Monthly Roundup – October 2017

31 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Action, Biopic, Chanel Cresswell, Comedy, Dean Devlin, Dean Israelite, Drama, Dutchboy, Edward H. Griffith, Fantasy, Gavin Boyter, Geostorm, Gerard Butler, International Space Station, Jack Lee, James Dunn, Jillian Bell, Jim Sturgess, Joan Collins, Joan Crawford, Josh Helman, Leslie Arliss, Louis J. Gasnier, Lucia Aniello, Michael Baumgarten, Miss Tulip Stays the Night, Murder, My Name Is Lenny, Mystery, No More Ladies, Power Rangers, Reviews, Robert Montgomery, Romance, Ron Scalpello, Rough Night, Scarlett Johansson, Sci-fi, Sparks and Embers, Sunset Murder Case, The Guest House, The Living Ghost, Turn the Key Softly, Weather satellites, William Beaudine, Yvonne Mitchell

Miss Tulip Stays the Night (1955) / D: Leslie Arliss / 68m

aka Dead by Morning

Cast: Diana Dors, Patrick Holt, Jack Hulbert, Cicely Courtneidge, A.E. Matthews, Joss Ambler

Rating: 6/10 – a crime writer (Holt) and his wife (Dors) discover that a weekend break in the country is no guarantee that murder won’t come calling to disturb them, and so it proves when the garrulous Miss Tulip (Courtneidge) is found dead in the cottage; an amiable if too leisurely paced murder mystery, Miss Tulip Stays the Night relies on hoodwinking the viewer from the start and keeping a vital piece of information all to itself until the end, but as a vehicle for Dors it isn’t quite as successful as may have been hoped originally, as the actress is too often sidelined in favour of having Holt attempting to solve the mystery before the police do.

Power Rangers (2017) / D: Dean Israelite / 124m

Cast: Dacre Montgomery, Naomi Scott, RJ Cyler, Ludi Lin, Becky G, Elizabeth Banks, Bryan Cranston, Bill Hader, David Denman

Rating: 4/10 – five teens discover the remains of a space ship buried in a hillside, and also find that they have been chosen to defend the Earth from an evil alien called Rita Repulsa (Banks), something that means wearing colourful outfits and playing with super powers; as if the likes of the Transformers or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises hadn’t already shown that there is a dwindling audience for this kind of thing, Power Rangers goes ahead and makes the same narrative mistakes as its confederates, and only makes a decent fist of things when it’s focusing on the inter-relationships of the teens, and not the frankly ridiculous storyline that needed four writers to work on it.

Sunset Murder Case (1938) / D: Louis J. Gasnier / 60m

aka High Explosive

Cast: Sally Rand, Esther Muir, Vince Barnett, Paul Sutton, Lona Andre, Mary Brodel, George Douglas, Reed Hadley, Kathryn Kane, Dennis Moore, Henry King

Rating: 4/10 – when her policeman father is murdered, a showgirl, Kathy O’Connor (Rand), decides to pose as a fan dancer at a nightclub in an effort to find out who killed him; Rand’s presence is the only interesting thing about this deadly dull drama that stops too often for musical interludes, and which seems to run longer than it actually does, making Sunset Murder Case a disappointing exercise that lacks for thrills and any kind of appeal that might make it look or sound better.

The Guest House (2012) / D: Michael Baumgarten / 82m

Cast: Ruth Reynolds, Madeline Merritt, Tom McCafferty, Jake Parker, Jennifer Barlow

Rating: 3/10 – wild child Rachel (Reynolds), stuck at home for the weekend after splitting up with her boyfriend, gets to know her father’s new employee, Amy (Merritt), when she comes to stay in the guest house…and not just as a friend; a low budget insult to any lesbians who happen to watch this farrago, The Guest House is ludicrous in the way it depicts lesbian lovemaking, and ludicrous in the way that writer/director Baumgarten could have ever thought that his script was even halfway adequate enough to make this worth watching – and that’s without the two terrible performances at the movie’s centre.

