Quatermass Special: TV to Film

Alan and I have been watching the Quatermass TV serials, followed by the films. So I'm going to do something a little unusual for this blog, and review the films, but in light of how they compare to the original serials.

The Quatermass Xperiment: A slicker product than the serial and, despite series creator Nigel Kneale's (understandable, given that he'd been cut out of the project) reservations about it, improves on the TV serial in a number of ways. The dialogue is cleaned up (to be fair, the TV script was essentially a first draft), and some of the problematic aspects have been dealt with through rewriting (e.g., rather than having the wrecked spaceship guarded by a couple of policemen and the wounded astronaut taken off to a cottage hospital, the army are called in and the injured man is isolated in a lab). And no, I don't mind Brian Donlevy as Quatermass; he's unsympathetic, but the character's a bit of a jerk in all his incarnations. Where the film is not so good is that it misses the message of the serial: the fact that the returning astronaut is a gestalt of the other astronauts is largely glossed over (which means we also lose a lot of the emotional content of the story, as the grief and astonishment of the other characters as they figure it out is now gone), and the ending takes an original and subversive idea of Quatermass talking the alien out of its takeover plans, and instead substitutes a stereotypical kill-the-alien resolution.

Quatermass 2: The TV serial is considerably more polished this time, with a few more drafts having been written and the BBC having developed a special effects team in the intervening years. Brian Donlevy comes across as considerably more sympathetic both than the TV version and his previous outing, probably because the character is on the back foot fighting authority rather than imposing it. The movie again benefits from a larger budget (e.g. we actually get to see the despised prefab houses of Winnerden Flats), but again loses out on the emotional front, as the chilling deaths of a picnicking family are edited out and the sequence where journalist Conrad (played in the original by Roger Delgado and in the film by Sid James) tries to call in his story while being taken over by an alien becomes a more conventional shooting, plus the plant labourers come across as a slightly cute collection of regional types rather than the rather scary oppositional force they were in the TV serial.

Quatermass and the Pit: In colour! And with an expanded role for Barbara Judd as she takes over most of James Fullalove's part from the TV series, which is generally a good thing (not that the TV version is problematic, but she does get sidelined a bit sometimes). Where the TV Colonel Bream is a scared, blustery, ignorant man dragged into the discovery of the prehistoric alien capsule by Quatermass, the film version is much more in-control and sympathetic (if no brighter), and is instead the one who drags Quatermass into the situation-- indeed, their relationship seems to presage the Doctor and the Brigadier in 1970s Doctor Who. Although the alien spacecraft is more beautiful and there are some wonderful claustrophobic scenes of panic, here I think the film's production actually lets it down vis-a-vis the series: the TV serial's archaeological dig was much more like a real dig site of the time, and the aliens much more convincing. Plus it's a shame the film version of Prof Roney couldn't have been a Canadian like the TV version.

The Quatermass Conclusion: Doing this one for completism, though one can't make much of a comparison as the film version is literally the TV version cut down to 100 minutes and topped and tailed by film-style credits. This is actually my favourite of the Quatermass stories; I like the poignancy of having Quatermass as an old man who's just trying to find his missing granddaughter in a world which largely doesn't care, and the backdrop of a Britain in a state of social collapse through privatisation and capitalist overexploitation has a lot more resonance now than in 1979. It also, weirdly, anticipates furries.

Movie count for 2011: 93

Sane

Aladdin: Early Eisner-era cartoon, and a good example of that period's key traits: postmodernism (between the heavy borrowing from The Thief of Baghdad and Robin Williams' potrayal of the Genie as a 1990s standup comic) and casual multiculturalism. Arabian mythology is given the same playful treatment as classic Disney gave European mythology-- and as such, I would argue that the film tacitly acknowledges that Muslim identity has as much place in American culture as any other. Critics have argued that the fact that the central couple have conventional Western good looks while the supporting characters are paunchy, big-nosed caricatures is racist, though I think that is a slightly problematic claim as the pretty-leads-caricatured-supporting-cast is a staple of all Disney fairytale movies (q.v. the near-contemporary Beauty and the Beast); however, context is everything, and it does have to be said that some of the descriptions of the fictional Arabic kingdom as being barbaric, and the guards' gleeful focus on corporal punishment, are not exactly striking a blow for tolerance and understanding. The sad thing is that, flawed or not, I can't see them making a cartoon even this sympathetic to Islamic cultures now-- however, the good thing is that it's out there, and maybe they'll do a better one someday.

Movie count for 2011: 89

Adventure Movies

Leon: Brutal but charming Luc Besson tragicomic thriller about an assassin who finds himself, through a strange chain of events, the custodian of a twelve-year-old girl out for revenge on her parents' killers. The whole story is strangely credible, with Natalie Portman having IMO thus far never bettered her performance as the girl in question.

Les Aventures D'Adele Blanc-Sec: Besson in considerably more playful mode, a slightly silly steampunk comedy about an Edwardian adventuress on a quest to find and revive the Egyptian mummy who she believes can save her sister's life, complicated by the intervention of the police, a pterodactyl and Rameses III. Gets a bit annoyingly slapstick at times, but it is saved by a rather biting sense of humour and the fact that the heroine is rather obviously a sociopath.

The Hidden Fortress: Kurosawa/Mifune classic, featuring a bearded general's attempt to get a rebel warrior princess to safety in enemy territory, as witnessed by two foot soldiers (George Lucas, in the intro to this DVD, tries very hard to downplay how influential all this was on the Star Wars franchise). While Mifune is great as the general, the plot is gripping, and the themes touching on the meaning of loyalty and honour, the brilliant touch really lies with the foot soldiers; cowardly, venal, greedy, stupid, cunning, loyal and affectionate by turns, and always utterly believable.

Life Force: Faintly misguided mid-eighties attempt to revive the British horror-SF genre, ripping off Quatermass, Blake's 7: Killer, various episodes of Doctor Who and arguably The Satanic Rites of Dracula by turns. Which should have been a lot better, but the problem is that it's a) humourless and b) pointless (as in, it's not actually about anything bar looking cool). Still, there's some very good animatronics.

Black Sheep: Not the New Zealand horror(bad?)flick, but a low-budget Russian drama about a group of criminals who escape during WWII and find themselves in a tiny peasant village, fighting off the German army on the one side and the Russian army on the other. With a setup like that it could have been a pointed satire, a tragic drama and/or a witty black comedy, but unfortunately it's just a bit unengaging.

Movie count for 2011: 88, and still haven't got onto the Tati boxset yet.

8 1/2 movies

Watchmen: The 3.5-hour director's cut version, with The Black Freighter running through it, and believe me it didn't feel anywhere near that long. While the theatrical release was good, it really does benefit from the extra time, which allows for more worldbuilding and layers of detail (and don't miss the "Under the Hood" DVD extra, featuring a "Where are they now?" profile on the Minutemen). Anyway, it does for the superhero movie what Watchmen did for superhero comics twenty-five years ago, and the world needs it.

Castle Keep: Another Vietnam-through-the-allegory-of-an-earlier-war movie, and like M*A*S*H* ultimately about the blackly hilarious pointlessness of it all. But it's grimmer and more surreal than M*A*S*H, acknowledging the strange beauty of war, with Major Falconer, on his pale horse, becoming an allegory of Death leading the youth of the nation to their collective demises, and presiding over the destruction of Western culture.

Nobel Son: Black comedy about a sociopathic academic and his dysfunctional family. Starts well and carries on being great for about two-thirds of the film, but the final bit feels seriously rushed, with a lot of necessary character development and narrative progression being ditched in favour of a quick voice-over and a resolution that consequently doesn't feel properly earned. It would actually have made a pretty good six- or twelve-part TV series, a sort of Six Feet Under for the Ivy League set perhaps, but 106 minutes wasn't really enough to allow the sort of tension and ambiguity the narrative needed.

The Black Hole: An underrated hybrid of Fifties and Seventies sci-fi; the use of greenscreen, computer graphics, animatronics and some really well-staged weightless sequences form the backdrop to a deeply Freudian story about the fear of female and gay sexuality (represented by the Black Hole itself). It's like Forbidden Planet crossed with equal parts 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Psycho.

Bambi: Seen right after the Adam Curtis documentary All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, which lent a strange subtext to the experience of watching a balanced ecosystem of herbivores in a mechanistic steady state, intruded upon only by the occasional intervention of humans. Also, continuing the theme from the previous entry, there are some strange Freudian messages to the story, with every single character apparently having a distant father and close-bearing mother. Despite that, the forest is beautifully realised, and the death of Bambi's mother genuinely tragic even for a non-child audience (and, really, how many other cartoons seriously address the inevitability and finality of death in terms that a child can absorb and understand?).

Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides: Really a lot better than I was expecting, given the lukewarm reviews. It gained points in my mind for a surprisingly subversive approach to organised religion (with the religious characters being either vandals or deluded), for excellent casting (Ian McShane FTW) and for some lovely surreal uses of voodoo-inspired magic. The set pieces weren't as much fun as those in the second PotC film, but I'm willing to overlook that for a good piece of storytelling that didn't bore me.

