Only two movies for December…

First up, Another Earth is the kind of movie you never expect and is absolutely one of a kind. It’s beautiful and tragic, melancholy and hopeful, poignant and bittersweet, and otherworldly (both figuratively and somewhat literally). A mistake results in a horrible accident that ruins the lives of a composer, and a young girl. As their lives come closer together, we see the extent to which fate has not been kind to either, and how there might still be a distant hope. The light sci-fi hook is perfectly situated in the background, neither dominating proceedings nor being entirely irrelevant. It’s the gun that will be fired, but for the most part the shot is never seen, just the holes it causes. Stunning, and brilliant. A must see film. (See my Another Earth Twitter review).

Finally, Hugo is a somewhat disappointing attempt by Martin Scorsese to do a kids film. A few moments set-up as silent movies aside, it lacks the magic and splendour to really pull this off. The pacing is off: the first hour is far too slow to watch as an adult, I can’t imagine any child sitting through it comfortably. The second half is better, but the pay-off we hope for never really emerges. It’s nice, but it’s not great. Sasha Baron-Cohen manages to inject some character as an awkward station guard, but most of the rest of the cast never really do much. The much-lauded 3D in it adds absolutely nothing; there’s little in here to give it any impact. A little slow and disappointing, but ultimately okay. (See my Hugo Twitter review).

The winner for December is… Another Earth.

For November’s Film Fight, there are 3 films slowly fading out of memory…

First up, We Need To Talk About Kevin is a relentlessy brutal look at another side of a horror story. We see the after-effects of a high-school massacre from a particularly interesting point of view, who then provides insight into the life of the perpetrator and the effect he had on her life. Tilda Swinton is fantastic throughout, almost unfailingly crushed by her life and left to deal with the consequences. It’s her character’s story, a tragedy that she feels she caused that becomes written through her body and face. The editing is exceptional, delving fluidly through memories and the present (both horrible and mundane) with a fractious momentum. Incredible, moving, and hard to watch. An excellent film. (See my We Need To Talk About Kevin Twitter review).

In The Ides of March, George Clooney adds another great directing credit to his modest list. The movie has an exceptionally strong cast (Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Clooney himself et al) showing the dark side of politics: continuously spinning the lies and dirt into something that looks better, of strategising and back-stabbing to end in the best position. As you might expect, the cast do their jobs well, and Gosling puts in another top notch performance. Without spoiling anything, the film takes a turn for the dark halfway through, and really comes into its own when we see what each of the leads is willing to do in their own interests. Very good film. (See my The Ides of march Twitter review). Note: as a first, my Twitter review appears to have gone missing. I’m leaving the link in case I ever figure out how to get it back.

Finally, Snowtown is an unsettling look at the true story of Australian’s worst serial killers, and the impact they had on one young man’s life. At times it can be gory, but it’s the pervading atmostphere and stifling control that really bring up a sickening feeling. The naturalistic, sombre direction helps build this awful tension into something unbearable. The ending is very quick, and it would have been better to have seen a little more, but the movie works well. Good, if horrific. (See my Snowtown Twitter review).

This month’s winner is… We Need To Talk About Kevin. It’s horrible, but works on every level. A late contender for film of the year.

Yes, I’m aware that we’re 5 days from the end of the year and I haven’t put up the Film Fight for October yet. If you’d like to believe so, pretend to yourself that I was merely building dramatic tension.

First up, Warrior is something of an anomaly as far as fight movies go: it tries very hard to have a plot, beyond the obvious underdog story of so many of its peers. It’s not entirely successful, but the story of a broken family, an emotionally dead marine, a drunk father, and a brother going under financially at least stand out. That said, the main focus was always going to be the fights themselves and it’s here that the film does very well. It manages to show the MMA at its best: a mix of brutish power (as exemplified by Tom Hardy) and extremely technical floor and locking work (as shown by Joel Edgerton). It doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of the sport and is all the better for it. Not a classic, by any stretch, but a worthwhile watch.  (See my Warrior Twitter review).

Real Steel manages to surprise, not by building a great film, but by being so damn entertaining. The writing is poor, with both the structure and dialogue being overly formulaic and cheesy. The actors put in an okay performance, even though the romance between Hugh Jackman and Evangeline Lilly falls flat at every turn. None of that doesn’t seem to matter too much, though, because by the end you’ll be cheering for the little silent robot to beat its Goliath-like rival. It builds up so much hope and optimism that you can’t avoid getting hopeful yourself. A feel-good, family film. (See my Real Steel Twitter review).

