Monthly Roundup – March 2018

31 Saturday Mar 2018

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5 Headed Shark Attack, Action, Adventure, Airport, Al Capone, Alex Hannant, All the Money in the World, And Then Came Lola, Animation, Anthony Bushell, Archery, Ashleigh Sumner, Barack Obama, Biography, Bob Logan, Braven, Brian Keith, Cenobites, Charlie Bean, Chokeslam, Chris Bruno, Chris Marquette, Christopher Plummer, Comedy, Crime, Damon Carney, Dave Franco, David Bruckner, Deepika Kumari, Documentary, Drama, Dwayne Johnson, Ellen Seidler, Elsa Lanchester, Fantasy, Father/son relationships, Film noir, Foreign policy, Gangster Land, Garret Dillahunt, Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Ghosts, Greg Barker, Hellraiser: Judgment, Heritage Falls, High school reunion, Hiking trip, Horror, Hugh Grant, India, Jackie Chan, Jake Kasdan, Japan, Jason Momoa, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Kevin Hart, Kidnapping, Ladies First, LGBTQ+, Lilli Palmer, Lin Oeding, Logan Huffman, Luke Rivett, Matt Jones, Megan Siler, Michael Barrett, Michelle Williams, Monster, Murder, Nico De Leon, Oasis, Paddington 2, Passport to Destiny, Paul Fisher, Paul King, Puerto Rico, Rafe Spall, Ray McCarey, Ready Player One, Reginald Beck, Relationships, Reviews, Rex Harrison, Ridley Scott, Robert Cuffley, Sci-fi, Sean Faris, Sequel, Shea Sizemore, Something Real and Good, Steven Spielberg, Sweden, SyFy, The Forest, The LEGO Ninjago Movie, The Long Dark Hall, The Ritual, Thriller, Timothy Woodward Jr, Tye Sheridan, Uraaz Bahi, Video game, Virtual reality, World War II, Wrestling

The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017) / D: Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher, Bob Logan / 101m

Cast: Jackie Chan, Dave Franco, Justin Theroux, Fred Armisen, Kumail Nanjiani, Michael Peña, Abbi Jacobson, Zach Woods, Olivia Munn

Rating: 6/10 – when you’re the despised son (Franco) of an evil warlord (Theroux), there’s only one thing you can do: vow to defeat him with the aid of your ninja friends; after a superhero mash-up and a solo Batman outing, The LEGO Ninjago Movie brings us ninjas, but in the process forgets to provide viewers with much in the way of story, though the visual innovation is still there, as is (mostly) the humour, making this something that is only just more of a hit than a miss.

Braven (2018) / D: Lin Oeding / 94m

Cast: Jason Momoa, Garret Dillahunt, Stephen Lang, Jill Wagner, Zahn McClarnon, Brendan Fletcher, Sala Baker, Teach Grant, Sasha Rossof

Rating: 4/10 – a trip for Joe Braven (Momoa) and his father (Lang) to their family cabin located in the Canadian wilderness sees them fighting for their lives when drug runners come to claim a shipment that has been hidden in the cabin; an unsophisticated action thriller, Braven has an earnestness to it that sees it through some of its more absurdist moments, but its Nineties vibe works against it too often for comfort, and despite the occasional effort, Dillahunt remains an unconvincing villain.

Passport to Destiny (1944) / D: Ray McCarey / 61m

Cast: Elsa Lanchester, Gordon Oliver, Lenore Aubert, Lionel Royce, Fritz Feld, Joseph Vitale, Gavin Muir, Lloyd Corrigan

Rating: 6/10 – in World War II, a cleaning woman, Ella Muggins (Lanchester), who believes herself to be protected from harm thanks to a magical glass eye, determines to travel to Berlin and kill Hitler; a whimsical comic fantasy that somehow manages to have its heroine save a German officer (Oliver) and his girlfriend, Passport to Destiny is an uneven yet enjoyable product of its time, with a terrific central performance by Lanchester, and a winning sense of its own absurdity.

Hellraiser: Judgment (2018) / D: Gary J. Tunnicliffe / 81m

Cast: Damon Carney, Randy Wayne, Alexandra Harris, Paul T. Taylor, Gary J. Tunnicliffe, Helena Grace Donald, Heather Langenkamp

Rating: 3/10 – the hunt for a serial killer finds its lead detective (Carney) coming face to face with the Cenobites – still led by Pinhead (Taylor) – but the solution to the case isn’t as obvious as it seems; the tenth movie in the series, Hellraiser: Judgment at least tries to offer something new in terms of the Cenobites’ involvement, but in the end it can’t escape the fact that Pinhead et al are no longer frightening, the franchise’s penchant for sado-masochistic violence has lost any impact it may once have had, and as with every entry since Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), it fails to introduce one single character for the viewer to care about.

The Final Year (2017) / D: Greg Barker / 89m

With: Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, John Kerry, Barack Obama

Rating: 7/10 – a look at the final year of Barack Obama’s second term as President of the United States focuses on his foreign policy team and their diplomatic efforts on the global stage; featuring contributions from some of the key players, The Final Year is an interesting if not fully realised documentary that never asks (or finds an answer for) the fundamental question of why Obama’s administration chose to concentrate so much on foreign policy in its last days, something that keeps all the good work that was achieved somewhat in isolation from the viewer.

And Then Came Lola (2009) / D: Ellen Seidler, Megan Siler / 71m

Cast: Ashleigh Sumner, Jill Bennett, Cathy DeBuono, Jessica Graham, Angelyna Martinez, Candy Tolentino, Linda Ignazi

Rating: 4/10 – in a series of Groundhog Day-style episodes, the undisciplined Lola (Sumner) is required to rush a set of photographs to her interior designer girlfriend, Casey (Bennett), so she can seal the deal at a job interview – but she has varying degrees of success; an LGBTQ+ comedy that stops the action every so often to allow its female cast to make out with each other, And Then Came Lola doesn’t put enough spins on its central conceit, and doesn’t make you care enough if Lola comes through or not.

The Ritual (2017) / D: David Bruckner / 94m

Cast: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton, Paul Reid, Maria Erwolter

Rating: 7/10 – following the tragic death of one of their friends, four men embark on a memorial hiking trip in Sweden, but when one of them is injured, taking a short cut through a forest puts all their lives in jeopardy; a creature feature with a nasty edge to it and above average performances for a horror movie, The Ritual employs mystery as well as terror as it creates a growing sense of dread before it runs out of narrative steam and tries to give its monster a back story that brings the tension up short and leads to a not entirely credible denouement.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) / D: Jake Kasdan / 119m

Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, Rhys Darby, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Jonas, Alex Wolff, Ser’Darius Blain, Madison Iseman, Morgan Turner

Rating: 7/10 – four teenagers find themselves transported into a video game called Jumanji, where, transformed into avatars, they are charged with thwarting the dastardly plans of the game’s chief villain (Cannavale); a reboot more than a sequel, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle has the benefit of well-drawn, likeable characters, winning performances from Johnson, Hart, Black and Gillan, and confident direction from Kasdan, all things that serve to distract from the uninspired game levels and the predictable nature of its main storyline.

Paddington 2 (2017) / D: Paul King / 103m

Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Ben Whishaw, Hugh Grant, Brendan Gleeson, Julie Walters, Jim Broadbent, Peter Capaldi, Imelda Staunton, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Ben Miller, Jessica Hynes, Noah Taylor, Joanna Lumley

Rating: 9/10 – the theft of a unique pop-up book sees Paddington (Whishaw) end up in jail while the Brown family do their best to track down the real thief, Phoenix Buchanan (Grant); an absolute joy, Paddington 2 is just so unexpectedly good that even just thinking about it is likely to put a smile on your face, something that’s all too rare these days, and which is thanks to an inspired script by director King and Simon Farnaby, terrific performances from all concerned, and buckets of perfectly judged humour.

Gangster Land (2017) / D: Timothy Woodward Jr / 113m

Original title: In the Absence of Good Men

Cast: Sean Faris, Milo Gibson, Jason Patric, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Peter Facinelli, Mark Rolston, Michael Paré

Rating: 4/10 – the rise of boxer Jack McGurn (Faris) from potential champion to right-hand man to Al Capone (Gibson), and his involvement in Capone’s feud with ‘Bugs’ Moran (Facinelli); a biopic that’s hampered by lacklustre performances and a leaden script, Gangster Land wants to be thought of as classy but budgetary constraints mean otherwise, and Woodward Jr’s direction doesn’t inject many scenes with the necessary energy to maintain the viewer’s interest, something that leaves the movie feeling moribund for long stretches.

Pitch Perfect 3 (2017) / D: Trish Sie / 93m

Cast: Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow, Anna Camp, Hailee Steinfeld, John Lithgow, Ruby Rose, Matt Lanter, Elizabeth Banks, John Michael Higgins, DJ Khaled

Rating: 4/10 – the Borden Bellas are back for one last reunion before they all go their separate ways, taking part in a European tour and competing for the chance to open for DJ Khaled; a threequel that adds nothing new to the mix (even if you include Lithgow as Wilson’s scoundrel father), and which is as empty-headed as you’d expect, Pitch Perfect 3 isn’t even well thought out enough to justify its existence and trades on old glories in the hope that the audience won’t notice that’s what they are.

Something Real and Good (2013) / D: Luke Rivett / 81m

Cast: Matt Jones, Alex Hannant, Colton Castaneda, Marla Stone

Rating: 4/10 – he (Jones) meets her (Hannant) in an airport lounge, and over the next twenty-four hours, get to know each other, flirt, have fun, and stay in a hotel together due to their flight being cancelled; the slightness of the story – boy meets girl, they talk and talk and talk and talk – is further undermined by the cod-philosophising and trite observations on life and relationships that they come out with, leaving Something Real and Good as a title that’s a little over-optimistic, though if it achieves anything, it’ll be to stop people from striking up random conversations with strangers in airports – and that’s now a good thing.

Ladies First (2017) / D: Uraaz Bahi / 39m

With: Deepika Kumari, Geeta Devi, Shiv Narayan Mahto, Dharmendra Tiwari

Rating: 8/10 – the story of Deepika Kumari, at one time the number one archer in the world, and her efforts to obtain Olympic gold in 2012 and 2016; a sobering documentary that for a while feels like it’s going to be a standard tale of triumph over adversity (here, relating to Indian culture and gender equality), Ladies First offers a much deeper examination of success and failure than might be expected, and shows that in India, as in many other countries, there are precious few opportunities for women to be anything more than wives and mothers.

Heritage Falls (2016) / D: Shea Sizemore / 88m

Cast: David Keith, Coby Ryan McLaughlin, Keean Johnson, Sydney Penny, Nancy Stafford, Devon Ogden

Rating: 4/10 – three generations of males head off for a bonding weekend designed to overcome the divisions that are keeping them distant or apart from each other; a mixed bag of drama and lightweight comedy, Heritage Falls wants to say something sincere and relevant about father-son relationships, but falls way short in its ambitions thanks to a script that can’t provide even one of its protagonists with a convincing argument for their position, a bland visual style, and even blander direction from Sizemore, making this a turgid exercise in emotional dysfunction.

The Long Dark Hall (1951) / D: Anthony Bushell, Reginald Beck / 86m

Cast: Rex Harrison, Lilli Palmer, Denis O’Dea, Reginald Huntley, Anthony Dawson, Brenda de Banzie, Eric Pohlmann

Rating: 7/10 – when an actress is murdered in the room she rents, suspicion falls on her lover, married man Arthur Groome (Harrison), but even though he goes on trial at the Old Bailey, his wife, Mary (Palmer), stands by him; an early UK attempt at film noir, The Long Dark Hall has its fair share of tension, particularly in a scene at the Groome home where Mary is alone with the real killer (Dawson), but Harrison doesn’t seem fully committed (it wasn’t one of his favourite projects), and the screenplay lurches too often into uncomfortable melodrama, though overall this has an air of fatalism that keeps it intriguing for viewers who are used to their crime thrillers being a little more straightforward.

Ready Player One (2018) / D: Steven Spielberg / 140m

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T.J. Miller, Simon Pegg, Mark Rylance, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen

Rating: 7/10 – in 2045, people have become obsessed with a virtual reality game called Oasis where anything can happen, but when its creator (Rylance) reveals there’s a hidden prize within the game, one that will give overall control of the game and its licence to the winner, it’s up to a small group of gamers led by Parzifal (Sheridan) to stop a rival corporation from winning; an elaborate sci-fi fantasy that provides a nostalgia overload for fans of Eighties pop culture in particular, Ready Player One has plenty of visual pizzazz, but soon runs out of steam in the story department, and offers way too much exposition in lieu of a proper script, a situation it tries to overcome by being dazzling if empty-headed, but which in the hands of Steven Spielberg still manages to be very entertaining indeed – if you don’t give it too much thought.

The Temple (2017) / D: Michael Barrett / 78m

Cast: Logan Huffman, Natalia Warner, Brandon Sklenar, Naoto Takenaka, Asahi Uchida

Rating: 4/10 – three American tourists – best friends Chris (Huffman) and Kate (Warner), and Kate’s boyfriend, James (Sklenar) – are travelling in Japan when they hear about an abandoned temple and decide to go there, little knowing what will happen to them once they get there; even with its post-visit framing device designed to add further mystery to events, The Temple is a chore to sit through thanks to its being yet another horror movie where people behave stupidly so that a number of uninspired “shocks” can be trotted out, along with dreary dialogue and the (actually) terrible realisation that movie makers still think that by plundering legends and myths from other countries then their movies will be much more original and scary… and that’s simply not true.

Chokeslam (2016) / D: Robert Cuffley / 102m

Cast: Chris Marquette, Amanda Crew, Michael Eklund, Niall Matter, Gwynyth Walsh, Mick Foley

Rating: 5/10 – a 10-year high school reunion gives deli owner Corey (Marquette) the chance to reconnect with the girl he loved, Sheena (Crew), who is now a famous female wrestler; a lightweight romantic comedy that pokes moderate fun at the world of wrestling, Chokeslam is innocuous where it should be daring, and bland when it should be heartwarming, making it a movie that’s populated almost entirely by stock characters dealing with stock situations and problems, and which, unsurprisingly, provides them with entirely stock solutions.

All the Money in the World (2017) / D: Ridley Scott / 132m

Cast: Michelle Williams, Christopher Plummer, Mark Wahlberg, Romain Duris, Timothy Hutton, Charlie Plummer, Marco Leonardi, Giuseppe Bonifati

Rating: 8/10 – a recreation of the kidnapping in 1973 of John Paul Getty III (Charlie Plummer), and the subsequent attempts by his mother, Gail (Williams), to persuade his grandfather (Christopher Plummer) to pay the ransom, something the then world’s richest man refuses to do; Scott’s best movie in years, All the Money in the World is a taut, compelling thriller that tells its story with ruthless expediency and features yet another commanding performance from Williams, something that takes the spotlight away from the presence of Christopher Plummer (who’s good but not great), and which serves as a reminder that money isn’t the central concern here, but a mother’s unwavering love for her child.

5 Headed Shark Attack (2017) / D: Nico De Leon / 98m

Cast: Chris Bruno, Nikki Howard, Lindsay Sawyer, Jeffrey Holsman, Chris Costanzo, Amaanda Méndez, Ian Daryk, Jorge Navarro, Lorna Hernandez, Michelle Cortès, Nicholas Nene

Rating: 3/10 – a four-headed shark terrorises the waters off Palomino Island in Puerto Rico before mutating into a five-headed shark, and being hunted by both the island’s police force, and a team of marine biologists from a local aquarium; operating at the bargain bucket end of the movie business, 5 Headed Shark Attack, SyFy’s latest cheaply made farrago, references Sharknado (2013) early on (as if it’s being clever), and then does it’s absolute best to make its audience cringe and wince and wish they’d never started watching in the first place, something the awful screenplay, dialogue, acting, special effects and direction all manage without even trying.

Last Flag Flying (2017)

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Bryan Cranston, Comedy, Darryl Ponicsan, Drama, Ex-Marines, Funeral, Laurence Fishburne, Review, Richard Linklater, Road trip, Sequel, Steve Carell

D: Richard Linklater / 123m

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, Steve Carell, J. Quinton Johnson, Yul Vazquez, Deanna Reed-Foster, Cicely Tyson

A man walks into a bar… From this inauspicious beginning, writer/director Richard Linklater provides us with another unmissable movie that bristles with humour and thoughtfully constructed drama, and which introduces us to three of the most fully rounded characters you’ll meet all year (and in one movie to boot). Adapted from the novel of the same name by Darryl Ponicsan, this is a loose sequel to Ponicsan’s The Last Detail (1973) (which he also wrote the screenplay for), and features three ex-Marines, all former friends who have lost touch since coming home from Vietnam. There’s Sal (Cranston), a bar owner, Larry aka “Doc” (Carell), who still works in a civilian capacity for the Navy, and Mueller (Fishburne), who has since become a pastor. Larry is the man who walks into a bar, in order to ask for Sal’s help with something. They travel to the Mueller’s home, where Larry reveals that he would like the three of them to go to Washington. The reason? Larry’s son has recently been killed while on duty in Iraq. His body is on its way home to be buried in Arlington cemetery, and Larry would like his two old friends to help him.

And so begins a road trip that sees Larry defer much of what happens to Sal and the Mueller, animosities long forgotten dusted off and trotted out, the trio encountering insensitive bureaucracy, the Mueller being mistaken for a terrorist, some detours along the way, and their friendships withstanding the test of both time and their being together again after so long. The script also reflects on matters of grief, regret, guilt, doing the right thing, and persevering through emotional and physical anguish. It’s a movie with many layers, all dovetailing neatly together, and providing one of the most affecting experiences of 2017. Linklater and Ponicsan have made a movie that is about the basic humanity in all of us, and how it brings out the best in us, even when we’re not sure if what we’re doing is the right thing. All along, Larry believes that what he is doing is what is appropriate and correct. At first he’s happy for his son, Larry Jr, to be buried at Arlington; after all, he’s been told his son died a hero in a skirmish with insurgents. But when the truth is revealed, his feelings change. And when he’s confronted with a different point of view, his feelings are challenged and his point of view shifts again. The clever thing is, at no point is Larry wrong about how he feels or what decisions he makes.

If it’s a simple statement to make – that Life isn’t always simple or easy – it’s still an important one. Linklater and Ponicsan are on point here, and the way in which Larry’s deliberations affect both him and his friends infuses much of the interplay between the three characters. For much of the movie, Larry is reticent and appearing to be in a world all his own, as he might well be. Sal is the motor mouth, always ready to challenge authority, politics, religion, anything that he disagrees with (and there isn’t much that he doesn’t disagree with), while the Mueller, actually called Richard, is a mix of the two, thoughtful and contemplative thanks to his religious beliefs but also forthright and aggressive when he feels he needs to be. You can see how they would have been friends in Vietnam, and how they emerged from that period to become the people they are now. Their experiences back then are used to inform the characters they’ve become, and thanks to three very gifted performances, spending time with them is an absolute pleasure.

Cranston has the more showy role, talking non-stop, Sal getting the three friends into trouble deliberately or without even trying, but always making him sympathetic, someone you can see is just trying to do their best in any given situation. The actor is on rare form here, judging the mercurial aspects of the role perfectly, and also showing a more reflective side to Sal that helps make the broader tones of his portrayal that much more believable. Fishburne is, in some ways, our way in to the characters, his quiet, brooding presence more reactive than passive, and despite the Mueller’s continued reluctance to be making this extended trip (nothing quite goes according to plan – as you might expect). It’s a role that also serves to remind us of what a terrific actor Fishburne is when given the right script, the right character, and he’s encouraged by the right director. And then there’s Carell as the distant, heartbroken Larry, his emotions pushed and pulled in opposing directions, and never quite sure if he’s in the moment or merely watching it all from a distance. Like his co-stars’ it’s a perfectly pitched performance, sincere, honest and entirely credible, and when his feelings do break through, all those tempered emotions mentioned before – grief, guilt etc – come flooding through and it’s almost overwhelming, for him and for the viewer.

Of course, this being a Richard Linklater movie, it’s not all doom and gloom or a completely depressing drama. The movie is infused with a dark, satirical kind of humour that offsets the heavy lifting the script does elsewhere. Sal provides much of the verbal comedy, his quick-fire retorts and pithy observations leavening the serious nature of the material, while there are a handful of visual gags, usually juxtapositions, that pop up here and there to good effect. And then there is a scene in the baggage car of a train where reminiscences and regrets come together to form one of the movie’s most engaging and humorous moments. Line by line, and minute by minute, this is the part of the movie that highlights the true spirit of friendship that exists between the three friends, and which is perhaps one of the funniest scenes you’ll see all year (even if you don’t see this until 2018). It’s also a point in the movie that is very much needed in terms of lightening the load, and it’s perfectly executed by all concerned.

That said, there a few caveats to be made, mostly in the form of certain scenes that prove superfluous, such as one involving Yul Vazquez’s oily, dislikeable Colonel where he vents his anger at the lack of respect shown to him by Sal in particular, and a side trip to visit the mother of a fellow Marine whose death wasn’t as heroic as she believes. This is one of the movie’s main thrusts, whether the truth should be told on every occasion or are there times when a lie is justified. Quite rightly, the movie errs on the side of “depending on the situation”, but it’s a valid question and one that is ripe for debate within the movie’s own context. And the movie ends on a sentimental note that, while providing Larry with a sense of closure, is at odds with the ambiguous nature of much of the material in relation to his son’s burial. It doesn’t quite ruin the movie – it would take something much more momentous than that – but as a way to finish things off feels more contrived than anything else seen or heard up to that point.

