Is there anything more frightening than the words “BUY TICKETS” next to the title of a movie you wrote?

As we announced last week – after keeping quiet about it for far, far too long – EXIT will soon have its world premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal.

And even better, EXIT will be the closing night film of Fantasia’s Camera Lucida spotlight. Programmer Simon Laperrière has said that the first Camera Lucida spotlight was based on a question:

“What is genre cinema today? And to answer it, I said we have to look at genre film in its most iconoclastic form, in all its differences.”

Last year – the first of Camera Lucida – included Quentin Duplex’s killer tire movie Rubber and Hirokazu Koreeda’s poetic, absurd Air Doll. This year, it opens with William Eubank’s avant-garde sci-fi Love and closes with the world premiere of EXIT on August 4.

Their description of EXIT begins like this: “According to legend, there exists at the heart of the city a door that opens upon a parallel universe. No one knows its origin or where it leads.” It calls EXIT “one of the best science fiction films of the year, merging a small budget with big ideas.”

(Is EXIT a science fiction film? I think that’s a very interesting question, actually…)

You can read Fantasia’s full description here, as well as watch our trailer and buy tickets for the premiere. The director Marek Polgar and I will be guests of the festival, too, and we can’t wait.

REPO MEN

Directed by: Miguel Sapochnik

Starring: Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Alice Braga

Country: USA

In the near future, you’ll be able to extend your life by buying artificial organs. If you can’t make the massive repayments, a repo man – like Jude Law’s Remy – will break into your home, cut you open, and take them back.

That’s the premise of the sci-fi Repo Men, from first-time feature director Miguel Sapochnik. And while it’s great to see Jude Law embracing his receding hairline, his performance is pretty dull at first. His snarky voiceover is unnecessary, and every scene with his family is dead weight.

As Remy has a crisis of conscience, though, the movie develops its black sense of humour. Remy’s co-worker (Forest Whitaker) leaves a BBQ to “get more meat”, for example, and later there’s a bloody sort-of-sex scene that’ll make your jaw drop.

Repo Men borrows its future noir aesthetics from Blade Runner, and its big fight scene from Old Boy. It’s so indebted to other films that it’s like its own characters: mostly transplanted parts, but still capable of pumping blood.

Other reviews this month: The Girl Who Played With Fire, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and the doco Food, Inc.

Issue #44 on sale now.

SPLICE

Directed by: Vincenzo Natali

Starring: Adrien Brody, Sarah Polley, Delphine Chanéac

Country: Canada

Many think Frankenstein was the first science fiction story. It tapped into something so powerful we’re still seeing new twists on the story today. This year it’s Splice, from the director of the 1997 lo-fi sci-fi Cube.

Sarah Polley (always excellent) and Adrien Brody (usually terrible, though pretty okay here) play a pair of gene-splicing scientists. Bored with using animal DNA, they introduce something human into the mix and soon have a gooey ‘daughter’ born with a stinger-tipped tail – and she’s growing fast.

Splice’s weighty ethical issues let it take itself pretty seriously for a movie that’s regularly so ridiculous. I mean, there are two pink lumps of Cronenbergian flesh licking each other with monster tongues in the first five minutes, and later there’s a sex scene that’ll keep fetish websites loaded with screengrabs.

But the best thing about Splice’s science-gone-wrong is how it asks the same question that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein asked back in 1818. What’s worse: children or parents? Splice says there’s enough horror in both.

Other reviews this month: Greenberg and The Ghost Writer in cinemas; Youth In Revolt, Cop Out, and Party Down: Season One on DVD.

Issue #42 on sale now.

Coppélia (Leanne Stojmenov) and Dr. Coppelius (Damien Welch). Photography by Branco Gaica.

Mostly, I focused on the ballet’s villain, Doctor Coppelius. He’s depicted as a sad and lonely inventor, surrounded by his odd mechanical creations – some half-finished, some almost human. In the original horror story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, though, he’s an alchemist suspected to be ‘The Sandman’, and is much more monstrous. (Like stealing-childrens’-eyes more monstrous.)

