Better Angels

This 2019 movie is the best version of Charlie’s Angels, so far. It’s a supremely charming combination of topical sci-fi adventure (about broadcast electricity), plus engagingly witty action-comedy that cleverly, and very skilfully, avoids all the silly parody, or the often dumbly contrived jokes, that marred previous cinema efforts in this franchise. But still maintains levels of good humour now inventively centred on the characters, instead of merely spoofy caricatures for its crime-busting trio. 

It’s also the first ANGELS scenario to be written and directed by a woman, so this distinctly benefits from socially-aware actresses keen to ‘make a difference’ here with roundly feminist attitudes. The result delivers plenty of great fun with freshly stylish pragmatism. This is not only an admittedly-laudable, and next-generation, project that’s aimed at creating or reframing positive role-models. It shrugs off nearly all the faults of earlier gleefully-daft cinema versions and re-imagines the TV show’s basic format.

Elizabeth Banks, who also co-stars here as a key BOSSley ‘lieutenant’ (other ‘Bosleys’ are played by Djimon Hounsou, and Patrick Stewart), directs this re-fashioned media property so that her upgraded movie sequel is more than simply an updated expression of this usually awkwardly-flawed property (see 2011’s merely average TV remake). Newly developed for international scale, it’s an inventive attempt at re-branding all inherent qualities of the small-screen 1976 original’s cheesecake formula, viably re-vamped to be in tune with post-modern ‘sisterhood’ concerns. 

It’s probably better appreciated if you’ve not actually seen Kristen Stewart before in her five-movie TWILIGHT saga. With all of that career baggage left behind, she makes quirky rebel Sabina an honestly likeable heiress-turned-heroine, at first clashing, and then chiming well enough, with ex-MI6 spy Jane (Ella Balinski), so they’re in synch for the dance-floor choreography. Meanwhile, in lively ‘Candide’ style, the new-girl techie Elena (Naomi Scott, POWER RANGERS), offers effective intro-POV angles for any uninitiated viewers on these Angels gone global.

Imaginarium

While Tideland and The Brothers Grimm (both 2005) were somewhat flawed genre pictures, Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus (2009), is a surprisingly delightful compendium of themes and imagery from the auteur’s back catalogue, especially his loose trilogy of Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988), plus The Fisher King (1991). 

As the head of a strong cast, Christopher Plummer is excellent as tiredly immortal Dr Parnassus who presides over a ‘magic mirror’ portal to whimsically animated realms of subconscious thought, both touchstone anchor and escapist release, to the fabulous primacy of ‘story’ which “sustains the universe” for all humanity. Disrupting its soul-grinding routine, the initially-amnesic ‘victim’ of a lynch–mob, Tony (Heath Ledger’s final bow, though the character’s played in dreamscape appearances by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell), revitalises a rundown carnival caravan - from the appealing charm of ye olde travelling sideshow to the slick freshness of post-modern street-theatre.

Trouble looms for Parnassus’ troupe when he’s reminded that repayment is due soon for his Faustian pact with Nick (Tom Waits), and so his daughter, ‘scrumpy’ Valentina (elfish model, Lily Cole - ‘Lettuce’ in Sally Potter’s Rage) is forfeit on her 16th birthday. There are fantastical Monty Python-ish wonderland visions beyond a stage facade, song ‘n’ dancing numbers, building structures or unrealities fall apart like crooked schemes unravelling, for topsy–turvy surrealism wherein the devil ‘walks’ on clouds and London police wrestle drunken bystanders to passivity, while (un-)lucky souls return to Earth from ‘acid’-trips of blissful exuberance, and gambling for a secret prize of redemption is worth a sacrifice or two.

“Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all immediately.” Please give generously, though - if you enjoyed the show. Gilliam may well have become a sentimental old fool - still believing, passionately, that the grandest of all possible dreams are simple romantic ones, even if they have no guarantee of a happy ending - but, Imaginarium... is a fairy-tale journey that’s worth taking, repeatedly. As an auteur’s medley, this sorely needed to be more than sum of its parts... And so it is!

Pacific Rim

For years after first watching my favourite Toho kaiju movie, Destroy All Monsters (1968), I wondered what a blockbuster version, with Hollywood special effects, would look like. I enjoyed the US remake of Godzilla (1998), but it whets the genre appetite for even greater scaled creature-feature mayhem. Could new standards of photo-real animation generate some anticipatory excitement for the ultimate monsterama - like Robot Jox versus Lovecraftian beasts - for bringing recent anime, where big mecha fight giant things, to life?

While the wildly different perspectives of British picture Monsters (2010), and very American game-derivative, Battleship (2012), examined - somewhat blindly - the big feet and head of such an imaginary movie-elephant, Pacific Rim (2013), as directed by genius Guillermo del Toro, is a valiant attempt to depict the whole mega-animal in a native cinematic habitat of comicbook colour and magnificently spectacular action. A winningly off-beat combination of Independence Day pulp sci-fi heroics and weird science, wearing the fan-boy credentials of its 50th anniversary Harryhausen-tribute on its sleeve. With tongue-in-cheek appeal, Pacific Rim focuses upon Top Gun styled pilots of the Jaeger machines as its warrior elite, unlike Marvel’s Iron Man 3 (2013), where the unacknowledged true hero is Jarvis - surely the most undervalued A.I. of recent years, despite orchestrating combat systems in that busy movie’s battle scenes.