Rating: 8/10 – some judicious trimming would have made this a 9/10 easily, but this is still a terrific movie that deserves to be seen by as many people as possible; with humour, poignancy, wonderful performances, and often beautiful cinematography from Shane F. Kelly, Last Flag Flying tackles its themes with intelligence and wit and style and huge amounts of unashamed humanity, making this another Richard Linklater movie that steals both our hearts and our minds.

Daddy’s Home Two (2017)

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Fathers, John Lithgow, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, Review, Sean Anders, Sequel, Will Ferrell, Xmas

D: Sean Anders / 100m

Cast: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Alessandra Ambrosio, Owen Vaccaro, Scarlett Estevez, Didi Costine, John Cena

Is it only two years since we were “treated” to Daddy’s Home (2015), the lacklustre real dad versus step-dad movie that was banal and uninspired except on a handful of occasions (bet you can’t name any of them now, though)? Well, the sad answer is yes, it is, and if this entirely expected (but unnecessary) sequel achieves anything, then it’s being blander and less funny than its predecessor. It’s actually quite impressive: the lengths to which the makers of Daddy’s Home Two have gone to ensure this sequel is a snoozefest on an epic level. This is a movie that makes the original look and sound like a multi-award winning cult classic. It’s also one of the dreariest movies to come along in a very long while. If you manage to get through this from start to finish, give yourself a pat on the back and a gold star.

Deciding that making a sequel means bringing in bigger names to bolster the cast, this has somehow managed to attract the likes of Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, and most bizarrely of all, Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger, the pilot responsible for the 2009 Miracle on the Hudson plane landing. There are always projects where you wonder if anyone read a finished script before shooting began, and what appears to be obvious here is that if they did they didn’t worry about the lack of laughs, the terrible dialogue, the predictable arc of the story, or the OTT feelgood ending that sees most of the main cast “singing” Do They Know It’s Christmas by Band Aid (why? Don’t ask). Comedy sequels usually aim higher, bigger, broader, or sometimes opt to be more extreme. However, this is a comedy sequel that eschews all that and goes all out to be the cinematic equivalent of beige; as a result, it’s unrelentingly tedious. The movie lasts for one hundred minutes but watching it feels like it takes twice as long.

The main problem is that the script – by director Sean Anders and John Morris – doesn’t have a purpose other than to make the audience wait until Gibson’s horny old goat, Kurt, finally succumbs to the idea of peace and goodwill to all men and kisses his son, Dusty (Wahlberg), on the mouth (and yes, you are reading that right). Before then, the movie takes an age to undermine the friendship and mutual understanding that was established between Dusty and Brad (Ferrell) in the first movie, and only around the hour mark does it finally pit them against each other. Cue lots of moody looks between the two characters, and both of them engaging in the kind of low-key antagonism that is best expressed by Brad’s fake-pumping a snowball throw: there’s a minimum of intent and no follow through. Throughout, Dusty tells Brad that Kurt is looking to undermine their co-dad status, and while Kurt is certainly dismissive of their friendship – and questions their masculinity at every opportunity – again there’s more intent than action. This is a sequel that talks a lot about what’s going to happen, and what did happen, but has a hard time focusing on the present.

As a comedy, it relies on a series of pratfalls that happen to Don (Lithgow), Brad’s father, and Brad himself; a number of uninspired one-liners; the blossoming attraction of pre-teen Dylan (Vaccaro) for his pre-teen step-sister, Adrianna (Costine); and… that’s about it. There are an awful lot of scenes that occur purely in order to set up the next scene, and then that scene sets up the next scene, and so on, until finally a scene comes along that has a specific purpose. By then, however, any sense that the script knows what it’s doing, or that Anders has any intention of loading the movie with any appreciable energy, is long gone, and as the movie drags itself along like a sick animal looking for a place to curl up and die, any sympathy that arises is entirely for the viewer, and not for the cast and crew who took part in it. They should have known better. (And it all takes place at Xmas, for no better reason than to provide an excuse for Kurt and Don to be involved, as if family get-togethers don’t happen at any other time of year.)

In the end, it’s a lazy movie with lazy performances and a hazy sense of its own quality. Ferrell has made too many similar “comedies” for anyone to be surprised at his involvement, while Wahlberg keeps everything on the same level throughout. Their performances are as perfunctory as possible, and they’re encouraged by Anders’ desultory approach to directing; going through the motions is all that’s required of them. Gibson is hamstrung by his character’s one-note attitude to parenting, while Lithgow’s dad-with-a-secret tries for pathos in one scene but is let down by the comic shifts that occur right alongside his tragic reveal. Cardellini and Ambrosio are the token women putting up with Brad and Dusty’s shenanigans, and with barely a word of protest (hey, whatever happened to strong female characters in comedies?), while the child actors are used for maximum cuteness, something that soon wears thin.

Forbearance is a wonderful thing, and so is patience, but if you absolutely have to see Daddy’s Home Two, then be prepared to wait around for long stretches for anything to have an impact, or provide a genuine laugh, or provide you with anything that will make the experience worthwhile. If this is the best that everyone can do, then it’s a further damning example of the parlous state of mainstream movie making in America today. With a budget of $69 million, it’s hard to work out where the money was spent, but easy enough to see why it was greenlit in the first place. That doesn’t excuse the poor quality of the script, though, or the lack of commitment from all concerned, all of which makes the movie not just a disappointment but a dire retread of themes and ideas that have been done to death already. You could argue that a movie like this one isn’t expected to be great, or a must-see, but with the talent involved it is reasonable to expect a greater effort made in making the movie as good as can be. That it doesn’t look like anyone could be bothered is both appalling and, worse, unsurprising.

Rating: 3/10 – sequels are an easy source of revenue (this has already made its money back and more), but they needn’t be an excuse for a shoddy finished product; Daddy’s Home Two is both of those things, and is also laboured, boring, unimaginative, and a slap in the face to viewers hoping to be entertained, something this movie gives up on with alacrity.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

14 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Action, Adam Driver, Carrie Fisher, Daisy Ridley, Drama, John Boyega, Kylo Ren, Mark Hamill, Review, Rey, Rian Johnson, Sci-fi, Sequel

D: Rian Johnson / 152m

Cast: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran, Anthony Daniels, Gwendoline Christie, Benicio Del Toro, Lupita Nyong’o

In the Star Wars universe there is one second sequel to rule them all (to mix franchise metaphors), and that’s The Empire Strikes Back (1980). That movie, even more so than A New Hope, was a lightning in a bottle experience, never to be repeated, and a shining example of what can happen when the stars are in perfect alignment. But now we have Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and though it falls just agonisingly short of being as good as Episode V, this is the closest anyone has come in coming close to the heights achieved by that particular movie. Better than all three prequel movies put together, richer and with more depth than either Episodes IV or VI, and showing even J.J. Abrams how it should be done, Episode VIII is the franchise entry that gives rise to another, newer hope: that Disney, for all that they want a Star Wars movie to grace our screens every year for the foreseeable future, do know what they’re doing. And the main reason for all this? Step forward, Rian Johnson.

Sometimes it’s a case of cometh the hour, cometh the man, and with The Last Jedi, it’s definitely Johnson’s hour, and he’s definitely the man. Not only has he built on the (mostly) impressive groundwork laid down by J.J. Abrams, but he’s made the current trilogy into something that’s in a league of its own. Whatever happens in Episode IX – and there’s more than enough evidence here to have Johnson substituted for Abrams in the writer/director’s chair – it will have to go some to top what’s on show here. This is bold, imaginative, stirring stuff, a clear rebuttal to all those who felt that The Force Awakens was too derivative of previous entries (another Death Star – okay, planet – and another Emperor – okay, Supreme Leader, etc.), and convincing proof that there will, and can be, life after the Skywalker story arc.

For this is the movie’s strongest suit, the way in which it’s pushing the whole Star Wars franchise forward, away from past glories, and toward future glories of its own making. Kylo Ren (Driver) sums up the aim of the current trilogy best when he says: “Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. That’s the only way to become what you are meant to be.” This could double as the trilogy’s raison d’etre, as we move further and further away from the events and legacies of the first six movies, and into a period within the galaxy that involves Star Wars finding a new identity for itself. In making this narrative jump to lightspeed, producers Kathleen Kennedy and Ram Bergman have made the most astute decision possible, and let Rian Johnson loose on their “baby”. And Johnson hasn’t let them, or the fans, or even casual viewers down. The Last Jedi is the Star Wars movie we’ve all been waiting for since 1980: the one that reminds us of just how much story-telling potential there is in the saga, and how much it can all mean to us both culturally and personally.

This is a movie that will delight existing fans, but also will go a long way to persuading non-fans that there’s much more to Star Wars than action toys and cosplay. Johnson has created an exciting, intimidating, intelligent, and emotionally daunting piece of sci-fi, and has done so with flair, confidence, and no small amount of visual style (the prequels, for all their faults, always looked visually stunning, but Johnson has upped that particular ante, and seemingly effortlessly). The movie provides impressive amounts of eye candy in terms of the production design, the locations used, and the special effects, but it’s all in service to the story, and the three separate plot strands that occupy the movie’s extended running time (forget that it’s two and a half hours long; you won’t notice the time anyway once you’re watching it). This is the movie’s greatest strength: in telling these separate plot strands in such a way that you can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next with all of them. Johnson keeps upping the stakes, putting the characters through the emotional, physical, and psychological wringer (and the viewer right along with them), and offering only very brief respites for everyone to catch their breath. It’s a juggling act, but one that Johnson pulls off with all the confidence of someone who’s been doing it all their lives.

Of course, the presence of Luke Skywalker (Hamill) is the main draw this time. Where Abrams had the nerve to keep Luke off-screen until the very last scene of The Force Awakens, here Johnson has to keep him front and centre for much of the movie, and provide some answers for the questions raised in Episode VII. To his credit, Johnson provides Luke with a character arc that makes sense of his isolation, and his reluctance to become involved with the Resistance. Hamill, naturally, seizes on the quality of Johnson’s writing and makes of Luke an old man with huge regrets and an attitude that keeps him feeling reproachful and pessimistic. The presence of Rey (Ridley) serves only as a painful reminder of his failings, and the way in which Luke rediscovers his sense of self-worth is played out with a great deal of attention to the character’s inner emotions, and the added layers of betrayal and guilt that he’s accrued over the years.

The dynamic between Rey and Kylo Ren is given its due, and though there’s a degree of inevitability about the way their Force-led relationship is resolved for now, the path they’re taken on by Johnson offers up a range of possibilities that keeps the viewer guessing as to which ones will be explored the most, and which ones will be held over for Episode IX. Both Ridley and Driver delve deeper into their characters’ individual needs and destinies, and the scenes they share have an intensity that matches the high stakes involved in their manoeuvring around each other. Against this it would be easy to say that the other characters don’t fare so well and have truncated story arcs as a result, but Rey and Kylo Ren are the central protagonists, and it’s their particular story that drives much of the action. Finn (Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Isaac) are kept busy but as secondary characters this time around, while newcomers Tran, Dern and Del Toro have roles that fit the requirements of the plot rather than making their characters as memorable as some of the others. And then there’s Carrie Fisher (involved in the movie’s strangest moment) and as General Leia Organa, carrying the weight of everyone’s hopes on her shoulders – and feeling the strain. It’s a tightly controlled performance, not a swansong as such, but one that contains the gravitas needed to emphasise the importance of keeping the Resistance alive.

In a year where there have been a number of high profile, highly anticipated blockbusters – most of which have proved disappointing on many levels – it’s reassuring to know that there is at least one movie released this year under that banner that matches the expectations required of it. Whether it’s setting pulses racing in its opening sequence as Poe seeks to disable a dreadnought’s external gun placements, or exploring the darker aspects of the Force, or even the notion that power isn’t corrupting of itself but the intent to grasp power is, the movie treads carefully but effectively through a series of emotional minefields and debatable decision making. However, this isn’t to say that it’s all doom and gloom and entirely heavy stuff, because it isn’t. There’s plenty of humour – a lot of it laugh out loud funny and in places where you wouldn’t expect it – and there’s some excellent location work, especially in Ireland’s Skellig Michael (where Luke is found), and the salt flats of Bolivia’s Salar de Uyuni. Johnson’s go-to cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, makes it all look stunning, and this is an episode where more than ever the visuals are used to enhance and support the material, and which can on more than one occasion, elicit gasps of appreciation – much like the movie as a whole.

Rating: 8/10 – with still too many ties to the Lucas era, and still finding its way to a satisfying future without those ties, Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a transitional movie but one that is so confidently handled by writer/director Rian Johnson that any qualms about the material can be overlooked – for the most part; a movie that keeps moving and keeps doing its best to be surprising, it’s the very definition of a crowd-pleaser, and one that rewards as it goes, and which sets up numerous possibilities for the next installment, due on 20 December 2019.

Death Race 2050 (2017)

07 Thursday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Comedy, Drama, Frankenstein, G.J. Echternkamp, Malcolm McDowell, Manu Bennett, Marci Miller, Political commentary, Review, Roger Corman, Sequel, Thriller, United Corporations of America

D: G.J. Echternkamp / 93m

Cast: Manu Bennett, Malcolm McDowell, Marci Miller, Burt Grinstead, Folake Olowofoyeku, Anessa Ramsey, Yancy Butler, Charlie Farrell, Shanna Olson, Leslie Shaw

Ah, Roger Corman. Yes, he’s a legend in the movie business, and yes, he’s made some lowest-common-denominator movies over the years, but he’s still highly regarded and his movies still continue to make money (which isn’t difficult as he still doesn’t spend very much on them). But Corman, for all his skill at getting movies made cheaply – and whether he’s directing and/or producing – doesn’t always get it right. For every House of Usher (1960), there’s a Supergator (2007), and for every Piranha (1978), there’s an Escape from Afghanistan (2001). And now you can add, for every Death Race 2000 (1975), there’s a Death Race 2050. A direct sequel to the original movie, Death Race 2050 ignores the three movies made by Universal between 2008 and 2013. Although those movies suffered a serious decline in quality by the third outing (or arguably the second), the move to revisit the milieu created for the David Carradine-starring original came from Corman himself, who felt that what was missing from the Universal movies was the political commentary.

Fair enough, you may think. Political commentary usually worked for George A. Romero, then why shouldn’t it work for Corman? The answer to that question is sharply illustrated when the viewer gets their first glimpse of Malcolm McDowell as the movie’s über-villain, the Chairman. With his floating, white-haired pompadour and “I’m in charge” attitude – and not to mention being surrounded by sycophants – it isn’t hard to think who Corman might be using as the inspiration for the Chairman. But aside from having America renamed as the United Corporations of America, that’s the full extent of any attempts at providing any political commentary or subtext. So with that out of the way, what else do we have? Surely there are some terrific action sequences involving uniquely designed muscle cars, and a wealth of pedestrian kills that are both gory and funny at the same time? And what about a group of weird and wild drivers all out to win the race and dispose of returning champion Frankenstein (Bennett)? Well, no; kind of; nearly; and sometimes. (It’s that kind of movie.)

Sadly, but perhaps predictably, whatever sense of originality or invention was intended to be part of the movie’s make up, has been ruthlessly excised in favour of a succession of appallingly directed, acted, shot, edited and scored scenes that aim for the darkly humorous tone of the original but which miss the mark by such a wide margin that you begin to wonder if it’s all deliberate (it’s the only answer that makes any sense). This is an extremely dispiriting sequel: crass, idiotic, banal, stupid, half-baked, laughable, nonsensical, hackneyed, trite, ludicrous – the list goes on and on. It’s almost as if the makers have taken a cursory glance at the original, made a few notes as to its content, and then decided that the best way to honour it is to make a sequel that trashes the original’s legacy, and in the most derogatory way possible.

From McDowell’s turn as the Chairman – replete with nods to his role in Caligula (1979) – to the decision to have Frankenstein remove his mask once the race gets under way, and to the inclusion of a group of rebels hellbent on disrupting the race for their own inane agenda, the movie flits from one ridiculous idea or set-piece to another with faint regard for its own skewed internal logic, or any interest in maintaining continuity. Almost all the interior scenes of the racers are shot in picture cars, while any scenes where the cars are seen in long shot are either speeded up or so poorly framed that any intended sense of urgency or excitement is over before it’s begun. Death Race 2050 may have been made on a shoestring budget, but watching it is like being privy to a rough cut of a movie and then finding out that the post-production funds have run out already.

The script – such as it is – is the work of director G.J. Echternkamp and Matt Yamashita. If any congratulations can be afforded them, it’s that between them they’ve managed to concoct a story that makes no sense, and which seems to have been stitched together from a variety of unremarkable sources. To mention all the areas where they’ve undermined their own narrative, or provided grist for the mill of their own incompetence would see this review double in length. But it’s with the dialogue that they’ve truly excelled themselves, coming up with such gems as, “Why did those pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock? Because they needed a place to stage the greatest pissing contest known to Man”, and “I’ll drink your tears, Frankenstein. I’ll lick them off your handsome face.” There are more, and almost all of them are likely to induce groans or slapped foreheads. The cast struggle (it’s the only thing they can do) against all of this, and even stalwarts of this kind of thing such as McDowell and Butler can’t do anything to make much of a difference. The characters all strive for relevance even within the fractured nature of the narrative, but ultimately they’re all hollow constructs whose fate is to be inter-changeable with each other – and even then not that successfully.

With the odds stacked so highly against it, the movie pivots from one ill-considered plot development to another, and relies on exposition-heavy scenes to fill in the gaps created by the script’s willingness to change tack at the slightest provocation. It looks tacky, and the visual design of the movie serves only to reinforce the idea that there was very little money available to get it made. As mentioned above, this is an appallingly assembled movie that becomes more and more depressing to watch the longer it goes on. If this really is the best sequel to Death Race 2000 that Roger Corman could come up with, then perhaps it would have been better to have left well alone and made something more distinctive or singular. As it is, we have this instead, a terrible farrago of a movie that is hard to defend both artistically and commercially.

Rating: 2/10 – a leaden, dreadful, uninspired movie that aims so low that it’s hard to work out what its aims actually are (aside from ripping off The Hunger Games as often as it can), Death Race 2050 is an insult to its predecessor, and easily qualifies as one of the very worst movies of 2017; low budget doesn’t have to mean poor quality, but this is one movie where any care or attention due to the project seems to have been jettisoned on day one as being completely unnecessary.

And Punching the Clown (2016)

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, Ellen Ratner, Gregori Viens, Henry Phillips, J.K. Simmons, Musician, Review, Sequel, Singer/songwriter, Tig Notaro

aka Punching Henry

D: Gregori Viens / 94m

Cast: Henry Phillips, Ellen Ratner, Tig Notaro, J.K. Simmons, Mark Cohen, Sarah Silverman, Mike Judge, Jim Jefferies, Stephanie Allynne, Michaela Watkins, Wayne Federman, Doug Stanhope, Adam Nee, Clifton Collins Jr

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the stage… singer, songwriter, and rambling troubadour extraordinaire… Henry Phillips! Five years after leaving L.A. under a cloud of misperceived anti-Semitism, the comic with the deadpan yet whimsical delivery is tempted back to the City of Angels by his agent, the ever-optimistic Ellen Pinsky (Ratner). Last time round it was the promise of a recording contract, this time it’s to meet a TV producer, Jay Warren (Simmons), who’s interested in using Henry’s act and dogged determination to avoid stardom as the basis for a new TV show. But L.A. still isn’t Henry’s town. Less than thirty minutes after he arrives at the home of his friend, Jillian (Notaro), his car is stolen, and at the first gig he plays – with Warren watching – he’s heckled off the stage. But Warren isn’t dissuaded by Henry’s misfortune, and if anything his interest is piqued even further. A meeting is set up with the Noww Channel, and everything looks set to make Henry a star…

Of course, this is Henry Phillips we’re talking about, and so the idea that everything will go smoothly and all work out for the best is about as likely as Liam Hemsworth winning a Best Actor Oscar. Henry is one of Life’s eternal losers, always running to catch up but never quite getting there. Whether he’s losing a battle of wills with a cab despatcher (Stanhope), or accepting a joint at the wrong time, Henry only seems able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It would be painful if it wasn’t so funny. And as with Punching the Clown (2009), this is what makes the movie so enjoyable, and so appealing at the same time. Henry is a lovable schlemiel, someone who keeps plugging away despite every drawback, insult, and injury. Henry doesn’t know what else to do; it’s his life after all. Yes he fails more often than he succeeds, but as he himself says at one point, he has no problem “failing, doing what I love”.

But whether or not Henry is a failure is to miss the point of Phillips’ and director Viens’ script, which artfully makes Henry a man of principle in a world where the people around him seem to have abandoned theirs in order that their lives are simpler. He’s content with his lot, has modest ambitions, and actually enjoys playing the crummy dives and comedy clubs that pay badly or sometimes, not at all. Henry knows his milieu, and it’s a fine distinction to make when judged against the craving for stardom and recognition that seem to be the norm these days. Fame, the movie is trying to say, isn’t all that it’s made out to be. It’s an obvious message, perhaps, but how many other movies make it an integral part of the narrative, or have their central character battle to retain their own idea of their own integrity? (And the clock is ticking…)

Henry is also strangely liberated by his behaviour, even when he gets it badly wrong. A request from Jillian to impregnate her partner, Zoe (Allynne), so they can have a child together proves as difficult a task for Henry to overcome as getting through a set without suffering some disaster. And when he walks off stage because his audience is behaving disrespectfully, what seems like the reaction of a man who hates confrontation, is rather the act of a man who won’t indulge that unpleasant behaviour. Henry may suffer Shakespeare’s “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (he’s regularly belittled by people, and often to his face), but he does so with good grace and the understanding that if he was to behave as obtusely as some of the people he encounters, then it will always backfire on him (as with the cab despatcher, a game of one-upmanship that Henry loses at every turn, even when he thinks he’s winning).

