Review #1,265: 'Ghost in the Shell' (2017)

Hollywood remakes of beloved foreign-language movies are rarely a welcome idea, but Ghost in the Shell seemed particularly doomed from the get-go. Alongside the cries from fans claiming the industry has officially run out of ideas, and from those who hold the original close to their heart and fail to see any other purpose in a remake other than to allow the fat cats to count the green, the announcement of Caucasian Scarlett Johnansson's casting in a role originally voiced by an Asian actor generated all-too familiar claims of 'whitewashing'. Tempers were only inflamed when it was rumoured that Johnasson's appearance was to be digitally-tweaked to make her appear more Eastern-looking, an idea that was quickly abandoned. Predictably, Ghost in the Shell arrived in cinemas back in March to underwhelming box-office.

As a result, I approached Rupert Sanders' 2017 re-do with a sense of trepidation and caution, knowing full well that it would lack the philosophical musings of the Masaume Shirow manga the story originated from, and the big questions raised by Mamoru Oshii's landmark anime adaptation. After all, this is a blockbuster wannabe starring one of the most in-demand actresses around, so of course the makers will feel the need to dumb everything down to suit a mainstream audience (even though Christopher Nolan has proven more than once that a film can be complex and intelligent and still rake in the cash). It is perhaps thanks to my low expectations that I found much to enjoy with Ghost in the Shell. Like the 'shells' depicted in the film, it's certainly hollow and jittery, but as a piece of entertainment, I was never bored, and the visuals offer plenty of colour and detail to distract from the straightforward plot.

Taking inspiration from everything from Shirow's manga, Oshii's 1995 movie and its 2004 sequel, and the hugely popular spin-off series, certain scenes will certainly feel familiar while the story of a shady corporation turning human beings into weapons against their will feels like it could be lifted from most Blade Runner-inspired science-fiction movies of the past couple of decades. Major (Johansson) is the first cyborg to employ a fully mechanised body with the mind, or 'ghost', of a human. Her employer, Hanka CEO Cutter (Peter Ferdinando), decides to use her in the fight against cyber-terrorism, which has become a real problem since the majority of the population have now been cybernetically enhanced. She works at Section 9 with her gruff partner Batou (a bleach-blonde Pilou Asbaek) and boss Aramaki ('Beat' Takeshi Kitano), and they are forced into action when Hanka finds itself under attack from a mysterious hacker named Kuze (Michael Pitt).

Oshii's 1995 incarnation tackled big themes such as humanity and identity, offering explosive moments of action to allow some relief from the head-scratching central plot. The result was one of the best animes of all time. Sanders' Ghost in the Shell has much smaller ambitions, and feels very much like a product of the post-Matrix world we now live in, even though the Wachowskis were mainly inspired by Oshii's film. It works only as spectacle, and this world of spider-legged geisha robots and giant animated advertisements really does catch the eye. The action, while hardly breaking down barriers, has a physicality behind it, and the punches and bullets land with a force that really pushes its 12A certificate to the very limits. As the lead, Johansson has proved time and time again that she is accomplished with the physical demands of such a role, and she gives Major a hunched, stompy awkwardness, despite the blandness of the character. It will never justify its existence to the die-hard fans of the original, but Ghost in the Shell 2017 offers enough visual panache and energy to engage those curious enough to check it out.


Directed by: Rupert Sanders
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, Michael Pitt
Country: UK/China/India/Hong Kong/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #781: 'Godzilla' (2014)

Flicking the memory of Roland Emmerich's disastrous 1998 Godzilla movie away with it's mighty finger, Gareth Edwards' 2014 re-imagining is an altogether mightier and maturer beast. The biggest question stemming from message boards and critic reviews alike, is whether the colossal lizard is seen, or even glimpsed, enough. Anyone who saw 2013's incredibly dull monster/machine pile-up Pacific Rim will surely be aware that more is not necessarily better, and CGI is soulless without a heart. So my answer to that question would be a yes, as although Edwards teases us perhaps one time too many, when the beast finally roars, it's spine-tingling.

The screenplay by Max Borenstein, based on a story by Dave Callaham, opts not to have the King of the Monsters the result of nuclear testing, but one of many ancient creatures laying low, feeding on the energy from the Earth's core. In 1999, scientists Ishiro Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Vivienne Graham (Sally Hawkins) discover the skeleton of a giant creature in a collapsed mine, and two pods. One pod has broken open and left a trail leading into the sea, and the other remains dormant. In Japan, unusual seismic activity causes a nuclear power plant to leak radioactive steam, killing the wife of plant supervisor Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston). Fifteen years later, Joe's son, bomb disposal expert Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), returns to Japan to find his father still obsessing over the unexplained events that led to his wife's death.

This sounds like a lot of plot for a movie primarily about giant, rampaging creatures. The director previously made Monsters (2010), a low-budget, very human drama about a world facing an alien invasion, only the focus was on the romantic relationship between it's two leads. Edwards clearly isn't interested in simply blowing shit up for our amusement, he wants us to care for the people dodging the flying cars and falling skyscrapers. It's an admirable approach, and is careful not to serve up stock chin-stroking villains or supporting characters you are waiting for to croak, but does make the mistake of offering one-dimensional archetypes as our protagonists. We have our square-jawed lead, our brilliant but possibly mad scientist, and even an expository ethnic character to make sure we're keeping up with the plot.

