We’re on holiday this week, staying on and around a houseboat parked near and about London. Unfortunately the themes that tie this weeks films together are Michael Crichton and misdirected attempts at feminism, which hasn’t got much to do with boats. The only thing I have, is that boats are all she/her and container ships are the ultimate global beasts of burden, carrying every nut, bot and iPhone from far off origin to port of call. That feels like some kinda feminist thought, some analogy for womens burden, filling in the gap between that and a movie where Tom Selleck shoots a toaster is an exercise for the reader. Answers on a separate sheet, make sure you show your working.

This exploration of Crichtonianism was sparked by The First Great Train Robbery being the first option my girlfriend found on BBC iPlayer that looked half ok. Crichton directs Connery in a 1978 heist ‘Romp’ adapted from his own book. The film is a period piece in more ways than one, Sean Connery is trying to rob a train, Donald Sutherland is trying to help him, Lesley-Anne Down is sexy. Everyone is in their lane, with Down severely underutilised; her role being to distract the worlds horniest mark, by being sexy around him. This, along with the rest of the film, feels extremely dated. It feels like a movie made by a British director in the 1950’s, while it has some elements of 70’s design and thinks it’s little risqué, it’s mainly top hat and tails London, sleazy and stilted. I wanted more from it, all the elements are available to do something interesting. There’s a promising sequence with Connery crawling along the roof of a moving train, but it comes so late and I was mainly checked out. It was exciting in theory, but as with everything else the pacing was glacial. I don’t know how you make such a feat boring. I generally don’t know how you take Sutherland, Connery and this premise and not make much of anything from it. Crichton is preoccupied with the mechanics of the plot, so the comedy isn’t given any priority, there’s no caper, no romping, no soul.

Coma, our next Crichton, has a brief moment of perfect imagery. Unconscious bodies hang from the ceiling, tubes, IV lines and various monitoring equipment snaking into and out of them. They look something between clouds and an art instillation, dead in all the important ways, but kept supported physically and medically by the structures around them. It’s really quite a striking moment, it’s all over the films promotional materials, it’s the image I’ll use at the top of this post, but to do so is a lie. This fleeting perfection is barely used, this storage facility sequence being at the end of a film that’s mostly full of muddled gender politics. Geneviève Bujold and Michael Douglas are junior doctors, the film’s about the former, but we’ll return at the end to Douglas. Bujold’s friend ends up in a coma after routine surgery, her investigation into a rash of similar cases in the hospital is stifled by her male peers and more senior doctors. But are they sexist pigs or are they hiding something? predictably they’re mostly both, with Bujold’s perceived feminine fragility used to ‘manipulate’ Douglas into betraying and disbelieving her. After the big reveal, the good bit with the suspension play, Douglas eventually relents, believes Bujold and saves her life. It’s a tacked on sequence, where she’s suddenly helpless, the feminist ideals of the movie are thrown out as medical waste and masculinity saves the day. Crichton is a medical doctor, he directed this and adapted it from a book by another doctor, so it’s two white men vs Geneviève Bujold, the entrenched establishment trying to tell us that things have to change, that sexism is bad. But don’t get too uppity, they’ll let you wear the coat and stethoscope, but cisheteronormality will be restored at the end. All must contrive to have a dashing Michael Douglas save his damsel.

The next night we watched a (the?) good Michael Crichton directorial project, Westworld. It’s a film of great imagery and big ideas and kinda not so much else. It’s peak Crichtonianism, there’s Science, Technology, a kinda unexplored human weakness/fragility that would have been interesting to get into, and Hubris. I always remember this film as more than it is, with a bigger plot and more cool robot effects, but honestly it’s just fun to watch. It has weaknesses in pacing, problems with not emotionally relating to the robots (or the people) and lacks a satisfying conclusion. But I think it gets past all that by being kinda sinister and scary, it’s got early elements of the anticorporatism that has defined a lot of my favourite films. The construction materials Crichton leaves lying around, the loose threads and spare ideas have made wonderful things, so many films’ roots lie in this movie. I like it and I think more people should have seen it. I do think the TV show is better (for 2 seasons, maybe even 3) but that’s another question.

