.
At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.
Rating: 5/5
It is 1937 in Nanking, former Chinese capital and scene of what is about to unfold as one of the greatest war-crimes in history (a massacre verging on genocide and an event which continues to sour Sino-Japanese relations to this day), but writer/director Lu Chuan is not here to analyse wider military events or stratagems. We open with the briefest glimpse of the Japanese assault on the city walls, and then before the credits have even finished rolling his camera is already patrolling the post-conflict city streets; a blasted, ruined landscape. His film picks up where the likes of The Pianist or Saving Private Ryan leave off, in the midst of a destroyed world, with the invaders and the surviving remnants of the defeated population already pitched together in a dangerous and disorientating mix of sporadic resistance battles, vast wretched prisoner encampments and perilously tenuous civilian "safety" zones.
Events are told in a masterful intercutting of macro and micro drama. We are introduced to only a handful of identifiable characters. Amongst them a Chinese bureaucrat trying to use his position to save his family, a young boy caught up in the resistance fighting, a naive prostitute (euphemistically referred to as comfort girls), one of thousands shipped to the frontline with no idea of the horrors awaiting them, and a single Japanese soldier with some semblance of conscience amongst his savage comrades. Their desperate personal stories intertwine inside the maelstrom of chaos and horror surrounding them.
The stunning black-and-white photography veers from stark, handheld and up-close, to vast and impressionistic sweeps that depict the large-scale massacres as nightmarish visions of some biblical apocalypse. The combined effect renders the feel of the movie as both something close to a rediscovered contemporary document and personal witness testimony, the small-scale drama illuminating the large-scale atrocity that might be beyond comprehension otherwise.
At times heart-stopping in its intensity and tragic almost beyond expressing. City Of Life And Death is a profoundly moving depiction of inhumanity at its most grievous. It simply should be seen.
Rating: 5/5
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Dredd (2012)
Karl Urban gives good chin in a pleasingly grimy, ballsy, UK independent production that obliterates the rotten memories of Stallone's badly misjudged '90s take on this cult comic favourite. Dredd the movie, like Dredd the character, is not particularly smart, and somewhat heavy-footed, but gets by with an effective mixture of substantial brutality, wry, underplayed humour, and a healthy dose of scathing totalitarian dystopia. It may not live up to the very best of its kind, but when, at around the half-way mark, the writers steal an iconic line from Robocop, I had to admit, "yep, fair play, it's earned the right to do that". And that's pretty high praise in my view.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Sunday 26 August 2012
Valhalla Rising (2009)
Many years ago, I stood on a cold windswept beach with three school friends. We stood in stillness and silence, slightly apart from one another, contemplating the grey desolate horizon, till one of them broke the spell with the pointedly deadpan observation. "I feel like we are a U2 album cover".
Watching Valhalla Rising is experiencing several grimy actors doing this for ninety minutes... with no punchline.
Rating: 2/5
Watching Valhalla Rising is experiencing several grimy actors doing this for ninety minutes... with no punchline.
Rating: 2/5
Monday 18 June 2012
Get Well Soon (2011)
A fifteen minute short from UK production company "Brag Productions", this creepy little vignette made on, presumably, almost no budget and perhaps intended as something of a calling card for the talents involved, is nonetheless a highly effective psychological horror with impressively polished production values.
Wisely restricting proceedings to one act and one location, we are introduced to a married couple; the husband apparently recovering from a recent brush with cancer. But between his fragile post-treatment mental state and his wife's seemingly conflicted feelings, things start unravelling fast.
Get Well Soon makes very effective use of its claustrophobic domestic setting, with liberal use of abstract close-up framing and extreme shallow focus, giving a discombobulating sense of events slipping in and out of reality. Moreover it effortlessly conjures a creeping sense of unease with minimal dialogue and a brooding melancholic score. Particularly impressive is the restrained, but genuinely grotesque FX work, which has all the gloopy, sticky physicality of the best pre CGI horror movies, but with none of the fake rubberiness that usually accompanied them.
Straddling a line somewhere between psychological trauma and visceral horror, this is genuinely impressive work that recalls most strongly the look and feel (and preoccupations) of early David Cronenberg. Which is very good, bad company to be in.
Rating: 4/5
View the complete movie here: http://vimeo.com/43898835
Wisely restricting proceedings to one act and one location, we are introduced to a married couple; the husband apparently recovering from a recent brush with cancer. But between his fragile post-treatment mental state and his wife's seemingly conflicted feelings, things start unravelling fast.
