Micmacs / Tic Tacs

My Micmacs review has been a struggle, it has to be said.

I’d intended to crowbar in a genius Micmacs / Tic Tacs pun in which I compared French cinema to those little plastic boxes of sweets where one half was green and the other half orange, but it wasn’t happening and it seemed insulting to suggest that the French only ever made two types of films – cracking thrillers or crackers comedies.

I also started to compare Micmacs to Ajami, an Israeli drama I watched last year that bears no resemblance to Micmacs whatsoever apart from the fact that it has two characters who are so alike that I thought they were the same person.

In the end I complained so much to Mrs The Incredible Suit about my woeful inadequacy to articulate my thoughts that she got sick of my whining and told me to put a few bullet points down and come back to it later. Well I liked the first half of that plan, but I wasn’t too keen on the ‘coming back to it later’ bit, so with a blatant disregard for accepted methods of coherent writing, here are the essential elements I was going to expand upon in my Micmacs review:

• Typically over the top bonkers French comedy
• Two characters who I thought were the same bloke for the first half-hour because they look similar and I may have nodded off at an important bit because it was Friday afternoon
• Inspired set-pieces where the goodies play the baddies off each other
• Looks amazing
• Slightly uncomfortable / incongruous stuff in a screwball comedy about how terrible arms dealing is
• Where does it fit on the Jeunetometer?

Feel free to add your own rambling piffle to beef that up to a proper, structured post, but if you can’t be arsed I understand perfectly.

Anyway just to be clear, I liked Micmacs once it settled down and I could work out what was going on. To expand upon my last bullet point, of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s films that I’ve seen, it probably fits into his sliding scale of goodness something like this:

Thanks for bearing with me. You’re diamonds, the lot of you.

To comment on this post, click here

Cackapoopants

It would appear there’s going to be a new Pirates Of The Caribbean film, subtitled “On Stranger Tides”, walking the plank and shivering me timbers in the summer of 2011. Just so you know I’m not making this up:

Seriously, I couldn’t be less interested in this if it was a six-hour documentary about Shia LaBeouf’s first experience on a potty. Ignoring the fact that the previous Pirates Of The Caribbean films were all cackapoopants, there’s a massive clue as to why On Stranger Tides is destined for nothing more than a 2-star review in Empire and a sound ignoring from The Incredible Suit: it’s the fourth movie in the franchise.

You’d think those dimwits in Hollywood would have worked it out by now. It doesn’t matter how successful, critically or financially, your film series is, if you make a fourth picture it will not be foursome. It will be fourful. Geddit? See what I did there? Oh fourget it.

OK, I know the head honchos at Warner, Fox, Universal and what have you are regular readers of The Incredible Suit, so let me spell it out. Here’s a list of some films that were the fourth to be made in a popular series. First, some of those that were so bad they actually tainted the memory of the first three:

Die Hard 4
Terminator: Salvation
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Wars: Episode I (Actually I like it but I’m in a minority. Of one)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Regular viewers will be only too aware who’s to blame for that)
Thunderball (If you think it’s actually good, go back and watch it again. It’s not)
Alien Resurrection
Superman IV
Batman And Robin
Lethal Weapon 4
Fantastic Four (Not strictly a fourquel but bad enough to be included)

Now, those that were not only good, but actually better than the first three:












So there you have it. Point made. Case rested. QED. Now who’s looking forward to The Hobbit?

To comment on this post, click here

Trouser-Browning Terror

Glorified Hovis salesman Ridley Scott is apparently preparing a prequel to his masterpiece, Alien. As you know, Alien is a completely perfect film, which clamped itself to the face of moviedom, shoved a tentacle down its throat and left a little something in its belly, which burst forth from the very ribcage of cinema in the shape of Aliens, another completely perfect film.

Aliens then went on to do a big sloppy poo on the lounge carpet, which appeared to be called Alien Cubed, and that poo had a little worm living in it which became Alien Resurrection, but we do not speak of such things here at The Incredible Suit.

Having put you off your lunch, let me get on with this prequel nonsense. Much as I love Alien, Ridley Scott is one of those directors – like Tim Burton and Martin Scorsese – whose films I blindly look forward to and hope will be fantastic, despite knowing full well that they frequently turn out to be a bit cack. Blade Runner? Not bad, but hardly the second coming it’s made out to be. Gladiator? Overrated. Hannibal? I’d rather eat my own brains.

So I’m afraid I can’t get excited about an Alien prequel. If it absolutely must be made (it mustn’t) then I suppose Scott’s the man to do it (or James Cameron), but I can’t see how it’ll work. Alien and Aliens succeed because we identify with the humans and share their trouser-browning terror at the prospect of an unsolicited trepanning at the hands of a vicious space beastie. But for a prequel to work it would have to show how the Aliens got involved with the ‘Space Jockey’, the fossilized, horribly violated creature we see near the beginning of Alien in the derelict spacecraft. Personally I’d rather not know; I can make up my own backstory for him. Maybe he was an intergalactic pizza delivery boy who turned up at the Aliens’ house 45 minutes late with the wrong topping and forgot the garlic bread, in which case he got everything he deserved.

My point is, the story would require the complete absence of humans to remain plausible, and the only successful movies not to feature any actual, genuine, living, breathing people are the High School Musical films.

There are dozens more obstacles in the way of this project, so if Ridders pulls it off it’ll be a minor miracle. In which case I’ll be only too happy to blog about it and say, “I told you it would be brilliant”, and that’ll be the poster quote you’ll see at bus stops and train stations the world over.

The Incredible Suit's Top 5 Ridley Scott films:
1. Alien
2. Blade Runner
3. Thelma & Louise
4. Er…
5. Hmm.

Of course what I really want to know is: What’s your greatest Ridley Scott film, like, ever? I know, let’s do a poll! Which reminds me, The Breakfast Club was your favourite John Hughes film. You’re wrong. Weird Science is tiptops.

To comment on this post, click here