The original TRON was released in the same year I was born, and I hope I've aged a little better than the film has in the intervening 28 years. When I watched Steven Lisberger's sci-fi adventure recently in preparation for the release of its belated sequel, it appeared hopelessly dated, with the visual effects now looking very creaky, and the lack of a strong storyline or characters making for an empty and dull viewing experience. However, the film still possesses one memorable sequence, the light-cycle race, and at the very least, its then-groundbreaking attempt to engage with the newfangled world of computers has the feel of filmmakers trying to give their audience something new. TRON is not a good film, but it was a bold one with fresh ideas and a unique style, and that alone is enough to set the bar at a level that TRON: Legacy doesn't come close to reaching.
TRON: Legacy has no such ambitions. While no expense has been spared in ensuring the film looks as slick and polished as can be, there's nothing inventive or imaginative under the surface of this unspeakably boring update. An early scene proves to be disappointingly self-prophetic, as software giant Encom announces its plan to release an upgrade package that has no significant improvements on previous versions, but will be presented in such a way that the masses will still buy it. Has a similar philosophy been at work behind the scenes of this movie? Almost everything that exists in TRON: Legacy has been lifted from another film, and the filmmakers appear to be gambling everything on their shiny presentation being enough to paper over the cracks.
It isn't enough, although director Joseph Kosinski does have one fairly smart idea up his sleeve, with the opening "real world" sequences of TRON: Legacy being shot in 2D before 3D is introduced as we move into the computer world. I guess this is the 21st century update on the way colour was used in films like The Wizard of Oz or A Matter of Life and Death to differentiate between realities, but this approach can't add any depth to Garrett Hedlund's strictly one-dimensional performance. The stiff and sullen Hedlund plays Sam Flynn, the son of Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), who was the chief protagonist in the first film. Some twenty years ago, Kevin disappeared and his son inherited Encom, although he doesn't show much interest in the business side of things, preferring instead to sabotage their plans, live in a shed, ride a motorbike and parachute off the top of skyscrapers.
All of this is very tedious to watch because it simply feels like we're marking time as we wait for Sam to enter "the grid". Eventually he does, receiving a mysterious message from the disused arcade his father owned and being blasted by a laser into the universe his father created. This is where dad has been trapped for the past two decades, after his own avatar Clu (also played by Bridges, albeit digitally enhanced to look 30 years younger) decided to elbow aside his maker and take over the running of the place himself. So, Sam's quest is to liberate his father and stop Clu from making his way into the real world, although this simple plotl leaves myriad unanswered questions and loose ends hanging. How exactly does a human exist in the digital world, and vice versa? More to the point, where does Kevin get the food that he is seen enjoying? Why are we told that Clu's faceless goons can't leave the grid, only to see them searching Flynn's off-grid base moments later? What exactly is Tron's motive? Is that really Cillian Murphy sitting there, looking bored? And what will the excruciating Michael Sheen's next biopic performance be: David Bowie, Jimmy Saville or Peter Stringfellow?
Plot threads and ideas are picked up and discarded at random. We are told that Quorra (Olivia Wilde, this film's Trinity) is the last of some kind of master race that was wiped out by Clu, although we never get a sense of what the significance or purpose of this is; the notion seems to exist solely to give the narrative a gravity that it hasn't earned. TRON: Legacy's writing is lazy, lazy, lazy. Every line of dialogue feels hackneyed and trite – including the tiresome Dude-isms Bridges is lumbered with – and the rules of this world seem to arbitrarily change according to the whims of the screenwriting team as if none of it matters. The thing is, for some viewers who will be happy to just enjoy the light show, it really won't matter.
A lot of effort has obviously been expended on TRON: Legacy's visuals, the film's chief selling point, but they seem very unimpressive to my jaded eyes. Compared to the lush, inviting world of last year's Avatar, the world of TRON – all glass, chrome and neon – seems sterile and uninspired. The novelty of the film's setting rapidly wears off, and while Kosinski ups the ante on the discus-throwing and light-cycle sequences, there's no charge of excitement because they feel so inconsequential. The whole of TRON: Legacy feels like that: empty, flat and meaningless. After years of development, backed by a near $200 million budget, and driven by the most cutting-edge technology available, we've somehow ended up with a film that feels less ambitious and more regressive than its 28 year-old predecessor. Is this progress?