V for Vendetta: I remember really disliking this when I first saw it in the cinema, but was willing to give it a second go. The first half-hour or so, I thought I'd changed my mind, but it sort of went downhill from there and wound up a curate's egg. Good points: Natalie Portman was better than I remembered her being, and a Britain in the grip of right-wing demagogues stirring up fear of epidemics and hatred against Muslims and gays has if anything only got more relevant. Bad points: John Hurt as one of the most boringly one-note dictators in cinema, Stephen Fry somehow managing to play an embittered, suicidal closet homosexual celebrity as a cosy, cuddly uncle, and an ending which is too stylised to be credible, but not stylised enough to be postmodern. Still, the mask is cool.

Kick-Ass: Noticing a theme here? Anyway, this is another film based on a subversive alternative comic, which is pretty good up to a point and then compromises itself. The story is, effectively, one about the dangers of fantasy: a lonely, inept teenager starts to live out his daydreams of being a superhero only to discover that in fact that's a really stupid idea; unfortunately the film provides a justified revenge plot and a happy ending which are all out of keeping with the original comic's downbeat tone. Oh, and the Daily Mail as usual has the wrong end of the stick about the portrayal of Hit Girl, the 11-year-old assassin: it's not exploitative, it's tragic.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 Remake): Pointless and tedious. And an insult to the original.

Movie count for 2011: 83

The Repeated Meme: Cry me a River!

Idea Proposed and Used to Death during the New Series: Monster mashups which, as Arthur Darvill notes in the "Confidential", look sort of like an enormous game of action figures.

Central Premise Recycled From: "The Pandorica Opens," only in reverse (The Pandorica Closes?)-- instead of having a Tesco toy-departmentsworth of monsters ganging up on the Doctor, the Doctor gets a Tesco toy-departmentsworth of monsters to gang up on someone else.

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: It'd be easier to spot the things that aren't references to Moffat's back catalogue. Small children who are special, timey-wimey, the Doctor meeting yet another small girl who will grow up to get jiggy with him, everybody in the universe knowing who the Doctor is, creatures in monks' robes with funny heads, girls with guns, militant Anglican monks, parenthood/couplehood issues, a nursery-rhyme-style poem...

Amy Screws Up the day with Wuv: It's true; those Flesh copies are so good even a mother can't tell the difference.

Joss Whedon Called...: He'd like you to know he's got the corner on Blake's 7 references. Also Rory remembering his time as a Centurion even though it didn't happen in this universe is far too much like Xander's having memories of serving as a soldier even though they didn't actually happen.

And from Lawrence Miles: UNIT-type military organisation with a thing against the Doctor, the idea that time travel affects people's DNA, struggle by various groups wanting to weaponise a time traveler who can't really fight back.

Murray Goldwatch: Much as usual.

Nostalgia UK: The retro Doctor Zhivago-style outfits on the future soldiers.

Inside Jokes: One of the many abortive Doctor Who movies had the Doctor dressing as a woman to defeat Jack the Ripper. The Doctor is also evasive as to whether he's had children.

Teeth! And Hooters! And Honkers! All on the Silurian!

Hats! Sort of, mostly Hoods! though.

Fish! No, they're taking a break this week.

Small Child! Um... pass.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Eyepatch Lady of course, though while you wait you can go buy some desert-camo Action Men and make your own militant Anglicans. And I'm still holding out for a nine-inch River Song with her own line of outfit and accessories, and adding to that a cross-dressing Silurian with Hooters, Honkers and her own lesbian lover for accessories.

The Repeated Meme: The Almost People

Idea Proposed and Used to Death during the Classic Era: Doubles. Particularly of the Doctor. The Chase, The Massacre, Meglos, Mawdryn Undead (sort of), Black Orchid (sort of), Arc of Infinity...

Central Premise Recycled From: There's one hell of a lot of Alien: Resurrection in this one; the monster-Jennifer chase down the corridor is pure homage, but the tough female leader with a secret terminal illness and the whole alien-or-human identity crisis. Setting it in a monastery also recalls the religious subtext to the story (when properly done, that is, not the bowdlerised cinematic version). Androids, or something like them, which are indistinguishable from humans. Plus the idea that the Company is up to something deeply unethical that needs exposing.

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Small child, asking "where's my father?"

Amy Screws Up the day with Wuv: The last five minutes are one serious Screwup with Wuv, though how, and what the Wuv involved, are for the cliffhanger.

Joss Whedon Called...: He wants back his surprise twist where it turns out one of the main characters isn't who or what you thought they were (q.v. Dollhouse, or am I stretching this one too far? Don't answer that).

And from Lawrence Miles: A woman who drops her jaw and swallows a man? Sort of like the TARDIS in Alien Bodies.

Murray Goldwatch: Strike up the bland!

Nostalgia UK: That mock-regeneration sequence bit, arguably.

Inside Jokes: Ben Aaronovitch once wrote a Virgin novel called The Also People. The Doctor's greatest-hits riff on his own past incarnations mirrors Logopolis; although "Reverse the polarity" and "would you like a jelly baby" are too cliched to be inside jokes, Hartnell's "one day we will return" is just obscure enough to count.

Teeth! Jennifer's got quite the mouth on her.

Hats! No, shoes! are cool this week. Also eyepatches are undergoing a revival.

Fish! No, though the fish and chips remark from last week gets a revisit.

Small Child! Wee Adam, the five-year-old boy who is willing to spend ten minutes on the phone waiting for his Dad to get done murdering himself. Plus an incipient Small Child in the last five minutes of the story.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: I was originally going to predict a limited-edition Amy Pond Possibly Up the Duff (same as the regular Amy Pond figure, only it comes with one of those little red-blue positive-negative icons), but now it looks like we just might get the Amy Pond in Labour playset, so I take that back.

The Repeated Meme: The Rebel Flesh

Idea Proposed and Used to Death during the RTD Era: Seriously, doesn't this feel like the distilled essence of RTD-era Base-under-Siege stories? It's equal parts "The Impossible Planet," "42" and "The Waters of Mars," plus echoes of the Master duplicating himself endlessly in the Era Finale. Also the Sontarans apparently got hold of some of that Flesh stuff.

Central Premise Recycled From: "The Impossible Planet," as mentioned. More philosophically, there's bits of The Thing, Blade Runner, Alien and The Death Guard in there.

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Surprisingly little this week, though we do get a quick Moffat Moppet, and surreal zombie creatures in spacesuits.

Amy Screws Up the day with Wuv: After the last two episodes, it's probably not surprising that Rory seems to be getting a bit up-close-and-personal with Ganger-Jennifer.

Joss Whedon Called...: He wants the philosophical concepts behind Dollhouse back. Oh, and Bioshock claim we've stolen their suits.

And from Lawrence Miles: People being reconstituted from a magic vat of fleshstuff, like in Interference.

Murray Goldwatch: Hits the heights of banality this week, with a distinctly Muzaklike tone to some of the non-leitmotif pieces. Or perhaps it's a comment on the alienating nature of manual labour?

Nostalgia UK: Casting Marshall Lancaster in a story about industrial unrest is just going to make everyone think of Life on Mars, you know.

Inside Jokes: Marshall Lancaster, above. There's a quick visual reference to Lady Cassandra in the sequence where Ganger-Jennifer emerges from the Flesh, and the Doctor shows his RTD-era fondness for climbing up spires. A monastery with an anachronistic record playing in it appeared in "The Time Meddler."

Teeth! More freaky-mouth action as a full-blown set of lips sprout out of the Flesh

Hats! None, but the suits have nifty Helmets.

Fish! The Doctor thinks Amy and Rory should go out for some. With chips.

Small Child! Ganger-Jennifer holds a picture of herself as a small child and reminisces about her early memories.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: The Gangers of course.

Alice and Wonderland

Temple Grandin: Biopic of the genius autistic animal behaviourist, which uses clever editing and animation sequences to convey how she perceives the world. Two takeaways: 1) it's amazing how much autism has normalised in the last thirty years, and 2) I'll never look at a cow the same way again.

A Town Like Alice: War-Britflick about a group of female British POW's, wandering around Malaya looking for a Japanese prisoner camp that would take them and dying of various tropical ailments and stress-related illnesses along the way. I know it's a classic, but I found it pretty unengaging.

Eyes Wide Shut: A film about a man who is convinced the world revolves around him, and then is extensively confronted with the fact that it doesn't. Slow, but also very beautiful and compelling, with Cruise and Kidman impeccably cast, and a haunting use of Christmas tree lights to convey atmosphere.

What a Whopper: Adorable teen comedy from an era that tends to get forgotten by popular culture, i.e. the early 1960s, when Britain was in transition from Austerity to Grooviness. Where else would you find a romantic subplot involving a radiophonic musician, Charles Hawtrey and Sid James before they got typecast, girls in underwear which contains more fabric than most modern outer clothing, Spike Milligan as a tramp on the Serpentine--and a couple of postmodern touches to remind us that the mad self-referential films of the late Sixties are only a few years away? Plus, it was written by Terry Nation. If you're feeling down, go buy it on Amazon and enjoy.