Phillips’ awareness of his alter ego’s foibles and habits, adds greatly to the movie’s sense of verisimilitude, whether he’s discussing why he’s in L.A. with radio show host Sharon Levine (Silverman) – a similar framing device to the one employed in Punching the Clown – or pointing out the obvious flaws in the format of the TV show Noww want to produce. And along the way he uses Henry’s experiences to highlight the way in which talent is increasingly manufactured, how broad, focus-based public opinion dictates what consitutes quality, and how even the smallest amount of individual power can be used carelessly or inappropriately and to the detriment of others. Heavy stuff, perhaps, but layered with a winning streak of humour that affords plenty of laughs along the way, whether it’s from lines such as, “It’s Sisyphus meets Charlie Brown!” (the TV show), visual gags such as Henry falling off stage (and going viral), or songs such as Dog-Type Girl (a highlight).

In the end, it’s Henry’s ability to shrug off adversity and make the best of things that makes him so endearing and so easy to spend time with. Phillips the actor is more accomplished than he was in his first outing as Phillips the troubadour extraordinaire, and he’s surrounded by a great cast, from Ratner to Jefferies and Notaro (so dry she’s virtually a desert), and the welcome presence of Simmons whose turn as Warren is shot through with a sense of melancholy that underpins the character and his lifetime in producing perfectly. Viens too is more confident this time around, and the movie’s faux-documentary shooting style is used to much better effect. And for once, the many ways in which this movie apes its predecessor proves to be a boon rather than a burden. Henry has remained consistent in his outlook and his needs, and in doing so has retained the sympathy that audiences can relate to, and he doesn’t let them down when it comes time for him to take to the stage.

Rating: 8/10 – similar in tone and approach to its predecessor, And Punching the Clown (the title is cleverer than it sounds) is a solid, rewarding and very funny second entry in the life and times of Henry Phillips, failing singer and comedian; smarter than your average low budget indie comedy, this will keep fans of the original very happy indeed, and if caught by newcomers, work as a terrific introduction to Phillips’ and the way in which he is able to “satisfy his satisfaction”.

Justice League (2017)

19 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Amy Adams, Batman, Ben Affleck, Cyborg, DCEU, Drama, Ezra Miller, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Steppenwolf, Superheroes, Superman, The Flash, Wonder Woman, Zack Snyder

D: Zack Snyder / 120m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Jason Momoa, Ray Fisher, Jeremy Irons, Diane Lane, Connie Nielsen, J.K. Simmons, Ciarán Hinds, Amber Heard, Joe Morton

If Justice League required the writing of a school report card, then that report would likely say, “Must do better.” A movie that furthers Warner Bros.’ insistence on building the DC Extended Universe one laborious movie at a time, this is unlikely to upset fans (who may well point to its lighter tone as reason enough to be happy with the finished product), but it should still provide cause for concern for anyone able to watch the movie objectively or without a vested interest. Although this is an improvement on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), there are still plenty of problems on show, some of which seem inherent in Warner Bros.’ approach to the DCEU, and some that have arisen out of the efforts made to address those same problems. If Justice League is to be as financially successful (if not critically) as previous entries in the DCEU – and early box office returns are casting doubt on this – then even more lessons need to be learnt.

The movie begins with the world mourning the death of Superman (Cavill), and crime apparently on the increase (though strangely, it’s hate crime that the movie chooses first as an example). Batman (Affleck) is still fighting criminals, as is Wonder Woman (Gadot), but an encounter with a strange, alien creature, a Parademon, leads the Caped Crusader to believe that a major threat is coming to Earth (alas, how and why he believes this, is left unexplored, possibly because it would add yet another plot hole to the many already on display). Wonder Woman confirms this, telling him that Earth is being targeted by Steppenwolf (Hinds), the “ender of worlds”. Steppenwolf and his Parademons are looking for three Mother Boxes, power sources that if linked together, could destroy Earth entirely (why he’d want to do this is another plot hole left for the movie to fall through). With one box entrusted to the Amazons on Themyscira, the second to Atlantis, and the third hidden by man, Steppenwolf collects the first two with unseemly ease, leaving Batman and Wonder Woman with only one choice: to find other people with “abilities” who can help try and defeat Steppenwolf; and yes, you guessed it, save the world.

Batman recruits the Flash (Miller) in record time, but has little luck with Arthur Curry (Momoa), the so-called Aquaman. And then there’s Cyborg (Fisher), part man, part machine, whose existence is due to his scientist father’s use of the third Mother Box (conveniently discovered for this very purpose) after his death in a car accident. Keeping hold of the third Mother Box long enough to resurrect Superman (more of which later), Batman and his new friends, including a newly motivated Aquaman, trace Steppenwolf to an abandoned nuclear power plant in Russia (plot hole alert!), and attempt to stop him uniting the Mother Boxes and destroying the world. In the process, Batman, the archetypal loner, learns to become a team player (even though everyone in the Justice League is, effectively, an archetypal loner, it seems to be more relevant to him than anyone else).

In assembling their own version of the Avengers, Warner Bros. and DC have tried to cut narrative corners by curtailing any origin stories and sidelining any character arcs. This leaves the newcomers looking and feeling like late additions to the story rather than integral parts of it. Batman and Wonder Woman are placed front and centre to provide the gravitas this series is committed to, while the Flash is used primarily to ensure there are plenty of laughs to be had (an improvement on previous entries, definitely, but by the end of the movie, a little over-used). But if any one aspect of Justice League should raise concerns about Warner Bros. and DC’s abilities to handle this franchise effectively, it’s in their treatment of Superman. The decision to kill him off at the end of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was possibly that movie’s best idea, but here his resurrection is handled so badly that it feels like an insult. Resurrected purely so that there can be a showdown between Superman and the League, the movie ignores the possibility of a much stronger and more long-term story arc* in favour of a ten-minute punch-up that’s abruptly halted by the appearance of Lois Lane. If anyone is in any doubt that Chris Terrio’s screenplay isn’t up to much (even with Joss Whedon’s additions), then this is the moment that confirms it.

The movie retains the series’ inconsistency of tone, and superficial world building, as well as its plodding attempts at exposition, as well as its over-reliance on big, flashy, hollow set-pieces that deaden the senses and lack imagination (hero hits villain with crushing blow, villain hits hero with crushing blow – and repeat, again and again). It jumps from scene to scene without the slightest concern for its own internal logic – which is continually ignored in favour of getting to the next showdown – and it takes liberties with its minor characters; if you’re not Wonder Woman, but you’re still a female character, be prepared to be given short shrift at almost every turn. Shoehorned into the narrative for no particular reason than that they’re part of the canon, the likes of Commissioner Gordon (Simmons) and Martha Kent (Lane) appear briefly and for little purpose. And yet again, the villain is the least interesting character in the movie, a fully-CGI character who is effectively a thug from another dimension, and who has all the villainous intensity of a playground bully.

For a movie that reportedly cost $300 million to make, Justice League also looks a little on the cheap side at times, with some backgrounds looking incredibly fake (check out the cornfield scene with Lois and Clark for an idea of just how awkwardly the marriage of CGI and on-set footage can be rendered). Snyder still manages to direct as if he can’t believe he’s been given the chance to shepherd such a huge franchise in the first place, and his inability to make individual scenes work as part of a greater whole remains firmly in place. As for Joss Whedon’s contribution, there are certain scenes that bear his imprint, but not enough to offset the dour approach adopted by Snyder, and even though the movie is demonstrably lighter in tone than its predecessor, the inclusion of some much needed humour isn’t enough to make up for the pedestrian plotting and the lack of a convincing storyline (or indeed, any storyline). “Must do better” indeed, and as soon as possible.

Rating: 5/10 – still unable to contend with, or overcome the issues that hold back the DCEU from achieving what it’s capable of, Justice League is what might best be described as “a happy mess”, but that’s doing the lacklustre nature of the overall material something of a favour; Gadot and Miller head up a cast who can only go with the flow and hope for the best, while the mythology building is put on hold in favour of several underwhelming scraps that reinforce the notion that whatever else happens in future DCEU movies, it’ll still be safe to assume that buildings will continue to crumble, and important storyteling lessons will still need to be learnt.

*What if the following had happened: Superman returns from the dead but is different, less interested in doing good, more selfish and unapproachable. Unwilling to help defeat Steppenwolf, the League has to find a way to defeat him themselves as a team (which they do). And so, by the time of the next Justice League movie, their foe is Superman himself, whose transition to the “dark side” has become more pronounced (oh, and there’s no Kryptonite to help them out). Now that sounds like a great storyline.

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (2017)

02 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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2015 Paris Agreement, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, Bonni Cohen, Climate change, Documentary, India, Jon Shenk, Review, Sequel, Tacloban City, The Climate Reality Project

D: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk / 98m

With: Al Gore, John Kerry, Konrad Steffen, Philip Levine, Eric Schneiderman, Marco Krapels, Lyndon Rive, Piyush Goyal, Cristina Gonzales Romualdez, Alfred Romualdez, Christiana Figueres, Dale Ross

When Al Gore’s campaign to educate people about the dangers of climate change was adapted for the screen in 2006 as An Inconvenient Truth, few could have predicted the effect that a small-scale documentary would have around the globe. The movie won a Best Documentary Oscar at the 2007 awards, and has been used as an educational tool (with some clarifications) in various school systems the world over. It was the first movie to address the issue of climate change head on, and in a way that the average person could understand. And it made a number of predictions about the way that climate change would affect the world in the coming decades unless governments worked together to prevent the situation from worsening.

Eleven years on, and Gore is still out there, still attempting to educate as many people as he can about the continuing climate change issue, but with the aid of over three and a half thousand activists who use Gore’s presentation in their own communities to foster greater awareness. This is the Climate Reality Project, begun by Gore in 2006, and one of the elements of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power that shows to what extent things have either moved on or changed, or even remained the same, since the release of its predecessor. What definitely hasn’t changed is Gore’s passion for the issue, and his seemingly tireless pursuit of getting the message across that traditional fuel methods such as coal and gas can no longer be allowed to be the first choice of countries looking to provide reliable energy sources for their populations. It’s a message he gets across, though, through Scotland being able to provide one hundred per cent of its electricity in August 2016 from wind power, to Chile’s solar market, which has grown from 402mw at the end of 2014 to 848mw at the end of 2015, and in 2016, was estimated to reach approximately 13.25gw.

Gore puts forward a strong case for renewable energies such as solar and wind power to take the place of fossil fuels, and he’s able to show that even in the US, where conservative attitudes might decry the message Gore is trying to get across, that some cities have already elected to provide one hundred per cent renewable energies for its citizens, and that as with An Inconvenient Truth, the need for change isn’t seen as a political one, but a moral one, an imperative that should be agreed across the political spectrum. That these cities have taken up the challenge and made it work is one area where Gore’s passion and commitment have been rewarded. But as with any crusade, it’s not all plain sailing, and even though Gore has continued to press for environmental change, it’s still an uphill battle against vested interests and political inertia, a fact that’s cruelly pointed out by a coda added to the movie after filming had been completed. Here, we see Gore’s dismay at hearing of President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.

Alongside Gore’s promotion of renewable energies, the 2015 Paris Agreement is the movie’s secondary focus, showing how Gore helped to bring about India’s commitment to the agreement and the behind the scenes efforts that brought this about (though it does make it look as if Gore was the sole instigator, which isn’t entirely true). The movie also finds itself in the midst of an unfortunate event that occurred two weeks before the conference, where a live twenty-four broadcast featuring Gore and some of the conference’s key players had to be cut short in the wake of the November 2015 terror attacks, including the mass shooting at the Bataclan theatre. Gore makes an impromptu and heartfelt speech that is the movie’s most emotional moment, and it serves as an unexpectedly poignant reminder that climate change, important an issue as it is, isn’t the only global issue that needs addressing at this moment.

But where the movie really hits home, as with its predecessor, is in its presentation of the many increasing natural disasters that have occurred in the last ten years, and the reasons why they’ve happened. Gore visits a Swiss Camp Climate Station in Central Greenland where he has to climb a ladder to go inside the main hut, something he wouldn’t have had to do a few years before, but has to now because the surface mass of the area has dropped so much in such a short time. He talks with the mayor of Tacloban City in the Philippines which was devastated by Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013, and includes footage of the destruction, footage that in recent years we have become all too familiar with from other devastated cities around the world. But most telling of all is the footage relating to the flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy in parts of New York in October 2012. Gore predicted this could happen in An Inconvenient Truth, and that it would affect the site of the World Trade Centre memorial. He drew a lot of flak for suggesting this, but was proved absolutely right. This is the point in the movie where you have to ask yourself, what more does the man have to do to get our undivided attention?

When he’s on stage giving his presentation, Gore is energised and persuasive and committed and often angry. But privately, there are moments where he looks tired and a little despairing, as if doing all this for the best part of twenty years is beginning to take its toll. It’s a sobering thought, but Gore will be seventy years old next year, and though he doesn’t always look it, there are times when he does and it’s these times that give rise to the idea that this sequel is perhaps the best chance he’ll have to bring the issue of climate change back to the attention of a general public who may have forgotten the warnings he made over ten years ago. Gore has fought long and hard over this issue, and the movie does spend time exploring what continues to motivate him, and why the issue is still so important to him that he devotes so much of his time to it. It’s a key element, one that wasn’t there as much in the first movie, but it does go hand in hand with the still timely message that none of us, not even a “recovering politician” such as Al Gore, can afford to ignore.

Rating: 8/10 – not quite as powerful as its predecessor, but still a necessary reminder that there’s a long way to go before the issue of climate change can be seen to have been addressed effectively, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power is a salutary ode to the power of one man’s commitment to change; if it’s a more personal movie in that sense, that’s not a bad thing, as Gore continues to be the best guide a lay person can have in understanding why climate change is still so divisive, and why it still remains the most important issue facing future generations, generations who may not have a choice in the world they’ll inherit.

Oh! the Horror! – Happy Death Day (2017) and Jigsaw (2017)

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Billy the Puppet, Callum Keith Rennie, Christopher Landon, Confessions, Drama, Horror, Israel Broussard, Jessica Rothe, John Kramer, Masked killer, Matt Passmore, Michael Spierig, Murder, Peter Spierig, Review, Sequel, Tobin Bell

Happy Death Day (2017) / D: Christopher Landon / 96m

Cast: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Ruby Modine, Charles Aitken, Laura Clifton, Jason Bayle, Rob Mello, Rachel Matthews

For Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Rothe), her latest birthday is not a day to acknowledge, laced as it is by the tragic death of her mother three years before, who also shared the same birthday. Waking up in the dorm room of schoolmate Carter Davis (Broussard), Tree spends most of her day being unpleasant to her friends and sorority housemates, skipping a planned lunch with her father, meeting her lover, professor Gregory Butler (Aitken), and planning to attend a party later that night. But on the way to the party she’s attacked and killed by a masked killer in a subway tunnel. Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances. As the day continues the strangeness of reliving the same day a second time causes Tree to avoid the subway tunnel and stay at her sorority house. There she finds that her housemates have arranged a surprise party for her birthday. Reassured that she won’t be killed a second time as well, she hooks up with one of the boys she likes, but the killer appears and kills her again. And Tree wakes up on her birthday in exactly the same place and in exactly the same circumstances…

Yes, it’s another horror-themed variation on Groundhog Day (1993), with Tree forced to relive her birthday over and over again until she can discover the identity of her killer. Along the way there are plenty of red herrings, almost everybody she knows is a suspect at one time or another (even her father for a few moments), and her efforts to avoid being killed are entirely a waste of time. Eventually she manages to persuade Carter of what’s happening to her and he suggests that she use each day to work out who the killer could be. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s done this and so Tree is still left to work it all out for herself, and when one attempt leaves her in the hospital and not dead somewhere, she becomes aware of the presence, at the hospital, of a serial killer, John Tombs (Mello), and becomes convinced he’s her killer. But that particular idea leads to a quite different revelation, one that provides the movie with its inevitably obvious twist in the tale.

For a movie that was first announced a decade ago, Happy Death Day does at least feel a little fresher than most teen-based horror movies, and it’s blend of terror, college campus hijinks and waspish humour is at least attractive to watch, and the script’s determination to do something a little bit different with its familiar premise is to be applauded, but it’s still a movie that doesn’t follow its own agenda or guidelines too convincingly, as evidenced by the killer popping up wherever they’re needed to on any given day, and leading to the assumption that they’re aware of the time loop Tree is experiencing, and that they’re somehow ahead of it (and especially when they still manage to turn up inside a locked room). Of course, the script also takes the opportunity to show Tree the error of her rude, dismissive ways, and the time loop acts as a learning curve, which at least gives Tree a chance to grow as a character, even if it’s not really necessary.

Tree is played with a great deal of tenacity and conviction by Rothe, and as she’s in every scene, it’s fortunate that she’s as good as she is, as in the wrong hands, Tree could have been a character that the audience might not have had any sympathy for. As it is, Rothe is a terrific heroine, caustic and unlikeable to begin with (“Who takes their date to Subway? Besides, it’s not like you have a footlong”), to responsible and more able to deal with the problems in her life, such as her deteriorating relationship with her father. Sadly, the rest of the characters don’t fare so well, with Broussard’s potential new boyfriend coming across as too fresh-faced and bland to attract Tree in the first place, and Matthews’ obnoxious sorority leader, Danielle, giving new meaning to the phrase, “stupid is as stupid does (and says)”. Landon, who’s yet to make a completely successful horror movie after the entertainingly flawed Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015) and the unnecessary Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014), shows an understanding of the various masked killer tropes the script relies on, and how to use them to the movie’s best advantage, but he’s not quite able to combat the many non sequiturs that crop up throughout. And if the killer’s look is too much like Ghostface from the Scream franchise – but with a baby’s visage instead – it doesn’t actually hurt the movie, but it’s not an intrinsically scary image either.

Rating: 6/10 – a pleasant enough diversion in these days of overly lacklustre horror movies, Happy Death Day isn’t as bad as it sounds from its tagline, but it’s also not as good as it’s premise may promise; Rothe is a great choice for Tree, and Landon stages the murder scenes with a great deal of visual flair, but ultimately, and despite a good effort from all concerned, it still can’t overcome the familiarity of the material to make it stand too far out from the crowd.

Jigsaw (2017) / D: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig / 91m

Cast: Matt Passmore, Tobin Bell, Callum Keith Rennie, Hannah Emily Anderson, Clé Bennett, Laura Vandervoort, Paul Braunstein, Mandela Van Peebles, Brittany Allen, Josiah Black

John Kramer (Bell), the notorious serial killer known as Jigsaw, and who never actually killed anyone, has been dead for ten years. But now, bodies are popping up all over the city that are clearly the work of Kramer – or is it a copycat? Despite mounting evidence that Kramer is still alive, the police, in the form of Detective Halloran (Rennie) and his partner, Detective Hunt (Bennett), as well as coroner Logan Nelson (Passmore) and his assistant, Eleanor Bonneville (Anderson) aren’t so convinced. After all, Kramer’s body underwent an autopsy – as seen in Saw IV (2007) – so it can’t be him. Soon, as the body count rises, and the finger of suspicion points toward Detective Halloran, Logan and Eleanor find themselves in a race against time to find the remaining “contestants” in Jigsaw’s latest game before they are forced to kill themselves or each other in order to survive and be set free.

By the time of Saw 3D (2010), the most recent in the series, the Saw franchise had become so convoluted that any attempt at following a logical narrative was almost as difficult as working out Pi to the thousandth degree. There were so many acolytes doing Kramer’s work, before, during and after his demise, that it was impossible to keep track of where they all fitted in to the overall narrative. And now we have an eighth movie that presents us with another acolyte doing Kramer’s work, and without spoiling anything for anyone, we have Kramer himself putting another unlucky group of sinners through the usual series of tests that will see them sliced, diced, maimed, tortured, and eventually killed. The how of it all is quite cleverly done, but this is the best thing about a seventh sequel that, like its immediate predecessors, seeks to play games with the series’ timeline, and cause its audience to spend much of the movie’s running time scratching their heads in confusion.

In tone, this is reminiscent of the first two movies, the ones that introduced and then expanded Kramer’s back story in such a way that you could still keep track of things before they got all gnarly and as tangled as the barbed wire in the Twisted Pictures logo. Newbies the Spierig Brothers have certainly got the look and feel of the series down pat, and while they recreate the grim and gloomy texture that infuses the series as a whole with due care and attention, in doing so, what they haven’t done (and neither has the script by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger) is to make this entry stand out from all the rest. The traps are all present and correct, and they are as fiendishly constructed as you’d expect, but somewhere along the way, the production has failed to make them as visually effective, or their outcomes as disturbing as in previous entries. In some ways, the traps in Jigsaw are the least gruesome in the series as a whole, and in that sense, the danger for the characters is lessened, making their ordeal less effective. It also doesn’t help that the confessions that Jigsaw/Kramer is looking for aren’t that effective either, with only one of them having any kind of impact.

