Sometimes less is more

Rebel Moon Part One (2023), Dir. Zack Snyder, 135 mins, Netflix

Poor Zack. A great visual stylist, bloody awful storyteller. There is not an original moment in Rebel Moon. For all the visual flair, it is just utterly vacuous eye-candy, its characterisation is non-existent, its dialogue risible, its narrative a scrapbook of clips from other movies. I have noticed that its being described as a Star Wars knock-off, but I think that’s missing the point- its really a bad Battle Beyond the Stars knock-off, which was itself a b-movie knock-off of Star Wars and The Magnificent Seven etc. Had Rebel Moon actually been made as a Battle Beyond the Stars remake or reboot, I think it would have diluted much of my apathy towards it. As it is, its just hopelessly derivative, horribly lazy.

To be fair to him, and to play devils advocate for just a moment, there may be a three-hour-plus version of this film, R-rated, that actually works, that makes sense, and is well-paced. What I watched last night might only be, in effect, a PG-rated highlights reel, the original film proper horrendously cut-down, so sloppily, jarringly-edited, that it has become turgid and nonsensical, in which even the action sequences (usually the saving grace of a Zack Snyder joint) don’t flow or work at all, not in the slightest.

The trouble is, the words ‘Director’s Cut’ have become so synonymous with Snyder that its become a standard marketing model with his work, and it would appear that Netflix saw an early PG-rated cut followed later by a harder R-rated ‘full version’ as just simply routine, even desirable. As it is, Rebel Moon seems to have been made not really knowing if its a six-part miniseries or a three-hour movie, instead finally becoming a long movie split into two and even then hastily abridged.

As a piece of writing, its awful; utterly episodic, confusion reigns over all (the final sequence with a ‘twist’ betrayal is so out of left-field and delivered so woefully that I wasn’t at all sure I had any grip of what was going on).  Essentially, it makes no sense at all. We just know that we are watching some sci-fi version of The Magnificent Seven and that it looks pretty.

The narrative, for all that visual splendour,  is driven wholly by dialogue. We are informed our heroine was rescued from a crashed wreck because she is told she was. We are told her further back-story because she tells it to somebody else. Each recruit to her cause, found on the various planets she visits have back-stories hastily thrown out there in snatches of almost absently-delivered dialogue: “oh yeah, she did this” or  “he used to be General, you know.” There’s shades here, funnily enough, of the DC Justice League debacle, as if Snyder never did quite fathom out where that DCEU/Snyderverse thing went wrong after all. There is no inner life to any of the characters, they are tokens, like the NPCs in videogames. Are they bad actors playing them, or good actors crippled by bad writing?

Maybe Rebel Moon was inevitable. There has been a trend in Hollywood that actually seems to champion the lack of any originality, to reward bad film-making, bad script writing, and wanton self-indulgence with inflated budgets. Its clear, for instance, that Snyder and his writer thought it was desirable, admirable even, to simply pick their favourite films and liberally rip them off. Plot points and themes were not suggested as” Character ‘A’ has this arc and it drives character ‘B’ to do this, or the counter-narrative drives character ‘C’ to do this…'” but rather “we’ll do this scene from Star Wars and then we’ll do this bit from The Magnificent Seven and then throw this bit in from Dune.” The entire language of this film is purely one of borrowings from other films, videogames and comics.  Its a triumph of homage over originality.

And painfully, it lacks any intelligence with that borrowing. (or should we be honest and describe it as stealing?). There seems to have been not one moment where anyone suggested that, well, hold on, yeah that would look cool but it wouldn’t make any sense, or no, you must be bloody joking, that’d be just stupid. This is pedal-to-the-metal film-making, a ‘don’t know where we’re going but we’ll know when we get there’ mentality. Even the most gifted creator needs someone to say no, you can’t/shouldn’t do that. Snyder isn’t alone: nobody dared question George Lucas when he wrote/shot The Phantom Menace or his other Star Wars prequels, or when Ridley Scott decided to make the Space Jockey a tall bald bloke.

