SANCTUM- Review

As discussed on this blog and on my weekly radio show, true stories invariably fill up UK multiplexes in January and February, usually because of the distributing run-over from the dying days of the previous year- i.e. The King's Speech, Black Swan and The Fighter, which were all released Stateside in 2010.

January and February in the States then, tend to be a dumping ground for less attractive cinematic propositions, which, typically, get a simultaneous release in the UK. See The Green Hornet or The Mechanic, for instance. However, what you have in the James Cameron produced thriller-stroke-drama Sanctum, is a crossover between both- a horrific journey through an uncharted cave system, in which a motley crew of adventurers are trapped when it begins to flood.

Here was me thinking that the whole point of nu-3D was to add depth to an image. That's what the industry hobnobs say, with complete disregard for all that black-and-white old-timey stuff that Orson Welles was doing all the way back when Citizen Kane was made. But now this one comes around, and as the premise would suggest, the setting is meant to be claustrophobic. That is the main source of tension- this is after all, a thriller. Therefore, the 3D doesn't work, in precisely the same way as Buried wouldn't have worked if it were in 3D.

Namely, we're supposed to believe that our heroes can't fit through this tiny squeeze between hulking masses of rock, all while underwater and running out of air. But if 3D puts you there, in the film, then there's obviously enough room for you, and for a whole room full of cinemagoers. It's facetious to judge a film on 3D's terms, but I think it illustrates a point that needed to be made, post-Avatar. Just because James Cameron is a better filmmaker than almost everyone else using 3D, it doesn't mean he can make 3D any better than it actually is.

On the film's own terms, Sanctum plays out in a pretty generic fashion. The screenplay had two writers, Andrew Wight and John Garvin. Wight actually had the near-death experience that formed the "true story" this film is based on, and Garvin is also credited as an actor and a "dive coordinator". I can't tell you who it was, but either one or both of them conflated this thing to the most derivative story imaginable. Broad archetypes go into the cave, and the deeper they go, the more staid and over-familiar they become.

Richard Roxburgh breaks type, in a way, by playing the gruff cave-diving veteran Frank, but there's a weird thing about the way his character plays into things. Although James Cameron ostensibly just produced this thing, the script is full of tics like characters explaining things over and over again. How that manifests itself is usually via everyone ignoring Frank's advice. And whenever that happens, the death toll goes up. It's like a super big-budget and decidedly more soggy version of one of those grisly public information films that went out in Britain during the 1970s.

So I suppose if you're paying enough attention, you'll at least figure out what not to do when you go into the world's deepest uncharted cave system to explore, and end up getting stranded in a hole that's slowly filling up with water. That would be some comfort if I ever had the inclination to go diving. And yet I still have much more common sense than many of the supposedly experienced adventurers who resolutely ignore Frank- it's particularly annoying with Ioan Grufford's billionaire wussy and Alice Parkinson, his girlfriend. Don't forget though, we're told it's a true story before the film even starts, so at least one of these people is getting out of there.

Whatever appeal Sanctum is meant to have, it's been so vaguely represented in the trailers that if you're actually looking forward to seeing it on the basis of those trailers, I imagine you'll enjoy it. In all honesty, James Cameron himself has done more to promote the film by joining Twitter recently, and I've been enjoying his feed much more than I enjoyed this film. With low expectations, I was neither disappointed nor surprised, but it did at least keep me awake and engaged in what was going on, no matter how predictable. There are moments of screaming claustrophobic tension, but these are far too sparse for the premise.

Ultimately, the 3D is an albatross around the film's neck, keeping the film submerged in gloom, when it could have soared to terrifying heights.

Sanctum is now showing in 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Sanctum, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Welcome to Camp Victory- 2010 Oscars Postmortem

Ladies and gents, it's always nice to be wrong twice. Because when you have two choices, you can pass it off as "I was right all along!" The Academy Award winners now validate the original sentiment from my Avatar review that...

"It's probably not going to win an Oscar for Best Picture..."

... and we can utterly ignore my more recent assertion that...

"...Avatar will win Best Picture on March 7th. Not because it's the best film nominated, but because that's what the Academy's like."

It's really a good thing I didn't put any money on anything. It was a sweep for The Hurt Locker, which picked up Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow. In the end Avatar picked up three awards, all in technical categories. Arguably as it should be, really.

The acting categories were all fairly predictable, with Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique both being recognised for critically lauded turns and Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock receiving recognition for their hard work in their respective careers thus far. Yes, that Sandra Bullock, who is the only actor ever to win a Razzie (for All About Steve) and an Oscar (for The Blind Side) in the same year, and fair play to her too. She's immensely likable in even the most awful shit, and I daresay she deserves it more than Mo'Nique deserved hers.

I was also pleased to see Up make a strong showing, winning Best Animated Picture and Best Original Score, both very well deserved nods. And Up is the only nominee that might have deserved Best Picture more than The Hurt Locker. I was also gleeful that the make-up work on Star Trek was recognised too, along with a laugh-out-loud presentation from Ben Stiller in full Na'vi make-up.

However, I always have my bugbears with the Oscars, and this year, being the first where I've pulled an all-nighter and watched it live, is no exception. So after four hours of caffeine and speeches, here are the top 5 most annoying, silly and downright bizarre things about last night's ceremony.


5. The acting profiles
While nothing trumped the oddly erotic sound of Sir Ben Kingsley saying "Randy the Ram" last year, this year's ceremony saw an irksome return for the back-slapping profiles on the acting nominees before they got to who'd actually won the buggers. They were seemingly picked for the most tenuous of connections in a couple of cases, i.e. Forrest Whittaker reminding us that he directed Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats, which boded worse for her chances of winning than we actually should have anticipated. With that link, I'm surprised they didn't dredge Chris O'Donnell up to say "George was a fantastic Batman, and I feel another sequel would've really shown that..."

4. The Best Original Score dances
Sure to be the most lampooned aspect of the whole affair, a group of break-dancers took to the stage before the award for Best Original Score was presented. What followed was an interpretative dance routine to each of the nominees. While the tribal dances of Avatar were fairly appropriate, and I think actually imitated the final scene of the film itself, the others were just bizarre. I mean, you can imagine without me telling you how surreal a Hurt Locker dance was. And I don't know why the Married Life refrain from Up warranted a re-enactment of the clockwork musical number from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, or why Sherlock Holmes just screams "the worm" to interpretative dancers.

3. The rude orchestra
The formidable Get Off The Stage song is feared by all, and maybe it was only because I've never seen it in use before, but I found the orchestra playing off speeches to be incredibly rude at certain points this year. Most unforgivably, Juan José Campanella was cut off in the midst of a rather marvellous speech after the surprise win by The Secret in their Eyes for Best Foreign Language Film. The guy seemed incredibly endearing and deserved his say as much as Mo'Nique. I for one wanna hear more of Juan José Campanella! Fuck off, you trombone-wielding cads!

2. Lack of love for Moon
And assorted other films that were sadly overlooked. OK, so it would have been more than just a minor upset if Moon had won an award despite not having been nominated for anything, but it should have got something, dammit. And so should The Lovely Bones and Me and Orson Welles, and even some of the films that were nominated but overlooked, like In The Loop or Up in the Air. But I'm always going to disagree with the choices on some level, so I'll be content to post my own picks in certain categories later in the week.

1. The Sky panel
Courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, the UK coverage of the event was chaperoned by a panel moderated by Claudia Winkleman. Said panel comprised David Baddiel, Ronni Ancona and Balls of Steel's Mark Dolan. Way to round up whoever was around the studio, Sky. Those lot obviously know nothing about film and yet minutely explained everything after each ad break. The absolute nadir of the show was a "bawdy" review of the In Memoriam sequence, in which potential Bizarro-Me (Dolan) said that dying was a great career move to get in that montage. At various points, I was moved to paraphrase Avatar. "The Sky Panel have sent us a message... that they will not shut the fuck up. We will send them a message... AND MUTE THE FUCKS!"