If the intention was to kick start a new run of Saw movies, with new characters and new scenarios that could be sent off in a variety of new directions, then Jigsaw isn’t the movie to herald in that new run. Tied too much to the previous entries, and lacking in anything appreciably new that might energise proceedings, what we’re left with is a movie that feels more comfortable as a cinematic version of a Greatest Hits album (look out for one character’s “hobby room”, and the return of Billy the Puppet), and which harks back to the series’ early days almost in tribute of them. In the end, the movie feels tired and unnecessary, adding little to the canon and providing a bland experience for fans and newcomers alike. The performances are serviceable, though Bell is good value as always, and the twists and turns of the narrative aren’t as compelling or persuasive as they’ve been in the past. Kramer is fond of saying that “the truth will set you free”. Well here, the truth is that Lionsgate, who didn’t want to make another Saw movie until they heard a pitch they thought was worthwhile, should have waited a little bit longer.

Rating: 5/10 – lacking tension in its trap sequences, and with even fewer characters to connect with than usual, Jigsaw is a stunted attempt at rebuilding the Saw franchise; Bell’s presence helps, but it’s not enough to rescue a movie that trades on former glories while being too respectful of them, and which doesn’t try to establish its own identity.

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Asgard, Cate Blanchett, Chris Hemsworth, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Jeff Goldblum, Marvel, Review, Sakaar, Sequel, Taika Waititi, The Grandmaster, Tom Hiddleston, Valkyrie

D: Taika Waititi / 130m

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins, Benedict Cumberbatch, Taika Waititi, Rachel House, Clancy Brown

Ah, Thor, God of Thunder – where have ye been? And what have ye done? Is there anything we should know about? After seeing Thor: Ragnarok, you might be thinking, no, there isn’t, as Marvel’s latest attempt to spin an interesting solo movie out of the Son of Asgard throws punchline after one liner after humorous quip as it tries to draw the audience’s attention away from the fact that, once again, Marvel have very few ideas as to what to do with the character (or Loki, or Odin, or worse still, Bruce Banner/Hulk). By making this a de facto comedy, somewhere along the line they forgot to provide a compelling story. Sure, there’s drama in Hela, the Goddess of Death (Blanchett) coming to destroy Asgard, and yes, there’s further drama in Thor and Hulk both ending up on the same planet and needing to team up to save themselves and Asgard, but it’s all buried under a layer of humour that is often clumsy and intrusive.

The main problem is with Marvel’s decision to split the narrative in two. At the beginning we have the re-emergence of Hela and the threat to Asgard as we know it. Hela proves a formidable opponent to Thor and sends him spinning off through time and space where he ends up on the planet of Sakaar. This is where the movie becomes a little schizophrenic, hopping to and fro from Sakaar, where Thor finds himself prisoner of the Grandmaster (Goldblum), a futuristic Nero-in-waiting who organises gladiatorial games in the kind of overblown colosseum where the unlucky folks in the seats all the way at the top need to bring binoculars in order to see the duels properly, and Asgard, where Hela spends her time waiting for Thor to come back for the big showdown (sorry, that should read behaving nefariously and cruelly to the people of Asgard). Either of these stories could have made an effective single movie, but here they only serve to rub up against each other awkwardly, and as a result, neither are particularly effective.

While Hela misbehaves in Asgard, Thor discovers he’s not alone on Sakaar. Loki (Hiddleston) is also there, having suffered the same fate at the hands of Hela as his brother. Of course, Loki is just as conniving and deceitful as ever, but equally as ever he can still be persuaded to do the right thing when the need arises. Also on Sakaar is Bruce Banner (Ruffalo), still transformed into the Hulk from his last appearance in the Marvel Cinematic Universe towards the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Hulk is the Grandmaster’s champion gladiator, still indomitable, still fuelled by rage but also satisfied by not having returned to being his weaker alter ego. And then there’s a third “refugee”, Scrapper-142, otherwise known as Valkyrie (Thompson), an Asgardian whose presence (and age) aren’t fully explained in the script, but who has history with Hela. Together, Thor, Hulk, Loki and Valkyrie must team up to escape from Sakaar, head for Asgard, and defeat the waiting Hela (sorry, that should read defeat the nefarious and cruelly behaving Hela).

While all this takes place over a matter of days (presumably), it lacks for tension and suspense. We all know that Thor and his team of Revengers will escape from Sakaar, even if it is through the notorious Devil’s Anus (a spectacular wormhole that hovers conveniently over Sakaar), but half the problem is that it takes him so long to do so. And by the time everyone’s back in Asgard for the big showdown, it leaves the final battle feeling a little rushed. Along the way, Bruce relays his reluctance to return to being Hulk, Loki plays both sides to his own advantage, Valkyrie is convinced to help Thor, and the Grandmaster behaves in the kind of off-kilter, quirky, madcap kind of way that only Jeff Goldblum can manage. Meanwhile, Hela sits on the throne of Asgard, glowers a lot, dispenses with a horde of Asgardian warriors in quick fashion, makes an acolyte of Karl Urban’s opportunistic Skurge, and goes back to glowering and waiting for Thor to return (sorry, that should read glowering and plotting the end of Asgard – though you’d think that, having been banished for what seems a very long time, she would have a firm course of action in mind by now).

It’s all put together by Marvel newbie Waititi in bright, airy fashion and with huge dollops of the aforementioned humour to wash it all down with. Some of the humour does work – the already seen in the trailer, “he’s a friend from work”, a lovely mini-performance by Hopkins as Loki playing at being Odin, and Thor trying to break a window – but overall there are just too many moments where the humour is forced or feels like it’s there to carry the scene instead of being an integral part of it. It also comes perilously close to making Thor seem like an inveterate joker rather than the more serious God of Thunder. Even Hela gets a number of wry, pithy observations to put across, and while Blanchett is clearly having fun, having the main villain sounding like a bored straight man trying to get a laugh doesn’t help at all. Marvel seem to be experimenting with each new instalment in the MCU, and Thor: Ragnarok has all the hallmarks of a comedy script that’s been beefed up dramatically thanks to the inclusion of Hela.

That the movie is still a lot of fun despite all this is a tribute to the talent of Waititi and his directorial skills, and the Marvel brand itself, increasingly less homogeneous of late, but still sticking to a winning formula. But there’s very, very little here that adds to the twenty-two movie story arc that will culminate in Untitled Avengers Movie (2019), and if this movie didn’t exist it’s not entirely certain that anyone would be too concerned if Thor and Hulk didn’t show up on our screens until Avengers: Infinity War (2018). Thor himself does undergo some changes (and it’s not just the hair), but where they will ultimately take him if there are to be any further solo movies is open to debate. As for Bruce Banner and his jolly green alter ego, the greater problem of how to provide him with his own solo movie remains unsolved, as the movie keeps him in a supporting role and shows just how effective the character can be when he’s not the main focus. A pleasant diversion then before we delve into the world of Wakanda, but one that’s like a bowl of ice cream: memorable only while it’s being consumed.

Rating: 7/10 – despite the critical drubbing that Thor: The Dark World has taken since its release in 2013, and despite the infusion of a huge amount of comedy, Thor: Ragnarok is ultimately the least of the God of Thunder’s outings so far (though only just); with too many holes in the script, and too many occasions where the characters react and behave in service to the humour rather than the other way around, this is still entertaining stuff, just not as bold or as consistent as it could, or should, have been.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ana de Armas, Denis Villeneuve, Drama, Harrison Ford, Jared Leto, Replicants, Review, Ryan Gosling, Sci-fi, Sequel, Thriller

D: Denis Villeneuve / 163m

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Jared Leto, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Hiam Abbass, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Barkhad Abdi, Dave Bautista, Edward James Olmos

Perhaps the most anticipated sequel of 2017, Blade Runner 2049 is finally with us, having been in development – in one form or another – since 1999. It’s a fascinating movie to watch, built as it is on the legacy of its predecessor, and it’s received a lot of praise from critics and fans alike. But it’s not entirely successful in the goals it’s set itself, and despite some terrific performances, Villeneuve’s inspired direction, and sterling efforts from all concerned with the movie’s look and design, the movie struggles at times to maintain proper focus and to make more of its story elements than it actually does. The style is tremendous, then, but the story it supports isn’t as well worked out as it initially looks. Partly this is to do with decisions made at the pre-production stages, and partly to do with a script – by returning scribe Hampton Fancher, and Michael Green – that rarely tries to flesh out its themes or tease out the inherent subtleties within them. This is being touted as intelligent sci-fi and a worthy successor to its predecessor (and on the whole, it is), but in reality it’s a movie that looks amazing, but can’t make its mind up about the story it wants to tell.

It seems straightforward enough. Modern replicants are now being used as blade runners, and are tasked with tracking down and eliminating any remaining Nexus-8 models that are still out there. K (Gosling) is one such replicant, and he’s generally regarded as good at his job. But then what should be a simple “retirement” throws up an unexpected development in the form of buried human remains. But the truth is stranger still: the bones are those of a female replicant who has given birth, something that was, and is still, regarded as impossible, due to it not being a part of their bio-engineering. K’s superior, Lieutenant Joshi (Wright), fearing such information would be catastrophic if it were made public, orders K to destroy all evidence relating to the case, and locate and kill the child. K visits replicant manufacturer Nyander Wallace (Leto), who identifies the remains as those of Rachael, a replicant who thirty years before, had an affair with a blade runner called Deckard (Ford). Wallace, who can’t manufacture replicants fast enough to match the demand for them both on Earth and on the Off-Worlds, instructs his enforcer, Luv (Hoeks), to follow K and locate the child before it can be “retired”.

And so the stage is set for a race against time in the search for the child (now clearly an adult but referred to as a child throughout). Except Fancher and Green’s script isn’t too concerned about this, and despite the amount of time it’s taken to set it all up. Instead we’re treated to extended passages concerning K’s relationship with a hologram called Joi (de Armas), evidence that K might be the child everyone (including himself) is seeking, meditations on the nature of memory and its veracity, an encounter with what could charitably called the Popular Replicant’s Front of Judea, and further oblique references to Joshi’s insistence that social upheaval will be the result of the child’s existence being made public. Some of this is interesting on a superficial, let’s-not-think-about-this-too-closely level, but that’s also why it remains at a superficial level. The idea that there’ll be a breakdown in the way that replicants are treated comes only from Lieutenant Joshi, but as there doesn’t seem to be anyone that she reports to (she and K could be the only two people in the blade runner department; we never see anyone else), this can only be looked on as her assumption, or her prejudice. But as neither idea is addressed or delved into, the viewer is left with the understanding that if she hadn’t raised it conveniently as an issue, then the movie would struggle to provide audiences with a strong plot.

Out of this, there’s still the confusing issue of whether or not replicants having children is a good or a bad thing. With nothing to suggest that it’s a bad thing – even though the viewer is asked to go along with this idea on faith alone – the fact that Wallace wants to crack this particular genetic anomaly in order to beef up his workforce in the off-world colonies (which would be a benefit for everyone), doesn’t seem such a bad idea at all. But the script insists that he has to behave badly in order to solve this issue and move forward (actually Luv behaves badly, and deliberately so, while Wallace is confined to the sidelines for much of the movie). As a result, tension and discord amongst the characters is encouraged instead of any détente, and once K finds Deckard hiding out amid the ruins of Las Vegas, the movie remembers it’s also a thriller as well as a romantic drama (K and Joi), and it ramps up the action accordingly.

From this it could be assumed that Blade Runner 2049 is a movie that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you look at it closely – and this is true. Fancher and Green’s script doesn’t always delve as deeply as it could do, particularly as replicants are still being treated as slave labour, a situation that should resonate but which is soundly ignored. But fortunately, the movie has Villeneuve as its director, and if he’s not able to smooth overt the cracks in the plot successfully, what he is able to do is make this sequel one of the most visually impressive movies of the last five/ten/fifteen (delete as applicable) years. Along with DoP Roger Deakins, Villeneuve has created a world that has devolved even further in the last thirty years, and which is alternately breathtaking and disconcerting. Dennis Gassner’s production design should be singled out for praise as well, as he makes every last aspect of 2049 life feel immediate and yet compromised, as if everyone is living in a world that’s becoming more and more withdrawn from their day-to-day reality. Large areas surrounding Los Angeles are now wastelands to varying degrees, and there’s still that perpetual rain to remind you of how bad things have remained, and the movie widens its horizons appropriately as it tells its bigger, broader story.

There are good performances throughout, with Gosling proving a good choice as K, his initially blank features slowly giving way to pained resignation mixed with profound hope as to his possibly being “the child”. It’s another outsider-looking-in portrayal, the kind of role that Gosling is so good at playing, and here he doesn’t disappoint. Ford is terrific as well, reconnecting with a role that he hasn’t played in thirty-five years but which he infuses with a grizzled intensity, and a great deal of sympathy. It’s good to see him embracing a part in a way that, Han Solo aside, he hasn’t done for quite some time. There’s great support from the likes of de Armas (in a role that is intended to make K’s replicant nature more human, but which remains surplus to requirements, no matter how hard the screenplay tries), and Hoeks as the movie’s resident replicant psycho. Leto wears odd contact lenses that contribute to his character’s blindness, and aims for urbane but still bizarro villain and largely succeeds thanks to his decision to underplay the role, while Wright, ultimately, is given too little to do other than repeat dire warnings about the child etc. etc.

A sequel to Blade Runner (1982) may have been on a lot of people’s wish lists over the years, but now that it’s here, there’s something of a temptation to praise it for what it does do – look astounding on too many occasions to count, have a score that complements Vangelis’ original score while being its own thing, create several worlds in one – instead of admitting that what it doesn’t do harms it too often (and on a couple of occasions, irreparably). Yes, it’s an incredible movie visually, and the makers should be congratulated, and awarded, for their efforts, but the script isn’t as convincing as it could have been. Still a movie to watch on the biggest screen possible (though not in 3D, which doesn’t add anything to the experience), and one to discuss for some time to come, this is one sequel that could have been bolder in its approach, and more complex in its ruminations.

Rating: 7/10 – though hugely effective for long stretches, Blade Runner 2049 does get bogged down in too many needless secondary plot lines during its middle section, but rallies to provide an exciting action sequence that rounds things off satisfactorily (even if it’s a long time coming); with many scenes that could have been trimmed or excised altogether, this is still a triumph for Villeneuve and his two male leads, and serves as another example of a movie that strives to be different from the rest of its multiplex brethren, even if it’s not fully successful.

Cult of Chucky (2017)

03 Tuesday Oct 2017

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Brad Dourif, Don Mancini, Drama, Fiona Dourif, Good Guy doll, Horror, Jennifer Tilly, Mental institution, Sequel, Thriller

D: Don Mancini / 91m

Cast: Fiona Dourif, Brad Dourif, Michael Therriault, Alex Vincent, Adam Hurtig, Elisabeth Rosen, Grace Lynn Kung, Zak Santiago, Ali Tataryn, Marina Stephenson Kerr, Jennifer Tilly

Number seven in a franchise that’s proving as hard to keep down as the titular character itself, Cult of Chucky is the latest instalment in a series that at least has tried to do something different with each entry. However, while this has its moments, it’s not as good as Child’s Play (1988), or its predecessor, Curse of Chucky (2013), but instead, occupies the largely stagnant middle ground of the rest of the series. Fans will no doubt love it, while non-fans will spend much of their time trying to work out who all the returning characters are. It’s very much a movie that’s been made to satisfy the fans, but if so, then it has to be argued that said fans are pretty undemanding.

It’s a movie that throws the viewer in at the deep end right from the start, and assumes that they’ll know exactly what’s going on, why, and who it’s happening to. It’s a continuation of the story that began in Curse of Chucky, but here the story is presented in a much more straightforward way that doesn’t try to connect itself with the events and characters of earlier entries as Curse did. But what it does do, as so many of the other entries have done, is to cut narrative corners whenever it’s convenient to do so. This means the movie is disjointed, takes liberties with its own continuity, and poses questions it has no intention of answering. For fans of horror franchises, a lot of this will be familiar territory, but as this is another entry written and directed by series’ keeper of the flame, Don Mancini, it’s all the more disappointing.

Set largely in a medium security mental institution, the movie focuses on Nica Pierce (Fiona Dourif), who was framed by Chucky (Brad Dourif) for the murders of her family in the last movie. Four years have passed, and her therapist, Dr Foley (Therriault), has managed to persuade Nica that she murdered her family, and that attributing their murders to Chucky has been a way of dealing with the guilt of what she “did”. But it’s not long before Chucky’s presence begins to make itself felt, first by one of the other patients, Angela (Kerr), telling Nica she’s spoken to Chucky and he’s coming for her, and then by Dr Foley bringing a talking Chucky doll into a group therapy session. A vsit by Tiffany Valentine (Tilly) sees Nica given another talking Chucky doll as a gift, and so, the stage is set for Chucky to go on yet another murderous rampage.

Having toned down the humour that marred Bride of Chucky (1998) and Seed of Chucky (2004), and reconnected with the strengths of the first movie, Mancini seems to be bogged down by what looks and feels like a transition movie, or that difficult second movie in a trilogy. It certainly leaves several plot strands dangling, and then right at the death (so to speak) it springs a surprise that has to be addressed/followed up in the next instalment (it’s one of those moments that will have fans punching the air in delight, while baffling the average viewer). Despite Mancini’s best efforts, the movie plays out with a grim determination to provide just enough death and franchise maintenance to keep people interested until next time, when perhaps, there’ll be a better payoff. And at least this time, the makers have foregone the low budget CGI employed on the last couple of entries, and returned to the animatronic and puppetry effects that have been used so well in the past. Chucky still moves like he’s got rickets, or is in need of a hip replacement, but it’s in keeping with how a plastic doll without functioning knees or ankles would move if it really was alive.

Fortunately though, and amidst all the pedestrian plotting and characterisations, Mancini manages to pull off a number of masterful moments that elevate the material, if only briefly. There are several establishing shots of the interior of the mental institution that show off its sharp lines and white open spaces, and there’s a character reveal that is both unexpected and effective purely because there’s no previous set up for it. There’s the puzzle of why one Chucky doll has a brutal fringe, and best of all, a death scene involving a skylight that Mancini shoots first with an eye for its initial static beauty, and then with an eye for its devastating, bloody outcome. These help the movie haul itself out of the doldrums it finds itself in at times, and gives some hope that if Mancini has already got number eight mapped out in his head, that it will contain moments as good as these, and perhaps a lot more besides.

Another bonus is the presence of the Dourifs, with Brad providing more solid voice work as Chucky, and daughter Fiona back in the fray as Nica. Fiona isn’t always best served by the script, but she has a similar intensity to her father that keeps the character more credible than most. As the movie progresses – and this may have been deliberate on Mancini’s part – Fiona looks more and more like her father, so much so that in a scene where she’s being hypnotised by Dr Foley and a light flashes in front of her, her features alternate between her own and what could have been her father’s super-imposed on hers, though that’s clearly not the case. It’s an odd, somewhat disturbing moment, and the feeling persists from that moment on. If it is deliberate, then it’s a clever trick considering where the movie ends up. Along the way though, Mancini plays to genre conventions for the most part, and keeps the movie from looking or feeling too fresh (the setting is yet another hospital where only the same three members of staff are on duty at any one time; otherwise it’s deserted). Held back perhaps by budgetary restrictions, the movie is nevertheless one that tries to bring something new to the series, but doesn’t quite manage it. Maybe next time…

Rating: 5/10 – lacking the consistency and attention to detail of its predecessor, Cult of Chucky gets by on a handful of bravura moments, but lets itself down by abandoning any attempt at maintaining its own internal logic very early on; the need to set up another sequel means the ending is something of a letdown, but if you’re a fan then this is something you’re probably going to derive a lot of pleasure from.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

20 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Comedy, Drama, Drugs, Galahad, Halle Berry, Julianne Moore, Kingsman, Mark Strong, Matthew Vaughn, Merlin, Pedro Pascal, Poppyland, Review, Sequel, Statesman, Taron Egerton

D: Matthew Vaughn / 141m

Cast: Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal, Edward Holcroft, Hanna Alström, Bruce Greenwood, Emily Watson, Elton John, Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Poppy Delevingne, Sophie Cookson, Michael Gambon

When Kingsman: The Secret Service hit our screens back in 2014, its anarchic sense of fun and willingness to push the boundaries of good taste (exploding heads, anyone?) made it stand out from the crowd, and introduced us to Colin Firth the action hero. It was smart, it was savvy, it was funny, and its action sequences, especially that astounding sequence set in a Kentucky church, showed that well choreographed fight scenes could still impress and leave jaws dropped everywhere. A sequel may have been in some initial doubt – writer/director Vaughn wasn’t sure the first movie would be successful enough to warrant a second outing – but now it’s here, and it’s a very mixed bag indeed.

As a sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle adheres to the formula for a follow-up to an unexpectedly successful movie in that it goes bigger, brings back its original stars and gives them less to do, references its predecessor in some ways that are good and some ways that aren’t, introduces a group of new characters that the audience aren’t allowed to connect with, and extends the running time unnecessarily. It’s as if Vaughn and returning co-screenwriter Jane Goldman have heard the phrase, “Give ’em what they want, and then give ’em more” and taken it to heart. But there are too many elements that clash with each other, and the movie never maintains a consistent tone. Also, that anarchic sense of fun that the first movie carried off so well, here feels awkward and somewhat laboured, and we have yet another villain with a goofy personality who’s just plain misunderstood (Moore’s over-achieving cartel boss wants to be recognised for her “business acumen”).