There's also the problem of Taylor-Johnson, who although is a perfectly likeable actor, does not have leading-man chops. This combined with his thinly-written character makes it incredibly difficult to get caught up in his long journey back to his loving wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and child (Carson Bolde). But while the film may often move at a snail's pace, it is never boring. Though the titular giant takes his time before popping his head up out of the water, there's two other bat-like creatures causing havoc, usually seen from the ground-up or on news reports, heightening the tension by creating a sense of realism. It's a very modern-day Gojira, developing it's own mythology yet appeasing fans of the beast's many incarnations, and no doubt frustrating those wanting to see an epic CGI smack-down. For a truly satisfying experience, just check out Ishiro Honda's 1954 original.


Directed by: Gareth Edwards
Starring: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Bryan Cranston, Ken Watanabe, Sally Hawkins, David Strathairn, Juliette Binoche
Country: USA/Japan

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #493: 'Cosmopolis' (2012)

In the opening credits of David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis, the bottom half of the screen gets increasing doused with "action" art, the Jackson Pollack drippings of various coloured paints, an American artistic icon, whose paintings fetch millions of dollars at auction, are the symbols of opulence, and social status, to that one percent of the West's population who are inconceivably rich - those financial elite that the worlds ninety-nine percent aim their contemporary anger at. Whilst this topical subject matter could well have been wholly conceived after the 2008 economic crash, but it is in fact adapted (by Cronenberg himself) from the 2003 novel by Dom DeLillo. (But then, these suited elites have been targeted hate figures for some time, but with the crash came hard evidence of their financial greed - and crimes for that matter.)  In Cosmopolis, the protagonist is Eric (Robert Pattinson), a billionaire asset manager, whose cold, detachment from reality, his alienation a product of his corporate exclusivity, operates his working life (and extra-curricula) from the inside of his technologically advanced limousine.

To the outside world, Eric is extraneous, but his interior world, the back of the limo, with its screens, curves and luminous sheen, reflect that consumerist fetishisation of technology - reminiscent of those chrome engines, erotically cleaned and poured over in Kenneth Anger's Kustom Kar Kommandos (1970). Eric occupies this space for much of the film, a hermetically sealed protector from the real world (customised so no sound can enter), where he lets in colleagues, friends, and a doctor for one-on-one conversation. It is this erotic space, where he communicates, fucks, and destroys lives, a space gleaming with technical-sexuality, is like a womb, the ultimate space of protection. In the few scenes exterior to the limo, - such as his encounters with his wife in eating establishments - the occupants are rarely heard, their insignificance obvious for the character.

But, like Joseph Conrad's Charles Marlow in 'Heart of Darkness', Eric is on an odyssey into the dark, and an apocalyptic journey into destruction and madness. But unlike Marlow, Eric's is a self inflicted destruction. This duality manifests itself symbolically, he is skewed, divided and unbalanced; his hair is only cut on one side, he shoots a hole in his left hand, and the visiting doctor advises Eric that his prostate is asymmetrical. The odyssey - his literal journey across Manhatten - is held up in traffic, a busy day that sees the President of the United States visiting the city, the funeral of a rap star, and an anti-capitalist "riot". Parallel to the increasing binary characteristics, Eric's detached wishes are often denied. In one scene he is informed of the death of his favourite rap star, but is disappointed that he died of natural causes, instead of a gun shot - a media-friendly representation. Juliette Binoche, Eric's art consultant, turns down a request (whilst copulating) to purchase an entire collection of Mark Rothko paintings, along with the space they occupy - an arrogance of ownership. Throughout the passage of Eric's car, he loses billions of dollars, his advisers philosophically, but dispassionately discussing these complex calculations and consequences.

In an early scene (and a quote from Zbigniew Herbert's poem 'Report from the Besieged City' at the start of the film), Eric proposes a fantasy future of finance where the rat becomes the worlds currency. In a restaurant, two anarchist protesters storm in holding rats by their tales, declaring "A spectre is haunting the world", before hurtling the rats at the patrons. That spectre is of course capitalism; the limo is grafittied by the protesters, Eric cocooned in perfect anonymity, but this is simply another pseudo-delight to the destructive dimensions of Eric. He knows he walks to danger, - he created it himself - a manifestation of possible psychosomatic invention? like American Psycho's (2000) Patrick Bateman, another satire on the financial elite, but one in which he is internally, mentally imploding, instead of externalising violence into a fantasy of psychotic whim. Here, Paul Giamatti's disgruntled forgotten work colleague, becomes a potential source of ultimate destruction, or he may simply be a manifestation of his deteriorating psyche.

However, unlike the sharp satirical whit of American Psycho, Cosmopolis is simply too cold, it's characters without depth. But then this could also be a purposeful emptiness. For Cronenberg, it is a return to that clinical aesthetic, and gaunt characterisation of Crash (1996) and eXistenZ (1999), but is too surreal in terms of its non-narrative structure to fundamentally clarify the sardonic elements that could have been so much more interesting. It is a very well made film, as you would expect from Cronenberg, his compositions and its movements and segues are beautifully constructed, but this odyssey into quasi-madness simply didn't enlighten me, or excite me in the way its central idea could well have, and simply is not cohesive enough to produce any major dramatic tension. As with the vacuous, clinical aesthetic of the film, it left me a little cold.


Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Sarah Gadon, Mathieu Amalric, Juliette Binoche
Country: France/Canada/Portugal/Italy

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy