On the Greatest Trilogy in Toy Story 3

Film history dictates that there will always be one weak link to a trilogy; Return of the Jedi (1983), The Bourne Identity (2002), The Godfather Part 3 (1990), Return of the King (2003) and so on. Yet Pixar have been building their own film history and in addition to creating a string of critically and financially successful feature animation films and imbuing in animation a depth and emotion that many live action films cannot achieve, have now decided it’s time to create a great film trilogy.

Trilogies’ weaker acts usually come in the final third (although not always, see The Bourne Identity), whether it is through over ambition, too much money, hubris or simply, as in the case of The Matrix Revolutions (2003), the revelation that your story was only 180 minutes long. Yet Toy Story 3 acknowledges what made the first two so special (story and character) as well as introducing new characters without ever detracting from the principal, much loved toys. The introduction of Ken brings a great comedic element that an older audience will appreciate, while Lotso’s story of abandonment ensures Pixar’s dark elements remain.

The film mirrors the breakout/break-in structure of Toy Story 2 (1999), but never rests on its laurels by refusing to progress its characters. Woody, Buzz et al, like Andy have moved on since we left them reunited at the end of Toy Story 2. Desperate to be played with after years of neglect from a growing Andy, the toys devise a plan to grab his attention. The look of heartbreak on Woody’s face when Andy throws him back in the chest shows how hard these past years have been on the cowboy. And that’s just the first ten minutes.

By keeping the same great elements that make all Pixar films so successful and combining this with a story that can appeal across the age groups, in addition to a 3D effect that is maybe the most complementary to the story a film has been to date, Toy Story 3 is the perfect end to a trilogy; exciting, funny, able to stand alone and with a poignant, satisfying ending.

It’s now up to Christopher Nolan and the rest on the Batman team to try and do better.

On Hunting for a Good Predator Film

"Certainly there is no hunting like the hunting of man and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never really care for anything else thereafter". This ridiculous quote from a great author (Hemingway) remains, in Predators, a ridiculous quote, but now in a terrible film rather than in an otherwise impressive body of work. Being dropped from a plane unconscious and landing in an unknown, hostile environment as the latest prey for a team of alien predators is a good set-up, yet producer Robert Rodriguez and director Nimrod Antal have seemingly achieved the near impossible and created an action sci-fi without one pulse-raising moment.

The predator is a good alien invention but has never had a film worthy of its creation, unlike its peer and sometimes enemy, the alien of Alien (1979), Aliens (1986) and Alien 3 (1992) etc. The exception, it could be argued, is Predator (1987), yet since then the ultimate hunters, who offer, through their humanistic characteristics something recognizable, have never been allowed to develop in a manner which will allow them to be the feature of a predator film. Here, the predators barely feature and we are instead stuck with a frustrating group of stereotypes who utter cliched dialogue and meaningless quotes (see above) in an attempt to add gravitas to what is complete trash. Casting Adrien Brody against type is a good idea, as is Lawrence Fishburne's schizophrenic survivor, but both positives are negated by bad dialogue. Unfortunately, a sequel is a distinct possibility.

On Casey Affleck's Performance in The Killer Inside Me

Lou Ford is a complicated man. In addition to being a sheriff in a small, oil rich Texas town he’s also a sexually tortured psychopathic killer. Channelling his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford with hints of Travis Bickle and Down in the Valley’s Harlan, Casey Affleck produces an memorising performance as The Killer Inside Me’s protagonist. Over the space of three films (Jesse James, Gone, Baby Gone and now The Killer Inside Me) Affleck is increasingly proving himself to be one of America’s finest actors.

Here, Affleck must convey the external and internal emotions of man who is trusted by his fellow Texans while repressing a childhood of sexual deviancy and hiding a murderous present. This is achieved with what appears to be remarkable ease, although surely it isn’t. Affleck’s preternatural ingenuousness on film brings with it his skill in conveying an active mind behind calm, unnerving eyes. Psychopathic, sexually deviant killers are hard to indentify with; normal rules that apply to almost the entire population disappear in the presence of a warped mind. Yet, Ford is completely relatable; his sense of entitlement, developed through a hidden intelligence he feels uncomfortable revealing is a relatable frustration. As is the mollifying manner that other residents treat him with. Therefore Lou Ford becomes as real and as memorable as Robert Ford and the far more contemporary Patrick Kenzie. The reality of the performance (complimented by Winterbottom’s direction) makes the character all the more terrifying. Therefore, rather than the violence (which is shocking in its suddenness) becoming the focal point of the film it instead evolves as another disturbing layer of Lou Ford.

