Flick of The Day: Akira

When I began writing the Daily Flick almost a year ago, I had two main aims. Firstly, I would attempt to review and recommend a film a day and as anyone who has read the blog will attest, I have been less than successful. Today's film is number 139 if you are interested. My second aim was to try and include as diverse a range of cinema as possible. This has been more successful as I have touched on innumerable genres and style of film making and included as much foreign language cinema as I felt necessary. However, there is one area in which I have been remiss for it is not a genre I am overly familiar with, Japanese Anime. Today's flick of the day is Akira.

Akira

A touchstone for the genre and perhaps the most influential example of its breadth, Akira is based on the manga series of the same name by Katsuhiro Otomo. In a post apocalyptic Neo Tokyo in the year 2019, a group of young bikers stumble across a government research project. Tetsuo, a disgruntled and oddly independent member of the gang becomes imbued with strange telekinetic powers of an insidious nature. These powers are linked to the government project centred on a being called Akira. As the military pursue Tetsuo and the energy source begins to take him over, we learn the dark secret at the heart of it and of the reconstruction of Japan after the last war.

Darkly atmospheric and highly stylised, Akira is a joy to watch with the stunningly rendered skyline of Neo Tokyo dominating many scenes and a level of detail in the animation not normally seen in anime of this time. The storyline is at times overly complex and perhaps too overwrought for an adult audience to truly engage with it. This not the point however, let the story flow over you and indulge yourself in the bright colours and textures of the animation. The first fully realised anime picture with long drawn out scenes and lip synced dialogue in the original Japanese version, for anyone with even a passing interest in the genre, it is a real must see. For those with little or no knowledge of the subject, it is a fine jumping off point. 

One of the main critiques of the film would be its attempt to condense a six volume comic with over 2,000 pages into a two hour film. This is perhaps the reason for the dense plotting which can be difficult to follow. Perhaps the film deserves credit for attempting to tell such a lengthy story but it doesn't quite manage it. It is perhaps telling that the long rumoured and always obligatory Pointless American Live Action Remake or P.A.L.A.R for short is to be split into two films.

All in all, this is an excellent example of Japanese anime and  many Western fans initiation to the genre.Its success upon release in 1988 created a market for anime in the West that has only grown since then. The works of artists like Miyazaki and Otomo has gradually become more well known since with Miyazaki's Spirited Away winning the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2002. Even for those with little or no knowledge of anime like myself, there is much to enjoy. 

Flick of The Day: WarGames

Ah, the 1980's. Remember them. After the boundary pushing 1970's, it is tempting to view the 1980's as a step back as in many ways it was, something which we have looked at before in our review of Cutter's Way. A lot of the best movies were not being made at big Hollywood studios or if they were, they were being made for a pittance. Hollywood studios were too busy making blockbusters that reflected the political mood of the day, namely right wing action pictures. Thankfully, there are some exceptions such as today's flick of the day, WarGames, a teen movie that perfectly encapsulates the cold war paranoia of the day. Remember of course, that the '80s were also the last decade in which American children lived in fear that the Soviets would nuke them in the night.

War Games (25th Anniversary Edition)

Are there two actors more associated with the 1980's then Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy? I think not. In any case, they lead the cast in this tale of a computer whiz kid, David Lightman played by Broderick who while intelligent pays no attention in school and is constantly in and out of the Principal's office. Broderick is full of his usual boyish charm. Lightman befriends fellow slacker Ally Sheedy, and he introduces her to the wonders of early '80s computer hacking. They change their school grades, book flights to Paris and accidentally login to a military computer and almost launch a nuclear attack on the Soviets. Of course, David and Jennifer think its just a strategy game but unbeknownst to them the computer has recently been put in charge of all of the nation's  missile silos. David thinks the game is over when he turns the computer off but the computer, named Joshua is still playing, counting to nuclear war. It is not long before the FBI catch up with David and he is brought to NORAD to explain himself.  David escapes and with the help of Jennifer seeks to track down the brilliant scientist, Dr Stephen Falken who created Joshua. Together they are in a race against time to stop Joshua from starting a nuclear war.

Released in 1983, the technology featured in WarGames has long since been passed by the shifting sands of human endeavour, however it still stands out as a fascinating drama. Director John Badman has created a film that is a cautionary tale of the dangers of nuclear arms proliferation and of over reliance on artificial intelligence. These are issues which are still relevant today. The film is filled with tension and the scenes at NORAD as the clock ticks down to Armageddon are still powerful. The peaceful message at its core is one that anyone can empathise with.

Apart from being a skillfully created thriller, it is also genuinely entertaining. Sheedy and Broderick seem to be having fun on camera. It is telling that John Badman was the second director attached to this film after the original director was fired 12 days into filming for having too dark a vision for the film. Supposedly Badman's first act in taking over was to get the actor's to enjoy themselves and this comes across on screen.

Stephen Falken: Now, children, come on over here. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there lived a magnificent race of animals that dominated the world through age after age. They ran, they swam, and they fought and they flew, until suddenly, quite recently, they disappeared. Nature just gave up and started again. We weren't even apes then. We were just these smart little rodents hiding in the rocks. And when we go, nature will start over. With the bees, probably. Nature knows when to give up, David.

