SUPER 8

The making of J. J. Abrams “Super 8” was shrouded in secrecy.  No-one knew what it was or what it was about.  This was a spot of marketing genius because suddenly the buzz on the film was enormous without anyone seeing a frame of the film.  Speculation was high as to just what it was about, with a lot of people convinced that it was going to be a prequel to “Cloverfield” (which Abrams produced).  Eventually Abrams dropped a little tidbit by explaining the film was going to be a tribute to those early “Spielberg” films, or more accurately “Amblin” films, like “E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial” , “The Goonies” and “Explorers”.  I must say that I have never been a massive Abrams fan, and although I wasn’t really anticipating “Super 8”, this new piece of information had piqued my interest.  It wasn’t until the first trailer for the film came out, that “Super 8” really hit my radar, but after I saw that, it went straight to the top of my “must-see” list.  From the trailer it seemed as if Abrams had got both the look and tone absolutely spot-on to those old Spielberg films, however would it be able to live up to the greatness of those classics.

Set in 1979, the film opens in the small industrial town of Lillian, Ohio, where one of its beloved residents has just been a victim of a horrible workplace accident, costing the woman her life.  At the wake of the woman we find out that she was actually the mother of our main character, Joe (Joel Courtney).  Joe is sitting outside in the front yard of his house, away from everyone else who are all inside reminiscing about his mother.  Soon enough a very drunk Louis (Ron Eldard) stumbles into the wake crying about being “sorry” until he is forcibly removed by Jackson (Kyle Chandler), Joe’s father and one of the local policemen.

After the wake, the film skips ahead a couple of months and when we re-enter the story we see that Joe and the rest of his teenage friends are helping Charles (Riley Griffiths) in the making of his zombie film, which he is trying to complete in time to enter into a local competition.  Besides Joe and Charles, the rest of the group consist of Cary (Ryan Lee), who has a bad habit of blowing things up, Preston (Zach Mills) and Martin (Gabriel Basso).  Charles is constantly changing and revising his script always in an attempt to make his film better, and his most recent change is to make his main character a married man, in an attempt to give the film more heart.  However by making this change he now needs to find someone to play the wife, and he asks his schoolmate Alice (the always great Elle Fanning) if she would be interested.  When Joe hears that Alice has said “yes” he is beside himself because he has had a massive crush on her for ages (but never had the courage to even speak to her).  The first scene Charles decides to shoot with Alice is a scene at a train station where she is saying goodbye to her husband.  Joe is performing make-up duties on the film and is in heaven when applying it to Alice’s face, where the two of them have the briefest of conversations.  While blocking and rehearsing the scene, Charles suddenly notices that a freight train is about to pass through the station, and in an attempt to get some free production value, starts the camera rolling and begins to film the scene.  While holding the boom-mike Joe’s attention is diverted to a pick-up truck that is driving erratically on a nearby road.  The truck is moving at an incredible speed, when it suddenly turns directly into the path of the train.  Joe yells to his friends to “watch out” (and in the process destroys the take).  The truck and train collide with such an impact that it causes the latter to derail in what is a spectacular sequence.  The kids run for their lives while mayhem is all around them.  Amazingly they all survive the destruction, but Charles realizes that he has left his camera back at the now destroyed station.  Charles and Joe go back to retrieve it, only to discover that the lens has been cracked.  It is then that they notice all the locals rushing to the accident site.  All of the kids decide to make a pact to never mention to anyone that they were at the scene of the accident when it took place, and once they all agree, they flee the scene unnoticed.