Get Well Soon makes very effective use of its claustrophobic domestic setting, with liberal use of abstract close-up framing and extreme shallow focus, giving a discombobulating sense of events slipping in and out of reality. Moreover it effortlessly conjures a creeping sense of unease with minimal dialogue and a brooding melancholic score. Particularly impressive is the restrained, but genuinely grotesque FX work, which has all the gloopy, sticky physicality of the best pre CGI horror movies, but with none of the fake rubberiness that usually accompanied them.
Straddling a line somewhere between psychological trauma and visceral horror, this is genuinely impressive work that recalls most strongly the look and feel (and preoccupations) of early David Cronenberg. Which is very good, bad company to be in.
Rating: 4/5
View the complete movie here: http://vimeo.com/43898835
Monday 21 May 2012
The Raid (Serbuan maut) (2011)
Indonesian martial-arts action thriller th... HWAA! YAAHA! BOOF, HWANG! YEEAAAAAAA! AAIIEEE! THWAK, THWAK, CRACKKK! GGGURR! AARGGH, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, HHEEYAIII! HYUH! OOOF! CRUNCH! UUURRG! CHOKE, GURGLE! SNAP! AAAIIGGHH, THUD!! ...ly directed by a Welshman.
Rating: 4/5
Rating: 4/5
Saturday 28 April 2012
The Andromeda Strain or: How I Learned To Start Worrying and Love Dystopian Science-Fiction of the 1970s
What is science-fiction? What constitutes a good definition of the genre? Ask any random selection of people off the street, and you'll get wildly differing responses and examples. This is rarely the case with the thriller, romance or western, for example. The setting may change (although naturally rarely in the case of the western) and the style may evolve over the years, but we all have a pretty solid idea of the core themes of each of these genres, and apart from the odd left-field experiment, we'd rarely be wrong in our assumptions.
For many people science-fiction is practically synonymous with fantasy, tales of romantic adventures in far off made-up places with silly sounding names. For some the genre is, uniquely, tied up with the hardware on-screen, requiring the presence of spaceships, robots or lasers to qualify for the breed at all. Go back to the 1950s and many people would be unable to distinguish it from horror. As the b-movie monster genre, which mashed up the pulpiest elements of both, was the dominant form.
All this changed in 1968, when the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey utterly rewrote the rules and presented, almost for the first time to a mainstream cinema audience, what was already well established in literature, that science-fiction is a genre of ideas. One of the cornerstones of proper science-fiction is simply to look at the world we inhabit from a new angle, and ask ourselves "what if?"
For a few brief years in the wake of that 1968 watershed, science-fiction (at its best) strove to match its literary counterparts, and asked big questions about the nature of existence, the future of humanity, and ruminated, usually pretty negatively, upon the big concerns of the day, of nuclear annihilation, of world overpopulation or the end of scant resources. Granted, not all of these were entirely successful, and many of the movies from that era are as bound to the post-Watergate and Vietnam sense of disillusionment and late-hippy, early-ecological social background of the day as those '50s monster pics were to the all-American apple pie family and red menace politics of their time.
But while the quality may have varied, what they usually shared in common was a gritty, downbeat style, mature writing with a believable and un-romanticised treatment of their subject, and a harsh, sometimes nihilistic world view. For the uninitiated, some better examples of the era, beyond that Kubrick masterpiece, include eco-parable Silent Running, THX-1138 (a kind of rewrite of 1984, and an astonishingly bleak work from one young George Lucas), Soylent Green, Solaris (the hard-work but rewarding Russian answer to 2001), a couple of classics in the form of A Clockwork Orange and Planet Of The Apes and, less well remembered now, but still very strong after all these years, The Andromeda Strain.
In a nutshell: A returning space probe crashes to Earth in modern-day America, leaving the population of a small town mysteriously wiped out. As the military prevaricate around how to act, it's up to a group of scientists, sequestered covertly to an underground bunker, to figure out the cause and avert a potential disaster.
The Andromeda Strain was the first filmed adaptation of a work by author Michael Crichton, later the creator of ER and author and/or screenwriter behind mainstream mega-hits of variable quality from Jurassic Park and Westworld to Congo and, ahem, Twister, and while he may have sullied his name somewhat with his more ludicrous later stories, this early work from his hit 1969 novel benefits enormously from his years as a medical student, and the believable, procedural detail that he brings to bear.
