Terminator: Salvation

If you see only one movie featuring giant robots this summer...



Before we get into the meat of my review of Terminator: Salvation, I feel that I should put my viewing into context. Despite its being released nearly a month before, I didn't get around to watching Salvation until after I had watched Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen, a film which, as my review will attest, I did not like at all. I feel the need to say this since I believe that I would have been much harder on Salvation if I had seen it earlier, but that the mind-numbing tedium and soul destroying awfulness of Transformers has led me to be much more gentle with McG's creation than I might otherwise have been.

The background of the Terminator series has now become so convoluted, encompassing four films, a spin-off TV series and lots of ancillary materials, that to attempt to cover it all succinctly would be a fool's errand. Boiled down to the basics; it is 2018, the world ended at some indeterminate time in the past (used to be 1997, then 2003, not sure now) when Skynet, a computer defense system, became self-aware and attacked humanity. Mankind now exists scattered around the Earth in enclaves of resistance, one of which is led by John Connor (Christian Bale) who was always destined to be the saviour of humanity thanks to Skynet's repeated attempts to off him in the past. Connor discovers that Skynet has a list of targets for termination; his name is at number 2, at number 1 is Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin), Connor's future father (though he is only a teenager, and won't actually become his father until he has gone into the past and impregnated Connor's mother. Head hurting yet?) Thrown into this milieu is Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a man who was supposedly executed in 2003, but has woken up in 2018 with no concept of what is going on or how he came to wake up naked in a muddy field.

One of the defining characteristics of James Cameron's Terminator films was their intelligent science fiction concepts. There were plot holes, to be certain, since anything involving so much time travel and so many paradoxes is bound to fall apart under any level of scrutiny, but overall they were clever films that mixed spectacle with ruminations on fate and destiny.

Terminator: Salvation does not have this. It is full of plot holes, moments of narrative stupidity and, certainly in the final half, some truly ridiculous leaps in logic. At various points in the story, humans are surpised by GIANT ROBOTS which are able to sneak silently, but as soon as they are seen, make the sort of ungodly din that you could hear from miles away. Elsewhere, John Connor is able to hijack a machine by inserting a USB pen into it. That's right, Skynet built its troops to be USB compatible. Most damningly, the scheme of the machines falls apart with even the slightest consideration; why, if they had kidnapped the prospective father of their enemy would they not kill him as soon as they had him in their massive complex? If they didn't know that he was their enemy's prospective father, why did they kidnap him in the first place? And, once they had their enemy in their grasp, why would they only send ONE machine after him? It's a stupid film, pure and simple.

The main problem with the film is that it is based on a logical fallacy; it assumes that what people found interesting in the earlier films were the brief glimpses given of the future and the war with the machines. Whilst these may have been interesting, they were the least interesting moments in those films, compared to the discussions of fate and the tension that arose from people being forced to battle killer machines using inferior technology. They were chase movies in which the odds were heavily weighted against our heroes, whilst Terminator: Salvation is a film in which the humans have a fighting chance and no one is being chased. There is no tension and little in the way of conflict.

However, whilst it may be as dumb as a bag of spanners and twice as blunt, at least the film has a handle on the spectacle side of things. Here is where the film gets one over on Transformers; when they have giant robots on screen, at least they have the sense to have them in frame for more than a second, and the camera remains steady for long enough for us to tell what is happening. The set-pieces in the film are fairly unoriginal, seemingly pieced together from other films, but they are fairly well put together and kept me interested.

The trump card for the film, though, is that it has two engaging performers at its heart. Surprisingly, one of them isn't Christian Bale, who delivers a whole performance in BatGrowl that isn't just phoned in, it's practically Tweeted. He's absolutely lifeless as John Connor and you really don't care if he leads the resistance or not.

No, the two engaging performers are Anton Yelchin and Sam Worthington, who both sink their teeth into their roles and deliver solid, believable performances. Yelchin, who earlier this summer was hilarious as a young Chekov in Star Trek, is plausibly hard-edged and convinces as a teenager who has lived his whole life under this pall of constant war, and his scenes with Sam Worthington are a highlight of the film.

Sam Worthington is a highlight unto himself, though, and I was really taken with him as Marcus Wright. The role is a fairly thankless one since his character's development is so painfully obvious, but he really sells Marcus's internal conflict and a sense that he does not know who or what he is. I'm really looking forward to seeing what he does next since he seems to have a knack for getting life out of flatly written characters that could make him the best thing in any future blockbusters he deigns to appear in.

Terminator: Salvation is far and away the weakest of the Terminator series, lacking the tension and suspense of the earlier films' action scenes and being completely devoid of any of their philosophical depth. However, it's an okay action film that passes the time and, despite its rampant stupidity and gaping plotholes, is better than you'd expect.