Of course, any sequel that seeks to revive a character who appeared to be killed in the first movie, has to tread carefully in how it brings them back; this may be a world far removed from our own reality, but even in fantasy land, death means dead and gone. Vaughn and Goldman have come up with an ingenious idea that makes sense within the confines of the world that Kingsman operates within, but the fact that in terms of the plot a year has passed and Harry (Firth) is still suffering from amnesia and the Kingsmen haven’t been told he’s alive, is just one of the larger plot holes that pepper the script and make you think that while Vaughn has been reported as saying that “writing this was the hardest thing I’ve ever done”, it soon becomes obvious that he needed to try a bit harder. Perhaps the biggest question that goes unanswered, is why villain of the piece Poppy Adams (Moore) takes out the Kingsmen in the first place. Without even a throwaway line to clear up the matter, viewers could be forgiven for thinking that it was important to the plot, and it is, but only as a way of introducing their American cousins, the Statesmen.

Cue a lot of cool new gadgets, the presence of franchise newbies Tatum, Berry, Pascal, and Bridges (seemingly the only people who work for Statesman – until the end, that is), a side trip to the Glastonbury Music Festival that actually includes a scene where Eggsy (Egerton) asks his girlfriend, Tilde (Alström), if she’s okay with him having sex with another woman (Delevingne), the sorry spectacle of Elton John having been persuaded to send up his image from the Seventies and encased in ever more ridiculous stage outfits (he’s been kidnapped by Poppy – of course), a physics defying stunt involving a cable car that at least has the benefit of a terrific one-liner as its pay-off, Harry being cured of his retrograde amnesia but still seeing butterflies (don’t ask), Poppy’s robot attack dogs Bennie and Jet (geddit?), and several plot threads that are left dangling like so much silly string.

There’s more, a lot more, but if there’s one area where the movie lets itself, and the audience, down, it’s with a disastrous sub-plot involving the US President (Greenwood) and his so-called “war on drugs”. Poppy’s plan is to infect the millions of addicts who use her drugs with a deadly chemical that will kill them. Unless the President agrees to her demand to make all drugs legal, then she’ll withhold the antidote. Publicly, the President appears to agree to her terms, but privately he has no intention of saving anyone, reasoning that if all the drug addicts in the world are dead, then illegal drugs will become a thing of the past because there’ll be no one around to take them. There is a twisted sense of logic there – barely – and it could have been made to sound semi-plausible, but the President’s flippant, couldn’t-care-less attitude seems more of a rebuke to the current real-life incumbent than any properly considered character design. And leading on from the President’s decision, the movie opts to provide audiences with the unsettling and seriously off-kilter sight of thousands of victims of Poppy’s plan being herded into cages and stacked on top of each other within the confines of a US football stadium (is there a message here?).

This time around the comedy is muted in favour of a more serious approach, but it’s as haphazardly sewn into the fabric of the movie as everything else. The action sequences, particularly an opening display of vehicular mayhem on the streets of London, and the final showdown at Poppyland, have been shot and edited with a view to making the fight choreography flow as quickly as possible within the frame, but as a result, details are lost and much of what can be seen seems to involve as much posing as it does fighting. Against all this, the performances are adequate, though Strong and Berry are on better form than the rest, while there are odd instances – a bar fight that echoes the original’s pub brawl, but with Harry coming off worst; Merlin singing Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver at a crucial moment – where the viewer can see glimpses of what might have been, but overall there aren’t enough to warrant a better appreciation of a movie that’s slackly directed, confuses sentiment for depth in its treatment of the relationship between Harry and Eggsy, and which doesn’t try hard enough to match the style and energy of its predecessor.

Rating: 5/10 – with the prospect of a third movie just over the horizon, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the point where the service should hang up its tailoring shingle and head off into early retirement; a disappointing sequel that shows a flare for inconsistency throughout, it offers shallow pleasures for those who want that sort of thing, but will prove a more difficult experience for those expecting a repeat of the giddy heights of the first movie.

Monthly Roundup – August 2017

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Argentina, Bad Santa 2, Baires, Bela Lugosi, Benjamín Vicuña, Billy Bob Thornton, Charlie Chan, Comedy, Daniel de la Vega, Darth Vader, David Prowse, Disappearance, Documentary, Drugs, Germán Palacios, Hamilton MacFadden, Honolulu, Horror, I Am Your Father, Jean-Pierre Melville, Julieta Cardinali, Kathy Bates, Marcelo Páez Cubells, Marcos Cabotá, Mark Waters, Mexico, Mystery, New York, Pierre Grasset, Reviews, Roland Winters, Sally Eilers, Sequel, The Black Camel, The Feathered Serpent, The Green Cross Code Man, Thriller, Toni Basterd, Tony Cox, Two Men in Manhattan, White Coffin, William Beaudine

The Feathered Serpent (1948) / D: William Beaudine / 61m

Cast: Roland Winters, Keye Luke, Mantan Moreland, Victor Sen Yung, Carol Forman, Robert Livingston, Nils Asther, Beverly Jons, Martin Garralaga

Rating: 4/10 – while on vacation in Mexico, Charlie Chan finds himself drawn into a mystery involving murder and the search for an ancient Aztec temple; the penultimate Charlie Chan movie, The Feathered Serpent is as disappointing as the rest of the entries made by Monogram, but does at least see the return of Luke as Number One Son after eleven years, though even this can’t mitigate for the tired, recycled script (originally a Three Mesquiteers outing), and performances that aim for perfunctory – and almost achieve it.

The Black Camel (1931) / D: Hamilton MacFadden / 71m

Cast: Warner Oland, Sally Eilers, Bela Lugosi, Dorothy Revier, Victor Varconi, Murray Kinnell, William Post Jr, Robert Young, Violet Dunn, Otto Yamaoka, Dwight Frye

Rating: 6/10 – Charlie Chan investigates when an actress is found murdered, and discovers that her death relates to another murder that occurred three years previously; the second Charlie Chan movie proper, The Black Camel keeps the Oriental detective in Honolulu (where creator Earl Derr Biggers based him), and at the forefront of a murder mystery that has more twists and turns and suspects than usual, and which proves an enjoyable outing thanks to good supporting turns by Kinnell and Young (making his debut and irrepressible as ever), and a more relaxed performance by Lugosi than most people will be used to.

I Am Your Father (2015) / D: Toni Basterd, Marcos Cabotá / 82m

Narrator: Colm Meaney

With: David Prowse, Marcos Cabotá, Gary Kurtz, Robert Watts, Marcus Hearn, Jonathan Rigby, Robert Prowse, James Prowse

Rating: 7/10 – Spanish movie maker Marcos Cabotá hits on an idea to tell the story of the man behind the mask of Darth Vader, and to restage Vader’s death scene with Prowse finally acting the part as he’s always felt he should have done; a likeable documentary, I Am Your Father is a tribute to Prowse’s continued commitment to the role of Darth Vader, and along the way paints Lucasfilm in a very poor light for mistreating him during shooting of Episodes V and VI, and blackballing Prowse since 1983 (over his “revealing” Vader’s death in Return of the Jedi), but the movie is let down by a haphazard structure, and not being able to show the re-shot scene (no doubt thanks to Lucasfilm).

White Coffin (2016) / D: Daniel de la Vega / 71m

Original title: Ataúd Blanco: El Juego Diabólico

Cast: Julieta Cardinali, Eleonora Wexler, Rafael Ferro, Damián Dreizik, Fiorela Duranda, Verónica Intile

Rating: 5/10 – when a young girl (Duranda) is kidnapped by a mysterious cult, her mother (Cardinali) discovers that not even death is an obstacle to getting her back; five features in and Argentinian horror maestro de la Vega still can’t assemble a coherent script to accompany his homages to Seventies Euro horror, making White Coffin a frustrating viewing experience that offers too many moments of unrealised potential, and leaves its cast adrift in terms of meaningful or sympathetic characterisations.

Bad Santa 2 (2016) / D: Mark Waters / 92m

Cast: Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, Tony Cox, Christina Hendricks, Brett Kelly, Ryan Hansen, Jenny Zigrino, Jeff Skowron, Mike Starr, Octavia Spencer

Rating: 6/10 – against his better judgment, alcoholic ex-criminal Willie (Thornton) teams up with his old friend Marcus (Cox) to steal two million dollars from a charity at Xmas time, which means donning a Santa suit once more; more defiantly scurrilous and offensive than the original, Bad Santa 2 benefits from Thornton’s ambivalent attitude as Willie, a plethora of cruel yet hilarious one-liners, and a great turn by Bates as Willie’s mother, but it also fails to pull together a decent plot, contains too many scenes that fall flat, and can’t quite replicate the energy of its predecessor.

Baires (2015) / D: Marcelo Páez Cubells / 82m

Cast: Germán Palacios, Benjamín Vicuña, Sabrina Garciarena, Juana Viale, Carlos Belloso

Rating: 4/10 – gullible Spanish tourist Mateo (Vicuña) parties with the wrong crowd in Buenos Aires and finds his girlfriend, Trini (Garciarena), threatened with a sticky end unless he transports drugs back to Spain; a thick-ear thriller Argentinian-style, Baires is mercifully short but dreary in its set up and cumbersome in its “thump a villain every five minutes” approach to tracking down the chief villain(s), all of which leaves little room for sympathetic characters, a credible narrative, or anything more than flat-pack direction from Cubells.

Two Men in Manhattan (1959) / D: Jean-Pierre Melville / 84m

Original title: Deux hommes dans Manhattan

Cast: Pierre Grasset, Jean-Pierre Melville, Christiane Eudes, Ginger Hall, Glenda Leigh, Colette Fleury, Monique Hennessy, Jean Darcante, Jerry Mengo, Jean Lara

Rating: 6/10 – when the French UN delegate disappears in New York, the job of tracking him down is given to a reporter (Melville), and a photographer (Grasset) who has his own agenda; practically dismissed by French critics on its first release, Melville’s ode to New York and film noir, Two Men in Manhattan is a nimble yet forgettable movie that prompted the writer/director to move away from the Nouvelle Vague movement he’d helped to create, leaving this as an enjoyable if predictable drama that could have done without Melville’s awkward presence in front of the cameras.

Rings (2017)

25 Friday Aug 2017

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Alex Roe, Curse, Drama, F. Javier Gutiérrez, Horror, Johnny Galecki, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Review, Samara, Sequel, Seven days, Video, Vincent D'Onofrio

D: F. Javier Gutiérrez / 102m

Cast: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan

Inevitability. In the world of franchise horror, the word is a touchstone for movie makers everywhere. Where there is one horror movie that’s been successful (even moderately so), chances are that someone will come along and make another. And another. And another, until the law of diminishing returns – financial, not artistic – brings an end to the whole terrible enterprise. For a while.

The latest franchise entry to be foisted on us without any kind of encouragement from fans, interested third parties, previous investors, or the terminally bewildered, Rings is a redundant exercise in supernatural nonsense that outstays its welcome right from the very start. Set on a plane, the opening scene plays out like a game of tag as first one passenger then another, and then another, reveals that they’ve all watched the dreaded videotape featuring Samara. It’s seven days on for all of them – just what are the odds? – and there’s nowhere for them to go: the plane’s in the air and the video screens are all working. And sure enough, heeeeeere’s Samara! Inevitably (there’s that word again), the plane crashes, killing everyone aboard. But has the cycle been broken?

Fast forward two years and the answer is an obvious, of course not. A college professor called Gabriel (Galecki) buys a battered old VCR at a garage sale and inevitably it contains a copy of the cursed videotape (just how many copies of this videotape were made?). Inevitably, Gabriel watches it. We’re then side-tracked into the lives of generic teen lovebirds, Julia (Lutz) and Holt (Roe) just as Holt is about to go off to college (guess who’s a professor there?). When Holt stops returning her calls and texts, and she receives a mysterious call from a girl called Skye (Teegarden) asking after Holt’s whereabouts, Julia drops everything and heads to Holt’s college. Soon, she’s met Skye and Gabriel, been introduced to “The Sevens”, a group of students involved in an experiment of Gabriel’s devising that involves Samara’s videotape, and been a passive witness to Skye’s demise. She learns that Holt has watched the tape and has twelve hours left before Samara kills him. Julia watches it too, but when she gets the call to tell her she has “seven days”, the phone burns a mark into her palm, and she has a vision of a door.

All this sets up a road trip to the town of Sacrament Valley, and an investigation into the whereabouts of Samara’s remains (Julia and Holt believe that by cremating her remains, Samara’s curse will be lifted). Soon they’re breaking into tombs, visiting a blind man named Burke (D’Onofrio) who knows some of Samara’s history in the town, and discovering hidden rooms below the church. There’s danger, more danger, continued supernatural threat, death, injury, more death, and a sequel-baiting ending that wants to have its Samara-shaped cake and eat it as well. Does it make any sense? On a convoluted, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-simpler level, no, it doesn’t, and mainly because Samara’s influence is allowed to have an effect beyond the videotape and her murderous follow-up courtesy call seven days later. This allows for the deaths of two characters that are at odds with the basic set up, and an ending that makes no sense because it undermines the admittedly skewed logic created from the start, and the greater mythology of the franchise as a whole – as anyone who remembers the end of The Ring Two (2005) should be able to attest.

So what we have here is a belated series’ revival that should be filed under “cash-in”, or “uninspired knock-off”. It tries to reinvent the wheel in terms of Samara’s origins in an attempt to provide viewers with something different from previous outings, but in doing so, becomes laboured and unaccountably dull. Much of the time spent in Sacrament Valley plods along at a pace that defies audience involvement, and with each new plot “development” the sounds of heads being scratched and confused sighs being released act as a measure of just how stale the script has become. Said script has been cobbled together by David Loucka, Jacob Estes, and Akiva Goldsman (what with this and The Dark Tower, Goldsman isn’t exactly having a banner year – and that’s without his story credit for Transformers: The Last Knight). With its bland central duo, reflexive storyline and make-it-up-as-you-go-along plotting, Rings is a horror movie that aims to be as creepy as its forebears, but then forgets that the old trick of having Samara emerging from a TV has lost much of its original impact. The troubled teen spirit is old hat now, a horror icon who no longer possesses the power to frighten audiences, except in relation to how living in a well isn’t too good for the complexion.

At the helm of all this is Gutiérrez, a director whose last stint behind the camera was in 2008. There are certain moments and scenes where it’s clear he’s opted for a generic approach to the material, but what’s unclear is whether this was due to budgetary constraints or creative decision-making. But what it does is to make the movie drag for much of its latter half, which in conjunction with the script’s grinding to a dramatic halt, leaves the viewer stranded waiting for the movie to become interesting again. But neither the script nor Gutiérrez can overcome the lack of original ideas being put forward, and much as he might try, Gutiérrez lacks the wherewithal to inject a much needed spark into proceedings. The performances are perfunctory and lack depth (which is perhaps inevitable given the material), and the cinematography relies too heavily on scenes being lit as if exploring the wider edges of the frame wasn’t required, or important. Even the movie’s few jump scares are tired approximations of previous jump scares. With so much that’s ineffective and mundane, the only thing the viewer can hope for is that, despite its success at the box office, this is one sequel-cum-reboot that puts off anyone revisiting the curse of Samara anytime soon.

Rating: 4/10 – stereotypical even by horror franchise standards, and lacking a perceptible style all its own, Rings adds nothing of value to the series, instead settling for telling the kind of melodramatic detective story that has been done to death dozens of times before; a movie then that serves only to reinforce just how the franchise has deteriorated since the heady days of Hideo Nakata’s 1998 original.

Sharknado 5: Global Swarming (2017)

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Anthony C. Ferrante, Cameos, Franchise, Ian Ziering, London, Sequel, Sharks, SyFy, Tara Reid

D: Anthony C. Ferrante / 90m

Cast: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Cassandra Scerbo, Billy Barratt, Yanet Garcia, Porsha Williams, too many minor celebrities to mention…

The Sharknado series has long been a bastion of awfulness, a treasury of trash, and a castle keep of constant calamity. It’s fast becoming the movie franchise that cannot, will not, die, with a new instalment being released each year with alarming regularity of purpose and design. And so we have the latest farrago in a series of movies that just keeps on coming and coming and coming. Rest assured (if that’s the right word), Sharknado 5: Global Warming won’t be the last in the series (and you’ll know why if you manage to make it to the end), and though Jaws 19 directed by Max Spielberg won’t ever happen, it’s more than likely now that in 2032 we’ll be having Sharknado 19: The NeverEnding Story streamed directly onto the back of our eyeballs.

This far in there’s very little point in offering up a proper review, or trying to differentiate between this instalment and any of the others. They’re all genuinely bad movies, and the producers seem to have decided that they need to be made that way deliberately. Fans of the series will get as much or as little out of Sharknado 5 as they have all the rest, detractors will have their views confirmed yet again, and the casual viewer will probably wonder how on earth a movie this bad has managed to get made in the first place. In the beginning, it could have been argued that the first Sharknado was a modern-day variation/update on the kind of monster horrors from the Fifties and Sixties, but without the radiation fallout to start things off. Now though, it’s a cultural anomaly that just keeps on giving and giving, even though the majority of us don’t want it to.

Rating: 3/10 – with only its celebrity cameos giving it a lift, Sharknado 5: Global Swarming is the franchise’s nadir, an appalling waste of everyone’s time and money; with the producers seeming to think that the series needs to get sillier and more deliberately stupid with each entry, it’s a poor reflection on their latest instalment when the cleverest thing about it is its tagline: Make America Bait Again.

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)

10 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Alpha-Omega, Andy Serkis, Caesar, Drama, Karin Konoval, Matt Reeves, Review, Sequel, Steve Zahn, Thriller, Trilogy, Woody Harrelson

D: Matt Reeves / 140m

Cast: Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Karin Konoval, Amiah Miller, Terry Notary, Ty Olsson, Michael Adamthwaite, Toby Kebbell, Gabriel Chavarria, Judy Greer

With so many franchise trilogies out there at the moment, and with so many of them failing to maintain a consistent level of quality across all three movies, what are the odds that a series based on a previous five-movie saga – which went from genre classic to tired afterthought – would prove to be the trilogy that bucked the trend and have the most impact? For such is the case thanks to War for the Planet of the Apes, the final entry in a trilogy that has been consistently impressive from start to finish, and which has raised the bar significantly in terms of motion capture performances.

The success of the series can be attributed to the seriousness, and the sense of purpose with which each entry has been approached. Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) introduced us to a world where the potential of apes superseding humans was a tantalising prospect. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) took us deeper into that world and showed how intolerance and distrust on both sides could be exploited by personal agendas. And in War for the Planet of the Apes we see the inevitable consequences that arise from attempting to avoid a future that has been predestined ever since Will Rodman created ALZ 112. The whole trilogy has been a triumph of storytelling and characterisation, and thanks to the efforts of everyone involved, has ended on such a high note that if Chernin Entertainment and 20th Century Fox do decide to continue the saga (as seems to be the plan) then they will have a massive job on their hands to equal or improve upon what’s gone before.

Since the events of Dawn… Caesar (Serkis) and his tribe have retreated further into California’s Muir Woods, but their hope for a peaceful, undisturbed existence is short-lived. A paramilitary group called Alpha-Omega has tracked them down. The group launches an attack on the apes’ home, but are repelled. Caesar spares the lives of four men, and tells them to report back to their leader, Colonel McCullough (Harrelson), that he hasn’t started this war, and he just wants his tribe to be left alone. Later, the soldiers return at night, and this time the apes suffer greater casualties than before. Caesar, determined to put an end to these endless skirmishes once and for all, decides to find the colonel and kill him. He intends to go alone, but his chief advisor, orang-utan Maurice (Konoval), gorilla Luca (Adamthwaite), and chimpanzee Rocket (Notary), all follow after him. Caesar allows them to accompany him, and while the rest of the tribe journey in search of a new home, the quartet travel to the “border” where the colonel has his base. Along the way, they encounter the daughter of a soldier, Nova (Miller), who cannot speak; Maurice insists that she continue on with them. Further on they meet Bad Ape (Zahn), a chimpanzee who helps them locate McCullough’s compound.

By this stage of the movie, many viewers may feel that they know what will happen next, and how, but one of the strengths of Mark Bomback and Matt Reeves’ script is its willingness to take the material into much darker territory than anyone might expect. To this end, Caesar undergoes both a crisis of faith and an apotheosis, and the moral certainties and imperatives that govern the actions and motives of both Caesar and McCullough are thrown into sharp relief by the similarities they exhibit. Although nominally the movie’s villain, and despite his resemblance to Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now (1979), McCullough isn’t the cut-and-dried bad guy that he first appears to be. Driven by the same fears of species annihilation that occupy Caesar, McCullough has glimpsed humanity’s future and the sight has scared him badly. Operating out of fear and a desperate sense of protectionism, the colonel behaves in ways that are both understandable and reprehensible, and it’s this dichotomy that makes the character such a good adversary for Caesar.

