8/13/15: More Human Than the Humans

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Alejandro Martínez, Antonio Banderas, Arthur C. Clarke, Automata, Birgitte Hjort Sørensen, Blade Runner, clocksmith, co-writers, David Ryall, Dylan McDermott, dystopia, dystopian future, end of humanity, future of mankind, Gabe Ibáñez, gorgeous cinematography, grim future, husband-wife relationship, Igor Legarreta, insurance investigator, Jacq Vaucan, Javier Bardem, Javier Sánchez Donate, Kes Bonnet, man vs machine, Melanie Griffith, multiple writers, near future, nuclear batteries, Patrick Salvador, Philip K. Dick, radiation, Robert Forster, robots, sci-fi, science-fiction, self-aware robots, solar storms, thought-provoking, Tim McInnerny, wasteland, writer-director, Zacarías M. de la Riva

At what point, exactly, does a robot cease to exist as merely a “machine” and become something more? It’s a question that’s been an integral part of science fiction practically from the genre’s creation, a question that’s been examined by literary luminaries like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clarke, across works as unforgettable as “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, “I, Robot” and “2001.” The questions are always the same fundamental ones: What is the primary difference between intelligent machines and humans? Can a machine ever “become” human or, at the least, human-like? Do robots possess the capacity for emotions? Can you program “sadness,” “anger,” “hatred” or “love”? If robots were capable of self-awareness, would this be the tipping point?

Cinema, for its part, has been asking the same questions for almost as long as we’ve had movies: Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) is probably the first example of a cinematic tradition that’s been going on for almost a century, a tradition that includes such diverse films as Forbidden Planet (1956), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Westworld (1972), The Black Hole (1979), Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984), Short Circuit (1986), RoboCop (1987), Cherry 2000 (1987), A.I. (2001), I, Robot (2004), WALL-E (2008), Moon (2009) and Chappie (2015). One of the newest inclusions into this amazingly eclectic group, Spanish writer-director Gabe Ibáñez’s Automata (2014), also ends up being one of the better ones: barring a few missteps and unnecessary clutter, Automata is a gorgeously filmed, thought-provoking look at what separates us from the machines…and why they just might be better at “living” than we’ll ever be.

The year is 2044 and the Earth has been decimated by solar storms that have, in effect, turned the whole planet into a radioactive wasteland. 99% of the population has died, leaving the survivors to take shelter in the few remaining cities, the equivalent of ants scurrying to get away from the magnifying glass. Since atmospheric disturbances have wrecked holy hell with radio transmissions, electrical grids and the like, technology has regressed to your typical dystopic state of being: in other words, humanity is completely and irreversibly fucked, our future sizzling away like so much fat in the fire.

Into this rather terrible situation comes the ubiquitous ROC Corporation (think RoboCop’s Omni Corp and you’re in the right neighborhood), creator of the “primitive” Automata Pilgrim 7000s, a type of robot which does everything from building the walls and coverings which protect the last cities to helping take care of kids, cooking meals and fighting wars (despite our truncated timeline, humans still need to kill each other, apparently, which always seems to be our one constant). By the time the film opens, there are millions of Automatas running around, each one governed by two very fundamental protocols: robots may not harm any form of life (including themselves) and they are forbidden from altering themselves or other robots. Like the Prime Directives in RoboCop, these are unbreakable, unalterable and, obviously, in place to help preserve humanity’s increasingly precarious place in the pecking order.

Our “Deckard” in this particular instance is Jacq Vaucan (Antonio Banderas), one of ROC Corp’s ubiquitous insurance investigators. Jacq’s job is to run around and look into any and all insurance claims levied against his employers: when we first meet him, he’s looking into the case of an Automata that’s been accused of brushing a family dog to death. Jacq is completely burnt-out (no pun intended) at his job and dreams only of moving his pregnant wife, Rachel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen), to the seashore, if such a thing still exists in this brave new world.

As befits the “one last case” trope, Jacq is called on to investigate one of ROC Corp’s Automata that has been unceremoniously shot in the face by wastoid police officer Sean Wallance (Dylan McDermott). It seems that the “dead” robot had been modified in some pretty significant ways: not only was it capable of “self-repair” (a big no-no) but it also seemed to be smuggling illegal parts (an even bigger no-no). Jacq’s boss, Mr. Bold (Robert Forster), gives him the news that he’s been impatiently waiting for: find someone, anyone, to blame for the modified robot and Jacq will earn a one-way ticket to his dream destination (provided, of course, that it’s real and not an actual dream destination).

From here, Jacq dives into the deep end of the case, tracking the robot’s “clocksmith” all the way from the city’s stereotypically dystopic slums to a creepy android sex parlor and, finally, into the radioactive wastelands colloquially dubbed “The Sandbox.” As Jacq learns more and more about the modified Automata and its ultimate purpose, he also uncovers hints of a wide-ranging conspiracy, a conspiracy that could affect the very future of mankind. With no one but a group of Automata to guide him, Jacq must confront the truth behind the robots, a truth that will eventually lead him to a godlike being and, just perhaps, the long-rumored ocean that he’s always yearned to see. What separates us from the machines? As Vaucan will find out, quite a bit less than we might think.

Right off the bat, Ibáñez’s Automata is an absolutely stunning piece of film-craft: to not put too fine a point on it, the production design (courtesy of Patrick Salvador), cinematography (beautifully handled by Alejandro Martínez) and general mise en scene (Kes Bonnet handled the art design) are nearly flawless. For a film with an estimated budget of $7 million, Automata looks like it cost roughly fives times that. Using a mix of CGI backgrounds and actual animatronics for the Automata, the film is completely immersive and, to be honest, looks just as good as any of the accepted modern sci-fi prestige pictures: again, it’s hard to not belabor the point but Automata blew me away early and managed to keep impressing me for the entirety of its nearly two-hour run-time. If the film has any issues (and it has a couple), they have nothing whatsoever to do with the look, ambiance or general production.

Performance-wise, Automata’s cast is exceptionally solid: Banderas is fantastic as the world-weary investigator, McDermott turns in one of his patented “loose cannon” performances, Forster is suitably paternal as Jacq’s kind-hearted boss and Tim McInnerny makes a great villain as ultra-slimy “company man,” Vernon Conway. Sørensen does a fine job with what she’s given, although her character doesn’t really come into her own until the film’s final third. There’s also a really nice, subtle vocal performance by Javier Bardem as the godlike Automata: he brings a perfect combination of intelligence, gravitas and parental concern to the performance and is definitely one of the film’s highlights, even if he doesn’t get much screen-time.

In fact, the only performance that doesn’t quite connect is Melanie Griffith’s take on Dr. Dupre: even though the actress gives it her all, her performance is never quite as realistic as the others’. Too often, it feels like she’s attempting to make sense of nonsensical dialogue and she never really sells the character: the scenes between her and Banderas have an awkward quality that’s rather off-putting. Ironically, Griffith is much more convincing in her dual-performance as the voice of Cleo, the sexbot: her vocal performance is much more subtle and nuanced than her “full” performance.

One of the most impressive aspects of Automata is how it references and takes elements from other classic sci-fi films, yet manages to make them seem wholly organic. In many ways, the film throws Blade Runner and Westworld into a blender and seasons the concoction with various elements from films like Alien and RoboCop: the Automata “weep” white tears, ala Alien…the godlike robot has a weary intelligence and understanding of humanity’s place in the universe, ala Blade Runner’s Roy Batty…there are sex-bots, like in Cherry 2000 (Griffith’s vocal performance as Cleo is also a great reference to her role in the ’80s film)…the giant hologram ads that “roam” the city are reminiscent of Blade Runner’s chaotic culture-shock…they all add up to make Automata seem like a part of a much bigger universe, a much further-reaching combined aesthetic.

Unlike many multiplex sci-fi thrillers, Automata is an endlessly intelligent film, one that’s not afraid to offer its complex science and mythology with a minimum of hand-holding. The film might open with the equivalent of an info dump but, in a way, that’s also to be expected: when you have a lot of details to impart and a limited time to impart them, sometimes the best way is also the bluntest way. At times, Automata threatens to become too complex and confusing, especially once we get into the robots’ “mind kernals” and their attempts at “self-improvement” and evolution. This, of course, is always the danger one assumes when dealing with a genuinely smart film: it makes demands of the audience and, if you aren’t willing to stay engaged, you’ll most likely be left behind.

In fact, if I had any real issues with Ibáñez’s film (he co-wrote the script with Igor Legarreta and Javier Sánchez Donate), they all lie with the unfortunately hackneyed, old-as-the-hills “corporate conspiracy” that lurks at the heart of the film. Without that silly, action-oriented facet, Automata would be a much slower, more thought-provoking film, much closer to the grandiose vision of Blade Runner than it ultimately is. We’ve already been shown such wonders by the time that an anonymous group of authority figures determine that Jacq “knows too much” that it feels like a serious cop-out: for all of the film’s grand vision and intelligence, the climax still devolves into one of those de rigueur “final shootouts,” as Jacq battles Vernon for ultimate supremacy. The conspiracy angle also introduces at least two subplots too many, subplots which help to drag the film down rather than propel it forward.