Sparks and Embers (2015) / D: Gavin Boyter / 88m

Cast: Kris Marshall, Annelise Hesme, Waleed Akhtar, Valda Aviks, Sean Baker, Len Trusty

Rating: 4/10 – five years after they met while stuck in a lift, Tom (Marshall) and Eloise (Hesme), meet up again just as she’s on the verge of leaving London to go off and marry another man, making this Tom’s last chance to win her back after their relationship has ended; a movie that wants so much to say something profound about love (but doesn’t know how to), Sparks and Embers wastes its two co-stars’ time, and the audience’s, on a story that lacks any kind of spark, and which sees the couple wandering along London’s South Bank, aimlessly back and forth, and oddly, at different times of the year, which is no mean feat when Tom has just forty-five minutes to persuade Eloise not to leave.

My Name Is Lenny (2017) / D: Ron Scalpello / 91m

Cast: Josh Helman, Michael Bisping, Chanel Cresswell, Charley Palmer Rothwell, Nick Moran, John Hurt, Rita Tushingham, Frankie Oatway, George Russo, Martin Askew, Jennifer Brooke

Rating: 4/10 – the story of British bare knuckle boxer Lenny McLean (Helman) as he tries to deal with the demons that still haunt him from his childhood, while also trying to keep his marriage from falling apart, and defeat main rival Roy Shaw (Bisping) – and all at the same time; a raucous, cheaply made biopic that has a good sense of the period it’s set in, My Name Is Lenny is undermined by Helman’s decision (supported no doubt by director Scalpello) to portray McLean as a constantly gurning nutjob with all the self-awareness of, well, someone who’s taken too many punches to the head, and a number of violent scenes that are there to make the movie more interesting (though only briefly) than it actually is.

The Living Ghost (1942) / D: William Beaudine / 61m

aka Lend Me Your Ear; A Walking Nightmare

Cast: James Dunn, Joan Woodbury, Paul McVey, Vera Gordon, Norman Willis, J. Farrell MacDonald, Minerva Urecal, George Eldredge, Jan Wiley, Edna Johnson

Rating: 5/10 – when a wealthy businessman disappears only to return in a semi-comatose state that no one can explain, ex-detective Nick Trayne (Dunn) is persuaded to investigate; eerie goings-on coupled with a lot of broad comedy makes The Living Ghost more entertaining than it has any right to be, particularly as the script flits from one ill-thought out idea to another, and the more than competent Dunn is left to carry the picture on his own, a situation that isn’t any good for him or the audience.

Turn the Key Softly (1953) / D: Jack Lee / 78m

Cast: Yvonne Mitchell, Terence Morgan, Joan Collins, Kathleen Harrison, Thora Hird, Dorothy Alison, Glyn Houston

Rating: 7/10 – three women – lovelorn Monica (Mitchell), selfish Stella (Collins), and good-natured Granny Quilliam (Harrison) – are released from prison on the same day, but though all three have plans to stay on the right side of the law, temptations put them all in jeopardy of landing right back where they started; a nimbly executed drama that poses some unexpected questions about the likelihood of prison being a place of reform, Turn the Key Softly benefits from the performances of Mitchell, Collins and Harrison, and by an assured use of London as a backdrop to the action.

No More Ladies (1935) / D: Edward H. Griffith / 80m

Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Charles Ruggles, Franchot Tone, Edna May Oliver, Gail Patrick, Reginald Denny, Vivienne Osborne, Joan Fontaine, Arthur Treacher

Rating: 5/10 – lovesick Marcia (Crawford) finally lands the man of her dreams, committed Lothario Sherry (Montgomery), only to find that being married hasn’t dampened his ardour for the company of other women; though the script is by Donald Ogden Stewart and Horace Jackson, neither man can make this turgid tale of jealousy and vengeful scheming as credible as it needs to be, and despite the best efforts of Crawford and Montgomery, it fails to impress, leaving only Ruggles and Oliver to elevate the material, and then merely by being present and on fine form.

Rough Night (2017) / D: Lucia Aniello / 101m

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon, Paul W. Downs, Ryan Cooper, Ty Burrell, Demi Moore

Rating: 6/10 – when five friends get together for a bachelorette party, they don’t plan on the male stripper they’ve hired ending up dead, or how difficult it will be to dispose of the body without anyone finding out; an uneasy mix of sweet-natured girl power and the kind of gross-out material that always makes for an equally uneasy combination, Rough Night features a great cast as the five friends (McKinnon is on good form as usual), but often leaves them stranded while the next set up is… set up, making this a comedy that relies on too much exposition to be truly effective, and which is only occasionally funny – though when it is, it is funny.

