Looper and The Perks of Being a Wallflower

It's been a film-heavy week. On Tuesday I saw The Hunger Games (good) and The Cabin In The Woods (incredible); in the past 24 hours I have seen two new releases, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky) and Looper (Rian Johnson). Fantastically, I didn't pay a penny to see any of them, despite going to the cinema for each. Anyway, I haven't done any reviews in a while so though it was high time I did some.

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The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky, 2012)

It's a fairly common occurrence that a writer will adapt their novel into a screenplay themselves; rarer, though, is for the writer to direct thing, although this is exactly what Stephen Chbosky has done for this complex, touching and highly-strung comedy drama. Charlie (Logan Lurman) is an outsider with a troubled past in his Freshman year at high-school, where he befriends a group of oddballs in their senior year, including Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller). As the year progresses Charlie grows closer to the group, and we gradually discover that our protagonists have much more going on under the surface than is immediately apparent.

The balance between comedy and drama is an interesting one. The suggestion that the film might take some dark turns is established from the off, with Charlie penning heartfelt confessionary letters (the source material was an epistolary novel) to an anonymous recipient, before switching to a more typical take on a boy starting high-school. The usual archtypes are all present - there's the friendly and understanding English teacher, the now-estranged friend from middle-school, the jocks, the bitches, and the weirdos with passions for old English rock music, who Charlie falls in with. Then the emotional bombs start falling, splintering this comfortable facade. The casual, off-hand way in which Charlie reveals a key cause to his alluded to difficulties is a real jaw-dropping moment, and credit to Emma Watson for ably conveying the wave of shock that knocked the audience out of their seats. 

It is a moment, and there is at least one other, that could easily feel contrived - the emotional equivalent to jump-scares in horror films - but the occasional oblique references to trouble pasts means they felt earned and justified, rather than being a simple Nicholas Sparks-style and-then-he-gets-cancer deus ex machina. 

Of the three main characters it is Patrick who is by far the most entertaining - witty, protective, humourous and camp - and while Sam may be a bit bland at times, all three character arcs are individually satisfying but are also woven together perfectly, with each characters' own changing circumstance and emotions having a knock-on effect with the other two. I did feel that perhaps some of the ways that Sam and Patrick were marked out as outsiders were a bit forced, for instance the appropriation of British rock music in service to outsider-cool was gimmicky. No points for guessing which band takes pride of place - who else but The Smiths - and what with their appearance in (500) Days of Summer it's getting a bit wearying. As for Charlie, while his struggles with his past and his psyche form a solid core for the film, Perks falls into the traps of telling us his character traits without actually showing them: he is presented as a quiet socially-inept misfit, but by the end of the first day he has made friends, and his love of literature is used in a similar way to the music in that the film assumes that because he reads he must be interesting. The reality is that apart from the (admittedly essential) personal trauma that underpins the film and provides much of the drama, Charlie is not a particularly interesting character. However, the surround cast cover over this deficiency ably.

Despite these few quibbles The Perks of Being a Wallflower is hugely involving, gripping and heartstring-tugging that packs an emotional punch that few films of this genre can match. With so much psychological damage scattered liberally across the characters it could easily have become overly-harrowing, but the line is well-tread and the balance superb. It's not the easiest watch, but it is one of the most rewarding.

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Rian Johnson might not be a name to match the likes of Nolan, Cameron and Whedon quite yet, with only low budget noir indie-hit Brick (2005) and Brothers Bloom (2008) to his credit until now, but that hasn't stopped him pulling off this ambitious noir-sci-fi thriller with a panache equivalent of those aforementioned blockbuster behemoths. 

As with any story involving time-travel, the logic unravels if you look at it too closely, so here is some friendly advice from Austin Powers to remember when you go and see it. Essentially, it is 2044 and Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Joe, a 'looper' - an occupation in which the looper stands in a field with a gun waiting for an unfortunate target to be transported back in time, where upon arrival said target receives a chest-cavityful of high-velocity shotgun shells, administered with disinterested efficiency by the looper. It's easy work but it comes at a price: a an unheralded point in every looper's life their target will be their future self, 30 years older, transported back with enough gold to provide the looper with a comfortable lifestyle for 30 years, whereupon he is then sent back and killed; in Looper terminology this is known as 'closing the loop'. Like I said, don't think about it too much.