Ultimately, however, my quibbles with Automata are minor: this is first-class, grade-A filmmaking all the way, the kind of intelligent sci-fi film that should make any fan of the genre sit up and take notice. While Ibáñez and his extraordinarily talented cast and crew don’t blaze the kind of bold, new trails that pioneers like 2001 and Blade Runner did, they still turn in a film that stands, head and shoulders, above similar pretenders. There is genuine beauty here, along with a tremendously powerful emotional core and some truly unforgettable images: the scene where the Automatas create life is one of the single, greatest nods to Frankenstein that I’ve ever seen and would be a crowning showpiece in any film. As only his second full-length directorial effort, Automata showcases Gabe Ibáñez as a truly formidable new talent, a visionary who will practically demand my attention, from this point on.

If you’re a fan of good filmmaking, I heartily suggest that you follow along, too. I’m not sure if Ibáñez is the next Ridley Scott or merely the next Alex Proyas: either way, I have a feeling that he’s got plenty of amazing things to show us.

2/28/15 (Part One): The Tin Man Rides Into the Sunset

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'90s films, 1990s films, action films, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Locke, CCH Pounder, cinema, cyborgs, Daniel von Bargen, Delta City, Detroit, dystopian future, evil corporations, Felton Perry, film reviews, films, franchises, Fred Dekker, Jill Hennessy, John Castle, Judson Vaughn, Mad Max, Mako, man vs machine, mercenaries, Movies, Nancy Allen, near future, Night of the Creeps, OCP, Officer Lewis, Officer Murphy, Peter Weller, rebels, Remy Ryan, Rip Torn, Robert Burke, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, RoboCop 3, sci-fi, sequels, set in Detroit, Shane Black, Stephen Root, street gangs, The Monster Squad, writer-director

Sometimes, a film can hit just about all its marks and still be disappointing: take Fred Dekker’s RoboCop 3 (1993), for example. Here’s a movie where expectations are already set fairly low (this is the third one, after all, and the first without Peter Weller behind the helmet), yet there’s every possibility to be not only pleasantly surprised but genuinely blown away…after all, Dekker is the unmitigated genius behind two of the greatest genre films of all time, Night of the Creeps (1986) and The Monster Squad (1987). In his more than capable hands, RoboCop 3 could have been the caustically funny, surprising joy that RoboCop 2 (1990) should have been. Instead, the film ends up being a thoroughly competent, middle-of-the-road sci-fi action film with only hints of Dekker’s demented genius. An auteur like Dekker reduced to the role of hired gun? Say it ain’t so, Joe!

The film kicks off with a pretty familiar scenario: the loathsome OCP is still trying to build their dream project, Delta City, over the charred bones and lower-class citizens of near-future Detroit. As in the previous RoboCop films, Detroit is still a war-zone: this time around, the prime offenders are a mob of stereotypical “punk” marauders dubbed The Splatterpunks, who seem to delight in setting any and everything ablaze with Molotov cocktails. In a telling development, OCP is taken over by the Japanese mega-conglomerate, Kanemitsu Corporation, making Detroit the first U.S. city to come under foreign rule. The new president, the titular Kanemitsu (Mako), is a no-nonsense businessman who’s tired of OCP continually missing its deadlines for breaking ground on Delta City.

In order to help along the process of claiming property that the residents don’t want to part with, OCP employs a collection of mercenaries known as Urban Rehabilitation Officers (Rehabs, for short). The Rehabs are, ostensibly, being used to fight the rising crime wave: in reality, they’re being used to forcibly remove the residents of the various slums that OCP wants to demolish. The residents are moved to “refugee camps” where they promptly seem to drop off the grid: the ultimate case of the “haves” doing away with the “have-nots.”

Our intrepid heroes, Officer Murphy (now played by Robert Burke, who looks a little like Weller, if you squint) and Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen) get caught up in the struggle when a group of homeless revolutionaries, led by scrappy Bertha (CCH Pounder) and Nikko (Remy Ryan), a pint-sized hacker who’s ably to handily turn lethal ED-209s into loyal “puppies” with the push of a button, butt heads with the Rehab officers, led by the odious Commander McDaggett (John Castle). In the ensuing chaos, Officer Lewis is killed (RoboCop’s sad “Officer down” line is just as ludicrous on paper as it is in the film) and Murphy is branded a murderous renegade. As OCP and the Kanemitsu Corporation fill the airwaves with bogus stories about RoboCop’s villainy, OCP’s CEO (Rip Torn) and Kanemitsu work behind the scenes to eliminate the cyborg avenger and clear the last roadblock to the long-delayed Delta City. To this end, Kanemitsu unleashes his own cyborg, a lethal-killing machine known as Otomo (Bruce Locke). Will RoboCop and the revolutionaries be able to stop OCP and the Rehabs once and for all or does the dawn of Delta City begin now?

While the first film was a fairly streamlined, subtly ironic sci-fi action film, ala Mad Max (1979), the sequel employed the “bigger is better” aesthetic, pumping up the action scenes while letting some air out of the more subversive ideas. In the process, RoboCop 2 became a much sillier, louder and goofier film, albeit one with enough inherent parallels to the original to serve as a more than suitable follow-up. RoboCop 3, by contrast, is the most cartoonish of the three films, as well as the first of them to earn a PG13 rating: as expected, this means that the film is exponentially less gritty and gorier, although the body count is still exceptionally high…in this case, it just means that hordes of baddies “fall down,” ala old Westerns, rather than explode in red sprays of arterial fluid.

By itself, this isn’t really a problem: the second film was, in reality, only a few small steps removed from a complete cartoon and (brain surgery scene notwithstanding) had about as much impact. The bigger issue comes from the fact that the whole film is obviously pitched at much younger audiences: all of the issues are very black-and-white and the very character of Nikko feels like nothing more than an attempt to insert a pre-teen hero into the mix. Compared to the foul-mouthed urchins in RoboCop 2, Nikko is Little Orphan Annie and the whole thing has a trite feel that definitely feels aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Acting-wise, RoboCop 3 is extremely broad, although the style does tend to work, since the film is inherently broad and silly. Burke does a suitable job as Weller’s replacement, although he doesn’t sound anything like our original Officer Murphy. We get a few “regulars” here, such as Nancy Allen, Felton Perry and Robert DoQui, although they’re pretty much relegated to the background for the majority of the film, allowing newcomers like Ryan, Pounder and Stephen Root (always a joy to see) to step up to the plate. For his part, Rip Torn turns in the kind of performance that he’s been autopiloting for way too long, although his smug bureaucrat fits the film’s heart-on-sleeve politics like a glove.

More than anything, I’m disappointed that so little of Dekker actually shows through in the final product. Short of a few scattered scenes and details (the OCP exec jumping out of a window while his wife harangues him on the phone, RoboCop driving the blazing, Pepto-pink pimp-mobile around like it was a tank) that are explicitly reminiscent of Dekker’s tongue-in-cheek approach, the film is depressingly generic and middle-of-the-road. It’s always bummed me out that Dekker only directed three films in his entire career and this was one of them: it’s equivalent to Francis Ford Coppola’s entire filmography consisting of The Godfather (1972), Apocalypse Now (1979) and Jack (1996). At the very least, Dekker has recently been rumored to be involved in Shane Black’s new Predator reboot: fingers crossed that this translates into him directing the film, although a Dekker script is (usually) a thing of beauty, so that’d be fine, too.

Ultimately, RoboCop 3 is not a terrible film: in many ways, it’s no worse (or better) than a hundred other direct-to-video, ’90s era “gems.” While the film is competently done, however, it also possesses no real sense of identity or even much in the way of distinguishing features: it just “is,” for better or worse. Since the third entry seemed to effectively nail the coffin lid shut (at least until the recent reboot), it’s fair to say that our heroic man of steel had already passed his expiration date by this point, a mere six years after he debuted. Quite the pity, really: with Fred Dekker writing and directing, RoboCop 3 should have been one of the most unforgettable franchise entries ever. Instead, the film is so generic as to be completely forgettable: now that’s irony that’s right up Fred Dekker’s twisted little alley.

 

2/25/15 (Part Two): The Tin Man Rides Again

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'90s films, 1990s films, action films, action-comedies, Belinda Bauer, cinema, cyborgs, Dan O'Herlihy, Delta City, Detroit, drug epidemic, dystopian future, evil corporations, fake commericals, Felton Perry, film franchise, film reviews, films, Frank Miller, Gabriel Damon, Irvin Kershner, man vs machine, Movies, Nancy Allen, near future, Never Say Never Again, OCP, Officer Murphy, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, RoboCop 2, sci-fi, sequels, set in Detroit, street drugs, street gangs, The Empire Strikes Back, Tom Noonan, Willard Pugh

After RoboCop (1987) became a box office hit and a bit of a pop culture phenomenon, it was only inevitable that we’d be graced with a sequel, sooner or later. Enter Irvin Kershner’s RoboCop 2 (1990), a movie that manages to up the ante in every way possible, as befits pretty much any action/sci-fi sequel you might care to name. As the director behind such blockbusters as The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Never Say Never Again (1983), Kershner was a much different filmmaker than the scrappy, sardonic Paul Verhoeven and it shows: RoboCop 2 is a much goofier, sillier and more over-the-top film than its predecessor…not surprisingly, it’s also a whole lot of fun.

