Screenwriting 101 Film Crit Hulk

Books on Film

Screenwriting 101

Film Crit Hulk

What kind of name is ‘Film Crit Hulk’?

Okay so, this always leads to an awkward introduction. This guy is easily my favourite person writing about movies right now. He works in the film industry but can’t reveal who he is so he writes anonymously under the guise of The Incredible Hulk. This includes writing in ALL CAPS and also kinda writing in ‘Hulk Speak’. He’s pretty eloquent though and at this point the hulk speak is pretty much just referring to himself in the third person. If you think being eloquent goes against the Hulk persona though, it doesn’t. Read up on the comics ;)

He also has a good reason for writing like that in that it effects how people actually take in what he’s saying. Without getting too much into it what ends up happening is that people pay more attention to the text (instead of just skimming) and they engage with the actual ideas more than how it’s written. Also, just the very idea of having a character known for being a giant rage monster advocate for sincerity and humanity and being nice and cuddly effects how people view things in terms of what’s on the surface and what’s underneath.

The writing can seem a bit much to take in at first (his articles are also super long) but I’ve been reading his stuff for years now and I can read his stuff so easily now I don’t even notice the style. I can easily read his stuff for hours at a time and often do just re-read a bunch of his articles in a row.

So anyway, what’s the book about?

It’s about screenwriting! It’s also very much about storytelling in general. A huge section of the book just deals with what most other screenwriting books don’t even bother with; what even is a story? Why do we tell them? How do you find a story to tell?

Other books, and screenwriting advice in general can also end up giving you a lot of ‘rules’. “Here’s the structure you need to follow. Here’s what you have to do. Here’s what you absolutely aren’t allowed to put in a script.” It’s all bullshit of course. Just look at any interview with a working screenwriter where any of these rules come up and they just laugh them off. Some people even try to claim they’re not telling you what rules to follow but giving you ‘principles’. “I’m not saying you *have* to do it like this, but all these successful films seem to follow this rule so…” They usually don’t give you a good reason for *why* to follow these principles except to point out a bunch of good movies that seem to follow them or to just shrug and say “hey, they just *work*”

Enter Hulk. He spends a good part of the book just tackling two of the most common things that screenwriters are told to follow ‘Three Act Structure’ and ‘The Heroes Journey’. He actually takes them apart, dealing with how they actually work and what effect they have on a story. His plan is take stuff that often end up becoming restrictive and instead make them freeing.

There’s a lot more too! It’s honestly the best thing about writing I’ve ever read and I’d call it essential reading for anyone interested in writing or filmmaking. I’d even recommend it to anyone that is just interested in movies in general. It really is great and I’ve read it 3 times since I picked it up just over a year ago (I even read it twice in the past 3 months!)

What a minute Paul, you’re not a working screenwriter! How can you know that this is better than any other book about writing? If something like ‘Save The Cat’ speaks just as confidently as this Hulk guy how can you know to recommend one over the other? Even if Hulk really does work in the industry how you know he knows what he’s talking about?

Well, I’ve been interested in writing and specifically screenwriting for years now and I’ve been paying attention to what kind of advice people have been giving about it for over 10 years now. If you pay attention that long and you specifically listen to the differences between what working writers say and what ‘script gurus’ say then you start seeing patterns. A lot of it comes down to aforementioned ‘rules’ and ‘principles’ and how they are talked about. Any ‘rule’ or ‘guideline’ should only exist to serve the story you are telling. It shouldn’t be just there because it ‘just works’ or whatever. You start learning the difference between actual advice and what’s essentially the writing version of snake oil buzzwords. Plus ‘Save The Cat’ is a fucking joke and any writer that’s talked about it has nothing good to say. If you can find a single good screenwriter that praises it I’ll buy you a house. (*)

Okay so I’m interested…

Great! Well, the great thing about this book is that it’s a pretty cheap ebook. It’s only £2.99 on Amazon. You can get it (here)

There’s more too! Since people people genuinely have issues with the All Caps stuff buying it means you get both an All Caps version and a regular text version. You don’t have to take all my praise at my word either, you can read a section from the book (here). In this excerpt he talks about Three Act Structure.
You can also check out a bunch of articles he’s written online (here). Enjoy!

