Thoughts on... Super (2010)

Super, 2010.

Directed by James Gunn.
Starring Rainn Wilson, Ellen Page, Kevin Bacon and Liv Tyler.


SYNOPSIS:

An ordinary man decides to superhero suit up and tackle crime himself.


What would happen if an ordinary guy with no superpowers was to one day decide enough is enough, don a costume and fight crime? This is the question Super poses. If it sounds familiar, well, that'll be because Kick-Ass (2010) got there first. Regardless of this, it's a fascinating subject, and one that is handled surprisingly well here.

Frank (Rainn Wilson) is married to recovering drug addict Sarah (Liv Tyler). The movie opens with Frank at his lowest, as Sarah leaves him for Jacques (Kevin Bacon) - owner of a strip club and drug peddler. As he sinks deeper into depression, Frank turns to religion for direction. He stumbles across a public access TV show that features The Holy Avenger (an underused Nathan Fillion), and has a vision where he is touched by God. Frank believes he has been given the direction he sought, and decides to fight crime and maybe win his wife back.

It's here that we begin to question the sanity of Frank, and this is what makes Super uniquely interesting. Most superhero movies are aware that the hero is a little unbalanced, but their behaviour is always demonstrated as justifiable. We're given morals to get behind, and the violence is portrayed in a relatively safe manner where we never really question its consequences. But with Super, things aren't quite so clear. We're placed in a morally grey area, pondering the stability of Frank whilst witnessing some pretty brutal acts of violence.

Without any superpowers, Frank dons a red costume, names himself The Crimson Bolt and arms himself with a monkey wrench. He figures if he hits criminals hard enough, they'll go down. Along the way he acquires a sidekick, Libby (Ellen Page), aka Boltie. She's also somewhat unhinged, clearly enjoying the violence a little too much. Both make for fascinating character studies. Now, I must confess I am a huge fan of Ellen Page, so perhaps I'm a little biased, but she looks fantastic in her superhero costume.

There's a host of delightful secondary characters that have potential, but unfortunately aren't given much time to shine. The fantastic Linda Cardellini appears briefly as a Pet Store Employee, Nathan Fillion seems well suited in a superhero costume but isn't featured nearly enough, and Michael Rooker is a delightfully menacing bad guy who could do with a few more lines thrown his way. It's a shame such a talented cast were squandered, but they do make the most with what they're given.

At times, Super almost feels like a superhero movie directed by Michael Haneke. It allows us, the audience, to draw the line between good and bad, but is always making us question our enjoyment of the film. It's easy enough to get behind Frank when he smashes the face of a child molester, but his actions become considerably harder to justify when he attacks a couple for butting in line. Libby, meanwhile, is just clearly nuts. Her response to the carnage unleashed is near-orgasmic joy, squealing excitedly like a six year old going to Disneyland. These are our heroes, but they're difficult to really get behind.

Director James Gunn doesn't hold back in unleashing gory violence, splattering crimson across the screen or revealing the consequences of a bullet to the head. The tone doesn't quite sit right with the superhero genre, but it's actually a welcome addition. Lately, superhero movies have been moving towards a darker, grittier, supposedly more realistic feel to them. Super takes this one step further, and should be commended for doing so. It's an unsettling bleakly dark tale.

That's not to say this is a harrowing story devoid of any joy. The raw violence is juxtaposed with moments of surprisingly light comedy, and throughout the movie there is a constant struggle in trying to balance the tone. It never quite succeeds at finding a happy medium, but I must admit I did quite enjoy the result. This is a movie that certainly won't appeal to everyone, but for those who are growing tired of the superhero genre this is an original alternative. Kick-Ass may have got there first, but Super does it better.

Liam Underwood

Check out the cover and blurb for Holy Franchise, Batman!

Earlier this week, Robert Hale released their catalogue of upcoming releases for January to June, which just happens to include a little book of mine called Holy Franchise, Batman! Bringing the Caped Crusader to the Screen. Read on for the blurb and be sure to check out the catalogue below for more details on the book, including a look at the cover...

Since the Caped Crusader first made the leap from comics to silver screen in the 1940s, generations of audiences have been captivated by the screen adventures of Batman, establishing the celebrated comic book hero as a true icon of popular cultre. Now, Gary Collinson traces the entire screen history of Bob Kane's Dark Knight Detective, providing a fascinating insight into one of the most successful media franchises of all time.

