Midnight Special

It must be the season for movies about people with potentially catastrophic superpowers being seen as either a saviour or a weapon depending on your point of view; fortunately for Midnight Special, it's directed by Jeff Nichols instead of Zack Snyder, thereby rendering it several million percent more watchable than Batman v Superman. It doesn't have Hans Zimmer's Wonder Woman theme in it though, so I guess you can't have everything.

Despite those superficial similarities, Midnight Special is nothing like a superhero film. It's a fairly self-contained and muted affair about Alton, a boy with initially unspecified but frankly alarming issues, who's been held captive by a mad religious sect until his pop Roy (Michael Shannon) breaks him out. The clock's ticking though: for reasons best not divulged here, there are just four days for the cult to snatch Alton back, and the same amount of time for Roy to get him to safety, before... well. Before something.

Nichols' film is a low-key mood piece, in a similar vein to the bits of Looper set at Emily Blunt's farm. In fact if Looper had been told entirely from that scary little brat's POV, the result wouldn't be far from Midnight Special. But it's not Rian Johnson that Nichols is channeling the most here: there's another huge presence looming over proceedings, and that presence has a beard and wears a baseball cap and is married to Kate Capshaw. OK fine, it's Spielberg. I'm talking about Steven Spielberg.

Specifically, though quite possibly coincidentally, Nichols appears to be homaging The Berg's early career: the cross-country chase evokes The Sugarland Express, there's an otherworldly Close Encounters vibe going on, and E.T.'s military pursuit of that which they do not fully understand also figures strongly. It's a darker shade of Amblinism for the most part, unshowy and stripped of its trademark sentimentality, although Nichols can't resist throwing in dazzling shafts of white light and dysfunctional parents just to be sure of a full house in his game of Spielbingo.

The danger of evoking these kind of touchstones, as was also apparent in JJ Abrams' Super 8, is that if the end product doesn't turn out to be one for the ages then you probably shouldn't have made the tributes so obvious. And while Midnight Special is definitely worth your while, it never quite fulfils the promise of its best scenes, in which Alton's troubling powers are revealed. The otherworldly elements here play second fiddle to a road movie which takes in Kirsten Dunst (in a fairly thankless and inconsequential role as Alton's mother) and Adam Driver as The One Good Government Guy, and while I'm all for character-based sci-fi I prefer it when the characters aren't quite as thin as they are here.

All credit to Jeff Nichols, whose output is consistently varied (if you don't count the ubiquitous Michael Shannon) and interesting; he's a director well worth watching and almost certainly has a masterpiece in him somewhere. Midnight Special isn't it, but it'll do for now.

Super 8

At the end of 2009, after watching Star Trek for a second time, I suggested that JJ Abrams was "well on the way to becoming this generation's Spielberg". Evidently J-Jabs is an avid reader of The Incredible Suit, because his immediate reaction was to get jiggy with ol' beardy features and make his own Spielbaby. And while the product of their hideously-imagined union isn't perfect, it is ruddy bloody good fun.

Let me know if I'm taking this metaphor too far

Super 8, as you will know by now unless you're stupid or dead, attempts to capture the tone of some of the films Spielberg produced and directed in the '80s. In this respect it most resembles E.T., with its broken families and small town invaded by both a mysterious creature and the military, and The Goonies, with its band of pubescent protagonists including a plucky mop-topped leader and the requisite fatty.

Things begin well with a cast of excellent near-unknowns and an amazing, ear-splitting train crash that goes on for approximately six weeks, before Abrams fills the bulk of his film with perfectly respectable bits of pre-teen drama, occasional mini-LOLs and the odd violent and noisy interruption by a massive, unseen gremlin.

The homage to Spielberg is more or less successful in Super 8's mise-en-scène (sorry), thanks in no small part to cinematographer Larry Fong's soaring crane shots, and composer Michael Giacchino brings a knowingly John Williams-esque feel to the score. And while there are enough elements of the script to make it a decent cover version of Amblin's Greatest Hits, Super 8 falls short of its target in the final act. There's nowhere near the emotional connection between kids and creature that Elliott has with E.T, and the youngsters don't drive the plot forward like the Goonies do. What's more, at no point does The Fat One do the Truffle Shuffle.

