James Cameron Ranked Worst to Best Jimbo’s back! James Cameron managed to take even longer between Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water than he did between Titanic and Avatar (thirteen vs twelve years), but never fear; there’ll be an Avatar 3 along in no time at all, for which I know we are all exceedingly grateful. I first compiled this Worst to Best in 2016, and the surprise is the relative hive of activity in Cameron’s closet during the intervening period. Besides the non-Avatar projects that saw the light of day with his name attached, we could rely
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Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) More or less what I expected from Jimbo. There isn’t an original bone in its body, essentially reheating the original with more polished effects and added underwater. If I hadn’t seen it in 3D, I suspect I’d have been distinctly underwhelmed. Avatar: The Way of Water is a bloated but proficiently serviceable medley of Cameron’s fascinations with hardware, ecology, transhumanism and now – very Vin of him – fam, often accompanied by contradictory and unironic media soundbites from the man himself. But then, if Jim’s a Black Hat turned White Hat, we wouldn’t
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) It’s odd how, rather than becoming more insightful as a maturing filmmaker, so reflecting a natural progression of the talent behind The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro has descended ever further into didacticism and overstatement (that is, when he’s even attempting to furnish his pictures with socio-political commentary). It inclines one to doubt him retrospectively. My suggestion is that del Toro sets out with geek intent – “I wanna make Frankenstein! I wanna make Pinocchio! Gimme! Gimme!” – and then pulls back, thinking “But how do I get respect as an
Doctor Who Season 22 – Worst to Best A season that tends to be thrown on the pyre as over-violent and over-continuity-driven, with an over-acted (and/or miscast, and/or unlikeable) Doctor. Which leaves it as one of the least-loved ’80s seasons, in a decade already least-loved among classic Who. Parts of this are fair. The violence is, at times, gratuitous, but this is as frequently down to the directors attached having no understanding of how to moderate tone as it is the content itself (I’d suggest the greater issue is the script-editor’s brand of ardent nihilism, which lends itself to the
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) One of those Disney animations (the 41st) I felt no great urgency to see. I’m all for them trying something different – I didn’t much care for most of their feted ’90s resurgence – but attempting an animated take on a storyline that would surely have been better suited to live-action (“ATLANTIS – Fewer songs, more explosions” read the crew t-shirts) probably wasn’t the way to go. This and Treasure Planet helped put the nail in the studio’s cell-animation coffin, just as Pixar was doing no wrong (and selling adrenochrome/ loosh addiction to a
Kubrick Ranked Worst to Best Ah, Stanley. The man whose greatest directorial work – or at least, most paradigm-influencing – is yet to be granted formal recognition. But enough about the Moon landings. Kubrick has been analysed like no other, both for his unparalleled martialling of cinematic language and for the seemingly endless variations of esoteric nutrition his work conceals. What he was saying does not, necessarily, present a unified vision, however. Express (and hidden) intent, perhaps, but at some point – it seems during the decade following his Apollo 11 mission – he recanted the dark side and
Christopher Nolan Ranked Worst to Best The Nolan-verse is about as rarefied as one gets in the blockbuster realm: chilly, cerebral storytelling enlivened by more populist approaches to scale and subject matter. The results have, on occasion, scored a resounding bullseye, on others exposed the separate components in rather unforgiving fashion. What endures, however, is a director in demand, one who may have peaked with the public a decade ago but can be relied upon to avoid the easy route. Which means he may yet engender a burst of event-appeal glory again, and in so doing give the MCUs
The Peripheral Season 1 Did Jonathan Nolan get carte blanche with The Peripheral? I wonder because, barring the slightly rickety season finale, there’s a level of confidence and sureness in the plotting and execution throughout that’s almost completely at odds with Westworld. We know that show had some serious teething problems during its first season. Perhaps HBO compromised his vision? Or maybe showrunner Scott B Smith simply he has a keener grasp of story. Whatever the reason, while The Peripheral skirts many similar futurist themes, it does so with a degree of coherence and engagement Nolan and Lisa Joy’s
