Top 5 Muse Soundtracked Film Scenes

(5) New Moon
‘I Belong to You’ is a great song, and Matt Bellamy even re-worked some elements of it for the purposes of this movie, but of all the films to waste it on… I don’t think I could ever stomach re-watching New Moon; with its endless moping by Kristen Stewart and its failure by Taylor Lautner to make any impression despite an ocean of screen time because his dialogue is so poorly written; even to enjoy hearing it.
 
(4) Eclipse
The throwaway nature of this usage of Muse is rather hilarious and is what makes it noteworthy. Director David Slade (former music videos lenser) puts the soaring track ‘Neutron Star Collision’ on a stereo in the background of a party scene so that Anna Kendrick can excitedly say ‘Oh, I love this song’, before the camera pans away from her to follow other characters away from the music and towards the actual dramatic purpose of the scene. Delightful.
 
(3) Southland Tales
Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales is a fascinating mess but it does have any number of memorable moments, and many of the best involve music: The Rock running scared to the surf version of the Pixies’ ‘Wave of Mutilation’, Justin Timberlake showily performing The Killers’ ‘All These Things That I Have Done’, and Muse’s magisterial ‘Blackout’ providing a suitably odd soundtrack to a scene where The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Mandy Moore clash at an opulent mansion.
 
(2) Twilight
The greatest cinematic game of baseball ever played sees the Cullen family take advantage of an approaching thunderstorm to hide the tremendous cracking sound made when a super-strong vampire batter hits a baseball thrown by a super-strong vampire pitcher. Thirteen director Catherine Hardwicke’s gritty films may make her appear miserable but soundtracking this with Muse’s incredibly funky (and allegedly a parodic attempt at doing a Britney Spears song) ‘Supermassive Black Hole’ shows a well cultivated sense of fun.
 
(1) Switchblade Romance
Alexandre Aja’s French shocker from 2003 has, for me, made the best use of any movie of Muse’s unique sound. Cecile de France, having been scared out of her wits while stealthily hiding from the psychotic trucker who has slain her friend’s family and kidnapped her friend, is reborn as an avenging fury when she roars off after him in a yellow sports car to the sound of ‘Newborn’ by Muse; escalating in as the car-chase proceeds.

A Better Life

Chris Weitz, whose last two directorial outings were the unbearably awful The Golden Compass and Twilight: New Moon, causes the earth to shift on its axis by following them up with an intelligent drama…

A Better Life could be uncharitably described as ‘The Bicycle Thieves, outsourced to Mexicans’ as the plot is driven by the increasingly desperate search by a father and son for a stolen vehicle vital to the father’s employment. Our hero Carlos (Demian Bechir) is a stolid gardener living illegally in America and working in Beverly Hills, but living far away from such luxuries. He sleeps on the couch while his brattish teenage son Luis (seriously, this kid is as annoying as Damian Wayne in recent Batman comics, and that’s some going) takes their house’s one bedroom. Carlos’ back-breaking labour is all for the sake of earning enough money to give a well-educated Luis a better life, and he seizes the chance to buy the truck of his boss Blasco Martinez (Quantum of Solace’s villainous general Joaquin Cosio). However, Carlos has become American enough to suffer from the maxim ‘no good deed goes unpunished’, and so begins a desperate search for the truck which is his livelihood, and which he cannot ask the police to trace…

Demian Bechir is a huge star in Mexico, unsurprising given that he looks like Ryan Reynolds in ten years’ time; if Reynolds came from below rather than above the American border. Bechir’s character-filled face wonderfully conveys indefatigable stoicism, endless compassion, and steely will. The villain is a subtle mixture of malicious guile and motiveless compassion, something which infuriates Jose Julian’s Luis, even as he convincingly comes to respect his father’s values which he previously despised. Their reconciliation is part of a fascinating examination of identity. Blasco wanted enough money to buy his own farm in Mexico, Carlos just wanted out of Mexico, but he’s quick to rebuke a sneering Luis that with a sombrero on him Luis is instantly another Gaucho, for all his assimilation.

The startling first shot of Luis’s school makes it look like a prison, an impression which the film pointedly does not dispel, as the system has given up hope on these cultural immigrants. The legally resident Latinos, like Luis, communicate solely in the language of gangsta rap, which leads to thinking and acting in ways with only two endpoints – jail or morgue. The stupidity of appropriating this culture and rejecting their own is exposed by the blind terror Luis displays when he has to venture into South Central, the source of the culture he’s adopted, where he sees a slogan daubed on a wall – ‘Too Many Mexicans. Not Enough Bullets’…

Weitz and originating producer Paul Junger Witt have crafted an affecting story of the people who live in the shadows of a sun-kissed world, and this is well worth seeing.

