Transformers (2007): “I Bought A Car. It turned out to be an Alien Robot. Who Knew?”

Café’ kid (looking at a crushed store): “Wow! This is the coolest thing I've ever seen! Explosions everywhere! This is easily a hundred times cooler than Armageddon... I swear to God!”

Cool CGI, ridiculous dialogue, stupid plot. The film starts with relationship between the young hero and his newly bought car. (Yes, his car.) The car turns out to be an intergalactic robot, in war with other intergalactic robots. Somehow the young hero’s old grandfather made a discovery and somehow some sort of geotag got etched on his grandfather’s spectacles (!) that he’s trying to sell on Ebay (first product placement).

The good and the bad robots fight to get the spectacles. The Universe is at stake. Robots throwing tanks like snowballs, beating the crap out of each other can’t fail, can it?

Secretary of Defense: “We are dealing with a highly effective weapons system, one that we have not come across before.” The movie can’t fail, can it?

Optimus Prime: “And the human race will be extinguished.” The movie can’t fail, can it?

Three things actually make the movie work: It has a decently structured plot, even though it’s stupid, with a decent cast of characters. And the movie never takes itself too seriously. With at quite clever Nokia-before-smartphones product placement.

Transformers is remarkably stupid, but it knows it’s stupid and simply doesn’t care, which is why the film is so much fun. Director Michael Bay shows his robots in perfect hero poses with blinding sunlight streaming over their shoulders, and robot Optimus Prime talks about loyalty, duty, and freedom like he’s just stepped off a recruitment poster.

Transformers absolutely revels in how completely loony this premise is, and is all the better for it. The movie is a great, noisy and explosive six-pack and popcorn action film, if you are in CGI-action mode.

Grade: B+

Advisory: Lots of stuff blown up. Robots cause mayhem everywhere they go. Hugo Weaving was paid handsomely to voice the villain Megatron

Macbeth (2010) – A tale of our times with Captain Picard, written 400 years ago

My favorite starship captain in my favorite Shakespeare play. Can’t fail.

This is not a kosher interpreted Shakespeare. It’s a modernized version set somewhere between the 1930s and 1950s, but with a touch of a post-apocalyptic-like Downfall (the “Hitler talks about”-movie) with modern weaponry and cars. It has fascist overtones much like Ian McKellen’s Richard III.

Dirty and bloody, acted to perfection especially by Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, this is the most original and touching screen adaptation I've ever seen of any of the great Shakespearean tragedies.

It makes almost every other Shakespearian movie seem lame. I have never seen any version of a Shakespeare play that so well captures the true essence of the play. Maybe Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V is comparable in scope and scale, but that movie is a more traditional interpretation.

A couple of things really lift this movie. First, making Macbeth a fascist dictator is effective and absolutely makes sense. The smart setting gives it contemporary meaning. The settings are full with small interruptions that add substance and efficiency to the production. I really like the subtle (and not so subtle) Soviet baggage in the movie. Props like the Stalinist-style portrait of Macbeth, the grainy newsreel of marching soldiers, and Banquo being killed on a train, hint parallels with the events in the play without intruding on them. Almost all the action is set around a kitchen sink and a refrigerator or in a corridor. The actors frequently make their entrances by a creepy service lift with clanking metal doors. And I really liked that the witches are nurses in a field hospital, killing rather than curing the victims of battle. It’s a liberating context, far from actors in armor just delivering brilliant speeches. For example Polanski’s version of Macbeth feels very outdated in comparison.

This might upset Shakespearian traditionalists, but Macbeth is supposed to upset people. It shows life at its most brutal and cynical side, and ask life’s toughest question. This is not family entertainment.

The post-apocalyptic scenery proves that Shakespeare writes timeless. It works. And it work very well. Director Rupert Goold keeps Shakespeare’s original text, except for a few instances. Every performance is truthful and inventive.

It also proves that Shakespeare’s plays work on a small scene. This adaption is mostly a claustrophobic brilliant chamber play.