A couple of days pass and Charles goes to get his camera fixed, however he is told that it is so damaged that it would be cheaper to buy a new one rather than get this one fixed.  Charles is shattered but asks if he could at least get the film inside it developed.  The film appears intact but will take a few days to be developed.  During this time, the locals notice the huge military presence around the crash site and the small town in general.  Just what exactly was on that train?  The military are not answering that question but they assure the locals that there was nothing dangerous on board, and that they have nothing to worry about.  This doesn’t ring true with the locals because since the accident a lot of strange things have occurred such as all of the dogs of the town have disappeared, and a large number of electrical goods such as fridges and washing machines have been stolen.  Not only that but the local sheriff has disappeared and a petrol station has been destroyed.  What is going on and what is causing these strange disappearances?  It turns out that Joe and Charles may unexpectedly have the answer to that question, because after they finally get back their developed film and look at what they have shot, they are stunned to see that they have accidently captured on film the secret cargo the military is so intent on hiding from the public.  As is usual in these kinds of films, the kids band together to work out exactly what is going on, while trying to save their little town.

Reviewing “Super 8” is actually a hard thing to do because the entire marketing campaign of the film was centered on not revealing too much, and because the film is still a relatively new release, I am a little uncomfortable about revealing the secrets of the film.  Let’s just say that my description of the film runs up to around the halfway mark, so there is a lot of the film that I have left out, plus I have also deliberately left out plot points from the first half also, just so I do not ruin the experience for everyone.  So is the film any good or not?  I certainly enjoyed “Super 8” but there are elements to it that are stronger than others.  The film excels and is at its best when it deals with the kids.  They are all fantastic and are superbly cast.  The chemistry they have together is amazing and they truly come across as a group of friends that have known each other all of their lives.  With the exception of Elle Fanning, I do not think I have seen these kids in anything else, which is great because they come with no baggage, they don’t feel like a bunch of actors playing their roles they actually just come across as a bunch of teenage kids.  They all impress, but most importantly they all feel so natural, and this is where “Super 8” gets its biggest strength from.

Once the “secret” is revealed and the film starts to introduce the presence of both the military and adults, it sadly becomes less interesting.  The “secret” itself is actually quite disappointing but I do not think it could have ever lived up to the anticipation that had been created through the marketing campaign and from within the film itself.  Also disappointing is the fact that it is rendered entirely by CGI.  I do not want you to think of me as someone who hates CGI, if it is used properly and in a way that doesn’t draw attention to itself, I think it is an important filmmaking tool.  The only problem I have with the CGI in “Super 8”is that the film is a throwback to an era which didn’t have CGI at its disposal.  It would have been nice to see it all performed via practical effects because the CGI doesn’t fit with the style of the rest of the film.  Also J. J. Abrams falls into the trap of showing the “secret” far too often and as a result, it loses its effectiveness after a while.

Behind the camera, Abrams and his cinematographer Larry Fong have done a stellar job at recreating the “Spielbergian” images.  It really does look and feel like those old classics.  My only negative in regards to the look of the film is the overuse of the lens flare.  A lens flare is when the lens catches a light at a certain angle and it creates a blue line across the screen, which often looks quite artistic.  “Close Encounters Of The Third Kind” has a number of them, and because of this I just assumed that Abrams was emulating that look, but I’ve since read that Abrams has made the lens flare a bit of a trademark for himself, with him even creating digital lens flares for his recent “Star Trek” film (the sheer number of lens flares in “Super 8” has me convinced that a lot of them could be digital here as well).  Again, I personally like the look of the lens flare, if used in moderation (Paul Thomas Anderson uses it brilliantly in his superb “Punch-Drunk Love”), but Abrams has gone over the top with the effect here, and it actually becomes a distraction.

The script is actually quite strong in terms of dialogue, especially in the exchanges between the kids, they just sound so real and natural with all the casual insults that they throw at each other.  Narratively though, the script doesn’t come together as strongly, especially in the second half of the film.  It is hard to explain without revealing too much, but sometimes our suspension of disbelief is stretched too far simply because the story hasn’t being layered thoroughly.  For example, after derailing the train in his pick-up truck, we are then expected to believe that the driver miraculously survived the crash, at least long enough to spill some plot points.  It is disappointing because certain things feel like they are there just to service the plot and to move it forward, rather than it being organic to the story being told.