Of course, when Joe is faced with his future self (Bruce Willis), he hesitates, misses his shot and gets knocked out, allowing Bruce Willis to make his getaway. Failing to close one's loop is a heinous offence, so Joe has to not only track down and kill his future self, but also avoid the vengeful organisation he works for. Take that and add to it a young farm owner (Emily Blunt) with a mysteriously ominous child and you've got yourself a right tangled plotline.

Usually, sci-fi stories are allowed one or two leaps of faith upon which the sci-fi world is based: in Star Wars you've got the Force and intergalactic travel; in Children of Men you've got an infertile population; in 1984 you've totalitarianism taken to its greatest extreme. In Looper, you've got time travel and telekinesis. From these two Johnson creates a believable timeline - time travel is made illegal almost upon invention, and telekinesis - initially heralded as the next step of evolution - is actually quite rubbish, used mainly by desperate men trying to pick up women in bars by floating nickels around. Charles Xavier they are not. Essentially, despite containing two fantastical concepts, Looper tries hard to be plausible, and it succeeds, creating and maintaining a satisfyingly realistic sci-fi world.

JGL is great as always and in the last few years has become one of the most captivating and versatile leading men in Hollywood. Some subtle prosthetics on his lips and nose shape his face to look like a convincing younger version of Bruce Willis, and his voice and posture are spot on too. However young Joe is not a clone, rather the passage of time has given the two versions different sets of moral values and one of the greatest pleasures to be found in Looper is seeing how certain character traits are evident - or not evident - unchanged or altered by the 30 years that separate the two versions of Joe. Bruce Willis is standard Bruce Willis really - tough, grizzled, but with a deep love of those closest to him and complete disregard for anyone that gets in his way. The surprisingly few meetings between the two are great entertainment; what old Joe lacks in youthful vitality he makes up for in canniness. One of the best lines in the film is when young Joe quips "your face is on backwards". 

The supporting cast is excellent, too, with particular mention to Emily Blunt who plays a protective farmer with an unruly child, caught up in the film's tightening circles. Even better, though, is Noah Segan who plays a hapless enforcer called Kid Blue. His role is small and the character uncomplicated, but it's rare treat to have a someone so completely and hilariously incompetent as this guy. He seems to exist purely so Johnson can punish him, like a macabre puppeteer. 

I'm failing as a reviewer here. I don't do scores but if I did I wouldn't give Looper a 5, but I'm struggling to put my finger on why. Perhaps its that the time-travel stuff doesn't make sense (even though I'm doing my best to ignore that). Perhaps is that one of the characters is reveals to be unexpectedly powerful that didn't feel in keeping with the Looper world. Perhaps I wanted a slightly happier ending. However, I think it comes back to Joe. I just didn't connect with him as much as I would have liked. They've done a fantastic job with his appearance and mannerism, but he's just lacking a spark and the charm to lift the mood of this frequently thematically heavy film. He also turns into Rambo at one point, which felt a bit off.

But other than that, even though it's a month or two late, Looper is the film that this summer needed. Some have said it's like 2012's The Matrix; it's more like Inception in that it's sort of complicated (depending on how much time you spend trying to figure out the time travel stuff), has some great set-pieces, solid acting, and is a wholly original sci-fi film. 

Reminiscence Of My Garden

I wanted to write something earlier, anything, I didn't care what. The first thing that came to my head just so happened to be the best song in the world was my garden back home in Maidenhead, so I went and wrote 1300 words about my memories of it. This is pretty personal I guess, so it's not getting the usual airing on Facebook or Twitter, b'yeah, it's still tentatively being posted here. I might do a few more of these in the future.

As I slipped gently between childhood, adolescence and finally early adulthood, the time spent in my garden diminished slowly but inexorably. Other interest drew me away from the small green expanse at the back of the house, with the patio, swings and vegetable patch. It was screens mostly, first the television when we got Freeview for the first time in early 2003 then consoles – TimeSplitters 2, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4 and Guitar Hero were the main offenders – and the internet.  Not only that, but as I grew I was permitted more freedoms, and long afternoons playing football at the park were infinitely preferable to kicking a ball against the side of house.

