Jurassic Park (1993)

 “An interactive CD-ROM!”

“An interactive C-D ROM!” 

I had a vague impression I’d seen this film 🎥 before. I hadn’t. It is, to avoid all beating around any bushes, brilliant. Oh, the cast is superb. Sam Neill and Laura Dern star with great brightness. Dickie Attenborough gives us a real career highlight. Jeff Goldblum gives us the prototype of the splendid maverick scientist role that he would come to own. Bob Peck, a find actor, finally makes it in Hollywood.

The CGI is dated. The science, perhaps, too: dinosaurs ARE birds. And, yes, Ian is highly charismatic. Yet his spiel against John’s sci-fi dinosaur DNS nonsense is subtly religious, objecting not only to John’s playing around with the ecosystem but to his perceived blasphemy- and “blasphemy” is a concept accepted only by tyrants who despise freedom and crave theocratic absolutism. Also, there’s an amusingly obvious subplot of getting the kid-hating Alan to begin to tolerate the little soda.

That aside, though, this is a solid blockbuster from the esteemed and too often snobbish my dismissed Mr Spielberg. Long may he direct.

Jaws (1975)

“We’re gonna need a bigger boat...”

My parents still remember seeing this at the pictures, two years before I was born, at the old Cannon cinema in Hinckley. It made quite an impression on them. And now I see why.

This isn’t Spielberg’s first film by any means, but it’s where he invents the blockbuster, right here, with a film where every lock of hair and every item of clothing is, unmistakably, at Peak Seventies. If any film defines a decade, this is it.

What's incredible is how very, very, straightforward the plot is- shark attacks terrify small town; police chief is prevented from taking action by stubborn mayor; three men ultimately spend the second half of the film hunting the shark and fighting for their lives. That's it. In lesser hands this would have made a kitsch B movie. That such a ho-hum premise and plot could lead to such greatness is a testament to Spielberg's mastery of the camera- some of the POV shots are dazzlingly creative- and a wisely scarce use of a not-that-good shark prop. It’s also the start of a very fruitful film career for the great John Williams. That musical hook is genius.

The other difference, of course, is the cast. Roy Schneider, Richard Dreyfuss and a very much against type Robert Shaw are all superb, especially towards the end of the film when it’s just the three of them doing a lot of nautical stuff that we landlubbers (I’m from about as far from the sea as you can get on this island) don’t understand. A lot of the little things are done right, and that’s good filmmaking.

My God, the young Spielberg is good.

The BFG (2016)

“Dreams are so quick!”

“Yeah, on the outside. They’s long on the inside.”

I read the novel as a kid, of course. And I’ve seen (and blogged) the cartoon with David Jason. But nothing, aside from Roald Dahl’s original work of brilliance, can top this wonderful Spielbergian fairytale.

Spielberg seems to be evolving in his recent work; there are similarities between this and Ready Player One in the confident use of CGI which achieves spectacle without overdosing us in a CGI landscape, and the confident creation of a well-thought-out world- giant country is dark, yes, but also very fairytale, and the use of hand held cameras to show us Sophie’s point of view during the action sequences is deeply effective. Even the setting, the Britain of the early ‘80s with cars to match, is fairytale in its iconic use of London cityscapes, a London where all streets are cobbled, the only drinking establishments are traditional pubs and buses abound.

Mark Rylance is simply a triumph as an unusually melancholic BFG, as you’d expect, the definitive portrayal. Ruby Barnhill inhabits Sophie perfectly, and I’m glad to see she kept her native northern vowels. And Penelope Wilton is, of course, perfect casting for the Queen.

The tale is told with verve and economy, with a mildly melancholic ending and some extra little set pieces- I loved the scene with Fleshlumpeater (the splendid Jemaine Clement) using cars as roller skates. This is probably the definitive film of the splendid novel, and another fascinating example of late Spielberg, with his inspired ability to create successful CGI worldscapes which work.

Ready Player One (2018)

”Ninjas don't hug!"