Who is Tyler Perry? On this side of the Atlantic, the auteur is an unfamiliar name, but in the United States, he has quickly become one of the most consistently successful filmmakers around. His rapid rise to the top has been marked by critical derision, but the black audiences his films are made for continue to turn out in force every time he releases a new picture, which is often more than once a year. Clearly, a specific section of the moviegoing public has a taste for whatever it is that Perry has, but that attraction has remained a mystery to UK viewers, as despite the diverse population in this country, Perry's films have consistently failed to find distribution. That changed earlier this year when Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too? became the first of his films to hit British cinemas, although it barely made a dent at the box office and its arrival certainly went unnoticed by me.
All of which means For Colored Girls is my first taste of the Tyler Perry experience, and what a taste it is. Intense, melodramatic, shocking and powerfully acted the film may be, but it's also laughably unsubtle, clumsily directed and horribly written. Perry has assembled a formidable team of actresses to portray the women suffering at the hands of various men, but even these fine performers can't do much to elevate the stodgy material they have been asked to digest. The film is an adaptation of Ntozake Shange's 1975 stage play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf (yes, Enuf), and while Perry has thankfully cut that unwieldy title, his inability to edit judiciously severely hampers his misguided film.
Shange's play consisted of actresses delivering 20 poems that reflected the ongoing struggle of black women, and while it's easy to imagine such an approach being powerful in the theatre, monologues are a serious obstacle in cinema. During For Colored Girls, whenever a character reaches her lowest ebb, she begins reciting one of Shange's poems, which necessitates a drastic shift from the straightforward approach and banal dialogue Perry utilises elsewhere in the picture. When we see a soliloquy unfold on stage, we can appreciate it in its theatrical context, but here, in a more realistic setting, it feels hopelessly artificial. As we watch a 16 year-old recovering from a backstreet abortion (Tessa Thompson) or a battered rape victim (Anika Noni Rose) suddenly resort to unedited lumps of Shange's poetic text in a hospital or police station, all I could think was, nobody talks like that.
So the scenes that should be the most powerful in the film end up feeling false and overly stylised, which is a shame, because if Perry has one gift as a director, it lies in his ability to get everything his female cast has got to give. For Colored Girls takes place in New York, with most of the characters either living in the same walk-up or crossing the paths of those who do. There's battered wife Crystal (Kimberley Elise), promiscuous Tangie (Thandie Newton), barren social worker Kelly (Kerry Washington) and religious zealot Alice (Whoopi Goldberg) among others. These parts offer plenty of tragedy for such strong actresses to get their teeth into, and they all respond with passion and emotion, fleshing out roles that, as written, occasionally seem little more than stoically suffering martyrs. Perry clearly loves these women, and he shoots them in long takes and tight close-ups, all the better to see the bruises and the tears streaming down their cheeks, but his constant chasing of big moments eventually takes its toll.
Tyler Perry is not a subtle director, and throughout For Colored Girls he is always striving for impact. He is willing to play any card in the hope of jerking some tears, with his film covering domestic abuse, alcoholism, rape, HIV (apparently indicated by a tickly cough), secret homosexuality and – in a jaw-dropping scene that the film never recovers from – even a spectacular death for two young children. I'm struggling to think of a director who could frame that particular scene in a way that doesn't feel like a cheap and nasty stunt, but Perry, with his blunt and artless style, is certainly not the man for the job.
In the end, Perry's manipulative efforts are counterproductive. The film's desperate desire to move us feels just that – desperate – and with the repetitive poetic monologues constantly pulling us out of the drama, we never feel settled enough to involve ourselves in these women's stories. It's a disappointment, because some of the actresses among this ensemble are great talents who are too often saddled with token parts that fail to display their gifts, and while For Colored Girls is massively flawed, I guess I can understand why black women, starved of representation onscreen, take Perry's films to their hearts. However, I'm not sure what this picture has to offer for the rest of us. It's a lumpy, histrionic and overextended affair, and one that misses so many of the targets it aims for. I haven't seen the rest of Perry's oeuvre, but it feels like For Colored Girls is a self-conscious stab at a great work, a film that attempts to encapsulate everything about the black female experience in America. Sadly, long before the schmaltzy, tacky final sequence, the truth is exposed – for all of his lofty ambitions, Tyler Perry simply isn't good enuf.