We’re now a few years past the original film and nothing seems to have really changed: OCP is still in charge of Detroit’s police department, who are still threatening to strike; Delta City is still on the horizon as the ultimate “beautification” project; the streets are still over-run with crime and marauding gangs; and Officer Murphy (Peter Weller), aka RoboCop, is still partnered up with Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen). The big issue this time around is the emergence of a lethal, ultra-addictive new street drug called Nuke: the drug is being pushed onto the streets in mass quantities by Cain (Tom Noonan), a religious fanatic/drug dealer/wannabe-messiah who holds the city in the grip of fear thanks to his numerous bombings and terrorist activities…think of Jim Jones and The Joker mashed into one roiling ball of lunacy and you’re in the right neighborhood.

Turns out that OCP engineered the Nuke epidemic and resulting crime wave as a way to stretch Detroit’s resources and force them to default on a huge loan: if the city misses a single payment, OCP gets to swoop in and take it all, free of charge. Bastards! They’re also developing a new type of cyborg, an “improved” version that OCP’s scientists have cleverly dubbed “RoboCop 2.” The only problem with the new cyborgs are that they’re a little…well, a little…glitchy: in a bravura moment, one prototype blithely guns down an entire room of onlookers while another one rips its one face off, screaming in (literal) blood terror. The problem, as any good Frankenstein could tell you, is the brain: the project’s head researcher, the sinister Dr. Faxx (Belinda Bauer), has yet to find a brain that can survive the automation process…but you better believe it’s not for lack of looking.

After RoboCop disobeys a direct order (thanks to more of those pesky residual memories of his), OCP decides to make him more “obedient”: Dr. Faxx inputs several dozen new directives into his hard-drive, changes which, effectively, turn RoboCop into a big weenie. Once the stoic face of criminal ass-kicking, RoboCop is now a grinning, puppy-hugging, rule-following, bureaucratic wuss: as can be expected, he’s also a much less effective police officer now that he’s pathologically “nice.” As Cain and his crazy gang ramp up their assault on the city, Officer Lewis and the rest of the force must, somehow, snap RoboCop back to his old self. At the same time, Dr. Faxx approaches Cain with a once-in-a-lifetime offer: the genuine chance to become a god…or at least as close to it as he’ll ever get. Will RoboCop be able to get his mojo back in time to duke it out with the new-and-improved Cain or does OCP finally hold the fate of Detroit in its greedy, little hands?

While the majority of the humor in the first film was more subtle and blackly comic (aside from the glorious scene where RoboCop drags Leon out of the “punk” club by his hair, of course), all of the humor in the sequel is much more overt and front-and-center. This extends to the numerous fake commercials which break up the action, much as they did in the original film: this time around, the commercials are much more over-the-top and function less as cutting satire than as broader buffoonery. In some ways, the tone of the film is much closer to the sequels to Lloyd Kaufman’s Toxic Avenger (1984) in their depiction of a dystopic world gone wildly, giddily off the tracks. Like the first film, the world-building in the sequel is strong, forging a good bond between the two films. At one point, a commercial for “Sunblock 5000” casually mentions that the ozone layer is gone, while a throwaway news bit discusses a rogue satellite frying Santa Barbara in the same way that one might ask someone to pick up their dry cleaning. The details are all quite fun (if more than a little silly) and help to make the film that much more immersive.

If I really have a complaint with the film (other than the fact that it’s a solid half-step down from the original), it has to be with the main villain: while Tom Noonan really sinks his teeth into the role of Cain and runs with it, he’s absolutely no match for the inspired insanity of Kurtwood Smith’s iconic Clarence Boddicker. In many ways, Noonan is constantly upstaged by Gabriel Damon’s Hob, the ridiculously foul-mouthed kid who slings Nuke for Cain’s gang: by the latter half of the film, Hob has become the defacto leader (albeit briefly) and that’s when the villains really seem to take off. In an action film like this, you really need unforgettable, hateful villains and RoboCop 2’s just pale to the originals, unfortunately.

Cast-wise, the film brings back many of the original actors, including Weller, Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Felton Perry and Robert DoQui (as the ever-suffering Sgt. Reed). This, of course, has the effect of creating an even stronger connection with the first film, a connection that’s reinforced by the production design: while many sequels have a “more of the same” feel, RoboCop 2 definitely feels like a continuation of a longer narrative, even if that narrative feels a bit unnecessary, by the end. In fact, it’s easy to see this sense of “continuation” as intentional, since the film has a completely open ending that not only doesn’t fully resolve the action but also directly sets up another film (a set-up which the third film, unfortunately, doesn’t make good on).

Even though RoboCop 2 is a much sillier, more weightless film than the first, there’s still a lot to like here: the more overt comedy leads to some great scenes like the ridiculous telethon where Mayor Kuzak (Willard Pugh) desperately tries to raise the funds to save Detroit (with the help of a fiddle-playing contortionist, no less!) or the giddy setpiece where a gang of Little League players commit a violent robbery and are let loose by the newly “nice” RoboCop, since they’re just kids. One interesting aspect of the film is how often we get treated to some rather eyebrow-raising moments involving the numerous child actors: they’re all saltier than a pack of sailors, with a particular favorite line being “Go fuck a refrigerator, pecker-neck!” To be honest, I don’t think I can recall a film where kids swore this much (there are plenty of films where kids engage in violent behavior, so that was considerably less surprising) and it made me bust out laughing more often than not.

Weller handles the new comedy angle with aplomb (his “nice” scenes are genuinely funny), which has the effect of humanizing Murphy to a much greater extent than the first film ever did. It’s great to have Allen back, as well, although it doesn’t feel as if she gets as much to do as she did the first time around. And, above complaint notwithstanding, Noonan is always a reliably unhinged performer: if he didn’t have such big shoes to fill, I doubt if I would have anything bad to say about his performance, to be honest.

While the sequel is a great deal goofier than the original, it’s not necessarily any less gratuitous: this time around, we get treated to an incredibly graphic brain transplant scene, along with the goofy “brain stem with googly eyes” bit that triumphantly ends the final battle. Since the film is pitched at such a comic-book level, however, the whole thing actually feels less violent than the original, which managed to ground everything in a more realistic, if still fantastic, milieu.

For the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed RoboCop 2, even if it was distinctly inferior to the original. There’s plenty of great action sequences, some genuinely funny comedic bits and a strong connection to the first film, making it pretty much essential viewing for anyone who enjoyed Verhoeven’s original. While this is nowhere hear the follow-up that either Terminator 2 (1991) or Aliens (1986) was, RoboCop 2 is a perfectly decent continuation of the franchise and a good way for fans to another dose of some good old-fashioned, cyborg law and order.

2/25/15 (Part One): The Tin Man With the Big Ol’ Heart

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'80s action films, '80s films, 1980s films, 4th Directive, action films, blockbusters, cinema, Clarence Boddicker, co-writers, cops, cybernetics, cyborgs, Dan O'Herlihy, dark humor, Delta City, Detroit, Dick Jones, dystopian future, ED-209, Edward Neumeier, evil corporations, fake commericals, film franchise, film reviews, films, Jesse Goins, Kurtwood Smith, Leeza Gibbons, man vs machine, Michael Miner, Miguel Ferrer, Movies, multiple writers, Nancy Allen, near future, OCP, past memories, Paul McCrane, Paul Verhoeven, Peter Weller, police, Ray Wise, Robert DoQui, RoboCop, Ronny Cox, sci-fi, science-fiction, set in Detroit, street gangs

It’s always a hoot to look back on bygone visions for “the future,” now that we’re firmly ensconced in it. The Jetsons promised us flying cars, Silent Running (1972) posited orbiting outer space greenhouses and 1984…well, we all know how rosy that was supposed to be, don’t we? While most notions of the future do a fair amount of credibility stretching (where are all those instant food machines and self-dressing booths that were supposed to make life so easy?), few have managed to be quite as fanciful as Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987): after all, this is a film that envisions Detroit as a bankrupt, crime-ridden wasteland, foresees mega-corporations taking over law enforcement (to the mass detriment of the lower classes) and theorizes that cybernetic implants will one day be advanced enough to allow the severely disabled and/or injured to resume some semblance of autonomous movement…in other words, what a bunch of malarkey, eh?