I’m annoyed because the time is perfect for a new space-fantasy to rival Star Wars, something to demonstrate how tired and stale George Lucas’s saga has become whilst in the hands of Disney. Something with fresh ideas, a new spin.  This clearly isn’t it. In hindsight, Zack Snyder was exactly the wrong person to handle it, he’s never had anything new to say, he’s just regurgitated graphic novels and comicbooks and videogames into pretty films.  Well, that’s where Hollywood is now, and nobody cares as long as there’s money made from it. Just how Netflix ever evaluates any profit from the expense of something like Rebel Moon, though, is anybody’s guess.

If it bleeds… well, good luck with that.

Prey (2022), Dir. Dan Trachtenberg, 100 mins, 4K UHD

The Predator films… well the first was one was great, I saw that at the cinema back in 1987, or 1988 (here in the UK, we had to wait for films back then)…. I remember it was back around the time Robocop came out and suddenly it seemed action films were getting pretty hardcore with action and gore (and to think we hadn’t even seen the uncut Robocop back then…). Ah, good times. Even the second Predator was okay, a film I’ve always had a soft spot for… but it all went pretty south after that for the Predator. After all, where do you go? To be honest, I’ve always thought it pretty odd- the central premise is about a race of aliens who ‘go safari’ in the galaxy to prove their hunting prowess, but they do so wearing a cloaking device that makes them invisible to their prey. What’s so tough about that? Give me a cloaking device and a bag full of weapons and I’m pretty sure the odds would be pretty unfairly stacked in my favour, too, and I’m certainly no Alpha Male. So Predators being galactic tough guys? I’ve never been convinced.

So anyway, movie studios love to keep making money out of established franchises, so we come to Prey. I’m rather late coming to this one, since I have some moral thing going on about never subscribing to Disney+ that most people reading this will be shaking their heads at.  To be sure, this would never have come to physical media at all had the streaming gig been making Disney bumper profits, but the Mouse needs some cashflow so here we go. I think this film is at least a welcome return to basics, more like the first film, albeit with way less testosterone-fuelled macho posturing, but hey, this is the time we’re living in- girls still doing it for themselves, get to the back of the line, boys.

This is… okay, I’m no expert, there’s no doubt all sorts of historical/factual goofs, but it certainly looks pretty convincing; the sets, the location shooting, the costumes, the makeup… at least until every time  someone opens their mouth and they speak with a Californian accent. You know, the art direction is great, these characters certainly look like Native American Indians but when they open their mouths we’re back in the present in “have a nice day” country.  I almost expected one of them to cry out “hey, dude!” – it rather diminishes the sense of belief, immediately yanking us back to the present day for all the effort evidently made to evoke its period setting. This nonsense didn’t happen in Dances with Wolves, did it? At least, not as far as I can recall. The more the film went on I kept hoping they would shut the hell up.

Despite that, I liked the film, but there’s this one thing…. I’ll probably be able to enjoy this much more the second time I watch it, because at least I’ll know (SPOILER ALERT?) that the dog is fine at the end. Yeah, this is one of THOSE films. The main character, Naru, has a dog that accompanies her , and all through the film whenever Naru’s in trouble all I could think about was the dog. I was so desperately worried for him, fearing that the well-meaning mutt was going to get too close to the Predator and get sliced in half or something. Its hard to get tied into a film and worry about our hero/heroine when I’m too busy worrying about where the dog’s at. There’s a few sections of the film in which we are following Naru and the dog isn’t anywhere to be seen. It was beyond distracting; this kind of thing happens all the time and can ruin films for me, at least first time around (albeit there is no second time around if the dog gets injured or killed).

I guess similar things happens for folks with children whenever infants are portrayed in danger, its movie magic,  empathising with onscreen characters, relating to real-world  personal feelings and experience. I don’t have kids, I frankly don’t care or get affected to the degree most folks do… at least not to the degree that I do about dogs (I guess I’m a bad person?).

Hell has frozen over

…..because I’ve just watched a half-way decent Nicolas Cage movie.

Renfield (2023), Dir. Chris McKay, 93 mins, HD

Another one of those instances where coming into films blind can be a strangely disorientating experience. Silly me expected to suffer through Nicolas Cage monstrously chewing up the scenery as the titular Renfield; I had no idea he was actually playing Count Dracula instead (Renfield played by Nicholas Hoult).  To be fair, Cage plays the Prince of Darkness brilliantly; part-monster, part-Marc Almond, it could end up becoming one of his signature roles. Not even the Mighty Cage can be criticised for over-acting playing the Count; its like he’s finally found his artistic nemesis.

