Singapore: its all about Ava

Singapore (1947), Dir. John Brahm, 80 mins, Blu-ray

The third film in Indicator’s Universal Noir Vol. 2 box and this one’s a doozy, certainly the most noir film of the set so far. I must say, I was very much surprised by how enjoyable this film was, considering my low expectations from the poster (Fred MacMurray as a sailor? Sorry, but give me a break!). I expected an escapist Hollywood romance/drama set in exotic, foreign climes – Affair in Trinidad springs to mind, but obviously there’s more than a few nods to the classic Casablanca, and while the latter is true, the film turned out be to much more than that. Mainly because of Ava. To suggest that for me she steals the film from everyone else is some kind of understatement. It’s not that she acts everyone else off the screen, more just a matter of sheer screen magnetism and presence.

Regards MacMurray, I’ve become resigned to the fact that whenever i see him in a film, I’m always predisposed to have a dislike/distrust of whatever character he is playing, simply because my first experience of watching him was in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, in which he played an adulterer, cheat and utter bastard with such consummate finesse it proved wholly definitive. I suppose in that sense, his casting here was rather perfect (actually it dates just three years after his similarly impressive turn in Wilder’s Double Indemnity) as he’s playing a character with some dubiety. He’s not a wholesome character here, rather a guy with a shady past who’s always trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities, but also someone who might be redeemed by the love a good woman.

As far as the plot is concerned, its fairly conventional, albeit enlivened by a few twists and turns that make it far more interesting than I had expected. Shortly after WW2, Matt Gordon (Fred MacMurray) returns to Singapore after having fled five years before when the Japanese invaded. He returns to the hotel he used to stay at, intending to retrieve a fortune in pearls he was smuggling out and had stashed in there when the war breaking out upset his plans. Seeing a table and chairs in the bar/restaurant he slips into a reverie and voiceover, the film fading to a flashback from five years before, when he was about to get married to Linda Grahame (Ava Gardner) after a whirlwind romance. Before they could get married, they became separated during the Japanese bombardment when  Gordon attempted (and failed) to retrieve the pearls, only returning to the church to see it burned to the ground and Linda presumably killed. Despondent, Gordon fled Singapore to join the war effort.

The complications of course are what makes this interesting- the film returning back to the ‘present’ of 1947, Gordon is being watched by both Deputy Commissioner Hewitt (Richard Haydn) who is well aware of Gordon’s criminal past and suspects he has returned to retrieve the pearls, and likewise mobster/fence Mauribus (Thomas Gomez) who wants the pearls himself, presumably from some deal the two had years ago.  So far, so routine-thriller as Gordon attempts to outwit both the law and the criminal fraternity, but then he suddenly sees Linda… alive. But now she’s Ann Van Leyden, devoted wife of plantation owner Michael Van Leyden (Roland Culver), with no knowledge of Gordon at all, or of a woman named Linda Grahame.  Is it Linda, or just some woman who uncannily looks like her? There’s a few more twists yet, but the real pleasure of the film is undoubtedly Ava.

Ava Gardner; one of the most beautiful actresses who ever appeared in film, she has this relationship with the camera that is like some kind of sorcery- the camera just loves some women, there is this spark… other examples include Marilyn Monroe, Kim Novak.. but here its just… well, she steals every scene she’s in. The plot, the other actors in the scene, they all kind of fall away… Its not even how beautiful she is, its some kind of energy in that relationship between actress and camera that defines screen icons…

A featurette on the Indicator disc goes into some general detail regards Ava’s life and career. I found it fascinating, a little disturbing and rather enchanting. I was left to idly imagine her life, being as beautiful as she was, that whole 1940s/1950s Golden Age Hollywood era, fame, fortune.  I’ve not seen many films featuring Ava- the last one I saw her in was On the Beach, released in 1959, some twelve years after Singapore but seemingly many years more than that – too much living , maybe, taking its toll on her? Certainly she was on her third divorce by then. She was a strong woman who seemed to suffer men,  famously uninhibited for the time which seemed scandalous to many (she was blamed for ending Frank Sinatra’s marriage in a scandal that threatened both of their careers): frankly, its the stuff of a Hollywood movie all in itself, glamour, drinks, affairs, betrayal, divorce… She certainly lived.