 Well, that was certainly superb. Who'd have thought it; a film from Steven Spielberg with no didactic music, no real stars and a very fresh feel. This film is hugely entertaining and so very 2018.

Superficially, perhaps, you could say this film is a bit like Tron, being set mainly in cyberspace with a corporate baddie. But, in truth, the film goes so much deeper, and has so much more to say, than the cool visuals and the myriad, admittedly awesome, pop culture references. And that isn't just about today's gamer, streaming and Twitch culture (Mrs Llamastrangler knows much more about all this than I do) in spite of the many obvious references.

It's 2045, and what we see of the world (well, Ohio) is grim and poverty-stricken aside from a few corporate bigwigs. People live in "stacks", trailer parks stacked on top of each other, and escape their lives through ubiquitous VR and, in particular, through the Oasis, a VR oasis invented by the late James Halliday and his mate, played by the superb Mark Rylance along with the ever-splendid Simon Pegg, both bizarrely with American accents. Through this world we follow Wade, love interest Art3mis and the slightly undeveloped rest of the gang as they try to complete the online quest left by Halliday to gain control of his empire.

Put like that it seems almost pedestrian, a kind of cross between Tron and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but it’s so much more than that. The commentary on escapism into an online world, a kind of VR Second Life where capitalism continues to operate as avatars depend on “coin” for how they look and what they can do, is acutely clever. So is the hint that not only has pop culture become, well, culture, but that the immediate access to cheap music and films will mean the pop culture of the late twentieth century will remain relevant and new pop culture will fail to be supported. There’s IOI with its “loyalty centres”, or debtor’s prisons, a serious potential future problem if debt laws are not reformed. There’s a reminder that reality is what actually matters and that being online is but an extension of this. There’s s love story. There’s the Holy Hand Grenade. There’s MechaGodzilla. This is easily the best new film I’ve seen for a long time.

Schindler's List (1993)

"The party's over, Oskar. They're shutting us down. Sending everything to Auschwitz."

This is, to put it mildly, not an enjoyable film. But it is a necessary one, and one of the greatest and most devastating films ever made.

It's fitting that a film about the Holocaust should not feature Hitler, that dull, bigoted, pathetic man whose place in popular culture as the embodiment of evil troubles me. Because unloading the unspeakable evils of the Nazis on to one lazy, useless, banal man is a cop out. The Holocaust is the worst thing the human race has ever done, and to emphasise the man in charge is to downplay the evil of the many soldiers, bureaucrats, functionaries and accountants who murdered six million Jewish people- individuals, with lives, hopes and fears- and so many others.

Worse, I can't blame it on anything intrinsically German (much as such racism would entirely miss the point) as I am an Englishman, with partly Anglo-Saxon and so ethnically German blood flowing through my veins. No; it is a profound human darkness that must never be repeated, and it is a profound worry that, as these events fade from living memory, the inoculation is fading. We already see the symptoms: people who use such stupid terms as "SJW" and "snowflake"... both my grandads used to shoot people like you, and I'm proud of them for that.

Schindler is no saint. He's a dodgy businessman, an adulterer, fond of the good life, not a good Catholic. But put him next to a psycho like Goeth, perhaps the most evil character in all of cinema. The contrasting scenes of both of them with Helen Hirsch show that. Liam Neeson is amazing, of course, and Ralph Fiennes is the most evil presence in all of cinema. But the real revelation is Steven Spielberg, whose usual didactic filmmaking gives way to a devastating, monochrome, handheld documentary style that clearly portrays the horrors of the Holocaust. Scenes are etched into your mind, which is a good thing: never forget.

A cathartic and profound work of art which dwarfs anything else that Spielberg has ever done, and a film which has made the world a better place by hopefully preserving the memory of the Holocaust for another generation.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

"You're not my father!!!"

Harrison Ford has aged nineteen years since Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, so it's 1957. McCarthyism, rock 'n' roll, "I like Ike", flying saucers, Indy having the Fonz for a son. Yep, it's the '50s, all right. And it's a good and entertaining film with a nicely twisty-turny plot. Except... is it just me who thinks Cold War Russians just aren't the baddies that the Nazis were?

