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Rating 2¾
Directed by Marc Forster
Written by David Benioff
Starring Ewan McGregor (Dr Sam Foster), Ryan Gosling (Henry Letham), Naomi Watts (Lila Culpepper), Elizabeth Reaser (Athena), Bob Hoskins (Dr Leon Patterson), B D Wong (Dr Ren), Kate Burton (Mrs Letham), Janeane Garofalo (Dr Beth Levy) and Michael Gaston (Sheriff Kennelly)
When his colleague Dr Beth Levy goes on sick leave Dr Sam Foster takes over the psychiatric treatment of Henry Letham, a college student. Henry tells Foster that he plans to commit suicide, even giving him a date and time, and seems to be able to foretell future events. Foster becomes increasingly obsessed by his enigmatic patient, but at the cost of cracks in his relationship with his girlfriend Lila Culpepper, who once attempted suicide herself. Then time begins to fragment as things real and things imagined start to blur.
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Marc Forster is the German-Swiss director of ‘Monster’s Ball’ and more recently ‘Quantum of Solace’, the latest addition to the James Bond franchise. ‘Stay’, his 2005 follow-up to the multi-Academy Award-nominated ‘Finding Neverland’, received mixed and generally negative reviews. It has a 27% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 117 reviews and grossed just $8.3 million at the box office against a production budget estimated to have been as high as $50 million. Several reviewers criticised the film’s conclusion, commenting that it made everything that preceded it seem pointless. Some accused the film of being little more than a blatant rip-off of David Lynch, although he is certainly not the only obvious point of reference. Think a mixture of ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’, with a sprinkling of ‘Donnie Darko’ on top, just for starters.
It is pretentious and it’s presented in a very calculated manner, which is certainly slickly done, although ultimately rather shallow. It put me in mind of several other films, without ever forging its own identity. Having said that, although the film never really built on its premise, I did quite enjoy it, if perhaps not enough to give too much thought to guessing where it was going or dwelling on it much afterwards.
In the end, the film is style over substance and it isn’t as clever as it probably would like us to think, but it obviously caught me at a moment when I was happy to go with that.
Review posted 5 December 2009
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Rating 2½
Directed by Michael Bay
Written by Caspian Tredwell-Owen, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, based on a story by Caspian Tredwell-Owen
Starring Ewan McGregor (Lincoln Six Echo / Tom Lincoln), Scarlett Johansson (Jordan Two Delta / Sarah Jordan), Sean Bean (Dr Merrick), Djimon Hounsou (Albert Laurent), Steve Buscemi (James McCord), Ethan Phillips (Jones Three Echo), Brian Stepanek (Gandu Three Echo), Michael Clark Duncan (Starkweather Two Delta / Jamil Starkweather), Siobhan Flynn (Lima One Alpha), Kim Coates (Charles Whitman), Alex Carter (Censor) and Shawnee Smith (Suzie)
Lincoln Six Echo lives in a self-contained high-tech underground colony of uncontaminated humans, each one waiting to win the “Lottery” and be allowed to go to an idyllic location called “the Island”, the last habitable place on the planet. Lincoln begins to question his surroundings and has a recurring nightmare, which brings him to the attention of Dr Merrick, who controls the area in which he lives. He also forms a close friendship with Jordan Two Delta and when she is announced as the next lottery winner and he discovers that everything they have always known is a lie (they are simply clones to be harvested for organ transplants or used for surrogate pregnancies), they escape from the complex and go on the run, relentlessly pursued by a deadly paramilitary squad.
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‘The Island’ is a 2005 sci-fi action film directed in typically abrasive fashion by Michael Bay. It has a 40% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 180 reviews. Rich Cline called it, “An intelligent, provocative premise wrapped in a bone-chillingly stupid action movie,” and Jeffrey Overstreet wrote, “It seems to assume that its audience is made of idiots, constantly reminding us of the simple plot details and having characters define things for each other.” It grossed just $36 million at the US box office against a production budget of $126 million and an outlay somewhere in the region of $45 million for domestic marketing and distribution. A further $127 million was grossed overseas. An accusation was made following the release of the film that it infringed the copyright of a forgotten 1979 film called ‘Parts: The Clonus Horror’. Settlement was reached out of court before it went to trial, allegedly for a seven-figure sum.
A number of familiar themes often pursued in science fiction are to be found here, drawing on libertarian political philosophies and ideologies, totalitarianism and commentary about science gone mad, in this case human cloning. There is no question that the film poses some interesting questions, but Michael Bay’s particular brand of filmmaking reduces the whole thing to the simple idea that everyone should be free to brandish big guns and cause maximum destruction. The constant stream of action sequences in the second half of the film’s two hours plus running time are slickly staged, but making everything bigger and louder and being brazen about the product placement does not make it better. These action sequences are, in fact, bone-headed and objectionably stupid.
Ewan McGregor is not an actor I have ever warmed to and nothing here changes that. Scarlett Johansson’s early promise seems to have dissipated somewhat since the days of ‘Ghost World’ and ‘Lost in Translation’. She lost me in promotional interviews for ‘The Island’ when she appeared to lay claim to having on-set tantrums because she wasn’t allowed to take her clothes off in the film. However, both are reasonably effective in the lead roles. The film itself is a perfectly serviceable action film, but the premise offers something beyond that and there is undoubtedly a much more intelligent if somewhat unoriginal film buried somewhere underneath the mind-numbing onslaught of explosions and general destruction.
I cannot pretend not to have enjoyed the film up to a point, despite some cringe-making dialogue (this is the second time I have watched it), but it could have been so much better and ends up being an offensive piece of mindless claptrap. I could not help but come away thinking there is a degree of irony in putting Michael Bay in the director’s chair of a film in which one of the central characters proves to be a megalomaniac with a God-complex.
Review posted 30 November 2009
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When his colleague Dr Beth Levy goes on sick leave Dr Sam Foster takes over the psychiatric treatment of Henry Letham, a college student. Henry tells Foster that he plans to commit suicide, even giving him a date and time, and seems to be able to foretell future events. Foster becomes increasingly obsessed by his enigmatic patient, but at the cost of cracks in his relationship with his girlfriend Lila Culpepper, who once attempted suicide herself. Then time begins to fragment as things real and things imagined start to blur.
Marc Forster is the German-Swiss director of ‘Monster’s Ball’ and more recently ‘Quantum of Solace’, the latest addition to the James Bond franchise. ‘Stay’, his 2005 follow-up to the multi-Academy Award-nominated ‘Finding Neverland’, received mixed and generally negative reviews. It has a 27% rotten rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 117 reviews and grossed just $8.3 million at the box office against a production budget estimated to have been as high as $50 million. Several reviewers criticised the film’s conclusion, commenting that it made everything that preceded it seem pointless. Some accused the film of being little more than a blatant rip-off of David Lynch, although he is certainly not the only obvious point of reference. Think a mixture of ‘Mulholland Drive’ and ‘Don’t Look Now’, with a sprinkling of ‘Donnie Darko’ on top, just for starters.
