LFF 2016: Arrival

Denis Villeneuve's second film to hover menacingly over cinema audiences in the space of twelve months is light years away from the grounded, nail-troubling thrills of 2015's Sicario, just as that film was nothing like his Enemy, or Prisoners, or Incendies before it. If Villeneuve - master of the one-word title - has spent his career thus far on an eclectic jaunt through a selection of genres, then Arrival might just signify his, uh, arrival at his natural home: intelligent, thematically grand sci-fi.

Plunging us into an apparent alien invasion, pausing briefly to introduce Amy Adams' introspective linguist Louise Banks, Villeneuve dangles potential, familiar threads which may or may not have red herrings attached. The mysterious appearance of a dozen extraterrestrial crafts around the globe suggests all-out Independence Day-style war might be on the horizon, while the recruitment of experts in their field (including a maths boffin called Ian) to assist with the kind of scientific breakthrough that only happens in the movies recalls Jurassic Park with tentacles. On the flipside, Banks' melancholy - and Villeneuve's deliberate, measured pacing - evokes Tarkovsky's Solaris. But Arrival is none of these things; sitting somewhere between arthouse and popcorn, it's refreshingly and joyously original, though it takes its sweet time explaining how.

"I speak aylien very wail, I lairn eet from ay boook"

Banks - one of the world's foremost experts in language - is tasked with establishing communication with the visitors, and it's not a quick or easy process. Her methods are complex and hampered by only sporadic contact with her subject, and her apparent lack of progress leads to nervousness around the world, especially high up in the Chinese and Russian military (it feels a little uncomfortable that Eric Heisserer's otherwise classy script has to fall back on racial stereotyping here, especially in a story about trying to understand a foreign culture, but the payoff warrants it). In all honesty, the pace may also incite restlessness in audience buttocks: as beautiful as Arrival's visuals are, and as terrifically weird as it sounds (it's often impossible to tell where Jóhann Jóhannsson's score ends and the sound effects begin), after ninety minutes you might find yourself itching to be amazed, rather than merely impressed. But then the last act drops, the rug you've been comfortably standing on is whipped away, and all is forgiven.

Arrival has so much to recommend it - Adams is restrained yet captivating; her character's story is as vital as the global crisis at the centre of which she finds herself; aliens are well cool - but its USP is the kind of narrative chicanery that blows away even the most deep-rooted cynicism of audiences who think they can't be surprised any more. It's reminiscent of Christopher Nolan's faux-Kubrickian efforts in Inception and Interstellar, but benefits from not being as wildly overambitious or unnecessarily complex. More than that, though, Villeneuve and Heisserer take a century of established cinematic storytelling and use it against you to create something so ballsy, it's almost as if you've been introduced to an entirely new language. Look very carefully and you can see what they've done there.

Probably worth mentioning that Jeremy Renner's in it too

A second viewing should be included with the sale of each cinema ticket, so that all of Arrival's sly genius can be appreciated in full. With hindsight, seemingly innocuous lines of dialogue take on new meaning, scenes that initially seemed irrelevant become crucial, and those red herrings can be fished out at an early stage. What's more, you can wallow in the respect afforded to you by a director who assumes you're smart enough to work with him in decoding the film's mysteries while simultaneously schooling you in linguistic theory and cinematic audacity.

Were it not for that somewhat protracted mid-section, Arrival would easily perch atop any sensible cinemagoer's (i.e. mine) top ten of the year so far. It's rescued by its dazzling finale, but there's still plenty to love about its freshness, its elegance and its refusal to cram in a car chase or ten. Almost certainly Denis Villeneuve's best film, the success of this sci-fi lullaby bodes extremely well for his next film: 2017's tantalising Harrison Ford / Ryan Gosling-starring Blade Runner sequel. Here's hoping to see more things you people wouldn't believe.

Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice

"People hate what they don't understand," explains Martha Kent to her supernaturally strong but somewhat dim adopted son Clark, who's confused about the general animosity he's attracted after casually wasting thousands of human lives at the end of Man Of Steel. If only someone had taken Zack Snyder to one side before he embarked on directing that film's sequel, Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice, and offered him the same advice; maybe then he wouldn't have excreted such a mass of hopelessly incoherent wreckage, and we wouldn't be praying that he never sets foot near such beloved icons of pop culture again. Just a thought.

The gist of Batman v Superman, such as I could ascertain, is as follows: Batman distrusts Superman's unchecked alien powers and therefore reaches the obvious conclusion that he must kill him immediately. Superman also dislikes Batman, for reasons that escape me right now. I'm not sure it matters. They fight, they make up, then they fight someone else. This process takes two and a half hours to play out, although due to a bizarre contortion of time that final fight lasts around eight weeks.

With this basic premise in mind Zack Snyder has set about making the experience as baffling, boring and bereft of joy as is humanly possible, and at that he has succeeded enormously. Scenes which appear to have been shorn of their beginnings and ends smash up against each other with little regard for narrative cause and effect, as if William Burroughs had arranged them during his cut-up period. Characters vomit reams of dialogue through stoic grimaces and ponderous frowns without saying anything helpful or interesting, and when they're not doing that they're punching or shooting each other for days on end. Any attempts at levity - I think I counted three - are immediately smothered by the crushingly dour mood, and Snyder's insistence on grading everything in that cobalt blue tint that enjoyed a brief moment of originality in around 2008 ensures that it's nigh on impossible to distinguish one location from another.

David Goyer's script takes a potentially interesting metatextual stance in having characters berate the unbridled carnage that made the climax of his previous Superman film so dunderheadedly offensive, but the concept goes no further than that. One fantastical metaphorical possibility is that Bruce Wayne is introduced as an embodiment of Man Of Steel's critics, sent to spank Kal-El's steely buttocks before - in Goyer and Snyder's sweetest dreams - making peace with the last son of Krypton and realising he's not such a bad cove after all. If that was the intention, though, the plan is somewhat derailed when it becomes clear that the new film is easily its predecessor's equal in terms of piling nonsense upon nonsense, like an eye-wateringly expensive game of nonsense Jenga.

What I'm basically saying is that this is me.

Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck, tasked with playing two of the most fascinating figures in pop culture's entire history, are fighting a losing battle here. They've both proved themselves capable of charm, wit and depth in the past, and although such qualities would seem relevant to their roles in this film they're simply not allowed to manifest. It's painfully obvious that these aren't intended as the Batmen and Supermen of Michael Keaton, Christopher Reeve or Christian Bale, but under Zack Snyder's direction they almost make you yearn for George Clooney.

Further major and minor irritants abound throughout, not least of which is Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor, possibly the most teeth-itchingly annoying performance of modern times. Not only is Luthor painful to watch, but he gets the lion's share of plot inconsistencies to boot. He's given no backstory or motivation so we have no idea why he's doing whatever it is he's doing; he's thrilled to see Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne chatting at his party despite the fact that, by rights, he should have no idea who the mild-mannered Daily Planet reporter is; his assistant finds Wayne snooping around in a private room but just leaves him to it, and he miraculously knows to use Lois Lane as bait to trap Superman in an early scene that is so under-explained it's like it fell out of a different movie.

In fact Batman v Superman raises an entire catalogue of questions it can't quite be arsed to answer: why, for example, doesn't Bruce Wayne design a bat-cowl that covers a decidedly identifying mole on his cheek? Why does Amy Adams need to play an entire scene in the bath, naked? Why is there a gigantic statue of Superman in Metropolis when everyone hates him? What in the name of all that is holy is going on in that astonishingly misjudged dream sequence? Why do we need to see Bruce Wayne's parents murdered (complete with pearls clattering on the pavement in slo-mo) for what must be about the ninth time? And what the fuck was anyone thinking when they picked that reason for Bats and Supes to kiss and make up?

Don't even get me started on this fucking thing

I could sit here all day bringing up other pointless and ill-conceived characters, gaping plot holes and forehead-slappingly stupid plot devices (here's one: a Kryptonite spear, intended to weaken Superman, actually renders everyone who touches it unfathomably moronic), but it's as exhausting to detail them as it is to watch them unfold before you. Only Hans Zimmer's new theme for a certain Amazonian warrior princess raises a smile, although the rest of his score is employed in such a way that it feels like he's personally battering you around the head with a pair of woks while a 200-piece choir shouts at you.

How Warner Bros and DC have arrived at this point is no doubt confusing to them, but it seems reasonably clear that much of the blame rests at Zack Snyder's feet. Batman v Superman isn't so much directed as ejaculated, and the resulting mess is going to require an extremely hot wash to shift. Snyder seems to have no concept of light and shade, of memorable moments or of genuinely epic storytelling, which he confuses with excessive CGI and loud noises. Perhaps his everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach is best exemplified in the long-awaited but tediously leaden fight between the leads, during which Batman wrenches from the wall an actual kitchen sink, which he uses in an attempt to render Superman senseless. He needn't have bothered; Snyder has already done the job for him.

Her

Stories about people having relationships with technology are nothing new (I could tell you a few unprintable ones about teenage me and my 128K Spectrum +2); nor are stories about the blurring of lines between artificial intelligence and human emotions - look at such cultural milestones as Blade Runner, A.I. or D.A.R.Y.L. for proof. So the tale of a man in love with his computer's operating system is hardly going to be groundbreaking in a time when you're never more than six feet away from another Philip K Dick adaptation. Unless, of course, you put that tale in the hands of someone like Spike Jonze. As you might expect from a man who refuses to even spell his name conventionally, Jonze has gone and made a film about our relationship with tech which isn't about our relationship with tech at all. It's about our relationship with each other, and nothing less than the nature of love itself.

Her stars Joaquin Phoenix as Theodore: a divorced, lonely man who whose floppy drive is hardened by his new OS, which names itself Samantha and is voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Imagine a breathy, sexy, less murderous HAL from 2001 and you're kind of there. The concept appears, on the surface, to be a self-righteous snark at those of us who spend more time gazing at and fondling our phones rather than other people, but it soon transforms into something else entirely: a genuine, heartfelt love story, and one far more convincing than most of cinema's current romantic pish.

Look how fucking hot ScarJo is in this.

Effortlessly conveying the core problem with human interaction - that humans are confusing, complicated, terrifying fuckers - Her deftly renders the notion that someone might want to have it off with their PC completely non-ridiculous. Theodore and Samantha's affair is entirely convincing in context; after all, the concept of falling in love is bonkers enough - how much crazier can it be just because it's with a software package? The film even approaches the long-in-the-tooth question about whether an artificial intelligence is capable of genuine emotions with refreshing intimacy, honesty and tenderness.

But it's Jonze's smart, witty script's ability to make us look at ourselves and how we treat, respect, upset and deceive each other that's at the heart of his film. I don't want to get all Dear Deidre on your asses but Her might be the best film for couples to go and see to help them understand each other a bit better. Releasing it on Valentine's Day is a masterstroke; it's the perfect date movie to take either your partner or your iPad to.

It's a little overlong and won't win over detractors of a certain whimsical style of indie filmmaking of which Jonze is occasionally guilty, but Her is a clever, sweet, unpredictable and often surprisingly funny love story which could easily have come across as mean-spirited satire in less skilled hands. And, if nothing else, it's finally proved that there was nothing wrong with me that time I stuck my dick in the tape deck of my Spectrum +2.