Tag: 2011

X-Men: First Class and the comic book heroes of 2011

2011 has already been hotting up as the year of the superhero film, with some of the biggest names in the business set for a remake, reboot or sequel. Indeed, it’s only February, and we’ve already had one blockbuster comic book adaptation in the form of Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet. As we saw from the Super Bowl commercials last week, the battle will continue throughout the year as Captain America: The First Avenger fights for freedom, the Green Lantern polices the galaxy and Thor brings down the mighty hammer of Odin. With so many to see, how are our anticipation levels reading for these fabulous films of 2011?

X-Men: First Class

Today, Twentieth Century Fox released the first trailer for the highly anticipated X-Men: First Class. Although this will be the fourth film in the franchise to date – following X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand and the atrocious Wolverine – this prequel has got fans in an uncanny buzz. Director Matthew Vaughn, who has already popped his comic cherry on Kick-Ass and its forthcoming sequel, should bring back the sense of frenetic energy that X-fans have been craving since Bryan Singer’s high-octane second installment in 2003.

Then there’s the cast: James McAvoy (Gnomeo & Juliet) takes on the role of a young Professor Charles Xavier, a role made famous by the venerable Patrick Stewart. Meanwhile, Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) has his own big shoes to fill replacing Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto. The awarded actors are certainly up to the task, and boy are they accompanied by a terrific cast: Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Australia’s Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man), Jennifer Lawrence and Oliver Platt just to name a few. If that’s not enough to convince you, then script is co-written by Kick-Ass scribe Jane Goldman. You will be seeing this film.

As you can see from the trailer itself, this is an origin of the famous team set during the Cold War era of the 1960s, complete with Cuban Missile Crisis, younger versions of familiar characters and a few new ones to boot. Most notably, Golden-Globe nominee January Jones (Mad Men) joins the cast as Emma Frost, another telepath with the ability to create thought projections. There also seems to be some kind of fairy creature that Charles and Erik visit in what can only be described as a David Lynch-style red room. If Michael J. Anderson turns up, it could be the greatest film ever made. (X-Men: First Class is out in Australia on 2 June, 2011 from Twentieth Century Fox).

Green Lantern

Will ‘Green Lantern’ shine at the box office?

One of Warner Bros./DC’s great hopes for the year didn’t run a spot during the Super Bowl, possibly saving themselves the $3 million price tag that goes along with it. As was the case with the Facebook-launched X-Men: First Class trailer, when the Green Lantern trailer launched online in November last year, it caused quite the fanboy stir.

Although never a major mainstream player on the superhero front, Green Lantern has managed to get some good marketing from DC and its parent company Warner Bros. thanks to appearances in the popular Justice League animated series, and his very own direct-to-DVD animated film, Green Lantern: First Flight. The trailer to the first live-action film for the character managed to elicit a few laughs – both intentional and the unfortunate kind – thanks to the all-CGI costume the character was wearing. This has the fanboys already crying outrage, but let’s see if the company can keep the goodwill built by Batman Begins and The Dark Knight going. Fingers crossed! (Green Lantern is out in Australia from Warner Bros. on 16 June 2011).

Thor

Potentially the silliest of all the films to date, Thor is a character that traces back to Norse mythology, but Marvel adapted into a comic book back in the 1960s under Stan Lee.

The new trailer that Paramount debuted at the Super Bowl this year amps up the hammer wielding and the muscly action, but the extended version – showing much poncing about in capes with Anthony Hopkins demonstrating why he should have stayed retired – has the potential to be one of the biggest giggle-fests of 2011. Lest we forget: for every Spider-man and Iron Man, there is an Elektra or Ghost Rider. Let’s pray to mighty Odin that with seasoned thesp Kenneth Branagh behind the camera, Thor will be the former. (Thor is out in Australia from Paramount on 28 April 2011).

Captain America: The First Avenger

Marvel’s plan is to bring together most of their film characters to date – Hulk (now played by Mark Ruffalo, replacing Edward Norton, who in turn usurped Eric Bana), Thor, Iron Man and a few bit players from the respective movies – and team them all up as The Avengers in 2012. First the team needs a captain, so in the Hollywood tradition of explaining everything before it happens, we get the origin story of Steve Rogers (aka Captain America). As such, the ‘First Avenger’ bit has been strategically stuck into the title to evoke a sense of…franchising?

The first footage we saw was (you guessed it) at the 2011 Super Bowl, and we witnessed the transformation of Chris Evans (who was last seen in superhero mode in the woeful Fantastic Four sequel The Rise of the Silver Surfer), from skinny private to super soldier as part of US government experimentation in the Second World War. As with X-Men: First Class, this looks to be a period piece (rather than the Cap on Ice modern storylines), and a very cool one at that. In the short 32 second teaser, we get to see his nemesis the Red Skull, the famous US flag shield and Tommy Lee Jones. Is that not cool, or what? (Captain America: The First Avenger is out in Australia on 28 July 2011).