Movie count for 2011: 74

The Repeated Meme: The Doctor's Wife

Idea Proposed and Not Used During the JNT Era: The Doctor's Wife. Look, JNT was just baiting the press with that one, stop taking it seriously.

Central Premise Recycled From: "Edge of Destruction." No, really, think about it. Also quirky malevolent aliens naming themselves after family members is straight out of "The Family of Blood."

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Doctor having romantic relationship with woman who Understands Him Like No One Else Does, but is doomed, and gets his companions out of the way to do it. Rory makes yet another reference to his now-nonexistant life as a Nestene. Also, from this season (already), companions going all timey-wimey and graffitiing messages as a consequence.

Amy Saves the day with Wuv: Actually the theme this year seems increasingly to be Amy Failing to Save the Day with Wuv, as the incident with Rory aging to death seems to indicate that Rory's got a few abandonment issues.

Joss Whedon Called...: He wants his patchwork people made out of bits of demons/aliens back.

And from Lawrence Miles: The TARDIS is a human girl. Plus Idris says "it's About Time" at one point.

Murray Goldwatch: The "Da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da" theme comes in about 26 minutes in, and we also get some Carmina-Burana-by-way-of-The-Phantom-Menace choir action during the running around corridors.

Nostalgia UK: Neil Gaiman counts, unfortunately. But apparently Tardis consoles include a "retroscope."

Inside Jokes: The Doctor's Wife, and "it's About Time!" see above. The episode starts off with what sounds like a reference to "The Androids of Tara," but it turns out to be a fake-out. The Doctor asserting that he's rebuilt the console before is probably a Pertwee Era reference. There's a shaving mirror on the jury-rigged console, and a reference to the Eye of Orion as a holiday spot. Idris' babble is taken from Dalek Sec, which is itself taken from Ghost Light (which is a clear massive influence on this story). The original Celestial Toymaker story featured a malevolent Aunt and Uncle. Opening a door through telepathic visualisation is from the novelisation of The Doomsday Weapon.

Teeth! Idris is bitey.

Hats! Some pretty good examples on Auntie and Uncle, plus Idris' wig.

Fish! "Like fish fingers!" "Oh, do fish have fingers?" Idris taking the mick.

Small Child! Not a literal one, but the Auntie-Uncle-Nephew setup has a metaphorical one in Nephew.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Idris, naturally. Though you can already make your own custom Nephew figure by painting the eyes of an Ood figurine with glow-in-the-dark green paint.

Worst Episode of Deep Space 9 Ever

Fight Club: Another of these Generation-X-defining films, about young men feeling alienated by the postmodern, post-ideological, consumer-driven zeitgeist of the late 1990s, spending too much time on airplanes and, with no ideological cause to rally round bar self-help groups, becoming drawn into an anarchic rebellion-as-therapy movement, with boxing clubs and bombing raids becoming a kind of self-actualisation process. Although some of the film feels a bit pre-September-11th, unfortunately a lot of the alienation and consumerised stagnation it portrays are still with us-- and indeed, now that the credit bubble has burst, in need of urgent resolution.

Waltz With Bashir: Animated film about post-traumatic stress syndrome, as the filmmaker/protagonist attempts to recapture his blocked memories of the 1982 Lebanon War, and in particular his witnessing of a massacre at a refugee camp. The nature of the animation and the soundtrack of frenetic electronica gives it a suitably nightmarish feel, while the climactic account of the massacre is a case study in how atrocities start and then keep going because nobody has the nerve to say "stop!"

Brideshead Revisited: A why-bother film. Pretty much all of the good bits were the ones which most resembled the TV adaption, and pretty much all of its problems were things which the TV adaptation was able to resolve (the short length of the film, for instance, meant that interesting characters like Anthony Blanche only get a spit and a cough, the casting of the Flyte siblings was all wrong, with Sebastian too uncharismatic and camp and Julia too beautiful and confident, and the frame story of Ryder's military service contributed nothing). This is a story which needs slow development, not the blockbuster treatment.

Movie count for 2011: 69

The Repeated Meme: The Last Saskatchewan Pirate

Idea Proposed and Used to Death by Walt Disney: Pirates. Look, anything you do will be compared to Pirates of the Carribbean one way or another, so either a) roll with it and get as silly and "arr me hearties" as you can, or b) go against type and play it nasty, gritty, and filthy, sort of like The Oneidin Line with more gore and grime.

Central Premise Recycled From: "The Stones of Blood." Only Cessair of Diplos was at least more camp.

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Moffat Moppet aside, the idea of a spaceship whose crew are dead and one of its computer routines is kidnapping random people is pure "The Girl in the Fireplace," while the purpose behind the mermaid's activities is from the resolution to "the Doctor Dances." Plus, there's a Black Spot on people's hands exactly where the Red Spot was in "Day of the Moon"-- couldn't they have waited a bit before recycling?

Amy Saves the day with Wuv: Rory, despite his medical training, is convinced that Amy's Wuv will be enough to allow her to do competent CPR. Mind you, since it seems working as a kissogram girl has qualified her to do competent swordfighting, he might not be far wrong.

Joss Whedon Called...: No, actually, he didn't.

And from Lawrence Miles: The eighteenth-century setting, arguably. A more likely candidate is the Doctor's remark about "alien bogies" (as a pun on Alien Bodies).

Murray Goldwatch: Nul points for the "ahahahahaaaaaa" siren chorus, sort of like "The Phantom of the Opera" without the tune.

Nostalgia UK: Pirates. Who did once used to be a real problem for the British Navy, but by the time of Gilbert and Sullivan, J.M. Barrie etc., were panto-fodder. Like these ones.

Inside Jokes: More "Warrior's Gate" references as regards mirrors being used as transdimensional gateways.

Teeth! On the mermaid! Whenever she goes to red.

Hats! Tricorns are cool.

Fish! The Doctor describes the mermaid as "a green singing shark in an evening gown" (they should have gone with that image, not Lily Cole).

Small Child! Toby. The least said, the better.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Wouldn't a glow-in-the-dark mermaid be cool? Unfortunately we're probably just going to get Hugh Bonneville with a small child instead.

The Funny Pages

Enchanted: Enchanting. Outrageously cute Disney self-parody which affectionately takes the mick out of princess films, featuring a cartoon fairytale princess who finds herself, through a malign enchantment, in modern New York-- and yet still retaining fairytale-princess traits like the ability to summon cute animals (cue Snow-White inspired sequence where she cleans up a flat with the aid of pigeons, rats and cockroaches) and inspire musical set-pieces (there's a production number in Central Park which manages to be funnier than the dancing cutlery number from Beauty and the Beast). But while it has the obvious Disney message that everyone needs a "bit of fairytale magic" in their lives, there's a less-obvious message that fairytale people also need a dose of reality.

Superman Returns: Continuation, or possibly greatest-hits compilation, of the 1970s/80s Superman films (and sharing their slight confusion over when they are set, featuring as they do a strange mix of Seventies and 2000s aesthetic features). It's more in the serious Richard Donner than the silly Richard Lester mode, but this isn't really to its credit, as it's overlong and boring, with Kevin Spacey's Lex Luthor lacking the sense of OTT fun of the Gene Hackmann version.

Movie Count for 2011: 66

What I saw this year at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival

Remember, people, support the festival. In these days of arts funding cuts, great things like this are vulnerable.

Your Days Are Numbered: The Maths of Death: Not actually a film, but a stand-up comedy show about mortality statistics. Which is audacious enough, but the show itself was both informative (most deaths in airplane crashes are actually from smoke inhalation, who knew?) and a laugh riot. They're on tour right now, check and see if they're visiting your area.

Robotica: A short film compilation by the One Dot Zero art collective, on the theme of robots, ranging from the silly to the surreal. My favourite was a steampunk Russian fantasy piece-- sort of like I Robot crossed with Grant Morrison-- but there were also some great music video pieces and animation tests featuring giant mecha.

Gantz: One of the two standout features this year. A Japanese superhero film, which uses the idea (a mysterious entity seemingly kidnaps people at the point of death and uses them as an army to combat a series of aliens) as a jumping-off point to ask what it is to be heroic, and how we can all be heroes. Features an attack on Tokyo by a giant statue of the Buddha of Compassion, and gets away with it.

We Are All Cylons: Clever documentary on Battlestar Galactica fandom, and how they use the series not just as a form of escapism, but to inform the moral codes of their everyday lives in a world where the boundary between human and technology is increasingly vague.

Sharktopus: So-bad-it's-good Roger Corman badflick in which a Mexican resort town is terrorized by a CGI monster shark/octopus hybrid. Visibly paid for by the local chamber of commerce (as the film not-so-subtly highlighs the vacation fun opportunities in the area while cheerily dispatching as many tourists, preferably attractive ones aged 18-35, as possible), and starring Eric Roberts, who quite visibly gets drunk during the filming.

Dinoshark: Variation on the above theme, also by Corman and involving a revived pliosaur terrorizing the same Mexican resort town. More of an effort went into making this a serious film than "Sharktopus", which is mostly to its credit (there's a subplot involving the corrupt local police chief which is absolutely sparkling and could have come out of a much better Third World crime thriller), but occasionally to its detriment (the attempts to give "characterisation" to the main players are just boring and pathetic). Some lovely CGI of the dinoshark (sic) coursing along under the surface of the water, and a hilarious sequence involving stunt surfers.