For his part, Caesar is still trying to deal with the ramifications of his killing Koba (Kebbell), and what that might imply in terms of his ability to lead his tribe. This element of self-doubt, itself riffing off the precept that “ape shall not kill ape”, adds further depth to a character who has always challenged the assumption that the apes’ fate is pre-determined. As time has gone by and his goal of peaceful assimilation has been repeatedly derailed by human intransigence, Caesar has become all too aware that mutual annihilation may be the eventual outcome of the apes’ struggle with their human counterparts. He knows that killing McCullough is necessary but finds that it’s not as simple as he thought it would be, partly because of the nature of the colonel’s compound (where apes are used as slave labour), and partly because he can’t fully excuse some of his own behaviour (which he sees reflected in McCullough’s actions).

The movie also deals with issues of social exclusion, both ape and human, and has a political edge that adds further realism to what is essentially a fantasy-based parable of human folly on a grand scale. There are succinct parallels to modern-day events happening in the real world that make it seem as if Bomback and Reeves have a prophetic ability that the movie can capitalise on, while for those who want to explore the idea, there’s the possibility that the apes represent another tribe searching for a place to settle in peace. All this aside, War… is further strengthened by a tremendous central performance by Serkis as Caesar. It’s been mentioned elsewhere, but Serkis’s performance is so powerful and so emotionally layered that if he’s not nominated for any acting trophies come awards season, then maybe a boycott is in order. Without Serkis, there’s little doubt that the trilogy would not have been as impressive and as compelling as it is. We’ve watched the character evolve over the course of three increasingly remarkable movies, and Serkis’s equally remarkable achievement deserves appropriate recognition.

Rating: 9/10 – a superb example of how to end a trilogy by not deviating from the path originally set out in the first movie, and by not sanitising it in any way, War for the Planet of the Apes is intelligent, emotive and complex movie making that wears its confidence on its sleeve as a badge of merit; featuring breathtaking cinematography by Michael Seresin (who was for a long time the go-to DoP for Alan Parker), expertly choreographed action sequences, clever references to the original Planet of the Apes movies, and by turns, a charged, stirring and poignant score courtesy of Michael Giacchino, this is easily one of the best movies of 2017 – paws down.

A Brief Word About the 2017 Blockbuster Season

17 Saturday Jun 2017

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2017, Blockbuster movies, Movies, Reboot, Remake, Sequel

Okay, it’s well and truly here, the 2017 Blockbuster Season, the time when the big studios release their tentpole summer movies in the hopes of bagging massive box office returns, and if they’re lucky, some long overdue critical approval. The movies that have been given the biggest push through trailers and promotional tie-ins and targeted social media outlets. The movies with the biggest budgets and the biggest stars. And the movies that roundly and soundly let us down. Each. And. Every. Year.

If you begin with Logan (released back in March), and if you treat it as a blockbuster, then the following movies all fall into the same category: big movies given big releases after big advertising spends have been pretty much exhausted. And those movies are: Kong: Skull Island, Beauty and the Beast, Power Rangers, Ghost in the Shell, The Fate of the Furious, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, Alien: Covenant, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Baywatch, Wonder Woman, and The Mummy. Not one of these movies is an original. They’re either a reboot, a remake or a sequel. Most of them have made a shed load of money already, and two of them have made over $1 billion. But can anyone say, hand on heart, that any of these movies have been so good that the anticipation built up by the studios was entirely justified? I don’t think so. To put it bluntly, none of them were that good.

So, still to come we have: Transformers: The Last Knight, Despicable Me 3, Spider-Man: Homecoming, War for the Planet of the Apes, Cars 3, Dunkirk, The Dark Tower, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. More heavy doses of fantasy and action, and another round of movies that we’ll all hope will be better than we think they’ll be. But how is it that we always fall for this “false advertising”? How is it that we always fall for the same build-ups and the same claims that Movie X will be amazing/fantastic/mind-blowing/the best thing sliced bread? Are we that numb to the continual failings of the big studios to provide audiences with movies that they can actually engage with on an emotional and intellectual level? And can we not just say No to over-hyped movies and their dire content? The people that make these movies are all highly regarded and all highly talented, but they make the same mediocre/rubbish/moronic (I’m talking about you, Baywatch) movies over and over. And we all rush to see them (and before you say, “yes, and so do you”, my excuse is that I’ll watch anything – I’m a movie addict).

This is a concern that I’ve raised before on thedullwoodexperiment, and I have no doubt that I’ll be raising it again in the future (probably next year). But before I do, think about it like this: the big studios tell us that their summer blockbuster movies help subsidise the smaller, more intimate movies that they also make. But even with that, aren’t we entitled to spend our money on seeing a tentpole movie that really does move us – and not to ennui?

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)

30 Tuesday May 2017

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Action, Black Pearl, Brenton Thwaites, Comedy, Curse, Drama, Fantasy, Geoffrey Rush, Javier Bardem, Joachim Rønning, Johnny Depp, Kaya Scodelario, Review, Sequel, Trident of Poseidon

aka Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge

D: Joachim Rønning, Espen Sandberg / 129m

Cast: Johnny Depp, Javier Bardem, Geoffrey Rush, Brenton Thwaites, Kaya Scodelario, Kevin McNally, Golshifteh Farahani, David Wenham, Stephen Graham, Angus Barnett, Martin Klebba, Adam Brown, Giles New, Lewis McGowan, Orlando Bloom, Paul McCartney

Six years after Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides appeared to have brought the franchise to an end, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer have resurrected Captain Jack Sparrow for one more round of hijinks on the high seas. This movie and a potential sixth in the series were being planned even before On Stranger Tides was released, but production delays and script problems kept Dead Men Tell No Tales from our screens until now. It’s debatable that anyone outside of the cast and crew and studio bosses were enthusiastic about the idea of a fifth movie, and it’s doubtful that even die-hard fans were expecting too much from it, but the series has made a lot of money since it began back in 2003 – over $3.7 billion before this installment – so perhaps another entry shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

Dead Men Tell No Tales harks back to the simpler, more effective pleasures found in the series’ first movie, Curse of the Black Pearl, and attempts to forget the bloated excesses of the previous two installments by imitating much of what made that movie so successful. However, this approach hasn’t meant a return to form, but instead has stopped the rot. You can argue that this is a better movie than On Stranger Tides, and you wouldn’t be wrong, but both as a stand-alone entry and the continuation of a series that provides links to its predecessors in an ongoing game of Guess-the-Reference, number five in the series is still found wanting.

For a start, there’s the plot, a mish-mash of ideas that are borne out of the idea that hidden somewhere at sea is the Trident of Poseidon, and that this is the cure for all the curses of the sea. At the start of the movie, a young Henry Turner (McGowan) confronts his father, Will (Bloom), and tells him of his plan to find the Trident and free him from his fate as the Flying Dutchman. Will believes the Trident can’t be found, but Henry is determined. Nine years later, Henry is now a young man (Thwaites), and still searching for the Trident, as is astronomer Carina Smyth (Scodelario). She has a book that gives clues to the Trident’s whereabouts, but has been condemned by the British as a witch. Henry, meanwhile, has encountered the ghost of Captain Salazar (Bardem) who is seeking revenge on Captain Jack Sparrow for his supernatural existence. On the island of St Martin, Henry, Carina and Jack all come together and make sail for the unmarked island that can’t be navigated to, closely followed by Salazar and interested party Barbossa (Rush).

There’s more – much more – and therein lies one of the movie’s biggest problems: it takes what should be a fairly straightforward idea and twists it so far out of shape that every attempt to straighten it out merely serves to make it less and less, and less, straightforward. The plot becomes buried under layer after layer of unnecessary twists and turns and double crosses and “clever” subterfuges. The characters’ individual storylines become convoluted and unwieldy, with one relationship forged out of nothing, and as for any character development, that’s been ignored in favour of getting everyone from point A to point B with a minimum of effort or fuss. For a movie that was delayed partly because of script problems, it makes you wonder just how bad scribe Jeff Nathanson’s original screenplay really was (or if Johnny Depp’s widely credited contributions are to blame instead).

Another problem lies with the character of Jack Sparrow himself. Five movies in and it’s clear that the character has run out of steam both dramatically and comedically. He’s a pale shadow of his former self, no longer as witty as he once was, or retaining the skewed moral compass he once had, and halfway to being a lampoon. And for the most part Depp is going through the motions, offering brief glimpses of the portrayal that made such an impact fourteen years ago, but unable to rekindle the past glories that came with that portrayal. The usual grinning and grimacing are there but that’s the point: it’s exactly the same grinning and grimacing we’ve already seen four times before. When your main character becomes more and more of a caricature with every outing, then it’s time to really shake things up and do something different.

But doing something different – anything different – isn’t part of the movie’s agenda. Instead, newcomers Rønning and Sandberg cleave to the look and feel of the first movie, but are hamstrung by having little in the way of dramatic meat to work with, and a preponderance of comedic moments that are self-referential and which largely fall flat. Yes, there are moments where you’ll smile and maybe chuckle to yourself, but outright laughs are as rare as someone in Salazar’s crew having a complete body. The various action set pieces offer the occasional frisson, but again there’s very little that holds the attention or seems fresh by design or in execution. A bank heist early on plays like a low-budget version of the vault robbery from Fast Five (2011), while the finale steals its set up from the parting of the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments (1956).

On the acting front, returnees Rush, McNally, Klebba, Graham, Barnett, New, and Bloom do what they need to do within the confines of the script, while newcomers Bardem, Thwaites, Scodelario, Farahani (as a thinly disguised version of Naomie Harris’s Calypso), and Wenham face exactly the same problem. When an actor of the calibre of Javier Bardem can’t manage to make a character such as Salazar even occasionally memorable then there’s definitely something wrong going on. And just when you thought there wasn’t a rock star who could give a worse performance than Keith Richards in a Pirates movie, up pops Paul McCartney as Jack’s Uncle Jack, an appearance that makes you pray he doesn’t pop up again.

In essence, this is a movie (and a fourth sequel to boot) that atones for the appalling nature of its immediate predecessor, but which in doing so, defaults to being predictable and safe. This makes it a movie that offers few rewards for its fans, and even fewer rewards for anyone coming to the franchise for the first time. A post credits scene sets up a sixth movie which looks set to bring back another character from the series’ past, but if it does, then it will have to be a vast improvement on this entry, and perhaps require a complete rethink of a franchise that has gone astray and which shows no immediate signs of finding its way back.

Rating: 4/10 – impressive CGI and beautiful locations are about the best things in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, but even they aren’t good enough to rescue a movie that opts for mediocre as a first choice, and is only fitfully entertaining; a tiptoe in the right direction for the franchise but still an underwhelming experience for anyone who remembers the glory days of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Alien: Covenant (2017)

12 Friday May 2017

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Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Drama, Horror, Katherine Waterston, Michael Fassbender, Prequel, Review, Ridley Scott, Sci-fi, Sequel, Thriller, Xenomorph

D: Ridley Scott / 122m

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride, Demián Bichir, Carmen Ejogo, Jussie Smollett, Callie Hernandez, Amy Siemetz, Nathaniel Dean, Alexander England, Benjamin Rigby, Uli Latukefu, Tess Haubrich

When the Alien franchise was given a new lease of life with official prequel Prometheus (2012), audiences were teased with the idea that they would finally learn just where the series’ chief villain, the xenomorph, came from. Prometheus, though, raised far more questions than it provided answers, and while it introduced the Engineers and went some way to showing the xenomorph’s origins (though not the reasons for its creation), the intended link between this first prequel and the original Alien (1979) remained obscure, and still far from being revealed. With Alien: Covenant, audiences could be excused for believing that some of those unanswered questions would be addressed, and the connecting story expanded on. But with at least two further prequels (sequels to the prequels?) planned, and possibly a third, the message here is frustratingly clear: don’t expect to learn anything you didn’t already know.

After the cod-theological leanings of Prometheus, the latest in the saga opts instead for cod-philosophical leanings, and spends time musing on notions of creation and acknowledging one’s place in the scheme of things. But the movie – scripted by John Logan and Dante Harper from a story by Jack Paglen and Michael Green – isn’t interested in exploring these notions in relation to the human contingent of the story, but instead in relation to two androids: David and Walter (both Fassbender) who represent opposite ends of their creationist cycle. David is the prototype, while Walter is the later model built to surpass the limitations of the original. Together they talk about their creator’s expectations for them, and then their own. But while on the surface these musings appear in keeping with the wider story of the xenomorph’s creation (whatever that may be), they don’t add as much depth to the material as may have been intended. Instead, they provide a basis and a reason for a third act “reveal” that exists purely to set up the next installment.

Before then, we’re introduced to the latest group of dinner dates for the murderous xenomorph. Only this time it’s either a neomorph (“infant” version) or a protomorph (“adult” version), but either way it still behaves like its forebear(?), has acid for blood, screeches like a banshee, and kills anyone in its path. This time around, the movie’s motley band of victims is the crew of the colony ship Covenant. A group of terraformers en route to an Earth-like planet called Origae-6, their cargo consists of two thousand colonists all in cryo-sleep, and a thousand embryos all in cold storage. While the crew also enjoys their cryo-sleep (they’re seven-and-a-half years away from reaching their destination), Walter carries out a variety of assigned tasks and monitors the ship and its personnel. A blast of unexpected solar energy damages the ship, and Walter wakes up the crew – all except for the captain, whose cryo-pod refuses to open. Thanks to the damage to the ship’s systems, the captain burns to death in his cryo-pod, which leaves Oram (Crudup) in charge.

A distress signal picked up from a planet that apparently doesn’t exist on any celestial maps reveals a human origin, and prompts Oram to redirect the Covenant to check it out. With the planet appearing to support human life, and being only a few weeks’ to get to, the reservations of chief terraformer Daniels (Waterston) are acknowledged but unheeded. Leaving chief pilot Tennessee (McBride) and two other crewmembers on board, Oram, along with Daniels, Walter, and the rest of the crew descends to the planet’s surface. There they find an anomaly in the form of wheat, a crashed spaceship, danger in the form of spores that infect two of the crew, and an unexpected rescuer when said spores precipitate the deaths of more than the infected. With a massive magnetic storm hindering their return to the Covenant, Oram and the remaining crew must find a way to survive the deadly intentions of the protomorph, and a more sinister danger lurking in their midst.

Those who found themselves dissatisfied with the direction taken in Prometheus will be pleased with this return to the series’ more basic roots, but even though it’s a step in the right direction, the problem with the movie overall is that it doesn’t offer anything new, and it doesn’t come close to replicating the tension and sense of dread that made Alien such an impressive outing. It tries to, and the script is clearly designed and constructed to provide gory set pieces at regular intervals in honour of the series’ abiding commitment to shocking audiences with jolts of body horror, but for anyone who’s seen all the previous movies in the franchise, this is a retread of scenes and set ups that were far more effective the first time round. Likewise the introduction of the various characters as regular joes, a device used to very good effect in Alien, but which here is truncated in favour of getting on with the action. Inevitably this means that when the crew starts to be whittled down, it doesn’t have the same effect as in the past, and Waterston’s plucky terraformer aside, it’s difficult to care about anyone as well.

In many ways, Alien: Covenant is a stripped down series’ entry that concentrates more on reliving old glories than advancing the franchise’s intended long-form narrative. Whatever happens in Alien: Awakening (2019?), it’s to be hoped that it reverts to telling the story begun in Prometheus and which should eventually connect with Alien. Here there are still more questions to be answered, and there’s a suspicion that the writers are already painting themselves into a corner, and that the decision to make a handful of prequels instead of just one all-encompassing prequel is beginning to look more than a little unsound. This has all the hallmarks of a movie made in response to the negative reaction afforded Prometheus, and if so, you have to wonder what this movie would have been like if the reaction had been positive. More of the same? Further exploration of the Engineers and their motivations? More pseudo-religious theorising? Less rampaging alien attacks and gory killings? It looks as if we’ll never know.

With the characters reduced mostly to alien-bait, only Fassbender and Waterston make any impact, though it is good to see McBride playing it completely straight for once. Fassbender is a mercurial actor but he always seems to have a stillness about him that seeps through in all his performances. Here as both David and Walter, that stillness is used to tremendous effect, and whether he’s waxing lyrical about art and music as David, or looking concerned as Walter, Fassbender provides two endlessly fascinating portrayals for the price of one. Waterston is equally impressive in a role that will inevitably draw comparisons with Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, but Waterston is canny enough not to make Daniels as strong-willed as Ripley, nor as valorous. Though she’s the movie’s nominal heroine, Daniels retains a vulnerability that Ripley didn’t have at all, and Waterston is a winning presence, her last act heroism borne out of desperation rather than determination.

Third time around, Ridley Scott ensures the movie looks as beautiful and darkly realised as his other entries, but somehow fails to make the movie as tense and compelling as Alien, or as intellectually portentous as Prometheus. He does ensure that the movie rattles along at a fair old lick, but with the script providing a series of “greatest hits” moments for him to revisit, Scott’s involvement doesn’t always appear to be as purposeful as in the past. There are too many moments where the movie’s energy seems to flag, and the tension dissipates as a result, leaving the viewer to wonder, if a director’s cut should be released in the future, will it be shorter than the theatrical version? And not even he can avoid making the movie’s coda look uninspired and predictable, all of which begs the question, should someone else sit in the director’s chair for the rest of the prequels?

Rating: 6/10 – a fitful, occasionally impressive second prequel/first sequel, Alien: Covenant revisits the haunted house horror tropes that made the first movie so successful, but finds little inspiration to help it fulfill its intentions; another missed opportunity to make the series as momentous as it was nearly forty years ago, where the story goes from here remains to be seen, but in continuing Scott et al really need to remember that a satisfying mystery requires a satisfying answer, something that this entry seems to have forgotten about entirely.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

28 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Dave Bautista, Drama, Ego, James Gunn, Marvel, Michael Rooker, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Star Lord, The Sovereign, Vin Diesel, Zoe Saldana

D: James Gunn / 136m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, Kurt Russell, Pom Klementieff, Elizabeth Debicki, Chris Sullivan, Sean Gunn, Tommy Flanagan, Laura Haddock

At the end of Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), there was a reference to the identity of Peter Quill/Star Lord’s father. It wasn’t particularly complimentary, but it did give some idea of where a sequel might be headed if the movie was successful (which it ever so slightly was). Three months on from the events of the first movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 begins with our heroes working for the Sovereign, a race led by Ayesha (Debicki). Charged with protecting some valuable batteries, the Guardians complete their mission but manage to earn the Sovereign’s enmity when it’s discovered that Rocket (Cooper) has stolen some of the batteries himself. Attacked by hundreds of Sovereign drone ships, the Guardians’ spaceship suffers a lot of damage before it can make a light speed jump to safety – and before the drone ships are all destroyed by another mysterious craft.

The Guardians crash land on a nearby planet and the mysterious craft lands also. The owner of the craft reveals himself as Peter’s father, called Ego (Russell), and that he’s been searching for Peter (Pratt) for years. It also transpires that Peter was abducted from Earth by Ravager Yondu Udonta (Rooker) at Ego’s request (though why Yondu kept charge of Peter goes unexplained). Now reunited, Ego suggests they travel to his home planet so that he can be “the father he should have been”. While Peter, Gamora (Saldana), and Drax (Bautista) agree to journey with him, Rocket and Baby Groot (Diesel) stay behind to repair their ship and look after Nebula (Gillan), Gamora’s sister and the payment they received from the Sovereign for their work. However, Ayesha has hired Yondu with the mission of retrieving the stolen batteries and capturing the Guardians.

On Ego’s home planet, Peter and his father begin to bond, but Gamora senses that something isn’t right. Ego’s attendant, an empath called Mantis (Klementieff), appears anxious over Peter’s being there but remains silent. Meanwhile, Yondu has been the victim of a mutiny, and some of his crew, led by self-proclaimed Taserface (Sullivan) and aided by Nebula, have taken over the ship. Nebula takes a ship and heads for Ego’s planet intent on killing Gamora, while Rocket, Baby Groot and Yondu find they need to work together to avoid being killed. Soon, everyone, including another drone armada sent by Ayesha, is heading for Ego’s planet, and the fate of the Guardians and hundreds of other far-flung planets hangs in the balance…

The surprise success of Guardians of the Galaxy three years ago was a shot in the arm for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, proving to audiences becoming accustomed to a regular diet of superhero theatrics, that there was more to said Universe than egotists in tin suits, enhanced super soldiers, and feuding demi-gods. By making a movie that had nothing to do with anyone else in the MCU, Marvel showed a confidence in their original material, and in the movie’s writer/director, that could so easily have backfired on them. That it didn’t must lie squarely on the creative shoulders of James Gunn, the man who took a motley crew of ne’er-do-wells and made them loved the world over. It wasn’t long before there was talk of the Guardians appearing in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), but a sequel was already in place. So – what to do with them in the meantime?

The answer is…not very much at all. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 falls into the category of uninspired Marvel sequel, a placement it shares with Iron Man 2 (2010), Thor: The Dark World (2013), and Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) (only the Captain America sequels have avoided falling into this category). While it’s true that there’s much to enjoy this time around, and the first movie’s freewheeling sense of fun and adventure is firmly in place, the fact is that this is a two and a quarter hour movie that runs out of steam – dramatically at least – at around the hour and a quarter mark. By that time, the three main storylines – Peter finds his father, Yondu makes amends for breaking the Ravager code, Gamora and Nebula come to terms with their hatred of each other – have all reached a point where there’s nowhere further for them to go, and James Gunn’s script lurches into an extended series of showdowns and signposted revelations that offer little in the way of character or plot development.