Geostorm (2017) / D: Dean Devlin / 109m

Cast: Gerard Butler, Jim Sturgess, Abbie Cornish, Andy Garcia, Ed Harris, Alexandra Maria Lara, Daniel Wu, Eugenio Derbez, Amr Waked, Adepero Oduye, Robert Sheehan, Talitha Eliana Bateman, Richard Schiff

Rating: 5/10 – when a satellite system (called Dutchboy) that controls the Earth’s weather starts to malfunction, causing all sorts of catastrophes, it’s up to warring brothers Jake (Butler) and Max Lawson (Sturgess) to save the day, and to uncover the person behind it all – which might just be the US President (Garcia); despite having a ton of sincerity poured all over it, Geostorm is still as silly and as earnestly po-faced as you’d expect, with Butler in full-on macho mode, Sturgess doing perpetual anguish, Cornish wondering if her career will survive this, and all in support of a number of disaster porn episodes that, frankly, have lost the ability to impress thanks to all the other disaster porn movies that have come before it (some of which writer/director Devlin will be all too familiar with).

A Family Man (2016)

25 Sunday Jun 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Alison Brie, ALL, Blackridge Recruiting, Chicago, Drama, Father/son relationship, Gerard Butler, Gretchen Mol, Headhunting, Mark Williams, Max Jenkins, Review, Willem Dafoe

Original title: The Headhunter’s Calling

D: Mark Williams / 108m

Cast: Gerard Butler, Gretchen Mol, Alison Brie, Anupam Kher, Max Jenkins, Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, Mimi Kuzyk, Dustin Milligan, Julia Butters, Dwain Murphy, Ethan MacIver Wright

Dane Jensen (Butler) is a tough, no-nonsense headhunter who uses a mixture of insider knowledge, sharp practice and carefully orchestrated bullying to get the sales figures he needs; everyone he successfully finds employment for earns his company, Blackridge Recruiting, a five-figure sum. His boss and mentor, Ed Blackridge (Dafoe), informs Dane and his main rival, Lynn Vogel (Brie), that he’s taking a step back from running the company, and his successor will depend on which one of them is the more successful in the forthcoming financial quarter. Dane is the better headhunter, and heading into the quarter has no doubts that he will take Ed’s place.

But while Ed is all-conquering at work, at home it’s a different matter. His wife Elise (Mol), would like Dane to be home more, as would his kids, Ryan (Jenkins), Lauren (Butters), and Nathan (Wright). But Dane is committed more to his work than he is to his family, and he continually makes excuses for getting home late and/or missing events in his children’s lives. The only promises he can’t seem to break or those that he makes to his clients, such as engineer Lou Wheeler (Molina). However, Dane’s outlook on life and his commitment to Blackridge begins to derail when Ryan is diagnosed with ALL (Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia). Faced with losing Ryan if his treatment fails, Dane spends more and more time with his son but to the detriment of the sales target he needs to reach to step into Ed’s position. As he struggles to come to terms with his son’s illness and his declining fortunes at work, Dane has to decide which is more important: his family, or providing for them.

If you decide to watch A Family Man, then be prepared to enter a world where lots of things happen that don’t happen in the real world. Now, of course, A Family Man isn’t based on a true story (not that it would matter), and it’s not a movie that’s set in a far-off fantasy world where dragons lurk over the next hillside, or wizards in pointy hats loiter in the local tavern. But its story does take place in an alternate reality, one that looks and feels just like the real world, but it’s also one that gives itself away from time to time as being wholly imaginary. It’s on these occasions that the movie, and Bill Dubuque’s saccharine-drenched screenplay, give the game away, and as a result, any suspension of disbelief disappears in an instant. And it’s a shame, as the movie didn’t need to be created in this fashion, and if the makers had excised all the otherworld trappings, then it might have stood a better chance than it does in its current form.

It’s a familiar story, told with a smattering of charm and a large amount of pontificating. Dane is the classic absent husband, too hooked up on the importance and the power he has at work to notice his home life slipping away from him. There’s always one more phone call to take, one more employer to call and cajole into taking on a client, one less occasion to spend with his wife and kids. He tries to justify his behaviour, his absenteeism, by spouting that he’s doing it for his family, as if they should be grateful that he’s becoming less and less of a presence in their lives. But the script isn’t satisfied with just having Dane dressed up in Hugo Boss and seeing life with blinkers on. He has conversations with Elise where he wonders about the bigger questions in life: is there more to everything than work (yes), how do you know if you’re happy (you just know), and why should it take forty minutes to ejaculate (ah, you’re too stressed?). It’s okay that Dane’s not just a lean, mean recruiting machine, but the script’s idea to make him seem more rounded as a character is laughable and obtuse.