The film also suffers from the fact that Denholm Elliott is dead and Sean Connery has retired, leaving Ford and Karen Allen as the only characters from earlier film, although John Hurt and Ray Winstone ably fill the British-character-actor-shaped hole. Cate Blanchett is a good baddie, the locations and set pieces are great, and even Shia LaBeouf is mostly acceptable. It's nice to have a film in this series that deals with El Dorado and the mysterious cities of gold (a phrase that puts the theme tune to a certain '80s cartoon in my head!!!). And it's an enjoyable tour of '50s tropes, with the artifacts this time being alien in nature (Erich Von Daniken a decade and a half early) and even a nuclear test befitting the Atomic Age. It's a shame Indy will eventually get cancer.

But something stops this film from being great instead of just very good. Perhaps it's a lack of polish to the dialogue but I rather suspect it's the lack of Nazis..

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

"Indiana? We called the dog Indiana!"

And so we come to the last and easily the best of the original trilogy. And, given the high quality of the other two films, that's a bloody big achievement.

So why is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade so bloody good? Well, it's partly because they've clearly thought long and hard about what worked best in the other two films, and they've rightly decided that Raiders of the Lost Ark is worth mining for the good stuff. So Marcus is back. So is Sallah. So, most importantly, are the Nazis. You've got to have Nazis.

There's also an outstanding cast. Ice tagged a few below, but there wasn't room for the likes of Alexei Sayle, Vernon Dobtceff, an uncredited Michael Sheard as Hitler or even River Phoenix as the young Indy. But the real casting coup is, of course, the ever-charismatic Sean Connery as Dr Henry Jones, Senior. Connery is simply excellent here. So good, in fact, that he even condescends to not sound like he's from Edinburgh for once.

Said opening sequence, with young Indy and the train full of circus animals, is superb, and not only because it reminds me of the contemporary 8 bit computer game. It even attempts to explain the origin of Indy's fear of snakes, but it wisely doesn't reveal too much about his mysterious father who, indeed, is held back until just the right moment.

The plot itself is very Raiders of the Lost Ark without being in any way too slavishly similar. And what can outdo the Ark of the Covenant but the Holy Grail? 

As per the previous film we get a series of outstanding set pieces- I love the airship- but the outstanding chemistry between Harrison Ford and Connery adds so much more. Connery is having great fun with a superb character and his presence pushes Ford to ever greater heights: this is one of the most entertaining cinematic double acts ever. 

And then we come to the climax. The "invisible" bridge falls just short of the supernatural, but Donovan's gruesome death at imbibing the false Grail is delightfully gruesome, and the whole climax is deeply satisfying which, er, sounds a bit ruder than intended.

Possibly one of the greatest adventure films ever. Personally I dread to think just how many times I've seen it.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

"I had bugs for lunch..."

I wasn't sure whether or not I'd seen this film before but I must have done; the memories all came flooding back as a watched it. It's a good film, if less so than its predecessor, and exciting as ever. 

I suppose we can't avoid the inevitable questions about an arguably negative portrayal of India- I mean, Thuggee in the twentieth century- and an implicit endorsement of colonialism, showing a semi-independent Princely State to be rather beastly and having Britain's Indian Army act as the cavalry at the end. And yes, those are valid points. But I think we should account for the fact that this is an American film, not a British one. The USA is not India's former colonial ruler, nor does it have anything like the number of people of South Asian extraction who live in the UK. Perhaps we can forgive them for some cultural sensitivities that we would not accept from the British, much as we forgive them for the stereotypical character of Apu in The Simpsons.

Anyway, the film starts in 1935, making it a subtle prequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark, and there are no Nazis to be seen anywhere.we begin with a nice little sequence in treaty port Shanghai before the action shifts to India by means of a delightfully entertaining plane crash which is one of the best sequence in the film. Alongside Indy are his stubborn love interest Willie- I bet that have some angry sex- and Short Round. I'm guessing a lot of people must find Short Round annoying, but I like him. He's cool, and by acting as Indy's surrogate son he softens and humanises the character.