The plot pokes considerable fun at the horror tropes horror fans are familiar with from so many films; indeed its charmingly sincere in its affection for those old Universal horror classics while giving it all a new Deadpool-ish spin. Dracula’s loyal henchman, Renfield, is finally tiring of working for the evil vampire Count.  He wants to quit and settle down to a normal life that doesn’t involve procuring victims to satiate his masters bloody thirst, hoping to exchange his workplace for something that isn’t a grisly tomb (hey, we’ve all been there). But how do you tell the most dangerously bad-tempered  and horrible employer in the world that you want to resign? Throw in some complications courtesy of Renfield’s self-help group, Renfield falling for the one honest cop in Philadelphia, and Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse) playing the Boss of a violent criminal gang armed to the teeth, and you’ve got an at times decidedly brutal comedy of horrors. It is rather funny too.

And it is very, very violent. There’s blood and body parts everywhere, and there’s a whole lot of bad language, f-bombs sprinkled in with most every joke and splatter of blood.  Tonally, well, Renfield has super-human powers whenever he eats bugs, so the film has huge fights and gun battles making it seem more Deadpool than a traditional horror film – it makes Hammer’s old films feel rather quaint by comparison (when you consider how much trouble Hammer had from the censors back in the day, one appreciates just how much films have changed).

Funnily enough, another indication of how films have changed is regards this one’s finances. This particular vampire got cruelly staked at the box -office, grossing barely more than $26 million worldwide on a purported $65 million budget. I must confess I nearly choked on my garlic when I saw that last figure. How a fairly simple comedy-horror like this manages to cost $65 million is beyond me (all those exploding squibs are more expensive than they look?), but I did spot ILM named in the effects section of the credits, and those boys really don’t come cheap. Its certainly a slick, well-produced film, but did it really need to be quite so slick, so well-produced? Back in the 1980s, this kind of film would have been made fairly cheaply and yes, would have likely looked cheap, too, but it wouldn’t necessarily have been any the worse for that. Limited budgets never held Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead back, or any of John Carpenter’s early horror films either.

In any case, the end result of that rather grim box office is that we likely won’t be seeing Nicolas Cage’s Dracula again. Wooden stakes in the heart are one thing, but lousy box-office something else entirely. Shame really, I quite liked the cut of this Count’s cape.

Digital Indy saves the day one last time?

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), Dir. James Mangold, 154 mins, 4K UHD

My heart says this was fantastic; its Indiana Jones. Its another Indiana Jones movie! John Williams, one of the greatest screen composers ever, working again on one more film.  Its Harrison Ford, one of the greatest movie stars of our generation, a matinee idol as of old with a screen charisma largely unmatched in this era, back, again. God knows how many more times we’ll be able to  say that.

My brain, of course asks THAT question: was an Indiana Jones movie starring a 79 year-old Harrison Ford a bad idea? In the cold light of day, of course it was. Ford was 38 years old when he made Raiders of the Lost Ark so long ago, and surely everyone back then would have considered it utterly preposterous to imagine an eventual sequel some 43 years later somehow STILL starring Ford. There’s no recasting here. We are living in a strange world, and technology has pushed on so far that somehow such a thing is possible: to be sure, there is something relentlessly artificial regards the ‘magic’ that allows Indiana Jones one last adventure- there is a lot of greenscreen, stunt doubles with facial replacement, reliance on CGI… the analogue reality of Raiders is long gone. This is a film very, very digital.

Particularly, indeed, in the film’s opening twenty minutes, a prologue set during the closing stages of the Second World War , requiring a de-aged Ford playing Indiana Jones in his early forties, a mighty challenge for the wizards of ILM. It really shouldn’t work, and many viewers will attest that it doesn’t, but I have to confess I was mightily impressed with the magic allowing us to see Indiana again in his prime. These digital characters/de-aged actors are tricky things, individual mileage always varies; I know many have issues with the digital Rachel in BR2049, something I’ve never had a problem with. I think its a question of suspension of disbelief, the willingness to ignore the Uncanny Valley and just go along with it.  The way I see it, its just the same as loving the stop motion animation in Ray Harryhausen films, the sometimes dodgy miniatures in old films or ignoring bad process photography in films using bluescreen or front projection. Its only a movie, go with it, don’t let it pull you out of it. Play the game, keep the magic going.  For me, this early sequence was quite magical.

