Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs

The least appealing title in cinemas for a while, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs explodes all over our screens in a welter of primary colours and a fair amount of brouhaha. We all expect the better animations to throw in a few laughs for the grown-ups, and indeed Pixar usually manage to squeeze in entire adult subtexts running parallel with all the kid-related fun, but did I really hear one critic last week say that this had a ‘nightmarish Lynchian feel’? (Yes, I did).

I dragged my heels, despite that. This had more to do with not wanting to actually say the words, “one for Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, please” out loud, than anything else, I’ll be honest. I tried to summon up a feasible scenario in my head as I waited in line: my kids had complimentary tickets and were waiting in the foyer; my date was already in there; I’m the director trying to avoid the crowds. It was never going to work. In the end I endured the withering gaze of the ticket booth girl and ploughed ahead. Nightmarish Lynchian kids’ cartoons are to be encouraged and embraced after all.

Meatballs is a robust slice of whimsy set on an island off the coast of the States (an island that’s hidden on maps beneath the A of Atlantic Ocean, which was a neat touch). The main industry is, or at least was, sardines, but the whole business is in decline. In the middle of things is Flint, a young chap who doesn’t want to be part of his Dad’s ailing tackle shop, but would much rather be an inventor. Unfortunately, all his previous inventions (which, charmingly, make smart little cameos throughout) have been utter plop.

No matter. Flint is a determined young man and he determines to make something truly memorable. On the day of the grand unveiling of the sardine theme park that the island believes will alter its sinking fortunes, he ruins a young TV weathergirl’s day by launching his new gismo, a machine that makes food out of plain water. It all goes disastrously, there are numerous calamities and the island seems ruined. Flint’s machine is rocketed up into the sky, presumably never to be seen again, and everyone is humiliated on national TV.

Then, miraculously, with the food making gadget floating in the clouds, it starts to rain cheeseburgers.

You heard.

Then jelly beans, then steaks, then ice-cream. In fact, anything Flint programmes into his computer appears to fall out of the sky. This isn’t quite as much fun as you might think, but it’s fun nevertheless, and the kids in the audience seemed to love it. It’s only when things threaten to go awry, and the machine begins to interact with a violent storm (the spaghetti tornado is fabulous) that it gets significantly darker and a whole lot weirder.

This necessitates a trip up into the clouds to see just how much Flint’s unmonitored tech has mutated and expanded. Now, I have to say that at this point it all gets pretty frenetic and there is much silliness. However, deep within this last twenty minutes lie some brilliant visual gags (there is a kung fu tiger claw joke that flies by, but had me in stitches) and some downright certifiable gear that I was very unsure about (surely that wasn’t a giant spewing backside?). But it is thinking, thinking, thinking all the time: I mean, who knew anaphylactic shock could be so amusing?

Still, it is most definitely a children’s movie, and not the new Meet The Feebles. Let’s just get that clear. As much fun as this is, and it’s a lot, I’d come up just a little short of Lynchian. I feel a little let down, in all honesty. But not that much.

Pontypool

There’s a grand tradition of the movies doing the radio. That is to say, of using the radio to provide a different slant on action that might otherwise be obvious or hackneyed. Radio is blind, it relies on the spoken word rather than the visual, and so the dynamic is different. Films about radio are different still, and they are curios to be savoured, when done with intelligence.

I’ve always liked Oliver Stone’s Talk Radio, for instance. It’s a sly, manipulative, wordy, entertaining and at times fanciful retelling of events inspired by the death of Alan Berg in 1984 (Berg was radio talk show host in Denver, Colorado known for rather flamboyantly expressed liberal views and for taking on people who disagreed with him; he was shot and killed at home by members of a white nationalist group called The Order). Talk Radio features a stonking performance by Eric Bogosian (“Tell me something I-I’m curious. How do you dial a phone with a straitjacket on?”) who weaves and dances and gurns all over the place, because Stone – for once – has to sit the fuck down and just point his camera.

Good Morning, Vietnam is pretty much same ball park, of course. Big issues, simple camera, lots of words, powerful performance. Job done.

So, aware that Pontypool was a movie based in a radio station, I was expecting something of the same order. And, yes, you do get that, but there is something entirely unexpected here thrown in with everything else.