Yet he’s not the most horrific thing in the story. That role belongs to his beautiful, artificial faux-daughter, Coppélia. In the ballet’s programme, I write:

“The existence of a lifelike doll in Hoffmann’s original tale is not a charming curiosity. After the truth of his creation is revealed, Hoffmann describes lovers forcing one another to sing and dance off-key and out of time, just to prove they are human. Otherwise how can they be sure?”

Popular culture has provided us with more supposedly scientific ways to test if someone’s human, like the Voight-Kampff machine made famous by Blade Runner. The movie’s production designer described it like this: “Basically it was a lie-detector machine. The lie is, I am not a replicant.”

In fact, as I saw the frail Doctor Coppelius appear on stage, I was reminded of J. F. Sebastian, Blade Runner’s old inventor, living alone except for his toys. The nursery rhyme his toys sing to him – “Home again, home again, jiggety-jig” – still plays in my head with alarming regularity.

Blade Runner – and a gazillion other science fiction stories too, of course – are designed to make us wonder if we’re human after all. How can we really tell? Singing out of tune and moving off the beat? Close analysis of our pupil dilation at embarrassing questions? Maybe it’s just as the theme song ‘Coppélia’s Coffin’ from the anime series Noir says:

“People are dolls tired from dancing / Sheep on the altar / The mechanical dreams / Where are they headed?”

We’re all just dolls, tired from dancing. Coppélia tries to dismiss these question with the light-hearted farce and energetic dancing at its beginning and end – but they remain bubbling under the surface of the stage while we’re in Doctor Coppelius’ lair.

An odd postscript: Coppélia’s choreographer, Arthur Saint-Leon, isn’t only famous for his ballets; he also invented an early form of notation to record these all-important steps. Ironically, he failed to record his work on Coppélia, and it only survived as its popularity kept it in almost constant circulation – even though it was initially interrupted by the Franco-Prussian war. What if it hadn’t been so lucky?

And another: in 2007, Japanese scientists offered a strange solution: a human-sized robot that could mimic the steps of a human dancer. In this way, the specific movements of folk dances could be perfectly captured and replayed, even after its original performers were long dead. “My impression is that there would still be a human element lacking,” one English folk dancer is quoted as saying. “The robot would still look, for the want of a better word, robotic.”

We keep telling ourselves that – but I can’t help feeling like it’s just modernity’s equivalent of whistling past a graveyard.

So despite a predictable childhood obsession with James Cameron’s Aliens and Terminator 2, I approached Avatar with a healthy dose of skepticism. With its maybe $300 million budget – and the swirling rumours of much, much more – I was afraid that no matter how good a film it might be, I’d be stuck staring at the price tag dangling invisibly from the corner of the screen and wondering if it was worth it.

But Avatar successfully stopped me thinking about its dollar signs. It’s a massive 160 minutes long and I didn’t once look at my watch. Yes, it trades in clichés – ‘naive scientists’, ‘evil corporations’, ‘noble savages at one with nature’, and (perhaps unfortunately) ‘white man saves the day’. Some are already complaining that the story’s too simple. Well, ‘complicated’ doesn’t equal ‘good’ – Matrix sequels anyone? – and Cameron’s simple story is masterfully told.

It’s far too deliberately paced for action fans, and barely a sci-fi at all. Cameron has little interest in exploring any ideas behind the projecting-human-minds-into-alien-bodies technology that provides the film’s title. It’s a deeply earnest and old-fashioned adventure story. If anything, Avatar is a conceptual, mirror-world sequel to his Aliens from 1986. Imagine if one of Aliens’ marines had a change of heart and decided to fight alongside the creatures with acid for blood. It even has a new Paul Reiseresque corporate stooge!

And here’s the ultimate compliment for Avatar’s special effects: they’re so good that I don’t feel much of a need to talk about them. Yes, the world of Pandora and its giant blue inhabitants is visually overwhelming at first. Too busy, too day-glow, too outdoor rave. Once you adjust, Avatar is completely immersive. The Uncanny Valley that turned films like The Polar Express into horrific parades of undead fleshbots is nowhere to be seen – thanks to being artfully subsumed into alien facial features.