Overall though, Abrams has done a lot right with “Super 8” and for me the positives outweigh the negatives, which made it a fun cinema experience.  While this has been a hard review to write without spoiling too much, I will say that the film is an exciting adventure story, filled with teen romance (and perhaps more importantly, friendship), as well as tackling deeper subjects like grief and how we deal with loss and trying to reconnect with our loved ones after facing a terrible personal tragedy.  Again, the film is at its best when the focus is centered on our teenage characters.  Let’s hope this is the shot in the arm cinema needs, so we see kids represented intelligently on screen again like we once did.  Make sure you stick around for the end credits because Charles’s zombie film plays over them, which is both brilliant and hilarious.  As a tribute to the Amblin films of the 80’s, “Super 8” is definitely a success (I didn’t mention the score by Michael Giacchino, who apes John Williams brilliantly), and while the film isn’t perfect, I certainly think it is worthy of your time and I recommend it to all.

3 ½ Stars.

I must say I got a good laugh out of my wife who knew nothing about 8mm film, and thought the film was a superhero movie akin to “The Fantastic 4” – “ The Super 8”.  My wife is hilarious, god bless her!!

HANNA

I really did not see this coming from director Joe Wright.  Whoever would have thought that the director of such intense and emotional period films as “Pride & Prejudice” and the amazing “Atonement”, would try his hand at a modern action film?  I certainly wouldn’t have, but I am glad that he did because “Hanna” is a fantastic and intelligent addition to the genre.

The film is often described as a mixture of “Leon”, “Run Lola Run” and the “Bourne” films, and while these titles are all apt in descriptive terms, “Hanna” has its own identity entirely.  Growing up in the woods somewhere below the Arctic Circle, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has been brought up by her father, Erik (Eric Bana), with one purpose in mind.  He has been training her since birth to become the ultimate assassin, so when she is ready and of age she can set out to hunt down and kill Marissa Vagler (Cate Blanchett).  Marissa is a CIA agent that Erik used to work with on a top secret experiment with the goal to turn kids into assassins for the use of the government.  When the project gets shut down for being immoral, Erik flees with Hanna, knowing she will be killed as she is the last remaining evidence of their guilty and shameful little project.  At the start of the film we see that Hanna is convinced that she is ready, and she sets off a beacon device that will alert Marissa to exactly where she is.  When the CIA bring Hanna in (minus Erik, who “escaped” capture), the first thing she does is ask to speak to Marissa.  Knowing something may be up, Marissa sends down a lookalike to speak to Hanna.  Hanna begins asking her specific questions about her dad that only Marissa would know the answers to, in an attempt to confirm Marissa’s identity.  What Hanna doesn’t realize is that the real Marissa is feeding her imposter the correct answers via an earpiece.  After all the questions have been answered correctly, Hanna is sure she has found her target, and immediately pounces, killing the woman instantly.  She then goes about escaping the room she is in, by killing the guards protecting the door, and then heads about escaping the entire compound.  Marissa is stunned and taken aback by the brutality she has just witnessed, and realizes that she is in a kill-or-be-killed situation.  Eventually Hanna does escape but when she surfaces from the underground compound she suddenly realizes that she is actually in Morocco.  How is she going to make it back to her dad at the rendezvous point in Germany with the CIA on her tail trying to track her down and capture her, and worse, with Marissa covertly trying to have her assassinated?

This film could have been just your normal run-of-the-mill action movie, but in the hands of Joe Wright, he has created something much more unique and special, with some considerable depth.  The film is actually quite a surreal piece and it is framed like a fairy tale.  In fact a number of fairy tales are referenced throughout the film and the finale takes place at an amusement park dedicated to the works of the Grimm Brothers.