The Reel Bits: It’s going to be spandex city this year, with a plethora of heroes vying for your coin. Based on what we’ve seen so far, our money is on X-Men: First Class and Captain America: The First Avenger being the must-see superhero titles of 2011.

February 11, 2011
No Strings Attached

Can men and women traverse the territory between friendship and sex without love getting in the way? Or is the fabled “sex buddies” or “friends with benefits” arrangement merely a myth?

The question is by no means new to the realm of film and television yet continues to be explored in countless efforts, with TV’s Sex And The City and Scrubs touching upon it, as well as the cinematic works of Kevin Smith (most notably Zack And Miri Make A Porno). Mumblecore hit Humpday pondered the topic from a completely different angle (and without the involvement of women), and Love And Other Drugs threw illness into the mix. Now No Strings Attached considers the concept with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher playing the central duo, in the first of two 2011 releases to delve into the intricacies and intimacies attached to casual couplings (soon to be followed by Friends With Benefits with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake).

Strong-willed Emma (Portman, Black Swan) and happy-go-lucky Adam (Kutcher, Killers first meet at summer camp at the age of fourteen, with the former on the receiving end of an awkward proposition from the latter. Ten years later, they cross paths at a college frat party, and then again – courtesy of their friends Patrice (Greta Gerwig, Greenberg) and Eli (Jake Johnson, Get Him To The Greek) – at a market four years after that.

Another year passes before the pair are brought together, with Adam drunkenly dialling Emma after discovering that his TV star father (Kevin Kline, Definitely, Maybe) is dating his ex (Ophelia Lovibond, Nowhere Boy). Giving in to their mutual attraction, they take their relationship to the physical level, quickly deciding to keep it casual rather than head into romance. As their liaisons increase in frequency and friendship blooms between them, Adam’s feelings start to develop into something more, whilst Emma is determined to keep her distance.

The success of a rom-com lies in the ability to sell a suspension of belief to the audience. From the first time we glimpse the poster to the seemingly endless stream of identical genre entries, we know that the leads are going to get together. It is partly the reason behind the continuing success of the films, with mainstream audiences genuinely wanting to “feel good” as the credits roll. Yet we are also asked to believe that some convoluted and often self-created obstacle – in this case, a set of easily broken rules that “stops” the characters from being truly together – is realistic enough to keep apart two obvious matches for 108 minutes or so.

While No Strings Attached does little to sidestep these cut and paste guidelines for romantic comedies, it does inject enough ‘risqué’ humour and warmth (thanks largely to the two capable leads) to set it apart from the avalanche of cinematic candy that has been rotting our brains for decades. Kutcher is an experienced generic ‘guy’ is these type of films, yet while Portman has dipped in from time to time, coming off the back of the emotionally powerful performance in Black Swan, this smacks of an attempt to soften her image for wider audiences.

The humour in No Strings Attached is certainly more (or less, depending on your point of view) sophisticated than genre stable-mates. However, it doesn’t go far enough: the humour in the Judd Apatow or Kevin Smith brand of comedies takes no prisoners, and tends to call a spade a spade (or a cock a cock if you prefer). While crude, it certainly takes the edge off the sugary story at the heart of the film.

No Strings Attached certainly makes a noble attempt at adding some the frank humour found in the aforementioned hits, including a menstruation mix-tape and the repeated sexual encounters, it still errs on the side of coyness with phrases like “eat kitty” and of course, no actual nudity. Yet despite this, and the cheddar-factory conclusion, this is one couple we don’t mind accompanying on their journey to the inevitable.

The Reel Bits: No Strings Attached comes with no frills attached either. Despite the saccharine climax, the genuinely likeable cast and smutty humour lift this several notches above the torrent of rom-coms currently infesting our screens.

No Strings Attached is released on February 10, 2011 in Australia by Paramount Pictures.

February 9, 2011
Paramount Super Bowl Spots 2011

For non-sport fans, the US Super Bowl is a place to catch all the latest big-budget commercials, check for wardrobe malfunctions and perhaps hear a diva making a hash of the US national anthem. For film fans, there is always the added bonus of getting an early look at some of the US summer blockbusters that will be screaming “look at me, look at me” during the middle months of the year (the hump if you will, or as we call it in Australia, winter).

Paramount has sent over a collection of their 30-second TV spots for some of their biggest releases this year. We’ve got a Queen-themed spot for Kung Fu Panda 2, the threequel Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (yes, they are still going with that title), the Johnny Depp animated western Rango. There’s also the epic-sounding Cowboys & Aliens (one of our Most Anticipated in 2011), comic adaptation Thor and the Steve Spielberg/J.J. Abrams Super 8. Finally, they’ve given us some footage from the much anticipated Captain America: The First Avenger.

Promos are © 2011 Paramount Pictures. Reproduced with permission by The Reel Bits.