I thoroughly enjoyed Singapore, but have to admit its mostly from being so bewitched by Ava’s presence in it. I suppose this might be surprising because she’s not playing a femme fatale, certainly its a very different character to the one she played in The Killers. I think that’s some reflection of how much of her impact here stems from her sheer presence, her relationship with the camera, rather than something doubled upon by the script or outrageous (for the time) clothing etc. Instead she’s beautiful and sensual while being largely restrained- maybe that’s why having seen both The Killers and On the Beach, its seeing her in this – undoubtedly a lesser film- which has me finally bowled over by her and looking to see her in more features.

Time Out of Mind: Not a noir at all, alas

Time Out of Mind (1947), Dir. Robert Siodmak, 89 mins, Blu-ray

While the previous film in Indicator’s Universal Noir Vol.2 box, Lady on a Train, was borderline noir at best, I can’t imagine anyone really having any argument for Robert Siodmak’s Time Out of Mind qualifying as noir in any way at all. This is really just a historical romantic drama, adapted from a popular book of the time written by Rachel Field. Its general thesis is for women to stand by their man, trust their heart and that love conquers all in the end… sentiments that any proper film noir would kick in the trash with utter contempt. I can only imagine that Indicator thought its inclusion worthy if only because it was directed by Siodmak, who had great success in noir with films like The Killers, Phantom Lady, Cry of the City and Criss Cross. As such, I suppose this has some worth as a curio, and certainly its got some interesting moments and direction… characters separated by doorways or windows, for instance, to represent their relationship or social standing/separation. The film also features Ella Raines, so brilliant in Phantom Lady, but alas utterly wasted here.

The plot of Time Out of Mind is pretty dull- it’s 1899, and Christopher Fortune (Robert Hutton) the son of a wealthy shipping magnate in Maine angers his father by preferring a career in music rather than the family business, and is encouraged to follow his dreams rather than family duty by servant girl Kate (Phyliss Calvert) who loves him dearly, but of which Christopher is oblivious.  Kate helps Christopher find the finances to enable him to flee to Paris where he will enrol in a music school. Three years later, he finally returns home, but married, breaking Kate’s heart. The marriage is doomed, as Christopher’s bride is a beautiful, rich but thoroughly nasty, using her father’s wealth to further Christopher’s musical dreams and live vicariously through his success, but Christopher’s heart isn’t in it, he feels a fraud.  Can Kate’s endless love for him put him on the right path to success and happiness?

Hmm, take a guess how this film ends. Hardly your usual noir there. The whole thing is pure melodrama, feels artificial and staged, and you can see where its all going from the start.  It doesn’t work at all, and Siodmak himself dismissed it. There’s indications of where a noir would go with something like this- Christopher’s sister Rissa (Ella Raines) is so obsessed herself with Christopher that her attention is borderline incestuous – so I could imagine this becoming transformed into something genuinely subversive, with three women fighting over a man too self-obsessed to really notice or care, but this was released in 1947, after all, and far too early to expect something like Twin Peaks. Shame- a David Lynchian take on Time Out of Mind would be a film I’d like to see.

As it is, there’s little here to encourage repeat viewings. At least Lady on a Train, likewise hardly noir at all,  was snappily paced, with genuine twists and turns and a captivating leading lady. This film really labours for little reason at all.

Lady on a Train: an unlikely Christmas noir

Lady on a Train (1945), Dir. Charles David, 95 mins, Blu-ray

Wow, Deanna Durbin- who was this lady? Seems she was the child star that saved Universal Pictures, a beautiful, gifted singer and actress who eventually got away, refusing to be chewed up by the Hollywood machine- but that came several years after she featured in this film. Here she’s Nicki Collins, the titular lady of the title, although she isn’t on the train very long- the first of several misdirection’s this film lays on viewers, the chief one being its classification of ‘film noir’ that qualifies its inclusion in Indicator’s splendid Universal Noir Vol. 2 box.  Lady on a Train is more a Nancy Drew-type murder mystery, more screwball comedy of errors, than what might be considered genuine film noir. While film noir is a fairly vague catch-all term that can frustrate some when titles like this get bundled in a noir box, I’ve found it to be an enjoyable way of discovering films I’d never otherwise notice. After all, when was the last time Lady on a Train was aired on television? Would it ever be aired again, in the future?

