BATTLESHIP - Surprisingly good!

I appreciate the irony of me telling you to ignore the critics - at least the paid ones - because BATTLESHIP is a lot of fun. And I say this as someone who couldn't watch TRANSFORMERS and generally doesn't do mindless action summer blockbusters.  I can see why the critics are being sniffy. BATTLESHIP is, no pun intended, an easy target to hit.  It has more than it's fair share of ludicrous action sequences and clichéd dialogue.  Its plot is a pick'n'mix from BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, INDEPENDENCE DAY, STAR WARS and TERMINATOR - utterly predictable from start to finish.  And worst of all, it stunt-casts a Sports Illustrated model (Brooklyn Decker) and a pop star (Rihanna). It's also pretty long.

But forget all that. Here's the deal.  NASA has sent  out signals to an earth-like planet that have resulted in an early-invasion alien task-force targeting a satellite station in Hawaii, putting up a forcefield that keeps out the US navy.  Luckily, BSG-stylee, a few ships are trapped inside the field, and it falls to them to destroy the alien force, eventually decommissioning an old battleship complete with vets on board.  Part of this involves tracking the alien ships, battleship game style, by trying to hit grid co-ordinates. Meanwhile, on the island, a geek, a girlfriend and a war-vet come together to knock on the communication satellite via which the aliens are due to bring in the rest of the invasion force.

There are a lot of battles and fights and whatnot and the vis-effects are all top-notch.  But what makes the film a success is that it takes its time establishing character, so that when it gets to the battles we actually care about the outcome and the character development they engender. The movie starts with a clean-cut Naval officer Stone Hopper (Alexander Skarsgard) witnessing his love-able loser brother Alex's (Taylor Kitsch) attempt to woo the daughter of an Admiral (Brooklyn Decker).  The intro is genuinely funny, just as the opening scenes with Kitsch as John Carter trying to break jail were really funny.  And what this movie does right is that it recognises that Kitsch has a Harrison Ford like loveable-rogue quality and rather than squashing that (as in John Carter) it actually lets it run throughout the movie.  All the way through we have him wise-cracking even as he becomes more mature and takes on command of the ship. 

Moreover, whenever, the dialogue gets too hammy, you have another character commenting on that. A lot of critics have criticised Kitsch's character using the line "I have a bad feeling about this" after a destroyer has pretty much been shot to shit. But I think they're missing the fun that the screenwriters are having with the genre they're in. How else can  you explain having Hamish Linklater play the science geek Cal looking basically like a young George Lucas?  And a couple of times he even explicitly says things like "who talks like that?!" This is a movie that internalises its own critique - it knows it has a mockingly self-indulgent attitude toward the genre conventions its playing with.

What's interesting is that this self-indulgent, gentle mockery sits alongside a very earnest, patriotic streak that runs throughout the film.  Early on, we have a scene where Korean War vets are saluted.  They play a key role later on.  And real-life vet Gregory D Gadson plays a pivotal role in the island storyline.  I like the fact that alongside all the action sequence nonsense, the movie looks us straight in the eye and shows us the true cost of war - men with their limbs shot off.  And it doesn't do this is in a sensational way - it just quietly makes its point.

So for me, BATTLESHIP is pretty much the perfect summer blockbuster. It's a mindless action movie that actually has a lot of intelligence - combining respect for vets with a conciliatory attitude towards the US' historic enemies.  It deals in cliché, but does so in a funny and self-aware manner. And we finally get a movie that understands that Taylor Kitsch is best used in a role which shows off his easy charm.  I'm all about this movie and look forward to the sequel.

BATTLESHIP was released on April 12th in Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, the UK, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Finland, Iceland, India, Italy, Japan, Spain and Vietnam. It opens on April 19th in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Turkey.  It opens on May 11th in Brazil and Colombia; on May 18th in Canada, Paraguay and the USA.