I’m nervous about saying it in case Avatar completely falls apart on a second viewing, but there were brief flashes where I felt like a kid watching Star Wars for the first time.

All Avatar‘s above pleasures, however, depend on your ability to process this pair of facts: it’s about a noble indigenous population fighting corporate greed and American imperialism in defence of their world’s vibrant ecosystem… that also happens to be the most expensive film ever made.

As Alanis Morisette might say: that’s the black fly in your chardonnay.

Does the production of a film affect your enjoyment of it? Read this unmissable New Yorker piece about Cameron’s creative process on the set of Avatar, and wonder if we should dismiss all art made with money that could have been better spent. I think it’s only human to hear an obscene Hollywood budget like this and have a flicker of thought about starving third world children – but if you follow this logical path, it becomes increasingly difficult to justify the cost of any art at all.

Is the disjunction between Avatar’s moral message and its decadent production an unforgiveable hypocrisy? Or is the fact that Cameron convinced his backers to throw hundreds of millions at a film that’s so overtly anti-corporate and anti-America the ultimate act of insider subversion? Does it matter?

If it sounds like I’m making excuses, I don’t mean to be. It’s perfectly reasonable to think the amount of money spent of Avatar is repulsive, and avoid it for that reason alone. It’s to James Cameron’s credit, though, that I was so completely taken in by the movie that these questions didn’t even occur to me until after the credited rolled – and after the hideous Titanic-style ballad began.

MOON

Directed by: Duncan Jones

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Kevin Spacey

Almost every interview, article, or casual conversation about Moon must mention that its first-time director, Duncan Jones, is the son of David Bowie. (Hey, just like I’m doing now! Weird!) His film, though, is good enough to stand on its own.

Moon is a callback to the cerebral sci-fi of the 1970s. Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is serving out a three-year mining contract on a moonbase, alone except for a friendly robot named GERTIE (voiced by Kevin Spacey). Sam seems to be going understandably mad, leading to an accident and an impossible identity crisis.

Moon is almost a one-man-show, leaving Rockwell to carry the film on his twitchy shoulders. He pulls it off, too. Yes, there are some snags in storytelling logic, and an intrusive soundtrack by the usually capable Clint Mansell (Requiem For A Dream). When most sci-fi cinema has been co-opted by CGI spectacle, it’s always a pleasure to see one putting ideas ahead of explosions. Jones’ next film should be a doozy.

Other reviews by me this month: (500) Days of Summer, The Mighty Boosh box set, and Van Diemen’s Land. (You can read that last one over here).

Issue #33 is on sale now.

First things first: the opening act of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 is a thing of beauty. The faux-documentary talking heads, the alien refugees captured with 90s-news-video stylings, the alien ship that’s only half-visible, hanging silently over Johannesburg – these images put you inside the world of the film with startling economy. I settled back in my seat, ready to be wowed.

As the final credits rolled, though, I was lacking in wow. The question is: was that the film’s fault, or my own?

District 9 is a clever, well-done, and genuinely entertaining movie. It’s been described as “the world’s first autobiographical alien apartheid movie” by Chris Lee in the LA Times. Writer / director Blomkamp talks about growing up in Johannesburg with the white minority of the population in power, and how this inspired the movie:

“Blacks, for the most part, were kept separate from whites. And where there was overlap, there were very clearly delineated hierarchies of where people were allowed to go. [...] Those ideas wound up in every pixel in District 9.”

It was quotes like this that led me expect some kind of metaphor-laden, socio-political apartheid tale. District 9 provides exactly that for the first half an hour or so – until its fairly standard sci-fi plot cranks into motion. Afterwards, these more unusual elements just become high-concept hooks for all the usual stuff: everyman versus evil corporate machinations, a magic MacGuffin for the heroes to quest after, and kaboomy video game shooter sequences.

(These action scenes, however, are great. They’re excitingly comprehensible in a way that cinema’s current Emperor of Explosions, Michael Bay, has sadly long forgotten.)

The alien civilisation we see is disappointingly shallow: sure, we meet Christopher – the Good and Wise Alien – but the rest of the occupants seem to be the same brainless scavengers that the government propagandists say they are. I just wanted a smattering of hints to tell me that they have… community leaders? Religious meetings? Games that the children play? Anything?