But with the arrival of Ryan’s cancer, the movie abandons any attempt at investigating Dane’s interior life, and instead, takes us on a journey into the alternate reality already mentioned above. This is a world where a child’s desire to be an architect when they grow up leads to Dane and Ryan visiting five famous Chicago landmarks, and Dane being able to recite facts about each one with confidence and precision. Dane appears able to skip work whenever he needs to in order to make these trips, and the hospital where Ryan is being treated seems remarkably unconcerned about them (one of Ryan’s main symptoms is generalised weakness and fatigue; wouldn’t these trips be detrimental?). A phone call between Dane and Lou sees Lou try to act as Dane’s counsellor when he doesn’t even know him. And then there’s Ryan’s doctor, an oncologist (Kher), whose bedside manner includes kissing Ryan’s hand at one point (yeah, that probably happens all the time).

There are further examples as the movie grinds mercilessly towards the kind of sugar-coated resolution that is meant to extract copious amounts of tears from its audience, but which in reality (yes, the real reality), is likely to encourage groans and unforced laughter. It’s all topped off by an unlikely last-minute piece of character reversal that only happens in the movies, and which even the most forgiving of viewers will find ludicrous/ridiculous/silly (delete as appropriate). Through it all, Butler at least plays it straight, even when the absurdity of some scenes seems written in letters forty feet high, and he’s backed by Mol whose role as Elise is undermined by the character’s yo-yoing back and forth between castigating Dane and supporting him. Dafoe’s role is nothing more than a recurring cameo, Brie is wasted, Molina has perhaps the movie’s best moment – in a bathroom, and the rest of the cast orbit around Butler until told what to do. Directing for the first time, Williams lacks the necessary experience to overcome or iron out the script’s inherent problems, and there are too many times where his direction brings out the commonplace rather than anything that might raise the material above the level of acceptable.

Rating: 4/10 – adequately done, A Family Man won’t stick around in the memory, but while you’re watching it, it will make an impact, albeit an unfortunate one; laden with too many moments and scenes that are hellbent on manipulating its audience’s emotions, the movie has all the hallmarks of a glossy disease-of-the-week TV movie, but with a bigger budget, a better known cast, and more time to drag out its increasingly implausible narrative.

Gods of Egypt (2016)

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adventure, Alex Proyas, Brenton Thwaites, Drama, Egypt, Elodie Yung, Fantasy, Geoffrey Rush, Gerard Butler, Gods, Horus, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Osiris, Ra, Review, Set, Sphinx

D: Alex Proyas / 127m

Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Brenton Thwaites, Gerard Butler, Elodie Yung, Rufus Sewell, Chadwick Boseman, Courtney Eaton, Geoffrey Rush, Bryan Brown, Emma Booth

Gods of Egypt starts by reinventing Egyptian history. Overly sincere narration informs us that Osiris (Brown) ruled over the populous and bountiful Nile area, while his brother Set (Butler) was given dominion over the barren, desert areas at the far edges of Osiris’ kingdom. Time passes, until Osiris decides to abdicate his throne in favour of his son, Horus (Coster-Waldau). At the crowning ceremony, Set arrives and promptly kills Osiris, blinds Horus by taking out his eyes, and usurps the kingdom. He also sets about killing all the other gods and collecting their individual powers.

A year passes. Set has enslaved the people of Egypt and has put them to building monuments in his name, including one that reaches high into the sky, a tower so great that Ra (Rush), Set’s father, will be able to see it in his heavenly orbit. A slave girl, Zaya (Eaton), convinces her beloved, a thief called Bek (Thwaites), that only Horus can save everyone, but he will need his eyes back. Horus’ eyes are kept in Set’s vaults, and Zaya’s position in the home of master builder Urshu (Sewell) means that she has access to the vaults’ plans and can ensure that Bek avoids any booby traps in his search for the eyes. He retrieves one, but is unable to find the other. In their subsequent escape from Urshu’s home, Zaya is struck by an arrow and dies. Bek continues on to the home of Horus where he bargains for Zaya’s return from the land of the dead in exchange for Horus’ other eye. The god agrees to help him find it.

