Madagascar is much more cartoonish than Dreamworks’ other recent animated features. In addition to a healthy (but not excessive) dose of slapstick violence, it plays about with cut-scene asides (the monkeys and penguins), with movie references (the American Beauty one is particularly good), and classic visual gags, such as Alex the lion seeing all of the animals around him transformed into juicy steaks. It doesn’t feature a make-it-all-better plot like Shark Tale, nor does it have a top-heavy list of stars who want their voice performances to take priority over everything else. It takes some chances, and is a better film for it.
Kung Fu Hustle
After seeing the wonderful trailer, how could I not want to see this film? Gang wars, dance routines, CGI-enhanced Matrix-style kung fu, and a hefty dose of physical comedy. The question was really: could the film really pull all of this off?
The answer: yes. And then some. It starts off as a pretty brutal gangland flick, with the leaders of one gang being brutally taken down by the aptly named rivals, the Axe Gang. Then it moves to the slums of Pig Sty Lane, where people go about their business, constantly watched and kept in line by the obnoxious Landlady. Two drifters try to hustle a free haircut by pretending to be members of the Axe Gang. The residents refuse to be intimidated, and proceed to deliver a thorough kicking. Unfortunately, a real Axe member gets in the way of the altercation, and has his ass handed to him. So begins a vendetta between the slum dwellers and the criminals, which will ultimately be decided by the strength, speed, and skill of the champions that emerge from their midst.
To put it in a more Western perspective, it’s a kung fu superhero movie. The heroes reveals themselves slowly, reluctant to discard their secret identities, but ultimately ready to stand up for what is right. The visuals are amazing. Never mind the sometimes imperfect CGI–the freshness and imagination with which the effects are deployed more than makes up for any lack of quality. The fight scenes blend extreme moves with mystical abilities (superpowers) and comedy in a way you never see in Western films, which take themselves so much more seriously. The story and plot are all over the map, but in the end it’s hard to care. The sheer energy, fun, and excitement that Kung Fu Hustle delivers can hardly be bettered.
Bubba Ho-Tep
Elvis isn’t dead–he’s living out his days in a Texas rest home with a dodgy hip, a growth on his pecker, and nothing but geriatrics and patronising nurses for company. John F. Kennedy isn’t dead, either. He was fixed up, dyed black, and tucked away in that same rest home, safely out of sight. Or…so these characters believe. Together, they investigate a couple of strange deaths in the home, which turn out to be the work of an ancient mummy who is feeding on the souls of the residents, safe in the knowledge that they won’t be missed.
This is a very odd film. Like its characters, it moves very slowly. The traditional mummy horror movie is subverted by the this pace, and by its sarcastic takes on key plot sequences. You just can’t take a fist-sized scarab familiar seriously when it’s being fought off by a decrepit Elvis with a bed pan. But it’s not a comedy, either. It doesn’t take any cheap shots at the (potential) delusions of the two main characters. It portrays them in a completely sympathetic light, and thus draws attention to the things that matter to them: the people they love, the people they left behind.
It’s an interesting attempt to mold a low-budget, off-beat genre movie into something more sophisticated and meaningful. And it does work, to an extent. Bruce Campbell gives a wonderful performance as Elvis: he is believable enough to make you question whether he is deluded, and vulnerable enough to make you care about him regardless. I don’t think it was good enough to hit the five stars Richard gave it, though.
John Sandford – Hidden Prey
Sitting down with a new John Sandford Prey novel is always a great pleasure. In many ways they are standard cop thrillers, but the lead character, Lucas Davenport, is so charismatic and cool that hooking up with him for another ride feels like slipping on a pair of expensive shades on a sunny day. It helps that Sandford’s writing is consistently good, not too wordy, tightly plotted, with a touch of humour. Basically, it hits my sweet spot every time.
Davenport is now with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, a somewhat political post, in which he gets to “fix shit” for the Governor. A Russian from a very important family has been murdered. When the police don’t make much progress, and the Russian government starts pushing the matter, Davenport is asked to move things along. This involves liaising with a Russian policewoman, who (inevitably) turns out to be more than she seems at first.
What else can I say? I thoroughly enjoyed it, and was, as always, a little sad at eventually having to finish it. Fortunately, I somehow managed to skip my annual Sandford fix last year, and have his latest book, Broken Prey sitting invitingly unopened on my bedside table at this very moment.
Christopher Brookmyre – A Big Boy Did It And Ran Away
I started reading this the day before the London bombings earlier this month. The first few chapters cover the activities of a terrorist for hire, the the reaction of the police, who have learned that he is planning a job on British soil. The sudden eruption of terrorist violence in real life, mixed with Brookmyre’s acerbically humorous writing, made reading the book quite uncomfortable for a while: I felt guilty about laughing.
The story revolves around two characters, Simon Darcourt and Raymond Ash. They were students and flatmates together at one point, but they fell out catastrophically and have gone very separate ways: Darcourt is now an infamous contract terrorist, and Ash has taken a job as an teacher, and is being driven psychotic by his colicky infant son. Ash thought Darcourt had died in a plane crash several years ago, but when he sees him walking through an airport one day, their lives become entwined once more.
