A star is bored

The film business is a high stakes game and the stakes are getting higher all the time. There was a time when a film like My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) could grow gently by word of mouth to become a colossal hit. Not any longer. The days of the sleeper hit are far behind us. In the modern movie business films have in theory a single weekend to prove themselves at the box office. In practice, sophisticated computer modelling means they have really only a few hours.

In this climate the marketing of the movie is crucial, a new audience has to be bought for every movie and that elusive ‘want see’ commodity has to be created. Hats off then to the marketing department behind this version of A Star is Born. They have created such an enormous amount of hype around this film that I even paid my own money to see it.

To be honest I cannot recall a recent film that has been more overpraised – not even La La Land (2016). Newspaper ads are full of four and – remarkably – even five-star reviews for a film which, to me, is at best workmanlike and at worst unbelievably dull. It’s a bore for the most part.

The appeal of the film to the studio is obvious, A Star is Born has been a hit three times already with Janet Gaynor (1937), Judy Garland (1954), and Barbra Streisand (1976) so in these risk averse times green lighting it seems like a no brainer. And yet this film seems especially  pointless.

The plot is well worn. It’s a story of the love between an established star and a wannabe in which the Svengali-like influence of the superstar will mould and shape the talented ingenue. The twist is that the established star’s career is on a downward trajectory, although he may not know it, and is about to be eclipsed by the rising newcomer. There is, as there has been in all three previous versions, a fateful conclusion and triumphant resolution.

This time round the star is Jackson Maine (Bradley Cooper), a country-rock star of inexplicable global popularity and the newcomer is Ally Campana (Lady Gaga), a waitress who wants to be a songwriter but lacks confidence. It’s simple stuff but very heavy going. The first half is light enough despite Gaga, of which more later, but the second half is a bit of a slog as we find ourselves wading through very predictable treacle.

Part of the problem is a very poor script for which Cooper is partially credited along with Will Fetters and Eric Roth. This is a script that leaves nothing to the imagination, it has no sense of subtext. Every point is hammered home and we are left in no doubt about the back story of every character because they cannot be prevented from narrating it at every opportunity. The first clash between Jackson and his older brother Bobby (Sam Elliott) is an especially egregious example of information dumping. There are no characters, just talking plot points.

Cooper is by some distance the best thing in the film. He is an attractive actor in every sense of the world and the film never lets you forget that. Gaga may have top billing but he’s the director, so he gets all the close-ups.

Lady Gaga on the other hand is extremely problematic. As Ally she has no presence at all, she’s no actor. I suspect this might be down to a consistent inability to find her lens, so she doesn’t have the impact she should have. It is nonetheless a passionless performance which only comes to life when she becomes, effectively Lady Gaga. Ally, as she is now singularly named, is Lady Gaga to all intents and purposes and performatively she provides a much-needed shot in the arm. There is however no explanation for how the soulful Suzanne Vega type songwriter turns into this overhyped creature.

Jackson meanwhile is going from bad to worse with a season ticket for the rehab facility. Unlike other versions of the story, the focus here is on the male lead rather than the female. It’s his story not hers and much less interesting for it; so much for #metoo. Whether or not Gaga could have lifted that dramatic weight is mercifully untested.

As a director Cooper deserves some credit for his choice of subject but that’s about it. Unlike other actors making a directing debut he has not chosen to do some vanity indie piece of emo navel-gazing. This is a big film with big budgets and big issues to deal with.

He deals with them competently and in a workmanlike way. The film’s visual trick is to put you on stage with the performers – previous versions gave us largely the audience perspective - but this is just a product of new technology. Cooper, to be fair, does his own singing and playing; it’s pleasant enough but not something you’d pay money to hear.

As a filmmaker there is very little flair or imagination in Cooper’s direction; he does not strike you as a director with something to say or an interesting way of saying it. He does deserve credit for getting through his first picture, but there’s nothing here to suggest that I’d be in any hurry to see his second one.

Now we really do know Jack

One of the casualties of the rush to epic franchise film making as typified by the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the demise of the mid-budget Hollywood movie. I mean the sort of film you could make for around $50 million with a low wattage star name and anticipate a decent return over time. 

