Review: The Fabelmans

The Fabelmans (spoilers. ish.)
Cert: 12A / 151 mins / Dir. Steven Spielberg / Trailer

Cinema is magic, and its creators are magicians. Steven Spielberg, for example, can make 2½ hours of quasi-biographical coming of age story feel like five*¹. It's not that The Fabelmans drags, just that it does not let up.

Beginning in 1952, this is the tale of the young Sam Fabelman (Gabriel LaBelle / Mateo Zoryan) spanning twelve years of his life (hence the two actors) as his parents Burt (Paul Dano) and Mitzi (Michelle Williams) move to several cities across the US in an upwardly mobile spiral. Already fascinated by movies and process of film-making, this is massively disruptive for Sammy and his sisters (Keeley Karsten / Alina Brace, Julia Butters / Birdie Borria), and the movie tracks the weaving course of their lives and Sam's growth and self-discovery.

KID

And it's fine. The story about a Jewish kid learning about the world and finding purpose in life through the art of translating ideas to celluloid is superb. The twee, mawkish, shrieking and overbearing soap opera which happens all around it, far less so. The two are intrinsically intertwined of course, and the film itself is named after the family unit, not the protagonist. My problem (and this is very much my problem as a viewer, not the film's as a creation) is that it's so sincere, all of the time. Your mileage will vary but most of the humour feels forced and most of the angst feels gleefully wallowing. I love Michelle Williams as much as anyone, but she's on Ten™ from the very first scene, a high-maintenance character in a film of domestic histrionics and it is draining to sit through.

The subplot with Seth Rogen's 'Uncle' Bennie is so telegraphed and then spelled-out as to be physically painful, and it's a shame since his character initially feels like a breath of fresh air - albeit a breath which is necessitated by the fug of Mitzi's constant drama. Paul Dano puts in a reliable performance as the family patriarch who only understands Science™, but the role demands relatively little of him as a performer, a charge which can be levelled at most of the supporting parts here.

NORTHERN

The real ray of sunlight comes in the form of Judd Hirsch as 'actual Uncle' Boris, the cranky, scrunch-faced black sheep of the family who arrives gibbering in distorted syntax to everyone's consternation. He's also the only character here who effortlessly sees through the bullshit and understands Sam's attraction to the arts - better at that point than Sam does - and the sacrifices which may be required to attain greatness. He is this story's Yoda, and is in it for nowhere near long enough.

When we see Sam making films - the actual physical process of coordinating, directing and shooting - The Fabelmans is great. Unfortunately, this accounts for less than a third of the film's run-time. But this is the lesson of course: we can't dedicate ourselves completely to creativity because the admin of life will always get in the way to some degree. And we either learn to live with that, or we give up creating. The process of cinema is where science meets art, and Sam Fabelman and his story are the embodiment of that collision.

Steven Spielberg has many weapons in his armoury. Understatement is not one of them. The Fabelmans almost comes over as something that the director needed to get off his chest, rather than an insight-unveiling introspective.

A self-indulgent missive of this intensity is certainly forgivable from a director as accomplished as this, but probably only as a swan-song. Steven, however, seems far from done...*²

*¹ And while it's nice of the man himself to sit in what looks like a generic hotel suite somewhere and record a special pre-film message to audiences who have come out to cinemas to watch his latest epic, it feels notably strange that one of the world's greatest film directors has recorded one of the least convincing thank-you messages ever.^{[ BACK ]}

*² Which I'm not complaining about, by the way. I certainly don't get on with all of Spielberg's work, but the man's been responsible for enough absolute bangers for me to appreciate what he's capable of. Okay, very few of those bangers have been made this century, but hey... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Independence Day - Resurgence

Independence Day: Resurgence (3D)
Cert: 12A / 120 mins / Dir. Roland Emmerich / Trailer



So it turns out I did the right thing by going home halfway through last night's ID4 double-bill after all. I'll say from the outset that I didn't actively dislike Independence Day: Resurgence, but I had so many gripes with it that I'm glad I didn't sit up until the small hours having them thrown at me immediately after the first lot...

The film opens twenty 'real-time' years after the events of Independence Day, in the radically different 2016 that sprang from the events of that movie. But rather than let the social and technological details of this timeline seep through to the audience over the course of the first act, the screenplay mechanically explains them all in very small words, with a pseudo-narration to begin with, followed up by the exposition-heavy conversation that no-one has, even in fiction ("Alright Terry, how's your alien-powered magic bladeless helicopter like we all have here in the present day?").