The acting and directing are first rate. Patrick Stewart is superb as Macbeth, and Kate Fleetwood is excellent as Lady Macbeth.

There are a number of ingenious scenes, like Macbeth talking to the two murderers while making a ham sandwich, or the porter delivering his speech while drinking and watch Soviet parades.

Patrick Stewart gives a performance that taps into all Macbeth’s weakness, greed, fear and madness. He can make the simple act of preparing a ham sandwich one of the scariest things you’ve ever seen. And Stewart’s Macbeth always has understood the consequences of killing. He displays an extraordinary understanding, clarity and emotional truth in the role. His Macbeth is strong and confident, but at the same time vulnerable and uncertain. You can feel his struggle and later his guilt.

The moment just before his death when he finally gets it, at the vision of the witches/nurses, is amazing. His exhausted, despairing delivery of the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” (act 5 scene 5) speech is from a man who has reduced his universe to dust. But in his transition from a decent but ambitious guy to a ruthless dictator, you never quite lose sympathy for him. It makes the character credible; you can relate to him. Which makes his fall even larger.

Same thing with Kate Fleetwood as Lady Macbeth. Her version of The Lady is very credible and makes her not sympathetic, but more understandable as human. For instance the intensity of the sleepwalking is breathless.

Michael Feast also deserves special mention as an excellent Macduff, carrying off an amazing silence after he learns the death of his sons.

This is the best version of Macbeth you will ever see.

Grade: A+

Dark City (Director’s Cut, 2008): In the Shadow of Matrix, but Better

Dark City 1998 (Director’s Cut, 2008)

John Murdoch wakes up naked in a hotel bathtub. As he stumbles into the hotel room, he receives a call from a Dr. Schreber, who urges him to flee the hotel as he is wanted as a serial killer.

In the room he discovers the corpse of a brutalized, ritualistically murdered woman, along with a knife. Horrified he leaves and assures himself, repeatedly, that he isn’t a killer.

The problem is that he can’t remember anything before waking up in the water. His wife is a complete stranger, he lost his own name, he can’t even remember last time he saw the sun.

He tries to avoid the police hoping that his memory will return and prove his innocence. On his journey of self-discovery, persistent but seemingly normal issues increasingly bothers him. As he edges closer to unraveling the twisted riddle of his existence, he stumbles across a strange underworld controlled by a group of beings known as The Strangers. These shadowy figures have the ability to stop time and alter reality through a process called “tuning”. He discovers that he has the ability to change reality himself. It is only the beginning of a terrifying and nightmarish journey. How do you prove your innocence when you can’t remember what happened? And without memories, can you even be sure that you are innocent? How can Murdoch be so sure if he doesn’t know who “me” is, if all he knows is a dead body in his hotel room? And after a while he realizes that nobody else have any real memory.

This is the core of the movie. Our experiences shape us, rather than the other way around. Memories are crucial to our sense of identity. Memories shape our sense of self in understanding who we are and our place in the world. A clear sense of identity enables us to understand the world around us (be it our environments, other people, family, and so on).

I saw this Science Fiction Horror movie some 10+ years ago. I was fascinated, but thought it was a Frank Miller cartoon-like Film Noire mix between Total Recall and Blade Runner.

In this director’s cut version the movie is digitally restored with a new better color scheme, which has a different cut that makes the movie more comprehensible. The re-cut has slowed the film down, which improves it. The movie has also had a major clean up that reveals the plot as well as the details. And there are extensions to lots of scenes that round off each character’s involvement in the plot.

Dark City is done in the old Twilight Zone style with a substantial dash of gothic steam punk, Metropolis, David Lynch, The Truman Show, Pleasantville and Batman Begins. There are so many interesting subtle influences in the movie. There are some 30ish influences or references to other movies, like Logan’s Run and Federico Fellini’s 8½.

Re-watching Dark City in the director’s cut, I couldn't help but recall countless SF novels I read as a child where the conclusion comes across as a shocking and brilliant revelation. It was exactly the same feeling for me when watching this. Philip K. Dick fans will recognize a virtual world where super-minds can alter it by thoughts. Like UBIK.