I AM NOW LEGALLY REQUIRED TO INCLUDE THE TRUFFLE SHUFFLE .GIF.

It's also hard not to be disappointed by the creature: with the tools at Abrams' disposal, he should be giving us full on Jurassic Park-style monster madness, rather than a shy bogeyman who hides just out of shot until the climax. Fortunately the rest of the film is good enough to keep your mind from wandering, and if it's not you can always speculate on exactly why all the dogs run away, or perhaps enjoy a challenging game of Count The Lens Flares. I lost track after about thirteen squillion.

In years to come it's unlikely that Super 8 will nestle snugly in the memories of today's children, but for now it remains solid summer blockbuster entertainment, and unless apes, cowboys or aliens can out-entertain it, it's the best we'll get in 2011.

I'm Sure I've Seen The New Super 8 Poster Before

A new poster for JJ Abrams' forthcoming better-be-brilliant-or-else Super 8 hit the nets earlier, causing small tremors in the nethers of geeks everywhere.

The primary reason for this trouser-troubling was that the poster has deliberately been designed to evoke the great work of Drew Struzan, trading off his connection with the 1980s hits that Super 8 seems to be shamelessly emulating, only with one billion percent more lens flare:

There was even mention that perhaps the great Mr Struzan himself had come out of retirement to do this poster, but upon closer inspection it seems fairly clear that he hasn't. The odd composition, not-quite-good-enough drawings and lack of The Struze's signature pretty much give the game away.

There's definitely something familiar about it though, and that something becomes painfully clear if you watch the trailer. Because every single element in this poster appears in the trailer in exactly the same pose, as if somebody's watched it, paused it every few seconds, printed out a bunch of screen grabs, fed them into a Struzomatic 5000 and produced the finished artwork. Here's the poster again, with those screen grabs plonked on top:

I don't know about you but I feel used, cheated and dirty.

Those Super 8 Trailer Lens Flares In Full

The trailer for JJ Abrams' Super 8, the film The Incredible Suit is quite possibly looking forward to more than any other this year, was released on Friday. It looked an awful lot like this:



It's very exciting and all but clearly the best thing about it is the truly ridonkulous amount of lens flares Abrams has crammed in to his new film. It's a little-known fact that he exhausted the global supply of lens flares with 2009's Star Trek, and so has had to employ thousands of third-world slave children to create more so that he can realise his vision for Super 8.

Obviously, though, you can't just shove in a lens flare without it having a credible source - I mean, that would imply they're just being used because they look cool - so let's take a closer look at where all these rogue flashes of light are originating, shall we? Yes, we shall.

Even the poster can't escape: 

The Top 10 Movies Of 2011

Now that 2010 is mercifully behind us and everyone has bored everyone else to tears with infinite lists of varying unimportance, I thought I may as well get in early with my favourite films of 2011.

Now obviously I haven't seen any of these yet, so it's a largely unjustified - not to mention pointless - list, but I firmly believe this is exactly what my favourite films of the year will be come the end of December. If I'm wrong you are all welcome to write a lengthy comment about what a waste of time this post is, although if you're going to do that you may as well say the same about all the other posts and that would be an even bigger waste of time, only yours rather than mine. OH THE IRONY.

And before you go any further I would just like to briefly apologise on behalf of various film studios for not having any official title designs for certain films, rendering this post even more amateur than it already was.

1

Opens August 19th

2

Opens April 22nd

3

Opens April 8th

4

Opens September 16th

5

Opens June 2nd

6

Opens March 11th

7

Opens August 12th

8

Opens July 15th

9

Opens March 18th

10

Opens December 26th

Hmm. It occurs to me that I really am the definitive Empire magazine reader. Anyway, was I right? Come back in twelve months and find out! Or, you know, come back every day. That would be better.