In less competent hands The Killer Inside Me could have become a misogynistic, exploitative experience, but with the skill behind and in front of the camera, it is instead an engrossing, ontological study of an unbalanced mind.

On Discovering Valhalla Rising

In Scandinavian mythology, Valhalla is a vast hall in which great warriors, the chosen dead are sent. In Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest film a great Scandinavian warrior has risen from Valhalla. This is the story of One-Eye, a mute prisoner of a Scottish clan, forced to fight while tied to a rope. This doesn’t stop One-Eye from brutally killing anyone who is put before him. With the threat of conquering Christian extremists, another clan offers money for One-Eye. Money that can be used to ward off a Christian massacre. One-Eye escapes his new captors, adopts a young boy and becomes a member of a band of Christian warriors on their way to Jerusalem to defend the Holy Land. This is Valhalla Rising.

Not deemed marketable enough to get a UK theatrical release, Valhalla Rising went straight to DVD. Not a sign of poor quality. Summer is a crowded marketplace and a small, violent film with a mute protagonist would struggle to find a profitable audience. Yet, there is always an audience to be found. It seems however that the powers that be behind Valhalla Rising decided that a deceptive DVD cover would offer the better chance of an audience and a profit. Hopefully this will be the case as there is much to admire in Refn’s symbolic film.

The story is minimal and characters are defined through the beautifully shot and savage landscape. As for One-Eye we are told, “He is driven by hate. It’s how he survives. It’s why he never loses” and this is enough. Mads Mikkelsen’s performance as One-Eye combined with the brevity of his back story creates a memorable character. One-Eye’s looks of disinterest at the Christian preaching and his protection of the boy give him recognisable traits even if his motives and conclusion are never clear. Symbolism takes centre stage over narration and while this may prove frustrating for some viewers, sticking with Refn’s film is a strangely satisfying experience.

On the Issue of Sequels with Aliens

When taking on the task of creating a sequel to the revered science fiction film Alien (1979), James Cameron ran a risk greater than many directors of sequels as here he was not the director of the first.

In 1979 Ridley Scott created a gritty, unpolished and tense horror. There is little comedy aboard the Nostromo and Scott drew subtle, believable performances from his cast. This is a director’s vision, very much a product of the 1970s mentality. In 1986 Cameron gave us a sequel very much of its time, Aliens, a bigger budget studio picture.

However, by being aware of what made Alien great and by expanding the universe and the characters in a realistic direction, Aliens avoids the same, almost expected fate that we assume most sequels will take. Cameron definitely created a more stereotypical Hollywood action film. The banter between the marines has dated badly and even the performance of Sigourney Weaver is more melodramatic than in Alien.

Aliens is bigger and more expensive with a larger cast, but by taking into account what the audience have learnt from Alien we are never confused, unlike the bigger, more expensive Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), which felt as if it had been created without even the awareness of Transformers (2007). Unlike The Lost World (1997) or Die Hard 2: Die Hard (1990), Cameron consciously steps away from what Alien accomplished and doesn’t retrace familiar steps. It would have been futile to produce another claustrophobic horror along the same lines, especially as Aliens continues – as far as Ripley is concerned – from where Alien left off.

Yet, a sequel doesn’t have to go bigger to be better. The Bourne Supremacy (2004) was a toned down, more talkative and more successful follow up to The Bourne Identity (2002). In the other direction and along the same lines of Aliens, The Dark Knight (2008) expands the world created in Batman Begins (2005) with greater exploration that allows us to remain familiar with the world, but find enough in there that is new to stay interested. What makes Aliens perhaps more impressive than other sequels that are better or as good as their predecessors is that Cameron was not the director of the first.

The issues of sequels will always create debate. The first in a sequence is often viewed favourably and the majority of the time sequels are unable to create or even recreate the formula that worked the first time round. When they do work though, is will be because they have followed the same basic rules that Cameron employed with Aliens.

On Dirty Cops in The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

David Lynch once referred to Nicholas Cage as, “the jazz musician of actors”; capricious in his behaviour, unpredictable in his choice of work. Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans therefore fits perfectly into the Cage canon. The origin’s of Cage’s dirty cop, McDonagh, are slightly blurred by the insistence of Herzog that he was unfamiliar with Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant (1992), in which Harvey Keitel turned in a crazed and hypnotic performance. Yet there are too many similarities (the title being just one) to suggest this is the case, and while cinema history is replete with dirty cops, it seems likely that Herzog’s film, while not a remake, is certainly influenced more by Ferrara’s interpretation than any other.