Jumping through the sprinkler in Speedos. Chasing small puddles round the rubberised fabric that formed the den on the climbing frame. Coming away from climbing the tree at the end of the garden, hands sticky with resin. I can remember the curtain-call for each of these. At 9 years old playing around with the sprinkler was fun; the following summer I considered that extremely weird. Eventually we didn’t fit in the climbing frame den so it was dismantled one afternoon, but we still had the swings so that was alright. One afternoon I was in the den bit with my friend from nursery, and his Irish mum came round to pick him up. Neither of us really wanted to get down, so slightly irate she said ‘Get daaynnn niieee, Jornathaan’ (get down now, Jonathan), and it became something of a catchphrase in our house. And the day when the tree surgeons came, bringing tools of destruction upon our little tree, was a day of mourning. Mum said it was killing the surrounding plants, but my grasp of floral imperialism was limited at that point so I didn’t really believe her. All I knew was that the tree was now a stump, and that opportunities for playing with a stump were limited.

Badminton was popular in our house for a while. Dad was the pro, forever catching me out with frustrating drop-shots. Paul was the worst. He was completely shit. He is also three years younger than I and four and a half than Rob, but still. The tantrums were hilarious. To his credit he improved steadily until he was at least reasonably competent. I remember the day badminton was ended forever particularly well because I caused it. Keen for some football practice, I went into the garden and tried to use the net as a ‘wall’. I got it over a few times, then one shot hit it full on, snapping a guy rope, and it collapsed. I never owned up, in fact I actually lied to Dad for some reason, and that was that. Table tennis was a relatively short-lived replacement, but the nightmare of trying to find the stupid little ball in the itchy bush (our garden is littered with itchy bushes) was too much of a barrier to ever invest serious time into it.

Clearly, sport was the main focus in the garden, and the main sport was football. Penalties were fun for a while, although Mum hated it. She was too useless anyway. Then my cousin Matthew began lodging with us, and he could do 96 keepie-uppies. My best effort at that time (around year 4 at school) was 8, so I was suitably impressed (my all-time best up to this point is 92, so I got damn close!). However, ours wasn’t a garden suited to playing football. It was too thin with too many things in the way and too many plants round the edge. Every years the daffodils appeared behind the swings in springs; every year they got flattened by errant footballs and, uhh, feet. I didn’t really give a shit about those daffodils. The aforementioned itchy bushes were the bane of my footballing childhood. I never understood them. They looked like ugly. They were big, they were dense, they were in the way, and they were itchy! Most of the time a broom was required to dig the ball out but frequently I just used to whack the bush in frustration.

Only once did they provide me with any amusement. In one of his many short-lived phases, Paul wanted to improve his football skills so I got him to do a few drills I knew. Obviously the ball kept going in the bush, so I told him that getting the ball out the bush was an important skill. He bought it, the idiot. So I kicked the ball in the bush a few times and he would diligently go and dig it out, getting covered in that itchy powder each time. Simple pleasures.

Our garden was also  home to our guinea-pigs. There were two: a dusty-ginger one called Spike and a black and white one called Ollie. I think we got Spike when I was in year 2, and Ollie a year later. They had a decent innings I think; I can’t remember precisely when they died, but when Spike died the three of us sat and cried in the living room all morning. As Spike got older I remember being terrified that I would be the one to find him dead; we changed their cage on a week-by-week rota so there was a one-in-three chance. Paul ended up being the unlucky one; Dad buried them both by the rhubarb. I don’t remember much of Ollie if I’m honest, he was the quiet, meek one. When he died all I could think was how shit it much have been for Spike to have to share a hutch for a few hours with his only companion in the world lying dead nearby. In retrospect, I neglected them, but thankfully they had Mum to give them attention and broccoli stalks. Consequently they squeaked when she walked past, hopeful for food, but didn’t for me. Once Ollie was dead, Spike got lonely. I walked past his run once and he took a flying leap at the chicken wire in a desperate attempt to escape. I was shocked, and it was awful.

I got in a scrap with Rob over the guinea-pigs once. It was Monday, and the responsibility of cleaning their hutch had fallen to me, but Rob, caught up in the daily routine, forgot it had changed until he was halfway though. He accused me (correctly) of knowing it was my turn all along, and we had our first and last genuine fight. Matthew slunk off to get Mum, who threw us in separate parts of the house to cool off. It took a few days.

I won the fight, by the way (Rob will disagree).