The theatrical version had an annoying opening narration (like Blade Runner had) that has thankfully been removed. The audience is now dropped right into the middle of events with no knowledge or insight into either the past or the main character. It creates a terrific sense of tension and disorientation. It is a delight to see a genre film so unafraid to have such an attention-demanding storyline and irregular structure.

Dark City explore the unreliability and subjectivity of memory, the ways in which memory can often lead to conflict as people remember the same events differently; the ways in which our memories may be affected by our imagination, and how memories can interfere with our perception reality.

The movie explore how our memory is used to record and replay events in our lives and how these memories can be altered by the very process of remembering. It also explore how knowledge gained through experience and reflection can change the way people perceive events in their past.

“Will a man, given the history of a killer,” Dr. Schreber ponders, “continue in that vein? Or are we, in fact, more than the sum of our memories?” Is our self, as Dr. Schreber suggests, “a touch of unhappy childhood, a dash of teenage rebellion, and last but not least, a tragic death in the family”?

Or is it something deeper underneath it all? Is there some core constant element that holds us together? And is that what makes us human?

The movie is also about aliens that changes peoples’ memories so they can learn enough about earth to take over their souls, because their own race is dying, yada, yada, yada. And there is a big fight in the end. You've seen it before.

The ending fight scene makes the movie a bit weak. It simply feels unnecessary, as if the director all of a sudden remembered he had a deadline to meet and could no longer continue the plot in the previous fashion.

Dark City came out at the same time as Matrix, but Matrix took all the attention. This movie is in some ways better. Think of it as Metropolis remixed with a twisty, but understandable plot. And don't bother about some one-dimensional and mannered characters (Kiefer Sutherland especially). That actually works quite well with the cartoon-like movie. Bears repeated watching.

Grade: B+

Advisory: Kiefer Sutherlands animated acting can be annoying. Jennifer Connolly, who plays Murdochs wife the nightclub singer Anna, is a brilliant singer. Sadly she is dubbed in the theatrical version, but luckily not in this version.

Primer: A Must See for Anyone Who Works With Innovation and Love Time Travel Movies

Primer 2004

”Are you hungry? I haven't eaten since later this afternoon.”

Primer is a head-spinning and brilliant movie about the perils and paradoxes of time travel. But it’s also a movie about how to handle and create value from a scientific discovery, and the lack of integrity and experience necessary to use the invention wisely.

The story begins with four friends in a Dallas suburb – Aaron, Abe, Phillip and Robert – who run a marginally successful garage venture. They are experimenting with some sort of superconducting device. When Aaron and Abe discover that the invention has time travel as an unexpected side effect, everything changes.

If you are looking for a Back to the Future Terminator kind of movie, you’re in the wrong theatre. The strength of this movie is in the very clever storyline. Primer was done with a $7,000 budget. The lack of special effects, or even standard digital tricks, actually benefits the movie.

It’s the manner in which the innovators deal with their discovery that gives Primer its depth and credibility. The movie shows scientific discovery in a realistic and down-to-earth manner. And start-ups work in locations no more glamorous than Aaron’s garage. They buy electronic components from Walmart, they cannibalize a microwave oven to get a magnetron, Freon from a refrigerator, Platinum from a catalytic converter.

There’s a lot of tech jargon in the movie. Former engineer turned filmmaker Shane Carruth didn’t dumb-down the movie dialogue for a broader market. The beauty of Primer is that it matters far less that you get the jargon and much more that you understand the big picture. Watching the guys talk about their invention is a bit like being at a party listening to a nerdy discussion. You don’t get the details, but you get the idea. It gives the movie an air of believability.

Aaron and Abe discover that their invention can alter time for objects inside their machine. They decide to keep this discovery from their two friends and secretly build a larger version of the device in a nearby storage facility and use it for time-travels. They cannot go back in time more than a few hours, but it’s enough to for example beat the stock market.

To late they realize they can’t control the chain of events. During the time they go back in time, their doubles are still walking around making decisions that can impact their future present.