Naturally, Set becomes aware of what Horus is doing. He sends assassins, and even himself, to halt their journey to the Egyptian capital and the procurement of Horus’ other eye. But luck is on Bek and Horus’ side, and aided along the way by Hathor (Yung), the goddess of love, and Thoth (Boseman), the god of wisdom, they reach the capital and Horus does battle with Set. With Set having unleashed the world-devouring creature Apep, Horus and Bek must find Horus’ eye, and a way to defeat Set and save Egypt from complete annihilation.

Students of Egyptian history will be shaking their heads in dismay at such a (brief) description of the events that occur in Gods of Egypt. But if they were to actually sit down and watch the movie, that head shaking would quickly turn into uncontrolled apoplexy. As revisionist fantasies go, Gods of Egypt is tawdry stuff, and heavily reliant on spectacle provided by CGI and poor script decisions. The gods can transform into armoured, winged variations of themselves in order to do battle with one another, but this is nothing to the way in which the characters speak an awful mix of cod-literal pseudo-intellectual exposition, and apparently heartfelt twaddle. With deathless lines of dialogue such as “I don’t want to die, I want to live! I want to live down on earth, amongst the lands I have conquered!” (spoken by Set), it’s no wonder that the script, by Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless – who also co-wrote Dracula Untold (2014) and The Last Witch Hunter (2015), and whose next project is Power Rangers (2017) – contains enough wince-inducing moments to stun a sphinx.

Ostensibly an adventure story, the movie packs in the usual amount of over-the-top action setpieces that seem de rigeuer in modern fantasy movies, and in doing so, sacrifices credibility at every turn, and on certain occasions, any coherence it’s built up along the way (which isn’t much). Characters behave erratically, leaving the audience to wonder if Sazama and Sharpless assembled their final script from the scattered pages of previous drafts, and the journey Bek and Horus embark on seems to take in every possible physical environment – from desert to swamp to mountain – available to the screenwriters’ imagination. The movie is a big, sprawling epic, eager to please with each new bout of CGI-rendered spectacle, and yet it’s spectacularly hollow, a crowd-pleasing exercise that lacks subtlety, depth and narrative stability (which begs the question, just which kind of audience is it looking for?).

The cast are lost amid all the surface glamour and overbearing special effects. Coster-Waldau is particularly adrift, varying the level of his performance from scene to scene and never quite managing to find a through line for Horus that doesn’t smack of constantly changing improvisation. He also has trouble giving weight to his dialogue, making Horus sound plaintive and reticent rather than angry and defiant. Thwaites is stuck with the awkward task of motivating Horus and his fellow gods to take up against Set, and providing most of the movie’s humour. That he only succeeds intermittently shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as again the script doesn’t support him in either endeavour, and often leaves him hanging high and dry. And then there’s Butler, chewing the scenery with all the energy of an actor working out a contractual obligation and not caring how bad he is.

The rest of the cast struggle manfully to maintain a semblance of interest in their characters with only Yung and Boseman injecting any passion into their roles. They’re not helped by the absence of Proyas in the director’s chair. Anyone who’s seen The Crow (1994), Dark City (1998), and I, Robot (2004), will be wondering what’s happened to the idiosyncratic and daring director whose visual ingenuity and flair marked him out as a talent to watch out for. Here, Proyas’ talent is squandered in a maelstrom of pixels and perfunctory plotting that does his reputation no favours, and makes his previous movie, the nonsensical Knowing (2009), look like a masterpiece in comparison. Proyas isn’t connected with another project as yet, but let’s hope he finds one that’s worthy of his talent and commitment.

Rating: 4/10 – overcooked and belligerent in its approach, Gods of Egypt looks good but remains resolutely superficial from beginning to end; an adventure movie that goes through the motions and proves hard to engage with, it trades plausibility for spectacle at every turn, and is entirely forgettable.

London Has Fallen (2016)

04 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Aaron Eckhart, Action, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Angela Bassett, Babak Najafi, Drama, Funeral, Gerard Butler, Heads of state, Morgan Freeman, Revenge, Review, Sequel, Terrorism, Thriller

D: Babak Najafi / 99m

Cast: Gerard Butler, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Alon Moni Aboutboul, Robert Forster, Jackie Earle Haley, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Sean O’Bryan, Charlotte Riley, Colin Salmon, Waleed Zuaiter

Three years have passed since the events of Olympus Has Fallen. Benjamin Asher (Eckhart) is in his second term of office as the US President, and Mike Banning (Butler) is still his most trusted Secret Service agent. Mike and his wife, Leah (Mitchell), are expecting their first child, and this newly approaching responsibility has prompted Mike to consider resigning from the Secret Service. But before he can make a final decision, the unexpected death of the British Prime Minister means a state funeral and the attendance of around forty heads of state from around the globe, including Asher.