Yes, some shots during this sequence work more than others. The tricky bit here doesn’t appear to be de-ageing Ford, rather its matching the vagaries of the on-set lighting. That seems to be where it falters, where things don’t quite gel properly, but on the whole I think it works brilliantly. Just for one moment, consider what they are doing here- they are  filming a 79 year-old Harrison Ford (cool as he the guy is, he’s an old man now) and making him look as he did in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple of Doom, films made decades ago.  I was delighted by it, seeing Indy in his prime once more, thwarting those pesky Nazis again- in 2023! An impossible adventure!

So sure, my brain can pick fault with the film, the ridiculous plot, the reliance on ILM trickery turning the whole thing into a pale digital shadow of Raiders etc, but sometimes you just have to cede to the romance of the thing. The cinematic romance of one of our most revered cinematic heroes somehow having one last adventure. Its a nostalgia pill, pure and simple. Certainly some fans of the early films can, quite reasonably, deride the cynicism inherent in Disney yet again mining an old franchise for profit, and bemoan something that is clearly inferior to earlier, classic glories. James Mangold gives it his best shot, but he’s no Spielberg – but in saying that, this film is certainly an improvement on Spielberg’s own late Indiana Jones venture, Indiana Jones And the Curse of the Crystal Skull (a film I like anyway, so there goes my street cred).

Sometimes, apologists be damned, its simply unfair to compare a film to something like Raiders of the Lost Ark and get personally aggrieved about it being inferior. You can’t recapture old glories, in just the same way as someone like Prince could never recapture the magic of his albums 1999, Purple Rain or Sign O’ the |Times. I was always just thankful that Prince was still making music, some that I disliked, some that I loved, and now he’s gone, I miss that hugely. Its just the same way that I admit being dismissive of James Horner’s later scores, having adored his early scores for  Brainstorm, Field of Dreams, Glory, among others, but then feeling the vacuum left upon his passing. The truth is, we’re losing our heroes, as we -and they- get older. Lets marvel when we have them still.  Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny gives us one more John Williams score, and one more Indiana Jones adventure. Sure, it doesn’t light up the screen the same way as that 1981 original does, but I had a whole lot of fun with it.

It made me smile. Sometimes that’s enough.

Peter Straub’s other ghost story

Full Circle aka The Haunting of Julia (1977), Dir. Richard Loncraine, 108 mins, 4K UHD

This is one of those blind-buys of a film that, prior to disc release, I had never even heard of. To be fair, Richard Loncraine’s Full Circle (a film he himself describes as a ‘flawed film’) is, as far as obscure goes, pretty hardcore- the BFI had to spend several years rescuing it from oblivion, by all accounts, for this disc release; another example of the merits of physical media. This film is a truly disturbing, slow-burn ghost story, tellingly from the same decade as the BBC’s Ghost Stories at Christmas series of shorts. There was a time so many films were like this; character pieces, with ordinary-looking (‘real-world’ as I like to call them) actors in everyday locations, where mood and tension gradually rise, reaching a conclusion that slowly creeps upon the viewer. No gory ‘event’ scenes, no jump-shocks, no haunted houses burning down (The Changeling) or getting sucked into oblivion in a big finale (Poltergeist) – in this respect, the film is positively old-fashioned and none the worse for that.

A particular beauty of this film is how it allows doubt to creep into your mind- do we take what we are seeing at face value, or perhaps should question the integrity of what might be an unreliable narrator? I’m not certain that latter proposition is the correct one, but its interesting that it hangs there like a possibility- even at the end we can’t be sure what exactly happened, a conclusion suggesting a few possibilities ensuring that the film hangs around in our heads afterwards, doubting what we saw/thought. I love films like that, especially horror films/ghost stories. I should note that this is more a ghost story than a horror film- again, definitely more akin to those BBC shorts that aired late on Christmas Eve. I suppose if one goes into this film thinking its one of those BBC shorts. but extended as a feature, then you’ll get the most of it.

On one level, it can be read as a study of a mental breakdown, brought upon by a traumatic event followed by all-consuming grief. On another level, well, its a haunting ghost story.