You Are Here: The other standout feature, a surrealist Canadian piece (shot, and set, in Toronto, hooray) which, I suspect, is about the human brain and the question of what consciousness is. Cleaning up at film festivals worldwide-- go see it, it defies description.

Short Films: Standout pieces this year were "The Interview" (pointed topical satire in which the last man on Earth goes for a job interview), "Virus" (cute animated short about computer viruses in love), "VortX Inc" (clever low-budget take on literal technological wizardry), "Death of the Real" (just a lot of evocative shots of a deserted New York), "Once Upon a Time on Earth" (a couple split up, then the Earth is invaded... will they get back together in time?), and "Goodbye Robot Army" (a charmingly ironic take on the mad-scientist genre).

Other Stuff: The freebies are back in spades this year-- I scored five magazines (including SFX's True Blood special, hooray!) seven books, one DVD (albeit of an anime series that looks dreadful) and a couple of inflatable swords promoting a new fantasy RPG from EA. Plus we got to play with the new 3D portable game player from Nintendo.

Movie Count for 2011: 64

Red sails

Sunset Boulevard: Satire on the entertainment industry which is, if anything, truer today than in the 1950s. Norma Desmond serves as a metaphor for the whole of the commercial film industry, a fame-addicted creature making a devil's bargain with creative talents-- feed my ego with facile celebrity-focused tat and I'll reward you, try to be your own person and you'll wind up dead in the swimming pool-- who collude in their own subjugation even as they resent it.

Movie count for 2011: 60

God bothering

The Day the Earth Stood Still: Fifties take on Christianity for the Cold War, as Jesus comes to Earth in the form of the alien Klaatu to try and save humanity from itself. In keeping with the dominant memes of the era, the proposed solution to human aggression is essentially authoritarian (a kind of robot police force which act to forestall any act of externally-directed violence). Not sure how well that would really work in practice. Also visually beautiful, with that kind of clean, spare austerity one associates with the early 1950s.

Dogma: Nineties take on Christianity for the postmodern era, as a group of Generation Xers take a road-trip to try to stop a pair of disillusioned angels from destroying all of creation. The message throughout being that legalism, doctrine and even belief are to be rejected, that grand narratives are generally false, and that what ultimately matters is being good to others, forgiving people and having ideas. Oh, and that Alanis Morrissette is God. Apparently more people were offended by this than by Jay and Silent Bob's continued existence.

Movie count for 2011: 59

The Repeated Meme: Day of the Moon

Idea Proposed and Used to Death in the Virgin Books Era: ...the above theme continues, with a trip to actual Area 51.

Central Premise Recycled From: "The Invasion of Time." No really, think about it. Also the Men in Black (who can, of course, wipe people's minds... and who inhabit a universe where aliens have walked among us for centuries).

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Leaving aside the kids, the spacesuit, the catchphrase, wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey etc., we have magical Doctor-induced TV images saving the day, Amy-loves-the-Doctor-really action, "silence will fall" and about a million references to last year's season (celebrity world leaders, phantom pregnancies, Rory's past as a Nestene....).

Amy Saves the day with Wuv: Well, she makes Rory feel better with Wuv, but considering that her getting pregnant with Schroedinger's Child is going to be the catalyst for the action all season, I'd say she's got a lot to make up for.

Joss Whedon Called...: ...he wants his Ben and Glory bit back (remember how, in Season 5, anytime anyone found out that Ben and Glory were the same person, they immediately forgot it? Course you don't. Think about it.)

And from Lawrence Miles: Someone falling off a building and landing in the TARDIS pool.

Murray Goldwatch: In the very first scene, he manages to give us yet another musical theme consisting of a single percussive phrase repeated over and over with no variations. This wouldn't matter if we didn't know he could do better.

Nostalgia UK: And the Mad Men meme continues as River and Rory cosplay as Joan and Pete.

Inside Jokes: Dwarf star alloy, plus the Doctor tells Nixon to tape record everything, plus yet another trip to Manhattan (complete with confrontation in a partly-finished block of flats, Empire State Building prominently visible in the background). River cements her position as the female Captain Jack by making the exact same joke Jack does in "The Empty Child" about the lack of utility of a sonic screwdriver outside of the putting up of shelves.

Teeth! Still the anti-teeth!

Fish! Missing! this episode.

Hats! No, though River has a new hairdo! every five minutes.

Small Child! Who might well be looking for its Mummy.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: See last post.

The Repeated Meme: The Impossible Astronaut

Idea Proposed and Used to Death in the Virgin Books Era: American space programme, aliens, Area 51, FBI, conspiracies, blah blah blah. It was the 1990s, you see, and that was fashionable.

Central Premise Recycled From: Pretty much any conspiracy-theory series of the 1990s, via "Dreamland" (the animated David Tennant spinoff story from a couple of years back).

Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: We've had creepy spacesuits and cute children, now have a cute child in a creepy spacesuit! And creepy tape recordings! Also wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey stuff with the Doctor's timeline and him and River Song meeting in reverse order.

Amy Saves the day with Wuv: Well, she can't save the day yet as it's only Part One, but her Wuv for the Doctor does get her running out to Monument Valley on a moment's notice.

Joss Whedon Called...: He wants The Gentlemen back. Oh, and Mark Sheppard.

And from Lawrence Miles: The Doctor's body is so dangerous, even dead, that it must be destroyed.

Murray Goldwatch: The irritating da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da theme starts in Scene 2, before the credits even, and never gets better.

Nostalgia UK: Mad Men-inspired Sixties-iana, the Moon Landings, Laurel and Hardy.

Inside Joke List: Space: 1969. "Since when do you drink wine?" Amy asks the Doctor (the Pertwee era, actually).

Teeth! Anti-teeth, on the Silence, who have no mouths and therefore cannot tooth.

Fish! Mentioned, as fingers with custard.

Hats! Stetsons are cool this week.

Small Child! In a spacesuit, no less.

Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: The Silence of course. Although it looks like the chances of us finally seeing a limited-edition Amy Pond Up the Duff are increasing.

French Fried

French Connection II: In my review of The French Connection, I mentioned its poorer imitators; well, this is one. Perhaps the problem with it is summed up in the sequence where Popeye Doyle is kidnapped and deliberately addicted to heroin by the baddies and subsequently goes cold turkey; it's both saying "drugs are bad, so all that seemingly useless effort that Popeye went to in the first film was justified, really it was," and at the same time "but people who are addicted to drugs are just weak people who can't kick the habit like Popeye can." Otherwise not much, just Gene Hackman wandering around an unattractive Southern French city in a silly hat getting into trouble and doing obvious riffs on better scenes from the first movie.

M*A*S*H*: Another film on the absurdity of war, this one seeing it through the blackly comic misadventures of a campful of army surgeons-- most of them very intelligent, dedicated, drafted, unhappy to be there, and therefore determined to cause as much trouble as possible so long as it's entertaining and doesn't interfere with doing their jobs. Deliberately rambling and plotless, instead focusing on the theme of coping, or failing to cope, with the madness of it all. Contains some brilliant directoral touches, in particular Altman's skilful way of filming scenes where everybody is talking at once in such a way that the audience hears exactly the phrases he wants them to hear.

Movie count for 2011: 57. Hoe for the Sci-Fi London Film Festival next week!

Straight Up

The Straight Story: David Lynch can do feelgood, who knew? Also, it's really lovely to see a Hollywood feelgood film that keeps everything completely low-key throughout-- Alvin Straight, the octagenerian who decides to make a cross-country trip on his lawnmower to visit his brother, isn't played as a lovable quirky eccentric, and there's no dramatic blockbuster ending where everyone who the protagonist has encountered on his journey bands together to help him get that extra mile, cheering as they go. There's no tacked-on sense of closure anywhere, just of simple intimate dramas into which Alvin and the viewer both drift, participate, and drift on.

Movie count for 2011: 55

Back and Back again

Back to the Future II: OK but unnecessary sequel. It had some nice moments (e.g. the "1980s nostalgia" cafe in the 2015 sequences, plus the plot riffed entertainingly on the idea that events were continually repeating themselves from one generation to the next), but really it just felt like a greatest-hits compilation from the first film-- like it was saying "here are all the bits you liked from the first film, writ a bit larger so you'll enjoy them more." Plus, science has exactly four years in which to come up with a flying Delorean.

Back to the Future III: Adequate but even less necessary sequel. Effectively the same jokes are told but in a Wild West setting, which I suppose has humour value in a kind of "the same things happen to the same people every generation" sort of way, but not only is it getting a bit dull and predictable, it also loses the element of irony the first fim (and to some extent the sequel) had, whereby we can contrast the aspirations, ambitions and personalities of the 1950s youthful characters with what they subsequently became in the 1980s. It's also made outrageously dated by being visibly set within the brief window in the late 1980s/early 1990s when Westerns suddenly became fashionable again for a moment.