As a film critic, you’re meant to be immune to hype; it’s your professional obligation to accept a movie for what it is and nothing more. Of course that’s a filthy, filthy lie. Critics absorb just as much pre-film expectation as anyone else, and the entering with the wrong expectations can destroy a movie. If you see one thing written on the label but find something else inside the box? It’s easy to feel disappointed.

Ang Lee’s underappreciated non-blockbuster Hulk (2003) is a good example of this. It was advertised as a Hulk-smash!-style extravaganza… and turned out to be a bizarre, visually experimental psychodrama about fathers, sons, and abuse. The 10-year-old Hulk fans in my screening were so angry that they would’ve turned green and trashed the cinema if they could, believe me.

But was my wow-lack in District 9 the equivalent of complaining that, say, James Joyce’s Ulysses sucked because it didn’t have any ninjas? Maybe it is. Ulysses was never going to have ninjas. District 9 was always going to be the film it is, and not the film I wanted it to be.

I have a feeling I’ll enjoy District 9 more the second time around with my expectations suitably reset. In the end, though, it feels less political than Paul Verhoven’s Starship Troopers (1997) – even though the latter’s bite was buried under all that soap opera beefcake and unflinching irony.

(A final admission: I’ve never read Ulysses, and man, I’m going to be so very embarrassed if it does have ninjas in it.)

(Admittedly, I’ve been a fan of McG since the first Charlie’s Angels, which combined the shimmering, high-energy fun of an old Hollywood musical with a sword-fighting Crispin Glover.)

Others have written in detail about what went wrong with the movie: how John Connor’s scenes were reportedly added piecemeal to the screenplay, explaining why they feel so redundant and barely half-stitched into the fabric of the film. HowTerminator Salvation fails most spectacularly, though, is as a satisfying sequel.

A good sequel is a complicated tightrope-walk between repetition and variation, and back in 1991 Terminator 2 struck the ideal balance. It took familiar elements and twisted them, so we saw Sarah Connor transform from lonely waitress to pre-apocalyptic warrior; saw the unstoppable high-tech terror of the first film become the desperate underdog when pitted against liquid metal; and saw the superb bad-Terminator-becomes-good-Terminator fake-out (which, yeah, everyone knew in advance, but still).

Now John Connor’s been told he’ll be the Saviour of the World from long before he did anything to justify it, and pop-psychology dictates that’d screw you up into a fascinating wad of dramatic issues. He should be inspiring fascinating madman-or-messiah reactions everywhere he goes. In Terminator Salvation, it’s like the screenwriters were told not to mention the earlier films in any detail – with no time travel talk, especially. John Connor knows that he has to save the young Kyle Reese in order to later send him back in time to become John’s father. We know it too. But for some reason it can’t be said out loud, leaving John shouting about how “the future’s at stake!” without anyone reacting beyond a kind of “Oh, that John…”.

Instead, Terminator Salvation trades on the surface affectations of its sequel status, like Linda Hamilton returning to record some pointless Sarah Connor voiceover tapes, or the much-discussed digital Schwarzenegger cameo, or John Conner saying “I’ll be back” – with an appropriate didja-catch-that-huh? music cue.

Sure, James Cameron used all these tricks too, but he balanced it with masterful high-concept storytelling techniques. His dialogue might occasionally exhibit a blistering case of the George Lucases, but in Terminator 2 his sequel-logic is note-perfect.

One last thing: there’s another pitfall inherent in going back to the same stories again and again, and it’s the reverse of the old ‘show don’t tell’ that’s inevitably bandied around during the first week of any creative writing class. The problem is that some things are much more powerful when they’re just imagined than when they’re actually splashed up on the screen for all to see.

Is the looming apocalyptic robot-war more interesting as a terrifying hypothetical? Reese explaining the future is much more harrowing than any of the flashbacks to the future in the first Terminator. (Okay, okay, except for the iconic scenes of a tank-tread rolling over human skulls, which haunted my misspent, violent-movie-watching youth.)

The first film’s final moments of an approaching storm hold much more menace that the grim reality of Salvation: