Though I intend to get back around to books tangentially further down, I am going to digress somewhat from that subject today, because I can only think about literature so much before I need to kind of deactivate that part of my brain to stave off impending overload.

By the way, my invitation, as always, remains open to library staff members who would like to do a post or posts on this blog. The choice of topic is your own.

Moving on…

I love loud, shiny action films, though I think that I’m generally pretty fair about assessing them. Let the record show that I did take my undergraduate degree in Communications, so I’ve got some film studies under my belt. And as an illustration that my sensibilities aren’t too severely skewed in favor of the loud and eye-popping, I will tell you—honestly even—that to this day Citizen Kane is solidly fixed as my favorite film.¹ Make of that what you will.

Primarily, I like smart cinema, especially when the filmmakers attempt something boldly, and I don’t abide the belief that a film can’t be clever, well-made, or well-acted merely because it involves a chase sequence and a few buildings blowing up.

Your mileage may vary, though I simply wanted to enforce that I’m not like this guy who called The Transporter “the French film that changed history!!” I think that I’m generally willing to call a spade a spade.

So let’s look at the quintessential action film director as an example of how my preferences lie. I am talking, of course, of Michael Bay. This has absolutely nothing to do with books.

Transformers [check catalog]? It’s almost a prerequisite to enjoying this film that you are a male and that you were a child of the 1980s. In truth, it is an ambitious film that juggles characters and plot arcs fairly effectively for half of it’s enormous running time, and proves that Michael Bay can organize a story well when he wants to. But at some point, it’s almost as though he became distracted and forgot about all of that, reverting from responsible director who ushers the threads of a narrative coherently, to the kid who just loves taking all of his toys and violently crashing them into each other while making explosion sounds. Transformers structurally implodes towards the end, done in by its own massive scope and the fact that the filmmakers forgot to design a convincing or explainable ending. A stupid movie all told, though I fully intend to watch it again regardless. It was awesome!

The Island? Now this one was extremely underrated. Naturally, the action is quite literally breath-taking, but there’s actually a smart premise undergirding the journey of the protagonists. It functions well as a convincing science fiction and also as a more metaphysical exploration of what makes us human, with some characters rising above their natures and some falling below even their own maleable expectations for themselves, and with it all reflected through the naïve yet sapient eyes of the major protagonist. Yes, there’s an open-endedness about it, though for once, it isn’t because Michael Bay got bored, but rather because the story compels an untidy denouement that leaves some questions dangling. I’ve never understood why critics lambasted The Island and I suppose I never will.

This has been a long build-up to the following statement: as with most matters of opinion, you may choose to disagree with me. And not that any of this really matters, but I do think about why a film is enjoyable or not, though the extent to which I enjoy it may not always be a product of how much I had to think about it (though having to think about it is generally a positive thing).

Everybody get all that?

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about film in the context of books lately for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my confessed interest in action films means that I’ll typically read the reviews for even the most unpromising-looking entry into this genre, which is how I discovered that the recent release Jumper was actually based upon a young adult book by Steven Gould that came out back in 1992. I don’t know that the book upon which it was based was any better than the film, itself, though I am thinking that it would almost have to be. NoveList will provide some reviews if you’re interested. I’ll provide a snippet from Kirkus Reviews:

Sprightly first novel combining revenge, growing up, lonely-superman and abuse-of-power motifs centered on a classic science-fiction theme: teleportation. Davy Rice, 17, lives with his drunken, brutal father in Stanville, Ohio, enduring physical and mental abuse…

Already this is probably deeper than the recent film. As an aside, one of the reviews for Jumper (the movie) contained my favorite critic quote of the year: “what can you do with Hayden Christensen? He’s as close as we have to an android actor.” That’s from the Boston Globe, and it’s funny because it’s true.

Secondly, the phrase “based upon a novel/story by Philip K. Dick” will often pique my interest, even though these films have been hit or miss for me. I didn’t care for Blade Runner for example, though I thought that Minority Report was brilliant and Total Recall (based upon “We Can Remember it for You Wholesale”) is a fond memory from my childhood. You can pretty much be guaranteed of one thing when you hear Philip K. Dick’s name invoked: it’s going to be weird.

In 2007, one such film sort of came and went without anybody much noticing. I am talking about the Nicholas Cage vehicle Next [check catalog]. In 2006, A Scanner Darkly similarly flew right under most people’s radars. I can’t speak to the quality of the latter-mentioned film, since I haven’t seen it. I have, however, now seen Next thanks to my friendly, youth librarian who picked this one out for the Young Adult media collection.

Next is based upon a Philip K. Dick story called “The Golden Man”. In typical Hollywood fashion, Dick’s story, which you can learn about at Wikipedia, functions as little more than a springboard for its cinematic expression. Probably rightly so, in this case, since Dick can be a bit too kooky for his own good at times. For example, this comes from Wikipedia in regards to “The Golden Man”:

Unknown to them, Cris turns out to possess another power; his golden skin acts like a lion’s mane, and allows him to seduce members of the opposite sex. Cris influences the fiancée into freeing him, then impregnates her and makes his escape.

Dick’s stories are chock full of loopy details like that.

The central concept involving a protagonist who can see the outcomes of his own actions into the near future is essentially the same, however, and that’s the bit that interested me when I heard about it, despite the fact that critics heaped a fairly ample amount of ill-will upon Next, as is their wont when an action film attempts, perhaps ill-advisedly, to rise above its genre conventions.

Let me be clear here: Next is not a great film. Entertaining, surely, though not without problematic elements: for example, the unconvincing romance upon which the entire narrative unwisely hangs, and the non-ending which seems to imply that this was somebody’s extravagantly expanded television pilot.

And yet, I found this to be a pretty good movie. In terms of how the filmmakers explore the protagonist’s gift of precognition, the film is very clever in how it seems to keep ratcheting up his abilities, using them to twist the plot right before your eyes, without ever really violating its own clearly-defined rules. I seem to recall film reviewers claiming the contrary: specifically, that the film can’t remember its own rules. That’s horseradish and simply proves what I’ve been saying for years—these people see so many films that eventually, they stop paying attention.

It’s true—you actually do have to pay attention to this film, and in a paradoxical way, that’s both a fault and its advantage. Basically, you don’t pop a film like Next into your DVD player expecting to have to leave your brain switched to the “on” position. And the lack of care put into the portrayal of the human relationships (which leads to some wooden performances and lost opportunities) regrettably belies how smart other elements of the narrative actually are (though importantly, Nicholas Cage scores a minor win here playing a protagonist for whom antiheroism represents the dominant personality trait).

It’s clear that the filmmakers were more interested in this story from the perspective of thinking about what the protagonist can do, and to that end, it might have made for quite a good television series. As a film, however, it feels rushed, though it is cogent. In any event, it’s certainly not boring. Ultimately, in the aftertaste, you’ll wish that they’d have done Next the justice that the premise deserved by not giving such short shrift to some of the dramatic elements.

Soooo yeah…it’s a fun bit of escapist cinema. There’s an undeniable slickness to the production, Nick Cage’s atrocious hairstyle notwithstanding, and it’s not the by-the-numbers fiasco that some critics would have you believe. It’s got a kind of quirky charm, despite its B-movie sensibilities, that sees it through.

Normally, I would say that enjoyment of a film such as Next demands that you be the sort of person whose ears prick up upon hearing “Inspired by a story by Philip K. Dick”, but then again, my wife also fully invested herself in it (at least until the last thirty seconds), and I’m sure that she doesn’t know Philip K. Dick from Philip J. Fry. Though she did love both Minority Report and Total Recall…so she’s all right!