In London, their arrival at the funeral triggers a series of terrorist attacks on some of the various heads of state: a barge explosion on the Thames that kills the French President, bombs going off at either end of Chelsea Bridge where the Japanese Prime Minister is held up in traffic, a further explosion at the Houses of Parliament where the Italian Prime Minister is canoodling with his latest girlfriend, and gunfire outside Buckingham Palace where the German Chancellor is mowed down. A firefight between the Secret Service and heavily armed terrorists ends with Asher, Banning, and Secret Service director Lynne Jacobs (Bassett) escaping by car and then by helicopter. But soon their helicopter is shot down, and Asher and Banning have to find safety before they’re found by the terrorists.

They find temporary sanctuary at an MI6 safe house, along the way learning that the main target of the attacks is Asher himself, and that he’s wanted alive so that he can be executed, live on the Net, for everyone in the world to see. At the safe house they also discover the reason why: two years before, Asher ordered a drone strike on a notorious arms dealer, Aamir Barkawi (Aboutboul). Barkawi survived, as did his son Kamran (Zuaiter), but his daughter was killed in the blast. This is his revenge. Aided by MI6 agent Jacquelin Marshall (Riley), Asher and Banning also discover that someone is aiding Barkawi by providing access to the British security systems.

With the safe house compromised, Asher and Banning escape but they’re ambushed, and Asher is taken. Banning learns the terrorists’ location at the same time the US and British security services do, and together with an SAS unit, he makes a last ditch effort to rescue Asher and put an end to Barkawi’s plan.

Olympus Has Fallen was a surprising success back in 2013, a thick-eared, jingoistic action movie that took its premise seriously and wasn’t afraid of being occasionally brutal and uncompromising (Banning’s interrogation technique). That it was also hugely absurd and as dumb as a bag of nails didn’t seem to hurt its performance at the box office, and it was helped immensely by Butler’s no-nonsense attitude in the role of Banning. Here he’s similarly resolute, only cracking a smile when discussing being a parent, or delivering occasional wisecracks as and when the script requires him to. And the rest of the returning cast all retain that poker-faced sincerity, pulling horrified faces when needed and looking shocked the rest of the time (except for Freeman, who remains passive pretty much throughout).

The narrative is predicatably inane, the kind of illogical mix of coincidence and haphazard plotting that sees perfectly orchestrated attacks occur in a matter of minutes, but which would have had to rely on the alignment of too many variables to ever work in reality (and yes, of course this isn’t reality, it’s escapism, but even escapism can keep a foothold in the real world). There’s a degree of fun to be had in seeing so many iconic London landmarks blown up or strafed by bullets or suffering incidental damage due to car chases, but it’s all strangely unimpressive. The first movie was made for $70m, but this time round it feels as if the budget was lower, and as a result, the CGI employed looks rougher and less convincing. And the action sequences have that speeded-up, over-edited approach that makes everything happen in a blur, and robs them of any impact.

London Has Fallen crams a lot into its relatively short running time, but most of it is to little effect. Once London has “fallen” the movie doesn’t really know what to do, and resorts to having Asher and Banning running around and killing bad guys at every turn. Barkawi is a better villain than Olympus‘s Korean antagonist, his personal vendetta a better reason for events than any political ideology, but his son Kamran is soon reduced from being his sister’s avenger to just another thug spouting anti-Western sentiments. Back home, Leah’s expecting a baby is meant to show that Banning isn’t all dour looks and grim forebodings (at one point he even suggests their baby has a Kevlar mattress), but with no likelihood of any threat being aimed in their direction, and with Banning being practically indestructible, all talk of his getting back safely to be a dad is redundant. And the subplot involving the mole? You’ll know who it is the moment they appear on screen.