Top Ten: Pixar Films

Today is a glorious day, people. A magnificent, splendid day, the sort of day that a narrator, probably voiced by Nicolas Cage, may refer to as one of 'the salad days', because I have seen 'UP', Pixar's 10th film. This means several things. 1) I've managed to keep a promise I made when I was 13 to see all of their films in the cinema. 2) I now have a new best film of the year contender. 3) I can do one of those multifarious and pointless Top 10 lists that litter the Internet in lieu of doing any actual reviewing. Let's begin.

10. Cars



No one loves Cars, in my experience. I've not met anyone who would put their hand on their heart and say that it was a great film because, let's face it, it's not. It's a fairly average story of a famous car (Owen Wilson) getting stuck in a small town and learning values from the local residents, particularly Doc Hudson (Paul Newman, in one of his last ever roles). It's by no means a bad movie. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at and the story, whilst fairly cliched and hackneyed, is sweet and the characters are endearing. Of all of Pixar's films, it's easily the worst, but that doesn't mean that it is bad, just that it is not of the calibre that I expect from Pixar.

9. A Bug's Life



Now, the low placing of this may suggest that I hold it in as low a regard as I hold Cars, but that's not true. In the same way that there are an infinite amount of numbers between 1 and 2, so there is a vast difference in quality between Cars and A Bug's Life. A retelling of Seven Samurai, with a bit of The Three Amigos thrown in for good measure, the tale of Flick (Dave Foley) is a tiny epic shot through with great jokes and some surprising moments of tension. And Heinrich, the fat German caterpillar who dreams of one day being a beautiful butterfly.

8. Finding Nemo`



Pixar's most successful film to date is one that I have a great deal of affection for, even if I don't really think it's as funny as their other movies. The deciding factor for me, as far as determining the place of the film in this list, is the relationship between Marlin (Albert Brooks) and Nemo (Alexander Gould). The opening scene, in which Marlin witnesses his wife and unborn children being slaughtered by a pike, only to discover that one of the eggs survived, perfectly sets up the idea that he would be an over-protective father and would go to any lengths to save his son from danger. This provides a solid emotional bedrock for the rest of the film, which is a genial enough little romp. Dory the forgetful fish, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, is also a terrific character.

7. Ratatouille



I thought this would be higher, considering that it was in my Top 5 for 2007, but the rest of the films in the list are ones I adore and I adore this one just a little bit less. Brad Bird's film about a rat (Patton Oswalt) who dreams of being a chef is an absolutely delightful film that, as ever, has some astounding animation and a real zest and energy to it. It also boasts one of the most touching moments I've ever seen in an animated film; the moment when food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) eats some ratatouille and is transported back, in a Proustian reminder, to his childhood. It's a sublime and profound moment that I absolutely love.

6. The Incredibles



Brad Bird's first Pixar effort just pips his second. This story of a family of superheroes trying to live normal lives is a somewhat odd mix that coalesces into an absolutely wonderful film. The first half, in which Mr. Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) feels suffocated by his boring office job and need to keep his powers hidden whilst dealing with his young family is dour and almost Bergman-esque in its depiction of strained relationships in a dull and drab suburbia. Once Mr. Incredible starts undertaking jobs for a mysterious benefactor, it quickly turns into a rip-roaring adventure, but one that is always underpinned by the notion of family and the need for Mr. Incredible to realise that his family are what matter now, not his tight-wearing escapades. An intelligent character-driven film that's also packed full of excitement and thrilling action set-pieces; the moment when Dash runs on water took my breath away the first time I saw it.

5. Monsters Inc.



The idea behind Monsters Inc, like the best of Pixar's films, is simple and brilliant; what if the monsters that live in closets are working for a corporation that harvests screams, and what would happen if a child got through into their world? There are so many wonderful elements to this film that get it such a high placing on my list; the chemistry between Billy Crystal and John Goodman as Mike and Sully, Steve Buscemi's devilish turn as the insidious Randall, Roz the gravelly voiced administrator, and Boo, the sweet little girl whose cries of ''Kitty!'' add such warmth to the film, and make for one of the most touching final shots in any of Pixar's films to date.

4. WALL-E



My number 3 film of last year and it's a damn near perfect film. WALL-E is a little robot whose been left all on his own on Earth trying to clean it up whilst humanity has survived, and devolved, on a space ship. When EVE, or iEve as she may as well be called, a pristine white robot sent to search for plant life arrives on Earth, WALL-E falls in love and ends up travelling halfway across the galaxy after her. The first half an hour, which is mostly silent and details both WALL-E's life on Earth and his burgeoning relationship with EVE, is haunting and incredibly beautiful. The film kind of loses something when it gets off-world and becomes more overtly adventurous, but it's anchored by WALL-E and his plaintive cries of EEEEEEvah.