3.5/5

2011: Hopes

In Darkest Night

Ryan Reynolds is Green Lantern, Blake Lively is love interest Carol Ferris, and Mark Strong is renegade alien lantern Sinestro in the biggest gamble of the year. Green Lantern’s ring which allows him to physically project anything he can imagine, but which can’t handle the colour yellow because of the evil Parallax, is the most far-out of the major DC characters; but in the right hands (see the recent resurgence of the comics title by Geoff Johns) he can be majestic. If this movie works it opens up the whole DC Universe for cinematic imaginings. If it fails then Nolan’s Batman swansong and Snyder’s Superman will be the end of DC on film for another decade…

A Knife-Edge

Talking of gambles what about Suckerpunch: can Zack Snyder handle an all-female cast and a PG-13 rating after the flop of his animated movie? The answers provided by his Del Toro like escapade set in a 1950s mental hospital where Vanessa Hudgens and Abbie Cornish escape into a fantasy universe to fight a never-ending war will give hints as to how he’ll handle Lois Lane and the challenge of resurrecting Superman’s cinematic fortunes. Breaking Dawn sees Bill Condon, director of Gods & Monsters, take on the final Twilight book in two movies. Given that the book sounds the epitome of unfilmable on the grounds of utter insanity, it’s a gamble to split it in two when it may make New Moon look competent. On the other hand he may take the Slade/Nelson route of Eclipse and simply play the romance as stark nonsense and be as nasty as he can with what little time for horror is left him after he’s shot Jacob shirtless 20 times. Paul should be a lock: it’s a comedy with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. However, they’re not working with Edgar Wright, co-writer and director of their other two movies, but with Greg Mottola, writer/director of Adventureland, and this film was meant to be released last year. Kristen Wiig has a supporting role created for her and Seth Rogen voices the titular slobbish alien with whom Pegg & Frost’s archetypal nerds have daft adventures, but will this be a mish-mash of styles?

A Grand Madness

Werner Herzog’s My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? has had immense success on the festival circuit and seems to confirm that Bad Lieutenant was no one-of, he really has got his feature mojo back.  Michael Shannon stars in a very loose version of a true-life murder case which saw reality and fiction tragically become fatally confused for a young actor appearing in a Greek tragedy. The Tempest sees Julie Taymor takes a break from injuring actors on Broadway to helm another Shakespeare movie. Her last film Across the Universe was misfiring but inspired when it worked, expect something of the same from this. Helen Mirren is Prospera, while Russell Brand’s obvious love of language should see him Fassbender his way through his jester role.

In England’s Green and Pleasant Land

February sees the release of two adaptations of acclaimed English novels. Brighton Rock sees Sam Riley, exceptional as Ian Curtis in 2007’s Control, take on the iconic role of the psychotic gangster Pinkie in an adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1938 novel. This remake updates the action to the 1960s and mods v rockers, with Helen Mirren as the avenging Fury pursuing Pinkie for murdering an innocent man, and rising star Andrea Riseborough as Pinkie’s naive girlfriend. Greene and Terence Rattigan co-wrote the script for the superb Boulting Brothers’ 1947 film, so this version has to live up to the high-water mark of British film noir. Meanwhile Never Let Me Go sees one of the most acclaimed novels of the Zeros get a film treatment from the director of Johnny Cash’s Hurt video. Can Mark Romanek find a visual way to render Kazuo Ishiguro’s dreamy first-person narration of the slow realisation by a group of elite public-school pupils of the sinister purpose of their isolated education? The cast; Keira Knightley, Andrew Garfield, and Carey Mulligan; represents the cream of young English talent, but replicating the impact of the novel will be difficult.

Empire of the Spielberg

Super 8. I gather it’s about aliens, and monsters, in fact probably alien monsters. In fact really it’s probably Cloverfield: Part II but with Abrams writing and directing instead of producing. Spielberg is producing so it’s safe to say this will be exciting. Whatever it’s about. It’s out in August. The War Horse sees Spielberg breaks his silence after Indy 4 with an adaptation of West End hit which follows a young boy’s journey into the hell of World War I in an attempt to rescue his beloved horse from being used to drag provisions to the front. Meanwhile with Tintin we get an answer to the question does Peter Jackson still have his directorial mojo? His version of the beloved famous Belgian comic-book has a lot to live up to, not least the uber-faithful TV cartoon adaptations. And can the problem of dead eyes in photo realistic motion capture CGI finally be solved?

The House of M: Part I

Kenneth Branagh’s directorial resurgence sees him helm Thor, his first comic-book blockbuster. Branagh will no doubt coax great performances from Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman, but does Chris Hemsworth have the charisma as well as the physique to pull off a Norse God banished to Earth just as Loki decides to invade it? This is a pivotal gamble by Marvel’s in-house studio. If this flops, it puts The Avengers and Iron Man 3 in major difficulties, and it is a worry. Captain America had fantastic storylines in acclaimed comics by Mark Millar and Jeph Loeb in the last decade, but Thor really has no great canonical tale that cries out to be told. Not that those Loeb/Millar ideas will get in the way of a (How I Became) Insert Hero Name approach to the Cap’n. Chris Evans, fresh from dazzling comedic turns in Scott Pilgrim and The Losers, takes on the title role in Captain America: The First Avenger. He will be a likeable hero but it’s almost certain that Hugo Weaving will steal proceedings as Nazi villain The Red Skull. Joe Johnston’s Indiana Jones background should probably guarantee amusing hi-jinks in this 1940s set blockbuster.