It is difficult to get across how controversial the idea that the best way to win a nuclear was not to start at all in the Reagan '80s. Let us not forget this was the decade of The Evil Empire, The Star Wars system and incredibly right wing films like Red Dawn, Invasion U.S.A and Rambo. The communists were always depicted as heartless and evil, killing civilians while they demolish churches on Christmas Eve (Invasion U.S.A). In contrast to the visceral hatred of those mainstream films, WarGames preaches peace above all else and if for nothing else should be praised for this.

Overall, this is a very enjoyable thriller. Ally Sheedy is young and pretty, Broderick is charming. There is a strong supporting cast including the great Dabney Coleman and John Wood. Its entertaining and has a good message at its heart. Well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: Sneakers

spyIt is strange how often film's can be of their time, existing only in the zeitgeist and seeming out of date very quickly. Some things age very well, comedies like Laurel & Hardy and Some Like It Hot are as funny today as they ever were while others age unfavourably, particularly anything involving technology unless there is a deeper message. Today's film is a high tech thriller from 1992, Sneakers, that has aged well for precisely this reason. It raises questions about the effect of technological advance on how we live rather then focusing on it.

Sneakers (Collector's Edition)

Possessed of a cast to die for and a great script, director Phil Alden Robinson makes good use of both. The cast reads like a who's who of some of the best talent of the last forty years; Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, James Earl Jones, Ben Kingsley, David Strathairn, River Phoenix and Dan Aykroyd. The film opens with a prologue on a snowy University campus in December 1969. Two students are hacking into bank accounts and making illegal wire transfers from the likes of Richard Nixon to the likes of committee for the legalisation of marijuana. One of them, Martin played by Redford goes for Pizza while the other Cosmo, played Kingsley waits. The police come, Martin escapes while Cosmo is caught and sent to prison. Fast forward to now and Martin runs a private security contractor with his partners ably played by Poitier, Strathairn, Phoenix and Aykroyd.  He is approached by government agents who are aware of his true past and offer to clean his record if he obtains a little black box from a mathematician called Gunther Janik. Of course nothing is as it seems and the box turns out to be a very valuable piece of equipment that can break any code and any encryption.

The film raises some interesting questions about how much we as a society rely on computers and their encryption to manage our everyday lives. As Ben Kingsley's character puts it:

"There's a war out there, old friend. A world war. And it's not about who's got the most bullets. It's about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think... it's all about the information! "

This is as relevant if not more relevant today as it was then. With each passing day we become more reliant on technology. Almost all governmental records in relation to taxation, income, marriage are computerised with no paper record. The question the film poses is what if these records weren't as safe as we thought them. If anything could be accessed, what might the consequences be? 

"Pollution. Crime. Drugs, poverty, disease, hunger, despair - we throw GOBS of money at them and problems only get worse. Why is that? Because money's most powerful ability is to allow bad people to continue doing bad things at the expense of those who don't have it."

The film is a thriller at heart though and it delivers on this front. The attempt to steal the black box back from Cosmo is a highlight with some wonderfully tense moments to keep you involved. Perhaps the film's strongest suit is it ensemble cast. All of the main performers are likeable and Ben Kingsley is devilish as the bad guy with a twisted ideology. The interplay between the team is excellent with some funny sparring matches between Dan Aykroyd's conspiracy theorist and Sidney Poitier's ex-CIA agent.

In summary, this is a memorable film with an interesting story driven by some excellent performances. The film is greater then the sum of its parts and is rounded off nicely with a good ending. There is something enjoyable about the bad guys losing out at the expense of the good guys. Well worth a look.

Flick of The Day: AntiTrust

There are some films that are worth seeing because they define greatness, they are the peak of the art form: Citizen Kane, Laurence of Arabia, etc. Then there are films that are worth seeing simply for the enjoyment of the genre be it thrillers or action pictures. Then there is that third category, films that by any measure are poor: badly scripted, irregularly acted, or perhaps laughable special effects but have something compelling about the story or the performance that makes it entertaining. 

Antitrust is just such a film. The setup is thus: Milo Hoffman, a confused looking Ryan Phillipe, is an idealistic young programmer who joins Gary Winston's NURV Corp (Never Underestimate Radical Vision). Winston is Tim Robbins doing his best impression of Bill Gates. Well, an evil Bill Gates, if such a thing existed. The real joy of this film is how completely over the top Robbins' performance is. Of course, as you've already guessed, all is not well at NURV, though I think even the most paranoid viewer won't how imagine how outlandishly bad NURV is.

Look out for the hidden surveillance centre camouflaged as...a day car centre. The tale told for all its faults is compelling enough and you may find yourself cheering at the ending, its just the poor script that lets this film down, take for instance this jargon heavy exchange:

Gary: We've loaded a back door to receive SYNAPSE transmissions on all of our OS software for the past 6 years. We've developed compression schemes and file formats that achieve conductivity, but.. We have a problem. You know what that problem is?

Milo: Ah, your adaptors can't overcome the band width limitation of wireless hand helds 

Gary:That's right

It's not all like this of course but it would help if Ryan Phillipe looked like he understood half the words coming from his mouth.
All in all, worth a look if you have an otherwise empty evening in front of yourself.