Beginning with the early movie serials of the 1940s, Holy Francise, Batman! charts the development of Batman's many exploits across both live-action and animation, presenting a comprehensive overview of his entire screen career. From the classic 1960s television series starring Adam West and Burt Ward to the hugely successful blockbuster feature films from directors Tim Burton, Joel Schumacher and Christopher Nolan, as well as early Saturday morning cartoon outings through to the acclaimed 'DC Animated Universe', this book explores the evolution of Batman - a journey that has taken him from 'camp' crime-fighter to Dark Knight.

For more info, head on over to page six...


Holy Franchise, Batman! is due out this coming June, so if you're looking to get your Batman fix in the weeks leading up to the release of The Dark Knight Rises, you may want to grab yourself a copy!

The Artist takes top prize at the Richard Attenborough Film Awards

The winners of the Richard Attenborough Film Awards 2012 were announced in London earlier this afternoon, with Oscar front-runner The Artist continuing it's run of awards success as it was named Film of the Year, while director Michel Hazanavicius also collected the gong for Filmmaker of the Year. Now in its sixth year, the Richard Attenborough Awards consist of thirteen categories, with six decided by UK film critics and the remaining seven open to public vote.

Take a look at all of the winners here...

Critics categories...

Film of the Year – The Artist
Filmmaker of the Year – Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)
Screenwriter of the Year – Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Actor of the Year – Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Shame)
Actress of the Year – Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
Rising Star of the Year – Tom Hiddleston (War Horse, Thor, The Deep Blue Sea, Midnight in Paris)

Public Vote...

British Film of the Year – Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Animated Film of the Year – Arthur Christmas
Family Film of the Year – The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn
British Film Star of the Year – Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
Film Star of the Year – Robert Pattinson (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1)
UK Film Blog Site of the Year – CineVue
Most Anticipated Film of 2012 – The Dark Knight Rises

Finally, we'd just like to say thank you to everyone who took the time to vote for Flickering Myth in the UK Film Blog Site of the Year category - your support is much appreciated!

Films To Watch Before You Die #59 - Trainspotting (1996)

D.J. Haza presents the next entry in his series of films to watch before you die...

Trainspotting, 1996.

Directed by Danny Boyle.
Starring Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Kevin McKidd and Kelly Macdonald.

Danny Boyle’s stylish and charismatic film adapted from the Irvine Welsh novel of the same name tells the story of a group of heroin addicted friends from an impoverish area of Edinburgh as their lives unfold.

Renton (McGregor), Spud (Bremner), Sick Boy (Miller), Tommy (McKidd) and Begbie (Carlyle) are the friends whose lives are under the microscope as each of them heads down a dark and destructive path of drugs and crime. The story’s main character Renton decides on quitting drugs and after one final hit he locks himself away from the world as he’s gripped by the horrors of withdrawal.

Once finally out the other side he finds his sex drive has returned and during a night out clubbing he pulls Diane (Macdonald), but it’s only when he wakes in the morning he realises she is a 15-year-old schoolgirl living with her parents. Horrified by this discovery he tries to forget about it all, but still remains friends with her.

As Renton lives a clean and sober lifestyle he becomes bored with his life and attempts to find a way out by moving to London and taking on a job. However, his friends catch up with him and trouble isn’t far behind. When they all return to Edinburgh for the funeral of Tommy they manage to come together and pull off a very profitable drug deal. As the celebrate their success they all crash at a hotel, but whilst they sleep Renton has plans of his own and makes off with the cash promising us he’s going to live a different life.

Trainspotting is a film you must see before you die as it’s a rip roaring journey to the depths of drugs abuse and the darkness of the story is illuminated by Boyle’s visionary directing and a killer sound track. The film also offers one of the all time great film monologues as Renton discusses choosing life.


D.J. Haza

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365 Days, 100 Films #95 - Gremlins (1984)

Gremlins, 1984.

Directed by Joe Dante.
Starring Zach Galligan, Phoebe Cates, Hoyt Axton, Frances Lee McCain, Corey Feldman, Dick Miller and Judge Reinhold.


SYNOPSIS:

A small town is invaded by a gang of destructive creatures at Christmas.


“There’s a man out there. I-I-I don’t mean a man, I mean, I don’t know what I mean. I mean, maybe a…what did they call them during the war. You know, the pilots?…Gremlins. Gremlins!”

William Shatner whispers the above in his uniquely staccato way during The Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, arguably the most famous of Twilight Zone episodes. Boy, he sure looked like Orson Welles when he was younger.

