Movie Muser

It’s always a shame when a movie that wants to be a genuinely intelligent slice of a-list entertainment fails. If one succeeds, Hollywood always treats it like a fluke, but if it bombs they point at it as proof that all that audiences want are big, dumb fireworks. What’s a particular pity with Transcendence is that it would probably have been better as a slightly smaller film.

Johnny Depp plays Will Caster, a scientist working on artificial intelligence who believes he’s close to creating a machine that will vastly outstrip any human intellect there’s ever been. However as there always is in this type of film, a group of terrorist-type people don’t believe in this type of machine and launch a series of attacks on facilities working on AI systems. That includes shooting Will with a bullet that doesn’t initially kill him, but is poisoned with a radioactive isotope that will cause him to die over the course of a few weeks.

He and his wife Evelyn (Rebecca Hall) come up with a plan – along with the help of Max (Paul Bettany) – to try and use their technology to upload Will’s consciousness into the computers. After a few teething problems it seems to work, although Max isn’t certain whether it really is Will or not. As this artificial intelligence’s powers and abilities begin to grow exponentially, the authorities and the terrorists start to get increasingly afraid of what it might mean, and whether Will will eventually decide to override individual human freedom and take control of organic life.

Transcendence is certainly a film with a lot of big ideas. Unfortunately it often seems to have no idea what to do with them. These ideas either go in circles or trail off, and annoyingly many are given resolutions that seem like they’ve said something about the issues while actually illuminating precisely nothing.

Is mankind on the cusp of unleashing technology that will destroy us? Is a machine capable of being truly human, or is there something indefinable about the mind that’s impossible for technology to copy? Perhaps most interesting is an issue that floats around the movie but isn’t really addressed properly at all, which is the level of trust we need to put in science and how we manage the repercussions for both good and bad as we create new technologies. What do you do if you create something with enormous potential for good, but which could also be incredibly destructive? By the end this is what really ought to be the film’s central question, but other than saying good and bad things can happen, it’s unsure what else to do.

It’s a film that can’t decide what it wants to be. There’s a big popcorn side and a fairly small drama, but the two sides never coalesce. The latter is perhaps the more interesting, dealing with Evelyn trying to negotiate the fact her husband no longer has a physical body, and the worry that she might be so keen to believe it really is Will inside the computer that she’s allowing the machine to do incredibly dodgy things so she doesn’t have to accept her hubby is actually dead.

The other side has explosions and special effects and action, but those viewers who are engaged in the character drama with computer-Will and Evelyn will probably find all the nanobots rather dumb (especially as things get increasingly preposterous towards the end), while those who enjoy spectacle will probably think the fairly long, talky sections are pretty boring. It’s all very lopsided, as if someone wrote one film and then somebody else came in and tried to make it something else, but did it by shoving the new bits in rather than tying it into a proper narrative structure.

There was a lot of interest in the film not just because of the a-list cast, but also because it’s the first film directed by Wally Pfister, the man who’s been the director of photography on most of Christopher Nolan’s movies. He also brought Nolan along as a producer. As you might expect the film looks great – and that’s certainly true on Blu-ray – and Pfister has a good hold on how to create individual scenes. Unfortunately though it’s in bringing it all together that it doesn’t work.

Overall Verdict: Despite the a-list cast and brave attempts at smart sci-fi, Transcendence doesn’t work. At least it’s a noble failure though.

Special Features:
‘Exploring Artificial Intelligence: What Is Transcendence?’ Featurette
‘Wally Pfister: A Singular Vision’ Featurette
‘Guarding The Threat’ Featurette
‘The Promise of A.I.’ Featurette
Teaser Videos Narrated By Johnny Depp & Morgan Freeman

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

Locke is the sort of film that was always in danger of seeming gimmicky. It is after all an entire movie where the only visuals are a single man, Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy), in a car driving along a motorway, with the ‘action’ playing out in real-time.

However thanks to a truly impressive performance from Hardy and the strong hold of writer/director Steven Knight it’s surprisingly gripping, smart and entertaining.

Ivan Locke is a family man with an important job in construction. However as he steps into his car he knows all that is in jeopardy. He sets off to travel from Birmingham to London, where a woman he had a drunken one-night-stand with is due to give birth. Over the course of an hour and a half he makes and receives a series of phone calls, including trying to sooth the mother of his new child, admit to his wife the mistake he made nine months before and also deal with the fact he should be preparing for one of the most important days of his working life, and the fact he’s going to London instead is likely to get him fired.

With the whole film resting on Hardy, the temptation must have been to make Ivan a rather histrionic character, but the film smartly reins him in, so that he’s always very controlled and determined. As his life collapses around him, he maintains a calm that you know has to break at some point, so that when it does, even in relatively small way,s it’s all the more powerful. Initially Ivan flits on the edge of coming across as an asshole – he is after all the maker of his own misfortune and his journey doesn’t just affect him – but it soon becomes clear that he’s trying to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always do it the right way.