This is not to say that we don't get a fair helping of the "stuff" of science-fiction. There's plenty of futuristic (for 1971) hardware, a form of alien life (although unlike any seen in cinema before) and even a few lasers near the climax. But the meat of movie lies elsewhere, principally with the drama going on between our band of lab-coat technicians who are, uniquely for that most short-changed breed, real people. Complex, difficult, tired, argumentative, largely unattractive, and totally believable as they struggle to deal with the situation they have found themselves dumped in. Particularly wonderful is the sharp-tongued, dour-faced, chain-smoking researcher essayed by Kate Reid, who brings a much needed but entirely natural sardonic wit to the otherwise dry proceedings.
Also effective, and again reflecting the changing attitudes of its time, is the largely negative impression the movie gives of the politicians and military commanders on its periphery, who are either incompetent or untrustworthy to some degree. It's a common stance to a modern audience, but must have been pretty coruscating at the time and reflects a sense of malaise that feels very much appropriate to its era and yet still rings true today.
Marshalling the project is director Robert Wise, who has often been looked down upon somewhat as something of a journeyman, a studio man... or to put it harshly, as some would, a hack. Generally a director for hire, who rarely, if ever, autered personal projects, I suspect he'd have no problem with that description of him, but that should not lead us to underestimate his rare skill as a filmmaker. In a remarkably varied career that began in the 1930s as film editor on, amongst others, Citizen Cane no less, he has directed several stone cold classics, from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, and the only science-fiction to rise above the pulp b-movie nonsense of its day), West Side Story, The Haunting (1963, and still one of the most effectively chilling ghost stories ever filmed), and The Sound Of Music. Yes! Hate it all you like, the third most successful movie of all time. He was quite some hack then.
Nearly forty years into his career by this point, Wise brings a freshness and daring to the project. The visual look is bleak, almost documentary like. The research centre that the film spends most of its running time inside looks and feels wholly believable in spite of a fairly modest budget. He recruited FX guru Douglas Trumball, who had worked not long before on 2001, and together they ensured a rigorous authenticity in the design of the technology involved, such as the communication screens, which actually worked for real, rather than being post-production optical effects as would have been the norm for the day.
There are some remarkable visual flourishes. In particular the use of split screens (back in vogue recently with its (over)use in the series "24"), which, as well as adding to the documentary look, are deployed, quite unexpectedly, in dream sequences which are at once both stark and abstract and infinitely more authentic feeling than a thousand misty dissolves that had previously been the visual shorthand for almost as long as cinema itself. In a few seemingly effortless, but intellectually rigorous moves, Robert Wise showed just how effectively he could make a film absolutely modern in look and feel (at a time when a young, hungry breed of independent spirited filmmakers were turning the old Hollywood studio system on its head) , yet completely without drawing attention to itself.
It's not a perfect movie to be sure. The obsessive procedures used during the "descent" into the complex drag on rather too long, and the finale indulges itself the venerable cliché of a countdown race that was rather clearly signposted from the off. But despite these minor flaws, The Andromeda Strain delivers in bleak, taught tension with a satisfyingly paranoid atmosphere and effectively essays a disturbing vision of an all too plausible disaster scenario.
And so it was, that for a few brief years science-fiction cinema seemed to have grown up and come of age, matching the new grimy realism that pervaded so much American cinema of the time. That is until May 25th 1977 in a galaxy far, far away....
Rating: 4/5
For many people science-fiction is practically synonymous with fantasy, tales of romantic adventures in far off made-up places with silly sounding names. For some the genre is, uniquely, tied up with the hardware on-screen, requiring the presence of spaceships, robots or lasers to qualify for the breed at all. Go back to the 1950s and many people would be unable to distinguish it from horror. As the b-movie monster genre, which mashed up the pulpiest elements of both, was the dominant form.
All this changed in 1968, when the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey utterly rewrote the rules and presented, almost for the first time to a mainstream cinema audience, what was already well established in literature, that science-fiction is a genre of ideas. One of the cornerstones of proper science-fiction is simply to look at the world we inhabit from a new angle, and ask ourselves "what if?"
For a few brief years in the wake of that 1968 watershed, science-fiction (at its best) strove to match its literary counterparts, and asked big questions about the nature of existence, the future of humanity, and ruminated, usually pretty negatively, upon the big concerns of the day, of nuclear annihilation, of world overpopulation or the end of scant resources. Granted, not all of these were entirely successful, and many of the movies from that era are as bound to the post-Watergate and Vietnam sense of disillusionment and late-hippy, early-ecological social background of the day as those '50s monster pics were to the all-American apple pie family and red menace politics of their time.