Rango (Australian Release Date: 10 March 2011)

Thor (Australian Release Date: 28 April 2011)

Kung Fu Panda 2 – “We Will Wok You” (Australian Release Date: 23 June 2011)

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon (Australian Release Date: 30 June 2011)

Captain America: The First Avenger (Australian Release Date: 28 July 2011)

Cowboys & Aliens (Australian Release Date: 11 August 2011)

Super 8 (Undated)

February 8, 2011
Shaolin

Despite a brief renaissance in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Chinese film (and in particular, martial arts) has been strangely absent from Australian cinema screens over the last few years. Not since the world’s love affair with Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon – which in turn led to wide releases of Hero and House of Flying Daggers – have audiences had many chances to see Asia’s stars on the big screen outside of Hollywood cameos.

Case in point is Jackie Chan, who despite having made a number of acclaimed films in his native Hong Kong over the last few years, has been largely seen in US takes on China, such as The Karate Kid. Indeed, viewers seeking out any more treasures would be forced to resort to annual festivals, imports or direct-to-DVD releases. Thankfully, Shaolin (新少林寺 aka The New Shaolin Temple) is enjoying a slightly wider release this season, simultaneously with the Chinese release and ahead of the Hong Kong release no less!

Set in the early years of the republic, feuding warlords threaten to rip apart China in their struggle for power. Young army leader Hou Jie (Andy Lau, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame) and his sworn brother Cao Man (Nicholas Tse, The Stool Pigeon) have carved up the land with little resistance, including the town of Dengfeng. The esteemed local Shaolin Temple – the birthplace of martial arts – takes in some of the wounded, and Hou Jie acts swiftly against Shaolin to make an example of them. However, when Cao Man betrays Hou Jie, wiping out his entire family, he must turn to the temple for assistance and a shot at redemption.

A loose reworking of 1982’s Shaolin Temple, the debut film of superstar Jet Li, this lavish production comes to us from director Benny Chan (City Under Siege, New Police Story). So as to not to damage the real Shaolin Temple, Chan and his company built a 10 million yuan (US$1.47 million) temple to stage the production, and create an endless series of explosions. Yet being the birthplace of martial arts, one would expect a certain level of fisticuffs throughout proceedings, and on this level the film delivers in spades, although none of the fight sequences seem to go on nearly near long enough. Yet what these fights lack in length they make up for in volume, with a seemingly endless series of fists flying back and forth between the factions. The climactic battle sequences are indeed impressive, although they take up much of the latter part of the film.

It is this length that is the biggest gripe of the piece, with the back-half of the film drawn out unnecessarily. Yet Shaolin is fast and furious in all other aspects. The concentration on action barely allows seasoned actor Andy Lau to flex his dramatic muscle, yet his casting was clearly a conscious one given his lack of a martial arts background. Indeed, international superstar Jackie Chan is given a minor, yet pivotal, role as a comedic Cook. Yet given that recent years have seen Benny Chan slum it with the likes of Rob-B-Hood, this is a much-needed return to form for the director and an epic martial arts film of the kind audiences outside of Asian have been missing for several years.

The Reel Bits: Despite a drawn-out series of exploding temples, and a simple morality play that only scrapes the surface, this is the kind of martial arts epic that works best on the big screen.

Shaolin was released in Australia from Hopscotch and Dream Movie (Australia) on January 20, 2011. It premieres in Hong Kong on January 27, 2011.

January 25, 2011
Mad Bastards

While there have certainly been some big hits at the Australian box office over the last few years, it is difficult to translate the success of local produce to the international stage. It could be that the local focus of many Australian films may not appeal to international audiences, already inundated by the might of the Hollywood hit machine.

Yet 2010 was an exception to this rule, producing a string of Australian hits that also gained attention overseas. Animal Kingdom was not only a box-office and AFI Award success locally, but it has garnered Golden Globe nominations and is hotly tipped for an Oscar nod for actress Jackie Weaver. Red Hill, starring True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten, was actually released in the US prior to its Australian screening late last year. Now Brendan Fraser’s Mad Bastards, which saw its world premiere at the Sydney Festival last week, is screening in competition at the prestigious 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

TJ (Dean Daley-Jones) is an ex-con who travels from Perth to the Kimberley to reunite with his estranged son Bullet (Lucas Yeeda). Bullet is currently undergoing his own set of problems; with the town cop Texas (Greg Tait) having just sent him off to a traditional camp to control his own violence issues. Texas is just as tough as TJ, and as the two collide, they both learn a little more about their own lives and their concepts of family.

Treading familiar territory of familial angst and domestic violence, Fraser transplants the typically middle-class focus of Australia’s suburban mayhem to the issues facing Aboriginal Australians in Western Australia’s Kimberly region. Using a cast of non-actors, and music of local boys the Pigram Brothers, director Fraser creates an air of authenticity not previously seen in a fictional feature film of this kind. Daley-Jones had previously worked as a grip on some film sets, and it was on this basis that he approached Mad Bastards for additional work. However, seeing that they had a leading man on their hands, the casting was a masterstroke: Daley-Jones is a powerful leading man, commanding the presence of a seasoned professional. Likewise, Tait – an actual policeman from the region – has a terrific chemistry with Daley-Jones. Despite his gruff exterior, one suspects that he has a heart of gold. In the film, Texas starts a group for men to discuss problems they might be having, revealing a sensitive side not eroded by some of the harshest conditions in this big, brown, flat and mysterious country of ours.