So it's over for another year, and it's been a particularly long night for me having watched the whole ceremony. As co-host Steve Martin said, the ceremony lasted so long that Avatar now takes place in the past. If you want to chart my all-nighter on Twitter, through all the suspense, ("I'd happily be declared a turkey fucker if the underdog here won...") from the dizzying highs, ("Oh my God, the Married Life song") to the crushing lows ("Michael Sheen's killed my video stream with awesomeness") then by all means, do so. I tweeted up a storm as a document to my struggle.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, support your troops over the Smurfs.

Dances With Smurfs?

The hype behind James Cameron's first film in 12 years, Avatar has been fairly massive. The Titanic director has been pioneering 3D since 2005 and promising a total game-changer for cinema in the form of his latest big-budget epic, but I confess I've been skeptical about that. 3D thus far has been little more than a gimmick, and I don't think Cameron has made a decent film since Terminator 2. The trailers for Avatar didn't impress me either. The first teaser had a bunch of CGI money-shots with no discernible plot or dialogue except the words "This is great." Thanks, James, but I'll make my mind up for myself. The second trailer was more plot-heavy, but as Eric Cartman observed in a recent South Park episode, it looked like Dances with Smurfs more than anything else. Now of course, the film has finally landed in cinemas worldwide, and I've been to give it a look.

I'll point out in advance that I've now seen Avatar in both 2D and 3D, and the latter still adds nothing. Although Cameron has used it more competently than any of the releases this year that pipped him to the post in terms of release date (except Disney and Pixar's output), 3D is still a gimmick. It's not really much more immersive in 3D, because credit where credit's due, the film is immersive on the merits of its cast and script. However, if you've been holding out on seeing your first 3D film in the cinema, this is probably the one to go for. For weary veterans of animated films and horror remakes, plump for 2D, cos it looks just as good. And so without further ado, I'm going to give the film a review. As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion on here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.


Avatar is all about Jake Sully, a crippled Marine who is drafted into a 22nd century science experiment ran by his late brother on the planet Pandora. The principle is that Jake's mind would be remote-beamed into a hybrid body, cloned from his brother's tissue and that of the native Na'vi. The Na'vi are hostile to the encroaching humans, and the idea is that the avatar bodies would be able to negotiate a diplomatic understanding between the two species. Because if they can't, the Ahab-esque Colonel Quaritch will send in the troops in the name of the dying Earth, aiming to dig out a rare mineral called Unobtainium. No, that is what they really called it. However, Jake goes native when he falls for a real Na'vi, Neytiri, and begins to question his calling in life.

I went into the cinema with low expectations for the film, and I'm pleased to say from the off that I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I stand corrected from all my assertions that this would be visuals at the expense of narrative. It'd be naive to say that the opposite is true- the very theme of Avatar is seeing everything, (something I suspect Cameron hoped would be epitomised by the 3D) so even when the narrative's foremost, it's about visuals. And the visuals are pretty staggering- in the assault of quick shots in the teaser trailer it was easy to dismiss the floating mountains of Pandora as "just floating mountains". But think about it for a second- floating mountains! We finally have time to savour those trailed visuals, and it's a tremendous feat of special effects. I've never been a proponent of style over substance- my favourite special effects in films were all done practically rather than digitally, especially in the likes of Raiders of the Lost Ark. So I was relieved that there was something more solid to the film than just the computer generated creatures and vistas.


There's a shot of a six-legged horse galloping along while on fire somewhere in the middle of the film that just about sums up the approach to most of the creatures in Avatar. Cameron can create anything with CGI, so he has, just for kicks. But in the Na'vi, we have something a little more special. They're cat-faced, ten feet tall and blue, and yet they're our protagonists. The bad guys are us- humanity and its greed, represented with scene-stealing vigour by Stephen Lang and Giovanni Ribisi. This subversion of the usual human-alien dynamic (see War of the Worlds, and every other alien invasion film) only works for a (mostly) human audience because the Na'vi are written and performed so well. Zoe Saldana gives a motion-captured performance as Neytiri, and in a narrow field for standout female roles this year, it's one of the best of 2009. It's through her that you empathise with the Na'vi, even over the aforementioned brilliance of Stephen Lang's downright awesome Colonel Quaritch.