But while the quality may have varied, what they usually shared in common was a gritty, downbeat style, mature writing with a believable and un-romanticised treatment of their subject, and a harsh, sometimes nihilistic world view. For the uninitiated, some better examples of the era, beyond that Kubrick masterpiece, include eco-parable Silent Running, THX-1138 (a kind of rewrite of 1984, and an astonishingly bleak work from one young George Lucas), Soylent Green, Solaris (the hard-work but rewarding Russian answer to 2001), a couple of classics in the form of A Clockwork Orange and Planet Of The Apes and, less well remembered now, but still very strong after all these years, The Andromeda Strain.
In a nutshell: A returning space probe crashes to Earth in modern-day America, leaving the population of a small town mysteriously wiped out. As the military prevaricate around how to act, it's up to a group of scientists, sequestered covertly to an underground bunker, to figure out the cause and avert a potential disaster.
The Andromeda Strain was the first filmed adaptation of a work by author Michael Crichton, later the creator of ER and author and/or screenwriter behind mainstream mega-hits of variable quality from Jurassic Park and Westworld to Congo and, ahem, Twister, and while he may have sullied his name somewhat with his more ludicrous later stories, this early work from his hit 1969 novel benefits enormously from his years as a medical student, and the believable, procedural detail that he brings to bear.
This is not to say that we don't get a fair helping of the "stuff" of science-fiction. There's plenty of futuristic (for 1971) hardware, a form of alien life (although unlike any seen in cinema before) and even a few lasers near the climax. But the meat of movie lies elsewhere, principally with the drama going on between our band of lab-coat technicians who are, uniquely for that most short-changed breed, real people. Complex, difficult, tired, argumentative, largely unattractive, and totally believable as they struggle to deal with the situation they have found themselves dumped in. Particularly wonderful is the sharp-tongued, dour-faced, chain-smoking researcher essayed by Kate Reid, who brings a much needed but entirely natural sardonic wit to the otherwise dry proceedings.
Also effective, and again reflecting the changing attitudes of its time, is the largely negative impression the movie gives of the politicians and military commanders on its periphery, who are either incompetent or untrustworthy to some degree. It's a common stance to a modern audience, but must have been pretty coruscating at the time and reflects a sense of malaise that feels very much appropriate to its era and yet still rings true today.
Marshalling the project is director Robert Wise, who has often been looked down upon somewhat as something of a journeyman, a studio man... or to put it harshly, as some would, a hack. Generally a director for hire, who rarely, if ever, autered personal projects, I suspect he'd have no problem with that description of him, but that should not lead us to underestimate his rare skill as a filmmaker. In a remarkably varied career that began in the 1930s as film editor on, amongst others, Citizen Cane no less, he has directed several stone cold classics, from The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951, and the only science-fiction to rise above the pulp b-movie nonsense of its day), West Side Story, The Haunting (1963, and still one of the most effectively chilling ghost stories ever filmed), and The Sound Of Music. Yes! Hate it all you like, the third most successful movie of all time. He was quite some hack then.
Nearly forty years into his career by this point, Wise brings a freshness and daring to the project. The visual look is bleak, almost documentary like. The research centre that the film spends most of its running time inside looks and feels wholly believable in spite of a fairly modest budget. He recruited FX guru Douglas Trumball, who had worked not long before on 2001, and together they ensured a rigorous authenticity in the design of the technology involved, such as the communication screens, which actually worked for real, rather than being post-production optical effects as would have been the norm for the day.
There are some remarkable visual flourishes. In particular the use of split screens (back in vogue recently with its (over)use in the series "24"), which, as well as adding to the documentary look, are deployed, quite unexpectedly, in dream sequences which are at once both stark and abstract and infinitely more authentic feeling than a thousand misty dissolves that had previously been the visual shorthand for almost as long as cinema itself. In a few seemingly effortless, but intellectually rigorous moves, Robert Wise showed just how effectively he could make a film absolutely modern in look and feel (at a time when a young, hungry breed of independent spirited filmmakers were turning the old Hollywood studio system on its head) , yet completely without drawing attention to itself.
It's not a perfect movie to be sure. The obsessive procedures used during the "descent" into the complex drag on rather too long, and the finale indulges itself the venerable cliché of a countdown race that was rather clearly signposted from the off. But despite these minor flaws, The Andromeda Strain delivers in bleak, taught tension with a satisfyingly paranoid atmosphere and effectively essays a disturbing vision of an all too plausible disaster scenario.
And so it was, that for a few brief years science-fiction cinema seemed to have grown up and come of age, matching the new grimy realism that pervaded so much American cinema of the time. That is until May 25th 1977 in a galaxy far, far away....