It starts impressively; a single blue sound wave stretching across a black screen, crinkling, as our host Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie) tells a local story about a cat gone missing. They expand, the wave and the story, as voices get bigger and opinions come into it. It’s a hell of a hook, and McHattie has a hell of a voice, grizzled and world-weary, it betrays his roots as a one-time big-hitter sent in disgrace to the backwaters of rural Canada. The next scene sees Mazzy at a stop light in the early morning dark on his way to work, hindered by a snow storm and an overwhelming desire to turn round and go back from where he came. This tells you a lot about him in very simple gestures.

Suddenly, and with immense creepiness, he is torn from his self-pity by a woman outside the car. Dressed elegantly, and certainly not fit for the weather, she stares in at him and mouths something. By the time he has reached for the window control she has faded into the gloom. Nice start.

A little spooked, Mazzey arrives at the station where his put-upon team, Sydney (Lisa Houle) and Laurel Ann (Georgina Reilly) are rolling their eyes at the errant jock’s lateness. As he settles in behind the booth he is soon waxing lyrical about local issues and global warming, and ignoring producer Sydney’s requests to take it down a notch. He’s pretty entertaining, it must be said, with a Charlie Bronson much-lived-in quality to his face and voice, and a great deal of seen-it-all-before trailer park wisdom, he rolls along, sometimes in the foreground, sometimes in the background, cheerfully ignoring the many exhortations to him to keep it civil.

Sydney and Laurel Ann (Reilly is excellent) contribute to an ambience that seems natural and established, and so it is more than a little poignant when the trio are shocked by reports coming in (mostly from their travelling weather man) that large scale disturbances are happening all over the local area.

These disruptions increase in regularity, and intensity. It is all the more shocking because we are trapped in the radio station, and often inside Mazzey’s booth, the only access we have to the chaos being the sound from outside. A chaos that seems to have them, and their tiny radio station as its epicentre. As their external reporter’s bulletins begin to descend into insane babble, and then Laurel Ann starts to speak erratically, Mazzey and Sydney realise that whatever is affecting the population, is being communicated by…communication.

Do they tell the world and risk spreading the malaise, or keep quiet?

Pontypool is an unusual slant on the horror thriller. It is filled with dialogue, and has just a handful of action spikes, all coming late on. Rather like Rio Bravo, there is a lot of wordy waiting around, and a sudden shocking last few minutes. Sometimes daring to walk up to pure silliness before facing it down with a dose of tension or a splash of fierce exposition, it is never less than entertaining and as thoughtfully executed as you could hope for.

Spread the word.

Gamer

It was inevitable, I guess. A bit like the infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters eventually producing the complete works of Shakespeare (in between furious bouts of wanking, presumably), I suppose that eventually we had to encounter a movie that was 100% comprised of bits from other films.

And I don’t just mean steals and homages and eyebrow-raising similarities strung out along the way. No, I mean, frame by frame copies, a sort of reverse scatter gun approach where all the other movies made up until this point, pepper images into a big vat of celluloid gloop and out comes a fully formed film. That movie is Gamer, and it is the most graphic view of how we will all go to Hell since Pieter Brueghel wondered, “hmm, let’s paint something with a bit more oomph today”.

In a dystopian futu-…

*bump*

*crack*

Kkkkzkkxk…kkkk…Zzxxxz…bbr…brrr

Brrr

*click*

Operator: What is the nature of your emergency?
Caller: Yes hello? I need an ambulance as soon as possible, please.
Operator: OK sir, what’s your address?
Caller: TheseGloryDays
Operator: Is that the Internet?
Caller: er, yes. A small part of it.
Operator: OK sir, and what’s the problem?
Caller: We have a gentleman here that needs help. He’s not functioning and we’re trying to talk to him, but he’s not …
Operator: He’s not…?
Caller: He’s just ranting, rambling. Incoherent stuff.
Operator: OK, OK. Is he unconscious? Breathing?
Caller: He’s…he’s…[noises off, screaming]
Operator: Is that him?
Caller: He…just keeps shouting.
Operator: Alright, is he on the floor, where’s he at right now?
Caller: He’s by the PC, hitting the keys with his fists.
Operator: OK let’s get him on the floor.
Caller: OK…Ah…no. That’s not gonna happen…[the word 'terminator' is clearly heard]
Operator: We need to get him down to the floor. We’re on our way there, we’re on our way but I’m going to do as much as I can to help you over the phone. We’re already on our way.
Caller: Oh god, he’s…standing now.
Operator: Is he attacking you, sir?
Caller: No, he’s heading towards the shelf.
Operator: The…?
Caller: Shelf, the shelf with all his DVDs on it…no! Yes! He’s attacking me!
Operator: Is he attacking you, sir?
Caller: Yes, he’s throwing the DVDs at me.
Operator: Oh god
Caller: Running Man…Clockwork Or-…ah!…Logan’s Run…he…
Operator: Sir?
Caller: Some Japanese stuff…[a scream]…sorry! Sorry! Korean! Korean!
Operator: Jesus.
Caller: Sin City…now…what? Xbox games…Call O-…Aaarrgh!
Operator: Sir?
Operator: Sir?

kkbb..brrkk…reeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Operator: Sir?