Perhaps what sets Mad Bastards apart is the blend of music and visuals that mark it as not only distinctly Australian, but uniquely Western Australian as well. Songs and music from the Pigrams and the ARIA Award-winning Alex Lloyd are both familiar and fresh, and are instrumental in taking both T.J and the audience on the emotional journey through the Australia landscape. For that is what Mad Bastards is at its core: a journey that irrevocably changes your outlook on life.

The Reel Bits: A fresh and hard-hitting take on a familiar issue on-screen, made all the more powerful by a cast of non-actors who bring genuine emotional strength to the narrative. A terrific start to what should be another great year for Australian film.

Mad Bastards is released in Australia by Transmission in May 2011. IFC has already picked this up for US distribution at Sundance.

January 24, 2011
The Green Hornet

In an interview with Total Film several years ago, legendary comic book creator Alan Moore said that “The main reason why comics can’t work as films is largely because everybody who is ultimately in control of the film industry is an accountant”. Those accountants have certainly been counting their receipts over the last few years, with massive successes in the form of the Sam Raimi Spider-man and the Christopher Nolan Batman franchises just to mention a few. At some point, one imagines the Hollywood boffins will run out of four-colour heroes to mine, already set to remake Spider-man less than three years since Raimi dropped the emo musical that was Spider-man 3. Yet even with a few hiccups along the way in the form of Elektra and more recently Jonah Hex, the bookkeepers of Tinseltown continue to plumb the depths of second-string heroes.

The Green Hornet first came to prominence as a radio serial created by George W. Trendle (The Lone Ranger) and Fran Striker in the 1930s. Achieving great success across multiple media – including a comic book series, books and films – most folk will remember the short-lived 1960s TV series with Van Williams in the titular role and none other than Bruce Lee as his partner Kato. Co-scripted by regular partners Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (Superbad, Pineapple Express), the pair update the tale for visually striking director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). After his media magnate father James Reid (Tom Wilkinson, The Ghost Writer) dies, Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) meets his father’s long-time mechanic and barista Kato (Jay Chou) and decides they need to do something with their lives. Capitalising on Kato’s mechanical skills and Reid’s newspaper connections, the pair soon become a crime-fighting duo under the guise of The Green Hornet and his unknown partner. Posing as crooks to catch the crooks, they soon earn the ire of crime boss Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds) and the war on the streets begin.

Big screen adaptations of lesser known heroes haven’t always been successful, with Daredevil being a perfect example of what happens when Hollywood thinks they know better than decades worth of comic history. If the filmmakers in that instance had taken the source material a little more seriously, then perhaps success and sequels would have followed. However, the irony of The Green Hornet is that its completely irreverent attitude is precisely what makes it work. From the über-serious epic nature of The Dark Knight to the borderline ridiculousness of an attempt to do the same in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, audiences would be forgiven for being jaded by the similarly weighty tone of recent spandex cinema. Rogen’s Reid does not take on the mantle of a crime-fighter due to the death or dismemberment of a loved one, and nor is he bestowed the proportional strength of an insect after a bizarre accident. His motivation is far more Rogen than that: sheer boredom.

Perhaps what is most surprising about The Green Hornet is just how hilarious it is. Unapologetically full of buffoonery, Rogen adapts the material to his own brand of comedy. Much as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World saw Michael Cera recast Scott Pilgrim as Michael Cera, there is something instantly compelling about the sheer clueless meandering in the first half of the film. The appeal of superheroes, at least in the United States, is that they represent everything a society should aspire to: truth, justice and god-like powers over life and death. Nobody notices that Superman is really Clark Kent without glasses because nobody wants to believe that, they believe in the ideal. Here that ideal is cleverly subverted, catering directly to a generation of slackers and geeks who could all be capes if they wanted to, but…whatevs. If the guy from Kick Ass had a bucket-load of money and no sense of social responsibility, or if Bruce Wayne existed in the real world, then you’d get The Green Hornet.

The rest of the casting is pretty spot-on as well. With the exception of a misstep in the casting of Cameron Diaz (The Box) – and a few wasted opportunities, particularly veteran Tom Wilkinson as the largely deceased father – both of the leads are excellent. Jay Chou, perhaps most recognisable to western audiences from Zhang Yimou’s Curse of the Golden Flower, delivers a star turn as the put-upon Kato, a “human Swiss Army knife” as Rogen’s character describes him. Overcoming the daunting legacy of Bruce Lee, he completely manages to make the role his own and in many ways steals a number of scenes away from the crowd-pleasing Rogen. Waltz is loving every minute of being the villain again, doing far more than simply transplanting his Inglourious Basterds‘ Landa to the 21st century. He balances the difficult task of making the audience laugh while remaining a convincing threat to the schemes of The Green Hornet and Kato.