Rating: 4/5
Friday 23 March 2012
The Hunger Games (2012)
Occupying the familiar milieu of one of science-fictions' most well worn conceits, the dystopian future society, in this case an impoverished set of states ruled over by a decadent totalitarian elite, teenager Katniss Everdeen hunts and scrapes to keep her family alive until fate forces her to volunteer as "tribute" for the annual Hunger Games, a form of brutal gladiatorial combat designed to keep the masses in their place. Twenty-four youngsters will enter but only one can come out alive.
With Harry Potter now done and dusted, and the finish line of Twilight just around the corner it's no surprise that studios have been hunting for the next big teen-lit franchise to bring to the screen, or that Suzanne Collins' mega-selling sci-fi adventure would be one of those in the frame. But in spite of the driving linear narrative, featuring plenty of set-piece thrills and a love-triangle backdrop, adapting The Hunger Games, with its sullen heroin, extensive internal monologue, bleak atmosphere and brutal violence, may not have been the safe bet one might assume, and director Gary Ross and colleagues have trodden a tricky balancing act to a surprisingly effective outcome.
Crucial to their success is Jennifer Lawrence; already a rising star after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Winter's Bone" and who, as Katniss, delivers just the right combination of introspection, steely determination and just a touch of vulnerability. But much credit too must be given to the support of Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks as her drunken mentor and absurdly coiffured escort respectively, both of whom carry roles that could easily have tipped into parody with much restraint. Indeed restraint could be the watchword for the whole production. On the page, the description of Capitol City's preening, rococo fashionistas seemed worryingly likely to translate to the screen with Fifth Element style campery. But this is kept firmly in check by an atmosphere of quietly unsettling disconnect from reality, always underplayed, and always taken seriously, underscoring the juxtaposition of the hollow, vacuous lives led by these privileged bourgeoisie against the spartan hand-to-mouth existence that is the only way of life our protagonist has ever known. Indeed these act-one sequences contain some of the film's best moments, effectively pulling the audience into Katniss' isolation and dreadful predicament with minimal fuss.
Once the games themselves kick into action, the need to achieve a target-audience friendly 12A rating does start to assert itself somewhat. The Hunger Games does not need graphic violence to deliver the thrills, but it does need things to become truly desperate, and in this regard the film seems to pull a few too many punches, with some deaths passing perhaps a touch inconsequentially, and little visible signs of the physical stresses of exposure, hunger and injury showing on the always clean and presentable contestants (or even evidence of stubble on the male team members after several days in the game). It's here also that the film makes its greatest departure from the book. Rightly judging the difficulty of relating some events via the first-person internal narrative of our heroine, fresh scenes are introduced depicting the power-brokers and puppeteers behind the games. It's a logical departure from the source structure that just occasionally falters by delivering a few ham-fisted Basil Exposition moments, but, by way of compensation, adds to the implicit parallels with modern-day TV and the trend towards ever more ghastly and extreme "reality" entertainment.
Much has been made of the similarity of Hunger Games' concept to that of "Battle Royale", and clearly a debt is owed. But while that Japanese subversive cult favourite is very explicitly an adult piece of satire that happens to feature school-kids bludgeoning each other to death, this is by intent a much more straight-ahead adventure, and the setting owes at least as much to the classic dystopian visions of "1984", particularly the impressively monumental authoritarian architecture. But as the downtrodden citizens watch on helplessly and those in charge manipulate the results for their own ends, I began to recall another movie that is perhaps the most interesting and unexpected antecedent: "The Truman Show", and like that brilliant work, The Hunger Games ends a touch ambiguously, leaving you with a lingering and disturbing question "would you watch too?".
With Harry Potter now done and dusted, and the finish line of Twilight just around the corner it's no surprise that studios have been hunting for the next big teen-lit franchise to bring to the screen, or that Suzanne Collins' mega-selling sci-fi adventure would be one of those in the frame. But in spite of the driving linear narrative, featuring plenty of set-piece thrills and a love-triangle backdrop, adapting The Hunger Games, with its sullen heroin, extensive internal monologue, bleak atmosphere and brutal violence, may not have been the safe bet one might assume, and director Gary Ross and colleagues have trodden a tricky balancing act to a surprisingly effective outcome.