Kevin Smith has done some classic work, mostly in the comedy and indie space, with Clerks and Chasing Amy rightfully taking their places as classics. Red State is something quite different: it’s part-horror, about kidnapping by outsiders (in this case an extreme religious cult), and part-satire, about how some governments have historically handled a siege situation. The two halves don’t marry up perfectly, with the switch seeming like two unrelated films being shoved together. The satire feels a little heavy-handed in places, and could have worked a little better by doing a little more showing, and less telling. The performances throughout, however, are excellent; veering madly between keen observation and scenery-chewing fervour that works perfectly; Michael Parks puts in a particularly notable performance as the pastor at the centre of the film. Very good. (See my Red State Twitter review). Note: this is the only film I’ve ever admitted into the Film Fight that I didn’t see at the cinema. I saw it on Netflix while I was in the US, whilst it was just exiting the cinema in the UK, making it a special case.

Finally, Moneyball is better than most sports films, at least, for someone who has little interest in sports. It follows a small baseball team giving up on the traditional ways of finding talented players (which are too costly) and instead going for a statistical approach. It manages to find just enough heart in all of this to make us care about the pressures of the general manager, and the players he buys who would otherwise be overlooked. It doesn’t do enough to make us care enough about an awkward final 30 minutes, where not much happens and then the film ends abruptly. Likeable, but with serious pacing issues. (See my Moneyball Twitter review).

Making my final pick for this month was tough, but I think the winner is Red State largely due to the excellent cast.

There are lots of complaints from the creative industries, in particular the movie and music industries, about the threats that they are under from piracy and new forms of digital distribution. It’s often, but not always, the industry itself that complains and not the creatives. The outcome of this has been worrying in several ways.

Copyright terms have been extended to 70 years for sound recordings which, given the age we live in, is a terrible idea. Copyright, as with patents, was devised as a way to incentivise creatives to create new works by offering them exclusive control over those works for a limited period of time. That last part is extremely important here: why would we, as a society, risk our cultural heritage to benefit a handful of people? We wouldn’t and we shouldn’t. If we allow copyrights to be continually extended, there is a greater chance that we will lose, forever, those recordings that we were trying to protect in the first place.

Moreover, why would we want to increase the length of time it takes to be able to access our cultural heritage? If we could argue that it would encourage artists to produce more work because they knew that it would be protected for their lifetimes, then maybe that would do it; but we know that this is not the case. The vast majority of the money from term extension would go to record labels. We’d be given more money to people who already take the vast majority of the income from creative works for merely acting as intermediaries, while pushing most of the risk onto artists themselves.

The few artists who would benefit substantially from term extension are people like U2, The Beatles, and Cliff Richard i.e. giant name stars who are already multimillionaires. The vast majority of artists, who earn their living through touring, would see no meaningful benefit.

Essentially, we’d be losing more of our cultural heritage for a longer time, with nothing else to show for it, except for propping up the intermediaries of the industry who are unwilling to move with the times. This seems like a terrible idea to me.

Separately, we have the movie industry, who simply do not understand what consumers want but complain about declining revenues. It’s somewhat trite, at this point, to complain that the “cinema is best ads” are only being played to people sitting in a cinema and that the unskippable, lengthy and irritating anti-piracy warnings on DVD/blu-rays are only being shown to people who legitimately bought a copy of the film; trite, but still absolutely true. Perhaps barriers to watching a film, like these unskippable ads, or DRM that stops you watching the film at all, are part of the reason that people pirate movies?

That’s the thing: regardless of what’s happened before, we’re now at a point where some people pirate movies, and some people buy them. The key for the creative industries is a) not treat paying customers like thieves with constant annoyances, and b) trying to get non-customers over to the paying side.