And this film may be slight, but its very enjoyable. Its really very odd -as this disc’s commentary track notes- a decidedly curious mash-up of genre: is it a thriller, a drama, a comedy, a musical?  There are times when it looks very much like a noir, dark shadows and expressionistic lighting,  times when it looks (and sounds) like a glossy Hollywood musical, times when its a madcap comedy. That certainly keeps the viewer on ones metaphorical toes, so to speak – just keeping track of Durbin’s changing hairstyles can make one dizzy enough- rather  a delicious smorgasbord of 1940s Hollywood. Maybe Steven Spielberg is a fan; it rather feels as wildly exuberant (and confused) as his 1941 did.

The plot, such as it is, has Nicki on a train journey from San Francisco to New York on Christmas Eve, noticing a murder being committed in a trackside building’s window as her train pauses approaching her station. She tries to notify the police but they aren’t interested, so instead decides to investigate herself with the help of a popular mystery crime writer. Its as silly as it probably sounds but its clearly more comedy than gritty noir thriller, and is so fast-paced one hardly has time to consider just how daft it all is. Slight as it is, its nonetheless surprisingly a whole lot of fun.

The pleasures of this film are many, but chiefly arise from the excellent cast featuring some of the best character actors working in Hollywood at the time.  Edward Everett Horton, Patricia Morison, Samuel S Hinds, Allen Jenkins, Ralph Bellamy, David Bruce, Dan Druyea, are all a joy, doing a lot with very little. They are perfectly cast, characters established simply with just how they look, how they deliver their lines; very often I just sat and admired the sheer efficiency of the film, the perfect timing, the looks and expressions, the visual interplay. They are all there to serve Durbin, as this is clearly a Durbin vehicle, Universal apparently trying to find something that sticks as regards finding her a line of films now that she was now an adult. Durbin is very good herself in what might seem a fairly thankless role; she has real screen charm, a natural beauty with one of those switch on/off smiles that Hollywood ladies used to be so good at As well as very good actress with a gift for comic timing, she was also an accomplished singer with an operatic voice, three numbers given to her in the most unlikeliest fashion just, well, because (one when she sings Silent Night in its entirety over the phone to her father. the other two when she poses as a cabaret singer in a nightclub). Durbin is the Real Deal and I was quite taken by her performance. I was surprised to discover later that she only made films for three more years, with just twenty-three films in her IMDB filmography, She retired to rural France and left all that Hollywood nonsense behind, something that few other child stars caught in the Hollywood system likely managed- here’s a noir with more than one happy ending.

Rebel Moon Part Two: Not terrible. Its worse.

Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver (2024), Dir. Zack Snyder, 122 mins, Netflix

This was so bad. The bar was set pretty low after suffering through Rebel Moon Part One, but all the same, it still managed to disappoint.  The scary thing is, I really don’t think Zack Snyder can see it. He’s so out of touch with film-making reality, lost in his Snyder-verse of what makes a decent film, that he just cannot see it. There’s something genuinely tragic about that. This is a guy with considerable visual talent, but my goodness his flaws are like a gaping maw, swallowing his career up.

I liked his Dawn of the Dead remake more than I expected, and 300 was a pretty decent stab at converting a Frank Miller graphic novel to film, and I will always defend his Watchmen (even if Alan Moore won’t)  as one of those unfilmable projects that somehow worked out. But after that, its been a long slow slope of style over substance finally crashing into the rank cesspool that is the Rebel Moon project. It’s not like we couldn’t see its coming- Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Justice League… they were all films with isolated moments of visual brilliance, moments of Pure Cinema, increasingly dragged down by abysmal plotting, cardboard characterisation and risible dialogue, steadily becoming more and more banal almost to the point of sheer lunacy. There is something increasingly juvenile, perhaps bordering on infantile, in how narrative functions in these films which curiously corresponds with his vociferous fanbase of teen nerds who refuse to grow up.