He’s accompanied by melodramatic music and filmed in a distressed close-up, but the immense terror of the situation blinds you to its exaggerated style. Shatner, playing a man recently recovered from a nervous breakdown, keeps seeing a figure on the wing of his plane. He’s aware it might be only a figment of his imagination – an understanding futilely strengthened by the fact no one else can see it - but is as successful of shaking the fear as Michael Shannon’s character in the recent Take Shelter. “Gremlins!” he later repeats in horror as he watches it rip away at the electrical wires of the wing.

“You gotta watch out for them foreigners ‘cos they plant gremlins in their machinery,” the xenophobic Marty Futterman (Dick Miller) warns Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) as he climbs inside his car during an early scene in Gremlins. “It’s the same gremlins that brought down our planes in the big one” – a distinct echo of the sentiments in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.

Gremlins is a Christmas film written by Chris Columbus (later the director of Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire and the first two Harry Potter films) and directed by Joe Dante (Piranha, Small Soldiers, The Hole and, to further the connection, an episode of the 1985 revival of The Twilight Zone). You’d imagine the two to cancel out each other’s respective sentimentality and horror. Instead Gremlins, although leaning more towards the dark, contains measures of each.

Billy is a teenager in a small town. It’s Christmas, but everyone is more hard-up than festively merry. His father, Randall (Hoyt Axton), is an inventor. His machines are kooky – a mechanised egg cracker, a portable bathroom – but all stop working properly after a few weeks. The contraptions litter the house to show faith in its breadwinner. Perhaps ‘loyalty’ is a better word, as the rest of the family approach each machine with caution and dread. But Randall’s a kind man, and they humour him out of love.

It means Billy is a central source of income for the Peltzers. Next-door’s Mr Futterman has recently lost his job, along with many in the neighbourhood. Kate (Phoebe Cates), Billy’s love interest, works two jobs. “I thought everyone was supposed to be happy at Christmas,” ponders Billy, looking a bit like the broken Jimmy Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life that plays on the Peltzers’ small, black and white television in the film’s first few scenes.

However, not having enough money – a well-trodden theme for Christmas films – is both inconsistent and often ignored. In the film’s prologue, Randall purchases a cute creature called a mogwai from an old Chinese toyshop as a present for Billy. He initially offers $100, and then jumps to $200 for his subsequent haggle. These are not the actions of an impoverished man. Nevertheless, he buys the mogwai on three conditions from the previous owner:

1. Do not expose to sunlight. It could kill him.
2. Never expose to water. Not even to drink.
3. And probably most importantly, never feed after midnight.

As is the way with rules in films, all three are broken after a short while. The second one makes the mogwai replicate at an alarming rate, whilst the third transforms them into a dangerous, reckless gremlin-like creature.

The initial mogwai, Gizmo, stays cute and loyal to Billy. The others, led by one with a mohawk called Stripe, go about destroying the town and creating absolute chaos. They even murder a few of its inhabitants. It is here where the film becomes a sequence of set pieces and action scenes, forgetting the tales of economic woe of before. The scenes of destruction are both brilliantly executed and often very funny, but the previous warmth and subtext is pushed aside. The town’s many poor folk over Christmas are turned into mere fodder for the gremlin invasion, and the central characters only afforded a single, but heartfelt, scene to develop further.

If Gremlins were to be made now, the mogwai wouldn’t be puppets. Rather, they’d be generated digitally using CGI. Even though the gremlins are limited in what they can do, and their movement appears awkward in the way that stop-motion animation often does, their visibly tangible nature makes them far more believable, threatening and empathetic than the chipmunks, smurfs or Dobbys of today. Be thankful for Attack the Block.

But this is where we return to that man on the wing. There is a more distinct subtext than poverty that runs throughout the film – that the gremlins are a product of foreign, specifically Chinese, economic invasion. Anghus Houvouras wrote recently on this very site about the matter - “…we are shown the Godless communists attacking an American institution: Christmas.”

The observation is a perceptive one. The original mogwai, from where the gremlins came, was purchased from a Chinese man. Mr Futterman slips in at least one reference to foreigners every time he appears onscreen, specifically in relation to their manufacturing exports. Randall is an inventor, attempting to realise the American Dream, but is thwarted by overseas quality at a convention he attends. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, an allegory for the Communist invasion of America, plays in the background of a few scenes. However, subtexts are rarely that simple. Instead, Gremlins is a mirror held up against suburban America, demonstrating their self-imposed siege mentality and paranoid fears.