Our hero is soon directed to save all the children of his host village from the temple of the title, and that's where the fun really starts. The meal, with the various living bugs, snakes, and the eyeball soup, is great fun. Soon, though, there is exploring,and the booby trap see know and love. We learn that the baddies are Thuggees, that their chief priest can tear out a man's heart with his bare hands(!), and that the rotters are using children as slaves. There's a final awesome chase scene before our heroes face a climax where they all end up trapped on a bridge over a chasm, facing death just like Danny in The Man Who Would Be King.

Still, there's no stopping Indy. The film ends with the village saved and Indy doing kinky shit to Willie with his whip. Oo er.

It's a fun film, packed with incident and crammed with cliffhangers. It's not as good as its predecessor, perhaps, but enormous fun nonetheless. And the location filming in Sri Lanka and then-Portuguese Macau looks gorgeous.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

"Snakes! Why does it have to be snakes?"

This film still feels fresh thirty years later: not bad for a movie based on the movie serials of the '30s and '40s. What makes it work is that the action never stops, with set piece piled on to exciting set piece and even the exposition scenes being made dramatic. On top of that you have Harrison Ford being, well, himself, Ronald Lacey as the perfect Gestapo baddie and loads of money obviously spent. This is a superb film.

I'm sure many archaeologists would raise an eyebrow at this somewhat glamorous depiction of what they do for a living, of course. Indy is clearly shown to be an academic. Others would raise eyebrows at the spiders, snakes and booby traps galore. The more churlish of us may well raise an eyebrow at the made up mythology if what's supposed to have happened to the Ark, particularly Ethiopians. Personally my own eyebrow is raised a little at the idea of Nazis being so obsessed with such a very Jewish artifact- that must have been awkward for them.

We have all sorts of Indiana Jones tropes here from the start- travelling by map (copyright The Muppets), the action-packed standalone opening sequence and Indy just shoring that bloke who waves a fancy sword at him. It's a brilliant start to s brilliant series. If you haven't seen this, where have you been?

Except, er, Indy doesn't actually accomplish anything, does he? The Ark would have blown up the Nazis whatever happened. Still, at least he gets a nice little Egyptian holiday with some snake-related activities. 

Hook (1991)

"When are you going to learn to stop acting like a child?"

"I am a child!"

It's rather obvious that the reason I'm blogging this film now is the sad passing of Robin Williams, so it's worth starting with a few words about a comedian and actor of great talent.

I've never been a great fan of Hollywood's popular comedies, which always have the main character learning some heartwarming lesson about family values rather than just, you know, being funny. Robin Williams may have been good at these, being both a superb comic actor and very capable of pathos, but for much of his career he was ill-served by film unworthy of his talents. There are, of course, a good number of quality films starring Williams but his best performance, for me, is a straight role in One Hour Photo.

Hook, although it somewhat fits the definition of a Hollywood comedy as defined above, is nonetheless quite a good film, if not brilliant, because of the spectacle, the sense of wonder that fantasy always brings, and a particularly sublime performance from Williams, who shines here, far outshining the pantomime villainy of Dustin Hoffman, who gets top billing for some reason.

The conceit- a sequel to Peter Pan in which J.M. Barrie simply passed of his neighbour's children's true stories of his own and Peter Pan eventually grows up and becomes a lifeless, Reagan-voting asset stripper who missed the '60s because he was an accountant- is a good one. Yes, he's a bad father as per many such scar actors in such Hollywood films, but the Peter Pan stuff actually makes this interesting. His fear of flying is a nice touch. And Robin Williams brings the role a real depth, far more than is in the script.

This isn't the greatest film ever, but it's fun and, indeed, bangarang. I love the montage with Peter getting his mojo back, and the late Bob Hoskins is great, far outshining Hoffman. Well worth a watch, and nostalgic to see some actual world-building spectacle from the days before widespread CGI.

