2013-05-22T16:38:51-04:00 Mike Sutton http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=mike-sutton Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Mike Sutton Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1254803 2012-02-05T19:00:00-05:00 2012-04-06T05:12:02-04:00

Mike Sutton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-sutton/ The Hangover, a group of friends go to Las Vegas for a stag party, get blind drunk and discover that they've done all sorts of things while under the influence that they have to sort out before the wedding. In The Hangover Part 2, exactly the same happens but you can swap Bangkok for Las Vegas.

One imagines that Todd Phillips could go on making these films indefinitely by changing the location; alternatively, straight-to-DVD sequels could be produced with increasingly less glamorous settings until the Wolf Pack find themselves waking up after an exciting night in Stoke Newington. Clearly, something is awry when such a lazy sequel can be a massive commercial success without people demanding their money back. To add insult to injury, the film recycles a good number of the same jokes from the first film, simply adding extra unpleasantness to the mix. It's visually ugly, badly paced and lazily acted; a film with no ideas beyond the basic motive of making money.

When I refer to a lack of ideas, I don't necessarily mean originality. Admittedly, there is precious little originality in mainstream Hollywood at the moment but then there never has been. Right from the start, American narrative filmmaking largely depended on existing ideas - plays, books, poems - and there's nothing at all unusual, or indeed wrong, about that. It's not where the material comes from, it's what you do with it that counts. A classic example: Brian de Palma may have stolen from Sergei Eisenstein in The Untouchables but he added a a good deal of his own style to the classic Odessa Steps sequence; equally, Sergei Eisenstein refined that legendary scene from visual ideas first seen in D.W. Griffith's Intolerance. The problem I'm concerned about is that so many films coming out of America seem to have virtually no ideas at all. It's not just the plots, it's the fact that the plots are recycled with such a paucity of visual and verbal invention. A great director can take familiar material and renew it through sheer visionary panache; Tim Burton, for example, rarely creates original stories but his films, like them or not, never seem like the work of anyone else. But if a director doesn't really care then there's no hope for the film.

The surprising commercial success of the monochrome and largely silent film The Artist suggests to me that audiences are desperate for something which is different and, more to the point, has some kind of controlling vision beyond the standard demands of a three-act story. As several writers have cogently argued, it's not a great film and, by the standards of the silent films which were actually being made in 1927, it's really rather mediocre. But Michael Hazanavicius has genuine ideas and has the skill to put them onto film. Compare that to the likes of The Iron Lady or J. Edgar which, despite promising performances, trudge through potentially interesting lives with all the inventiveness of an average TV biopic; or Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows which, Jared Harris' brilliant Moriarty apart, has no feeling for either Conan Doyle's creation or the period in which it is meant to be set, and ends up like any other big-budget adventure movie in which the Great Detective might as well be James Bond or Indiana Jones.

Speaking of Ethan Hunt, however, Brad Bird demonstrates in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol that all is not lost in the world of mega-budget action. It's packed with familiar set-pieces and the script barely rises above the functional but Bird's direction is inspired, turning the familiar grind of the M:I series into a crazily insolent live-action cartoon. The pacing is a little bit frenetic, even hysterical, and it's obvious that no-one quite knows when to say enough is enough but you get the impression that Brad Bird could go on directing daft stunt sequences for another hour and still not run out of ingenuity. The ideas here come not from the material but from the execution and that's what is desperately needed. The film is just an action flick but it's got a soul and it's alive. The Hangover Part 2, on the other hands, looks like it was filmed in a drunken stupor. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1189262 2012-01-08T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-09T05:12:01-05:00

Mike Sutton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-sutton/ "No good movie is too long just as no bad movie is short enough"
Roger Ebert

When David Fincher's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo opened in cinemas last week, viewers were sharply divided on its merits. Was it as good as the Swedish original? Was it a worthy screen adaptation of Stieg Larsson's book? Did the sight of Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara in bed together make you vomit or just feel vaguely nauseous?

My own feelings about the film are that in many respects it's about as good as a Hollywood thriller gets nowadays and that David Fincher's panache as a director shines through even when he's clearly working as a hired gun. But I had one major problem with it, and that's the matter of its length, something which seems to me to be symptomatic of a major problem with mainstream American filmmaking.

The Roger Ebert quotation above suggests that we shouldn't worry too much about how long a film is as long as we're having a good time watching it. To some extent I agree with this - who would want to shade minutes off The Godfather or Lawrence of Arabia simply in order to get them under two and a half hours? But too many films in the past few years have been extended beyond their capacity to hold the viewer's interest because the stories they tell simply don't have enough substance to last the course.

It's a sort of storytelling elephantisis, something similar to the disease of scale which overtook David Lean when he turned a potentially beautifully little love story into the epic morass of Ryan's Daughter. Last year, I thoroughly enjoyed the first hour or so of Bridesmaids until I noticed that repetition was setting in and that I still had another hour to go before reaching some kind of conclusion.

