There once were fairly cute and entertaining (albeit one-dimensional) films such as Cocoon, Parenthood, Night Shift and Willow. Then came more ambitious undertakings, attempts at more grown-up and deeper film making. But with films such as Backdraft, Apollo 13, Ransom, The Paper, EdTV and Far and Away, also came inconsistency and a strong penchant for cheap and superficial handling of emotions and relationships. A clear commercial angle, which had already started to emerge in the 80s, came blossoming in the 90s, a full-force proclamation of cinema as first and foremost a tool of entertainment with profit-making capabilities. And although i have yet to watch Frost/Nixon, it is probably safe to say that for the past nine years Ron Howard has been continuing on his path of mediocre but commercially successful film making, with Angels & Demons being the culmination of everything that is wrong with this type of cinema.

If The Da Vinci Code failed to inspire, Angels & Demons tries so hard to bring movement, excitement and action that it forgoes any attempt at plausibility in the process. This film is simply two hours filled with a couple of people chasing other people while solving riddles about the Illuminati in the process. Now you may be thinking that this sounds pretty good, except that it isn’t. As i watched Tom Hanks playing the hotshot academic Robert Langdon, i found myself longing for the early Indiana Jones, or for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, and even for Jacques Clouseau. Anything but this cheap and non-believable caricature of a detective chasing after villains who seem more keen on playing riddles than on doing the job.

I did enjoy one thing however, and it is not the absurd sight of a skydiving pope wanna-be or the loose connections with a Bush administration that could have resorted to unspeakable evil to force its values upon the vulnerable masses. Nor was it the fairly obvious mean characterization of the sometimes stereotypical Stellan Skarsgård to provide for an (un)expected twist at the end. No, the thing that i enjoyed was…hmm…i can’t remember. Maybe it was that the film ended.

With the exception of Back to the Future (1985), i can’t recall a film using time travel as a premise and not completely dividing audiences and critics alike. In fact, it would seem that time travel has become a clear recipe for automatic B movie classification in the minds of most people (films such as The Butterfly Effect (2004) do little to help this bad reputation). Since the majority of the world continues to regard the possibility of time travel as pure fantasy, it is indeed difficult to imagine why these same people would approach a time travel film seriously. And that is unfortunate, since this immediate negation of the possibility of time travel clearly has an effect on one’s ability to assess these films in a fair manner.

With The Jacket for example, a film that deals with a hospitalized gulf war veteran being able to project himself into the future after being injected with hallucinogenic drugs and being locked up in a drawer (this strange treatment, concocted by a mad doctor played by Kris Kristofferson, is part of a shock therapy for violent patients), most critics seemed unable to take seriously the idea of time traveling from one’s mind and by being placed in a tight and closed-in environment such as a drawer. I suppose some kind of nice helper device such as a time machine or a tunnel wrapped in plastic foil, or even a never fully explained elaborate apparatus might make it a bit easier, but a drawer just doesn’t cut it. Also, there is the usual tendency to identify time travel inconsistencies and to seek a clean resolution without any open issues or questions. Any loose end that remains at the end only fills the already uncertain viewer with additional doubt and ambiguity.

I realized some time ago that, not only is time travel possible (after all, who are you not to trust Albert Einstein?), but also that we no longer need to be afraid of inconsistencies. As the theory of parallel universes grows in popularity, it provides an interesting way to approach time travel and to envision different scenarios playing into the future. In The Jacket, the character played by Adrian Brody seems to be capable of transporting himself into the future, or perhaps, into a parallel universe, with only his brain as a catalyst. The drawer and the drugs are enablers (this also formed the basis for the excellent 1980 film Altered States), as is the fact that his brain structure has probably been rearranged by the wound shot he received during the war, but there is no external device that helps him achieve this. Only his mind. Is this far fetched? Perhaps a bit but that does not make it impossible. As i explained in my review of Jumper (2008) and of The Connectivity Hypothesis, there is plenty about the mind we do not know and have forgotten. Could the unlocking of various regions of our brains allow us to teleport ourselves or to time travel? After all, there is mounting evidence that ESP, telepathy, levitation, telekinesis and other supposedly ‘paranormal’ activities might in fact be the products of minds that have learned to reprogram or restructure themselves, or perhaps even more simply, to open themselves to long lost possibilities.