(*) - not legally binding

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Directed By:  Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written By: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, Raymond Carver

Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan

Preface

I set up this blog a while ago but haven’t really written a lot for it. A big part of the reason is that a lot of the time there wasn’t really anything I had to say about a particular film that other people weren’t saying better in their reviews. So I only wrote something if I really felt like I needed to say something or get something off my chest.

When I first saw Birdman in January I *really* wanted to write something about it but I didn’t. When it started to do well in awards shows I wanted to write about it but didn’t. When it won a bunch of Oscars I wanted to write about but didn’t. The reason I kept resisting is because, well, I’m not sure if I can say how I feel about this movie without coming off kinda mean or insulting. I think the movie is dumb, has a gross message and is the expression of someone whose views I disagree with on a fundamental level. Lots of people though, my friends among them, think it’s really smart. Some of them called it a masterpiece and said it’s one the greatest films they ever saw. If I start taking this movie apart and laying out *why* people are being fooled into thinking this movie is smart (and that is what I think is happening) then what the hell am I saying about the people who love it so much? Nothing good I suppose.

So why now? The other day I posted a link to a news story about Niell Blomkamp signing onto an Alien movie and I made a joke about how it would just be a bunch of ‘fan fiction wanky bullshit’ and someone got really offended by it and argued with me. I clearly touched a nerve and I guess I was being crude and hand-wavy about it. What I said though, although crude and reductionist is based in how I really do feel. And I didn’t say it out of hate, I said it out of love. I love movies so god-damm much and I hate when I see the same horrible patterns and bad instincts repeating themselves. I’d love if the new Alien movie was great, I want every movie to be great but I don’t think trying to follow up Aliens is a good idea. So I said what I said the way I said it and someone got offended.

I had been making the same kind of glib jokes about hating Birdman since I saw it and I guess it was the same as what I did with the Alien story. Maybe I also touched a nerve and offended people. So clearly the best thing to do would be to actually lay out what my problems with the movie are in the best way I can. And not only that but I hope that I can do it in a way that is, well, not stuck up or arrogant. And what better movie to talk about that than with this one!

Phew! That was a long preface! And now on to the actual review? Umm..well…

First I’m going to talk about the directer a little bit

Who made the movie?

Birdman has four credited writers so if you’re going to talk about the movie as someone’s expression (which I will) you need to get into who the actual author is. And normally a team of four people (including the director) would make that tricky. How can you claim that Alejandro is responsible for this stuff when he had three co-writers? Luckily I don’t have to since he’s done that himself:

"When somebody is behind it with a vision, no matter how many collaborators he has—and there are always many—200 people in the crew and three or four writers, it doesn’t matter, it’s the vision of whoever makes the last decision…You can be hearing ideas, you can be influenced and be flexible, but in the end the last thing, the print of the film is by one person, only one. That’s the truth.”

But even if we want to take this on face value it can be a bit tricky. He had a very public disagreement with the writer of his first three movies over who should be credited. Guillermo Arriaga is the only credited screenwriter on Alejandro’s first three movies (although Alejandro has an idea credit for Babal. I don’t know exactly what happened between them but the facts that have been made public are these:

• Arriaga is against the auteur theory and believes that directors get too much credit for a film and the writer doesn’t get enough.
• Alejandro felt Arriaga was trying to take too much credit for their work together and took out an ad saying that he had an “unjustified obsession with claiming the sole authorship of a film," and "you were not - and you have never allowed yourself to feel part of this team”
• Alejandro had Arriaga banned from the set of Babel and had him stopped from being at the screening at Cannes.

So what happened? I don’t know. Maybe one of them was being unreasonable, maybe both were. Since I’m talking about Alejandro in this article I want to be fair and to try to give him the benefit of the doubt so let’s suppose that he brought a lot to those movies and Arriaga was being unfair. Then Alejandro’s quote about how the movie is by one person might just be defensiveness more than anything else. Maybe it sounds worse than it actually is. And maybe he kinda has a point too. 