Movie count for 2011: 54

Mods and Rockers

Brighton Rock: The 2011 remake. One of those movies where I felt like some bits worked and some didn't. Good use was made of the Brighton setting, but having the blowsy ex-prostitute who decides to investigate the murder be the same person as the owner of the cafe where the girl who witnessed the deed works made the town feel far too small. Likewise I could understand the decision to transpose the action to the 1960s, as Pinky's attempt to take over the gang ran paralell to the youth riots, but on the other hand it occasionally made the whole thing feel heavy-handed and caused accidental flashbacks to Quadrophenia (and also, Pinky never really felt like he belonged in a 1960s setting; he wasn't engaged with the youth culture, or much of an Angry Young Man). The religious themes were well handled though, leaving one to think at the end that God may well have forgiven Pinky, whatever Pinky himself believed about his hell-bound status.

Amadeus: The director's cut. An exploration of envy, which was gripping (despite being about three and a half hours long), well-staged and well-cast, but I also have to say I found it difficult to empathise with Salieri and rather felt he needed to get over himself-- I kept wanting to say, "so what if you're not Mozart, be happy with the achievements you have, and be grateful that you're one of the few who can appreciate Mozart's music for what it is", and, twitterpated idiot that he was, I kept rooting for Mozart.

Movie count for 2011: 52

Movie Roundup

Burn after Reading: Cohen Brothers black comedy, following on their familiar two-idiots-acquire-something-valuable-and-mayhem-ensues theme (q.v. Fargo, Raising Arizona, A Simple Plan), but setting it in Washington among the paranoia of the Bush Junior regime. A friend of mine describes it as "bleak," but I just thought it was hilarious.

Infamous: Truman Capote, portrayed here as a cross between Holly Golightly and Porky Pig, writes a fictionalised biography of a convicted murderer (played by Daniel Craig with such intensity as to make anyone realise he's wasted on the Bond franchise), but finds that the experience takes him to his moral, spiritual and ethical limits. Through telling this story, and also exploring Capote's friendship with Harper Lee, the film considers the boundaries between truth and fiction, and the cost of fictionalising truth, without coming up with any easy answers.

Fantasia: the 1940 version (to be precise, the 1969 edit with the racially insensitive bit removed). Some bits work better than others: The dinosaur/Rite of Spring and the witches' sabbat/Night on Bald Mountain sequences were definite hits, the Toccata and Fugue left me rather cold, the Nutcracker Suite/flower fairies and Pastoral Symphony/Greek gods ran the complete gamut from charming to boring to downright offensive, and the dancing hippoes/Dance of the Hours was vaguely insulting to women, composers and Italianate architecture. And how I feel about The Sorcerer's Apprentice depends on my mood.

Fantasia 2000: Scored slightly better than the earlier version in terms of outstanding sequences, with the nature spirit/The Phoenix and Rhapsody in Blue/New York in the Thirties sequences being both fantastic, and the Pomp and Circumstance/Donald Duck loading the animals onto the Ark sequence deserving an award for sheer chutzpah. Unfortunately there was also two tedious sequences, an overly cutesy one involving flamingoes, and a bunch of pointless celebrity intro spots, which just makes the film look like the studio are afraid no one will see the movie without slebs. Take about half of this movie, about half of the previous movie, mash them together and get James Earl Jones to introduce the lot, and you're sorted.

Toy Story: A film that manages to weave together product placement, computer animation, kidult sensibility, irony and metatextuality (prior to this film, after all, Woody and Buzz Lightyear weren't toys...); thus, probably the defining film of the 1990s.

Manhattan: Woody Allen is a New York writer with a complicated sex life. Diane Keaton is a New York writer with a complicated sex life. Meryl Streep is a New York writer with a complicated sex life. In fact, pretty much the only person in the film who isn't a New York writer with a complicated sex life is Mariel Hemingway, which explains why Woody Allen winds up dumping her and then regretting it. So not exactly the most complex or original Woody Allen film, but it's charming and pretty, with some witty lines and a wry take on a world recognisable to anybody who's ever been involved with any sort of literary/arts/academic scene.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves: Disney's first full-length feature. As it was made before animation had settled down to a series of tropes, it's interesting to view in the context of 1930s cinema more generally: a male and female love interest who might as well have been Dale Arden and Flash Gordon with slightly different hair; dwarves; organised labour (Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go), and animated animals which are cute but still recognisably animals, even if they do weird things like scrubbing pots with their tails. Also interesting in terms of the ambiguous Christian imagery at the end: is the Handsome Prince actually Jesus Christ, resurrecting the deceased Snow White and taking her away to a golden castle which hovers on the horizon as if in the sky, or is Snow White herself a regendered Christ-figure, a person of royal blood who dwells among the poor and the lowly and makes their lives better, is killed by those in power, and, after lying dead for a while, revives and goes up to claim her magical/heavenly kingdom? You decide. The version we saw had a couple of worth-seeing featurettes, in the form of a behind-the-scenes piece (with surreal footage of dancers in huge dwarf masks and beards cavorting around so the animators could get the movement right) and a cut sequence which explains what happened to the soap that Dopey swallows during the washing scene, and where Snow White is supposed to sleep.

Movie count for 2011: 50

List to the Right

Schindler's List: I'd like to propose that this film be read in terms of the socio-political context of the early 1990s. Namely, what we have is a text arguing that 1) death and survival/salvation and damnation are arbitrary and random; 2) that the person who can do the most to fight oppression and injustice is not the state, not the party, not the church [repeat ad nauseum through all the traditional institutions], but the individual, and 3) that this fighting of oppression can, indeed should, be fought through capitalist activity. And as such, it's part of a philisophical continuum with privatisation, deregulation, "trade not aid," and the idea that social activism need not cause one to sacrifice one's material comforts (indeed, that one might even turn a profit doing so-- and it's only at the very end of the film that Schindler ceases turning a profit and starts going bankrupt in the name of saving Jews). Not saying it's a bad film-- quite the contrary, it's well shot and the performances are superb, though it could definitely have done without the cloying "I could have done more!" speech at the end-- but that maybe it needs to be seen not as having a universal message, but as a film made at a time when the old institutions were failing, capitalism was on the ascendant, and people were looking for a philosophy.

Movie count for 2011: 43

I said, I think I remember the film, and as I recall I think we both kind of liked it

Superman III: Better than I and IV, though frankly that's not saying much as both are beaten in quality and believability by Hollyoaks. I liked the idea of the villains being a big businessman and a computer programmer, and also found it refreshing that a) Richard Pryor's villain isn't so much a bad guy as a man driven to crime through recession conditions, and b) the character articulating the idea that lower taxes and reduced pension funds are a good idea is a bad guy. However, the film really failed to gel: the main storylines didn't have much to do with each other, and Pryor's character arc kind of got lost (it looked like they were taking him along the lines of good guy--> temptation --> bad guy --> series of epiphanies where he realises what he's doing is wrong --> good guy again, but that fizzled out round about the start of the epiphany cycle), there were several completely pointless set pieces (though I did find the Tati-esque one at the start, where Metropolis seems to be full of strange little catastrophes, quite sweet), and the fantasy-science entered the Kingdom of the Nuclear Fridge far too rapidly.

Breakfast at Tiffany's: Blake Edwards on peak form, viewing like a charming and non-nihilistic version of Cabaret ("sensitive" failed writer falls in love with a charismatic but dodgy crypto-prostitute with a strange past, and through her finds himself and his creative voice). Features the best cat actor I've ever seen (and that includes the creepy Siamese in UFO). The only false note is struck by the comedy "Japanese" neighbour played by Mickey Rooney in appalling yellowface-- remember, this film was made two years after The Crimson Kimono-- for which there is no excuse at all, but steel yourself to get through those scenes and there's a lot to love.

Citizen Kane: Brilliant, magical, simultaneously realistic and surreal, thoroughly exploring Kane's character while still leaving him a mysterious figure at the end. To review it properly would take an academic career, not a capsule review, so I'll just leave it at this.

Movie count for 2011: 42 (title explanation for those who didn't get the reference here)

Two movies about cute blonde children

Poltergeist: The best horror movies are always the ones which aren't really, actually about the horror, but use it as a gateway to explore something else. Hellraiser is about marital infidelity. Hallowe'en is about teenage sex. The Wicker Man is about religious faith and temptation. The problem I had with Poltergeist is that it doesn't seem to be about anything. The spirits invade the house through the television-- is is about fear of the media? Nothing else suggests that. The victims are a Reaganite suburban family-- is it a satire on middle-class American hypocrisy? Apart from the fact that the family keep the disappearance of the youngest child hushed up, apparently not. The catalyst for action is an adorable child-- is it about paedophilia or child abuse? Seems not. There's a suggestion at one point that the mother of the family got pregnant at 16 (the eldest child is 16, the mother is 32), which perked me up thinking that the twist would be that the channel for the spirits was the teenage daughter, fraught with issues about the nature of her conception and her jealousy of her adorable younger siblings, but no, the teenager might as well not be in the movie for all the writers keep shunting her off to a friend's house. Even why this particular suburban family gets the treatment is unexplored (surely the entire subdivision was built on the abandoned graveyard, so why just them? If it's because the father of the family was the estate agent who sold the houses, how are the ghosts supposed to know that, particularly as he did so not knowing about the graveyard?). To top it off, I couldn't manage to care enough about anybody in the story to worry overly if the ghosts got them. Also contains the most product placement per minute of any film I've ever seen, particularly for Star Wars toys. I honestly can't understand why this movie was/is so popular. And remember, this is the producer who made Munich, Empire of the Sun and Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Metropolis (2001): Not the Lang version, but a Japanese writer and director taking some of Lang's themes, ideas and imagery and running with them, and the result is a lot better than you might think. It's a story of startling visual and political complexity (particularly the portrayal of the two counter-cultural groups, the crypto-Maoist rebels and the crypto-fascist "Mardukes," and of the coup d'etat promulgated by the aristocrat Duke Red), and its main flaw is that it's kind of difficult to figure out precisely what the Ziggurat, the Tower of Babel-like creation in which Duke Red is investing so much of his time and energy, is supposed to do, which makes some of the characters' motivations equally cryptic. It's a good movie, but be prepared to invest a certain amount of time in trying to figure it all out.