Crucial to their success is Jennifer Lawrence; already a rising star after her Oscar-nominated performance in "Winter's Bone" and who, as Katniss, delivers just the right combination of introspection, steely determination and just a touch of vulnerability. But much credit too must be given to the support of Woody Harrelson and Elizabeth Banks as her drunken mentor and absurdly coiffured escort respectively, both of whom carry roles that could easily have tipped into parody with much restraint. Indeed restraint could be the watchword for the whole production. On the page, the description of Capitol City's preening, rococo fashionistas seemed worryingly likely to translate to the screen with Fifth Element style campery. But this is kept firmly in check by an atmosphere of quietly unsettling disconnect from reality, always underplayed, and always taken seriously, underscoring the juxtaposition of the hollow, vacuous lives led by these privileged bourgeoisie against the spartan hand-to-mouth existence that is the only way of life our protagonist has ever known. Indeed these act-one sequences contain some of the film's best moments, effectively pulling the audience into Katniss' isolation and dreadful predicament with minimal fuss.
Once the games themselves kick into action, the need to achieve a target-audience friendly 12A rating does start to assert itself somewhat. The Hunger Games does not need graphic violence to deliver the thrills, but it does need things to become truly desperate, and in this regard the film seems to pull a few too many punches, with some deaths passing perhaps a touch inconsequentially, and little visible signs of the physical stresses of exposure, hunger and injury showing on the always clean and presentable contestants (or even evidence of stubble on the male team members after several days in the game). It's here also that the film makes its greatest departure from the book. Rightly judging the difficulty of relating some events via the first-person internal narrative of our heroine, fresh scenes are introduced depicting the power-brokers and puppeteers behind the games. It's a logical departure from the source structure that just occasionally falters by delivering a few ham-fisted Basil Exposition moments, but, by way of compensation, adds to the implicit parallels with modern-day TV and the trend towards ever more ghastly and extreme "reality" entertainment.
Much has been made of the similarity of Hunger Games' concept to that of "Battle Royale", and clearly a debt is owed. But while that Japanese subversive cult favourite is very explicitly an adult piece of satire that happens to feature school-kids bludgeoning each other to death, this is by intent a much more straight-ahead adventure, and the setting owes at least as much to the classic dystopian visions of "1984", particularly the impressively monumental authoritarian architecture. But as the downtrodden citizens watch on helplessly and those in charge manipulate the results for their own ends, I began to recall another movie that is perhaps the most interesting and unexpected antecedent: "The Truman Show", and like that brilliant work, The Hunger Games ends a touch ambiguously, leaving you with a lingering and disturbing question "would you watch too?".
Rating: 4/5
Sunday 18 March 2012
Sleeping Beauty (2011)
Ponderous art-house exploitation bobbins. Somewhat reminiscent of Eyes Wide Shut. Marginally preferable by virtue of being shorter.
Rating: 2/5
Rating: 2/5
Saturday 17 March 2012
Into Eternity (2010)
Michael (no not that one) Madsen's fascinating and thought provoking study of the problems of long-term storage of nuclear waste material could be presumed to fall into one of two documentary formats. A: The dry scientific lecture, a-la Horizon, or B: The Michael Moore-style charged polemic. Surprisingly it resembles neither of these so much as it does the stately and poetical science-fiction of Andrei Tarkovsky.
Taking as his subject, the huge and potentially world-leading Finnish project to bury their waste in permanent underground storage caverns, the focus of the story swiftly moves on from preliminaries such as the logistics of construction, to the unexpectedly rich philosophical question of how we communicate the meaning and danger of such a place over its unimaginably vast intended lifespan of a hundred-thousand years. Michael frames his entire presentation as a message to some far-flung civilisation, twenty times more removed from our own than we are from those who built the pyramids. Telling the story of how we buried "the fire we could not extinguish" as an eloquent and profoundly moving legend, to be passed down from generation to generation... of the place, as he so beautifully expresses it, that we must always remember to forget.
Rating: 4/5
Monday 27 February 2012
Cane Toads: The Conquest (2010)
A charming, oddball documentary that charts the progress of an invasive species of Central American toad across Northern Australia and the experiences of the townspeople it encounters along the way.
Introduced to Queensland in the 1930s in an attempt to alleviate the blight of the cane beetle which was ravaging the crops of the regions' sugar cane farmers; the cane toad, in a manner all too painfully predictable, manifestly failed to live up to its billing as miracle cure for the farmers' ills, but rapidly became a fast spreading pest in its own right.
Mark Lewis's film traces the history behind the original introduction, and then follows the invading force, mile by mile, and year by year, in its unstoppable march across the continent, whilst intercutting the stories of a cross-section of experts, officials, and shall we say... "locals" caught up in its path.