The Jacket has some good performances and an appealing cinematography. Directed by the artistically inclined John Maybury, the film is slow and deliberate, which, again, if one is not buying into the material, will make it seem arrogant and tedious. Shot in the cold snowy winters of Quebec and Scotland, the atmosphere is heavy and dreary and adds nicely to the feelings of madness and confusion experienced by the lead protagonist. A better than average film, the Jacket falls somewhere between the scary intensity of Jacob’s Ladder (1990), the intriguing modernity of Donnie Darko (2001) and the strong visuality of Stay (2005).

A couple of years ago, someone lent me Session 9 on DVD. I had never heard of Brad Anderson before and as such, wasn’t sure what to expect from the film. But it turned out to be one very scary, well crafted flick. It is therefore not surprising that The Machinist, just a few days after its release here in London, seems to already be establishing itself as a cult phenomenon.

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Flight Plan starts by pretending to be interesting, mysterious and psychologically challenging, only to quickly plummet into the banal, the boring and the unforgivably predictable.

The film noir transported to a present-day high school in Southern California.

Except that in this high school, only a few kids seem to occupy the premises, the principal strikes some unusual deals with the students, mothers offer glasses of milk to gang members and the high school itself and the grounds around it seem to exist somewhat out of time and out of space, a fake reality that plays with our senses, expectations and paradigms.

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Cypher is, surprisingly, not based on a Philip K. Dick short story. But Brian King, the writer, and Vincenzo Natali, who previously directed the intriguing Cube, must have clearly watched Total Recall, Paycheck and Blade Runner or read the stories they are based on and decided to explore the theme that was at the centre of Dick’s oeuvre: what is reality? The premise is clever, the film moves at a strong pace and the acting keeps it all believable, in spite of a bit of overindulgence towards the end.

Creepy at times, funny at others, The Tenant is hard film to pin down. It disturbs us a little, scares us occasionally, confuses us somewhat and even makes us laugh at times (perhaps, sadly, unintentionally). Such a combination is clearly not for everyone. And it is this combination that makes The Tenant a diluted and confused effort. Polanski’s own Repulsion is a far superior tale of madness and Rosemary’s Baby a great deal scarier.

This very pretentious film, based on a story by Stephen King, claims to explore the nature of evil through the relationship between a young man who is fascinated by the Holocaust and the ex SS officer he helps unmask. With the exception of Ian McKellen, who is at his usual best, the film has in fact very little to offer in terms of interesting psychological or sociological insights. Any serious attempt at investigating ‘what makes us do what we do’ is unfortunately quickly sacrificed in favor of a cheap, action-driven narrative that has the audacity to pretend that it can deal with such a serious and grave subject matter.

Believe it or not, i did enjoy Vanilla Sky. So to see Open your Eyes, the original Spanish film upon which the Cameron Crowe remake was based, proved quite an enjoyable experience. No Tom Cruise, no overbearing and dictative typical Cameron Crowe pop soundtrack, this original version feels truer, richer and deeper.

No wonder Park won the Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes 2004, a jury led by Tarantino. Oldboy is stylish, violent, cool, hip, and much better than Kill Bill (which shows what i thought of Kill Bill). But it is difficult for something that is cool and hip to endure and for its essence to break through that surface, if such essence did in fact exist. Oldboy was good fun, very well made fun, but that’s all it will be remembered for.

Dark and negative endings have never been Hollywood’s forte. The fact that The Manchurian Candidate has one does not make it automatically a good film. Despite its reputation, and despite the acting by Lansbury and some very interesting shots, the film is nevertheless fairly standard Hollywood fare with over-the-top characters and little regard for plausibility or realism.