Saoirse Ronan is fantastic in the lead role of Hanna, where she succeeds in pulling off the sensitivity of the emotional scenes along with the physicality of the action scenes, and importantly she is believable in both.  Joe Wright’s image of this sixteen year old assassin is a strange one because he has gotten Saoirse to dye her hair and her eyebrows very blonde (almost white), so she actually looks quite alien, which I suppose helps visualize the whole “fish-out-of-water” scenario that Hanna finds herself in (I suppose in a practical sense it also helps camouflage Hanna when she is hunting for food in the snow, as we see at the beginning of the film).  The role of Hanna is quite a tough one because she initially starts the film as an emotionless, almost robotic assassin determined to execute the mission she has been put on the earth to fulfill.  However as she starts to come into more and more contact with other people, and even makes a friend, she begins to warm up and feel emotions that she never knew existed, while at the same time still having the ability to snap back into assassin mode when it is called for.  As I’ve just mentioned, Saoirse is great, and along with the two Fanning sisters, I think she is probably the best young actress going around these days.  Her work is always of such a high standard and she has got incredible taste in the movie roles she chooses.

The rest of the cast are pretty good as well, with Eric Bana putting in a strong performance as Hanna’s dad, and there is some nice work from both Olivia Williams and Jason Fleming who play the parents of a family Hanna befriends.  Olivia Williams especially is great in her role as a carefree, almost new-age type mother.  One of the flaws of “Hanna” though is the performance of Jessica Barden as Sophie, the first friend Hanna ever makes.  She just seems all wrong and appears far too young for the role she is portraying.  She looks and sounds like a twelve year old, but she is meant to be around sixteen, and unfortunately her whole performance grated on me.  This now brings me to the strange performance from Cate Blanchett.  As you may know, I rate Blanchett very highly and she is definitely one of my favourite actresses, but her role as Marissa is not one of her best.  I’m not sure if this is deliberate (and I certainly hope that it is) but there are times when Marissa speaks with a thick Southern accent and other times when there is barely a trace of it at all.  It is definitely strange, but the only thing I can think of is that she plays different variations of herself depending on the company she is keeping.  Other than that, her performance is pretty good, and she displays a strong intensity needed to play the villain of this piece.

Being a film directed by Joe Wright, you know that visually it will be spectacular.  I must admit that I was initially worried about this because soon after the film was announced it was revealed that Wright wouldn’t be working with his regular cinematographer Seamus McGarvey (who had lensed all of Wright’s previous features) on this project.  However I never had anything to worry about because Alwin H. Kuchler equips himself well with the cinematography duties he performed on “Hanna”.  What also helps is that Wright has continued his working relationship with his amazing production designer, Sarah Greenwood.  Her work is always inventive and stunning, and along with Kuchler’s photography, they have created a very bizarre and surreal world for Hanna to inhabit.  It really fits in with and enhances the fairy tale theme throughout.

Another trademark of a Joe Wright film is the complicated long shots that he likes to add, usually once or twice a film, and in this regard “Hanna” is no exception.  The shot in question begins with Erik getting off a bus at a station.  He starts his walk and it isn’t long before he realizes that there are a number of men waiting for him.  The camera continues to follow Erik along his journey while weaving in and out of pylons exposing the hiding places of the CIA agents.  Erik and the camera continue down an escalator until they reach an area that is civilian free.  The camera continues to roam while Erik is stationary and it is soon revealed to us that he is surrounded.  The agents close in on him and Erik attacks and still all in one single shot, he disables all of the agents and escapes.  At almost exactly three minutes in length, it is such an impressive shot and is an amazing technical achievement.  If I was to be slightly critical, I think that the shot should have ended when we see Erik surrounded, with the fight scene itself being comprised of a number of carefully edited shots, because personally I feel that the fight suffers a little bit and is not as powerful as it could have been, within the confines of the single shot.  It just lacks the required power, although I understand that Wright wanted us to feel as if we were in the moment with Erik, and I am fine with that (it really is such a minor complaint).