The most intimate relationship in Easier with Practice exists between two people who don't meet for the majority of the picture. Davy (Brian Geraghty) is a young writer who is touring America with his brother Sean (Kel O'Neill) to promote his self-published collection of short stories. He is a nervous, introverted young man, uncomfortable in his own skin, so there's a certain logic to the way he attaches himself to a woman who only exists as a voice at the other end of a phone. When Davy is alone is his motel room one night, the phone rings and the mystery caller introduces herself as Nicole. The scene that follows is shot in a single take, the camera remaining discreetly above waist-height as the bewildered Davy sits on his bed and slowly warms to the idea of engaging in phone sex with Nicole. After that, Davy is smitten with a woman he has never met.
It sounds implausible, but Easier with Practice is apparently based on the real experience of Davy Rothbart, who wrote about his unusual encounter in GQ. Kyle Patrick Alvarez's directorial debut is a portrait of loneliness and it is given a vital sense of weight by Geraghty's sensitive performance in the lead role. His Davy recoils at any sense of real, physical intimacy – a fact that seems to have damaged one relationship, with old friend Samantha (Marguerite Moreau) – but with Nicole he starts to relax, and to open up. Although her first few calls result in Davy having to find private spots in which to masturbate, their post-coital conversations eventually begin to become more important. Nicole remains in control of the relationship, though, refusing to give Davy her number and leaving him in an anxious state as the hours and days pass without his phone ringing.
Easier With Practice is often insightful and touching in its view of people unwilling or incapable of engaging with the real world who take solace in fantasy relationships, but the film often feels frustratingly underdeveloped. This is a slight narrative on which to hang a feature and Alvarez often lets his film drift when Davy and Nicole aren't in conversation. There are a couple of sharp individual scenes here, with Alvarez drawing some tension from an awkward game of Truth or Dare, but a number of scenes seem to lack a sense of purpose or definition. The director does show glimpses of an interesting visual sense, though, and his compositions are consistently well thought-out, but his efforts are not complemented by David Rush Morrison's rather drab cinematography.
Fortunately, the whole picture gets a much-needed lift in its final quarter with a clever climax. The scene in which Davy finally gets to meet Nicole gives the narrative a sly twist and reaffirms Alvarez's skill at handling moments of uncomfortable intimacy, with both performers giving affectingly nervous turns. Easier with Practice ends as a smart and surprisingly absorbing study of lonely souls and of the way people afraid of being hurt create and reinforce barriers with those around them. The film has its misjudgements and its longueurs, but there is conviction and talent on display here, and a real attempt to engage with some intriguing notions of what a relationship should be. Such qualities are too rare to be easily dismissed.
You might expect alien creatures to be the focal point of a film entitled Monsters, but one of the surprises offered by Gareth Edwards in his debut feature is that the monsters themselves are kept out of sight for much of the movie. However, their presence can be felt at every step of this inventive drama. As the film's two lead characters wander through Mexico, we see evidence of alien infestation that has lasted six years. Signs warning the public of quarantine zones, the debris of damaged tanks and fighter planes, even a kids' cartoon on a local television network that has incorporated the monsters into its story. Everything is depicted in a naturalistic and matter-of-fact manner and it is instantly convincing as a portrait of a world that has learned to adapt and accommodate this new element in their lives.
Monsters will inevitably draw comparisons with last year's District 9; both films are directorial debuts, both offer allegorical tales of mankind learning to live alongside alien creatures, and both successfully incorporate slick visual effects that belie their relatively small budgets. This is particularly true in Monsters' case, which was made (for a total that has been reported as anywhere between $15,000 and $500,000) with little more than a camera, a couple of actors and plenty of ideas, with director Edwards filling in the background details on his computer later. Whether it's just a result of his financial limitations or more indicative of his filmmaking personality, Edward's minimalist approach works wonders for Monsters, and makes it feel like a fresh discovery. In many ways it reminded me of early Spielberg and specifically Jaws and Close Encounters, which held back on the revelation of their creatures and instead focused on atmosphere and characters. If Steven Spielberg had made War of the Worlds in 1975 rather than 2005, it might have looked something like this.
Edwards relies heavily on his two actors to carry the film and Monsters often feels more like a road movie with romantic comedy undertones than a sci-fi picture. Cynical photojournalist Andrew (Scoot McNairy) and rich tourist Samantha (Whitney Able) are thrown together when Sam's father – the publisher of the magazine Andrew works for – instructs the photographer to ensure his daughter gets across the border to the US safely. A series of unfortunate events leave them with no other route north than through 'The Zone,' the quarantined area inhabited by the most active creatures, and so they venture into danger, occasionally hearing ominous sounds in the dark forest around them, or catching a glimpse of an alien tentacle in the river that they are nervously sailing down.