The change of location means a further devaluing of the premise, as the series charges around London (and Romania) with all the subtlety of a Pamplona bull, and the city’s iconic landscape gives way to a series of nondescript back alleys and buildings that have all the character of slum dwellings. You can see the movie getting cheaper and cheaper as it progresses, and by the end you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a DTV movie made entirely in Romania (something with Steven Seagal in it perhaps). And the freshness and creativity of the first movie’s action scenes is abandoned in favour of an abundance of hallway shootouts where Banning seeks cover behind every available nook and cranny, while the bad guys stand out in the open so they can be more easily despatched.

Replacing Frederik Bond in the director’s chair, Najafi makes a half-decent fist of things, but he doesn’t bring anything memorable or enticing to the movie, shooting it in a flat, perfunctory way that keeps things from getting too exciting or involving. But with a script that never tries to be anything more than simplistic or pedestrian, Najafi was unlikely to be able to elevate the material, and the result is a movie that stalls far too often on its way to its inevitably dreary conclusion. Scenes rarely connect one to the next, and the movie’s one attempt at tragedy is ruined by the predictable outcome attached to the phrase, “Yes, I’ll be a godmother”.

If there is to be a third movie – and it’s possible, Asher still has two years in office to see out – then it’s to be hoped that a better story can be found than this one to suit the needs of the series. Butler continues to be the main draw, dishing out punishment with a viciousness that few action heroes indulge in, and he also dishes out a handful of one liners with the appropriate acknowledgment of how corny/risible/absurd they are in the given circumstances. Eckhart has only to keep up and get punched repeatedly when captured, while Freeman dons his Mantle of Gravitas with all the enthusiasm of an actor given nothing to do that’s different from before. Forster, Leo, O’Bryan and Haley all get occasional lines of dialogue, and the British contingent, led by Salmon as a befuddled Chief Inspector(!), has its ineptitude made plain until Riley’s appearance as a smart, methodical, and cynical MI6 agent.

As action sequels go, London Has Fallen isn’t going to set the box office alight, and it isn’t going to impress many viewers with its uninspired plotting, featherweight storylines and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it direction from Najafi. With most of its final forty minutes shot at night, it’s also one of the murkiest, most visually unrewarding movies made in recent years, and by the time Butler as Banning is making googly-eyes at his son, audiences will have been moved to lethargy. All of which makes the final shot, where Banning decides whether or not to resign, one that carries a tremendous amount of hope with it – and not that he stays in the service.

Rating: 5/10 – not so bad that it should be avoided, and not so good that it should be applauded, London Has Fallen sets its stall out early on and doesn’t deviate from its intention of being as thick-eared as its predecessor; laughable in places – especially to anyone who lives in London – but determined to ignore how absurd it is, the movie lumbers through the motions and never shows any sign that it wants to be any better than it is.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014)

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alpha dragon, Animation, Berk, Cate Blanchett, Dean DeBlois, Drago Bloodfist, Dragons, Gerard Butler, Hiccup, Jay Baruchel, Sequel, Toothless

D:Dean DeBlois / 102m

Cast: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, Kristen Wiig, Djimon Hounsou, Kit Harington

Five years after the events of the first movie, the villagers of Berk are now co-existing peacefully with dragons. While everyone has settled into this new arrangement, Hiccup (Baruchel) is still as restless and inquisitive about the world as he’s always been. While out one day mapping new lands with his dragon Toothless, Hiccup is joined by Astrid (Ferrera) and together they encounter a dragon trapper named Eret (Harington). He tries to capture the two dragons but Hiccup and Astrid escape; they also learn that Eret is trapping dragons for Drago Bloodfist (Hounsou) who is building an army of them in order to conquer the surrounding lands. Returning to Berk, Hiccup tells his father, Stoick (Butler), about Drago. Stoick adopts a siege mentality, telling Hiccup they must prepare for the worst, for Drago is not a man who can be reasoned with. Hiccup doesn’t believe this, and with Astrid, goes off to find Eret, where they promptly surrender in an attempt to be taken to Drago. However, Stoick, village blacksmith Gobber (Ferguson) and Hiccup and Astrid’s friends find and rescue them.

Hiccup and Toothless carry on with their search for Drago but are surprised by the appearance of a masked dragon rider, who captures them with ease. The rider is revealed to be Hiccup’s mother, Valka (Blanchett). She went missing twenty years before when Hiccup was a baby, and has been saving dragons the whole time, learning about them and keeping them safe in an island haven created out of ice by a giant, alpha dragon. As mother and son reunite, Stoick tracks Hiccup to the island, while Astrid and friends abduct Eret and get him to take them to where Drago is readying his army of men and dragons, but they are captured and Drago learns of Berk and its dragons. Stoick and Valka are reunited, but soon Drago attacks the island. Valka and her dragons put up a strong resistance, but Drago has an ace up his sleeve: another alpha dragon that challenges and defeats Valka’s. With Drago’s alpha dragon able to control all the other dragons, including Toothless, Drago moves on to Berk.