Now we are so conditioned to the instant dopamine hit of the big budget blockbuster and the success or failure at the box office decided within a matter of hours there’s no room for risk.

I mention this because Jack Ryan, or Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan to give the show its Sunday name, is exactly the kind of story that Hollywood doesn’t seem willing to tell anymore. That being the case, streaming television is the perfect home, hence the investment from Amazon Prime. You get all sorts of bangs for your buck and you get the chance to develop story and character.

There have been five Jack Ryan movies with the two starring Harrison Ford – Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994) – probably the best known. But for all those five films we have no real idea who Jack Ryan is.

We recognise Harrison Ford as the guy who finds himself in a chopper in a combat zone wearing a flak jacket and a ‘How the hell did I get here?’ look. But really, we don’t know Jack, in every sense of the phrase.

As a writer Tom Clancy doesn’t do nuance or character. His books – and the early ones are quite entertaining in spite of themselves – are basically plot heavy technical manuals dressed up as thrillers. With this series we have room to breathe and find out a little more about who Jack is.

Jack Ryan doesn’t completely do nuance either but there is character development. The eight episodes are effectively three chapters in an overarching arc and they have a very contemporary feel. This is a world of suicide attacks and dirty bombs and ‘conventional’ terrorism. There are elements here which are recognisable from Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger as well as The Sum of All Fears (2002) but the show-runners have the freedom to make this as much about Jack Ryan’s world as about the man himself.

Ryan is the fulcrum around which the story pivots and he doesn’t have to be dashing to the rescue in every show. This means other concepts can be explored. The pilot episode for example is as much about radicalisation as it is about Ryan. Other shows have insights into the refugee crisis and state surveillance; it’s not all about Jack.

The casting of John Krasinski as Ryan is an inspired choice.  Physically he looks the part and he can handle the action scenes, but he can also handle the character moments. The mantle of Jim Halpert from The Office sometimes hangs heavy on Krasinski but here it actually informs his character. He seems perfectly at home as a man whose job is really checking financial transactions and looking for needles in haystacks.

Wendell Pierce as his boss is a revelation and possibly the best thing in the series. He has left his larger than life persona from The Wire and Treme behind and here plays a much more textured individual. Pierce has a secret which defines his character and, while I’m not going to spoil anything here, it does make for a genuinely memorable moment when it is revealed.

Jack Ryan is fast, smart, and humorous when it has to be, but it is not without its missteps. There are times when it all feels a little too rushed and characters get from place to place a little too quickly. Also a sub-plot about a conscience-stricken drone pilot is just tonally and dramatically wrong, unless there is a surprising pay-off in season two.

The second season – to be set in Russia - was commissioned before the first one aired so with luck they should continue that story of Ryan growing into his role.  By the end of the first season there is a hint of Krasinski becoming the man who Ford was; he may not know how he got there but at least he now knows how to deal with it.

The Meg is just not bad enough to be a classic

I’ve said on here before that I like my genre films to know their way round the genre they are operating in. They need to give the audience what it expects, and then come up with a way of making it unexpected. The Meg succeeds in this but only up to a point.

This creature feature is possibly the giantest of giant shark movies – the monster here is a megalodon, a prehistoric shark which grew to around 70 feet long. Thought to have been extinct for two million years it’s been disturbed by a research team trying to prove that the ocean has a false bottom – really! – and has now made its way into the open ocean.

Before that it will be snacking on a smorgasbord of genre movie stereotypes. There’s the burned-out case seeking redemption (Jason Statham), the hard-nosed scientist whose work comes before her emotions (Li Bingbing), the ruthless billionaire funder (Rainn Wilson), the no-nonsense team leader (Cliff Curtis) and the obligatory shark bait (you can work them out for yourself). There’s also a cute child (Sophia Cai) and a dog – I’m giving nothing away by revealing they both survive.

This is a film almost twenty years in the making. Directors such as Guillermo del Toro, Jan de Bont, and most recently Eli Roth have been attached. Finally, it was entrusted to Jon Turteltaub, the very embodiment of a safe pair of hands. The result is a film that does exactly what you expect it to but not a lot more.

It hits all the marks and the underwater scenes are quite impressive, but it doesn’t go that little bit further. It’s curiously lacking in humour; even Jaws (1975) managed a laugh or two along the way.