Sam Worthington is central as Jake of course, and he's as excellent here as he was in Terminator Salvation, only better here because he has a coherent script and a director who doesn't credit himself as "JCam"or some shite like that. I've been taking the piss out of his Next Big Thing label a bit because it was borne solely out of early buzz for this film, but I have to admit that Worthington has a very engaging screen presence, both as an action star and as an actor. He has some good support from Lang and Saldana, not to mention an emotive and memorable turn from Sigourney Weaver as the Avatar project's director, Grace. The role is just as much a showcase for her snarkiness and biting humour as it is for her instant empathy with her audience. I'm stressing these points because I feel it's easy to get swept away in the visuals of Avatar and not give due credit elsewhere.


As you might expect if you're even slightly aware of who I am, I don't think Avatar is without flaws. James Cameron hasn't made a film shorter than two hours long since The Terminator, and this film's 162 minutes carries more than a little flab between setpieces in the second half. I have to say that for the most part, it flew by, but my expectations of Cameron made those flabby bits drag a little. Mostly, these parts are concerned with the film's mixed message. The director's trademark worship of military hardware is increased tenfold by the futuristic setting, and yet there's a slightly hypocritical anti-war message at the centre. You can't convince me that you want to save the trees, on Pandora or anywhere else, when the very next shot is essentially saying "LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THAT GUNSHIP! BOOM BOOM BOOM, KABOOM! WAR IS AWESOME!" and decimating CG forestry. There's also a clumsy war-on-terror subtext in Quaritch's motivations and in the general Unobtainium scramble. And that's the other big flaw- that stupid name. I think they only mention it once, but they can surely come up with a better name than that for a McGuffin? That said, I wish oil was called Unobtainium instead- the alleged ulterior motives for the war in Iraq would have been laughed out of Bush's Cabinet room.

All of this aside, I wouldn't want to damn with faint praise by saying that this is Cameron's best film since Terminator 2, because in the 18 years since that came out, he's only made two films, and they were True Lies and Titanic. Nuff said. Instead, I can favourably compare this to Aliens. The two films ostensibly have several elements in common, like the non-descript evil corporation going into space in the name of greed, the wise-cracking and quotable Marines, the AMP mechs, and of course Sigourney Weaver. But more than that, it's a damn fun film to watch, a world away from the schmaltzy-ness that looms throughout Titanic and the utter lack of entertainment value in the bloated and self-indulgent True Lies. It's a game-changer in respect of the visuals, because special effects have now been advanced spectacularly by Avatar. There haven't been battle sequences this good on film since the Lord of the Rings trilogy closed off six years ago, and crucially, the effects complement the narrative rather than vice versa.


As I've said before, this has been a dog of a year for big-budget action blockbusters- summer of this year was an awful time to be at the cinema with the exception of Harry Potter and Star Trek, both of which were 2008 films delayed to this summer, and District 9, which was comparatively cheap to make anyway. In Avatar, we finally have the first, and probably last, bonafide, big-budget cinema experience of 2009. It's by no means a great film, but it should be applauded for not relying entirely on its groundbreaking visuals. It's probably not going to win an Oscar for Best Picture, for instance, but it's sure to clean up in the Visual Effects category. It will be a while before we'll see a cinematic event as big as this again, so make sure you see it there, because only time will tell if this holds up as well on DVD and blu-ray...

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Year's end is approaching faster and faster, and I'm now going to race to catch up on the films still playing- Nativity! and Planet 51 specifically- and the last week of the year brings a wealth of releases too, including Sherlock Holmes and Nowhere Boy. Reviews of those are sure to be up in the next two weeks, along with the long promised Special Project for this blog. Watch this space!

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.