In the end, the book is more about how the history Ash and Darcourt shared, how they came to be the people they are, and how life rarely turns out the way you expected it, than it is about the terrorist plot and how it unravels. It’s tense, funny, and full of sympathetic insight into the mind of a new teacher and a sleep-deprived parent.
War of the Worlds
There are some 12 (and 12A) certificate films that I would be willing to let Alex (age 4) see–with proper supervision, of course. Despite the dark tones, I think he would quite enjoy Revenge Of The Sith, for example, and Spider-man, too. War of the Worlds, though, definitely does not fit on that list. I found this a genuinely scary film.
After first setting the scene with an interestingly unsympathetic main character (Tom Cruise playing a divorced dad reluctantly taking his kids for a weekend), Spielberg ramps up the tension and doesn’t take his foot off the gas until the closing scenes. The images of death and destruction are vivid, and the more subdued set pieces continnuously push a sense of despair at the overwhelming odds the humans face. The whole film is filled with a sense of genuine dread. It’s somewhere beyond thriller, but short of horror: a mixture of shock at what has happened, and fear of what is to come.
The ending, then, comes as a bit of a let-down. Because it stays true to Wells’ original story, the humans don’t have a hand in their own salvation. Tom Cruise doesn’t turn the situation around, and single-handledly defeat the invaders. Instead, they are saved by the good fortune of evolution itself. This isn’t very Hollywood, but it is much more like real life, where heroes aren’t on tap to avert every disaster, and a return to normality may seem incongruously mundane. The references to 9/11 are wholly intentional.
Christopher Brookmyre – Boiling A Frog
The best of the Jack Parlabane series so far. It could easily be seen as anti-Catholic, but I think it is mostly anti-hypocrisy: the Catholic character who rejects the hypocrisy he co-conspirators indulge in is redeemed. Also, the flawed characters are too obviouslt straw men to take entirely seriously as genuine targets. It’s satire, and it’s supposed to have bite.
(This quick review is part of my September 2005 “clearing the decks” exercise.)
The Siege
The most striking thing about this film is just how prescient it turned out to be. Released in 1998, it features Islamic fundamentalist terrorist attacks on New York, a public stricken with fear and anger lashing out at anyone vaguely Arab-looking, politicans looking for a quick solution to please their angry constituents, a military willing (and eager) to round up suspects in the streets and to torture prisoners. The war is fought on American soil (Brooklyn is placed under martial law, and occupied by the army), but the themes of the war against terror that followed the September 11th attacks are all present and accounted for. It would be impossible for a Hollywood studio to make this picture in 2005, because it would be considered far too aggressive a condemnation of the US government’s behaviour since 2001.
(An independent production company, however, might not make the colossal mistake of casting Bruce Willis in the role of the Army general in charge of the occupation. In the face of meaty performances from Denzel Washington and Annette Bening, he stands out as wooden and lifeless. If there was ever a role written for the late, great J.T. Walsh, this is it.)
Seeing this film in the middle of 2005, it is easy to dismiss the ending as unrealistically happy. It’s as if someone had filmed a reconstruction of a particularly gruesome car crash, and let everyone walk away with only minor injuries, when in real life no-one got out alive. But to do so would be unfair. In 1998, The Siege set out to be an action thriller, with some strongly cautionary messages about the importance of the American values of justice and liberty, especially in times of crisis. For expressing the wish that those values can win through in the end, it should be applauded, not berated.
If only the real world were more like the movies.
Neal Asher – Brass Man
From the title and the blurb, I knew in advance that Brass Man was going to return to one of the most interesting characters of Neal Asher’s earlier book, Gridlinked. (Brass Man is the third in the Gridlinked/Ian Cormac series.) What I hadn’t expected was the holy shit moment in the first chapter when you realize just how directly it follows on from The Line of Polity, too. From that point on, Brass Man is just as much of a head-over-heels race for survival as the previous two in the series.
It is probably the most reflective of the three, too. You spend a lot of time in Mr Crane’s head, learning more about what brought him to this point, and how his internal struggle works. The stage is also shared by more, and more powerful AIs than before, which leads to some duels that are cerebral as well as planet-shaking. (Fans of Iain M. Banks’s Culture novels will find a lot to like here.) And on top of all that, there is a wonderful parallel plot involving the quest of a knight on the far-out world of Cull to slay a dragon. If he can fight his way past the rest of Cull’s flora and fauna, that is…
Neal Asher – The Line Of Polity
The Line of Polity is the second book in the Gridlinked/Ian Cormac series. After having dispatched part of the extra-galactic entity known as Dragon, Cormac is back to his day job of infiltrating and eliminating terrorist cells. One such action, designed to put an end to the activities of rogue bio-scientist Skellor, doesn’t go quite as planned, and Cormac suddenly finds himself with a much more dangerous enemy on his hands.
Meanwhile, an Outlinker space station has been destroyed by nanotechnology last seen employed by Dragon; an undercover sting operation against an arms dealer goes sour, and a revolution is brewing on the theocratic world of Masada. Neal Asher brings back most of the key characters from Gridlinked to tie these threads together in spectacular style. With threats to the protagonists ranging from being subsumed by hostile nanotech to being eaten alive by the horrifying wildlife of Masada, this is classic all-out adventure from start to finish.