On this occasion, and with only one post-credits scene designed to set up the already announced Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, it’s clear that this is Marvel’s first true filler movie, designed and made to capitalise on the success of the original, and to fill a gap in the release schedule. Fortunately though, and again thanks to the involvement of Gunn and his returning cast, this is a filler movie that replicates much of the first movie’s highly enjoyable charm and visual quirkiness. From the opening credits sequence that sees Baby Groot dancing to ELO’s Mr. Blue Sky while his fellow Guardians take on a multi-tentacled inter-dimensional monster in the background, Gunn’s novel approach to the material proves (again) to be one of the movie’s MVP’s, and is only bested by the sequence later in the movie when Yondu and Rocket take back control of Yondu’s ship. (However, Ego’s home planet looks like it was designed by My Little Pony on an acid trip.)

But while there’s a heck of a lot going on visually, it’s down in the story department that the movie shows signs of wear and tear. The emphasis on family ties is made over and over again as old enemies become bosom buddies in order to give the movie a happy, feelgood vibe, and the ranks of the Guardians are swelled temporarily (this is personal redemption achieved easily and without the slightest challenge). The characters remain much the same too, with Peter and Gamora still at odds over their attraction for each other, and Rocket retaining his knack for deliberately saying things that will antagonise others. Drax is even more insensitive than before, Nebula is still consumed with rage against her father, Thanos, and Baby Groot – well, he’s still just as cute (if not more so). Of the newcomers, Gunn doesn’t seem entirely sure of how to use Mantis, Ayesha is akin to a spoilt little princess, while Ego’s “purpose” isn’t fully explored, and makes Russell work extra hard in getting the idea across to audiences.

With much of the movie underperforming in this way, it’s fortunate that Gunn has retained the irreverent sense of humour present in the first movie, and there are some very funny moments indeed, from Rocket being described as a “trash panda”, to an out of leftfield reference to Mary Poppins, and the pay-off to the first post-credits scene. Elsewhere, Sylvester Stallone pops up in a role that’s intended to be expanded on in future outings, Russell is given the same younger version treatment Michael Douglas received in Ant-Man (2015), the Awesome Mix Tape Vol. 2 is exactly that, and the space battles are bewildering in terms of what’s happening and to whom. But with all that, this is still hugely enjoyable stuff, lavishly produced and glossy from start to finish, and designed to please the fans first and foremost. On that level it will probably succeed, but it won’t change the fact that this is not quite the triumphant sequel that many will be expecting – or hearing about.

Rating: 6/10 – with much of the movie feeling flat and ponderous in terms of the drama, and the characters no further forward in terms of their development, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 gets by on its often inspired humour, and the chemistry that unites its cast; a safe bet for the most part, with enough inventiveness and charm to make it look and sound better than it is, it’s a solid enough movie, but in automobile terms, it doesn’t have too much going on under the hood.

The Fate of the Furious (2017)

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Charlize Theron, Cuba, Drama, Dwayne Johnson, F. Gary Gray, Jason Statham, Kurt Russell, Michelle Rodriguez, Review, Sequel, Thriller, Vin Diesel

aka Fast & Furious 8

D: F. Gary Gray / 136m

Cast: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez, Charlize Theron, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Scott Eastwood, Kurt Russell, Elsa Pataky, Helen Mirren, Kristofer Hivju

And so we come to episode eight in the ongoing Fast and Furious franchise, the series that just keeps on giving and giving… and giving and giving and giving and giving. This is a movie, one of several that we’ll see this year, that will do incredibly well at the international box office, and which will be hugely successful no matter what critics or bloggers or anyone and their auntie says about it. It’s a movie that exists in its own little cinematic bubble, oblivious to movie making trends, advances or developments. If you live in the UK, it’s the equivalent of those Ronseal adverts that state, “It does what it says on the tin”. And if you don’t live in the UK, then try this comparison: it’s like going to McDonalds and ordering a Big Mac, fries and a Coke. You know exactly what you’re getting, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve had that particular combo more times than you can remember, that’s also kind of the point. Here, familiarity breeds expectation, and the makers of the Fast and Furious movies know exactly how to satisfy that expectation.

All the familiar elements are here: exotic locations (Iceland, Cuba, New York?), Diesel being taciturn and glowering a lot (he even shouts a few times, which is new), Johnson looking like a poster boy for steroid abuse, Rodriguez glowering a lot like Diesel, Gibson acting unconscionably stupid, Bridges giving nerds a fairly good name for once, over-the-top action sequences that regularly and deliberately challenge the laws of physics, and cars, lots of shiny, sleek, expensive cars. Relative series newbies Russell, Emmanuel and Statham slot in neatly amidst the rest of the cast, while complete newbies Eastwood (good guy) and Theron (bad guy) add little and a lot respectively. Throw in some old faces from previous entries, and a storyline that’s been built on the back of the last two outings, and you have another patchy, under-developed crowd-pleaser that does enough to keep its audience interested while at the same time giving said audience very very very little that’s new. And it’s the opener for a closing trilogy of movies that will see the franchise come to an end in April 2021.

If there’s anything interesting about the movie, it’s the way in which it harkens back to earlier entries, and tries to incorporate the look and feel of those earlier movies. The opening sequence, set in Cuba, is a throwback to the approach and feel of the first and third movies, with its street-level, underground racing vibe, and beautiful hangers-on to some of the ugliest drivers ever seen on screen. There’s a car up for grabs, a sneering minor villain who thinks he can outwit Dominic Toretto (foolish man!), and some very impressive stunt driving. But it’s a measure of how far the series has come in terms of its tone and style, that this sequence – which starts off well – soon descends into the kind of ridiculous, credibility-free, and excessive action set-piece that the series has become known for. Seeing Toretto winning the race in a stripped-down junker, in reverse, and with the engine on fire no less, serves as an acknowledgement that while the series wants to honour its more scaled-back origins, it’s grown too big and excessive to be able to.

Much has been made of this movie’s main storyline – Toretto betrays his “family” – but as a plot device it’s one of the weaker ideas in the series, and all because we know that there’s no way it’s “for real”. As expected, there’s a reason for his “betrayal”, and while it’s played out with as much sincerity as returning scribe Chris Morgan can instil in his by-the-numbers screenplay, it shows a complete disregard for the character of Letty (Rodriguez) and the trials she’s endured since “dying” in part four (and especially in relation to a scene between Letty and Toretto early on in Cuba). Worse still, the whole thing leads to a scene involving Statham’s returning nemesis Deckard Shaw, and the complete reversal of his character from murderous psychopath to genial funster. It’s as if the makers have seen his performance in Spy (2015) and thought to themselves, how can we exploit this?

Character assassination apart, the movie follows the tried and tested formula of the previous three movies, and never deviates from its cookie-cutter approach. It’s no secret that the franchise thinks up its action sequences first and fits a story and plot around them later, but this time the obvious nature of such a design is even more noticeable than before. An attack on a Russian minister on the streets of New York occurs at the halfway mark, and includes the appropriation by über-villain Cipher (Theron) of any car in the area that has an on-board computer system. Why she has to activate all of them makes no sense, but it does lead to mass collisions and vehicles falling from multi-storey car parks and no end of unconvincing CGI. Far better? The scenes predceeding this where Toretto has to escape Cipher’s surveillance in order to put his own plans into action. Short, simple, and so much more effective.

One thing The Fate of the Furious does get right – finally – is its choice of villain. Stepping out of the shadows no one knew she inhabited, Cipher is played with chilling conviction by Theron, and if as seems likely, she’s going to be the villain for the last two movies as well, then her involvement could be the best thing about them – as it is here. With Statham’s character now reformed, the movie needed someone to be a real villain, and Theron comes through in spades. She’s icy, mad, and bad to the core. Theron shares most of her scenes with Diesel, and every time it’s a no contest: she acts him off the plane Cipher uses, and off the screen as well (which is a shame, as away from all his franchise movies, Pitch Black (2000) excepted, he can be a very good actor indeed).

But what about those action sequences? And what about that submarine smashing through the ice? And all those explosions? Everything we’ve seen in the various trailers? Well, they’re all as slickly produced and homogeneously exciting as those in previous entries, and they’re fine examples of modern day action heroics, but even so they remain curiously thrill-free. A prison riot does Statham and Johnson no favours thanks to having been shot in a jerky, shaky style that makes focusing on the various punches and kicks both actors dish out quite difficult to follow. It’s a sequence that could have benefitted from having a few more bone-crunching sound effects thrown in as well. The submarine sequence is reminiscent of the ending to Furious 6 (2013) (justly famous for its neverending runway), but is surprisingly restrained for all that, while the movie’s biggest explosion – naturally saved for last – also gives rise to the movie’s most ridiculous and risible moment.

But none of this matters. Not Helen Mirren’s awful Cockney accent, not Hivju’s distracting resemblance to a young James Cosmo, not even the sight of Johnson manhandling a torpedo as it races across the ice. The Fate of the Furious can do what it likes and audiences will lap it up regardless. Does this make it a bad movie? On the whole, yes, it does. But for all that, is it entertaining? Weirdly, yes, but in a subdued, stopgap kind of fashion, as if this entry in the series was a bridge between previous episodes and the ones to come, ones that will (hopefully) up the series’ game considerably. After eight movies the franchise has reached a kind of tipping point: the final two outings need to be much stronger and more focused on what they’re trying to do. The series hasn’t quite run out of mileage yet, but it’s running perilously close, and if the makers aren’t careful, the remaining movies will most likely be running on fumes.

Rating: 5/10 – fans will lap this up, but The Fate of the Furious, with its tangled ideas about family and betrayal, doesn’t add up to much, and relies too heavily on its action sequences to prop up its awkward script; the cast have to make do with the same character beats they’ve been given in previous movies, and franchise first-timer Gray isn’t allowed to do anything different with the formula, making this a movie generated and made by committee, and as a result, lacking a distinct identity to make it stand out from the rest of the series.

T2 Trainspotting (2017)

19 Sunday Mar 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Danny Boyle, Drama, Drugs, Edinburgh, Ewan McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Irvine Welsh, Jonny Lee Miller, Literary adaptation, Porno, Review, Robert Carlyle, Sequel

D: Danny Boyle / 117m

Cast: Ewen McGregor, Ewen Bremner, Robert Carlyle, Jonny Lee Miller, Anjela Nedyalkova, Kelly Macdonald, James Cosmo, Shirley Henderson, Pauline Turner, Scot Greenan, Kyle Fitzpatrick, Gordon Kennedy, Irvine Welsh

Choose life, choose four characters who have led miserable lives for the past twenty years and can’t overcome their failings. Choose redemption if only because it sounds good and it might make you feel better. Choose old friends, however much they might hate you, because making new ones is too difficult. Choose Scotland. Choose to make amends. Choose the past over the future because it’s safer. Choose remorse. Choose anger at seeing your dreams go unfulfilled, and try to make new dreams to stop yourself from feeling angry. Choose revenge if remorse won’t work. Choose life over a slow, drawn-out, painful trudge towards non-existence. Choose drugs to soothe or melt away the pain of choosing life. And choose the path of least resistence so that choices become easy. Choose football, music, sex, anything to make the emptiness inside you feel less overwhelming. But above all, choose life, and live it with everything you’ve got, even when you feel that you don’t have anything to offer, and if you did, that no one would want it.

Twenty-one years on from the events depicted in Trainspotting (1996), we finally have the sequel that’s been mooted for so long (Danny Boyle first voiced the idea back in January 2009). Back then, the original movie ended with Renton (McGregor) stealing the proceeds of a drug deal – £16,000 – from his friends, Simon aka Sick Boy (Miller), Spud (Bremner) and Begbie (Carlyle), and heading off to live a normal life. But that “normal” life, which included living in Amsterdam and being married, has fallen apart, and now Renton is back in Edinburgh. His mother has died, he’s staying with his dad (Cosmo), and looking to hook up with his old friends – if they’ll let him. He visits Spud first, only to find him trying to asphyxiate himself with a plastic bag. Saving an initially ungrateful Spud, Renton learns that Begbie is in jail serving a twenty-five year sentence, Simon is the landlord of a rundown pub that an aunt has left him, and Spud himself is a drug addict.

Renton reconnects with Simon, but Simon holds too much enmity towards his old friend because of the money from the drug deal. Along with his business partner, Veronika (Nedyalkova), Simon offers Renton the chance to become part of a scam to acquire European development funds that Simon can use to open a “leisure” club above the pub. Renton agrees, and ropes in Spud to help design the club and oversee its construction once the funds are awarded. Meanwhile, Begbie finds a way out of prison and back home to his wife, June (Turner), and teenage son, Frank Jr (Greenan). Begbie takes his son with him when he burgles properties, but is sidetracked from his endeavours when he learns from Simon that Renton is back in Edinburgh. Begbie’s thirst for revenge is exploited by Simon, and a chance encounter at a nightclub between the AWOL gaolbird and Renton leads to a showdown above the pub, and the chance to settle old scores the hard way.

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, then T2 Trainspotting is likely to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Laced with affectionate nostalgia and perceptive notions of what it is to be middle-aged and treading water, this looked-for sequel isn’t as iconic as its predecessor – and to be fair, it was never likely to be – but it does have an erstwhile melancholy feel to it that accurately reflects the regrets of its four main characters. Like everyone else, Renton is the architect of his own downfall: drug-free but without any purpose in life, he’s come home because he’s not been able to make a go of it in Amsterdam; he’s adrift in his own life, and lacking ambition. Conversely, Simon has nothing but ambition, a drive to better himself financially, but he lacks foresight and cohesive thinking; his plans always backfire as a result. Spud is an addict who wants to swap his drug habit for something more meaningful, another addiction preferably, but one that has a positive effect on his life; writing down stories from twenty years ago helps him on this path. And Begbie – well, Begbie’s only regret is that he’s only just now got out of prison.

With the characters locked in place, John Hodge’s screenplay is free to explore themes of personal responsibility, misplaced nostalgia, revenge, deceit, and compromised friendships. It looks back further than Trainspotting itself, to when all four friends were much younger, pre-teens with the whole world ahead of them, and all the promise that entailed. It provides flashbacks to the first movie, and reintroduces other characters from twenty years before, such as Renton’s girlfriend, Diane (Macdonald), now a successful solicitor. And it shows how stagnant each of the main characters’ lives have become, how mired in mediocrity they are thanks to emotional malaise and impulsive behaviour. There’s little in the way of meaningful progress for any of them, just a desire to lead brighter, better lives that is slipping away from them with every passing year.

This gloomy, regret-laden approach could have made the movie too depressing or downbeat for audiences unfamiliar with the original (which was itself a frank, unapologetic examination of the joys and horrors inherent in taking drugs), but there’s too much mordaunt humour and scabrous comedy on display, and Hodge and returning director Danny Boyle have made a movie that connects on various, different levels, and which does so with Boyle’s trademark visual stylings. This is still a movie that fizzes with invention, from its seemingly scattershot, haphazard camera angles, complex yet rewarding editing rhythms, exceptionally well chosen soundtrack, and emphatic performances, and all the way down to the integration of “old’ footage with new, including a recreation of that classic moment from the original where Renton is almost knocked down by a car – and then stops to revel in the moment.

It’s a Danny Boyle movie through and through, with several moments where the semi-linear narrative seems unlikely to knit together into a satisfying whole, until by the end, everything has been explained and the various strands all neatly tied up. And there are fitting outcomes for all the characters, with all bar one back on the road to self-respect and potential absolution. In bringing back the original cast, and at a point where their own ages reflect the passing of time more effectively than if it had been achieved through make up, the movie offers a kind of shorthand for new viewers, introducing each character they play with an economy of purpose that’s admirable and effective. McGregor still retains some of that boyish charm that made the younger Renton so attractive to watch, while Miller takes glowering to new heights, his features displaying the frustration of Simon’s life with an icy conviction. Carlyle is still effortlessly frightening as Begbie, a man who may not be as comfortable in his own skin as we thought, but who can still inject menace and venom into the most unremarkable line of dialogue.

But if there’s one performance that stands out from the rest, and unexpectedly so, it’s that of Bremner as Spud. Spud is the eternal fuck-up, the addict with the unenviable ability to still feel deeply and profoundly despite the mental numbing he endures, and Bremner is simply superb in the role. Spud is the only character that the viewer can sympathise with, as his motives are selfless, and focused (as best he can) on providing for his partner, Gail (Henderson), and son, Fergus (Fitzpatrick). There’s an innate bravery about Spud that Bremner underplays with skill, making the moment where his writing skills are acknowledged by Veronika, a touching and heartfelt one. Through Veronika’s eyes we see Spud as more than just an addict, and unlike his friends, he can be cheered on with affectionate glee. But friendship is still the key ingredient in what makes these four people tick, even if they’re at odds with each other over past indiscretions. And some bonds, however stretched or damaged they may have become, will, as the movie tells us, withstand much more besides, and still prove beneficial to everyone concerned, no matter how much life has battered them.

Rating: 8/10 – an invigorating if pensive look at middle-aged bitterness wrapped up in a blanket of repentance, T2 Trainspotting doesn’t match the heights of its predecessor, but in fairness, it never actually tries; as much a product of its time as the first movie, there’s a heartache about this movie that is genuinely affecting, and which allows new viewers to see Renton et al as far more than cyphers in a movie about trying not to let the past inform and dictate the future.

Logan (2017)

03 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adamantium, Boyd Holbrook, Caliban, Dafne Keen, Drama, Hugh Jackman, James Mangold, Marvel, Patrick Stewart, Professor X, Richard E. Grant, Road movie, Sequel, Stephen Merchant, Superheroes, Thriller, Transigen, Wolverine, X-23

D: James Mangold / 137m

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook, Stephen Merchant, Elizabeth Rodriguez, Richard E. Grant, Eriq LaSalle, Elise Neal, Quincy Fouse

It’s 2029, and mutants are pretty thin on the ground, with those that remain hiding from the rest of humanity, hoping to be overlooked. They’re almost extinct thanks to a virus created by the Transigen Project, led by Dr Zander Rice (Grant). More able than most to blend in, Logan aka Wolverine (Jackman), is working as a limo driver while also looking after – secretly – Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart), now in his nineties and suffering from senile dementia. Hidden away in Mexico, Logan is helped in this by another mutant, Caliban (Merchant). Xavier’s psychic abilities are now inherently dangerous; if he has a seizure it triggers a psychic attack that could mean the death of anyone around him. In one of his more lucid moments he talks of a mutant who will need Logan’s help, but Logan doesn’t want to know anything about it.

An encounter with a woman, Gabriela (Rodriguez) and a young girl, Laura (Keen), brings Logan and the mutant Xavier has been talking about together. Laura is a mutant, but with a difference: she was created in a Transigen lab, along with twenty-two other “children”. Bred to be weapons, the creation of a twenty-fourth mutant means Laura and all the other children are expendable. Gabriela has helped Laura and the other children escape, but now they need to rendezvous at a place called Eden in North Dakota. When Transigen come a-calling at Logan’s hideout – in the form of Donald Pierce (Holbrook) and his team of genetically enhanced Reavers – previous events dictate that Logan, Xavier and Laura make a run for it, and against Logan’s better judgment, they head for North Dakota. But Caliban is captured by Pierce and coerced into using his tracking abilities to find Logan and the girl.

As the trio journey to Eden, Logan learns more about the activities of Transigen and their attempts to create mutants they can control, while Pierce comes close a couple of times to catching them. A chance encounter outside of Oklahoma City with a local family, the Munsons (LaSalle, Neal, Fouse) has unexpected consequences, as well as revealing the identity of X24, Transigen’s latest creation. Logan does eventually get Laura to Eden, which proves to be real and not the comic book-inspired destination that Logan has believed Gabriela made up. There the other children are planning to make a break for the Canadian border, and Laura plans to go with them. But Pierce, now accompanied by Dr Rice, is soon on their heels, and it will need Logan’s alter ego, the Wolverine, to ensure they reach safety instead of being captured and killed.

Fans of Logan/Wolverine have been clamouring to see the character that they’ve read and seen in the comics, brought to life in the same violent, berserker fashion that he’s portrayed on the page. A brief moment towards the end of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) gave everyone a chance to see what that would look like, but it was just a moment, however well-received. Now, in his third solo outing, Logan’s rage has finally been given its due, and this is the ultra-violent/borderline sadistic outing that the fans have been waiting for. The tone is set right at the start, with a scene that pits Logan against a quartet of gangbangers. Blasted in the chest, he still gets up and proceeds to use his adamantium claws to slice, dice and eviscerate all four of them. But at the same time it’s clear that his healing powers aren’t as effective as they used to be, and though his trademark rage is still there, it appears that the use of his claws is as painful for him as it is for anyone on their receiving end.

It’s this vulnerable side to Logan’s character, this curtailment of his powers, that makes Logan such an interesting movie to watch. Based very loosely on the comic book series Old Man Logan (2008-09), this version of Logan, older, even more pragmatic, yet weary of life and living, allows the viewer to look beyond the usual superhero movie traits, and into the mind of a character who’s seen and done too much and doesn’t care to keep living that kind of life. He wants to die, a concept that most – if not all – other superhero movies shy away from. But returning director James Mangold, who made The Wolverine (2013), and along with screenwriters Michael Green and Scott Frank, has made a road movie-cum-Western that adds surprisingly complex emotional layers to its basic storyline, and which doesn’t tiptoe around the issues it brings up. This is an unashamedly adult “superhero” movie, dealing with adult themes in an intelligent, adult way, and at no point does it short change the viewer by glossing over the emotional stakes set up within the narrative.