The really cool thing with the movie is, that if you start messing around with something you can’t control (the time-space continuum), there is no way to reverse the chain of events.

Every time Abe and Aaron try to fix a mistake, they make layers of changes on top of each other. And make things even worse. The first layer of paint you apply before you do the real painting is called a “primer”. Abe and Aaron keep re-living and trying to fine-tune the same events to get it right, like applying new layers of paint over a familiar painting.

Their steady downward spiral proves to be dreadfully compelling. We watch them expand and contract reality into permutations that, once understood, are horrifyingly unsettling.

Soon they find more and more strange unexpected evidence of their time-travels everywhere. For instance, one night they run into the father of a friend to Abe, who wants to invest in the machine, or maybe already have in an alternative future as he has already used their time machine. The reality, in which his trip to the past occurred – Abe and Aaron’s present, that is – has been changed by Aaron and Abe and no longer exists. Yet the man is still present in the present world, but now he never even made the trip in the first place. Now he’s just a time travel byproduct, a side effect of the process.

They believe they can actually master a moment; control the direction of time and produce beneficial outcomes. Maybe not at all once. But eventually.

They start out like normal guys, with no problems or moral dilemmas. As the movie continues Abe and Aarons personal motivations are more and more revealed and soon they are faced with bigger and bigger moral issues.

They have the potential to change events, or simply muck with causality: Abuse the stock market, prevent a potential murder, punch your boss in the face then go back and stop yourself, or the real kicker – kill yourself and change history so that it never happened. Aaron pictures himself hitting his boss “just to know what it feels like”, and then explains that he would subsequently prevent himself from the act by intervening before it occurred.

They begin to experiment on their own. Faced with a new world of immeasurable power they respond with greed and pride. As the questions get bigger, they find themselves bending and then breaking their time traveling rules to help themselves.

They start to betray their friends and lie to each other. Abe and Aaron’s friendship crumbles under crumbling moral rules. Fear, paranoia and greed supersede any chance of trust.

The movie illustrates not only how far we would go if we were given the power of the Gods (or at least to interfere with other peoples lives and actions), but also the consequences. If you had a machine that could help you change history, how would you use it? Would you play the stock market, or save a girl’s life at a party to look like a hero? Would the omnipotence make a person more kind, or more evil?

The movie’s low key makes the omnipotence and how it corrupts more urgent. These guys are engineers and scientifically clever, but morally as badly prepared as we all are: we seldom think of the consequences of our actions because we seldom discuss moral issues of our actions.

Primer is eight years old, but it gives an intelligent comment to today’s social media revolution, like the way Facebook, FourSquare and all the others that mess with our integrity without really knowing the consequences. Can we preserve dignity and privacy when we voluntarily give away our entire life to Facebook? How and why did we get to the point where almost all of our activities leave a trace? Are we willing to let both the state and commercial companies into our bedrooms? The technology has taken humanity to a tipping point, and nothing will ever be the same. There are definitely parallels between this discussion and the moral questions raised in Primer.

Now, if you don’t care anything about innovation ethics, you should watch the movie for its ingenious portray of the perils and paradoxes of time travel.

For example: Aaron is eating breakfast in his kitchen. Let’s call him Aaron 1. He suddenly passes out. He passes out because Aaron 2, a future version of Aaron1, has traveled back through time and drugged Aaron 1’s milk before Aaron 1 entered the kitchen to eat breakfast. Aaron 2 then drags Aaron 1 upstairs and stows him in the attic. Aaron 2 goes back downstairs and enters the kitchen, but then a future version of Aaron 2 has traveled back through time and attacks himself. We will never know what would have happened if Aaron 2 hadn’t used the time machine to become Aaron 3 and change the events because those events never happened. Aaron and Abe successfully invest on the stock market, but don’t end up rich at the end of the movie, because future Abe and Aaron change their own past to prevent themselves becoming rich in the future.

Confused? I think it’s awesome. The film ends with five simultaneous timelines, but the permutations of history are endless.