George Ghon on MELANCHOLIA

Andreas Gursky's Rhein II

Doom and gloom are high on the agenda nowadays. Lars van Trier’s poetic Melancholia is one of the more beautiful jigsaw pieces that deal with the sombre mood in an arresting way, creatively speaking. A big blue planet named Melancholia approaches earth on a trajectory, which will eventually lead to a fatal crash, terminally extinguishing humanity. Given that background, we follow the wedding party of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) at a remote, neo Gothic estate, owned by the rich husband (Kiefer Sutherland) of Justine’s sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). The newly wed couple (with Alexander Skarsgård as Michael) arrives in a pristine mood, trying to wiggle their oversized limousine up a narrow mountain road, delaying their arrival, but keeping their state of general excitement and mutual enjoyment. Only when faced with the party guests, her parents (a confused John Hurt and a cold Charlotte Rampling), and her unscrupulous boss (Stellan Skarsgård), Justine’s fragile emotional composure comes to light and we witness the mental pains of a pretty girl, which seems to have, by all conventional standards, a pretty good life. 

If we remember the Justine of de Sade’s eponymous novel as a victim of society in pre-revolutionary France, whose virtuous intentions get callously exploited by powerful figures (representations of church/law/aristocracy), Lars van Trier’s character is a bit more subtle, her suffering largely self-inflicted, or so it seems. There is no apparent traumatizing event that links to her mental condition. The Melancholia from which she suffers comes out of the blue, like the menacing planet that is spiralling towards earth on its fatal course. On a superficial level it could be afflicted by it, but speaking in more symbolic terms, the planetary crash could act as metaphor for the threat that Melancholia, the illness, is to contemporary society. In this context, Slavoj Zizek’s book ‘Living in the End Times’, which was originally published in 2010, gains new relevance. In a chapter on depression he asks the crucial question: ‘If the twentieth century was the Freudian century, so that even its worst nightmares were read as (sado-masochistic) vicissitudes of the libido, will the twenty-first be the century of the post-traumatic disengaged subject (…)?’ The libido recedes in that transformation, leaving Thanatos to overpower Eros. 

Or the libido takes its funny turns, to say the least. Instead of procreating with her understanding husband, Justine opts for the quicky with the dumb office boy on the nightly golf course to momentarily please her wavering sexual desire. It has to be said that the men in this film don’t live up to their roles. The boss is an asshole, the father doesn’t listen, and the only thing the brother in law can think of is his money. The male characters are bystanders on the sideline, one-dimensional lightweights that merely accessorize the plot, which is driven by the emotionally complex interactions of the two sisters, Justine and Claire. As the end of the world approaches, they have to face the tragedy without any masculine comforting. Claire is ridden with terror, but Justine doesn’t fear the approaching apocalypse. Mankind is evil, she concludes, and the universe better off without it. She is longing to die, can’t wait to swap the bland reality she experienced for something that might turn out to be spiritually more fulfilling. 

This abstract desire to annihilate the human race and trade it in for something more sublime, is equally apparent in Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhine II, which just sold for $4,3m at Christies in New York and broke the prize record in a photography sale. The large print shows the grey Rhine River framed by its green bed under a foggy sky. Ultra-minimalist composure, strangely attractive, but with every human trace carefully removed in the retouching process of the digital file. Why are the aesthetes longing for a post-human equilibrium so much these days? Both Gursky and van Trier suggest a pretty radical solution to the struggles of society in the 21st century: Complete wipe out. Let’s hope that this message can be seen in a metaphorical way, too, and be understood as a mere hint that it is time to change, soon. 

MELANCHOLIA played Cannes 2011 where Kirsten Dunst won Best Actress, and Toronto. It opened earlier this year in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Brazil, France, Estonia, the Netherlands, Greece, Ireland, Romania, the UK, Germany, Italy and Hungary. It opened earlier in November in Spain, Canada and the US. It goes on release in December in Portugal, Slovenia and Australia. It opens in January in Hong Kong and Turkey and in February in Japan.

Preview - BEYOND THE POLE

Reviews are getting posted a little less promptly now that the locks are off the alcohol cupboard in Bishopsgate (quite literally) and the European fixed income divergence trade is starting to bear fruit. Which brings me to a preview of a movie that one might think a little at odds with the purported aim of this blog - a review site that loves shameless violence and scorns vegetarianism in all its manifestations. Not that I don't have time for the earnest agit-doc, but it always seems to me that they make not one iota of difference: after all, no unrepentant flat-earther is going to shell out his hard-earned cash to see some flick from the Lib-Lab coalition. To my mind, this genre of film is basically preaching to the already converted Guardian readership. This is where BEYOND THE POLE comes in - a new British film touting itself as the first environmental comedy. We sent our correspondent - a man more at home with ultra-violent Korean flicks - to investigate......