Jaws is also, I would suggest, a big part of this film's problem. The spectre of Spielberg’s classic, and to a lesser extent Deep Blue Sea (1999) hang heavy on The Meg. There are scenes which are so obviously inspired/stolen that there isn’t much Turteltaub can do to freshen them up. The film’s self-awareness hits the wall in a couple of key moments and instead of any fresh twist we get ‘will this do’.

His take on the crowded beach sequence, for example, is shot more or less exactly as Spielberg’s – there’s even a whiny kid who wants to go into the water – but because he’s already told us what’s going to happen next the scene lacks tension.

Statham is good and gritty and, given his aquatic background, it’s surprising it’s taken movie makers so long to get him into the water. But even he can’t handle dialogue like: ‘Man versus Meg isn’t a fight. Its slaughter.’

Actually a few more lines like that and a few more tongues wedged into cheeks wouldn’t have been a bad thing. As it is The Meg is just sufficiently good to be entertaining, but not bad enough to be a classic.

Mission: Impossible - Fallout continues to set a high bar for action movies

It’s an indication of the maturity of this franchise; six movies spanning more than twenty years that with this latest episode Tom Cruise and his team allow themselves the luxury of a sequel. There’s enough depth of storytelling, character and generic tropes in Mission: Impossible – Fallout to create a spectacularly satisfying stand-alone film which also fits neatly into the existing M: I canon.

In Fallout we have the return of the villainous Solomon Lane (Sean Harris) from the fifth film and his Syndicate goes even further back to the original TV show. The enigmatic Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson) features again from the fifth movie, Mrs Hunt (Michelle Monaghan) is back from the third one and a cameo in the fourth, and of course the ever reliable Luther (Ving Rhames) is on his sixth outing. There’s new blood as well. Not least the shamefully underused Vanessa Kirby as The White Witch, and Henry Cavill in perhaps his best role as the menacing Walker.

At the heart of it all of course is Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt, along with Rhames the series’ only ever-present. There’s a body of material to be drawn on here especially in Hunt’s characterisation. The end of the film, for example, relies on a skillset you may have forgotten from the second movie. He’s been doing this for more than 20 years so what keeps him going? The wording of the trademark mission message ‘should you choose to accept it’, makes an interesting subtext. Why does he continue to make that choice?

Although no less dynamic, Cruise manages to make Hunt a little more thoughtful here. As a colleague pointed out Cruise, now 56, approaches each of Hunt’s action stunts with a slight reluctance as if he knows his knees and ankles are going to pay for it in the morning.

The one thing that remains impossible however is the plot. Mission: Unfathomable might be a better title. This time the IMF are looking for three missing plutonium cores which can create three nuclear bombs capable of massive devastation. It doesn’t really matter who has them at any given time or why anyone wants them; the cores are a plot device and they do their job superbly. The quest for the cores keeps the plot moving along at breakneck speed.

Everyone has a motive, sometimes more than one, and everyone is out to double-cross everyone else or so it seems. Don’t worry, every 20 minutes or so screenwriter Chris McQuarrie stop for quite an elegant re-cap exercise. Although I completely understood why Henry Cavill asks at one point ‘Why do you have to make this so bleeping complicated?’ Or words to that effect.

In these days when big budget movies, no matter how honourable their intentions at the start, all tend to end up as a soupy morass of CGI, I’m thinking about Wonder Woman for example, it is refreshing to see the Mission: Impossible franchise continue to rely on good old-fashioned film making skills.

The cinematography (Rob Hardy) and editing (Eddie Hamilton) are absolutely superb and the locations are expertly chosen. I’ve said before in reference to this franchise that it relies on Ian Fleming’s concept of ‘thrilling cities’; exotic background locales which make the foreground action so much more interesting. Locations have seldom been so well used as they are here. And all of it happens under the inestimable supervision of Tommy Gormley, the first assistant director, who makes the cinematic train run on time and here is also, deservedly, credited as co-producer.

The combination of all of this is a film which feels real even though you know it can’t possibly be. The action sequences are jaw-dropping; writer-director McQuarrie gets that car chases depend on what you miss not what you hit for excitement, and the helicopter finale is simply the best I’ve seen. Throughout all of this McQuarrie, for me a much underrated talent, relentlessly maintains the film’s forward momentum.