Spiderhead (2022) Spiderhead’s setup suggests a third-act revelation, or at least stunning dramatic development, one that never comes. It’s a deficit that may lead many to feel underwhelmed by Joseph Kosinski’s follow up to Top Gun: Maverick, currently flying high in the box-office charts. I wouldn’t say that of it, exactly, but this is undoubtedly a case where the short story lent itself more directly to the anthology show format, lacking sufficient meat for feature expansion. Abnesti: The time to worry about crossing lines was a lot of lines ago. Based on George Saunders 2010 New Yorker (short) story Escape from Spiderhead,
The Pentaverate (2022) Soft disclosure, or a hard pass? In last week’s So I Married an Axe Murderer review, I speculated why Mike Myers might choose to return to comedy now, almost a decade and a half since his last effort, and considered the context of his picking the conspiracy subject – when it has never held greater currency – yet flipping the malign elite control on its head to present a positive secret society. That he was an identified visitor to Langley didn’t really make such a great case for his approaching the material with autonomy. But what if The Pentaverate is
The Invasion (2007) It would be entirely understandable for any on the lookout for ongoing relevance and refection of social trends and undercurrents to pass over Oliver Hirschbiegel’s take on Jack Finney’s The Body Snatchers (Warner Bros’ fourth so far). After all, it underwent some brutal reshoots and wound up in such a mangled form that it was pronounce DOA. The Invasion’s a footnote no one much cares to exhume, less still re-evaluate, and for good reason; a decade and a half’s distance has done nothing to reposition it as a neglected gem. Nevertheless, the first half of the picture does withstand renewed
The Black Hole (1979) Sometimes, a movie’s ambition is enough to see it through its less illustrious aspects. When I last revisited this entry in the “Dark Disney” canon, I pointed the finger of blame for The Black Hole’s drawbacks at director Gary Nelson, and while I still believe that’s partially fair, I have to credit him with the fact that it remains commendably weird-arsed (as I put it) and light years ahead of most big-budget science fiction, not only in its broaching of ideas but also in pursuing them to their conclusion. Calling it a kiddie 2001: A Space Odyssey would be
Eternals (2021) It would be overstating the case to suggest Eternals is a pleasant surprise, but given the adverse harbingers surrounding it, it’s a more serviceable – if bloated – and thematically intriguing picture than I’d expected. The signature motifs of director and honestly-not-billionaire’s-progeny Chloé Zhao are present, mostly amounting to attempts at Malick-lite gauzy natural light and naturalism at odds with the rigidly unnatural material. There’s woke to spare too, since this is something of a Kevin Feige Phase Four flagship, one that rather floundered, showcasing his designs for a nu-MCU. Nevertheless, Eternals manages to sustain interest despite some very variable performances, effects, and
2021-22 Best-of, Worst-of and Everything Else Besides The movies might be the most visible example of attempts to cling onto cultural remnants as the previous societal template clatters down the drain. It takes something people really want – unlike a Bond movie where he kicks the can – to suggest the model of yesteryear, one where a billion-dollar grosser was like sneezing. You can argue Spider-Man: No Way Home is replete with agendas of one sort or another, and that’s undoubtedly the case (that’s Hollywood), but crowding out any such extraneous elements (and they often are) is simply a consummate crowd-pleaser that taps
The Matrix Resurrections (2021) Warner Bros has been here before. Déjà vu? What happens when you let a filmmaker do whatever they want? And I don’t mean in the manner of Netflix. No, in the sequel sense. You get a Gremlins 2: The New Batch (a classic, obviously, but not one that financially furthered a franchise). And conversely, when you simply cash in on a brand, consequences be damned? Exorcist II: The Heretic speaks for itself. So in the case of The Matrix Resurrections – not far from as meta as The New Batch, but much less irreverent – when Thomas “Tom” Anderson, designer of globally
eXistenZ (1999) eXistenZ has more going on, more ideas and layers, than any of its thematic late-90s bunkmates – The Matrix, Dark City, The Thirteenth Floor – even if it’s the least polished of the quartet. It’s engaging, and engrossing, and David Cronenberg creates a sense of recursive, entropic remove from any original point via a range of baseline realities, but his movie is perhaps more satisfying thematically than it is in terms of storytelling. It doesn’t even make its rules of gameplaying entirely clear. Rules such as, how immersive is one’s avatar? As I see it, the only way eXistenZ can function –