The old Chinese man never wanted to part with the original mogwai. Mr Futterman is a caricature, a recently made-redundant patriot channelling his anger towards foreign countries rather than the reasons for his unemployment residing closer to home. Randall can’t sell any of his inventions because they don’t work. He is an impatient man who peddles his prototypes, becoming uninterested once they start to go wrong, adding on a new feature rather than addressing the fundamental problem. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was never anything more than scaremongering, and has an argument itself that the true threat comes from Senator McCarthy’s Communist witch-hunts at the time.

No, the gremlins are not symbolic of a Chinese threat. They are too unruly, too politically unmotivated. They are depicted twice playing video games in separate instances. Their leader, Stripe (as in ‘Stars and…’) wears a mohawk like an 80s punk. They drink until they pass out and roar inappropriately at Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, making a mess of the cinema whilst they do. The gremlins are an articulation of America’s constant fear of the moral deterioration of its youth. They are mischief-makers, not political insubordinates.

RATING ***

Oli Davis

365 Days, 100 Films

Ridley Scott in talks for The Counselor

Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator, Robin Hood) has entered talks to direct Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy’s original scripted drama The Counselor.

McCarthy has already written a number of novels that have been turned into films: No Country for Old Men, The Road, and All the Pretty Horses. This is his first spec screenplay and it was quickly bought by The Road producers Nick Wechsler and Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz in December.

The Counselor is a contemporary story set in the Southwest and features a respected lawyer who thinks he can dip his toe into the drug business without getting sucked in. He soon realises this was a bad idea as he finds himself in a desperate situation and has to try his best to get out alive.

Scott has been in direct talks with McCarthy and it is likely that he and his Scott Free Entertainment production company will join the project. If he does sign on, this will be his next film following post-production on Prometheus, which is due out June 1st in the UK. The Counselor would take priority over a number of films vying for the director’s attention, including a historical epic about Gertrude Bell and Summit Entertainment’s Child 44.

Emma Hutchings

Movie Review - Coriolanus (2011)

Coriolanus, 2011.

Directed by Ralph Fiennes.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave and Jessica Chastain.


SYNOPSIS:

After being banished from the city, a military hero returns to Rome in order to extract his revenge.


William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus might not be the most famous of his plays, and certainly not, in my opinion, as loved in popular culture as Hamlet, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing; I was surprised, then, when I saw it was to be brought to the big screen in a modern day setting. With Kenneth Branagh (the usual go-to guy for Shakespeare adaptations) making a mess of CGI settings and struggling with a dire story in Thor, this marks the directorial debut of fellow Brit and ‘thesp’ Ralph Fiennes. And what a debut it is.

There is nothing I enjoy more than seeing directors and actors who fully engage and understand the world of the film they are making, and can immerse themselves in the material. Fiennes clearly knows what a modern version of this story should look like and his understanding of the play’s themes and its pulse is evident from the start and never lets up. The film is packed with talent and Fiennes has surrounded his production with some of the industry’s finest.

Telling the tale of a war between the Romans and the Volscians in modern day urban war zone, Fiennes shoots his film entirely handheld and the style works well and is effective at all times; whether it’s putting the viewer in the battles as the bullets fly, or amongst the politicians and family as the drama reaches boiling point. The film’s opening half an hour is electrifying stuff and looks like a sequel to The Hurt Locker and is just a exciting; the sight of Fiennes as Caius Martius (later to be titled Coriolanus) in full military gear with guns and knives with another man’s blood covering his bald head is one of the most striking images I’ll see all year. However, the film is certainly not an action picture and the second half is far more talkative but in these scenes the actors deliver the thrills as we watch the likes of Jessica Chastain (fast becoming my favourite actress), Brian Cox and Vanessa Redgrave (the film’s best performance) hit all the right marks and, again, show an understanding of the play, the themes, and most importantly, the language. There is nothing more embarrassing than an actor who can’t deliver Shakespearian dialogue if called upon to do so. Even Gerard Butler walks away with his head held high, which is a miracle in itself.

Coriolanus may look like great with its handheld style and urban settings and all star cast, but it is for the more ‘mature minded’ audience who want to think about the character’s motivations and reasons for doing what they do, rather than having it spoon fed to them. If you don’t have the attention span for its 122 minutes, or think that everyone has to swear or say ‘like’ after every other word, then this may go over your head. If however, you can embrace the language, the politics, and appreciate how these can translate to 2012, then Coriolanus is the ticket for you.

Morbometer™: 7.6 OUT OF 10

Rohan Morbey - follow me on Twitter.