The improvised dialogue between McNairy and Able doesn't provide the characters with much depth, but they are a likable pair whose growing attraction and emotional attachment feels real as it develops throughout the movie. They do enough to hold our attention as Edwards' films proceeds at a surprisingly measured pace. He allows his characters to stop occasionally and take in their surroundings, from interacting with a family who offer them food and shelter to gazing in awe and fear at the ghost towns they pass through, or the enormous wall built across the US/Mexico border. The director is good at generating tension too, staging a nighttime attack on the guerrillas escorting Andrew and Sam and a later sequence in which an alien's exploratory tentacle lurks in uncomfortable proximity to the cowering pair.
These are the moments in which Monsters is at its most effective, when Edwards is displaying his firm grasp of filmmaking technique and utilising his visual effects sparingly but brilliantly. He is less surefooted when he tries to graft a clunky immigration moral onto this simple narrative, or too clumsily rams home his "who are the real monsters?" tone. He also struggles to bring his film to a truly satisfying climax, delivering an ending that feels weirdly abrupt, but it's easy to forgive a multitude of sins when faced with the kind of beauty Edwards unexpectedly throws up when he finally gives us our first unobstructed view of the creatures interacting with one another. It's the kind of moment that would be gorgeous and memorable on any budget, and it's the point that confirmed for me the fact that this guy is a real filmmaker, with an eye for lyrical, striking images and the skill to pull them off. Monsters is a remarkable debut, and it will be fascinating to see where Gareth Edwards goes next.
The perennial problem with films based upon jokey conceits is that the joke will often wear thin when it is stretched to feature length. Machete is 105 minutes long, but perhaps it was a more natural fit for the two and a half minute trailer that originally introduced the character. That trailer was conceived by Robert Rodriguez as part of the Grindhouse package he and Quentin Tarantino offered to filmgoers in 2007, before discovering that the majority of filmgoers weren't particularly interested in their deliberately trashy homages. Nevertheless, it appears enough people subsequently pestered Rodriguez about the possibility of a feature length expansion on his trailer to make Machete a cinematic reality. Be careful what you wish for.
Anyone who has seen Machete in its trailer form will already know the story. This film sticks closely to the narrative already established there, even recycling a couple of shots and lines of dialogue, but it possesses a few more big names in the cast alongside Danny Trejo, Jeff Fahey and Cheech Marin. Those actors are important to Machete, because in his first starring role, Danny Trejo doesn't bring much to the party aside from some monosyllabic grunting and a face that looks like it has taken a beating from life. Granted, Rodriguez doesn't ask for anything beyond that from his leading man, but the lack of wit, passion or energy in Trejo's star turn has a deadening effect on the picture. He stalks through the movie wearing a permanent scowl, slicing off limbs and heads with his trusty weapon of choice, but watching scene after scene of such action does grow awfully repetitive.
Occasionally, Machete displays a sense of outrageous invention that enlivens the whole movie. In one scene, arguably the film's highlight, a cornered Machete jumps through a window and swings into the floor below by hanging onto a dying man's intestine. That sequence gets a big laugh, but Rodriguez too often lets the pace flag and lets the energy levels drop in between such gleefully over-the-top stunts, attempting to inject some social satire into the film with his depiction of America's reliance on its immigrant underclass, but that element of the film doesn't really take us anywhere. Rodriguez has a co-director credited on this production, with editor Ethan Maniquis stepping up, but it's hard to tell what effect, if any, that has had on the film. The direction, as is often the case with Rodriguez, is slack and uneven, making it difficult to discern exactly how much of the film's slapdash appearance is part of the bad movie tribute and how much is a result of the filmmaker's limitations.
Some mild relief is provided by that eclectic supporting cast. While a couple of them (like an alarmingly bloated Steven Seagal and a typically expressionless Jessica Alba) struggle to impose themselves on the film, the majority have fun with their roles, and their enjoyment is infectious. Robert De Niro, Jeff Fahey and Don Johnson are all on ripe form, while I particularly enjoyed Cheech Marin's turn as a shotgun-toting priest ("God has mercy. I don't"). However, these are just bits and pieces scattered throughout the film; entertaining scraps in a picture that cannot sustain the generous running time it has set for itself. Machete is lazy, self-indulgent and surprisingly dull, but I'll say this much for the film – it would probably make a great trailer.