At a whisker under two and a half hours we are entitled to the occasional lull but it never feels slow. McQuarrie the screenwriter has written a perfectly structured screenplay for McQuarrie the director to take advantage of it.

At the core though is Cruise; the real stellar force of this franchise. The vanity of the Impossible Missions Force is that team members can be swapped out at will, as they were in the first two films. But we all know there is no franchise without Cruise. After six movies he brings gravitas to Hunt and provides a surprisingly emotional foundation for an action movie.

Why does he choose these missions? I don’t know. Will he choose another one? I’d bet on it.

The Rock is in a hard place...and the audience will love it

One of my favourite genre movies is Tremors (1990) in which a small Texas town finds itself under threat from a swarm of giant sandworms. It’s a creature feature but what makes it so good is that director Ron Underwood knows it’s a creature feature and knows what the audience expects. So he uses all the genre clichés – or tropes if you’re getting fancy about it – but does so in such a way that they inform the story rather than inhibit it. The makers of the early Final Destination films did exactly the same thing.

Which brings us to Skyscraper, the second movie of the summer to star The Rock. Two Dwayne Johnson movies in one summer – what a time to be alive. Like Tremors, Skyscraper knows its foundation myths and while this is film fairly and squarely aimed at modern audiences, it has its roots in the past. There are traces of Seventies disaster movies, there is an obvious nod to Die Hard (1988) and there is even a passing glance in the direction of Orson Welles epic finale to The Lady from Shanghai (1947). But all of these improve rather than restrict the storytelling.

Johnson is Will Sawyer a former hostage negotiator turned security consultant who gets the chance to bid for the job of his life, the contract for The Pearl. This is the world’s largest building and is as hi-tech as all get out. Sawyer and his wife Sarah (Neve Campbell) are having the time of their lives in Hong Kong but, as you would expect, there is a catch.

His erstwhile boss has something that the bad guys need. It’s a computer drive but, if I’m honest, I’m not sure what it does or why they need it. Anyway this is our McGuffin and everyone wants to get it. The bad guys decide the best way to do this is to set fire to the building.

The problem is that his wife and kids are in The Pearl and while everyone thinks it’s empty Johnson has to get inside the burning building, ideally around the 100^th floor, above the fire line, and save the day.

That’s it in plot terms. David Mamet says drama hinges on two things; what does a character want and why does it have to be now? In screenwriting terms these are known as ‘stakes’ and Johnson’s stakes are impeccably established. He wants to save his family and he needs to do it now before they are burned alive.

Skyscraper pretty much hits the ground running. Johnson’s character is established in a pre-credit scene in which a situation goes a bit pear-shaped and he ends up losing a leg. The consequent prosthetic plays a huge part in the rest of the story – Sawyer’s artificial limb is like Thor’s hammer, Captain America’s shield, and Indiana Jones’s whip rolled into one.

It’s this level of invention that makes Skyscraper such fun. The plot runs on train tracks, calamity after calamity is heaped upon our hero and armed only with his wits, enormous quantities of duct tape, and his trusty prosthetic, Sawyer has to save the day.

One of the joys of the film is, in these days of over-reliance on CGI and animation, it relies almost entirely on physical effects. Those are real stunts with real stunt people and while there is a lot of green screen for background, there is real physical effort going into this. In addition, the cinematography by Robert Elswit is superb. Elswit is well known in indie circles for his work with Paul Thomas Anderson but, as his work on the Mission: Impossible franchise shows he is something of an action specialist. You can almost feel the heat and smell the smoke here.

Johnson does what Johnson does, and he does it very well; he is the right man in the wrong place at the right time. His physicality is incorporated into the characterisation but even so, the requirements of the role push him to the limit. And, in keeping with most of his movies, he does not hog the action. The female characters in his films tend to have a good deal of agency in the outcome of the story and Neve Campbell is no exception here.

Skyscraper isn’t perfect, the breadcrumbs in the script are a bit obvious, but it is tremendous fun and harks back to a simpler cinematic time while at the same time making the audience gasp with novelty and excitement.