Demon Seed (1977) Demon Seed lends itself to a scornful response, mostly because its premise is so outré as to be deemed absurd, risible even. It’s been said Donald Cammell intended to make a comedy, and some critics suggested he’d missed the boat in by failing to deliver a satire. However, it’s difficult to see how hilarious this might have been, based on the premise (machine violation and forced impregnation). And yet, conceptually, the picture is simultaneously silly and sinister. In that sense, Cammell, who rued the studio influence that spoiled his vision, might have been the perfect guy to bring it to the
Doctor Who Revelation of the Daleks Lovely, lovely, lovely. I can quite see why Revelation of the Daleks doesn’t receive the same acclaim as the absurdly – absurdly, because it’s terrible – overrated Remembrance of the Daleks. It is, after all, grim, grisly and exemplifies most of the virtues for which the Saward era is commonly decried. I’d suggest it’s an all-time classic, however, one of the few times 1980s Who gets everything, or nearly everything, right. If it has a fault, besides Eric’s self-prescribed “Kill everyone” remit, it’s that it tries too much. It’s rich, layered and very funny. It has enough material and ideas
Scanners (1981) David Cronenberg has made a career – albeit, he may have “matured” a little over the past few decades, so it is now somewhat less foregrounded – from sticking up for the less edifying notions of evolution and modern scientific thought. The idea that regress is, in fact, a form of progress, and unpropitious developments are less dead ends than a means to a state or states as yet unappreciated. He began this path with some squeam-worthy body horrors, before genre hopping to more explicit science fiction with Scanners, and with it, greater critical acclaim and a wider
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter (2016) I’m not sure I’d go as far as calling Iain Glen the saving grace of a billion-dollar-grossing movie franchise, but I suspect it’s no coincidence that the best two entries in the Resident Evil series feature him prominently. Unlike most of the characters in the run, he imbues Dr Isaacs with considerable personality, which can only serve to lift the proceedings, particularly in this concluding part. It helps too that Paul WS Anderson is genuinely attempting to pull out all the stops in terms of plot twists and set pieces. Which means Resident Evil: The Final
Loki (2021) Can something be of redeemable value and shot through with woke (the answer is: Mad Max: Fury Road)? The two attributes certainly sound essentially irreconcilable, and Loki’s tendencies – obviously, with new improved super-progressive Kevin Feige touting Disney’s uber-agenda – undeniably get in the way of what might have been a top-tier MCU entry from realising its full potential. But there are nevertheless solid bursts of highly engaging storytelling in the mix here, for all its less cherishable motivations. It also boasts an effortlessly commanding lead performance from Tom Hiddleston; that alone puts Loki head and shoulders above the other limited
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007) My previous exposure to the Resident Evil movies was limited to the first outing and then this one. And the reason I was intrigued to see this one was to a small degree the Mad Max trappings it chose to appropriate, but mostly it was the presence of one Russell Mulcahy as director, at that point very much in the straight-to-video realm (an arena he’d quickly return to with a Scorpion King sequel). My interest in the Highlander – and Ricochet! – director tackling zombies was not misplaced. Resident Evil: Extinction is vastly superior to anything the series offered hitherto. Why, it even makes the material seem half
Love and Monsters (2020) If nothing else, Michael Matthews goes some way towards rehabilitating a title that seemed forever doomed to horrific associations with one of the worst Russell T Davies Doctor Who stories (and labelling it one of his worst is really saying something). Love and Monsters delivers that rarity, an upbeat apocalypse, so going against the prevailing trend of not only the movie genre but also real life. The screenplay is credited to Brian Duffield, whose idea it was (also the quite decent Underwater) and Matthew Robinson (er, The Invention of Lying), and it’s fairly light on its feet. However, I suspect it’s Matthews who