Clearly, getting people to pay for something they’ve grown somewhat accustomed to getting for free is not easy. It’s a problem that’s been around for a long enough time that if it was, people would likely have done it by now. However, it might be worthwhile starting with some of the more obvious solutions:

• Make it as easy and quick to watch a legitimate copy of something as it is to watch a pirated copy. This should be a no-brainer. The arguments about having DRM on digital copies and on discs has already been lost. If people want to pirate movies or music, it’s trivially easy to do, whether it has DRM or not. Stop putting barriers in the way of people who want to give you their money and more of them will give you their money.
• Make legitimate copies as readily available as pirated copies. If you want to buy a digital copy of a movie, it’s extremely difficult to do so. There are basically no services (in the UK) where you can get access to a reasonable library of digital movies that can be bought to keep. If you want to buy a DVD, I can get my hands on pretty much anything that has been released. If you want a digital copy? No, you’re stuck with searching torrent sites. Simply make your content available in a free and open format and you’ll increase sales because, you know, it’s hard to make money when you aren’t selling the damn thing.
• Make legitimate copies as high quality as pirated copies. After pushing for the HD era for many years, encouraging uptake of HD TVs, accept that full HD is now the default. It is not the premium option, it’s what people expect. There’s no reason not to do this other than thinking you can push people for another £5-10 to get an HD version of the film. HD is the default, if for no other reason than that’s what you’re competing with on the pirated side.
• Make legitimate copies reasonably priced. Accept some basic truths. The era that people were willing to pay £15 for a brand new copy of something on day one is mostly gone (hardcore fans aside). You’re no longer competing against this weeks releases, you’re competing against every great film ever made. There are enough movies being made, and enough decades of classic film available, that there is simply no good reason to spend that much money on a great movie. We can all wait a few weeks until it drops down to a more reasonable price; and sales show that’s what most people do. That might be depressing, but it’s also true. That devaluation has already happened; and is another reason that when some people see “£22” for the HD BluRay version of a film its so far from what they think the film is worth, they’ll either wait it out or pirate it. Decrease the gap by decreasing the price. I know the industry reaction has been to try the opposite: increase the value of the package, but it’s not a great strategy. Most people don’t care about the special 10-disk edition that they’ll never watch, and it won’t be very long before people see that Triple-Play packs (Blu-Ray, DVD and crippled digital copy bundled together) are merely the illusion of value. If you want to sell bonus content to the hardcore fans, that’s fine; but most people simply won’t care.

Although there were a number of other films I’d like to have seen, I managed to see 4 films in September:

First up, Super 8 is a movie with a feel to it we haven’t seen in at least a decade. It’s a kids adventure film, in the mould of classics like The Goonies, updated slightly for modern sensibilities. At its heart, its a monster mystery about some kids making an amateur movie who get inadvertently involved in a massive cover-up. I’ll leave the mystery at that, but say that the execution is superb. JJ Abrams brings his usual directorial style of fast, moving action shots and lots of neat set-pieces. Its a little cheesy at times, but it’s a great film. (See my Super 8 Twitter review).

The Inbetweeners Movie is exactly what you’d expect: the near-to-the-knuckle, gross-out comedy of the TV show is transplanted into a setting that gives it a little more room. This isn’t ideal, though, as the plot and jokes are spread just a little to thin over the movie’s running time. It’s funny, but not fantastic, and if you hated the show this is not going to change your mind. (See my The Inbetweeners Movie Twitter review).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, unlike most modern spy films, is glacially slow. Not entirely to its detriment, you understand, it’s deliberately deliberate. Everything about it is supposed to ground the story, that of an investigation into a high-ranking mole in 1970s British Intelligence, in reality is much as possible. This continues through the natural lighting used throughout (many scenes are lit primarily by nearby windows) and the muted performances. That is, unfortunately, the one big downfall of the movie. In trying to be as understated as it can, nothing gets a chance to really shine through other than the plot. While that’s refreshing in many ways, it seems a shame to have such an incredible cast without giving them anything they can use to stand out. Still, it’s a good movie, if a little disappointing. (See my Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Twitter review).

Finally, Drive is a uniquely confident driving movie. Rather than being driven with abrasive dialogue and big crashes, like the Fast and the Furious franchise, it’s got a remarkably light touch of the wheel. Ryan Gosling is excellent as the lead; a mysterious stunt and get-away driver who gets involved in something he shouldn’t. His character is relentlessly quiet, building a tension around everything he does, as you’ve no idea when he’ll react. The atmosphere is otherworldly, with a musical score like no other in recent memory, and when the action does happen its a masterclass in how car chases should be done. Some have described it as a modern day fairytale, and you can see elements of that, but it’s more of a modern day western, with Gosling as the strong, silent type who doesn’t start the fight, but will have no problem ending it. An excellent film. (See my Drive Twitter review).

While there were some great movies this month, Drive is the winner, as it’s just such a unique and refreshing film; a very good contender for film of the year.