Visually, the film uses all of the tricks in Gondry’s bag. Honed for years on music videos and pioneering some of the techniques used on The Matrix on his Smirnoff commercials, Gondry delivers an incredibly slick mix of sound and vision that is distinctly his own, yet characteristically different from anything Gondry has delivered in the past. The car, the Black Beauty, is a machine that James Bond would have given his right arm for, and is the type of rev-head porn that keeps us tuning into Top Gear every year. However, it must be said that this is one of the worst uses of 3D to date, barely noticeable for the first two-thirds of the picture, except the occasionally out-of-focus object or character. Only in the spectacular finale, where the film almost threatens to topple off the rails, do the eye-popping effects (and end titles) finally justify the wearing of 3D glasses for 119 minutes. However, the film breezes through to this point that you’ll want to get off the ride just so you can get back in line and do it all again.

The Reel Bits: A hilarious, kinetic and visually punchy action film that proves that you don’t have to be serious to be taken seriously in the comic book world.

‘The Green Hornet’ (2011)

The Green Hornet is released in Australia by Sony Pictures Australia on 20 January, 2011.

January 18, 2011
The Dilemma

Opening with a dinner conversation that discusses the very topic of knowing one’s friends and family, the film unravels the dynamic between smooth-talking salesman Ronny Valentine (Vaughn, Couples Retreat) and his scientist buddy Nick Brannen (James, Grown Ups). With Ronny’s girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Connelly, Creation) and Nick’s wife Geneva (Winona Ryder, Black Swan) the pair make a pleasant foursome, with the former duo on the cusp of a more substantial commitment and the latter seemingly comfortable after many years of marriage. When Ronny spies Geneva in the arms of the much younger Zip (Channing Tatum, Dear John), his loyalty to his friend is stretched to the limit. The longer Ronny keeps his discovery a secret, the more the situation deteriorates, threatening to overcome his relationship with Nick on the personal and professional levels.

The film certainly presents a dilemma for the audience. The characters we are presented with in the early scenes of the film are genuinely likeable. While Vince Vaughn doesn’t deviate much from the like-him-or-hate-him cocky persona that he has been offering audiences since Swingers, his relationship with Jennifer Connolly in the film appears to be one of genuine affection. Similarly, what Vaughn’s character describes as the “hero couple” of James and Ryder actually works on-screen in a way that wouldn’t be suggested on paper. Yet having convinced audiences that we should care about the fate of these people, it takes an incredibly long time for anything to come along and challenge the warm and fuzzy feeling engendered by the opening moments. Indeed, it is a good 30 minutes or so before the dilemma of the title presents itself, and like all romantic (or in this case, bromantic) comedies, it takes a frustratingly long time to resolve itself.

The Dilemma never quite decides what it wants to be. While those same opening moments might lead audiences to believe that this is going to be a cut above the typical rom-com – especially when Ron Howard’s name floats by with all of the authority that Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind might suggest – it is not long before the schtick of Vaughn’s one-man stand-up routines peppered throughout key moments remind us of Wedding Crashers or Couples Retreat. Yet every other scene is one of schmaltz so severe that you may literally not know whether to laugh or cry. Just when the film appears to have made an emotional breakthrough, we are once again returned to a ‘bit’. The violence of the confrontation between Vaughn and Tatum could be referencing some of the latter’s roles to date, but it too feels like it belongs in another film altogether. Similarly, the entire sub-plot about the revolutionary engine that the boys are working on serves as an unnecessary distraction at best, but in reality stretches the already flimsy premise out to an incredibly bloated two-hour running time. Like the cars that Vaughn and James are working on, The Dilemma appears to have been assembled in a factory full of people who don’t seem to know they are working on the same movie, but have a rough idea of what one should look like.

For all of its schizophrenia, there are some genuinely amusing moments to The Dilemma. Queen Latifah’s contribution of “lady wood” to the cultural milieu may be the work of pure genius, even if it doesn’t gel with the rest of the film in any way whatsoever. Tatum’s emotional reaction to Vaughn’s harsh confrontation is similarly amusing, and some scenes around Vaughn’s attempts at a complicated cover story provide some crazy non sequiturs. Ryder may have also found a second-wind to her career playing emotionally disturbed psycho bitches, especially after her powerful performance in Black Swan, although like the rest of the cast, she may need to check her contract to see if there are any other studio obligations that must be fulfilled in rom-com form over the coming years. If The Dilemma is a failure, it is a borderline noble one, as if it had simply picked one of the many genres it skirted, it had all the makings of a good film.

The Dilemma was released on January 13, 2011 in Australia from Universal Pictures.