Movie count for 2011: 39

Winterized

The Lion in Winter: A film about the internal politics of the English/Northern French Royal Family in the 12th century might sound like one for the specialists, but this is amazing stuff, taking history as a loose basis for a psychodrama about a powerful family whose members are all plotting and counter-plotting against each other with schemes of amazing complexity. That Peter O'Toole and Katherine Hepburn are brilliant as frenemies/lovers Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane goes without saying, but watch out for Anthony Hopkins, Nigel Terry and Timothy Dalton in roles which are completely and totally different from the sort of thing they're respectively famous for.

Movie count for 2011: 37

Man and Superman

Viva Zapata: There's a good message to this film, namely, that people, especially people in revolt, are better off without leaders, as Emilio Zapata discovers that, firstly, the cult of personality revolving around him does more harm than good, and, second, that when he achieves power, it corrupts him as much as it does anyone else. Unfortunately the message is buried under far too much leaden dialogue, plus some appallingly Orientalist stereotypes of Mexicans (particularly Mexican women). Marlon Brando shambles through the story as the title character, looking embarrassed by his costume and blackface and mumbling all his lines.

Sleeper: Witty and savage satire, ostensibly about a 1970s man who wakes up 200 years later to find himself in a strange future society, but actually a polemic against contemporary bourgeois American attitudes-- selfish people lulled into compliance by their gadgetry, silly intellectuals convinced that they're changing the world by writing poetry but being terrified by the thought of actual subversion, "revolutionaries" who are no different to the rulers they propose to replace. It's just gotten worse in the past 40 years. Co-stars some very beautiful modernist architecture, and Diane Keaton.

Superman: I wasn't expecting much, but this actually surprised me by how appallingly bad it was. Inconsistent in terms of plot, characters and even what decade it's supposed to be (it couldn't seem to make up its mind whether it was the 1950s or the 1970s), establishing a group of antagonists at the start and then never actually using them, shameless abuse of CSO, equally shameless waste of a great cast... the list goes on. The only good things were, 1) occasional lovely directorial touches (mainly in the scenes of Superman's boyhood in Kansas, where the principal photographer just goes nuts over the wheatfields), and 2) the initial conceit of making Lois Lane a nasty, sadistic bitch, which seems to have been nicked from the Fleischer cartoons. Though unfortunately it all falls apart as the writers don't seem capable of reconciling her being a nasty bitch with her being Superman's main love interest (I know people say the appeal of The Godfather had more to do with the films than the book, but you'd think Mario Puzo could have managed a tiny bit of character complexity). Marlon Brando drifts through the story as Superman's father Jor-El, looking embarrassed by his white pompadour wig.

Movie count for 2011: 36

The Road to Mandalay

Manderlay: Sequel to Dogville, and I actually liked it better than the first film. It's a story about a rich white woman who encouters a plantation where the slaves have apparently not been told about the Emancipation Proclamation, and sets about trying to turn it into a collective farm. The results, firstly, skewer white liberal reformist attitudes (as Grace's efforts bear fruit in some areas, but lead to starvation and death in others, and she is ultimately forced to confront the uncomfortable similarity between herself and the plantation's former owners as regards their relationship with the black workers), and secondly, poses deeper, Enlightenment-philosophy-style questions about the complicated relationship between individual freedom/rights, collective freedom/rights and the law.

The Roaring Twenties: Justifiedly famous James Cagney gangster-picture with a political message: made in 1939, the film pins the blame for the rise of gang activity in the 1920s on, firstly, America's involvement in WWI; secondly, the government's failure to provide for the returning soldiers in its aftermath; and, thirdly, the enactment of prohibition laws. Cagney plays a young man who returns from the war to find all jobs taken, but the criminal underworld open to employment for intelligent young men with mad gun-wielding skillz. The plot which develops also has a strong moral message, as the "good," "innocent"-seeming characters are actually responsible for some of the most calculated acts of amorality in the story, while Cagney's character, despite being a criminal, also tries to do what's right by his friends and girlfriend. A clear influence on Boardwalk Empire.

Movie count for 2011: 33

Going Places

Run Fatboy Run: Better-than-expected Simon Pegg comedy, falling somewhere between the brilliance of Shaun of the Dead and the blatant catering to the Americans of How To Lose Friends and Irritate People. Pegg plays his stock character of the drifting underachieving male who is galvanized into action-- in this case, he resolves to run a thinly-disguised London Marathon (renamed the Nike River Run, presumably for product placement purposes) in order to win his estranged ex-girlfriend and the mother of his child back from an evil American financier. Although it's set in London it feels a bit aimed at the American market (although the American character is the baddie, it takes place in tourist-London rather than real London, and it carefully contains no cultural references that Americans are unlikely to get), but despite that it's cute and feelgood, and has two supporting characters, played by Dylan Moeran and Harish Patel, who have all the good lines.

Raising Arizona: Classic Cohen Brothers comedy about a Southern petty criminal who resolves to fly straight after marrying a policewoman, but, when they learn they can't have children, the couple find themselves drawn into crime through hatching a mad plot to kidnap one. My Name is Earl appears to have ripped off quite a lot from it (the protagonist even has a shaggy haircut, moustache, predilection for loud shirts, and idiot-savant sidekick, and narrates the whole thing in the same perplexed-but-dry tone as Jason Lee), though it also has a distinctly magic-realist aspect in the protagonist's prophetic dreams and the presence of a biker who represents the protagonist's shadow-self made real, and it also features a bank-heist subplot which views like a dry run for O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Syriana: Complicated film interweaving a series of seemingly disparate, but actually interconnected, stories revolving around the merger of two oil companies to take over a drilling operation in an unnamed Emirate, and the power struggle between the Emir's sons, both of which are shadowed and influenced by forces within the American government and business community. It's a story with no good or bad guys: Alexander Siddig's reforming prince is determined to help his country modernise and realise its potential outside of American control, but is a thoroughly unpleasant type with al-Quaeda connections, while George Clooney's sympathetic CIA agent engages in assassination attempts without so much as a moral qualm, the sweet, family-oriented young Pakistani immigrant workers are being groomed as suicide troops by their smiling and earnest imam, and there is a distinct question as to whether Matt Damon's international economist really is, as his estranged wife contends, profiting over his son's accidental death at a party thrown by the Emir. It's the sort of film Edge of Darkness should have been.

Young Frankenstein: Mel Brooks comedy made around the same time as Blazing Saddles, with some of the same people and a similar starting point, sending up the foibles and biases of the Universal horror films of the 1930s rather than Westerns. Very funny, but it doesn't have the same biting social commentary as Blazing Saddles-- although it does send up the sexual/gender subtext of horror films by having a priapic Frankenstein's Monster in pursuit of an ostensibly-fridgid, actually-rapacious woman, that side of it doesn't really come in until quite late in the story, and the complexities of sexuality in the genre, such as the gay subtexts that some have noted in James Whale's horror films, never really get explored. Perhaps it was a bit too early for all that. More puzzlingly given the team involved, the antisemitism angle seems to mostly get passed over. Still, lots of fun to be had, and see if you can Spot Gene Hackman.

Movie count for 2011: 31

Napoleon complex

Napoleon Dynamite: Strangely funny, almost plotless comedy about an irritating teenager (he actually makes one sympathise with the school bullies) living in a small town which appears to be stuck in the mid-eighties, with a bizarre collection of friends and relatives. A surreal, funny and non-preachy take on the traditional teen-movie themes of being true to oneself and finding one's calling in life; Napoleon does both, but the way he does it is so off-the-wall you might not realise he has.

Movie count for 2010: 27

Two True

True Grit (1969): Intense Western about a fourteen-year-old girl who hires a bounty hunter to seek revenge on her father's murderer, with a Texas Ranger who also has an interest in getting his hands on said murderer joining them on the hunt. The story explores the complicated nuances of interaction between the characters on their journey, and manages to portray the girl's courage without resorting to patronizing her. My only real complaints are that, firstly, the woman playing the girl is in her early twenties, and it shows, and secondly, that the climax somewhat undoes the portrayal of her as intelligent, brave and logic-driven by having her do something pretty unbelievably stupid when confronted with a rattlesnake.