Through their behaviour, corrupt police often draw laughs, whether it’s The Wire’s McNulty inventing a serial killer for overtime or Ray Liotta’s Henry Oak in Narc, after an informant asks for a hit during questioning stating, “It’s impossible you’re this dumb”. Yet these are serious characters in situations and environments that are drawn realistically and carry serious weight in their stories. To its discredit, The Bad Lieutenant and Cage’s performance are played for laughs. Subsequently, the story of a family executed by a drug lord is merely a tool to allow Cage’s performance to progress and Herzog’s camera to explore and add to the hyperbole of the acting. McDonagh is without doubt a dirty cop; he steals drugs like it’s a second job; he gambles; he accepts sexual favours for leniency and, perhaps at his most despicable, he cuts off the air supply for a wheelchair bound old lady before declaring she is what is wrong with America. Cage pulls all this off with a crooked style and is mostly believable in the role. He has an incredible ability to switch instantly between crazed unpredictability, tenderness (the silver spoon scenes) and desperation. Yet the direction to play this as a comedic character lets him down and never allows him or us to really get under the skin of McDonagh. The performance is too big, too distracting to allow us to attach ourselves to McDonagh on any relatable level. Neither is this such a departure for Cage that we are convincingly with the character at all times. He played a similar character better in Scorsese’s Bringing out the Dead (1999) and has been far more memorable in Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Adaptation (2002).

Herzog’s past films suggest an interest in larger than life characters that are altered by or change their environments. His documentaries including, Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and Grizzly Man (2005) show characters that come alive through their interaction with their surroundings. The protagonists of Fitcarraldo (1982) and Rescue Dawn (2007) must battle their environments to survive. Here, New Orleans, interesting as it is to see the underbelly of a city used so infrequently in cinema, has no impact on McDonagh past the opening scene; he moves around the city, but is not part of it in the same way Popeye Doyle manipulated while at the same time lived off the vibrancy of New York City in The French Connection (1971). Therefore, The Bad Lieutenant does not feel like a Herzog film. The visual flair (animal close ups, break dancing souls) while good to look at feel tacked on to remind us what a crazy film this is. In fact, this is a very standard story disguised behind tricks that exists on a surface level only.

One last point, which may be nitpicking unnecessarily, is how bad a lieutenant exactly is McDonagh. Obviously the answer is very, but what leads him to such reprehensible behaviour is an addiction to drugs that has arisen through a heroic act. As McDonagh and Pruit stand over the drowning inmate they take bets on how long he will live, yet McDonagh saves him. Maverick behaviour maybe, but not bad. It is Val Kilmer’s Pruit who is happy to walk away and let the coroner deal with the body. And again, towards the end, Pruit, who with no drug addition or clear need for money, is eager to kill and steal from Big Fate. And again, McDonagh does the right thing. A bad lieutenant or drug addict who needs help?

On Debunking Myths in Robin Hood

There has been a lot of talk around the latest reimagining of the Robin Hood story and how it abandons the common myth in favour of a more realistic approach. This is dangerous territory to negotiate when it comes to figures so entrenched in mythology that every report of their lives is contested from some angle.

Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood begins well, establishing Robin as an archer in Richard the Lionheart’s crusade and giving him reason to arrive in Nottingham. It is here the film begins to feel strained. An unconvincing deception attempts to reassert the belief around the Locksley name familiar from Robin Hood Prince of Thieves (1991). This in turn leads to a romance between Russell Crowe’s Robin and Cate Blanchett’s Marion that lacks chemistry, or any spark at all. A shame considering both are great, versatile actors. Familiar characters arrive in familiar guises (the alcohol loving Friar Tuck, the deceptive King John) and this effort to establish an authority on the Robin Hood myth starts to borrow more and more from the very films that reinforced our impressions, right or wrong, of the outlaw.

The principal difference lies in the lack of robbing from the rich to give to the poor by replacing what in the past films is an actual trait with a more philosophical approach. There may be very little actual robbing, but through his actions, Robin defends the poor by fighting against the imposing army of the wealthy and powerful. Although it is suggested that Robin will become the very mythological character we have always imagined him to be.

Through such instances the film neither embraces the myth nor abandons it enough to create an identity of its own. Instead, a sense of familiarity creeps over the film the longer it continues. Same players, different game. Robin Hood is neither as enjoyable nor as rousing as Prince of Thieves, which successfully balanced many of the themes Scott employs (bloody crusades, land taxes, tyrannical ruler) with the myth that has endured for so long. Robin Hood attempts to do for this myth what Antoine Fuqua attempted for King Arthur (2004), but the same is true here as it was for Arthur and his Knights; the myth is more fun.