January 15, 2011
Polishing the canon: the importance of lists

The history of film can be told in lists. At least, that is what you’d be forgiven for thinking if you were a regular buyer of popular film magazines or were to wander the aisles of any book store’s collection of tomes on film. The American Film Institute has an entire section dedicated to lists on their website, following their 100 Years…100 Movies series. If lists ever had significance, much of this has been diminished by the promotional nature of the device, largely used to sell magazines or promote campaigns. Regular readers of popular film magazines may have seen The 500 Greatest Films of All Time on several passes now, or wonder if there are any genres left to tackle. Indeed, every month Empire lists a new Top 10 of something, with the most recent Australian edition barrel-scraping by listing the Top 10 Most Superficial Characters. We too are guilty of this, devoting a section of The Reel Bits’ articles to Lists as well. Perhaps a Top Ten Lists of All Time is in order?

A steady canon

The idea of a film canon, a set of films by which all other films should be benchmarked, is the underlying ideology behind the plethora of lists that emerge from various film societies, critics and publishing houses. Attacked as elitist by some, writers/filmmakers such as Paul Schrader (perhaps best known for his Taxi Driver script) defends the need for a canon in his musing on the state of film writing in 2006 article for Film Comment entitled Canon Fodder. Excluding documentaries, non-narrative films and repeat entries from the same director, Schrader lists 20 films in his canon, with an additional forty runners-up. His idea was to “counter the proliferation of popularity-driven lists”. This argument, however, tends to be based on film as a singular kind of medium. So how important is a film canon in 2011, when the world of film is constantly evolving with new production and delivery methods, with major directors shooting films on iPhones or delivering them via online platforms such as MUBI?

This debate is nothing new. Back in 2002, Dan Sallitt wrote (on Slate) about the prestigious Sight & Sound list, The Greatest Ten Films of All Time, that appears once a decade. Sallitt argued that while the list purports to be “a snapshot of the evolving film canon” that even with “a few shifts and substitutions” very little had changed in the ten years since the last poll. Indeed, Citizen Kane had been the top film in 1962, and remained that way forty years later. “Unfortunately”, he added “for the foreseeable future…major directors of today’s cinema are likely to appear in the Sight & Sound polls only as commentators”.

‘Citizen Kane’ – still the greatest?

Indeed, this is true of so many lists. On the AFI’s 2007 edition of 100 Years…100 Movies, the two most recent films in the Top 10 were from 1972 (The Godfather) and 1980 (Raging Bull). All other film in the Top 10 had been released prior to 1965. Of the 23 “new” films added to the list, only two had been released since the creation of the previous list in 1997. One of the new entries, coming in like a rocket at #18, was 1927’s The General, a cracker of a film to be sure: but did it really need a 2007 list to remind us of that? Surely there had been some seminal pieces of cinema in the previous decade that demanded more widespread attention? Is it not the duty of organisations such as the AFI to promote all cinema to the world, especially those that don’t make the mainstream, rather than dust off the same Citizen Kane-centric lists once a decade?

New ammunition

Yet currency doesn’t seem to be the only solution either, with recent editions of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die controversially dropping classics in favour of the occasional flash-in-the-pan hit. The latest edition has added Todd Phillip’s The Hangover and James Cameron’s Avatar, yet dropped Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Amelie. Why? Film is a constantly evolving medium, in a state of flux because it is one of the newest in the overall history of art. Yet to use Schrader again, his definition of a canon is that a film must be “by definition, based on criteria that transcend taste, personal and popular”. (For the record, his own Taxi Driver comes in at 36). Some of the more recent entries on the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list certainly fail on that last count. If a film does not stand the test of time, as some would argue is the case with Citizen Kane, Gone with the Wind or more recently The Return of the King or Avatar, should it be stricken from the record? Is it no longer “good film”, or is it simply a case of pandering to changes in taste? Both are perfectly valid responses, and there is no reason they need to be mutually exclusive.

So lists are full of problems, and often represent the subjective interests of a handful of (possibly) elitist critics? Yes, and no. As mentioned, Schrader’s own list contains a film he penned, but does this mean it is not objectively an ‘essential’ film? Of course not, and countless other critics will testify to the power of Martin Scorsese’s urban nightmare, while others may dismiss it as mindless violence. The point is that film criticism is necessarily a subjective pursuit, often as much about crafting one’s own clever language around someone else’s work. Yet it is through this critical engagement that a deeper appreciation of film is achieved, with personal canons created almost every day. The act of watching is reviewing: it is comparing with what has come before and what will potentially come. To restrict the canon to an agreed upon set of films – to set the bar too highly as it were – even if those films have been selected by a society (or group of societies), is to narrow the view too much. In this light, a canon restricts the effervescent imaginations of critics around the world, but it is the same ‘old school’ thinking that causes filmmakers to rebel and create something entirely new every generation or so.

You may fire when ready

No matter what it is called – a film canon, a ‘best of’ list or the ‘Top Films of All Time’ – they all serve a similar function as a starting point. To think of them as the base by which other films are measured has its uses, but with hundreds of worthy titles released around the world every decade, it is far too limiting to tie ourselves to old-guard notions of what constitutes good film. Rather, we (both critics and audiences alike) should use each and every list as a place to discover new and exciting films from around the world, in the hope that we will one day have a personal list of films that defines each of us and our personal journey through cinema.