Doctor Who The Two Doctors Ah yes, The Two Doctors. It can’t catch a break. If it isn’t in gratuitous, disgusting and in appalling taste, then it’s incredibly, unforgivably racist. And terribly directed besides. Some of these things are fair comment. Having recently rewatched Warriors of the Deep, I can attest there are degrees to the field of bad direction; as uninspired as his work is, Peter Moffat isn’t nearly at the bottom of the heap in this case. Tat Wood even suggests Pennant Roberts could probably have made something of the story, which is illustrative of how incredibly off base his overall
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) I’d like to report I had a blast with Godzilla vs. Kong. It’s lighter on its oversized, city-stomping feet than its slog of a MonsterVerse predecessor, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and there are flashes of visual inspiration along with several engaging core ideas (which, to be fair, the series had already laid the seeds for). But this sequel still stumbles in its chief task: assembling an engaging, lively story that successfully integrates both tiny humans and towering titans. Ilene: The myths say that their ancestors fought each other in a great war. Kong: Skull Island has fared best
2020-21 Bests-of, Worsts-of and Everything Else Besides As one, year-end lists and retrospectives are keen to see the back of 2020, doubtless under the blithe illusion – or brazen fabrication – that what’s coming next will be any kind of improvement. The good news is, if you’re into ramped-up New World Orders, you’re in clover. Otherwise, the outlook is far less rosy. My take on such matters comes via an ostensibly filmic blog, which may at least temper the veneer of doom mongering beneath a slick, or sick, auteurish sheen. Or perhaps not. I did manage to see a
THX 1138 (1971) Curious George’s debut is the antithesis of his later Star Wars (A New Hope), and it’s interesting that he should have invested himself in something so austere, “adult” and joyless given his later escapist veneer. One half senses, like Spielberg with Sugarland Express, that this was a self-consciously serious piece, intended to garner respect, rather than being something he was entirely invested in. But in contrast to the ’berg, Lucas was always a thoughtful young man – the prequel trilogy is deadly serious in theme – and it’s as likely that basic pragmatism took over when it came to
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) The deal with 2010: The Year We Make Contact, of course, is that it pales into insignificance if sat next to Kubrick’s film. The further deal is that being a unworthy sequel doesn’t make it a bad film. Indeed, I’m always rather impressed by it. With the proviso that, like pretty much all Peter Hyams’ best films (see also Capricorn One, Outland, The Star Chamber) it doesn’t quite come together. And that, most damagingly, it feels like an ’80s SF movie, whereas 2001: A Space Odyssey for all its psychedelia and monkey suits, hasn’t dated at all.
The X-Files 11.7: Rm9sbG93ZXJz (Followers) A cautionary what if? (or what when?) on our rampant reliance on, and insatiable uptake of, technology, Followers (I’m not quoting all that code every time) ploughs a path of the techno-tomorrow (or tonight) that has met with mixed results in the past (anyone remember First Person Shooter, Gibson be praised?), but here mostly manages to sustain itself, despite the slender premise. It’s a quirky episode, bigger on offbeat atmosphere than outright laughs, and works the better for it. The impression of yet more new blood in the show’s creative department is offset somewhat by the realisation that not only
Iron Man (2008) The Marvel-verse clearly owes Jon Favreau a huge debt. As much as Kevin Feige, in his own formative way, he’s the man who set the tone for their cinematic endeavours. You only have to look at the okay performances of the other contenders in the then-forthcoming Avengers to recognise Favreau had found a particular alchemy that the rest, at the time, lacked. It was he who pushed for not-so-long-since persona-non-grata Robert Downey Jr to take the lead (and there hasn’t been a piece of Marvel casting so assured since, with the possible exception of Tom Holland). And it
Moonraker (1979) Depending upon your disposition, and quite possibly age, Moonraker is either the Bond film that finally jumped the shark or the one that is most gloriously redolent of Roger Moore’s knowing take on the character. Many Bond aficionados will no doubt utter its name with thinly disguised contempt, just as they will extol with gravity how Timothy Dalton represented a masterful return to the core values of the series. If you regard For Your Eyes Only as a refreshing return to basics after the excesses of the previous two entries, and particularly the space opera grandstanding of this one, it’s probably fair to say you
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