The various alien behemoths are amusingly reminiscent of many other designs from creature movies. Whether in coastal defence or pre-emptive nuclear strike mode the smack-down encounters between Jaegers and kaiju are vividly depicted without a hint of the crazily edited havoc popularised by Transformers (2007) and its sequels. And yet, del Toro’s epic skates happily over the highly implausible, and completely ignores the physically impossible (even eight Chinook helicopters would be quite unable to airlift such massive robots!). When the screen shows us this much fun, it’s easy to overlook the bad SF content, and accept Pacific Rim as a gloriously irreverent exercise in fantasy. Just set aside your cynicism for 130 minutes and revel in the harmless nightmare of it all!    

Gunn controls

The very best DC movies are Zack Snyder’s new classics, leading to his 4-hour epic JUSTICE LEAGUE. I doubt James Gunn will ever improve on MAN OF STEEL because their approaches to comicbook material seem to be from opposite directions. Snyder treats all the fantasy and sci-fi combo for superheroes quite seriously (as it should be, I think, since that’s the most difficult adaptation). He turns colourful costumes and juvenile humour into dramatic action scenes.

Having re-watched Marvel's GOTG 3 and Gunn’s DC sequel THE SUICIDE SQUAD, it’s clear that when he's not making the fantastical horrors of ultra-violence look too ridiculously cartoonish for comfort, Gunn prefers genre TV soap opera, with enough garish or cloying sentimentality to make even Disney fans squirm. Gunn eagerly pokes fun at the conventions of superheroic adventure, while Snyder promotes its traditional inspirational qualities. There’s nothing much in the new SUPERMAN teaser that we haven’t already seen from this media franchise, except perhaps that a whole bunch of other DC heroes - Supergirl, Green Lantern, Mr Terrific, Hawkgirl, Metamorpho, etc. - could relegate Superman to a mere guest-star in his own movie. And, it's quite funny how the new SUPERMAN movie's Krypto looks more like Snowy from TINTIN, than Superdog from TV show TITANS.

Cloud Atlas

Oddly intriguing, and sometimes fascinating, but, ultimately, quite frustrating, CLOUD ATLAS was directed by Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run), with Lana - formerly Larry - and Andy Wachowski forming a separate crew. Based upon the novel (that I still have not read) by David Mitchell, it reaches from the hidden mind to the outré limits, while it explores the chronoplex destinies of individuals - all bearing the same comet-shaped birthmark - via six stories set in different eras. Revealed in fragments, these include a comedic 1970s conspiracy with Tarantinoesque blaxploitation gags, a post-holocaust island of tribal cannibalism and technocratic survivalists, a farce about escapees from a British old folks’ home, and the fate of a 22nd century Korean ‘disposable’ waitress rescued from enslavement.

Cloud Atlas cobbles together vanilla sci-fi thrills with philosophical banalities about how an invisible touch of crimes and kindness lingers, to gain weight affecting unpredictably dark futures, where obedience to corporate emblems on bright soaring towers, has entirely replaced nationalistic enthusiasm for multi-coloured rags up the flagpole of patriotism. Under the dogmatic rules of social Darwinism, cannibalism is the last taboo; and Cloud Atlas deploys, quite repetitively, the dilemma of unethical recycling, as if copied from the infamous final revelations of Soylent Green, and A Boy And His Dog, with a grisly sincerity about that amoral mentality. 

Yet it gathers portentous blathering: on spontaneous creative sparks, finding a reliable muse, some bleak introspection or nostalgic reverie, inspiration derived from limitless hope, and quaint little fables about how truth can wreck beliefs. There’s a lot going on here, but the glass is not half full, or half empty; it is cracked and leaking. At its heart is a musical composition, a ‘Cloud Atlas’ symphony, that somehow resonates across/ transcends time periods - from historical to futuristic - that provide multiple/ po-mo roles for the main cast (Jim Broadbent is the best of them in repertory theatre mode), in a quirkily novelistic quantum reality concocted by trippy grey convolutions of imaginative thinking round narrative corners. Can you cog the true-true of it now? 

It’s an epic but rambling effort and, this being a Wachowskis opus, the makers cannot resist inserting some gratuitous cyberpunk action scenes (very much like Casshern or Natural City), with a rebel hero on the loose in the spectacular Asian megalopolis. You might love bits of it, but I doubt many viewers will agree on exactly which bits are great and which are not. Perhaps, as befitting its myth of irregularities, Cloud Atlas is most genuinely ‘entertaining’ (in anticipation) before seeing it, then again (overall, in contemplation) after viewing. Such is the indie blockbuster conceit of this ambitiously cross-genre TykWacho formulation that its trick also works a second time round, and will possibly repeat its engrossing, curiously adultescent ADHD, appeal for a third, or fourth play, too. It does not offer enlightenment, but it is an uplifting movie.

 

The most profound influence upon Cloud Atlas is Terry Gilliam. Although rejecting his oeuvre’s delightful flights of whimsy, a greater sense of realism in Cloud Atlas is woven tightly around a core of urgent romanticism that’s very Gilliamesque in tone. Think of his Time Bandits, Brazil, and especially The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen, in particular (but also 12 Monkeys, and The Fisher King), and the cumulative impact of Gilliam’s story-teller idiom and ironic humour, on this paradigm of acutely cinematic expression, becomes clear. Whatever positive/ negative comments you may have read/ heard about Cloud Atlas, I strongly suggest that you give it a try. You have nothing to lose... except three precious hours of your life.