Overall though, Joe Wright has confounded expectations and delivered a superb action film with “Hanna”.  Importantly he hasn’t fallen into the trap of filming his action scenes with “shaky cam” and instead he relies on beautifully composed shots making all of the action very easy to understand just what is going on.  Although the film is not perfect (the strange group of misfits that Marissa hires to hunt down Hanna are just odd), it is always entertaining and intelligent.  As usual it is very strong visually, and with a strong performance from Saoirse Ronan in the title role, “Hanna” is definitely a film I can recommend to everyone and I look forward to watching it again soon.  With his next film, Joe Wright is returning to comfortable ground with an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (which also sees him reteaming with Keira Knightley).  After that film I hope that he makes the live action version of “The Little Mermaid” (which he was once attached to, but little has been mentioned of it recently), and if so, I hope he sticks close to the original fairy tale with its very dark and shocking ending – it would be amazing.  Until then, though, at least we have “Hanna” to whet our appetite as to what Joe Wright would bring to a full-on fairy tale.

3 ½ Stars.  

THE LAST CIRCUS

It’s strange, but I’ve just realized that three out of the last four films that I have seen have had to do with the circus or carnivals.  The latest is Alex de la Iglesia’s new film “The Last Circus (Balada triste de trompeta)”.  Although I am a massive fan of de la Iglesia’s work, I have to admit that his output can be a little hit or miss.  When he is totally on his game, he can make truly spectacular films that are right up there with the best of De Palma (like the films “La Communidad”, “The Baby’s Room” and “The Ferpect Crime”), but he can also go the other way and make some less impressive features that I suppose non-fans of the director would call “duds” (like “800 Bullets” and “The Oxford Murders”).  He is a very visual director (hence the De Palma reference previous),  so his films are never dull to watch and the content within them is usually so bizarre that you are never sure exactly what you are going to get or what will happen next (which is always a good thing).  That defines “The Last Circus” perfectly because I’m sure when the film starts that no-one at all could predict exactly where this film goes and how it is going to end.  It is insane.

The film begins with a prologue that is set in 1937 where we are witness to a performance by two clowns, one happy and one sad, to a bunch of young kids.  The show is soon interrupted by revolutionary forces who, desperate for troops, begin forcing people to draft in their cause and fight in their war.  When the sad clown refuses (and ultimately pays for this refusal), the happy clown reluctantly agrees and is immediately sent off to war, leaving behind his young son, Javier, who was sitting in the crowd.  He is thrust straight into the thick of the battle, and let me just say, the image of a machete branding clown (in a dress, no less) laying waste to the enemy’s regime in brutal and violent manners, is one of the strangest you are likely to see, but it gives you an indication of the kind of film that you have wondered into.

Ten years later after the war has ended, Javier visits his father, who is still imprisoned for his part in the war, to tell him that he has decided to continue in the family tradition and become a clown – a “happy” one.  His father disagrees with him and explains that because of the tragedy of this war he has missed out on a childhood, and he is far more suited to the role of the “sad” clown, as he doesn’t have the ability to make people laugh.  We then flash-forward to 1973 where Javier has just joined a circus playing the “sad” clown to Sergio’s “happy” clown, who also happens to be the circus’s main attraction.  While being shown around the circus, Javier lays eyes on the beautiful Natalia, who is the troupe’s acrobat.  He is immediately spellbound by her, but she also happens to be the girlfriend of his clown rival, Sergio.  Right from the get-go it is obvious that Sergio is a dangerous and violent man, and this is never more evident than when Javier is invited to a dinner with the rest of the circus troupe.  Throughout the whole night Sergio is the centre of attention, and demands that attention, but the night goes sour when Javier is the only one not to laugh at one of Sergio’s jokes (due to the fact that it is in incredibly poor taste).  Sergio is outraged that someone hasn’t laughed at his joke (because he is a clown “and he knows what is funny!!”) and when Natalia tries to calm him down, he explodes into a rage of violence against her, beating her unconscious in front of everyone.  The only person who tries to do anything to help is Javier, which sets the tone for the rivalry between these two clowns for the love of Natalia, which continues and escalates through to the end of the film.  The twists and turns that the film takes until it reaches this finale are truly insane and trust me, you will never know where this thing is going.