In all seriousness, despite its often campy tone, the original RoboCop is actually a pretty lean, mean, relentless little bruiser, similar in tone to Cameron’s original Terminator (1984) or Miller’s inaugural Mad Max (1979). Like these franchises (or pretty much any action franchises, to be honest), the original film is a much more modest, grounded affair than any of the resulting sequels. Thanks to an ever-prevalent streak of pitch-black humor and some great performances from the likes of Peter Weller, Kurtwood Smith (That ’70s Show’s Red Forman), Nancy Allen, Ray Wise and Ronny Cox, RoboCop is a fun, exhilarating and clever peek into a future where business and bureaucracy are king and humanity’s future rests on a pair of very sturdy steel shoulders.

It’s the mean streets of Detroit, in the near future, and the city’s police department is run by the omnipresent OmniCorp (OCP, to the punters), the kind of all-reaching octopus conglomerate that has its tentacles in everything from gene research to government insurrection to military weaponry. OCP CEO Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) has a pet project that threatens to revolutionize law enforcement and allow for the clean-up of the city’s crime problem ahead of a sparkly new development deal dubbed Delta City: the all-robotic, crime-fighting ED-209. Only problem is, the thing doesn’t work, as we see when it blasts a hapless volunteer to kingdom come during a test run in the board room.

Enter Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), a pretender to the throne with his own plan: the RoboCop project, wherein real police officers are infused with state-of-the-art cybernetics in order to create superior “cyborg” cops. They need a subject, of course, which comes around in the form of Murphy (Peter Weller), an eager-beaver, rising star who gets transferred into hell on earth and is promptly shot to shit by the villainous Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith, chewing delicious scenery by the mile) and his murderous street gang. Legally “dead,” Murphy is turned into the titular hero, a galvanized steel “peace officer” whose just as likely to leave the suspects in pieces.

As RoboCop cuts a swath through Detroit’s criminal population, he begins to regain some of his basic humanity, thanks to the attention of his former partner, Officer Lewis (Nancy Allen), and some recurring memory snippets that give tantalizing hints of his former life and family. Torn between being a soulless machine and a living, breathing human being, RoboCop fights with retaining the essential humanity that made him “Murphy.” As he gets closer to the criminal mastermind who originally ended his life, however, Murphy will learn that the web of corruption spins all the way to the hallowed halls of OCP’s upper echelon. Will RoboCop have what it takes to put an end to the evil or will the very nature of his existence prevent him from dispensing the justice that Detroit so desperately needs?

One of the biggest pleasures of Verhoeven’s RoboCop is the assured way in which the Dutch director builds his dystopic world, using a combination of pitch black humor, pulse-pounding action setpieces and some truly cool special effects, including some nicely realized stop-motion animation. The satiric commercials that break up the action are frequently funny (the one for the Nukem board game is simply sublime) but they also help to give peeks into the larger world, the skewed, slightly scary one that exists outside the framework of the film, proper. The series actually develops this further in the second installment but it’s a great aspect and really adds to the overall feel.

Any pulpy action flick lives or dies by two elements: its action sequences and its cast. In both of these aspects, RoboCop comes across as a pretty stellar example of the genre. While Weller’s performance here is iconic, it’s just one solid performance among many. Nancy Allen is great as his spunky partner, while Cox and Smith are pitch-perfect as the arch-villain and his sleazy second-in-command. Boddicker’s gang is one of the great groups of cinematic baddies, spotlighted by an incredibly spirited turn by veteran Ray Wise as Leon (the scene set in the “punk” club is absolutely delightful).

While it might be easy to associate Verhoeven with his most outrageous “low” (that would, of course, be Showgirls (1995)), his resume also includes Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997): the director clearly knows his way around sci-fi action and the whole shebang kicked off with RoboCop. The film is full of great action moments, shootouts and car chases, reminding of the aforementioned Mad Max and Terminator in the ways in which the setpieces always seem grounded in some kind of physical reality, regardless of how fanciful the action gets. It’s the kind of physicality that gets lost in modern CGI-based action films and gives RoboCop a bruised, scuffed feeling that fits like a well-worn shoe.

Similar to the Mad Max and Terminator franchises, the RoboCop franchise would go on to bigger, louder and more outlandish heights in future installments. While the other films in the series all have their charms (the third one, much less so, admittedly), my heart will always belong with Verhoeven’s brash, snarky and full-blooded original. When the satire, action and political commentary all hit their mark, there are few ’80s blockbusters that are in the same league as RoboCop (no matter how many times I watch the finale, I always stand and cheer at the “You’re fired” line). Jones and Boddicker are classic villains, RoboCop is the quintessential knight in shining armor and Anne Lewis is just the kind of partner that you want watching your back, when the chips are down.

In an era where business and technology continue their vociferous joint march to the sea, it’s kind of nice to see a film where the little guy wins, even if we know that OCP is going to keep trying to get their pound of flesh long after the cameras cut. More importantly, RoboCop still holds up today as a great action film: compared to other ’80s fare, it’s much less dated and more streamlined. While it’s undeniably pulpy, it’s also pretty hard to hard to deny the film’s allure: you might have the right to remain silent but I’m willing to bet you’ll be doing a fair amount of cheering, too.

11/30/14: The Last Train Out of Town

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12 Monkeys, action films, Alison Pill, auteur theory, betrayal, Blade Runner, Bong Joon-Ho, Chris Evans, cinema, class systems, class warfare, climate change, dystopian future, Ed Harris, end of the world, English-language debut, Ewen Bremner, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Hunger Games, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Ko Ah-sung, Luke Pasqualino, Movies, near future, Octavia Spencer, rich vs poor, sci-fi, Snowpiercer, Song Kang-ho, Steve Park, The Host, Tilda Swinton, trains

Nowadays, with the space between the haves and have-nots not so much a gap as a massive, bottomless chasm filled with baying hellhounds, the notion of class warfare has never been more prescient. Increasingly, it seems that the world can be neatly divided into two groups: those who can afford the basic necessities of life (food, clean water, housing, security, justice) and those who must struggle to divide up whatever dregs remain. We can argue notions of economics, supply-and-demand, consumerism, et al until the cows come home but it does nothing to change the basic facts: as it stands, our modern world is but several very slippery steps away from the feudal system that proved so “effective” during the Middle Ages. While issues of race, gender, religion and nationality will always plague humanity, anyone who doesn’t see the underlying class issues behind them is either willfully ignorant…or a part of the problem.

For his English-language debut, Snowpiercer (2014) Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho takes a good, long look at this underlying class warfare, wrapping it tight within the guise of an environmental message film before bundling everything up within a stream-lined sci-fi/action outer-shell: if you will, Joon-ho’s film is the turducken of big-budget multiplex fare, a multi-layered feast that reveals new flavors and wrinkles with each turn of the script. If the ultimate result ends up feeling somehow less revelatory than expected, it does nothing to detract from the overall quality of the film: anyone worried that making the transition to English-language films would blunt Joon-ho’s edge should check their fears at the door, since Snowpiercer is nothing if not a highly accomplished spectacle, relentlessly paced and endlessly thrilling.

From the outset, we learn that efforts to reverse global warming, involving a material known as “CW-7” have proven a little too successful: the Earth has now frozen and the vast majority of life has been wiped out. The only survivors now live on a massive “super-train” that zooms in a perpetual, never-ending loop around the frozen desolation, unable to ever step foot outside lest they instantly freeze. Aboard the train, similar to the breakdown on the Titanic, the survivors have been separated into two groups: the wealthy, powerful members of society get the front of the train and all of the perks (real food, drink, tanning beds, raves, shopping, sushi), while the poor, downtrodden masses get the tail section and live in complete squalor, subsisting on some sort of strange, black “food” substance and whatever scraps the upper berths don’t want. To make matters worse, the poor are constantly beaten and abused by the thuggish security detail and have their children constantly taken from them, spirited away to the front of the train, never to be seen again. The system is stretched to breaking and something must change…and change, it does.

Revolution enters the picture in the form of Curtis (Chris Evans), the charismatic “folk leader” of the lower classes who, along with their de facto leader, Gilliam (John Hurt), has devised a plan to wrest control of the train from the haves and return it to the have-nots. Quite simply, “whoever controls the engine, controls the world,” and Curtis knows that their only hope for change is to fight their way all the way to the front of the train. At first, the task seems all but impossible: the security detail is huge, well-armed and cold-blooded; the ruling regime, represented by the bizarrely presentational Mason (Tilda Swinton), don’t see the lower classes as anything other than fodder and free labor, so have absolutely no problem with dispatching as many of them as necessary to make their point. During the moment of truth, however, as Curtis’ rebels square off against the security team, something miraculous happens: the guards are revealed to be out of ammo, after all. Fortune, it appears, has just smiled on the brave.

Seizing the moment, Curtis and his fighters gain the upper-hand and begin their perilous trek to the front of the train, working their way towards a climatic meeting with Wilford (Ed Harris), the mysterious industrialist and engineer who not only foresaw the current environmental crisis but created the Ark as humanity’s last recourse. Along the way, the group picks up Nam (Song Kang-ho) and his daughter, Yona (Ko Ah-sung), a pair of drug addicts who may just know how to get Curtis into the engine room. As the group will find out, however, nothing on the train is quite as it seems and Curtis will soon be neck-deep in betrayal, shocking revelations and life-changing decisions. At stake? Nothing less than the fate of all humanity.