More than any other time travel movie I’ve seen, Primer makes you feel as if time travel is for real, with real consequences. At the Aha moment (at least for me), it throws the viewer into the same situation as the story characters, when Aaron and Abe observe their doubles from afar and realize that they have no way of knowing whether either of them, without the knowledge of the other, has already altered their past. Mistrust has introduced an unknown variable into their equation.

Primer is one of those very rare movies that gives Hollywood a real kick in the butts to say, “THIS is how you create a thriller, dumbass!”

It’s not about the budget. The movie itself is virtually a garage invention. A glimpse of a microphone here, hearing a whispered “cut” now and then, the grainy 16 mm texture – they’re all fine. It’s amazing what a shoestring budget and a vision can do.

The strength is the way Primer show how we think we are modern, but emotionally and ethically no better than cave men. If you like intellectual, intense, dramatic, sci-fi movies, then you’ll like this film.

Hands down, I love this movie.

Grade: A+

John Carter 2012 – Mars never looked so good

Quite underrated. I didn’t expect high art, but I got the fun, action movie I was expecting. Better than fair and less than good, but certainly watchable. And John Carter is a visual delight at times.

The most memorable performance in the film is not, strictly speaking, a performance at all. It‘s Woola, a six-legged Martian “dog”, or a dog in a newt suit.

I first discovered John Carter of Mars at a Swedish SF congress in Stockholm 1975 and bought the paperback from Donald AWollheim himself.

I’m glad I did. I couldn’t put the book down. Burroughs is a master storyteller and the original novel was written 144 years ago. It’s amazing that the quality of writing can still entertain more a century and a half after. In order to really understand the movie, you have to have to read the three first books of the series, as they are one story, like LOTR. Project Gutenberg, A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1868)

It’s a fine line between taking this story too seriously or not seriously enough, and the movie walks it fairly well. The original conceptual art was, indeed, done by Frank Frazetta, which is seriously awesome. Woola, a bunch of steampunk airships, and a gladiator sequence with a white-furred, fanged giant ape is enough for me to make this a great pop corn flick.

The Dejah Thoris Princess of Mars has been upgraded to a smart and battle-ready tattooed regent of the Royal Helium Academy of Science. She proves to be more than a passive beauty. Dejah Thoris was the really interesting human character, visually and otherwise. And the movie really should have kept Burroughs’ title Princess of Mars. She’s a way more engaging character than John Carter, at least his movie version.

The movie also has a liberal anti-war and pro-environment sentiment to give the silliness some weight. In the book John Carter angrily tries to keep his Civil War past behind him, refusing to help Colonel Powell fight the Apaches: “We're nothing but a warring species and I want no part of it.”

It flopped at the theatres. The movie had a gargantuan budget of $250,000,000. Where did all the money go? It certainly wasn’t spent on the screenplay. I’ve seen films that have done far more with a fraction of that sum. You can read an interesting analysis of what went wrong with the film here and here.

In summary: John Cater was marketed horribly, which is a shame since it is a pretty decent flick.

Grade: B

PS

I saw the movie in 2D. I can live without 3D.

PPS

There is also a “Princess of Mars” B-movie from 2009 with Tracy Lords as Dejah Thoris. Not the worst flick you ever saw, but forgettable.

Krull – A Gem from the Fantasy Boom of the 1980’s

Krull – (1983)


It could have been worse. The film was one of the most expensive movies of its time in 1983, with a reported budget of 30 MUSD. But it only grossed half of it. Columbia Pictures expected it to be a hit, and likely a franchise. It had the Marvel comic adaptation as well as Atari and arcade games based on it. But it was released only a few weeks after Return of the Jedi and it got bad reviews. But the people who ignored it at the cinema gave it a shot on the cables and its reputation has steadily grown over the years. Today it has a cult status and has gained a whole lot of fans.

Krull was done in the same era as Ivanhoe and Excalibur, Dune and Willow, Superman and Flash Gordon. I was a fantasy film lover during the 1980’s and still am. I don’t recall that I ever saw Krull at the theaters, but it did grab our attention at the video store. And I stumbled over it recently.