3. Up



This should be considered the de facto number 1 spot, really, since numbers 1 and 2 have been the same for 10 years now and I doubt they'll ever be displaced. It's similar to how a Pope can be as good as a Pope can be but he's still not going to get bumped up to Jesus, he'll always just be at number 2. So it is with Pixar films.

Up is Pixar's most recent offering and, although I'll do a proper review this week sometime, I will say right here and now that it is absolutely brilliant and beautiful and just plain lovely. The plot follows Carl Fredericksson (Ed Asner), a 78-year old man who ties a bunch of balloons to his house in order to fly to South America and fulfill a dream that he shared with his dead wife. He hits a snag in his plans when he discovers that Russell (Jordan Nagai), a Wilderness Explorer, has hung on to his porch and has to ride with him all the way to South America. There are so many lovely moments in the film but the two that really got me were the opening 15 minutes, during which we are shown a montage of Carl and Ellie's relationship from when they were kids, through their childless marriage, all the way to Ellie's death. It's one of the most poignant and heartrendingly sad sequences I've ever seen in a film and, much like the other films on this list, it provides an emotional core to proceedings that stops it flying off into wackiness. The other moment came about 20 minutes from the end and I won't spoil it, I'll just say that it had me is floods of tears in the cinema. It also features Dug, a talking dog that makes for one of Pixar's most endearing characters.

2 and 1. Toy Story 1 and 2



These two are interchangeable and inseparable at the top of the tree since they are both, as far as I am concerned, about as perfect as it is possible for films to be. Existential, hilarious and filled to the brim with great characters, the Toy Story films are, in the words of Mark Kermode, the Godfather 1 and 2 of animated films. That analogy doesn't bode well for Toy Story 3, but I'm still hopeful. Anyway, why do I love these films so much? They are just so intelligently made and, the older I get, the better they get. As a kid, I laughed at the jokes and the characters, and I still do over a decade later, but now I appreciate them as a diptych about life, aging and love. The two films together comprise a lot of deep themes about friendship, jealous and the passage of time, a theme that reached its apex in Toy Story 2 during the absolutely heart-breaking ''When She Loved Me''. They are two absolutely wonderful films which I don't think will ever be replaced, either on future versions of this list or in my heart, but Pixar have repeatedly demonstrated their ability to make absolutely transcendent films, and long may they continue to do so.

Go on, cry!

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Big metal men hit each other. For two and a half hours.



I quite liked the first Transformers film. It was silly, over the top and featured a high rate of characters-to-explosions, which is par for the course with Michael Bay films, but also had some really stunning looking robot effects, albeit ones that you could only appreciate in production stills since they were never still or in frame long enough in the first one to be seen clearly, and it tapped into the sort of nostalgia for my childhood that I usually suppress. All in all, I liked it quite a lot.

Now we come to the second film and all the ingredients from the first are present and correct, but bigger and louder. We've got the robots (but more of them!), we've got the bullshit plot (but more of it!) and we've got the human characters (but more insufferable!). Shia LeBeouf returns as the moronically monikered Sam Witwicky, Megan Fox returns to drape herself over things and run in slow motion whilst displaying the emotional range of a mannequin on ketamine, and John Turturro is back for no real reason other than to show his arse again. This time around The Decepticons are searching for another lost artefact which would allow for their leader, The Fallen, to take his revenge on Earth. For some reason.

Yes, all the ingredients from the first film are present and correct, now in greater amounts. However, just because you can make a massive cake, doesn't mean it'll taste any good, and that is very much the case with Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

First off, the effects are, once again, very good. The transforming effects are still terrifically well executed, even though Michael Bay spends a little too much time highlighting them despite the fact that we've all seen them before. As before, though, you can't really see the robots most of the time because of Bay's ADHD editing and inability to keep anything in frame for any length of time. Unless its Megan Fox draping herself over something or running in slow motion. The action sequences, of which there are many, are largely dull and uninvolving affairs since they consist largely of the same sort of thing we saw in the first film, with the possible exception that this time the humans are not quite so useless at fighting against the Decepticons. There are some fights in the film that threaten to match the level of excitement created in the first film, the last 45 minutes of the film are surprisingly tense, but largely it settles into a rut of lifeless fight after lifeless fight.