For the most part, Snowpiercer works spectacularly well on several different levels. For one thing, the film is a superb action film, showcasing several impressive set-pieces (the tunnel massacre is pretty unforgettable) and throttling forward at a breakneck pace. We’re jumped into the action from the get-go and the film never really lets up: in some ways, it almost feels as if we’re dumped into Snowpiercer in media res, although the film is streamlined enough that abject flailing about is fairly minimal. Everything is filmed in a highly stylized, kinetic fashion that will be immediately familiar to fans of Joon-ho’s back catalog (especially his iconic monster flick, The Host (2006) and the various fight scenes, full of highly evocative slo-mo and balletic movements, are consistently impressive.

Snowpiercer also succeeds as a dystopic future flick, albeit one that doesn’t add much to the lexicon: even the revelation of the icky looking protein bars (Spoiler: it’s not people) feels like part of a fairly well-established formula. That being said, the film’s look and world-building is fully immersive: this is recognizably our world but it’s tweaked enough to give a proper sense of disorientation. It reminded me of Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995), although Joon-ho’s particular vision isn’t quite as singular or unique. There are moments when the film approaches the iconic city scenes of Blade Runner (1982), especially during our introduction to the tail section of the train and the moment where our heroes first pass into the posh upper class section.

The third area where Snowpiercer excels is as a message film: while the script can, occasionally, be a little too on the nose, there are plenty of layers here and some truly interesting discussions of responsibility, personal sacrifice and the value of the individual against the many. Wilford may be the film’s de facto villain (although Swinton’s ludicrously over-the-top Mason fits that bill in a more classic manner) but his climatic meeting with Curtis raises more questions than it answers: a latter-half revelation puts his actions into a new light, making easy condemnations just a little bit harder. Wilford may be a real son of a bitch but he’s anything but arbitrary: the fact that he, technically, has a point doesn’t absolve him or his peers of responsibility for their terrible actions but it should definitely lead to some interesting post-film conversations/arguments. In many ways, Wilford represents the unwavering, coldly clinical eye of government: decisions and actions that seem unconscionable on the ground sometimes take on a different meaning from the war room.

Despite all of the pluses, however, I must freely admit that I didn’t find Snowpiercer to be the complete revelation that others have: if anything, the film is an exceptionally well-made, tightly plotted action with lots of themes and meaning but, ultimately, not much different from similarly intelligent multiplex fare. Often, I was reminded of the Hunger Games series: while Snowpiercer is a much more mature, artistic film, craft-wise, it’s really not that far removed, thematically. Unlike the uncomfortable class discussions of something like Society (1989), nothing in Snowpiercer really feels “game-changing,” as it were: we’ve seen this particular conflict many, many times over the years and, while it may be timely, it’s certainly not shocking. This is not to knock the film’s themes in any way, however: I would rather see an overly familiar discussion of class and environmentalism on the big screen than no discussion at all, thank you very much. That being said, I frequently found myself wishing that the film took a few more risks: even the double-crosses felt a bit familiar and the ending, while beautifully executed, didn’t seem to pack the punch that it could have.

Ultimately, however, my quibbles about Snowpiercer feel fairly petty: above and beyond all else, this is the kind of intelligent popcorn film that we definitely need more of in this era of the “turn your brain off and react” action film. The acting is excellent, with Captain America’s (2011) Chris Evans almost unrecognizable as the grizzled hero and Song Kang-ho serving as a more than suitable foil. If Hurt and Swinton end up turning in yet more variations on their past work (“gruff mentor” and “quirky oddball” could very well be chiseled on their gravestones, at some point in the far future), it doesn’t take away from the basic pleasure of watching either one work. Ditto for Ed Harris who’s managed to avoid disappointing me for at least a couple decades now: a film could do a lot worse than have him play a megalomanical leader with a God-complex and distinct ideas on the social contract.

Is Snowpiercer one of the best films of the year, however? To be honest, it’s kind of a difficult question to answer. The film is certainly one of the best action films of the last several years, hands down, but I just can’t help shake the feeling that it’s still slightly less than what it could have been. Despite it’s epic scope and feel, Snowpiercer, somehow, feels like a slightly lesser film than The Host. Chalk this up to to the transition from more personalized family struggles in one to more “universal” issues in the other and we begin to see where the issue may lie. While watching Snowpiercer, I kept waiting to feel the intense connection to the characters that I did with the family in The Host but it really only happened with Nam and his daughter: whenever the two of them share the screen, Snowpiercer is able to transcend its sci-fi/action trappings and become something simultaneously more intimate and more far-reaching. In a film that purports to be about the very essence of humanity, it’s only when we spend time with this disenfranchised father and daughter, so wrecked by life yet still so inherently hopeful, that the film truly seems to come alive. I’d like to say it’s enough to melt the most frozen heart but that would be kind of precious, wouldn’t it?

10/24/14 (Part Two): Mommy’s Little Monster

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31 Days of Halloween, Adrien Brody, androgyny, auteur theory, body image, Brandon McGibbon, Bride of Frankenstein, Canadian films, cinema, co-writers, creature feature, Cube, David Hewlett, Delphine Chaneac, experiments, Film auteurs, film reviews, films, Frankenstein, gender roles, gene splicing, genetic research, Henry Frankenstein, intelligence, KNB Effects, Mary Shelley, Movies, near future, new parents, parent-child relationships, research & development, Sarah Polley, sci-fi, sci-fi-horror, Splice, technological advancement, Vincenzo Natali, writer-director

As this “brave new world” that we’re part of throttles ever forward, we find ourselves in an era when groundbreaking scientific discoveries seem to be a dime a dozen: here a medical breakthrough, there a previously undreamed of planet, everywhere some innovation. Hell, researchers even think they’ve discovered how to prevent humans from aging: forget the Jetson’s flying cars…this is what the future really looks like, apparently. As the question of “Can we do this?” becomes more moot, however, we find ourselves in a quandary that’s at least as old as Mary Shelley’s stitched-together creation: “Should we do this?”

Indeed, as our technological prowess and knowledge expands exponentially (seemingly by the minute), humanity finds itself at a bit of a crossroads, similar to that faced by a parent and child: at some point, the child’s knowledge will surpass the parent’s, regardless of how “smart” they are. As our technological abilities lap our current understanding of the larger implications involving issues like artificial intelligence and genetic engineering, however, the bigger, more terrifying problem becomes evident: at some point, humanity will unleash something on itself that it not only doesn’t fully understand but that it’s powerless to resist. Writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s sci-fi/horror Splice (2009) takes a look at this very issue, wrapping the warning in a tale that’s equal parts “new parent blues” and body horror, sort of like Cronenberg tackling Frankenstein. It’s a bracing and, at times, highly unpleasant film. Like all of Natali’s films, however, it’s also thought-provoking, intelligent and has enough twists and turns to separate it from the pack.

Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley) are maverick scientists involved in cutting-edge gene-splicing research. Their research involves combining various organisms, culminating in their pride and joys, “Fred” and “Ginger,” organic creations that are like nothing that came before. After their research company decides to halt further genetic splicing in favor of focusing on the breakthroughs they already have, however, Clive and Elsa decide to go rogue and continue their splicing experiments on their own. For “pure” scientists, the thrill is always in the chase, not the chase, and the partners won’t stop when they’re so close to a world-changing discovery.

And, of course, they end up getting their wish, albeit in a way that they probably didn’t expect. Thanks to the inclusion of human DNA in their experiment, Clive and Elsa are now the proud “parents” of…well, something, for lack of a better word. The name their creation “Dren” and there’s immediately conflict: Clive is horrified by what they’ve done and wants to kill the “creature” before anything bad happens. Elsa, on the other hand, wants to study Dren: since the creature ages at an accelerated rate, Elsa figures that they have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to observe the entire life-cycle of a new species…what scientist worth their salt would pass that up?

As Dren grows, she develops into something decidedly alien, humanoid although possessed of a massive tail with a poisonous stinger at the end, similar to a scorpion. As Dren gets older, the relationship between the “parents” and their “child” becomes more complicated, made more so when Dren begins to display some decidedly violent behavior. If Frankenstein taught us anything it’s that first impressions probably aren’t the best judge. For, you see, as Dren grows, she’s changing: becoming something much greater and more terrifying than the scientists could have ever imagined. After “Fred” and “Ginger” tear each other to rags before a mortified crowd of spectators, Clive and Elsa’s “official” research is shut down. Their secret project has now become something potentially lethal, however, something which threatens not only their lives but the very future of the human species. As Clive and Elsa will learn, there are some doors that should never be opened, even if we have the key.