Nobody can really match him for his visual flair in transferring the energy of comicbook panels to the silver screen, so vividly managed in 300 that it has shaped -and limited- his career ever since. His slo-mo is the equivalent of Tarantino’s penchant for littering his own films with bad language, its become shorthand for his directorial method (but at least Tarantino can write, for all his own faults, his films at least make sense). But comics are dumb, (largely) made for kids- or at least kids who would later grow up and start reading proper books. There is a reason why, back in the 1970s, there was huge disbelief and media attention when the Salkind’s bet a fortune on making a big-budget, serious motion picture based on that old Superman comicbook. Comics were for kids, films were for adults. At least, that’s how it used to be. Has it gone full circle now, are the comics for the adults and the films for the kids?

Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver is so stupid, so badly written, that even the world’s finest actors couldn’t save its dialogue or plot- and this film’s actors are NOT the world’s finest actors. They are clearly not helped by Snyder’s direction, either, which I suspect primarily involved stand here, pose like this and frown, and repeat, etc. Even the action is boring and badly staged, and that’s usually Snyder’s prime selling point- here the endlessly repetitive slo-mo doesn’t intensify anything, instead it constantly veers into parody.  This film could be given a laugh track and it would probably work as some sit-com piss-take of Star Wars. I was watching it appalled at just how lazily it telegraphs everything, how badly it is paced and edited and how it is riddled with plot holes like the craters on the moon.

Basically, its a lesson in how not to make a movie, but more importantly, maybe its the film that wakes up Netflix and other streamers to how Hollywood creatives are taking them for a ride. Quality should mean something, it shouldn’t just be content for content’s sake, and the creatives should be taken to task for taking the piss like this. If this film crashed and burned at the box-office with huge noise and attention, instead of just disappearing on a streamer, it would likely derail Snyder’s career. Instead I guess he’ll just carry on as usual, and we’ll get more of the same.

Tales That Witness Madness: Hard to forgive

Tales That Witness Madness (1973), Dir. Freddie Francis, 90 mins, Talking Pictures TV (SD)

It was the cast that made a fool of me, suckered me in. Its an old film gambit that invariably works, and why some actors were paid well and always got work- past glories lending their casting some weight to undeserving movies. You’d think I’d learn by now. But I saw Kim Novak, Jack Hawkins, Donald Pleasence, Joan Collins and Michael Petrovitch in the cast and thought that it might be worth a watch… well, lets just say that this film is hardly the finest cinematic hour for any of them. The hard truth is, while some of us film fans like to think of film as an important art and craft with historical worth, for most of the folks in the business its just a pay cheque to keep the wolves from the door. Quality might even be accidental; I wonder if any of the thespians etc behind this film later looked back on it and thought, “that was my new car I bought back in 1974” or “well that paid for the swimming pool extension that year” and nothing more than  that. Is that, after all, all that films are?

The only slight plus is the irony of as wooden an actress as Joan Collins playing a wife competing with a dead tree for her husband’s affections… and losing. Its like some cruel microcosm of her career.

Mind, often even bad old movies have some worth to them, maybe some element of fun. Not so here with this frankly excretable horror feature from 1973.  Watching it, I wondered what people thought, actually paying hard-earned cash back then to watch rubbish like this in town cinemas. Maybe they expected less from movies; this film is terribly, nonsensically written, poorly cast, edited, directed, a stinker of the first order. I don’t know what the shooting schedule was like for films like this back then, but what, maybe two weeks, maybe? It looks like it was made by people tired of making movies,