If all this sounds like a job for the David Attenborough, that's understandable, but you'd be missing the point. There is real environmental science to be learned here, to be sure, but Cane Toads: The Conquest treads this ground lightly, offering an easily digestible sprinkling of facts that could comfortably be crammed into a fifteen minute PowerPoint session. What it delivers in spades is an understated, blackly comic mix of horror parody and absurdist social docu-drama as we meet the wonderful parade of folks who paint them, stuff them, pet them, curse them with Old Testament wrath and launch them from home made rockets!
Sometimes fascinating, and frequently funny, this is less a film of amphibious analysis and more an affectionate portrait of Australians in all their eccentric glory.
Rating: 3/5
Introduced to Queensland in the 1930s in an attempt to alleviate the blight of the cane beetle which was ravaging the crops of the regions' sugar cane farmers; the cane toad, in a manner all too painfully predictable, manifestly failed to live up to its billing as miracle cure for the farmers' ills, but rapidly became a fast spreading pest in its own right.
Mark Lewis's film traces the history behind the original introduction, and then follows the invading force, mile by mile, and year by year, in its unstoppable march across the continent, whilst intercutting the stories of a cross-section of experts, officials, and shall we say... "locals" caught up in its path.
If all this sounds like a job for the David Attenborough, that's understandable, but you'd be missing the point. There is real environmental science to be learned here, to be sure, but Cane Toads: The Conquest treads this ground lightly, offering an easily digestible sprinkling of facts that could comfortably be crammed into a fifteen minute PowerPoint session. What it delivers in spades is an understated, blackly comic mix of horror parody and absurdist social docu-drama as we meet the wonderful parade of folks who paint them, stuff them, pet them, curse them with Old Testament wrath and launch them from home made rockets!
Sometimes fascinating, and frequently funny, this is less a film of amphibious analysis and more an affectionate portrait of Australians in all their eccentric glory.
Rating: 3/5
Thursday 16 February 2012
The Woman In Black (2012)
A laudably understated adaptation of Susan Hill's celebrated gothic chiller, The Woman in Black tells a simple but effectively spine-tingling tale of disturbing events at an isolated village in early 20th C rural England.
There has been criticism in some quarters of Daniel Radcliffe's presence in the central role as casting too young. I'm not buying this. In fairness he does have relatively little to do for much of the short running time beyond looking somewhat perturbed. But his portrayal of a young, but tragically bereaved husband, somewhere perhaps in his mid-20s, is convincingly depicted with a gaunt, withdrawn look and meekly shuffling persona. The problem, I believe, is simply the difficulty that audiences are having in seeing past the familiarity of Harry Potter as an adult in any movie. This perfectly solid performance will hopefully be a significant step in gradually recalibrating audience expectations for his future career.
Complimented by some pleasingly underplayed supporting roles, and top-notch production design, especially the deserted and overgrown manor house at the centre of the story; this self-consciously old-fashioned ghost story comes across rather like a particularly fine and visually lush BBC period literary adaptation. It won't break any new ground in the annals of horror movie making, but it is a solid reminder of just how satisfying understated chills and unsettling atmosphere can be.
Rating: 4/5
Wednesday 1 February 2012
The Artist (2011)
Comedy, love, and a bit with a dog.
It is the late 1920s, and a silent screen idol is at the height of his fame when a chance encounter with a girl in the crowd starts her out on the road to stardom, while his own hubris will cause him to risk everything when the coming of sound changes their fortunes.
If a few months ago, I had suggested that the best film of the year would be a completely silent movie shot in black and white, with intertitle cards, a 1.33 aspect ratio and all the rest of the 1920s movie trimmings , what might have you expected? Most likely a cunning spoof or skit on early movies, made with a knowing wink to a modern audience? Or perhaps a resolutely technical exercise? a slavish copy of the authentic article, perfectly reproducing every nuance of the form for a minority group of buffs to stroke beards sagely in appreciation of?
The wonder of Michel Hazanavicius' slice of silent heaven is that all the skills needed for the above, and more, are deployed invisibly, seemingly effortlessly, in creating pure, unabashed entertainment. This is a simple, but expertly honed tale of fame and fortune, of loss and despair, of romance, friendship and second chances. It is exactly the sort of charming, snappy caper that they (we are oft told) don't make 'em like any more, and the seemingly bold move to make a movie, about silent movies, as a silent movie, is no arch piece of artistic grandstanding, but a spot-on decision from a master craftsman to put film-making form totally at the service of the story being told.