One of the reasons I bring this up is that it happens in the film. After bring Mike into the play and they work on the scene a bit Mike goes to the press and tries to take credit away from Riggan (The movie is fairly autobiographical). But the important thing is that he’s the author of the film so I’m going to talk about it as his expression.

Superhero movies and ‘Cultural Genocide’

One last thing before getting into the actual movie itself and this is important. Alejandro has been very open about how he doesn’t like superhero movies. He calls them ‘cultural genocide’ and even puts that phrase into the movie. He’s talked in interviews about how he feels movies these days have too much action and not enough ‘ideas’. That they’re not like the movies he grew up watching and that kids these days never think about the movies they watched. He specifically said that these movies don’t have “ideas or humanity”. He’s an ARTIST who makes REAL ART of course! Not like those other assholes (he’s even said that he doesn’t watch movies - only films). 

It’s a horrible attitude that seems to have been around forever (even Hitchcock was looked down on for making popular trash in his day) and doesn’t show any sign of going away. Sometimes it’s hating of superhero movies, sometimes it’s about how many sequels and remakes we have now, sometimes it’s how they haven’t made any good films since the 70s. It always comes down to the same thing: that movies have tiers; there is art and there is trash and they should be separated. I could go on for ages about how much I hate this attitude but honestly James Gunn recently put it best. (link)

I also find this ironic since not only is Birdman lacking in smart ideas and humanity, it’s gross in the same way as the worst superhero movie of 2014. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

The shooting style

Finally! Talking about the actual movie (and only 1,300 words in! yay!)

I want to get this out of the way first. For good reason too. I think it’s nothing more than a gimmick. I know a lot of people love the style and how it was made but it just doesn’t work. There’s no reason for it. I’ve heard a few defences of it over time so it’s best to just talk about it by addressing them.

It took a lot of work

Yeah, I don’t care. Sorry, but giving yourself a bunch of extra work doesn’t make something better if it’s not in service of anything. You could shoot a whole movie with your arms tied behind your backs and turn the camera on with your nose every day if you like but it wont make your movie better

It replicates the no-sleep fever dream that Riggan is going through

When I first watched it I thought this might be what they were going for but the movie doesn’t stick to it being subjective. I even thought that maybe when the camera followed other people it would be showing what Riggan *imagines* they are doing/saying but there’s ultimately nothing to indicate that. Plus the movie very purposefully steps away from Riggan’s experience when it shows that he actually took a cab instead of flying and when it shows that his telekinesis is really just them thrashing his room. It keeps the one-shot style but jumps back and forth between being outside and inside Riggan’s head so that doesn’t work as a reason for having it.

It makes it like a play

I like this defence the most and I do like the idea of having long scenes of two actors just interacting with each other (and the actors are great here) but I feel it still takes away from the movie more than it adds to it. For one, it adds a bunch of unnecessary walking around plus the main problem is it takes the decision making out the shot construction. When you have one style over the entire movie then it kinda stops becoming an actual decision. It just becomes how things are. So there’s no motivation for the shots any more. If they mixed it up more and had sections that were one long take and sections that weren’t it would have worked better and I’m sure people would have still been impressed.

“I just really like long one-take shots”

Ha ha, I know man, me too. I really do, but they need to be motivated. They need to actually serve the story.

Ideas and Humanity

So what are these ideas that he put into the film? In his words:

"I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That’s why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place and they’re absolutely contradictory." and talking about the main character "He thinks that he is a great fucking artist half the time and half the time he thinks that he is a fucking jellyfish”

And that’s basically everything that Birdman is over and over again, two different ideas in the same space. But it gets into weird paces when you start looking at what those ideas actually are because Alejandro can’t help but put his own thoughts and beliefs in there. He’s stated that everyone is partially right, everyone makes a point. But then nobody in the movie advocates for something Alejando doesn’t himself strongly believe. Nobody in the movie advocates for superhero movies except to say that they’re popular and idiots like them. Every character just becomes a different part of Alejando’s belief that certain pieces of art and in turn the artists belong on a higher level than others. It all goes back to the idea of tiers. Some art is better than others, being ‘real’ is what art is really about. Everything in the movie just becomes an extension of his own beliefs. What kind of smart ‘idea’ is it to just shit on superhero movies for not being ‘real’ and where’s the humanity in placing yourself above everyone else and acting like a huge section of people are beneath you? If you really cared about 'ideas and humanity' wouldn't the smartest and most humane thing to do be trying to understand why these movies are so popular and why they resonate with people so much?