Happy New Year! (Part II)

My preview of 2011’s best movies has been so overwhelmingly popular / such a massively misjudged disaster (I don’t know, I wrote this last week) that I’m taking things to the next level. And I don’t mean an awkward fumble over the clothes, you’ll be relieved to hear, but Part Two of…

Films That Might Not Be Crapples in 2011!

Attack The Block

Saturdays have been an abyss of despair since Joe Cornish left 6 Music’s Adam & Joe show to direct this sci-fi comedy about a bunch of South London kids defending their council estate against invading aliens, but I forgive him. AS LONG AS IT’S THE BEST FILM OF 2011. Which I’m sure it will be.
Very Much Looking Forward To: A theme song by Joe as good as his Quantum Of Solace offering

Best Minor Cast Member Name: Flaminia Cinque

Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part II

Still not sure about the wisdom of splitting this into two films, but if this isn’t the best of the series I’ll eat my sorting hat. I’m also hoping it will, by July 2011, be socially acceptable to say that Ginny Weasley is a sexpot.
Very Much Looking Forward To: The epilogue looking much better than the leaked photos suggest
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Christian Wolf-La’Moy

Cowboys & Aliens

Despite predicting a complete disaster because Jon Favreau is “helming”, or “directing” as they used to call it, I’ll still be seeing this because you can’t not see a film starring James Bond, Indiana Jones and Eric Knox from Charlie’s Angels. Icons of a generation all. Also I hate cowboys and love aliens so it gives me something to root for. Come on you extra-terrestrial antagonists!
Very Much Looking Forward To: A high noon showdown between Daniel Craig and Christopher Johnson from District 9
Best Minor Cast Member Name: None, but Ervin Rustemagic is a co-producer

The Adventures Of Tintin:
The Secret Of The Unicorn

I’d be more enthusiastic about this if it wasn’t motion-capture animation, which fills me with a gut-churning dread, but when you’ve got the likes of Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson, Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish involved you’d be Crackers Patel not to be interested. Like every film released in 2011, it stars Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Very Much Looking Forward To: The return of The Mighty John Williams
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Who cares? JOHN WILLIAMS IS BACK!!

Super 8

Everything exciting about this film can be found in this previous geekgasm.
Very Much Looking Forward To: The beginning, the middle and the end
Best Minor Cast Member Name: Give me a break, I doubt it’s even been written yet

So there you go. What have we learned? Not much, except that 2011 will be full of aliens, superheroes and comic book movies, and that there are some people in the film business with amazing names.

See you in six months!

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Super 8 Trailer Reveals Dreadful Secret

So here's that Super 8 trailer I babbled incoherently about on Monday:



Hmm.

I think I'm going to take the decisive step of burying my head in the sand and maintaining that this will still be the greatest thing since sliced E.T., despite the unavoidable fact that the last time Steven Spielberg had anything to do with Area 51, this happened:

Oh god, it's all coming flooding back. It's going to be awful isn't it.

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JJ Abrams' Super 8 Trailer!*

The Incredible Suit would like to take a moment to register its excitement for Super 8, a 2011 film written and directed by JJ Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg.

Just to clarify, that's a new film from the people responsible for, among other things, Raiders Of the Lost Ark and Back To The Future (two of The Incredible Suit's best films of all time ever), Cloverfield (The Incredible Suit's best film of 2008), Star Trek (The Incredible Suit's second best film of 2009) and Lost (The Incredible Suit's second best TV show of all time ever).

There's a trailer out there in full crappovision if you like that kind of thing; I'm such an unbearable snob that I refuse to watch it until it's on the interwebs in an officially sanctioned format that takes an hour to buffer. In the meantime I'm happy to gaze like a horny teenager at the heartbreaking beauty created by the combination of the following words and pictures:

Furthermore, if you want to goggle in disbelief at the lengths some people will go to to unpick a film's viral marketing campaign, have a look at this. These guys are so high up the Ladder Of Geek I can't even see them from my rung.

*Post does not feature JJ Abrams' Super 8 trailer

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