January 11, 2011
127 Hours

After conquering space (Sunshine) and fighting back zombie hordes (28 Days Later), Danny Boyle achieved what was seemingly impossible by winning no less than 8 Academy Awards for an English/Hindi Slumdog Millionaire, an adaptation of Vikas Swarup’s Q & A. After taking out such a prestigious haul, including statuettes for Best Picture and Best Director (and equivalent personal nods at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes), where could the maverick director possibly go from there? Boyle returned to a concept that had intrigued him for several years, bringing his Slumdog Millionaire crew back to adapt mountain climber Aaron Ralston’s 2004 autobiography Between a Rock and a Hard Place to the screen.

Aaron Ralston (James Franco, Eat Pray Love) is a cocky canyoneer in the Utah desert, and has unwisely gone off on his latest adventure without telling a soul. After a brief encounter with two hikers (Amber Tamblyn, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Kate Mara, Transsiberian), he slips and becomes trapped when a fallen boulder pins his arm. In order to be rescued, he must extricate himself from the rock, climb a steep cliff face and walk 8 miles back to civilisation. Over the course of five days pinned under the rock, Ralston reflects on a former lover (Clemence Poesy, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows: Part 1), his family and friends, all in an attempt to search for the strength to do the unthinkable.

The idea of a feature film about a man trapped underneath a rock may seem like an interminably dull concept on paper. Despite being based on a bestselling autobiography, Boyle described 127 Hours as very much “an action movie with a guy who can’t move”. Indeed, co-writer Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) reportedly struggled with the idea of how to make this concept compelling in an extended format. Through the magic of cinema, Boyle and Beaufoy have crafted a tightly woven and fast-paced story utilising the rapid editing and narrative techniques we have seen in Boyle’s films since Trainspotting. Even if you know the ending – and the sheer number of interviews with Ralston over the last few years and in the press junkets leading up to the release of this film would make that hard to avoid – there is an immediacy to the film that you can’t shake. At times you will have a physical reaction to the events, as Ralston’s mind darts from one thought or half-remembered emotion to the next. We too are stuck at the bottom of the canyon, and we too become hopelessly trapped in Ralston’s own mind.

Franco – who finds time to be a film director (Fool’s Gold and the forthcoming Broken Tower), screenwriter, film producer, author, and painter when he isn’t giving this acting lark a go – carries entire weight of the film on his shoulders in the performance of a lifetime. Infecting us with his enthusiastic hedonism early in the film, we are completely drawn into his world of speed at any cost. When the cost finally comes, Franco has already pinned us down as the devastating panic begins to set in.

When the inevitable tough decision is finally made, and it is a harrowing scene at that, there is a sense of joy mixed in with the extreme grotesque nature of the act. Even though the scenes are literally bone-breaking, once the realisation comes that the deed will result in Franco’s (and by extension the audience’s) liberation, the decision and the blood becomes easier to bear. Just as Hiroshi Teshigahara’s Woman of the Dunes used the sandy confined space to elicit a tactile claustrophobic reaction in the audience, one in which a contemplation of existence itself and finding a way to survive one’s own terms were the only options, so too is Ralston’s decision completely logical by the time it comes. The liberation of a man escaped from not only his physical confines, but from the mental barriers one places on themselves, is one of the most life-affirming experiences you are ever likely to have in a cinema.

127 Hours is released by Twentieth Century Fox in Australia from 10 February 2011.

January 5, 2011
Most Anticipated 2011

As 2010 comes to a close, and we have our Top 10 in 2010 done and dusted, we here at The Reel Bits are looking to the future. Every year, hundreds of films are released to the cinemas, and we probably see more of them than we are willing to admit. The good, the bad and the outright ugly are all in a day’s work for lovers of cinema. Yet there are always a few that stand out from the rest, the ones that you’d sell a vital body part to see if it wasn’t likely to make you keel over in discomfort before the release date. 2011 is set to have us all sitting in bathtubs full of ice, peddling organs on eBay.

Cowboys, aliens (sometimes both), superheroes, plenty of nostalgia and masters of cinema returning to the silver screen – and that’s not to mention the 2010 releases that haven’t made it to Australia yet. So let’s set the DeLorean and/or hot tub for 2011 get into it.

My picks are an eclectic mix to be sure, and perhaps leaning towards the mainstream a little (I’m still a sucker for a good blockbuster), but before we get into the hows and whys, let’s talk about the bloody great elephant in the room: the 2010 releases that we haven’t seen. Not the few dozen films we don’t get around to seeing each year due to lack to time or inclination, but all those terrific films already released in the US and UK that still haven’t made it out here to our Antipodean shores. Don’t even get me started on foreign language films, where we often have to rely on film festivals or import DVDs/Blu-ray to provide our fix. A stack of my highly anticipated films – not least of which are the Coen Brothers’ western True Grit, the Oscar contender Black Swan, critical favourite Rabbit Hole, David O’Russell’s intimate boxing epic The Fighter, Disney’s Tangled, Studio Ghibli’s Kari-Gurashi no Arrietty and Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go – have still not reached Australian screens by very late 2010. Indeed, one of the most nominated films of the awards season – Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours – is not released in Australia until 10 February, almost a month after the Golden Globe Awards. I was lucky enough to see this earlier this month, and will bring you that review in early 2011. Yet no discussion of 2011 can really commence until about late-February for most Australians, by which stage we have finally put 2010 to bed.