The film spends so much time explaining minutiae and introducing characters we don't need to meet, that it almost forgets to be a movie about aliens who want to smash the living-shit out of the Earth. Almost, but not quite. There's more up-close ET involvement in this sequel I'm glad to say, and while they're still effectively personality-free drones, the film's best scenes are the melee and ground-battle engagements. The rest is entirely formulaic blockbuster fluff, though.

Now, unlike the modern breed of city-smashing superhero movies, Resurgence doesn't spend its climactic battle committing bystander-genocide. No, it does this off-handedly in the middle of the film, apparently for no other reason than making our heroes pull slightly concerned faces at monitors and news reports as millions of civilians die because they were in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Still, as any good despot knows, the more you kill, the less it seems to actually matter, somehow.

Another regular complaint of modern movies is that the CGI effects feel hollow and without punch while the cast over-emote against greenscreen backdrops. But the opposite seems to be in play here, as the film's visuals are detailed and vibrant, while it's the acting that's completely weightless. Roland Emmerich seems completely satisfied that his cast have learned their lines, so he doesn't bother getting them to put any actual feeling into reciting them. No-one appears to be enjoying themselves on-set (although with a script as laboured and cumbersome as this, it's hardly surprising), and as I've seen most of the cast be much better elsewhere, that's got to come down to poor direction.

This really feels like a generic alien-invasion movie that's been retrofitted with Independence Day continuity in its third draft, presumably on the promise of a bigger budget. While Independence Day: Resurgence is distracting enough, I didn't exactly find it entertaining.

It's not that the film left me with nothing afterwards, more that it left me with nothing while I was watching it...

Best bit: How, when ex-president Whitmore has his third-act hero shave and pops on his old flight suit, he suddenly doesn't need that walking stick any more. #Bang! #Heroism!



I can imagine fans of San Andreas loving this.



For the visuals? Sure.
For the performances? HAHAHAHAHA!.



Blatantly set up its next installment? Absolutely.



Cast, no.
Director… well that's a tough call. It's certainly not Emmerich's worst.



Nah.



There is.



Level 2: Independence Day: Resurgence stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in 2003's 21 Grams, as did Benicio 'going to be rocking up in Star Wars Episode VIII in an as-yet un-named role' Del Toro.





DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Independence Day

Independence Day
Cert: 12A / 145 mins / Dir. Roland Emmerich / Trailer



A preamble: I first saw Independence Day back in 1996 during its initial cinematic release. The last time I watched Independence Day was in 1996 during its initial cinematic release. For reasons best known to the Summer of that year, I got completely caught up in the marketing hype for the event-movie of the year, but didn't get to actually see it until it had been playing for about a month or so.

By that point, I'd already bought a few of the fairly cool looking Trendmasters figures (they came with a floppy disk, mate. Do you know how exciting that was?), and they were busy taking pride of place in my luxury Kent penthouse flat when I finally caught the film at Canterbury's ABC, and I realised the aliens had a far more prominent position on my bookshelf than they did in Roland Emmerich's disaster-epic. Because that's what Independence Day is. A disaster movie; not a sci-fi one. Plenty of flying-saucers but an utter dearth of actual aliens, so that we learn little-to-nothing of the culture of the extra-terrestrial invaders, and instead learn little-to-nothing about the cardboard cutout characters sent to fight them off and save the world.

I wasn't angry at the film per se, just pretty disappointed that the figures I'd bought were basically the 90s counterpart of the Jawas from Star Wars: undeniably there and undeniably worth making toys out of, but not really the reason you should go and see the film. In many ways, I'd spoiled it for myself with over-anticipation (a thing I rarely do these days*¹). So fast-forward twenty years and my local showed a double-bill to usher in the sequel*², Independence Day: Resurgence. Under the normal run of things I wouldn't bother watching an underwhelming movie from two decades ago, but since I'd like to catch up before the new installment and since watching an underwhelming movie at home would provide far too many distractions to concentrate properly, I figured why the hell not?