Tales That Witness Madness is one of those portmanteau horror films that were popular back then, telling three of four short stories tied together by some over-arching narrative. In this case, its Dr. Tremayne (Donald Pleasence) working in an asylum recounting to his  summoned colleague Nicholas (Jack Hawkins) the case histories of four patients whose cases he has brilliantly ‘solved’. I don’t know if I actually fell asleep and missed something at the end, but I stuck with the film for just two reasons – a) to see what Kim Novak was doing in it (the buggers knew what they were doing, holding her segment till last) and b) to see what this cunning ‘solution’ actually was, that was the reason for the tales, hoping for some kind of clever twist. But as might have been expected, there’s no such genuine explanation, only a nonsensical cop-out in which Nicholas somehow gets attacked by the suddenly no-longer-invisible tiger from the first story. Its so stupid, I’m surprised the bar for what amounted to releasable films was so low back then- no wonder the industry was in dire trouble, it was hardly competing with television with dross such as this. Maybe audiences were more forgiving, too?

Civil War: Nobody wins

Civil War (2024) Dir. Alex Garland, 109 mins, Cinema

Not wholly convincing, perhaps, but nonetheless a pretty powerful piece of film-making, Alex Garland’s Civil War… well, it seems to have antagonised the extreme sides of the political divide if only because it tries so hard NOT to.  Some will argue its a weakness of the film that it doesn’t fall on either of the political sides wholeheartedly, for instance doubling-down on the President being some crazy far-right politician as some kind of hate figure and eulogising the Western Front forces as liberal saviours, or  maybe going into deep detail regards the two factions and what led to the war.  Things are kept deliberately vague- we are simply told that the sitting President is on his third term (breaking the historical two-term limit) and that he disbanded the FBI. We aren’t told there is any dubiety regards the previous Election results, or what political party he represents. We just know that a number of States seceded from the Union in protest at the third term and the Presidents presumably dictatorial decision-making, sparking (another) American Civil War.

I don’t think Garland could ever win, and commend his restraint on specifics and not baiting either side  (Republicans or Democrats) in what is already proving to a be a contentious election year (I can’t decide if the film is ill-timed or  is perfectly/cynically timed for boffo Box Office) – its easy to imagine how incendiary this film could have been, and that wouldn’t have helped anybody with how things are. Can you imagine if some gun-happy redneck went into a cinema shooting patrons because of some perceived slight on ‘his’ United States? Maybe it is a pity this film couldn’t have been a rampantly bold Oliver Stone kind of movie that deliberately provokes viewers, but I think that just reflects the time we are living in.

As I have noted, some factions are nonetheless angered by that restraint, perceived as ‘chickening out’ of making a stand on either side. The film is ‘seen’ from the viewpoint of press photographers/ journalists documenting the final days of the war as Western Front forces, contrary to the Presidents own confident speeches predicting victory, close in on Washington DC. This viewpoint is largely impartial, and while I think its clear the President has over-stood his authority and is responsible for splitting his own country from within, the press don’t seem to comment upon it too much (“Once you start asking those questions you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record so other people ask.” which I suppose is the mandate for the film).

Their attention is wholly upon the gig- getting to Washington in a race against time for, somehow, one last interview with the President before it all comes falling down. The film takes an episodic form documenting their road-trip across from New York and the broken America they pass through.

The film is a confident, coldly efficient work, pretty well-made considering its fairly low budget (although admittedly large for an indie like A24); there is a surprising sense of large-scale and reality to the brutal repercussions on American society.  If the film has a weak point, I think its the writing of some of the characters- particularly Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young wannabe press photographer who hitches a ride. She’s clearly supposed to represent our own befuddled viewpoint and general bemusement at what’s going on, a coming-of-age thing, but the part is weakly written, far too obvious. I’d have much preferred to have had more monologues from Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) offering some life-worn observation of the lost America he grew up in and the shit show it has become. What does Jessie know or understand, or have to offer the audience?

The central protagonist is Lee (Kirstin Dunst) who is a partly pragmatic, partly still-ambitious veteran photographer on one last big scoop who reluctantly becomes a mentor to Jessie. She’s seen things in her career that haunts her and one gets the impression this is one job too many- but she doesn’t really externalise that, the psyche shattered by seeing too often the worst of humanity. Maybe that’s the problem with the film skirting  taking a side, avoiding offending either Republican or Democrat audiences. The irony is that the film is stolen completely by Jesse Plemons, chillingly playing a solder who threatens the main characters- its pretty certain whose side he’s on (with a mass grave behind him filled with -presumably- the wrong kind of Americans).