Expanding on the original movie’s themes of tolerance and understanding, How to Train Your Dragon 2 once again reveals that the biggest threat in a world full of dragons is Man himself. With Berk now a harmonious place where dragons are part and parcel of daily life, Hiccup’s search for new lands and new experiences is a neat reflection on the movie itself, a way for the series – part three is due in 2016 – to beef up the drama and bring the wider world and all its complications back to Berk. By broadening the movie’s horizons, the storyline attempts to become richer and attain a greater depth, and in doing so, rewards the audience at (almost) every turn. The introduction of two new protagonists, Valka and Drago, stops the movie from being a retread of the first movie, and allows How to Train Your Dragon 2 to work as a movie in its own right, while at the same time, pointing the way to a greater, three-movie story arc that has yet to play out fully. With the reintroduction of Stoick, Gobber, Astrid, Snotlout (Hill) et al – old friends all of them – the mix of the familiar and the new is a (mostly) winning formula.

Of the two new characters, Valka is the more fascinating, an absentee mother who has greater empathy with dragons than with her son or husband. Her abandonment of Hiccup when he is merely a baby is one of the movie’s more surprising scenes, a moment when a mother’s love for her son is outweighed by her horror at the injustice she sees happening around her. With this back story fleshed out, the stage is set for some familial conflict, but writer/director DeBlois avoids any emotional confrontations, and instead opts for a reconciliation between Valka, Stoick and Hiccup that tugs very, very effectively at the heartstrings but fails to elevate the drama inherent in such a situation. (With Valka’s past behaviour all forgiven in an instant, the viewer could also be forgiven for wondering why her absence was so important in the first place.) In comparison, Drago is the more straightforward character, but carelessly so, his thirst for power so poorly referenced and explained that he becomes just another necessary tyrant for the hero to overcome, an almost stock villain complete with obligatory sneer and sharply angled features. What could have been an interesting connection – Drago lost an arm to a dragon, Hiccup his foot – is brushed over as soon as it’s revealed, and even in the face of overwhelming evidence of the good that can come from a symbiotic relationship with dragons, maintains his conquering mindset. It’s all too convenient, poor motivation that preserves the threat he represents, and the need for a large-scale, crowd-pleasing climax.

There’s a lot of rushing in the movie, a hurrying to get to the next scene, the next big animated showpiece, that stops How to Train Your Dragon 2 from being entirely successful. There is one event that is so unexpected, and so dramatically effective that its subsequent glossing over is close to unforgivable – it would also have made for a better ending to the movie, as well as providing Part 3 with a strong opening. It should have a lasting effect on several of the characters but instead is shunted aside in favour of the aforementioned climax (which ends the movie predictably and with a complete lack of resonance, despite Hiccup’s upbeat voice over).

In spite of all this, the movie is on the whole, an absolute joy to watch, the animation often breathtaking, and the warmth it carries over from the first movie working completely in its favour. It’s good to see Hiccup and his friends so credibly older, their teenage years now left behind and their adult lives just beginning. The animators have aged them well, and it’s a pleasure to be reacquainted with them. The relationship between Hiccup and Toothless is as moving as before, and so too is his emerging romance with Astrid: it’s gently done and handled with great affection. Their friends all get their chance in the limelight, particularly Ruffnut (Wiig) who develops a major crush on the unfortunate Eret, and there’s sterling work from the sheep. Back on composing duties, John Powell provides an emotionally rousing score that complements the material with assured ease, and in the director’s chair, DeBlois proves more than capable of helming a movie on his own, showing a flair for, and an understanding of, the material that bodes well for Part 3 (providing he gets someone to co-write the script with him).

Rating: 8/10 – missed opportunities aside, what’s on screen is bigger, bolder, and in places, more beautifully rendered than in the first movie; funny as well – and in all the right places – How to Train Your Dragon 2 may disappoint some younger viewers with its more adult themes, but this is animation of often stunning quality and with a top-notch cast who all know exactly what they’re doing.