Sure, Emmerich's film won't have changed in the intervening years, but maybe my appreciation of film will have..?*³

+ + + + + + + + + +

An amble: Hmm. Yeah, it's not great, is it? Not so much that the film hasn't aged well, more that I was less than half an hour in before I realised that it's basically as crap as I remember. To be honest, I was already bored by the time Will Smith and Harry Connick Jr take to the skies for the first time in an attempt to beat the aliens into submission with standard issue Air Force script-clichés. I get the idea of making a sci-fi invasion movie that's about "the little people", the everyman watching TV news reports and not knowing what the hell's going on. But to make that work, you really need to write in some characters, rather than archetypal caricatures spouting the first line that came into Roland Emmerich's head.

It's tempting to say that the film is of its time, but both the structure and dialogue are insultingly hackneyed, even for 1996 (Jurassic Park predates this by three years, remember). It's more amazing to note how many films Independence Day has influenced, despite doing very little that was actually new. It's basically the first episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but without the sarcasm.

When Jeff Goldblum watches a 15 mile-wide*⁴ flying saucer glide slowly over New York for five minutes before suddenly remembering the piece of paper in his hand and gasping "...the signal!", and he's meant to be the smartest guy in the city, you know that humanity is basically (and deservedly) doomed. Although you'd also think that an invading force who have a bit of a gripe after the Roswell incident might actually target the Nevada hangar holding their still-operational scout-ship like in the first wave of attacks, or something.

And you detonate a nuclear device in an alien mothership (big enough to hold a shit-ton of 15 mile-wide bomber ships, remember) that's parked up within the planet's gravity-well? That's just going to be the Endor Holocaust all over again...

+ + + + + + + + + +

A post-amble: On one hand, it's nice that Emmerich has used the alien fleet as a metaphor for resource-stripping, invasion-paranoia, especially as he'd later go on to obliquely suggest "Freedom Hatin' Terrorists" to moviegoers by employing the cunning cypher of "Actual Freedom Hatin' Terrorists".

But you've got to figure that that metaphor can be instantly read as relating to the settlers who all but wiped out the native population of America. And since this movie depicts a defiant America nobly saving the world, that suggests either crippling social-guilt, or a complete lack of self-awareness.

I guess the sequel will tell..?

Films where people gaze concertedly into the middle-distance and croak "Good God…".
Every six minutes, or so.



Well, if you didn't catch it at tonight's double-bill screenings, chances are you'll be able to slot in a triple when Part 3 comes out.



What, be an entirely mainstream version of a geeky thing?
Absolutely.



Given Roland Emmerich and Will Smith's involvement, I hardly think that's an appropriate question…



Let's be honest. A little bit, yeah.



There isn't, but there's a "I've got a really bad feeling about this" line.
Plus that whole pre-finale scene in Nevada, which is essentially the Yavin IV base but dragged out for three times as long.



Level 2: Independence Day stars Mary McDonnell who appeared in the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, of course, alongside Katee 'Bo-Katan' Sackhoff.




*¹ Although it wasn't the last time I'd do this. A couple of years later I got similarly excited about the Stargate movie, buying a similar number of (admittedly smaller/less-expensive) figures in the process. These days, I only spend inordinate amounts of disposable income on spin-off merchandising after being disappointed by a movie...

*² They might have showed an ID4 double-bill leading into a midnight showing of the new movie, but I went home after the first one. I'll catch Resurgence tomorrow. I'm suffering from Midnight-Fatigue a little if I'm honest, and after staying up until 3am watching the worryingly bland X-Men: Apocalypse with little more than a handful of patrons, I have no desire to repeat the experience. There were about 30 people in for the double-bill tonight, although additional midnight screenings of the new movie alone were taking place in other screens. If Resurgence is good sequel, it'll still be good at 20:45 on Thursday night, thanks very much. If it's a terrible one, then I won't be self-imposing sleep deprivation to find out...

*³ Spoiler: it has, that's the point of this blog, in fact.

*⁴ The "15 miles wide" detail was one I only picked up on tonight (having only watched the film once before, obviously). Don't know why it initially stuck, but every time we see a shot of the discs it kept popping back into my head as it made less and less sense each time. That crashed ship in the background at the end? That's 706 square miles of Nevada Desert spanged in one earth-smashing collapse, is it? And the same for all the other downed ships all over the world? I'm amazed there are any humans left alive on the planet for Resurgence…


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.