Like Natali’s solid debut, Cube (1997), Splice is elevated by a great central idea and some truly intelligent writing. Unlike Cube, however, Splice benefits from some excellent acting and much greater production values: the creature is always impressive, from the get-go, and only gets more so as it continues to “evolve” and change. Natali is a tricky filmmaker, almost a poker-faced prankster who delights in hiding things in the margins of his films. One of my favorite revelations in Splice comes from the names of Brody and Polley’s characters: Clive and Elsa. Unless I’m reading too much into it, the connection with Universal’s classic monster flicks seems undeniable: Colin Clive played Henry Frankenstein in James Whale’s classic Frankenstein (1931), while Elsa Lancaster played the monster’s “bride” in the followup, The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Subtle, sure, but just the kind of attention to detail that make Natali’s films so interesting.

More importantly, however, Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley invest the film with some genuine heart and soul: unlike the under-developed characters from Cube, Splice is filled with what feel like real people dealing with some intensely difficult decisions. They don’t always make the right decisions, of course, but what Frankenstein story would be complete without a misguided God complex? Polley, in particular, is fantastic as Elsa: she gets some extremely difficult emotional beats to work through and nails everything with a verve that makes it impossible to take your eyes off of her. It’s to Polley’s great credit that she can share the screen with what amounts to a scorpion-tailed gargoyle and still hold her own: contrast this with something like Pacific Rim (2013), where the human actors are completely upstaged by the monsters and robots.

As previously mentioned, Splice is full of some pretty ingenious twists and turns, none of which I’ll spoil here. Suffice to say that the film manages to work in discussions of body image, gender roles and Oedipal/Elektra complexes before the whole thing culminates in a blood-drenched finale that’s the very epitome of “The end is the beginning.” As with almost all of his films, Natali seems more interested in setting up clichéd tropes in order to detonate them from the inside than he is in playing to audience expectations: just when you think you have Splice figured out, Natali flips the film on its head and tells you to take another look. As someone who constantly bemoans lackluster resolutions in indie horror films, I find Natali to be a breath of fresh air: no matter what happens, I know that he’ll find an interesting way to resolve everything without resorting to obvious “Shyamalanisms.”

As with most of Natali’s films, Splice is far from perfect but none of the minor issues or slight imperfections really impact the overall film: taken as a whole, Splice is a massively entertaining, thought-provoking sci-fi/horror film that combines the chilly sterility of Cronenberg with a blood-and-guts monster flick. There are ideas aplenty here and Natali manages to hit most of what he’s aiming at, making Splice one of the most intriguing of the new wave of “intelligent sci-fi” that’s cropped-up in the last five years or so. It’s rare to find a horror film that has both heart and brains, guts and a soul. Like any good mad scientist, Natali has cobbled his film together out of some pretty cool spare parts and let me tell you: it’s a real monster.

5/28/14: Your Life, Minus the Bad Parts

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abused children, Brendan Fletcher, child abuse, childhood trauma, cinema, cutter, Dead Poets Society, film reviews, films, Final Cut, Genevieve Buechner, Jim Caviezel, memories, Michael St. John Smith, Mimi Kuzyk, Mira Sorvino, Movies, near future, Omar Naim, Robin Williams, sci-fi, science-fiction, Stephanie Romanov, Tak Fujimoto, tech-thriller, The Final Cut, thriller, Vincent Gale, Where the Buffalo Roam, writer-director

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could edit our own lives, go back through the “footage” of our years and remove all of the embarrassing, sad, shameful and hateful moments? In a perfect world, perhaps, we’d be able to remember just what we wanted: every golden sunset, ever moment of empowerment, every true moment of happiness, would stand in greater relief without all of the “other stuff” to clog it up. We would be able to remember our first kiss forever, while completely forgetting every racist, sexist, despicable or stupid thing we ever did. It sounds pretty great, on the outside, but it’s also pretty foolish. Indeed, it’s often the bad stuff, the moments that we’re most ashamed of, that help us to grow the most, to form our worldviews and personalities. It’s impossible to know love without knowing hate: good doesn’t exist without the presence of evil. We know all of this, of course, but we’re also humans and humans, by default, are pretty foolish creatures. We’re always looking for the perfect, idealized version of ourselves, sometimes to the deficit (or destruction) of those around us. It’s just what we do, really.

Omar Naim’s Final Cut (2004) examines not only this particularly human phenomena but also the tendency to whitewash (or tar, depending on the situation) someone after they’ve died. Dead people have a difficult time defending themselves, after all, so it’s no difficult thing to proclaim someone as either “hero” or “goat” after they’re unable to do anything about it. While it’s always disheartening to see how quickly people will rush to dig up dirt on a newly dead celebrity, it’s no less worrisome to see how willing some folks are to deify undeserving people. After all, if the memories of a person’s bad deeds can be erased from the public conscience, doesn’t that, in some twisted way, absolve them of their actions? It’s an intriguing idea and one that the film examines, at some length, with rather varying degrees of success.

Alan (Robin Williams) is a “cutter” in the near-future, a craftsman charged with editing the lifelong memories of recently deceased people into attractive, bite-sized pieces that are perfectly suitable for hi-tech memorial services/funerals called Rememories. Alan is one of the best cutters in the business, which means that he’s particularly adept at cutting out all of the nasty little bits that would tend to be upsetting in a public setting: for every life accomplishment, Alan cuts out a memory of savagely beating one’s spouse…for every moment of infidelity, child abuse and hatred that Alan removes, he leaves in the moments of charity, love and joy. Essentially, Alan gives families the “gift” that they think they want: an idealized, pain-free memory of their deceased love ones. It’s similar to history books that skip over the ugly parts, in favor of a more homogeneous, white-washed version of events: if we don’t see them, they couldn’t have happened.

While he may be good at his job, Alan doesn’t seem like a particularly happy person. For one thing, he’s constantly tortured by half-lucid, childhood memories of his friend, Louis, dying: from what he can remember, Alan was explicitly responsible for Louis’ death but he just can’t remember enough about the incident to know one way or the other. As such, he walks around bearing the burden of crushing guilt for an incident that may not have even happened…at least the way he remembers it. Talk about a key to a happy life!

Alan’s life is further complicated when his “boss,” Thelma (Mimi Kuzyk) presents him with a new assignment: edit a suitable Rememory for Charles Bannister (Michael St. John Smith), the recently deceased executive who was intrinsically tied to the implant technology that allows people’s memories to be recorded. Charles was an important person, perhaps one of the most important in the “new world,” but he was also a monster, as Alan discovers when he comes across the terrible footage of Bannister molesting his young daughter, Isabel (Genevieve Buechner). Isabel’s mother, Jennifer Bannister (Stephanie Romanov) seems to be well-aware of the abuse, since he’s careful to keep Alan away from Isabel: she doesn’t want her “muddying” the waters, as it were. Bannister was a very important person and they need to ensure that the public remembers him as a technological innovator rather than the monster who routinely raped his own daughter.

To further complicate matters, there’s a heavily anti-implant faction in society, a group that fights for a return to the days when memories were personal and couldn’t be manipulated by corporations. One of Alan’s former cutting peers, Fletcher (Jim Caviezel), is deeply embedded with the protesters and wants Alan to break the tenets of his profession and get him Bannister’s uncut footage: if the general public can see the truth, Bannister won’t be deified and his horrible actions will be dragged into the light of day. Alan protests, as dedicated to his job as anyone who truly believes in their work but cracks are forming in his smooth veneer. When Alan finds out a secret about himself, a secret which automatically sets him at odds with his own profession and fellow cutters, he must decided whether to do the right thing or to follow the oath he took, regardless of how unjust it may be.

The Final Cut, first and foremost, is a very serious, somber film: just a few minutes in, it reminded me explicitly of Gattaca (1997), another ultra-serious, portentous science-fiction film. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a serious film, mind you, but The Final Cut ends up slingshoting past serious into a cinematic realm usually reserved for stuffy historical dramas or “big, important” pictures. Unfortunately, the film never becomes quite “big enough” to make these affectations seem anything more than pretentious. It’s kind of like getting Brian Eno to score a Roger Corman boobs-and-aliens-in-space epic: adding gravitas to a pulpy storyline doesn’t make the subject inherently weighty. Likewise, The Final Cut seems focused on big, intellectual issues yet the resolution still hinges on the kind of maudlin, sentimental “feelings” that the film (mostly) avoids for its running time.

The ending, on its own, ends up being a pretty massive problem, since it purports to morph the film into a completely different beast with the movie’s final 10 minutes: never the best place to “flip the script,” as it were, unless you’re going for a “twist ending.” The finale to The Final Cut is no twist: rather, it’s a non-ending that sort of shrugs its shoulders, leaving the audience to pull together any deeper meaning. Worse yet, the ending posits the highly insulting notion that everyone in the film knows what Alan wants more than he does. It’s the equivalent of spending twenty minutes trying to convince the ice cream man that you really do want vanilla and not strawberry before he hands you a double-scoop of strawberry, anyway.

Craftwise, The Final Cut has the exact same look/feel that I tend to associate with most “Dystopia-lite” films, although the presence of veteran cinematographer Tak Fujimoto definitely lends the proceedings some weight. Fujimoto, known for Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and Silence of the Lambs (1992), among many, many, many others, doesn’t bring a ton of individuality to the film but there’s plenty of nice shots here, including some truly impressive overheads. Again, the whole thing tends to remind me rather overtly of Gattaca, but that could just be a by-product of the whole “independent, intelligent sci-fi” subgenre. The score, as a rule, is always ponderous and somber, as if we need constant reminding that this is a “serious” film with “big issues.” A lighter (or, at least, more subtle) approach might have been more effective but it is what it is.