Contrived new situations were created and character points were made again and again for no apparent reason other than to add minutes onto the running time. My liking for the film survived this because I liked the people on screen, but I was still shifting about uncomfortably wondering why it needed to be any longer than 90 minutes - at the most.

The same applies to virtually any summer action blockbuster movie you care to name but, Michael Bay's Transformers movies are particular culprits. I should state here and now that I don't really understand anything about Transformers and my viewing was purely for research purposes, but it should be theoretically possible to make a fun adventure film about robots hitting each other without stretching it out to 155 minutes. Instead we get something made with a level of portentous seriousness that used to be reserved for films about Jesus Christ.

In the case of David Fincher's recent film, the story reaches a natural stop - or given that its part of a trilogy, a pause - after the final confrontation with the killer and the final revelation about Harriet's fate at around the 110 minute mark. All we need after that is a brief wrap-up of Lisbeth and Mikael's relationship and a perhaps an ironic little coda about the fate of the Wennerstrom bank accounts. But the film goes on for another 30 minutes taking an age to establish very little, especially since I suspect most of the audience will have already forgotten all about the details of the Wennerstrom case which were introduced in the first ten minutes.

There's some mild amusement to be had in Lisbeth's globetrotting and disguises but, for me, the film was already over.

I don't have any sort of problem with long films in general. Some directors use length to the film's advantage by telling epic stories - like Sergio Leone in Once Upon a Time in America - or to create a slow pace which is compelling in itself - like the great Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky in films like Stalker and Andrei Rublev.

But modern Hollywood needs to stop confusing length with importance or value for money and realise that nearly three hours of sound and fury isn't necessarily better than two hours. I would suggest a good look at what mainstream American directors achieved in the Golden Age while prescribing a course of Warner Brothers gangster movies from the 1930s followed by some exposure to the classic Universal monster movies, many of which barely make the 90 minute mark.

A good start has been made by Rupert Wyatt whose Rise of the Planet of the Apes was trim, exciting and came in at about hundred minutes. Let's hope other directors learn from his example. ]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1178686 2012-01-01T19:00:00-05:00 2012-03-02T05:12:01-05:00

Mike Sutton http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-sutton/ New Years Eve - or should I say, the only interesting thing about that disaster - is that it exploits one of the holidays which is relatively rarely seen in movies. You could probably fill in a whole year watching films set at Christmas time and there are Yuletide movies to suit all tastes from Elmo Saves Christmas to Silent Night, Deadly Night Parts 1 to 5. But the New Year has not spawned so much celluloid despite being an event which seems to become more inflated with every passing year. This is odd because it's an ideal setting for a movie; a time when people get together, friends and strangers alike, and pretend to be having a great time while secretly wondering whether the party next door might be a lot more fun than the one they're actually attending.

Perhaps that's the problem. For many of us, New Year is a time of uncertainty, a time when our feelings of inadequacy and worries about the future come to the fore. After all, it marks the passing of another year and we're all too aware that none of us is getting any younger. So seeing these feelings reflected on screen could be an uncomfortable and intense experience, whereas the clichés of Christmas movies, no matter how far removed from reality, induce a warm glow of nostalgia. Worse still is a picture of unbridled merriment or the dawning of true love; watching Harry finally meet and romance Sally at the witching hour could make anyone not quite so fortunate want to drown themselves in a vat of cava.

There are, however, a handful of great movies for the New Year which have managed to walk the delicate line between reality and sentiment:

THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972, Ronald Neame)

In which a distinctly unappealing New Year's Eve party on a cruise liner is rudely interrupted by a giant wave which turns the ship upside down. Luckily, Gene Hackman is on hand to utter the immortal words, "We have to go up!"

SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950, Billy Wilder)

In which William Holden attends Gloria Swanson's New Year's Eve party and finds he's the only guest.

BRIDGET JONES' DIARY (2001, Sharon Maguire)

In which Renee Zellwegger has the kind of drunken New Year's Eve which is all too familiar, especially when she starts singing along out of tune to Celine Dion.

BOOGIE NIGHTS (1997, Paul Thomas Anderson)

In which William H Macy, before he finally snaps, endures a New Year celebration which is bound to make yours look like fun in comparison.

STRANGE DAYS (1995, Kathryn Bigelow)

In which virtually the whole speaking cast dies and, at the very end of the Millennium, Ralph Fiennes realises that the world no longer has any kind of moral centre. But it's fine because he gets to have a lengthy smooch with Angela Bassett.

THE APARTMENT (1960, Billy Wilder)

In which Shirley MacLaine finally realises that she loves Jack Lemmon after all and runs back to his apartment on the stroke of midnight. The sentiment is undercut by Billy Wilder's dry sense of humour and one of the great closing lines - "Shut up and deal..."

As for my all-time favourite New Year movie, it's got to be a slightly unconventional choice:

LAST NIGHT (1998, Don McKellar)

In which the very last night of the world is spent in various ways by a large cast of characters who are preparing for the end. It sounds depressing but it's actually funny, moving and inspiring. ]]>