True Grit (2011): Similar to the first version in many ways (some dialogue was even identical), mainly differing in making LaBoeuf, the Ranger, a more complex and nuanced character, and in giving the story a darker, eerier tone. This is accomplished, first, by setting the action in winter, giving us grim dark skies and occasional snow to contrast with the original's bright skies and lovely landscapes, second, by peopling the hinterland with strange, random people and unexplained events, and third, giving the ending a tragic, downbeat tone which shows how everyone involved in the story paid the price for their decisions and actions. It all feels much less like a traditional Western, and more like Heart of Darkness.

The remake also gets points for casting a real fourteen-year-old, and for having a more believable rattlesnake scene.

Movie count for 2011: 26

Boldly going

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: 101 minutes of Kirk and his crew digging themselves out of a hole.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: is basically Galactia 1980 done right-- people from the future time-travel back to California in the Eighties in an invisible spaceship, hook up with a daffy girl local, hand out formulae for miracle products, and engage in funny scenarios due to their failure to understand local culture, only in this movie the characters are likeable, the situations and their attempts to get out of them uncontrived. Also, after the Captain Ahab theme of Star Trek II, it's nice to have a movie from the point of view of the whale. The only problem is the last five minutes when all the charges against the crew are dropped, Kirk busted back to Captain, a new Enterprise is built (funny, the Federation were scrapping it just one film ago) and everyone flies off into the sunset with the reset button firmly pressed.

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Reportedly the film which nearly scuppered the franchise, and viewing like a catalogue of everything not to do in a Star Trek movie. Don’t use “The Way to Eden” as your reference point, don’t introduce random relatives for Spock, don’t have cutesy scenes of Kirk, Spock and McCoy singing around a campfire, don’t have knockoffs of the Star Wars cantina sequence… and if you’re going to have a charismatic preacher as your antagonist, then please, make his message actually interesting and not some kind of Californian encounter-group shibboleth about acknowledging your pain and having a group hug. Also, I’m all for celebrating the sensuality of the older woman, but having Nichelle Nichols do a striptease really doesn’t fall into that category.

Star Trek VI: Witty and intelligent finale to the original movie series, building on the fact that the original series was basically a metaphor for Cold War politics and doing the collapse of Communism in space, complete with jokes about Fukuyama’s “the end of history” comment and a space-Chernobyl incident. Some complain about the classical misquotations scattered throughout, but for me they worked; it starts out as the Klingons apparently misunderstanding Shakespeare, then morphs to the Klingons actually doing a kind of postmodern reinterpretation of Shakespearian themes, and before long Spock, Chekhov and even Kirk are getting in on the postmodern action, with Spock claiming Sherlock Holmes as a literal ancestor, and Kirk acknowledging his Peter Pan syndrome with a quote from J.M. Barrie. Kim Cattrall guest stars as a Vulcan calculated to induce ponn farr in anything within a fifty-mile radius.

Movie count for 2011: 24

Mad Dogs and Teenagers

Dogville: Tragic reflection on the bad side of human nature by Lars von Trier. Nicole Kidman plays a fugitive from gangsters who hides out in a small mountain town, paying back the villagers by helping them out with their work; the villagers, faced with mounting pressure to turn her in on one side, and the temptation of having a ready source of labour on the other, gradually ratchet up the exploitation until it turns into outright abuse. The ending turns the whole thing into a philosophical discussion on the nature of forgiveness which is not dissimilar to that in Bad Lieutenant, but taking the opposite narrative tack: because the person called on to forgive would, in the same situation, have acted no differently to the person they are asked to forgive, they cannot, in the end, do so.

Also, what is it with Scandinavian directors and dogs?

You Don’t Know Jack: Biopic of euthanasist Jack Kevorkian, which is both sympathetic to Kevorkian’s initial idealistic reasons for assisting the suicide of the terminally ill and/or incurably disabled, but also paints his final trial and conviction for murder as the result of his being emotionally traumatised by assisting at all these deaths until, as the trial judge states, he wanted to be stopped.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Having managed to get through the 1980s without seeing this, I thought it was time to give it a go. It turned out to be a surprisingly witty and accessible teen movie, full of well-timed physical comedy, whose ultimate message is: be true to yourself, and don’t obsess about what other people do or think.

Movie Count for 2011: 20

Eye of the Beholder

Black Beauty (1971): The original book was an early animal-rights polemic, told through the picaresque journey of a horse as he goes from a pleasant rural life on a country estate to a harder life as a London cabhorse, before finally being rescued when close to death from abuse. The film loses most of this thematic progression, instead giving us an adventure series and inserting sequences where, for instance, the eponymous horse spends a while with the biggest set of gypsy stereotypes this side of a Channel 4 reality programme, as a circus horse on the Continent (I'm not making this up), and as a warhorse in Afghanistan, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake (again, not kidding-- he's directly responsible for at least two deaths even before going to the Hindu Kush). This vignette-style treatment also leads to interesting narrative strands being violently cut off (what, for instance, will happen when the girlfriend of Beauty's soldier owner finds out that her father's needling the lad into going off to war lead directly to his brutal death in combat? We never learn). The horses are beautiful, the foals are cute and the landscapes dramatic, and the ending does get somewhere close to the bittersweet tone of the novel (despite a shoehorned-in and pointless cameo for Anna Sewell), but it's not really worth setting the Skybox for.

Movie count for 2011: 17

Crimson faced

The Crimson Kimono: Not-very-good late-fifties noir-lite B-pic; a stripper who had been planning a Japanese-themed act is killed, an artist who did a painting of her is threatened, the team of police detectives assigned to the case (one European-American, one Japanese-American) both fall for the artist, and it all ends with the world's slowest high-speed chase and the world's most laboured apology. Interesting mainly for its portrayal of Japanese-American (and to a lesser extent Korean-American) culture: at a time when Asians tend to get stereotyped as evil inscrutables or accented comedy-figures, the Japanese characters here are portrayed matter-of-factly as sportsmen, parents, teachers and war heroes (the Korean War naturally-- WWII remains the elephant in the room), and likewise their culture is not something impenetrable by Caucasians (e.g. the Caucasian detective is a kendo enthusiast). The religious diversity of such communities is also unproblematically portrayed (the minor characters include a Japanese Buddhist priest and a Korean Catholic nun). At the end, too, the Japanese detective gets the (Caucasian) girl. It's just a shame this couldn't have happened in a better movie.

Movie count for 2010: 16

Life lessons

Le Diner des Cons: The diner in question is a supper party where the participants are all supposed to bring along an idiot; the amoral protagonist finds a prize one, who turns out to be a sort of demented and less-likeable Monsieur Hulot. The escalating series of resulting hilarious disasters teaches him some painful but true lessons about compassion, and very possibly gets him a tax audit.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: Still the best of the Star Trek films, wisely eschewing the Enterprise-fetishism of last outing in favour of a story about learning to accept bitter truths. Kirk is portrayed as a man perpetually afraid of confronting his own aging and death, and having to do so over the course of the film, ending up sadder but wiser. Khan, meanwhile, has a contrasting story as a man unable to let go of his insane desire for revenge on Kirk, and as such winds up wasting his own and his followers' lives.

Hoax: Based-on-a-true-story film about Clifford Irving's famous faked "autobiography" of Howard Hughes. Although played for comedy-drama and disowned by Irving himself, the film does raise the question of what is truth: if one can write a fiction indistinguishable from reality, does this make it true? Worth watching in a double bill with F for Fake.

Movie Count for 2011: 15

Not so edgy

Edge of Darkness: Takes an intelligent, paranoid, gripping tale of corruption in business and government, and turns it into a banal whistleblowing thriller. So banal, in fact, that I really don't want to waste any more time reviewing it than I have to. Suffice it to say that it's a good thing that it seems to have more or less sunk without trace.

Movie count for 2010: 12 (don't worry, I've got a Tati box set, two Kurosawas and Le Diner des Cons somewhere about the house, so there is much better to come)

Seal of approval

The Seventh Seal: Ninety-minute-long metaphor for the brevity and absurdity of life and the randomness and inevitability of death.

The Big Heat: Film noir ostensibly about a good cop trying to put away a well-connected mobster amid a web of corruption. However, it's directed by Fritz Lang, who can't resist putting a slight shadow of ambiguity over said cop's morality-- specifically, whether the vengeful actions engaged in by a gangster's wronged girlfriend at the climax of the movie were her own idea, or whether the cop manipulated her into it.

Goodfellas: Sort of like a cross between "Mean Streets" and "Casino," a morality tale which follows the career of a mobster from his first entry into crime in the 1950s through to the catastrophic implosion of his criminal network in the 1980s. Predictably good performances all around, but particular credit to Joe Pesci, who is simultaneously funny and terrifying.