Robin Williams, as befits his late-career “serious” roles, is completely subdued, almost to the point of blending into the background. It’s definitely not my favorite of his low-key performances but I’ll be honest: I’ll take a hundred “mediocre” performances like this to one of his obnoxiously manic “funny guy” personas. I’ve never been a fan of Williams when he gets truly wound-up and rewatching some of his more “classic” roles, such as Good Morning, Vietnam (1987) and Dead Poets Society (1989) showed me that he’s been guilty of this for some time. While Williams’ performance in The Final Cut is nowhere near as relevatory as his turns in One Hour Photo (2002), Insomnia (2002) or World’s Greatest Dad (2009), it’s still a nicely low-key performance that maintains a consistent pitch throughout the film. I’m not sure that Alan has much of an arc, to be honest, but it’s nice to get through a Williams’ film without getting “mugged” to death.

Aside from Williams, the rest of the cast ranges from capable to fairly anonymous. Mira Sorvino has a rather thankless role as Alan’s on-again/off-again girlfriend, Delila, and Caviezel ends up being less than convincing as Fletcher, the former philistine who’s had his eyes opened to the evils of modern technology. To be fair, I’m rarely, if ever, blown away by Caviezel, who seems to underact to the point of non-acting. That being said, Fletcher is a rather confounding character and I’m not sure that anyone could have made him distinctive.

While The Final Cut isn’t a bad film (although it has a very bad ending), it’s also not a particularly interesting film. Any of the plot’s intriguing concepts (how would you act if you knew that everything you did would be recorded for the rest of your life?) become mundane by sheer repetition (a fact not helped by the tedious aural flashbacks that remind us of things we may have missed) and the whole thing is too glum and joyless to be much fun. While it’s interesting to think of our lives as one big editing project (like with film editing, Alan separates the footage into various categories, although his categories have names like “Masturbation,” “Personal Hygiene,” “Youth,” and “School”), I can’t really see the concept having much interest to anyone who’s not well-versed with the Final Cut editing program. Ultimately, The Final Cut ends up being so similar to other films that you might begin to wonder if someone hasn’t removed your memory of seeing it before. You probably haven’t but you’re sure gonna think you have.

4/30/14: Today Came Yesterday

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'70s films, '70s-era, Bruce Dern, Charles F. Wheeler, cinema, Cliff Potts, Deric Washburn, Dewey and Louie, director-producer, directorial debut, Douglas Trumbull, Earth, environmentalism, film reviews, films, Freeman Lowell, global warming, greenhouse effect, Huey, Jesse Vint, L.A. Law, lost in space, Michael Cimino, Monsanto, Movies, near future, NYPD Blue, outer space, robot helpers, Ron Rifkin, sci-fi, Silent Running, space operas, special effects, Steve Bochco, Steven Bochco, The Deer Hunter, trees, Truck Turner, visual effects pioneer

Sometimes, science fiction can be so fantastic, so out-of-this-world, that it leaves the realm of “science” and puts both feet firmly in the “fiction” camp. Take Douglas Trumbull’s ’70s-era sci-fi film, Silent Running, for example. In this particular movie, we’re led to believe that in the near future, mankind has destroyed Earth’s atmosphere due to unchecked industrialization and pollution, leading to the loss of all flora on the planet. Not only are we asked to buy this utterly outrageous scenario (since when has unchecked industrialization ever led to anything but more money and happiness?) but it’s also compounded by a further bit of foolishness: in order to preserve what trees and plants are remaining, we’ve put them aboard gigantic, spaceship-sized greenhouses and sent them into space, where they can be free from Earth’s noxious atmosphere, serving as a melancholy reminder of what we once enjoyed.

As mentioned, utter hogwash: why in the Sam Hell would we waste money sending the trees into space when we could just let them die, for free, by doing nothing? As long as future generations can read about them, that should be more than sufficient: no self-respecting “person-in-charge” would spend one cent on this foolishness, much less the perceived mega-cost of a fleet of spaceships. After all…they’re just trees, right? What real use do they have, besides the obvious benefit of building resources and mass-producing toothpicks?

Silent Running is concerned with Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), an employee of the defunct Forestry Department who has spent the past eight years tending the last remaining forests. These forests have been uprooted from their native terra firme and set to space, orbiting Saturn in massive “greenhouses” in order to protect them from Earth’s now noxious environment. Lowell is the epitome of the tree-hugging peacenik: hanging out in long, flowing, Druid-style robes; growing his own, organic food; petting fluffy bunnies and tenderly planting each new seed, cutting and sapling. His crew members, however, aren’t quite as eco-friendly as ol’ Lowell: Barker (Ron Rifkin), Wolf (Jesse Vint) and Keenan (Cliff Potts) spend their days racing around the spaceship on ATVs (crushing Lowell’s plants in the process), scarfing down the fake, processed “food” that they’ve been provided and bitching about being stuck in space with hippy Lowell, when they’d much rather be back on good ol’ Earth, pollution be damned. When a communique comes in from Earth, Lowell expects the best (the reinstatement of the Forestry Department and his installation as Director) but gets the worst (nuke the forests and bring the ships back to Earth, where they can be re-purposed for commercial usage.

Lowell, of course, is devastated: this is akin to a mass genocide, for him, and synonymous with giving up the rest of our (tenuous) humanity. The others, however, are overjoyed and rush to set the nukes as quickly as they’re able. While the other ships around him begin to glow with the inferno of their “cleansing,” Lowell just can’t let that fate befall the forests under his care. In a moment of terrifying clarity, Lowell takes matters into his own hands and, with the assistance of his faithful robotic helpers, Huey and Dewey, sets out to atone for mankind’s mistakes and preserve the forests, at all costs.

When visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull directed Silent Running in 1972, there no way he could have known how prescient the film would become by 2014, a mere 40+ years later. After all, Silent Running is a film that examines not only over-industrialization, pollution, resource management (and waste) and global warming but it also manages to throw haymakers at genetically modified food and our species’ tendency to put the almighty dollar above the needs of the natural order. In a day and age when words like “Monsanto” and “GMO” are hot-button issues and revelations about global warming on shows like Fox’s Cosmos can bring the kind of angry debates that used to be restricted to questions like “Tastes great?” or “Less filling?”, it definitely seems like our world is ready for another look at this chestnut. While there’s plenty of hippy-dippy silliness to be found here (the ’60s weren’t far in the rearview mirror, after all), there’s also a surprisingly somber and moving meditation on what it means to be human, what it means to be a guest and what it means when we’ve lost something as basic as the plants around us. Throw in a powerful, nearly solo performance from Bruce Dern and you’ve got a film that deserves to be given a chance to add its voice to the current debate.

Right off the bat, Silent Running looks absolutely gorgeous, featuring some of the most majestic space shots you’re likely to see from that era (2001: A Space Odyssey, by contrast, came out a mere four years before Silent Running). Trumbull was an award-winning, visionary, special effects pioneer whose work in films like 2001 (1968), The Andromeda Strain (1971), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977),  Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) and, my personal favorite, Blade Runner (1982), pushed the genre (and films, in general) into exiting, new places. His work on Silent Running, perhaps because it was a labor of love, are exemplary: the early shot we get as the camera zooms out of the forest and into outer space, to reveal the greenhouse-ships for the first time, is a true stunner. Words like “awe-inspiring” get thrown around a lot today but I would love to have been able to experience this film in the theater, with other people: I can’t imagine that there was anyone there who didn’t have their mind blown by that initial reveal. Likewise, the scene where Lowell navigates through the rings of Saturn is a Technicolor marvel, reminiscent of the equally impressive space-travel scene in 2001.

Trumbull also used real people, under costuming, for the parts of the robot helpers, which gives them an odd sense of movement that’s strangely realistic: it’s an interesting effect that only speaks to the care and attention put into the production. Truth be told, everything about the visual style of Silent Running works exceptionally well: the sense of world-building in the film is pretty complete, unlike more generic “space operas” that feature anonymous scenery and Spaceship #1, Robot #5 scenarios. By extension, the acting in Silent Running is pretty good, although all other characters become subsidiary to Dern’s, by the end. Although this isn’t a “one-man-show” film like Moon (2009), Wrecked (2010), Gravity (2013) or All is Lost (2013), the focus is squarely on Dern throughout, with the other characters serving only to play up elements of his own personality or to provide him moral/logistic challenges.

Dern has been a helluva career actor, logging time in nearly 150 projects in just over 50 years, with many of them being of the utmost quality. He’s easily one of our most under-rated actors and Silent Running gives a great opportunity to see Dern play a role that’s more low-key than his usual parts but no less passionate. Without Dern’s powerful performance, Silent Running would be a beautiful bit of cotton-candy, big ideas in search of an anchor: Dern is just that anchor, attaching the film’s ideas about ecology and conservationism to a decidedly human ideal. It’s a sad, sympathetic performance and, to be honest, quite haunting: I found myself thinking about Freeman Lowell quite a bit in the days following my screening of the film.