The House of M: Part II

Other studios, content to build one franchise at a time around Marvel characters, will unleash two very different comic-book blockbusters. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance sees the lunatics behind the Crank films finally get their hands on a blockbuster after their script for Jonah Hex was rewritten to make it vaguely ‘normal’. The prospect of Nicolas Cage, fresh from his brush with Herzog, being encouraged to again find his inner madman while the two writers/directors shoot action sequences from roller-skates besides his bike is an awesome one. Matthew Vaughn meanwhile helms X-Men: First Class starring James McAvoy as the young Professor X and Talking Movies’ hero Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto. This prequel charts the early days of their friendship and the establishment of Xavier’s Academy, before (according to Mark Millar) a disagreement led to Magneto putting Xavier in a wheelchair. The prospect of Fassbender doing his best Ian McKellen impersonation gives one pause for joy.

Eclipse

David Slade, director of Hard Candy and 30 Days of Night, succeeds in returning some of Catherine Hardwicke’s viciousness to Eclipse but takes the romance tongue-in-cheek seriously…

The opening reinstates the nastiness that Hardwicke made so crucial in the first film by depicting a savage vampire attack that agonisingly turns new villain Riley. From there Slade alternates sappy romance with something that New Moon so badly lacked – a plot. The same plot broadly as the first film mind, killing spree heralds vampires heading towards Forks who target Bella, but a plot nonetheless. Slade gleefully ret-cons the vampires into ice-cold beings who shatter like glass when hit hard enough, which allows for decapitations aplenty with exploding heads and nary a drop of blood, and doesn’t make a lick of sense given that they mop up the red stuff, but why complain when it allows a lead vampire to very painfully lose an arm to a werewolf.

Slade also fleshes out the Cullens, giving Rosalie a chance to stop pouting and become a character by revealing her back-story. The real revelation though is Jackson Rathbone as Jasper who after doing a Harpo Marx impression for two films is finally given dialogue and, in revealing his Civil War past in Texas and his experience in training newborn vampires, turns out to be ridiculously charismatic. He’s matched by Xavier Samuel as Riley, who raises an army of insanely destructive newborn vampires that cause such mayhem in Seattle that sinister vampire overlords the Volturi dispatch Jane (Dakota Fanning) to kill them. Whisper it, but Fanning displays an un-nerving flair for sadistic villainy – far surpassing Bryce Dallas Howard’s underwhelming cameo as Bella’s vampire nemesis Victoria – with one moment in particular almost an exorcising of her past career.

Such almost fourth-wall breaches litter Eclipse as Slade is aware that these characters have taken on a life outside their fictional framework. When a hypothermic Bella needs to be warmed up and over-heated werewolf Jacob tells Edward “We both know I’m hotter than you”, you almost expect both actors to look directly at the audience and then return to the scene. Slade knows that teenage girls will wildly cheer Jacob’s first appearance and his first shirtless scene, especially Edward’s reaction by engaging in an epic make-out session with Bella. It is hard not to suppose that Slade and his writing associate Brian Nelson did a dialogue polish as there are tart put-downs at all these moments which make Taylor Lautner’s Jacob a more sardonic and charismatic presence here than in the previous film despite having less screen-time and also give Robert Pattinson something to play other than brooding. New Moon was unintentionally funny in its awfulness but Eclipse’s intentional comedy reaches exquisite heights in a scene when the always droll Billy Burke as Bella’s father tries to discuss accidental pregnancy with Bella while they both die of embarrassment.

Reviewing the performances of Pattinson and Lautner is of course redundant and it could be argued that the unashamed objectification of them is a positive development, but, this conflict between a dependable pretty boy and a moody pretty boy was done far better in seasons 2 and 3 of Gilmore Girls, which only highlights the enormous problem that is Bella Swan. Kristen Stewart’s original turn masked the fact that Bella is a bafflingly anaemic heroine, the super-massive black hole at the heart of the Twilight phenomenon, whose passivity, immaturity and self-pitying and self-destructive nature would drive Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, Scarlett O’Hara and Veronica Mars around the bend…

This surpasses New Moon but favourable comparisons to that are like saying fewer people died when the Lusitania sank than when the Titanic went down. Eclipse isn’t as good as Twilight but it’s a qualified success as a horror film spliced with a romance that needs to wink at the audience. But when a romance needs to wink at the audience it means that you’re liable to spend as much time anthropologically observing the audience’s fevered reaction to the movie as actually watching the movie.

3/5