Riggan’s character arc

So what’s Riggan’s intelligence? What are his contradictory ideas? Ego and self doubt. That’s it. He thinks he’s great and that he deserves love and adoration but he also has self doubt and questions himself. Over the course of the movie people argue with him but just ignores them and the times he does listen to them it’s only in service of getting more adoration. And how does he reconcile his two ideas? He decides to completely ignore the self doubt and accept that he *is* better than everyone else and literally starts to fly over all the plebs that are below him. And everyone loves him for it. And he is now much happier and gets everything he wanted. Not by accepting his flaws but by accepting that he’s better than everyone else. Oh gee, great. 

And what movie had the same problem with the main character? The Amazing Spiderman 2. That’s  right, what is one of the worst superhero movies I’ve ever seen has the same type of gross characterisation as the movie that thinks its so much better than superheroes. In ASM2 we have a main character who is presented as being this awesome indulgent wish fulfilment avatar where all of his obstacles come from the fact that other people wont just fuck off and let him be awesome. And he keeps being proven right and everyone else keeps being proven wrong. Even when his girlfriend dies and his best friend turns into a monster it’s all their fault for not listening to him.

Riggan is the same. An indulgent wish fulfilment avatar that this time caters to artist types who want to feel like they’re special and perfect and everyone else needs to just get out of their way and let them be awesome. And I honestly feel like this is a big part of why people like the movie so much. (and I’m 100% certain it’s why the Academy loved it so much). It’s also why some people say Andrew Garfield was the better Spiderman, he’s not, he’s just the one people most want to be.

And indulgence on its own isn’t necessarily bad but it all comes down to what’s being indulged and how it’s presented and what relationship the audience has with it. Like, porn is fine as long as people know it’s porn. If you start trying to say it’s real life then you have problems. Similarly, a movie can get away with being indulgent if it wears it on it’s sleeve instead of being gross and then acting like it’s IMPORTANT.

Why people like it

This is where I get into the tricky part, where I start to fly over everyone else and explain to them why they’ve been fooled into liking this movie.

The style

I already gave this its own section but one thing to add here is that that kind of style can bring a type of ‘realness’ to a movie. What I mean is that one long take can approximate real life in a way that sometimes makes it feel ‘more real’ than something shot conventionally. Kinda similar to how a found footage movie works. Of course a long take can also sometimes make something seem more fake too but in this case I think for a lot of people it brings an air of ‘truth’ to it.

The style is also a big flashy thing that impresses a lot of people and makes the movie seem like more of a big deal than it actually is. Hell, the movie ‘Chef’ deals with a lot of the same stuff as Birdman does but it’s not as flashy so people see it as a much less ‘important’ film.

Mystical Magical stuff

There’s *just* enough that’s it’s really intriguing and seems really smart. I’m not entirely sure why this happens but the right amount of fantasy can make something feel more ‘special’. It adds an ‘intrigue’ I guess. True Detective would have been just as great if they took out the visions and the paranormal flavour but with it included it just seemed better didn’t it? People really responded to it. Same here, the movie opens with a guy floating and has telekinesis? Seems important.

The casting

Michael Keaton plays a washed up actor who once played a superhero and Edward Norton plays an intense actor who is a massive prick. Sound familiar? Well, it lines up with what a lot of people think these people are like. It makes the movie feel like it has more ‘truth’ and also more self aware than it actually is.