The Styrofoam sets and the too many transportation routes – endless fighting, climbing, walking, riding, flying – could have made it unbearable. Aliens are from outer space, but they still use horses as a means of transportation. The laser guns appear to have only one or two shots apiece, as the aliens turn their weapons over in combat to reveal blades for close-quarters fighting.

From the sky drops a “Black Fortress” inhabited by an evil monster “The Beast” and its soldiers called “Slayers”. They want to concur the planet. To stop the invasion, the two rival kingdoms join forces by the marriage of Princess Lyssa and Prince Colwyn. Unfortunately during the ceremony the Slayers attack the palace, kill both kings, wound Colwyn and kidnap Lyssa. The next morning, the wise Ynyr helps Colwyn to find the magic weapon “Glaive” (French for “double-edged sword”), a giant mind-controlled sort of shuriken.

Together they go on a quest for the monster’s black fortress to free Lyssa. During their quest they face a number of dangers and challenges, and form a band of strange characters they meet on their trip, including a Cyclops and a magician who can change people into animals. And in the end the Black Fortress and the Beast explodes.

It could have been unbearable, but what really save the movie are the impressive UK cast and a really good music score. For Swedish readers: Star Lysette Anthony also played Rowena in the 1982 TV film Ivanhoe, with actors James Mason, Sam Neill and Anthony Andrews. (Since the premiere in 1982, Ivanhoe has been broadcast on Swedish television on the January 1st every year. It's now considered a tradition.)

Peter Yates’ direction is competent, even though it’s hardly the equal of his masterpiece Bullitt. The special effects are decent for the time, but look a little primitive to our modern over-spoilt eyes.

It’s an enjoyable popcorn-viewing experience. What else do you need here?

Grade: B

Advisory: seeing Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) before anyone knew who they were.

Immortel (ad vitam): Not for the empty minded

Immortel (ad vitam) (2004)

New York City, year 2095.  France is under dictatorship following two nuclear wars. The ancient Egyptian gods have returned to Earth in a floating pyramid above Manhattan. They have cast judgment upon Horus (the falcon headed god). Given only one week by the gods to preserve his immortality, Horus must search New York City and find both a human host body to inhabit and a willing mate to continue his legacy. In the city Jill wanders around in search of her true identity aided by a doctor who discovers that she is physically only 3 month old. Alcide Nikopol, a rebel condemned to 30 years of cryopreservation escapes his prison, due to a mechanical accident. Horus takes control of Nikopol's body. Sounds surreal? It is.

Immortel is based on the first two volumes in the Nikopol Trilogy, a French science fiction graphic novels trilogy written between 1980 and 1993 by Bosnian born Enki Bilal: La Foire aux immortels (Carnival of Immortals), La Femme piège (Woman Trap) and Froid Équateur (Cold Equator).

Enki Bilal has always been one of my favorite French comics artist. His works is a surreal mix between the deadly epic seriousness of anime, combined with the French classic Metal Hurlant style. Reading his stories is a bit like watching a painting from a Dutch renaissance master – poetic, violent and heavy on symbolism.

The movie is very true to the original comic. Enki Bilal directed Immortel himself, probably not an optimal solution. Storytelling genius in one medium does not necessarily carry over to another. You can tell it's a filmed comic book. The dialogue may read well on paper, but suffers in the movie from its stilted formality. And someone with a better grasp of English should have polished up the language. Here and there you can tell it's translated French.

Immortel was one of the first movies to use an entirely "virtual backlot". The actors were all shot in front of a green-screen with all the backgrounds added in post-production. Bilal uses computer-animated actors with live actors (probably for budget reasons). The technology was a bit immature. The animations looks like a computer game trailer.

But it doesn't really matter as the story is brilliant and the visuals are stunning. Even if it has technical and narrative defects, the film has unsuspected depths. There is not a bit of Hollywood in this. Immortal is that rare movie that doesn't only entertain, but dares to make you think. It's a film that you love to see again.

Grade: B