This is largely because Michael Bay, as is his wont, frames every shot to be a money shot; every shot is bombastic, every shot is melodramatic and ever shot is overblown. Even Rainn Wilson, as Sam's professor, gets a low-angle dramatic panning shot when he is introduced. The problem with imbuing every shot with an equal level of importance is that it renders them equally meaningless and, to paraphrase an old Richard Herring routine, I found myself sitting there reacting in exactly the same way to moments of tragedy as I did to moments of excitement and humour; with the numb, deadened stare of Megan Fox. I just did not care about any of it most of the time and it really did degenerate into a case of things just happening, even the death of Optimus Prime failed to get any sort of response from me since it was presented in exactly the same way as Sam's mom getting high.

I suppose I should talk about the human factor in the film but there doesn't seem to be any point. All the actors are as good as they can be considering they are in a film in which no one, in the audience or in the crew, cares about them or what they do. It's all about the big metal men hitting each other.

I will say, however, that what is missing from Revenge of the Fallen that was present in the first film is the chemistry between LaBeouf and Fox. In the first film, Sam was a charming, awkward kid who pined after a girl who was completely out of his reach, and the development of their relationship, such as it was, during the first film kept me interested whenever the film moved away from the action. This time around, the two are very much together and there is no real sense that their relationship is in trouble, so that spark that they had in the first film is completely absent and makes the non-robot moments of the second film much less interesting than those of the first film.

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy bits of it; there were some scenes that made me laugh, and some that were quite tense and exciting, but all in all it was an unimpressive attempt at spectacle that reminded me of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest; a bloated, overlong follow-up to a perfectly fine first film that begins, ends and leaves absolutely no lasting impression once the credits roll. Cue bad Linkin Park song.

Pour Elle (Anything For Her)

What is it with French films and fire extinguishers?



Julien (Vincent Lindon) is a French teacher whose wife (Diane Kruger) is arrested and imprisoned for a crime which she did not commit. After three years of prison visits with his young son and failed appeal attempts, Julien takes matters into his own hands and tries to concoct a means of getting Lisa out of prison.

This film is tense. Very tense. To give a sense of how tense it is, I had already seen the final ten minutes whilst few days before and still I was on the edge of my seat all the way through, even though I knew how the film was going to end. Fred Cavaye constructs the film so well, placing the emphasis on Julien's growing obsession, represented by hundreds of pictures and documents which he sticks to the wall of his bedroom, as well as his decision to sell all the furniture in his home to raise money, rather than on action set-pieces, though he does throw in one with a drug dealer fairly early on to break things up. Julien's status as a normal man with no particular aptitude for violence or crime really sells the enormity of the task ahead of him, and it's very easy to identify with his struggles and setbacks since we know about as much about breaking someone out of jail as he does. It also raises the stakes during the more action-orientated sequences since you know that the last thing Julien wants to do is kill anyone, so there is always a conflict in him even when resorting to murder would be the easiest option.

What really raised the film up, for me, were the performances and the family dynamics. There are some lovely characters moments amidst the tension, ranging from little moments like Julien and his son, Oscar, talking about Oscar's friends at school, or big things like Julien's brother punching a wall in anger after hearing that Lisa's appeal has been rejected, then walking out of the room without saying anything. There's a naturalism to the performances and their interactions that you do not find often in thrillers, and this makes the relationships, be their paternal, fraternal or marital, seem terribly and painfully real and I found myself investing in these characters a lot more than I was expecting.

This investment, more than the plot of itself, was what I really found engaging about the film. I believed in every character in the film and found their motivations and actions had a level of verisimilitude to them that seemed at odds with the expectations raised by the prospect of a thriller. The little moments between a father and a son or a husband and wife are as explosive as a gunshot, and the way in which Cavaye combines the two is remarkable dexterous.

Vincent Lindon is easily the strongest member of the cast, partly because he has the most screentime, but mainly because he is completely convincing as a husband and a father. You really feel his pain and frustration with the system that has taken his wife away from him, and the slightly clumsy and amateurish way he sets about trying to get her back fits the idea of him being someone who is just winging it and trying to figure out how to do something that would be difficult for someone who knows what they are doing. The scenes between Julien, Lisa and Oscar in prison are heartbreaking because there is such a strong sense of familiarity between them, as if they really have known each other for years and are in love. The relationships he has with his brother and father are also well realised, particularly the one with his father, which is shown to be strained and silent and pays off in a big way during one silent exchange of glances two-thirds of the way through the film. The only problem I had with him was the massive bags under his eyes. Anyone that haggard would be picked up at a police checkpoint immediately, regardless of whether they fit any description. He just looks like he has something to hide.

It feels cheap and easy to compare Anything For Her to Tell No-One since they are two recent French thrillers but it is a reasonably good comparison. Both films are pacy, breathless thrillers that have heart and characters that set them apart from the crowd. One of the most engaging, and moving, films I've seen so far this year.