It’s “satire”

It’s supposed to be at least and there are parts that are funny but ultimately I don’t think it works as satire. It’s not clever enough, doesn’t say anything worthwhile or original about anything. Plus I don’t think Alejandro is able to do ‘silly’. If this was a silly lark of a movie it would work a lot better as satire but he can’t help but fill his movies with a sense of importance. Which brings us to:

It’s confident.

God god is it confident. And here’s where it gets interesting because even though I think the sense of importance gets in the way of the satire, it doesn’t get in the way of the ‘ideas’. This is a movie that is so sure of what it’s saying and saying it with such weight that you just can’t help feeling like it’s saying something of value. Just look at it! It’s IMPORTANT. It’s ABOUT STUFF, MAAAN!

Everything is in service of taking Alejandro’s toxic views and nothing ideas and either trying to hold them at arms length or leaning into them and making them seem like wisdom.

Of course I can’t really talk about the idea of using ‘tricks’ to fool someone into liking a movie without getting into the whole idea of movies being nothing but manipulations and ‘tricks’. It’s a huge conversation (and this piece is long enough) but you have to look at what ‘tricks’ are being used and what it’s in service of saying. In this case it’s saying nothing good.

Wrap up

Alejandro has been very open about how this movie was inspired by his own crises at turning 50 and struggling with his own self doubt. He’s also able to acknowledge how self important that was, he claims that’s why he made it a satire, to create distance. He also said he didn’t want to make it into a tragedy so he purposefully went in another direction with it. But the satire didn’t work and the ‘other direction’ just ended up being to ignore the self doubt and embrace his own greatness.

And so we’re left with this movie. A director who feels he is important and looks down on other movies and the people that make them made a movie all about how great it is to be better than everyone else as long as you just ignore that pesky self doubt that gets in the way. If he had just stood up and said all that stuff people would have probably hated him, but instead he put it into a movie and instead of dealing with he just indulges and gets praised for it. People are liking a movie made by a guy that looks down on them about how they deserve to be looked down on.

And here I am making fun of shit on Facebook and worrying that I might be putting down people in ways that I don't want to. Instead I could be making a movie where my stand-in is better than everyone else and I’ll get called a genius. Go figure.

Hollywood Rat Race - Ed Wood - Book Review

Hollywood Rat Race

-Edward D Wood Jr

My favourite movie is ‘Ed Wood’ so imagine my surprise when I’m in a used book store and I happen across ‘Hollywood Rat Race’ a book written by Ed Wood himself! The back of the book says that it’s part how-to manual, part memoir but it’s not exactly that. Which was disappointing, but it’s interesting none the less.

Written around 1964-65 and only published in 1998 what it is is a guide for young actors of how to make it in Hollywood. A lot of it is pretty sound advice too, do as much as you can before moving to Hollywood , learn as many talents as you can and be wary of any “producer” whose offer seems too good to be true. They’ll take money for shooting a screen test he says, but not bother putting any film in the camera. He also advises you to be a character actor instead of a star. Stars fade but a good actor will always get work.

Where the book really comes alive though is when he goes on a tangent or starts talking about his own life. He really genuinely loved movies and Hollywood, he even devotes a chapter to the fact that some people hate the industry but he doesn’t understand how they can (he thinks communists are involved though). He says he loves all of it and writing of every kind too. Not long before writing this book he wrote a documentary for the military and ended up finding it really interesting. He also talks about some of his friends and the people he admires and how much he loves doing stuff for them, writing movies just so they have a part or organising a public appearance of Bela Lugosi because so many people thought he was dead. He tells a story about how he once rented a house right across the street from the Warner Brothers lot just because of where it was and because it had a nice pool. The apartment itself was tiny (according to Wood you could only enter the bathroom sideways) and cost loads but as long as nobody came inside he could have loads of Hollywood people over and it made him look good.