Great performances abound across the board. The central couple of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are wonderful as the debonair, self-obsessed matinee idol, and the perky starlet-in-the-making. John Goodman has never been better cast than as a cigar chomping Hollywood producer, and the ever dependable James Cromwell oozes quiet dignity as a faithful assistant. But it is no poor reflection upon any of these uniformly superb players to note that they are nonetheless repeatedly acted off the screen by a Jack Russell named Uggie!
Whatever you may be expecting, whatever misgivings you might have about the idea of sitting for two hours in a darkened room watching what one could reasonably imagine to be some kind of quirky satire or art-house indulgence will swiftly be forgotten. The Artist is a perfect little gem of a movie, a joy for anyone who loves cinema.
Rating: 5/5
It is the late 1920s, and a silent screen idol is at the height of his fame when a chance encounter with a girl in the crowd starts her out on the road to stardom, while his own hubris will cause him to risk everything when the coming of sound changes their fortunes.
If a few months ago, I had suggested that the best film of the year would be a completely silent movie shot in black and white, with intertitle cards, a 1.33 aspect ratio and all the rest of the 1920s movie trimmings , what might have you expected? Most likely a cunning spoof or skit on early movies, made with a knowing wink to a modern audience? Or perhaps a resolutely technical exercise? a slavish copy of the authentic article, perfectly reproducing every nuance of the form for a minority group of buffs to stroke beards sagely in appreciation of?
The wonder of Michel Hazanavicius' slice of silent heaven is that all the skills needed for the above, and more, are deployed invisibly, seemingly effortlessly, in creating pure, unabashed entertainment. This is a simple, but expertly honed tale of fame and fortune, of loss and despair, of romance, friendship and second chances. It is exactly the sort of charming, snappy caper that they (we are oft told) don't make 'em like any more, and the seemingly bold move to make a movie, about silent movies, as a silent movie, is no arch piece of artistic grandstanding, but a spot-on decision from a master craftsman to put film-making form totally at the service of the story being told.
Great performances abound across the board. The central couple of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo are wonderful as the debonair, self-obsessed matinee idol, and the perky starlet-in-the-making. John Goodman has never been better cast than as a cigar chomping Hollywood producer, and the ever dependable James Cromwell oozes quiet dignity as a faithful assistant. But it is no poor reflection upon any of these uniformly superb players to note that they are nonetheless repeatedly acted off the screen by a Jack Russell named Uggie!
Whatever you may be expecting, whatever misgivings you might have about the idea of sitting for two hours in a darkened room watching what one could reasonably imagine to be some kind of quirky satire or art-house indulgence will swiftly be forgotten. The Artist is a perfect little gem of a movie, a joy for anyone who loves cinema.
Rating: 5/5
Sunday 29 January 2012
War Horse (2011)
Spielberg. Animals. War. Lost Innocence. West Country Accents. Rescue. Reunion. Gob-Smacking Tracking Shot. God Light. God Light. God Light. God Light. HEARTWARMING. Hanky.
Rating: 4/5
Cyborg Girl (Boku no kanojo wa saibôgu) (2008)
Ho-hum. Another month, another Korean directed human / cyborg rom-com.
Jiro is just your standard issue shy and nerdy student until, one lonely birthday, a kick-ass robot chick from the future drops in and turns his life upside down. Director Jae-young Kwak, who had already scored a massive hit with the more conventional romance "My Sassy Girl", here directs in Japanese in a wholly more ambitious project, but still feels at his most comfortable when on familiar ground. Keisuke Koide as the gobsmacked Jiro is initially a tad irritating with his dumbstruck jaw-on-the-floor performance, but gradually settles into a likeable and more rounded character. While Haruka Ayase as the beautiful machine from the future is not half as bad-ass as her Terminator-homaging introduction would like us to believe, and is all the more charming for it.
For most of its running time, Cyborg Girl (aka: Cyborg She) is sweet and gently amusing as this odd couple figure out their relationship and get involved in a bunch of life-saving scrapes, before proceedings climax quite unexpectedly in a massive set-piece with surprising emotional punch. Had things been tidied up around this point I would have nothing by praise for this unconventional but sweetly satisfying genre hybrid. However at around the ninety minute mark, Jae-young suddenly remembers he's also making a science-fiction, and we get a largely superfluous extended denouement involving A.I. style departures to new time zones, additional secondary characters and time-looping repeated scenes. It all goes on a bit and makes little sense, but fortunately doesn't completely undo the goodwill generated earlier. Nonetheless a tighter edit would have probably earned it an extra star.
Rating: 3/5
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