For my part, I was appalled, fascinated and horrified at seeing Americans shooting Americans the way this film depicts, there is a tragedy to it all that, as an outsider from the UK, I found quite shocking. I suppose it could have been more horrific, more nightmarish, more polarising- but I suppose that’s left for some other movie.  I still think this proves a worthy effort.

Road House: an in-joke that sailed over my head

Road House (2024), Dir. Doug Liman, 121 mins, Amazon Prime,

I vaguely recall seeing the original (Patrick Swayze) Road House, but it was back in the VHS rental days over thirty years ago so can’t really remember anything of it – didn’t leave much of an impression with me to be honest, but I know its well-regarded by fans.

This new Road House though, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, well, I can’t imagine this one getting much of a fanbase, other than for connoisseurs  of appalling, so-bad-its-really-quite-good films but with this film that’s such a low benchmark…. I mean,  far as I’m concerned, its just plain bad and should be avoided, but other people’s mileage may vary.  Its just so lazy, formulaic, everything so telegraphed… is ‘violent comfort food’ a thing? That’s really all this has going for it, really- a lot of the old ultra violence, as Alex and his droogs might say (I guess they’d be fans of stuff like this). But even that is taken to ridiculous extremes, another one of those films where the action choreography leaves real-world physics behind in favour of Marvel comicbook nonsense.

Jake Gyllenhaal, the best Peter Parker/ Spider-Man we never had, is really pretty good to be fair- his performance likely the only plus this nonsense has going for it, but even that is horribly outweighed by Conor McGregor, who can’t even walk normally never mind act or speak dialogue. McGregor’s performance is so peculiar its almost a work of art- its almost terrifying, how bad it is. Physically he’s really imposing but its utterly diluted by what amounts to a bizarro caricature of a hulking brute, and his voice…. if ever someone needed a dialogue coach or maybe even a dub, its him- even the earliest example of Schwarzenegger’s worse accent was never as mystifying. But maybe I’m being unfair and its entirely intentional- you can’t really tell in films like this. There’s so much wrong and implausible one has to wonder if its actually deliberate, an in-joke that sailed over my head.

In the film, Gyllenhaal is a reluctant fighter who is haunted by something in his past, eventually gleaned through nightmare flashbacks, in which during a UFC fight he killed his opponent when overcome by rage. So through the film he always ties to rein himself in (while beating the shit out of everybody) to ensure things don’t get out of hand. I swear to God I kept on expecting him to cross the fourth wall and go all Bill Bixby saying  “don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.” It was bordering on that kind of camp, what with McGregor clowning around.  The film doesn’t cross that line, but maybe it should.

I don’t know what in the world anyone was thinking, making this film, its so nuts. I thought The Beekeeper would be the worst action film inflicted upon me this year, but hey, we’ve got a contender….

Napoleon: Bland and bonkers

Napoleon (2023), Dir. Ridley Scott,  158 mins, Apple TV

Its inevitable that one compares Napoleon to Ridley Scott’s first film, The Duellists from 1977, because it shares the same period setting. It’s fascinating, really- The Duellists is a beautiful film that feels like an artefact of some other era,  a grim, subdued arthouse film with a gorgeous, hypnotic score by Howard Blake soaring over one of the moodiest, most beautiful closing shots in cinema history. Napoleon, meanwhile, is utterly bonkers.

The Duellists is like some delicate painting executed in minute detail with absolute care using the smallest of brushes, while Napoleon is slapped on its canvas with big sweeping brush strokes in wild abandon. I’m not suggesting the latter is the wrong approach but it does seem symptomatic of Scott’s output of late, cranking out films as if in a race against time. His speed shooting films no matter their complexity or scale is amazing, the very definition of efficiency on-set, it would seem. Doesn’t necessarily translate into accomplished films, though. Its curious to me that the characters in Napoleon feel very modern, whereas in The Duellists the characters all seem of their age, of the Napoleonic period, a little strange, a little alien.