Mia Farrow is the kind of actress we seldom see leading in films these days (I can think of Tilda Swinton, maybe, but few others); she’s attractive, sure, but not in any way that draws attention to it; there’s no glamour element, no larger-than-life sexiness that can often distract. The subtlety of the film is echoed in her performance.  Farrow plays Julia Lofting, an upper-class American woman who loses her eight year old daughter Kate in a tragic incident that leaves her traumatised. She splits from her husband Magnus (Keir Dullea) believing her marriage was on rocky ground anyway, losing her daughter the final straw. She sets herself up in a Kensington house to start a new life while dealing with the overwhelming grief that threatens her mental stability: walking around London she catches momentary glimpses of a girl that she believes might somehow be her daughter.

Or is it someone else, another child, that possibly haunts her? Julia begins to unravel a mystery about the house she has moved into, one involving a brutal child murder in the 1950s. Is Julia really being haunted/visited by the ghost of a child, and why is it of a girl, not the boy that was tortured and murdered, that Julia thinks she sees? Is she simply losing her mind? The film plays a tricky balancing act, and while it does indeed show its hand later on, tipping its hat towards a paranormal explanation (its mentioned in the special features that the films producers were likely influenced by the success of films like The Omen), there’s enough in its many layers to catch the the seeds of doubt in Julia’s fragile mental state.

In this case, I’m possibly indebted to (or distracted by?) the many unreliable narrators of so many film noir, and I’m off on some side-road ‘reading’ that’s off the mark, but I do so dearly love films like this that offer possible readings, intended or not. I do wonder sometimes, am I watching films wrong?

Full Circle has a great creepy atmosphere, partly from the lovely, slightly hazy cinematography by Peter Hannon, partly the evocative score by Colin Towns, partly from the slow, steady pace courtesy of editor Ron Wiseman. It is such a 1970s film, its wonderful really (funnily enough, I think it was the fact that the film was made in 1976/released in 1977 that convinced me to purchase this disc, I adore so many films from that decade). That being said, the directors commentary in which he notes the film is flawed is probably fair, the film as it stands isn’t perfect. It was amended from its initial cut with a reshoot that creates an unintended  plot hole just hanging there which admittedly distracted me (a character dies, leaving that and another character, and particularly a parked car, just disappearing from the remainder of the film without any mention- shades, really, of something similar happening in The Horrible Dr Hichcock). Its one of those things though that leaves you afterwards trying to tie things together and while unintended, possibly only doubles-up the possible unreliability of the narrator.

This BFI release has much to recommend it; a lovely picture quality for the film itself, and excellent extras (commentary, video essay, interviews and also including one of those then-and-now featurettes that tours key locations from the film, comparing scenes from the film with shots from the present day, that I always  personally enjoy immensely, and improved here no end by an enthusiastic guide who talks about how things have changed). One could not imagine the film getting a better release- its perfect really. If films like this are your cup of tea, its a definite winner.

Heeeerre’s Santa!

Violent Night (2022), Dir. Tommy Wirkola, 112 mins, HD

There’s a hotly-debated topic every Christmas -well, okay, not so much hotly debated as pointlessly regurgitated, as regards whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie (of course it is, I watch it every Christmas Eve).  I can imagine it must have been the genesis of the pitch for this movie, and I guess they thought they’d hit a goldmine- think Die Hard, but with Santa! Kerching! I mean that’s it, the rest writes itself, its like the very definition of modern Hollywood: one -line premise, copy the blueprint from some other movie, but make it louder, make it more violent (yeah more guns, wilder ways to die and “hey, I got a gag about a nutcracker!”). Someone had evidently just watched Home Alone again, too, and decided to throw that in as extra garnish.  As pitches go, its perfect- it even sets up annual sequels (Christmas comes every year, after all), and Hollywood LOVES sequels.

Its Christmas Eve, and Santa -the REAL Santa, that’s the first gag- is in a bar getting drunk before embarking on another night dishing out prezzies to greedy kids. So he staggers off to work, throws up on the barmaid when she marvels at his sleigh flying off, and… oh never mind, I’ll leave it to the official synopsis- When a team of mercenaries breaks into a wealthy family compound on Christmas Eve, taking everyone inside hostage, the team isn’t prepared for a surprise combatant: Santa Claus is on the grounds, and he’s about to show why this Nick is no saint. Oh how I laughed.