Once the guinea-pigs were gone I could go the whole autumn and winter without venturing out into the garden even once. Then, once the sun came out I would spend half an hour or more each afternoon after school practicing keepie-uppies and ball control. I never really got it; I blame my gangly legs. Though if Peter Crouch could do it…

The last strong memory I have of the garden is a surprise birthday party when I was 17 that my then-girlfriend threw for me, in allegiance with Rob. It was lovely, it really was – just a simple gathering of friends enjoying being together. Also it was genuinely truly a surprise; I got back from shopping in Windsor with Mum and Rob made an incredibly shit reason for me to go in the living room – something about Kenyans running on the telly (possibly the Great North Run) – and I went in and heard giggling then they popped out from behind settees and chairs and stuff. Good times.

Writers and their Characters' Names

Hello again. Missed me? It's been a while.

I have a theory. The quality of a writer's books correlates very closely with how well-named their characters are. This is basically going to be a list, I've just realised. The reigning champion of character naming is by no coincidence the writer of the greatest trilogy of books, Phillip Pullman. Roald Dahl does well too; as do JK Rowling and Paul Stewart (writer of the Edge Chronicles, a hugely underrated series). It's not just applicable to children's fantasy writers; all-time greats of literary fiction also survive this test.

A quick Google search of the greatest characters in history also reveals a list of the best named characters in history, from many of the best books in history. There's Holden Caulfield, Humbert Humbert, Atticus (and Scout and Jem) Finch, Jay Gatsby, Kurtz and Marlowe, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf, to name but a few...and of course, Shakespeare does alright too. Also the Bible is worth a mention, and not just because the main 'characters'' names have all ended up as Western-mainstays, but because of Methuselah, Solomon, and uh, Paul.

I've mentioned many of these characters a few posts back, but Pullmans array of creations are worth repeating. So, here is the greatest list of character names from one man (from the same book, no less): Lyra Belacqua, Pantaliamon, Lord Asriel, Marissa Coulter, Iorek Byrnison, Serafina Pekkala, Lee Scoreseby, Iofur Raknison, Stanislau Grummann, Balthamos, Baruch, Mary Malone, Chevalier Tialys, Lady Salmakia, and Metatron. Maybe Will Parry's slightly dull name is a reason why I never took to him like I did Lyra (if I ever have a daughter, she's gettin' called Lyra) and the rest. Sally Lockheart from Pullman's other fantastic series also gets an honourable mention.

Having just watched the BFG on telly I've rediscovered all Roald Dahl's fabulous creations. To wit, Charlie Bucket,Willy Wonka (and all the kids in Charlie in the Chocolate Factory); Bruce Bogtrotter, Ms. Trunchbull (Matilda); Aunts Spiker and Sponge (James and the Giant Peach); Boggis, Bunce and Bean (Fantastic Mr. Fox); the Twits (The Twits...obv); Fleshlumpeater, Gizzardgulper, Bonecruncher (and the other giants from The BFG, Manhugger (LOLGAY) notwithstanding). Quentin Blake is also the most fantastically named illustrator ever.

It goes the other way, too. Bad writers that turn out dull, flat prose also lumber their characters with dull, flat names. One of the main reasons I gave 50 Shades of Grey a wide berth is that the main character is the crinegeworthy Anastasia Steele. You can tell she's trying: Anastasia evokes the famous Russian princess with hints of Old World fantasy and seduction; Steele undercuts that with a cool modernism, replete with that extraneous 'e'. However, together to two mix like milk and orange juice, and make me want to vomit. In short, Anastasia Steele is a porn-star name (which, I admit, is apt. But that doesn't make it any better).

Thinking of these bad characters is difficult, because I tend to forget about them.

What makes for a great name? I...I have no idea, really. In the case of Dahl, his characters' names plainly reflect their defining characteristic, none more so than the tall, gaunt, cruel Aunt Spiker and her counterpart, the rotund and piggy Aunt Sponge. Pullman seems to drawn on national naming divisions; his characters with religious relevance drawn on Latin (Baruch and Balathamos for instance); Lee Scoreseby is indelibly Texan, Iorek and Iofur Icelandic (I think); while Lyra Belacqua is just fantastic, wild yet dignified, classical yet modern, and beautifully mellifluous (cheers thesaurus).