The last Crichton this week is Runaway and it’s the Tom Selleck vs toasters as previously referenced. Selleck is a cop on the Runaway squad, he goes about switching off robots that have malfunctioned, his only weakness? vertigo. You’d think that wouldn’t come up or be an impediment for him working, like, a regular normal police job, but it’s a movie; it comes up all the time and him defeating his fear lets him end the baddies reign of terror, I’m sure you’re surprised. Said baddie is played by Gene Simmons from Kiss, which I didn’t actually notice until checking the cast. Gene Simmon’s first acting role being invisible but in an entirely forgettable way, probably wasn’t what he was going for. You could replace him with any middle of the road actor doing a passible performance and you wouldn’t notice, the shock is just how insipid that is, it’s worthy for non-worthiness.

I really can’t get over how terrible the robots in this film look, with Selleck running in to destroy one which has gotten hold of a gun, but otherwise looks like a large microwave with wheels and mechanical arm. It’s a rebuttle to Bladerunner from the files of Police Squad, it’s Mel Brooks doing Westworld. It’s treated with all the sweat-dripping-from-the-walls seriousness of a police thriller, there’s a killer on the loose and he’s using robots with arms made from vacuum cleaner hose to do his crimes. There’s also a smart gun that’s coded to your thermal signature which is kinda cool, the film’s full of ideas that fit right into the ‘amazing (bad) cyberpunk TV shows shot in Canada’ genre which I’m always here for. The best bit is when Gene Simmons attacks Tom Selleck’s cyber wife and she dies in his arms. She’s made of black plastic and about the size of a large hi-fi system (wife-fi system?), yet conveys more feeling and emotion than all of the human cast. It’s a Futurama bit, I loved it. Again, there’s mixed feminism in this film, like a misplaced forgotten subplot. Selleck’s partner, played by Cynthia Rhodes, starts as a Runaway Squad rookie but quickly becomes just a romantic interest. Everyone wants her and Selleck together, even the cyber wife, Rhodes is gradually stripped of agency, loosing her uniform for a dress and ending up little more than arm candy.

I think Crichton intellectually understands feminism, but it isn’t in his bones, maybe he thinks he actually believes it. Coma comes close to making a point, Crichton fought for the main character to remain a woman, but Michael Douglas is the larger star and still ends up saving the day and getting the girl. His other female characters seem so throwaway, so disposable, often they’re only women because he supposes he should have one in the film. I don’t like it and I don’t like how that’s where much of the art I enjoy comes from. I love how the TV show Westworld explores gender and sex worker politics, but I hate how the film is so lacking in that regard. I’m at odds with myself here, I can watch and enjoy without that context in mind, but do feel a little guilty when I think more in depth about it. The Crichton left for us to make sandcastles from isn’t worthless but we still have to check it for glass.

We now step away from Crichton and to my recommendation, Tim’s Vermeer. On the surface and in theory, the film is an exploration of optical methods that Vermeer might have used to help him paint. But the real story is about Tim Jenison, an inventor and full-time hobbiest who took some controversial ideas from the art world and ran with them. A man with the scruffy distracted demeanour of a history professor, who is fundamentally likeable and only tangentially aware of his eccentricity. The culmination of his theory is him building a 1:1 recreation of Vermeer’s studio, then, using a hand ground lens, shaving mirror and some other accruements, spending a year making a beautiful and near perfect recreation of Vermeer’s The Music Lesson, the titular Tim’s Vermeer. Tim thinks of Vermeer as a human camera, but never belittles his achievements, he looks at the entire thing from 90° off axis, he sees himself in the past, bemoaning how science and art have drifted apart in the present. His connection with art is somehow deeper by being less educated. He is empirically and spiritually impressed by Vermeer, it’s very charming.

At time of release many art critics took to their columns to write scathing reviews of Tim’s process, calling him charlatan, failure. But in this they prove Tim right, they are incapable of seeing something as a technological and creative achievement. It’s almost ironic that art critics get so caught up in mystique and obsessed with prestige, that they daren’t see any engineering or technology behind it. They’re the ones meant to be able to differentiate after all. But it seems when they look behind the curtain all they want to find is more curtain. I don’t think this film was for the art snobs, much like the painting and the process, it was made for Tim. It’s a document of personal achievement. Watching it you get just a little insight into someone’s passion, a taste of Tim’s fervour and sleepless nights spent thinking. I like that a lot, seeing the things people make and do for themselves. There need be no other reason for it, besides the passion of it all.