So yeah, its literally Die Hard in a millionaire’s mansion. There’s hostages, a load of gun-totting mercenaries, a vault they are trying to break into in the basement, and a lone guy running around trying to evade capture and save the day. Only he’s not an ex-cop, he’s Santa (who also happens to be an ex-Nordic marauder who enjoyed smashing skulls with his hammer, who knew?).

Its… well its okay, I guess- initially I thought that it certainly knows its audience, its unabashed in its blatant nods to Die Hard etc but at the same time it tries to throw in this weird “I believe in you, Santa!” as if we’re suddenly watching Peter Pan or something and the film suddenly tries to teach us the True Meaning of Christmas amongst all the body bags and headshots.

I’ve seen worse Christmas movies. I think I’ll leave it at that, I don’t want to get on Santa’s naughty list….

Flash: Ah-ah! Saviour of the DC universe!

The Flash (2023), Dir. Andy Muschietti, 144 mins, 4K UHD (Amazon Prime)

Ah, well, maybe not- by the time The Flash was eventually released the DC Universe was already getting rebooted behind the scenes, closing out an era of under-performing, troubled attempts to grab some of the success of the Marvel Studios’ line of comicbook films. There’s actually something a little sad seeing Gal Gadot, Jeremy Irons, Ben Affleck again in a film knowing it was largely the end of the line for them, with the link to better films just a reminder of a closed era. Never mind seeing a septuagenarian Michael Keaton reprising his fan-favourite turn as the caped crusader. Likewise I enjoyed seeing Sasha Calle as Supergirl, and will confess to being more than a little bit frustrated knowing that any original intention there was to give her a film of her own was nixed a good while ago. I also enjoyed the glimpse of (and affectionate nod back to) Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Helen Slater’s Supergirl, albeit it was shoddily executed like so much else.

But that reference to Mike Hodges’ Flash Gordon film that I used for this post’s title is an apt one- its the one film I kept on thinking of while watching this wild mess of a superhero flick. In most respects, The Flash is an unmitigated disaster, with a messy plot, some surprisingly dodgy visual effects… but its rather fun for all that. I’d suggest that what the film really needed was to just go all the way; Hodges’ film is pretty terrible itself, but has become adored precisely because of just how camp and cheesy it is, and rescued by its Queen soundtrack.  I remember back when I was in college, a lecturer referred to seeing Flash Gordon in a cinema and noting that it didn’t seem like a film, more a rock video, and the noisy audience were loving it on a level that more traditional film-viewing patrons didn’t ‘get’.  I’ve never really liked the film, myself (I felt rather let-down after seeing the tantalising and beautiful pre-production paintings featured in Starlog prior to the films release).  But I can see how it is so adored by many.

Maybe The Flash could never foster that kind of devotion, but its so madly over the top that I can imagine with, say, a rock soundtrack and full-on comicbook-trope camp, you know, less of a ‘superheroes in the real world’ /adult graphic-novel approach and more of a… well, maybe Adam West Batman approach, make the most of the four-colour comicbook excess of kids comics, it might have worked better. The intention was fine, but the execution was horrible. It needed a defter touch, a knowing wink such as what Hodges gave to audiences during Flash Gordon.

I have to admit, though, I rather enjoyed the film (much more than I did Black Adam, for sure). I mean, it wasn’t good. It was really pretty nuts. It was stupid and terrible and really betrayed all the signs of studio interference and reshoots that likely happened, but for all that, I rather enjoyed it. At times it certainly gives even Mike Hodges film a run for its money in the dodgy visual effects department, and I wouldn’t have thought that was even possible considering the technology leap in the intervening decades (and how much money was spent on this thing). I couldn’t believe what I was seeing half of the time, that’s for sure; quite a few times I wondered what the hell they were thinking, and the emotional pull that it was evidently working on for the finale just had zero heft whatsoever, it was almost comical. Like a Christmas turkey delivered a few weeks early.

I could never champion the film, its too badly realised, frankly, but one can see the core intent. It was just too late, I guess, and there’s been far too many superhero movies- likely nothing will evaporate the superhero fatigue at this point, but I have the suspicion it would take something which felt like a breath of fresh air. Like this might have, once. With maybe a cheesy rock soundtrack ringing in one’s ears as one left the theatre.