Operator: Sir!

The Butterfly Tattoo

Phillip Pullman’s back-catalogue is getting quite the run-out these days, and so, now, parallel universes away from His Dark Materials, we have The Butterfly Tattoo, a smart and considered Romeo & Juliet re-think.

Chris (Noah Huntly..sorry, Duncan Stuart [it's just that he's the dead spit]), an Oxford local, is likeable; a smart but inexperienced and naïve lad, he fills his days dogsbodying for an Oxford electrical firm, dreaming of the future. Back home, his Mom and Dad have split up and he manages to hold it together, doing his best to get on with both parents and looking forward to his time at Uni. Through a brush with a couple of odious toffs, he meets the feisty Jenny (Jessica Blake, in an exceptional debut), and his life turns upside down.

Jenny takes him out and shows him another world of pot-smoking and gigs, a slightly uncomfortable and spikey existence, with which he seems ill-equipped to deal.

During these early stages, there is a stiltedness that is perfectly natural, and a wonderfully well-staged examination of young romance. Gently, with no great revelation, we accept that Jenny is damaged, although the information she offers is carefully played down. There is no real detail; Blake plays it without whistles and bells, but simply flags it with neat precision.

They are victims of outside influences. Mean-sprited Piers (Dan Morgan), previously rejected by Jenny, manages to undermine Chris’s confidence, and his boss, Barry, a Walter Mitty character with uncertain links to a shady and violent past, acts as a conduit to a dark and disruptive history that threatens to explode into the present.

The links to Shakespeare’s romance are inescapable and the conclusion, foreshadowed in an arresting opening few moments, is swiftly and darkly engaged with. The Butterfly Tattoo isn’t perfect, but it is an admirable attempt at showing how young love flourishes and the power it can wield. An unknown cast, a soundtrack of unsigned bands and a scattering of unfashionable Oxford locations make this an interesting and thoughtful diversion. Director Hawkins has a future, certainly, but Jessica Blake may just need to get ready for something really quite stellar.

The Final Destination

The Final Destination has done pretty good business, aptly performing a real smash and grab raid on attendances in its first two weeks (it topped the charts in the US and UK recently). But now it is fading swiftly. This tells us something. This tells us it’s shit, and that people have worked that out.

Yes, yes, yes, of course, I am aware that such things should be self-evident to begin with, and admittedly I’m somewhat appalled it has made such a big noise at the end of the summer. Clearly, the prospect of seeing absurdly staged death scenes in 3D has dragged people along. I don’t know. I mean, I only went because a) I got in for nothing, and b) I don’t write for the Daily Mail, which, I feel, weirdly obliges me to ’see’ a movie if I want to review it.

But, yes, surely it was obvious? It’s the third sequel of a franchise that should never have been a franchise in the first place. OK, so the first film had a bit of chutzpah about it (one genuinely memorable shock, a bit of craft in the use of character names, and more than enough energy to keep things rocking along) but beyond that, did it deserve to me remade? And re-made? And remade? No, of course not. They are all, after all, the same movie. Someone will bleat that this is 3D, though. It is. It doesn’t help. It’s still a steaming stool, whether you think it’s glooping out of the screen towards you, or just a flat excremental image. You can’t polish a turd.

No, the reason for The Final Destination is simple. It’s a quick get ‘em in exercise, and hurry, because we probably only have a month before anyone cottons on.

Still, they don’t detain you too long. 82 minutes it lasts: the same amount of time that Nicole Richie, whoever she is, spent in jail for drug driving; the same amount of time that Michael Jackson’s doctor delayed calling 911. Is that a sign? Those brainless dunderheads who believe in numerology could probably rustle you up an unconvincing theory as to why it’s important.

I’ll just go with coincidence, but, yes, 82 minutes. And I think I probably would rather have been locked in a cell, or curled lifeless on the bedroom floor, than sit through this shocking waste of time and resources.