"Beyond the Pole sounds ghastly, promoted as a feelgood environmental comedy, which does it a disservice. It's not schmaltzy, doesn't preach, and has no over-the-top scene where everybody cheers. But it is very funny. Filmed documentary-style, Stephen Mangan (GREEN WING) and Rhys Thomas (THE FAST SHOW) work well as the glass-half-full and glass-half-empty buddies who are equally foolhardy. They set off from Lichfield to the North Pole hoping to set some sort of Guinness record. The film charts the obstacles they face, which include polar bears, frostbitten penises and, through their radio, relationship strife back home.

For the most part the film belies its shoestring budget and radio play origins. The Arctic is beautiful even when purpotedly shot on a camcorder. The cast is never hammy, and benefits from the comic timing of Rosie Cavaliero as the long-suffering girlfriend and Mark Benton as the local amateur radio enthusiast. In a stroke of luck for the filmmakers, it also boasts a pre-True Blood Alexander Skarsgård camping it up as a rival trekker.

Moviemaking on ice was never going to be easy. To some extent location filming in three weeks against-the-odds, on a Greenland ice field that was due to melt, has helped the performances. The dialogue comes across as improvised and the tension seems genuine. However, the script's ending needed more development prior to the shoot. We know it's inconceivable that such a pair of losers could make it to the North Pole and back unscathed. Eventually things have to go seriously wrong. This juncture is held off as long as possible to keep the humour flowing, but once the fun is over, the conclusion feels perfunctory. With more pathos, and maybe even a bit of schmaltz, Beyond the Pole would linger in your mind as a charming comic tragedy."

BEYOND THE POLE will be released in the UK in early 2010.

London Film Fest Day 11 - METROPIA

METROPIA is a derivative dystopian sci-fi flick raised above the parapet by its superb and novel animation and brought back down by the essential ridiculousness of its main concept.

Set in 2024, humanity has been brought low by environmental degradation. The world is enveloped in a grey fog, concrete buildings rot, and litter scatters the streets. In other words, this is the environment of every sci-fi flick you've seen. As usual, big business is the enemy, as embodied by Ivan Bahn (Udo Kier), the head of Metropia - the company that linked all of Europe's metro systems. The project was conceived as a peace initiative - making Europe truly one country - and of course, all of us have horror-flashbacks to the last person who tried that, and indeed the last movie, set on a train system, to explore it, Lars von Trier's superb EUROPA EUROPA aka ZENTROPA. Writer-director Tarik Saleh also takes no chances on his protagonist, a boring everyman call-centre worker called Roger. He's firmly in the vein of Orwell's Winston Smith, or Terry Gilliam's Sam Lowry. He has a lovely girlfriend but he dreams of the hot chick on his shampoo bottle. He's also convinced that something's not quite write on the metro and takes the seemingly outlandish step of riding his bike to work. The movie works as a sort of Hitchcock thriller, in which our hero gets enchanted by a Hitchcock blonde - the beautiful Nina of shampoo-bottle fame. Together they try to work out why Roger can hear a voice in his head telling him what to do.

Now, my fundamental issue with the film is that I find the precise means by which the standard-issue evil corporation is going to take over the world absolutely ridiculous. Because, ladies and gentleman, The Man is going to control your mind through.....wait for it.....anti-dandruff shampoo. Yes yes.

The good news is that this film is so technically well-made and perfectly cast that you can almost ignore the fundamentally stupid concept at its centre. The film-makers have basically photo-shopped the frack out of real photos of real people. The result is incredibly unsettling and alienating - characters that look recognisably human but have been subtly distorted. It gives you the creeps - in a good way. The same can be said of the design of the environment. It all looks like our world but subtly distorted - made to look older - like a WW2 film - but futuristic at the same time. It's wonderfully unsettling. Vincent Gallo is superb as the voice of Roger - capturing the whiny, paranoid but no-nonsense character - and Alexander Skarsgard (of TRUE BLOOD fame) is spookily well-matched as his "inner voice" Stefan.

So what can I say? On balance, do I think this film works? For me, no. But my goodness, it was wonderful to look at.

METROPIA played Venice, Sitges and London 2009. It opens in Sweden on November 27th.