Movie count for 2011: 11

Fridge moment

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Possibly my second-favourite film of the series, because it does for the 1950s what Raiders did for the 1930s, presenting us with a kind of collective unconscious of the decade while playfully riffing through the films of the period. An example: the Nuking of the Crystal Fridge not only plays like a knowing parody of the nuclear-test footage I reviewed earlier (watch them and you'll see what I mean), but also reads less like an accurate portrayal of the nuclear tests than like the contemporary mythologising of them: there was no "town" in the desert, but certain government propaganda films made out that there was, and hiding in the fridge is if anything less daft than some of Bert the Turtle Says Duck and Cover's suggestions for how to survive a nuclear blast. Also continues some of the playful self-parody of Crusade, for instance Indy referring to the Bhagavad Gita inaccurately as the "Hindu Bible" (suggesting he knows a lot less about Hinduism than he thinks). The film also has a huge unacknowledged debt to Quatermass and the Pit. My three main problems with it are that: 1) the Cate Blanchett character should have continued for another few films (heck, scrap Indy and give Spalko her own series-- Irina Spalko and the Men Who Stare at Goats, now that's a sequel); 2) the father issues are much more conventionally played than in Crusade, and 3) I still think models are better than CGI. Though it mostly worked OK here.

Movie count for 2011: 8

Parenting issues

Juno: Non-judgmental, unsentimental yet upbeat tale of teenage pregnancy, which consequently felt believable. The film doesn't sentimentalise Juno's condition (binge-eating, hormonal surges, constipation, plus the most amazingly distended pregnancy prosthetic I've seen in a movie), but at the same time doesn't make it out to be some kind of punishment for her misdeeds (Juno's parents are disappointed in her but supportive, and the ending of the film implies that Juno will go on to an otherwise-normal late adolescence and early adulthood), while adoption and blended families are given a good press. The gradual unfolding of the characters of the adoptive parents, also, is touchingly done, and the whole thing is a portrayal of flawed, but generally good, human beings which, well, the whole family can enjoy.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: I was looking forward to this as it was my favourite of the trilogy when I was a kid, but found it a little disappointing this time round. Although much, much better than the second film, it is mostly a rehash of the first, with a few changes rung on it for variety. It's a good film for a game of spot-the-thesp (can you find Ronald Lacey among the Nazis?) and has some good lines; even the father issues worked fairly well as Spielberg plays them almost like knowing self-parody (although there were one or two cloying bits towards the end). However the film referencing is much thinner on the ground (mostly coming in the witty casting of an actress with a strong resemblance to Lauren Bacall as the treacherous Nazi Dr Schneider), and most of it felt fairly tick-the-boxes to me (quest for Judaeo-Christian mythological object? Check. Nazis played by Brits? Check. Dieselpunk-style souped-up Thirties techno-porn? Check. High-larious scene indicating what a terrible teacher Indy is? Check). Still, I've spent worse evenings. Next: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Nuclear Fridge.

Movie count for 2011: 7

The Repeated Meme: A Christmas Carol

Must... resist... temptation to make "Jump the Shark" jokes...

Idea Proposed and Used to Death in the Davies Era: Christmas specials. Gratuitously Christmassy Christmas specials. With snow. Which, unfortunately, look really stupid when they get repeated on BBC3 in July.
Central Premise Recycled From: Go on, guess. Though they're also ripping off Blade Runner visually. Oh, and Torchwood's episode "To the Last Man" (look it up, I'm not summarizing it for you). And "Voyage of the Damned", of all things. And Amy and Rory's outfits are clearly Make Do and Mend.
Reference to Moffat's Back Catalogue: Where to start, where to start...? The Doctor forming a relationship with an adorable moppet in the past and also with the same moppet as a grownup in the future, conversing with a TV picture that's somehow connected with the changing timeline, the Doctor rewriting the story as he goes along by nipping back and forth along his own timeline, airborne sea-life.
Gratuitous Scottish Joke: None actually. I think they may have done with that bit.
Amy Saves the Day with Wuv: Amy and the Doctor appeal to Sardick's Wuv for Abigail to Save the Day.
Star Wars Bit: Freezing someone to pay off debts, plus Abigail's blue hologram-recording.
Nostalgia UK: Space Dickensiana.
Tennant Line: Sardick says "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry" to his younger self.
Murray Gold's Festive #1: Well, if you're going to hire Katherine Jenkins, you may as well get value for money by having her sing something vaguely classical.
Inside Joke List: A Tom Baker scarf on Matt Smith, plus photos of Matt Smith visiting the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower.
Teeth!: On the Shark!
Item Most Likely to Wind Up as a Toy: Didn't have to guess at this one, as Forbidden Planet London's already got a Christmas box set, consisting of.... Amy, the Doctor, and the Tardis. Seriously? You couldn't give us a lousy Michael Gambon in a bowtie, to say nothing of a pull-the-string-and-she-sings Katherine Jenkins? Or a half a sonic screwdriver? Oh well, go to The Entertainer or Tesco or wherever, spend £1 on a plastic shark and a Santa-and-his-sleigh-set, take five minutes to customise it and you've got your own Christmas Doctor Who toy.
Something Gets Redesigned: Sardick's life.

Goats and Cheese

The Men who Stare at Goats: Valiant attempt to make a fictional story of an interesting documentary/book about the US Army's for-real attempts to research the existence of, and possible military uses of, the paranormal. The action focuses on George Clooney as a burnt-out former member of a unit set up in the 1980s to develop the psychic powers of soldiers, now wandering through Iraq convinced he's on some kind of mission, with Ewan McGregor in tow. Where the film fell down was: 1) it didn't go far enough in highlighting the absurdity of military culture and the so-called post-war situation in Iraq-- occasionally I was reminded of Buffalo Soldiers, for instance the sequence where two groups of civilian contractors accidentally start a firefight with each other, but it never got as good as Buffalo Soldiers in that area; 2) Clooney really does have psychic powers, where it might have been more interesting to continually play on the idea that really he doesn't, but he's convinced he does; and 3) the filmmakers clearly wanted the story to have a happy ending and wedged one into it, when in fact the ending of the story is clearly a sad one.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: Plotwise and conceptwise, pretty good, and with an interesting Freudian subtext (as the child-entity VGER moves from the oral-anal stage, in which it is represented by a suspiciously sphincter-like space anomaly, to the stage of adult sexual relationships through taking human form and joining with Commander Decker); had this been an extended episode of Star Trek: TOS, I'd've rated it as outstanding. Its big problem as a movie is that it's long and boring, with huge swaths of it divided between sequences which seem to be an attempt to copy 2001 without really understanding what 2001 is about, and sequences which amount to, basically, spaceship-porn. It's also the start of the series' fetishization (and yes, I use the term deliberately) of the Enterprise, which always bothered me a bit; in TOS, there was no real indication that the Enterprise was anything particularly special, but from here on there seems to be this idea that the Enterprise is somehow this really exciting, really special ship which everybody would give their right arms to be on. Sorry, not buying it. Next up, The Wrath of Khan.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom: An almost total inversion of Raiders of the Lost Ark, being dumb, crass, racist, sexist, and not as funny as it thinks it is. There are far fewer knowing filmic references and, apart from the opening sequence's pastiche of Gold Diggers of 1933, also, and what I suspect is an attempt at referencing Black Narcissus later on, most of them are pretty banal and obvious. The religious side of the plot was also pretty crass, treating Hinduism as a kind of tribal superstition rather than a sophisticated world faith, despite an attempt to save it at the end by suggesting that the god Shiva exists and is pissed off at the mad Kali-cultists Indy is up against. The racism I found genuinely offensive, starting with the gurning sinister "Orientals" in Shanghai and going on through a corrupt and decadent India where people apparently eat live snakes, beetles and monkey brains while enslaving peasant children. Even on a plot level it didn't really hang together, with the opening sequence in Shanghai having no connection to the rest of the story bar providing a reason why Indy is traveling around with a dumb blonde and an eleven-year-old street urchin, and with set pieces which don't so much advance the plot as (to leap ahead a couple of films) nuke the fridge. Remember, this film was directed by the same man who directed Munich.

Movie count for 2011: 5

Raiders

The Social Network: Film about the development of Facebook, seen through the subsequent lawsuits between the various parties involved. It both a) reminded me a lot of Oxford (the complicated Darwinian patterns of alliances and fallings-out between the overly intelligent and the overprivileged) and b) helped me understand the appeal of Facebook more (it's all about giving people the university experience, by which they mean dating, embarrassment, parties and social one-upmanship). A lot more fascinating than a film about a website ought to be-- but then the website itself is more fascinating than it ought to be too, so that's appropriate.

Raiders of the Lost Ark: A postmodern masterpiece, and early example of proto-dieselpunk. Lucas and Spielberg go beyond simply pastiching 1930s adventure serials to creating some kind of perfect distilled essence of the 1930s adventure serial, tapping into the technololgical and social fantasies of that generation (producing a Spruce Goose and Nazi delta-wing plane which actually work, and playfully referencing the decade's obsessions with Egypt and Nepal) while knowingly referencing the films and novels of the era. Also, for a film focused on the Ark of the Covenant, manages surprisingly well to steer clear of religious issues; Judaism and Sunday School both get only passing mentions, Islam none at all (although at least one of the hero characters is implied to be a Muslim). For a film that's thirty years old, too, the effects still stand up well, supporting my hypothesis that a well-done physical effect lasts better than CGI. Next week, The Temple of Doom.

Movie count for 2011: 2