Without a doubt, one of the most highly anticipated films for cinema lovers in 2011 is going to be Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, only his fifth film since 1973 and his first since 2005’s underrated The New World. Starring Brad Pitt, Sean Penn and Jessica Chastain, if the early trailers are anything to go by, it should rank up there with Malick’s lyrical masterpieces Badlands and Days of Heaven. Opportunities to see Malick’s films on the big screen are few and far between these days, and as a recent screening of Badlands at Sydney’s Chauvel Cinema demonstrated, Malick is a master of the American landscape. Viewers should run to see what will no doubt be a limited run on the big screen, and easily makes it to the #1 most anticipated slot on my personal list. The only thing that could challenge this is a new film from Martin Scorsese. Oh, hang about…

1930s mystery Hugo Cabret from master filmmaker Martin Scorsese is a ‘must see’ list for its odd collection of cast members ranging from Chloe Moretz (Kick Ass, Let Me In) to Sacha Baron Cohen (Bruno), with Christopher Lee, Ben Kinglsey, Ray Winstone and Emily Mortimer in between. Despite the lack of Leonardo Di Caprio, Scorsese’s first effort without him in nine years, this may be a return to form after the disappointing and predictable (yet critically acclaimed in some circles) Shutter Island. Scorsese has recently excelled at the period piece – including the beautifully shot The Aviator, the brutal Gangs of New York and the majesty of Raging Bull, so I’ve definitely got high hopes for his latest creation.

Cowboys & Aliens may as well be a theme for 2011, with the film of the same name set to be one of the most genius combinations ever. Based on a comic of the same name, it’s directed by Iron Man helmer Jon Favreau and brings heavy-hitters Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, TRON: Legacy‘s Olivia Wilde and Sam Rockwell, this has the potential to be the biggest blockbuster of 2011. There will also be Simon Pegg and Nick Frost’s (Shaun of the Dead) Paul, a comedy version of E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial and of course, DC Comics’ Green Lantern. I’m a little skeptical over the use of CGI in the film, especially on Lantern’s suit, but I’m hoping its success will lead to a Green Arrow film. Along with Green Lantern, it will be a big year for comic book heroes, although Thor looks like it may tip over into sillyville and Captain America: The First Avenger may need more than The Voyage of the Dawn Treader scribes Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely and Buffy creator Joss Whedon to stop it from tipping over into jingoistic nonsense. Rounding things out for comic fans is The Green Hornet, starring the unlikely action hero Seth Rogen and coming to us from the always interesting Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). At the very least, it should be visually interesting and with a media screening already booked in, we look forward to bringing you that review in early January.

Kids of all ages can look forward to Winnie the Pooh, the first theatrical Pooh story to be made by Walt Disney Feature Animation sine 1977’s The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I’m an unabashed Winnie the Pooh fan, as my Ultimate Guide to Pooh (written for Ultimate Disney back in 2005) will attest. Many boxes of tissues are already prepared for the tear-fest that this is likely to be for this old softy of a reviewer. Pixar, of course, is releasing Cars 2, but there is nothing about this film that looks like it will overcome the vanity-project leanings of John Lasseter’s original. On the other hand, The Muppets – starring…well, just about everybody – is just the fun comeback that Kermit and the gang have been deserving of for years. Nostalgia is powerful narcotic, especially when it comes to the box office.

Some of the outlying entries on the list are a bit of wishful thinking: Red Riding Hood looks visually interesting. Catherine Hardwick, director of the woeful yet bafflingly popular Twilight, previously brought us the much edgier Thirteen and Lords of Dogtown, and this looks to be a much darker version of the classic tale from Orphan scribe David Johnson. Speaking of dark, the mad Love Exposure genius Sion Sono’s Cold Fish is due out in Japan next month, although with the possible exception of the 15th Japanese Film Festival in late 2011, it is unlikely Australians will see this film on our shores anytime soon. As a horror fan, I’m also looking forward to Kevin Smith’s Red State, potentially his most interesting creation in years, and of course, Wes Craven’s long-awaited sequel Scream 4. Given that the current horror revival is largely thanks to the non-stop thrills initiated by his 1996 original, this may be the commentary we need on the genre.

It will be interesting to see how many of these films end up on our ‘best of’ list at the end of 2011, as there are a few “little sleepers than might”, including the Mel Gibson puppet-vehicle The Beaver. More mainstream flicks like the Immortals, Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch, Hanna and, of course, The Hangover 2 may pull audiences back to the cinemas once again. Assuming Australia doesn’t have to wait too long to see them.

December 29, 2010