The War of the Worlds (2005)

"Trees are funny!"

I have a rule. Never do I blog a sequel before it's predecessor and never do I blog a remake- if I blog remakes at all; I have a big prejudice against them- before the original. Never mind the obvious stylistic nods to the 1953 George Pal film; this is at heart another version of the original novel. Indeed, we open and with Morgan Freeman speaking H.G. Wells' words, and the ending, from a time when Natural Selection was a relatively new thing, is retained in this updated film, set in modern America.

Steven Spielberg and War of the Worlds was always going to be a neat fit, and the film certainly looks great. Sadly, it stars Tom Cruise, but it's nice to see a suitably weird performance from a young Dakota  Fanning, one of my wife's favourite performers. 

The opening section, introducing Sal, his kids Robbie (studying French colonialism in Algeria, appropriately as the original novel was based on the idea of the British Empire feeling what it was like to be colonised) and young Rachel, goes on too long with the stuff about custody of the kids, something which could have been established much more economically; we want Martians!

The spectacle never ceases to amazed but, sadly, there's a reason why Tom Cruise was a has-been by 2005. Everything looks fantastic and there are some nice touches- the Martians ride the lightning to their machines- and the family themes sentiment is even, by Spielberg standards, not overdone. This is a good film, but could have been great with a different star.

Poltergeist (1982)

“They’re heeeere!”

It’s so weird to watch this film for the first time knowing what happened to Heather O’Rourke (she died at 12, seemingly of natural causes), especially given that this is a pretty damned eerie film in any case. It is, of course, a superb piece of cinema. I don’t consider this to be a Steven Spielberg film, on the grounds that he didn’t direct the thing, but he nevertheless co-wrote and produced it. And I have to say that this film exhibits all of Spielberg’s considerable strengths and absolutely none of his emotionally manipulative downside.

It would have been easy, in a film like this, for the main protagonists to be mere ciphers, but they’re not; they’re well-rounded individuals, particularly Steven and Diane, who convince as a baby boomer young couple (how old this makes the film sound!), smoking weed while at the same time being caring parents and natural suburbanites. Heather O’Rourke, of course, steals the show as the oddly creepy Carol Anne, but the whole family feels real.

This being a film set in suburbia, and interior décor being something that quickly dates, every scene is absolutely redolent of the early Eighties. Also, it’s an odd experience to see a film for the first time when that film has so permeated popular culture. The climax of the film, as the house is swallowed up, immediately made me recognise an obvious reference in an episode of Family Guy that I’d seen just a few days before. (Oh, and regarding dating of the film and popular culture, I’m rather afraid I actually recognised that particular issue of Captain America.)

The film, is far less based on the traditional narrative of poltergeists (a strong psychic link to an adolescent girl rather older to Carol Ann, not that I necessarily believe in all that), and is far closer to the more mainstream idea of a ghost. Certainly, the sheer number of poltergeists here, and the apparently demonic nature of the malevolent entity behind all this, does not reflect what I was expecting from the film. But this isn’t an investigation of the poltergeist trope, it’s a big budget Hollywood movie (in marked contrast to most of the other Eighties horrors that I’m blogging at the moment), and so this large amount of spectacle is appropriate.

The earlier part of the film is suffused with lots of small, scary moments. The level of scariness is quite mild to start with, but there are a hell of a lot of scary things, and for a lot of them you don’t quite k now why they’re scary. It’s not until that scene with the maggots that the gears change. One nice touch, though, is that Diane is not initially scared of the poltergeists, and tries to have fun with them. After all, that’s what I’d do.

The film sort of pre-empts Ghostbusters by having the family consult a bunch of paranormal professionals, led by the charismatic Dr Lesh. But it’s the diminutive Tangina Barrons who is the real star here.

The ending of the film is drawn-out but dramatic; I certainly didn’t feel any indication of “too many endings” syndrome. And, of course, the film just had to fit in a scary clown.