I watched Napoleon once and I’m pretty fine with that, but I occasionally return to The Duellists and I’m always bewitched by its strangeness, there’s something just so interesting about it, its pace, lighting, how it sounds. I wouldn’t suggest it was any more historically accurate- some of the casting is frankly bizarre. But there’s something about The Duellists which calls me back for more viewings, and it remains one of my favourite Ridley Scott films.

Napoleon seems rather disposable in comparison. Maybe a directors cut would improve it- Scott did talk at length about a longer cut which was expected to surface on Apple TV eventually, but that’s all gone quiet of late. Its perhaps foolish to imagine a directors cut would ‘fix’ the film in the way that his Kingdom of Heaven was improved by its own directors cut, but you never know…

nobody needed CGI back in 1977….

Constellation: In either reality, what’s the odds of a second season?

Constellation Season One (2024),  Eight episodes, Apple TV

We seem to be in a renaissance of serious sci-fi on television of late (The Expanse, For All Mankind, Foundation,  Silo, 3 Body Problem) but I have to wonder if something like Constellation might burst that bubble.  I guess you can just try too hard or push things too far for even the geeks, never mind casual/mainstream audiences. The cast in this – Noomi Rapace, Jonathan Banks, James D’Arcy – are excellent and the show, typically of Apple, is of a very high production quality, but it just falls apart in the execution. Maybe it credits the audience with too much patience and intelligence?

For my part, I enjoyed it and guessed the central conceit fairly early on but having said that,  I started to get confused by how it played out; they  (the writers/showrunners) just seem to lose control of it.  Its a tricky thing to pull off – actors playing alternate versions of characters, without the audience initially aware they are seeing alternate realities –  and they don’t manage it, frankly.  I don’t think they sufficiently state the internal logic, set the ground rules, so to speak, to ensure a concrete footing for the audience.  Instead, as the series progresses it unravels and becomes largely nonsensical towards the end. The whole concept of  space travel, Quantum physics and multiple realities is handled well and is intriguing enough to maintain interest, but alas becomes hopelessly muddled by soap opera relationships that irritate rather than engage.

I’m not sure whether it is in the writing or the editing, but something goes awry in the last few episodes. Worst of all,  the ending of this first season commits the unforgivable sin of not just closing this first season with a frustrating cliffhanger -predictable as that is, these days-  but one that frustratingly makes little sense.

Did Gerry Anderson’s 1969 sci-fi flick Doppelganger (aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun) tell pretty much the same story, but better? I rather think it did, and it did so in well under two hours with beginning, middle and end without leaving a conclusion untold.

I suppose if Constellation gets a second season and finishes the story it might save itself with a satisfying and sensical conclusion, but I’m dubious it will even get that second season. I’d love to know how many people actually stuck it out for all eight episodes, and how many of those felt rather betrayed by that last episode’s  cliffhanger – indeed how many would even give a second season a chance? I have to confess to feeling vexed with the format of these prestige shows, running for eight or ten episodes and always relying on teases for second, then third, then maybe fourth, seasons, stretching things out into a long narrative over several years.  Its getting so that I’m wondering if its worth the commitment, especially if the show gets cancelled and that always-teased finale never transpires (so many guilty culprits, like The Expanse, Westworld etc). If individual seasons aren’t wholly satisfying, what is indeed the point?

I also suspect that, however the second season goes, it is quite conceivable that the same story could have been told sufficiently well in just those first eight episodes. Of course that’s just not how these shows are greenlit and made these days, with the cast likely already committed to multiple seasons when they sign on the dotted line. But its surely beholden upon the showrunners, the writers and editors to endure that individual seasons are well-enough structured that they are in themselves satisfying rather than quite as frustrating as this proves to be. Its a bad sign when after eight episodes the credits come up and I’m thinking what the f—-?

True Lies 4K: The ugly truth

James Cameron’s True Lies finally comes to home video in a 4K presentation- but that may not be the truth, it may be a lie. Depends on what 4K means, really… true lies indeed.