It undoubtedly helps that while it’s only Hardy on-screen, Knight enlisted some impressive talent to interact with him on the phone. And they really did interact, as the film was essentially shot like a play, with Hardy in a modified car, while the likes of Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson and Andrew Scott did their parts in a hotel while talking to Tom on the phone. This process was repeatedly nightly for the course of a week to create the footage that was eventually turned into Locke.

The film manages to find a surprising amount of tension is its apparently simple set-up, as Locke’s life implodes but his calm demeanour has him constantly trying to keep things on some sort of track. He’s not an intrinsically bad man, and he wants to do the right thing – in this case to be there for the birth of a child that didn’t ask to born into the mess surrounding it – even if that means he could be destroying everything he’s built up to that point.

With a smart handling of its themes – not least the idea of a man setting off down a road where the destination he wants to get to isn’t where he might end up – it really is a very good film. Admittedly those who demand more action from their films than a man sitting in a car dealing with grown-up problems may find it rather dull, but those prepared to engage will discover a movie that could have been a gimmick but has ended up a rare treat.

Overall Verdict: An impressive Tom Hardy anchors a film that offers far more tension and interest than you’d ever expect from what is just a man in a car for 85 minutes.

Special Features:
Making Of Featurette

Reviewer: Tim Isaac

For better or worse Werner Herzog is a director who deals in extremes. At times his films touch genius – and there are many such moments – and if sometimes he wanders down dead ends, he should be applauded for a least trying to push the boundaries of cinema.

This box set, beautifully presented with a booklet and lovely cover, includes his key works. These are Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), The Enigma of Kasper Hauser (19740, Heart of Glass (1976), Stroszek (1977), Nosferatu (1979), Wyyzech (1979) and Fitzcarraldo (1987). Although Herzog is still going strong and still pushing himself, this is the heart of his work, with a five-year gap to Cobra Verde (1987) which is the last film included here.

It’s always tempting to see Klaus Kinski as the on-screen persona of Herzog, mad with staring eyes and an unstoppable presence, and indeed his work here would back that up, especially his egomaniacs in Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, Wrath of God, both films a metaphor for the impossibility and futility of trying to achieve huge projects – like making a film. Kinski as Nosferatu is certainly madder than Max Schreck in the original, but perhaps has less charm.

However, watching these films together it’s not just Kinski who Herzog sees the world through. Bruno S gives remarkable performances, especially in The Enigma of Kasper Hauser, playing a man who has been kept captive for 20 years and who is suddenly, tragically, released into society. He ends up in an Elephant Man-style circus.

Arguably Herzog’s greatest achievement features no stars at all, and a cast under hypnosis – a classic Herzog risk. The beautiful Heart of Glass features a tiny town under threat when the maker of special glass dies, taking the formula to the grave with him. The inhabitants are faced with ruin, but Herzog’s camera, instead of focusing on death and decay, fixes on the beauty of the surrounding landscape, which features some of the most awe-inspiring shots cinema had yet seen. It’s a particularly German romantic view of the world, full of awe at the power of nature and the insignificance of man.

It all started with Aguirre, Wrath of God. Shootings, stabbings, threats of violence, tantrums and near-starvation were just an average day’s filming when director Herzog met Kinski. This, their first film together, set the template for what was to come over the next 30 years – Kinski storming off set, Herzog threatening to kill him and then turn the gun on himself, Kinski shooting the tip of an extra’s finger off, Herzog’s crew going without food while Kinski stayed in a hotel, it was all there.

The resulting film is pretty extraordinary, an insane journey down a river into Kinski’s heart of darkness, and it shares a lot of visual feel and pacing with Apocalypse Now. Here Kinski’s Aguirre is a trooper among a group of conquistadors travelling through South America in search of El Dorado in 1560. Just in case we don’t know, it’s pointed out at the start that the rumour of El Dorado was began by native Americans to get their revenge on the invading Spaniards, but they fell for it.

The film is an assault on the senses, an amazing visual feast, especially considering Herzog only had one camera, the one he “borrowed” from film school. He decided he did such a good job he never gave it back, a fair deal in retrospect. The opening shot, of the troops climbing down a mountainside into the jungle with clouds whispering around them, is stunning, and there are many more visual treats. The music too is highly ethereal, and combined with highly committed acting it adds up to a gripping experience.

Fitzcarraldo is perhaps the perfect metaphor for Herzog’s mad version of film-making. The story of a man determined to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle, it features a by now strung out Kinski barking orders at natives to drag his ship up the side of a mountain and over into the river on the other side. It’s gloriously mad, and the best thing about this box set is that after viewing it you can watch Burden of Dreams, about its making – perhaps even more extreme than the film itself.

Overall verdict: Herzog will always divide people and makes few concessions to his audiences, but make time for his particular world view and you will be richly rewarded. This box set contains pretty much all of his finest moments.

Additional features: 10 discs, all in HD, optional 5.1 German and English audio on all titles, original aspect ratios 1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.85:1, Dolby Digital mono audio and stereo audio (320kbps), Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio (448kbps)

Reviewer: Mike Martin