There’s a real element of sadness that hangs over the whole thing though. Asides from the fact that he’s a passionate filmmaker who’s now famous for being among the worst is knowing how he spent his final years. This was written at a time when the future of Hollywood was uncertain, business was going down, television was being seen as significant competition, and fads like 3D weren’t working. It would be a few years until the likes of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ and ‘Easy Rider’ ended up revitalising Hollywood so when he wrote this the only thing that seemed to be working for Hollywood according to him were ‘nudie pictures’ which Wood looked down on. But this was at the point in Wood’s career when it was all going downhill for him. He was drinking more, his suffered from depression and was so poor he ended up having to make the soft core porn films he looked down on so much as well as writing pornographic novels. Maybe his talk of how much he loves every part of writing was him steeling himself for this new stage in his career and maybe all his talk about sleazy producers and who hard it is to make it in Hollywood comes from bitterness about how he ended up. He was proud enough of his work that he says “Orgy of the Dead” (a movie he wrote based on his own novel and which was released right before this book was written) might end up being remembered as a ‘classic of it’s kind’. All it’s remembered now though is as being the bridge between the horror and sci-fi stuff he made before it and the porn he made after.

Thirteen years after he wrote this, evicted from his apartment and staying in a friends place he spent the whole weekend drinking and after going to lie down he died of a heart attack. Two years after his death the Golden Turkey awards called his the worst director of all time and his cult following started.

It was interesting read but you’d probably have to have some affection for Wood. It would have been a lot more interesting if it was a guide for filmmakers instead of actors. There is a lot of bitterness but there’s some sweetness in there once he starts talking about the people he likes which I found really endearing. He also mentions angora sweaters 13 time. I counted.

Book Review - ‘Dreams & Shadows’ - C. Robert Cargill

Book Review - ‘Dreams & Shadows’ - C. Robert Cargill

Robert Cargill is more well know as Massawyrm on AICN. He’s recently branched out in

other types of writing with the movie Sinister and also this, his debut novel.

‘Dreams & Shadows’ takes the idea that all the various faeries and folklore from around the world are real and all live together in a separate fairy realm. The story follows two human boys, Colby and Ewan who end up getting mixed up in it and each others lives. 

Colby is a young boy who has a chance encounter with a genie and is granted his wish to ‘see everything’. This includes being brought to the fairy world where he meets Ewan, a young boy who was stolen as a baby and replaced with a changeling. Their meeting sets off a chain reaction that could change the whole balance of the fairy world.

I really enjoyed this book. It’s very readable and I’m a sucker for stories about folklore. I honestly had a hard time putting it down sometimes and flew through it pretty quickly. There are some issues with it. There are some points where it gets bogged down in long monologues but I guess you can kind of get away with it a little more in books. Unfortunately some of the monologues that are supposed to be deep are not quite as deep as they seem to think they are.

I still recommend it especially if you are a fan of urban fantasy. He signed a deal for two more books in this series and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

More like mystery COCKS

Directed By: J.J. Abrams

Written By: Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Benedict Cumberbatch, Peter Weller,

*Spoilers*

There’s an anecdote that is often used when writers talk about getting studio notes and re-writing scripts. In the story a writer is called in and is asked to re-write the ending. The main character is supposed to have a big success at the end but it just doesn’t feel like that much of a victory so they ask the writer to change the ending to fix this. He doesn’t change the ending though because he recognizes that the ending isn’t the issue, it’s the beginning. The stakes weren’t properly set up and so you don’t have a reason to want him to win. The point of the story is that while the producers were responding honestly to the script and felt the weak ending it’s the writers job to understand WHY the ending felt weak.

The same kind of thing happens with how audiences react to things. Like, let’s say if you really love a movie, the bad guy from the movie and the ending of the movie does that mean you can just take some elements from that movie and re-create it to get the same effect? No you can’t. Or should I say "no you KHAAAAAAAAAN'T"

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of the most loved Star Trek movies. In fact ‘Wrath of Khan’ is often referenced interchangeably with ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ by filmmakers as a way of saying “The sequel will be better and darker than the original.’ Loads of Star Trek fans love Khan and when Trek was re-booted in 2009 a lot of them were hoping to see Khan again.

Star Trek Into Darkness also has Khan as a bad guy and plays with the stuff that happens in Wrath but in a bunch of dumb ways. I really liked the 2009 Star Trek and one of the things they did in it that I thought was a cool idea was the fact that they made the fact that it was a reboot part of the plot. Someone goes back in time and changes the past, creating an alternate timeline. Leonard Nimoy’s Spock also goes back in time too meaning there are now two Spock’s in this timeline. Unfortunately it seems more and more like the timeline plot was just a cheap way of getting Star Trek fans to shut up and stop complaining about ignoring the original films. “They’re still part of the canon we’re using”, the filmmakers can say. ‘Look, here’s original Spock to tie everything together”. I really wish that they had just rebooted it. Even if in Into Darkness they had quietly ignored that there was two timelines and just changed what ever they wanted I might have been okay with that. Instead they specifically bring back Old Spock in this one just to point out that he faced Khan before. So Wrath of Khan is part of the back story to this and Khan is the same guy in both movies. In that case how did a Indian (who was played by a Mexican) turn into a British guy? And why does that scene with Old Spock even happen? I thought at first that they would do something interesting where Old Spock would warn them about how much of a bad guy he is but because of the different timeline he’s not that bad and it would create tension. Nope. He’s just a bad guy. So, what? Spock was just there to point out to the audience that Khan is from the older movies?

There is a lot of this movie that only seems to work if you know Wrath of Khan. I used to always point at Trek 09 as being one of the best examples of how to do references/call backs. Every reference in that movie works if you haven’t seen any Trek beforehand. The reference itself is a second layer if you happen to get it. This one acts like we should already care about who Khan is. His reveal is played like it’s a big moment for no reason. And then there’s the ending which this time has Kirk sacrificing his life in place of Spock. He dies and then five minutes later he’s brought back. Why even bother to kill him off at all? They seem to have just doesn’t it because Wrath of Khan did it but without any of the depth. Along the way Spock screamed out ‘KHAAAAAAAAAN’. Why? Because Kirk shouted it out in Wrath of Khan and it’s well known so yeah, fuck it, lets just shoehorn it in here too.

I know this might sound really nit-picky but all I felt watching the movie was that this is the movie equivalent of offering someone cake and then throwing it on the floor. I mean, they are still free to enjoy it as long as they don’t mind having to eat like an animal. Are they going to keep doing this? Is there going to be one where they have a plot involving whales in the future? They have a whole universe to play with! Why even re-tread anything at all? God forbid we might see something new.

I've seen people defend the movie by talking about how if you ignore all the stupid stuff Abrams is still able to put together a decent set piece but I don't even care anymore. There was one part that could have been cool where they do a space jump but they already did one in the last movie so it's not even original. 

Another major problem was Alice Eve. Not her, but how she was treated. She is seemingly only in the movie for two reasons. One, there is a character in Wrath called Carol Marcus so of course they’re going to shove someone with that name in there. Also she strips down to her underwear FOR NO REASON AT ALL. Okay, I do know the reason, it’s so they could put it in the trailer. UGH.

Edit: Damon Lindelof acknowledged this issue on twitter last night and said he'd be more careful about this sort of thing in the future.

I have other issues too, the majority of the crew are sidelined just to focus on Spock and Kirk but even then they’re not really developed any more than they were in the last one. Also the end got a bit confusing because I thought they were far from Earth but then they fell to earth? That might have just been me zoning out though. I was sick of the movie by that point.

When they first announced the new Star Wars movies I was kinda looking forward to them because I liked the idea of there being fresh blood but now I’m absolutely dreading them. JJ Abrams doesn’t even like Star Trek and he ruined this movie by shoving in a bunch of stuff fans were familiar with. God only knows what he’ll do with a series he’s been obsessed with since he was a kid.

Alt/Celluloid

Here's a list of stuff I've written for the blog Alt/Celluloid so far. The blog is focused on suggesting movies that might have slipped through the cracks. I'll continue to post there as well as writing fuller reviews here.

Other people contribute to it and there is some great stuff on there. You can check out the blog here:

http://altcelluloid.blogspot.ie/

Anyways here's a list of stuff I've suggested there, I've (tried) to sort them here into categories.

Horror:

The Bay (2012)

John Dies at the End (2012)

Detention (2011)

Tucker and Dale vs Evil (2010)

Troll Hunter (2010)

The Last Exorcism (2010)

Triangle (2009)

Let The Right One In (2008)

Pontypool (2008)

Timecrimes (2007)

[Rec] (2007)

The Orphanage (2007)

Japanese Animated:

Paprika (2006)

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

Whisper of the Heart (1995)

Japanese Drama:

A Boy and his Samurai (2010)

Fish Story (2009)

Kikujiro (1999)

TV:

Nathan For You (2013)

Awake (2012)

Terriers (2010)

Children's Hospital (2010 -)

TV Animated:

Batman: The Brave and the Bold (2008-2011)

Paranoia Agent (2004)

Drama:

Like Crazy (2011)

Monsters (2010)

Submarine (2010)

Humpday (2009)

The Fall (2006)

The King (2005)

Mean Creek (2004)

Documentary:

Lake of Fire (2006)

Evil Dead (2013)

The Suburgatory finale took a strange turn...

Directed By: Fede Alvarez

Written By: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues

Starring: Jane Levy, Shiloh Fernandez, Lou Taylor Pucci, Jessica Lucas

*Spoilers!*

Fede Alvarez made a bit of a splash with the short film ‘Panic Attack’ a few years ago. He ended up in talks with Sam Raimi to make a movie but it fell apart and they decided to remake ‘The Evil Dead, the Ultimate Experience in Grueling Horror’ instead.

The movie starts off pretty interestingly, with Jane Levy playing a heroin addict who is going with her friends and brother to a cabin in the woods to go cold turkey. That’s pretty cool because when she starts freaking out and saying she wants to go home they’ll think it’s just the withdrawal and she just thinks she sees dead babies crawling on the ceiling or whatever. It’s abandoned pretty quickly though and so is all the character dynamics (I think one of the guys has a problem with the brother or something but it’s only mentioned once.) Then it just starts going from gore scene to gore scene.

The first one is easily the most problematic. It’s a recreation of the tree rape scene. That was easily the worst part of the original and only a few years later Raimi was already saying he regretted putting it in. Apparently it was producer Robert G. Tapert that suggested putting it in the remake. What a prick. I think they try to soften it by involving a female spirit but it still shouldn’t have been put in at all.

The other gore scenes are technically well done and they use a lot of practical effects which is great and all but the scenes are all kind of dull. I re-watched the original recently and one thing that makes that work so well is the idea that ANYTHING can happen. There isn’t really any method to what the deadites are doing, they’re pretty much just fucking around. There’s more of a sense of escalation too, things seems to get crazier as it goes on. With the remake it’s just a character gets mutilated, then another gets mutilated and then another gets mutilated. It’s made worse by the fact that they keep cutting to images in the book depicting everything that is happening. Is the implication that there is a set list of mutilations and even an order they have to be done in? What? Why? Is there a boss deadite somewhere trying to meet a quota or something? Actually there probably is because the book also says there has to be 5 souls for the main spirit to come and I guess he’s pretty picky.

It really only gets good right at the end when it starts straight up raining blood. I guess you have to try and top the amount of blood in ‘Dead Alive’ so they were like ‘Yeah, fuck it let’s just make it rain blood.” Red Letter Media had a theory that they only put in the bloody rain to get around the MPAA. Kill Bill had to have a scene in black and white because of how much blood was in it but in this they might get away with it because it’s impossible to tell how much is actually blood and how much is rain. Levy has also changed into a red dress for no reason at this point too so I guess it was so they could get away with spraying her with as much blood as possible without it becoming too obvious.

It was too little too late though. They are planning a sequel and also a sequel to Army of Darkness and there are hints that they might cross over too. I’m curious if they'll follow the original series and start moving into comedy. Looking back there’s something really crazy about that progression. I can’t imagine the makers of Saw or something being like “Okay the next one will be more of a comedy and the third one will be even more of a comedy and will have WAY less gore and way more Three Stooges stuff. Yep”.

Rating: Avoid