Critically “The Last Circus” started its life very positively when it was awarded “Best Screenplay” and the “Silver Lion” (Best Director) award at the 2010 Venice Film Festival.  However since then, the critical reaction has been mixed.  Fans of de la Iglesia seem to really enjoy the film, while others have denounced it as utter trash.  Personally, I think the film, when it is at its best, is very good indeed, but it does straddle a line into the absurd which it occasionally even falls into.  “The Last Circus” is the first film by de la Iglesia that has not been co-written with his regular writing partner, Jorge Guerricaechevarría, and I think this shows in the film’s lack of cohesion at times.  It just doesn’t feel as tightly put together as his previous films.  For the first hour of its running time, I believe that it is spot on, but it hits a certain point in the film (when our hero is re-coupérating in a cave) where it starts to lose its way a bit.  It continues to get more absurd and ridiculous as it builds to the end, and it gets harder and harder to suspend your disbelief in the actions happening on screen, which ultimately makes the second half of the film not seem as tight or as well put together as the beginning.  However I will say that this is due to ambition, because what de la Iglesia is doing with “The Last Circus” is making an allegory to Franco-era Spain with Natalia standing in for Spain, Sergio, the fascists and Javier representing the common folk.  By this we can determine that de la Iglesia believes that Spain during that time was complicit to the abuse being forced upon it, and even got a strange pleasure from it (and formed its identity from it).  The other thing he seems to be saying is that if you spend enough time fighting these monsters (fascists), you ultimately become one yourself.  As I mentioned, I am not sure that he gets these ideas across as well as he could have, but the ambition to do so shouldn’t be looked at as a negative.

As usual for a de la Iglesia film it is visually stunning, but it is largely without the long complicated shots that he often puts into his films.  Some of the images in “The Last Circus” are those that you would have likely never seen in a film before (and probably again), like the transformation scene when Javier turns himself into a clown “permanently”.  It is crazy (and a more than a little disturbing).  The world of the circus gives de la Iglesia ample opportunities to show-off visually and he does not disappoint, with one exception.  Unfortunately he falls into the trap of over-using CGI in the finale of “The Last Circus”, to the point that it takes you out of the film as you no longer believe what it happening on screen, because the computer images are of such poor quality that it never looks real.  Being someone who is so obsessed with visuals it is actually a bit of a shock to see this in a de la Iglesia film.

In regards to performances in the film, they are all well done, with the two boys really standing out: Carlos Areces as the permanently sad clown, and Antonio de la Torre as the evil Sergio.  Originally I was going to write that de la Torre was the highlight of the film, but in terms of characters arc and what he ultimately turns into, the role of Javier is the harder of the two and Areces really pulls off both spectrums to his character.  We ultimately care for this character who we could have easily disliked if put in the wrong hands, because let’s face it, Javier is a bit of a whiner.  Carolina Bang as Natalia is a little one-note but her performance is never bad, plus she is stunningly gorgeous to look at, which in this role is a huge positive.

Overall Alex de la Iglesia, a director who you would never call subtle and who often likes to let his films tip into the realm of excess, has created a baroque and entertaining film with “The Last Circus”.  It is like a mixture of grand guignol and opera, it is always violent and grotesque, but within all of this it is also an allegory to Franco-era Spain.  I cannot finish this review without mentioning its brilliant title sequence, it is simply outstanding and sets you in the mood for the next two hours.  Understand that the film is not for everyone’s taste, but if you are a fan of de la Iglesia’s previous work, I’m sure that you will find his latest film very worthwhile.

3.5 Stars.

I just want to note that Alex de la Iglesia has already finished filming his next film, “La Chispa de La Vida” (which stars Salma Hayek), which may premiere at this year’s Venice Film Fesival.  Again Jorge Guerricaechevarría is not involved in the screenwriting (I hope they have not had a falling out), but for the first time, neither is de la Iglesia.  The script is by the screenwriter of “Tango and Cash” and is apparently a “dramedy”.  Not sure about this one, but any film directed by de la Iglesia is one that I will look forward to.