In another nifty hat-trick, Silent Running’s script also featured the early effort of two gentlemen who would go on to full careers: Michael Cimino and Steven Bochco. Ciminio, of course, is best known for the epic failure that was Heaven’s Gate (1980) but he also wrote and directed the award-winning The Deer Hunter (1978), as well as writing the Clint Eastwood vehicles Magnum Force (1973) and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). Bochco, of course, is the guy synonymous with creating a TV empire, including such iconic shows as Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser, M.D., L.A. Law and NYPD Blue. Together with Deric Washburn (who also worked on The Deer Hunter screenplay with Cimino), they’ve turned in a really tight script, filled not only with gripping action sequences (the aforementioned Saturn crossing, the race against time with the nukes) but also big emotional beats (Lowell’s inspiring speech to his crew members, the poignant and lovely finale). Silent Running is that rare event movie that is actually about something, rather than being a mindless excuse to consume popcorn.

If there is any point where the film feels “silly” or dated, it would definitely have to be the awful theme songs, sung by Joan Baez. The songs are both stereotypical hippy twaddle, to be frankly honest, and seem so cliché as to drive the rest of the film down. In one key scene, one of the stupid songs scores a bit where a hawk flies to Lowell’s outstretched: combined with the song, the scene is so ridiculous and treacley as to be laughable. If anyone wants to cast dispersion on Silent Running, let it be for the awful songs, which give the exact mental image that the rest of the film works so hard to contradict. Lowell may be a “hippy” but the songs are the worst kind of pabulum and definitely do the film a disservice.

There’s a point, in the film, where Lowell argues with his ship-mates over the tide of progress that’s brought them to where they are now. As the other men point out, Earth’s policies may have done irreparable damage to the environment and the flora but it also led to no poverty, no disease and a constant temperature of 75 degrees. In short, this has become a “golden age” for mankind, despite the implications for everyone else. This may be true, Lowell grants, but it also means there is no more imagination, no more frontiers to conquer…because we just don’t care anymore. When we turn our backs on the natural world and defy the complex machinery of nature, we’re making a definite statement: we know better than you do, whoever you may be. “You” may be a higher power or it may be a dedicated group of environmental activists. “You” may be a raft of scientists or it may be the board of directors of a mega-corporation. “You” could be a bunch of loud-mouthed “eco-terrorists” or it could be Mother Nature, herself.

In this day and age, “we” are so sure about everything, so confident in our own boundless abilities, that we always know better than “you.” This, of course, is a shame: we can always stand to learn from others, no matter who they are or what they believe. In crafting a bold, new world for humanity we have said, unequivocally, that we know what is best for the planet and, by default, what is best for every living thing on it. This is not only hubris but it’s dangerous. In the business world, sticking to the same unsuccessful strategy would not only be considered pointless but it would also be seen as crazy. We’ve tried to wring every last drop and resource out of our planet for almost 200 years, now: maybe it’s finally time to try something different.

 

2/16/14: You Can’t Pick Your Friends

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aging, cinema, film reviews, films, Frank Langella, friendship, getting old, grown children, indie comedies, Jake Schreier, James Marsden, Jeremy Sisto, Liv Tyler, Moon, Movies, near future, Peter Sarsgaard, Robot and Frank, robots, sci-fi, Short Circuit, Spike Jonze, Susan Sarandon, technology

What, exactly, is friendship? Most, if not all, of us will have at least one friend: if you’re Lone Wolf McQuaid, you probably only have one; if you’re George Bailey, you’ve got at least a couple dozen. How much give-and-take is required for a relationship to be considered a “friendship?” Can the butler be friends with the lady-of-the-house? Can parents be friends with their children? What about non-human friends? Can humans be friends with animals? We know that children can be friends with aliens, thanks to ET and those darned Reese’s Pieces, and we know that Steve Guttenberg pals around with Number 5 but what about the rest of us: could we ever truly consider a robot to be one of our best buddies?

Robot and Frank, the feature-film debut of Jake Schreier, explores the subject of human-robot friendship in a way that manages to avoid both the easy sentimental notes and silly humor that usually capsizes films like this. The story, as many truly great stories are, is just about as simple as they come. In the near future (think video-phones and hovering cars), aging former cat burglar Frank (Frank Langella) is beginning to exhibit the first signs of dementia and his grown children Hunter (James Marsden) and Madison (Liv Tyler) are worried about him. Not worried enough to pause their fast-paced lives (Hunter is a corporate go-getter whereas Madison is a globe-trotting, socially-aware do-gooder) and actually spend time with him, mind you, but concerned enough to know that he needs a little extra help. Hunter, being the tech-savvy problem-solver that he is, decides to splurge and get his father a robot assistant (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard). At first, old-fashioned Frank views Robot as nothing more than a creepy talking tin-can, an automated nursemaid to help alleviate his absentee children’s’ guilt over his well-being. In time, however, Frank comes to see the amiable Robot as something more: a ready, if not necessarily willing, accomplish in Frank’s newest heist plans. Over time, however, Frank will come to see Robot as something more: a genuine friend.

On the surface, there’s about a million different ways that Robot and Frank could’ve become a chore to sit through. The film could have played up the disparity between Frank and Robot, making this one of those noxious buddy films that always seem to star Zach Galifianakis and some unfortunate “other.” You know the type: Frank keeps being old-fashioned and stubborn…Robot shakes his head and gives one of those “Oh, Frank!” looks…the same watered-down formula we’ve been receiving since the filmmakers decided to rip off The Odd Couple. On the other hand, this could have been played as a real tear-jerker, one of those films where you arrive with a box of Kleenex or you don’t show up at all. After all, Frank isn’t exactly a spring chicken and we definitely get plenty of reminders of his failing mental state throughout the film. It wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to imagine a film where Frank lies on his dead bed and Robot tenderly holds him, weeping little tears of oil from his eye sockets: this isn’t that film, either.

Instead, Robot and Frank is one of those rare films: an utterly jubilant, funny and smart buddy comedy about aging, family, doing what makes you happy and flipping off the world while doing it. The writing is exceptionally sharp, making the relationship between Frank and Robot feel completely natural and right: there’s nothing that feels gimmicky about their scenes together. Chalk it up to the fact that Langella, 74 years old when the film was released, is one of the more rock-solid actors of his generation and that Sarsgaard manages to inject Robot with just enough pathos and humanity to be relateable.  Robot isn’t the cute ball of energy that was Short Circuit’s Number 5 but he’s also as far from the cold inhumanity of HAL as a robot can get. If anything, Robot (and Sarsgaard’s performance) reminds of Kevin Spacey’s performance as Gerty, the robotic intelligence in Moon: Sarsgaard’s deadpan delivery of such lines as “Frank, that cereal is for children: enjoy this grapefruit” and the amazing “I can’t promise that I’ll allow the actual burglary but I’m glad to see you so enthusiastic” are the wellsprings for much of the film’s funniest moments.

In fact, despite several indicators that Robot and Frank is of the distinct “indie dramedy” family (read: humor so depressing that you’ll chuckle solemnly while throwing yourself from a window), the film is actually very buoyant and quite funny. There’s a fresh, vibrant quality to Frank and Robot’s burgeoning friendship, a quality which permeates nearly every frame of the film. Even when things begin to get heavier in the back half, as Frank must contemplate wiping out Robot’s memory in order to hide his felonious activities from the police (Jeremy Sisto, in a rather odd cameo that feels cut-down from a more substantial role), the film manages to maintain a fleetness that makes it the furthest thing from a “feel-good-about-feeling-bad” film. The film never shies away from the reality of Frank’s situation but it never wallows in future misery, either: we know that this is, ostensibly, Frank’s last hurrah, as it were, and it’s nice that the film doesn’t condescend to him, even if some of the younger nitwit characters do.

From a craft standpoint, Robot and Frank is really quite beautifully made. The cinematography, by Matthew J. Lloyd, is a continual knockout, combining with the evocative “indie-ish” score to create a mood that most resembles Spike Jonze or Gondry-lite. A mentioned previously, the acting is exceptional across the board, with special attention merited by Langella’s outstanding, nuanced performance and Sarsgaard’s stellar voice-work. Susan Sarandon even shows up (is she contractually obligated to appear in every indie film from the past five years) as a kindly librarian who appears to be sweet on Frank: their relationship provides some genuinely nice emotional heft and a truly powerful latter-half revelation that manages to recast several events in a different light.

All in all, Robot and Frank is a truly moving, relatively cliche-free film that features a really neat friendship as its core. While other films might treat the concept of a human-robot friendship as a gimmick, Schreier’s film actually takes the concept seriously. These two don’t become buddies because the script tells them to: Robot and Frank become friends because, in the real world, that’s probably just what would happen. Minus the hover-cars, of course.