There doesn’t seem to be much love out there for True Lies these days (and will probably be even less after this release). The film seems to be widely considered something of a misfire for Schwarzenegger  and Cameron, although I always enjoyed it. I remember watching it back in 1994 knowing nothing about it, and instead of it being the straight action flick that I expected, it turned out to be something of a hoot. To be fair, nuclear-wielding terrorists seem to be an odd subject for a comedy but that’s essentially the b-plot, the main story being one of a spy’s marital strife when his lies catch up with him. The film isn’t perfect- Schwarzenegger seems rather out of his depth (imagine Bill Paxton playing that part instead!) and Cameron’s heart doesn’t really seem to be in it (it was a project brought to him by Schwarzenegger rather than something he instigated himself), but there’s an awful lot of good in the film- especially Jamie Lee Curtis who steals the show from everyone.

But this is another of those Cameron films – like The Abyss, in particular- that has a troubled history on home video beyond the DVD era, in that it hasn’t had one. This is a film that was never released on Blu-ray and looked increasingly unlikely of ever getting a 4K release. Even now, the lack of enthusiasm for the film from the Studio and Cameron seems to have resulted in a lacklustre/disastrous transfer, subjected to all sorts of nefarious A.I. shenanigans by Park Road Post, a New Zealand-based outfit using HAL 9000 by the look of it. The same A.I. tinkering has been inflicted upon Aliens and The Abyss, but for some reason True Lies has fared the worst.

What I suspect -and I may be wide of the mark, its only a suspicion- is that for all the talk of a new 4K scan of the original negative, I think this 4K master is based on a 2K scan done years ago when a Blu-ray release was mooted (and presumably stalled by Cameron, as was The Abyss). My suspicions are based on the fact that The Abyss looks so much better than this, and does seem to have had a new recent 4K scan – if that were also true of True Lies, it would seem reasonable to presume that the result would look very similar if not even better (much of The Abyss being pretty dark, True Lies shot often in bright sunlight). Instead, True Lies looks suspiciously like Park Road Post has up-rezzed a 2K scan to 4K, adding artificial detail and digital artefacts like edges,  and scrubbing out most of any film grain. If they DIDN’T, then something went wrong somewhere. Sometimes the film looks fine, even frustratingly good, while at others it looks almost as ugly as a DVD would.

The Abyss on 4K, while clearly looking processed, nonetheless looks very good indeed – but there’s something wrong with True Lies. Its not an unwatchable disaster by any means but if this thing has indeed had a new 4K scan then there’s something very wrong with that camera negative. I often thought while watching the film that maybe some of the shots had focus problems (happens more often in films than you’d think) and that the A.I. algorithms that Park Road Post are using just couldn’t fathom out how to fix it.  There’s an early shot when the credits are onscreen -text being an optical addition that can cause degradation anyway in the pre-digital days- when a driver pulls up to the security gate and his face looks so out of focus his features drop into smeary DVD territory, its pretty amazing and not something I think I’ve seen on a 4K disc before.  What I would like to know is, why would Cameron put up with that, why would he find that acceptable when he’s been delaying HD releases of these films for years.

I guess we’ll never know. The irony is that some effort has clearly been made for this release- there is a great new 43-minute featurette looking back on True Lies with many of the participants who are still around (its an older film than we’d like to admit when looking in the mirror),  chipping in with interesting observations and anecdotes. There’s many new releases and studio catalogue titles that don’t get features like this anymore, and I really enjoyed it. Its not exactly worth the price of the 4K disc but is a certain consolation.

At least I can watch True Lies though- my old DVD was from the R1-import days, I hadn’t seen the film in maybe fifteen to twenty years, possibly longer, so I had a great time with the film itself. Its been great being able to watch this and The Abyss again; films just aren’t the same as they used to be, these days, albeit I appreciate pink-tinted glasses of nostalgia may have a hand here.

Does anyone think we’ve missed the point of this release? That its some kind of grindhouse edition, approximating the look of my old fleapit ABC cinema in town during the 1980s? Don’t know why Cameron would aim for that, but… strange world.