It’s the Wolverine movie that Hugh Jackman has been waiting to make since his first appearance in the role back in 2000. Still aloof, but weighed down by experiences we can only guess at, Logan is battered and scarred, his features weathered by time, and partly hidden beneath a salt and pepper beard that provides texture in terms of his age and weary resignation at being so old. This is a Logan who is continually in pain, the antithesis of the Logan we’re used to seeing, and it’s ironic that the source of his strength and invincibility (until now), his adamantium skeleton and claws, is the very thing that’s now killing him. There’s an inevitable layer of melancholy attached to this, but Mangold and Jackman make sure that Logan’s gruff demeanour is still in place, derailing any sentimentality that might have arisen otherwise. This isn’t as elegiac as its references to Shane (1953) make it sound; instead, it’s about that other staple narrative of the Old West, the passing of an era.

Jackman excels in what is easily his best performance in the role, and it’s good to see him finally playing Logan as something more than the cigar-chomping, Elvis-sideburned figure we’ve been used to. But if Jackman’s transformation into a much older Logan is disarming, then he’s more than matched by Stewart’s interpretation of Xavier’s mental disintegration. There are moments when Stewart’s bewildered, beseeching features are too painful to watch, and again it’s the irony of seeing a once proud and powerful man undermined by the very gift that made him stand out from the crowd that makes the movie so emotionally complex and rewarding. There are terrific supporting turns from Holbrook (give this man a leading role, for Pete’s sake), Grant, and Merchant, but inevitably it’s Keen who draws the viewer’s attention for her largely mute, refreshingly feral performance as Laura/X23, a character with a close connection to Logan, and someone you really don’t want to mess with when she furrows her brow.

If this really is Jackman’s swansong in the role then he couldn’t have picked a better storyline with which to hang up the claws and walk away from the X-Men franchise. By stripping back the narrative, and focusing on the relationships of the three main characters, Logan transcends its comic book origins to become a movie that is daring, quietly introspective when necessary, aggressively violent in a shocking, sometimes disturbing way, and able to take its basic set up – the road movie – and twist it far enough out of shape that it feels more nuanced and transgressive than on first impression. Mangold shapes the world around Logan with a keen eye for detail, and avoids doling out excessive sentimentality, keeping everything grounded and credible, despite the fantastic nature of the material. It’s an artistic triumph, and one that shows that Marvel superhero movies don’t have to follow the same template all the time, a message that Kevin Feige will hopefully take on board.

Rating: 9/10 – an intense, gritty, superbly realised and mature outing for its title character, Logan is perhaps the first “superhero” movie that wouldn’t feel out of place as a Best Film Oscar nominee (though it’s still unlikely to happen); gripping for long stretches, with the quieter moments proving just as engrossing as the action sequences (which are very well staged indeed, if a little hyper-edited), Mangold and Jackman’s determination to give the Wolverine a proper send-off is apparent from start to end.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

15 Wednesday Feb 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Chad Stahelski, Common, Drama, Ian McShane, Keanu Reeves, New York, Review, Riccardo Scamarcio, Rome, Sequel, The Continental, Thriller

D: Chad Stahelski / 122m

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Riccardo Scamarcio, Ian McShane, Common, Ruby Rose, Claudia Gerini, Laurence Fishburne, Lance Reddick, Franco Nero, Peter Serafinowicz, Peter Stormare, John Leguizamo, Bridget Moynahan

In the surprise movie of 2014, Keanu Reeves made a bit of a comeback playing a retired assassin called John Wick. Brutally coerced into giving up a peaceful life as a widower after his wife, Helen (Moynahan), died from cancer, Wick had his car stolen and his dog – a puppy! – killed (not to mention being beaten up himself). He came out of retirement, dished out some serious retribution – killing a total of seventy-seven people (mostly unfortunate henchmen) in the process – and headed off into the sunrise.

Well, that’s what we thought he was doing. But as this amped-up, mercilessly nihilistic sequel shows, here’s what John actually did next. First there’s the small matter of retrieving his car from the uncle (Stormare) of the Russian gangster who stole his car in the first place. One warehouse full of wrecked cars and dead or suffering henchmen later, John has got his vehicle back and has managed to get it home where it can be rebuilt in all its former glory by John’s friend and chop shop specialist, Aurelio (Leguizamo). Job done, he says hello to his new dog, and he even re-buries the weapons he disinterred in the first movie. But just as he’s finished that, and is ready to resume his retirement, fate comes calling in the form of sequel nemesis, Santino D’Antonio (Scamarcia).

Santino wants John to honour a marker he has, the debt that John owes him for Santino’s help in John’s retirement. John refuses, but Santino is like a spoilt child who’s been told he can’t have his own way. As soon as he leaves he uses a rocket launcher to blow John’s house to smithereens (but don’t worry, this time John and the dog survive). Next stop for a seriously annoyed John is the Continental hotel, where assassins can meet, have a few drinks, rest up, and absolutely, positively not kill each other. Chided by hotel owner and mentor, Winston (McShane), for not accepting the marker, John meets with Santino and discovers that his target is Santino’s sister, Gianna (Gerini).

So, a less than happy John travels to Rome, meets up with Winston’s Italian counterpart, Julius (Nero), gets all kitted out – bulletproof suits are all the rage in Rome – and after wandering through a series of tunnels setting up an elaborate kill sequence for later, he finds Gianna. Her death ensues, and just as expected, John has to escape back through the tunnels while offing an astonishingly large amount of disposable henchmen (don’t they have a union?). On his tail is Santino’s right hand assassin, Ares (Rose), there to dispose of him as a “loose end”, and Cassian (Common), Gianna’s personal bodyguard, who has taken his employer’s death, well, personally. John avoids death several dozen times over, gets back to the Italian Continental, and manages to leave for New York with Julius’s help. But not before the scheming and deceitful Santino has taken out a contract on John’s life, a contract worth $7m to anyone who can do what no one else has even come close to doing: killing the Boogeyman himself.

There’s more to the story, but in actuality it doesn’t amount to much, peppered as it is with an extended sequence of multiple mayhems at a train station – John and Cassian casually shooting at each other over the heads of blissfully unaware travellers is both comical and disturbing in equal measure – a reunion for ex-Matrix co-stars Reeves and Laurence (“Don’t call me Larry”) Fishburne, and yet another extended shootout in a museum, which features a genuinely disorientating sequence in an exhibition wing full of mirrored hallways and rooms. It’s all impossibly loud and garish and there’s not even the hint of a policeman hoving into view at any moment (though we do get to see a returning Jimmy the patrolman ask John if he’s “working”).

But plausibility and noting the absence of any laws that don’t pertain to the life of an assassin aren’t exactly the movie’s main interest. John Wick: Chapter 2 has one mission statement and one mission statement only: to provide its audience with as many over the top, seriously insane fight sequences as it can squeeze into its two hour running time. There are moments when the movie is absolutely bat-shit crazy in its determination to make viewers exclaim “Holy f*ck!” at the positively insane levels of violence on display, whether it’s John taking out a motorcyclist with a car door, or dispatching another assassin with a pencil; it’s all designed to up the ante for modern day action thrillers, and put other like-minded movie makers on notice: this is what you have to surpass.

Whether anyone else can or will match the violent excesses that John Wick can come up with is debatable – and that’s without the inevitable Chapter 3 to consider as well. Under the guidance of returning screenwriter Derek Kolstad and director Chad Stahelski, John Wick: Chapter 2 is a riot: bigger, bolder, more exhausting than its predecessor, and yet leavened by healthy doses of humour when it’s needed. It’s not to all tastes, and some viewers will be put off by the obvious “gun love” on display, not to mention the number of close up head shots that are sprayed (literally) throughout the movie. But this is a movie that’s unashamedly for fans of high body counts, sneering villains who’ll definitely get their come-uppance, brutal fight sequences, and beautifully art-directed and surreal backdrops for said sequences.

The world that John Wick and his contemporaries inhabit is not the same world that we inhabit (though it has its similarities, obviously). In it, a man can be shot in the stomach and still see off multiple attackers. But thanks to a script that’s much cleverer in its design and intent than most people are likely to give it credit for, this is a sequel that delivers on the promise of its predecessor, and adds a whole new level of shock and awe, while also expanding on the world it takes place in. It’s almost the perfect sequel, giving the returning audience more of what it liked first time round and much more besides. If there are criticisms to be made then they’ll relate to the suddenness of the airport sequences and how they’re edited together (clumsily in places), and the continuing idea that John Wick is a ghost, the boogeyman that no one sees coming, when everyone he meets says, “Ah, Mr Wick”.

It all ends on a promise, one that will have fans clamouring for the makers to hurry up, and naysayers burying their heads in their hands in despair. But again, this is a movie made for fans of the original, a demographic that has apparently grown since 2014. At time of writing, John Wick: Chapter 2 has already made half of what the first movie made overall, and in just four days of release. And whatever you might say about Reeves’ acting ability, or the absurdity of the shootouts and one man overcoming all odds, this is a movie that delivers a ridiculous amount of adrenalin-fuelled turmoil and does so with an enormous amount of chutzpah. There really isn’t anything else out there to touch it.

Rating: 9/10 – that rare beast, a superior sequel, John Wick: Chapter 2 opens up the throttle in the first frenzied fifteen minutes, and barely lets up for the next hour and forty-five minutes; simply put, it does what it says on the tin, and then pumps an extra shot in for good measure.

Brotherhood (2016)

09 Thursday Feb 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Arnold Oceng, Cornell John, Drama, Jason Maza, Noel Clarke, Revenge, Review, Sequel, The Hood Trilogy, Thriller

D: Noel Clarke / 104m

Cast: Noel Clarke, Arnold Oceng, Jason Maza, Cornell John, Shanika Warren-Markland, Tonia Sotiropoulou, Leeshon Alexander, Lashana Lynch, David Ajala, Nick Nevern, Jack McMullen, Michael “Stormzy” Omari, Daniel Anthony, Adjoa Andoh, Red Madrell

And this year’s award for worst second sequel of a British movie goes to…

It’s a category you’re not likely to see at the BAFTAs this year (or any year for that matter), but if you did then Brotherhood would be the odds-on, hands-down winner. A broad mix of revenge drama, juvenile comedy, awkward social commentary, and baffling thriller, Noel Clarke’s conclusion to The Hood Trilogy – following Kidulthood (2006) and Adulthood (2008) – sees him return to the character of Sam Peel and provide fans of the previous entries with a disjointed, exploitation-heavy, credibility-free movie that is let down by Clarke most of all.

Which is a huge shame, as Clarke has consistently fought to make British movies on his own terms and for British audiences first and foremost. When Kidulthood was released, it was the kind of movie that audiences were unfamiliar with. Its gritty, though exaggerated look at a South London teenage sub-culture, was challenging, and a bold statement of intent from Clarke himself, who wrote the script. As well as Clarke, it contained roles for the likes of Adam Deacon, Nicholas Hoult and Rafe Spall, and grabbed enough attention that it spawned a slew of similar, like-minded movies over the next few years. Two years later, Adulthood cemented Clarke’s reputation as an indie movie maker, retaining the original’s gritty, challenging demeanour while exploring themes of revenge and personal responsibility that attempted to add depth to the events of the movie.

The same themes are explored even further in Brotherhood, but as with most second sequels, the law of diminishing returns hits hard, and sees Clarke struggle to piece together a storyline that makes any sense. Ten years on from the events seen in Kidulthood, Sam is holding down four jobs in his efforts to keep his family – partner Kayla (Warren-Markland), and their two young children – together, but it means he doesn’t see as much of them as he needs to. Meanwhile, his younger brother, Royston (Anthony), an up-and-coming singer, is shot and wounded at a gig; the gunman leaves a note “For Sam Peel”.

When Sam learns of the note through one of Royston’s friends, Henry (Oceng), it leads him to an East End gangster called Daley (Maza). Daley explains that Sam, and his family, has been targeted for “past sins”, sins that can be erased if he takes a job working for him. Sam refuses, and is then confronted by Curtis (John), the uncle of Trife, a young man Sam killed ten years before. He wants revenge, and wants Sam to know what it’s like to have nothing. Matters are made worse when a stupid mistake on Sam’s part causes Kayla to leave with the children, and a sudden death pushes Sam over the edge and seeking his own revenge on both Curtis and Daley.

Brotherhood is a mess, both in terms of its plot and storyline, and its overall approach. Clarke can’t seem to connect things in an organic, natural manner, and there are too many scenes that bump up against each other like strangers. Whether or not this was intended from the start – and it’s unlikely that it was – what it means for the movie as a whole is it becomes a succession of unlikely situations and confrontations connected by the thinnest of motivations or a variety of ill-considered choices. Chief among these is the note left for Sam by Royston’s assailant: Henry takes the note home, leaves it there for a day or two (the movie’s timeline is hazy at the best of times), runs into Sam by accident, and only then tells him about it. It’s one of several occasions when the movie prompts disbelief in the viewer, and makes you wonder if Clarke was in too much of a rush to get the movie made, and was forced to cut several corners in the process.

If so, it still doesn’t excuse just how clumsily the plot has been assembled, or how badly it’s been executed. Clarke the writer and Clarke the director often seem at odds with each other, offering contradictions in scene after scene and never meshing together in a way that allows the tortured narrative to make any sense. Early on, Sam catches on that one of Daley’s gang is following him. Sam attacks him, beating him to the ground and injuring his leg, but in the very next minute, Hugs (Alexander), Daley’s enforcer, arrives on the scene and Sam immediately backs down and behaves like a scared child. It’s such an about-face that it’s actually shocking to see Clarke the screenwriter and Clarke the director expose Clarke the actor in such a terrible way, and make what should be a tense, memorable moment one that encourages laughter and further disbelief.

As a result of Clarke’s poorly constructed script, and his equally poor directorial choices, the rest of the cast fare just as badly, and are as poorly served as Clarke himself. Maza gives a mannered performance that’s meant to be menacing, but he’s about as scary as the villain in a Scooby-Doo! movie. John, who’s appeared in all three movies, plays the vengeful Curtis with all the subtlety of a tank crushing roses, while Oceng is the comic relief whose performance is surprisingly enjoyable, but whose character, and his involvement, is at odds with the tone of the rest of the movie.

But worst of all is the callous streak of misogyny that runs throughout the movie, with several scenes that feature “European prostitutes” being paraded completely naked or wearing the kind of lingerie that makes no difference. Their inclusion provides a sour taste that the movie never overcomes (or makes any apology for), and Clarke makes sure that he has sex scenes with Warren-Markland and Sotiropoulou that fail to add to the plot or advance it in any way. The movie seems happier when it’s being violent, and there’s a particularly nasty – and yet, cathartic – scene where Sam takes a nail gun to one of Daley’s goons. But it doesn’t rescue the movie from the tonal and narrative disasters it propagates throughout its running time, and despite everyone’s best efforts, Brotherhood proves to be an unfortunate conclusion to a saga that has never really escaped its rough and ready appearance, or its raw, ill-defined acting.

Rating: 3/10 – low-budget, British “meh”; an unfortunate conclusion to a trilogy of movies that have always been well regarded (though against the odds), Brotherhood is unlikely to be thought of in the same way as either of its predecessors, and is let down by an amateurish sheen that is the responsibility of all concerned, and not just its overstretched writer/director/actor.

Mini-Review: Underworld: Blood Wars (2016)

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Anna Foerster, Charles Dance, Drama, Fantasy, Kate Beckinsale, Lara Pulver, Lycans, Review, Selene, Sequel, Theo James, Thriller, Tobias Menzies, Vampires

D: Anna Foerster / 91m

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Theo James, Tobias Menzies, Lara Pulver, Charles Dance, James Faulkner, Peter Andersson, Clementine Nicholson, Bradley James, Daisy Head, Oliver Stark

Seconds out… round five! Yes, four years after the resoundingly awful Underworld: Awakening (2012), the world is treated to yet another unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary, and unwatchable Underworld movie. Nothing has changed. The Vampires and the Lycans are still at war with each other (though the Lycans appear to have the upper hand), Selene is still an outcast from her fellow bloodsuckers for killing Victor way, way back in Underworld (2003), blood is still the most important commodity on both sides, Kate Beckinsale still looks great in skin-tight black leather, and the plot makes about as much sense as building a dam from ten packs of waffles. It’s complete and utter tosh, and you get the sense that no one was really taking this seriously; not one person.

What plot there is concerns the Lycans reducing Vampire numbers by the coven load, thanks to the inspired leadership of Marius (Menzies), who appears to be a kind of enhanced werewolf. On the Vampire side, Elder Thomas (Dance) is supported by Vampire Council member Semira (Pulver) in bringing Selene (Beckinsale) back into the fold in order for her to use her unique skills in fending off/killing the Lycans. Selene relcutantly accepts but is soon betrayed by the scheming Semira, and flees to the Nordic Coven, where a Lycan attack led by Marius leaves her dead beneath the ice. With Semira further emboldened by news of Selene’s death, she allows the Lycans access to the Eastern Coven, and soon the place is overrun by werewolves. With only Thomas’s son David (James) to lead them – which is handy as he’s the true heir to the Vampire leadership – the Vampires are in danger of being wiped out once and for all…

By now, any movies in the Underworld franchise that find a release (and Alexander Corvinus help us, there’s another one in the works), are purely for the fans only. They will make a certain amount of money – so far Blood Wars has made over $75 million, more than double its production budget – and they’ll gain a respectable (new) lease of life on home video. For the makers, it’s a win-win situation, and to some degree, it’s the same for the fans. Kate Beckinsale as Selene + warring Vampires and Lycans + shoddy CGI effects + incomprehensible storylines and dialogue + the same steel blue lighting effects in each movie + poorly edited action sequences = the franchise that good taste can’t kill.

Like the Resident Evil series, which also foists a movie on us every few years, the Underworld movies feature a strong-minded, invincible heroine, and the merest interest in logic or credibility. As long as there’s a fight scene every ten minutes, and the villains are appropriately nasty and conniving and amoral, then nothing else is really needed. Well, except for an establishing shot to set up the next instalment, that is. That these movies continue to attract the likes of Beckinsale and Dance is possibly the only thing that’s impressive about them, but not even Beckinsale can do anything with lines such as, “There is no beginning, there is no end. There is only the coming.” That’ll be Underworld: Dead Poor then.

Rating: 3/10 – the first truly “meh” movie of 2017, Underworld: Blood Wars has all the attraction of root canal work and a rectal exam put together; unfailingly predictable, and trite on almost every level, the directorial debut of TV helmer Foerster readily shows that the producers are firmly in charge and there’s no room for originality – at all.

Monthly Roundup – December 2016

31 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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50's sci-fi movie, A Perfect Man, Action, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Ana Girardot, Barry Sonnenfeld, Cameron Mitchell, Cat, Cell, Chandler Riggs, Christopher Walken, Comedy, David Tomlinson, Devil's Crag, Diana Dors, Drama, Edward Kemmer, Eliminators (2016), Flight to Mars, Frances O'Connor, Giant from the Unknown, Hard Target 2, Horror, Hostile takeover, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary, James Bobin, James Nunn, Jennifer Garner, John Cusack, Johnny Depp, Kevin Spacey, Lesley Selander, Literary adaptation, Marguerite Chapman, Mars, Maurice Elvey, Mercy (2014), Mia Wasikowska, Murder, Myanmar, Nine Lives, Peter Cornwell, Pierre Niney, Reviews, Rhona Mitra, Richard E. Cunha, Robert Knepper, Roel Reiné, Sally Fraser, Samuel L. Jackson, Scott Adkins, Sequel, Shirley Knight, Stephen King, The Mad Hatter, The Red Queen, Thriller, Tod Williams, Vargas, Wade Barrett, Wonderland, WWE Films, Yann Gozlan

Cell (2016) / D: Tod Williams / 98m

Cast: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Isabelle Fuhrman, Clark Sarullo, Ethan Andrew Casto, Owen Teague, Stacy Keach, Joshua Mikel

Rating: 4/10 – a mysterious cell phone signal turns people into crazed, zombie-like creatures, but one man (Cusack) is determined to find his son while society disintegrates around him; a Stephen King adaptation (and co-scripted by him), Cell is another reminder that his work rarely translates well to the screen, and this is no exception, being dramatically incoherent, a waste of its talented cast, and lumbered with an ending that makes absolutely no sense at all.

A Perfect Man (2015) / D: Yann Gozlan / 104m

Original title: Un homme idéal

Cast: Pierre Niney, Ana Girardot, André Marcon, Valéria Cavalli, Thibault Vinçon, Marc Barbé, Sacha Mijovic

Rating: 7/10 – aspiring author Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) isn’t getting anywhere until he finds an unpublished novel and claims it as his own, a move that leads to fame, fortune, blackmail, and ultimately, murder; a clever, twisty thriller that benefits from a splendidly nervous, anxious performance from Niney, A Perfect Man may have many familiar elements, but it’s a movie with a great deal of style, and it holds the attention in such a way that there are times when you won’t realise you’re holding your breath.

Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary (1953) / D: Maurice Elvey / 80m

Cast: David Tomlinson, Diana Dors, Bonar Colleano, Sidney James, Diana Decker, Audrey Freeman, MacDonald Parke

Rating: 5/10 – returning to the UK with his new bride (Decker), US soldier Laurie Vining (Colleano) is horrified to learn that he may still be married to his first wife, glamour girl Candy (Dors), a situation that leads to his desperately trying to avoid his new bride – or anyone else – from finding out; a bedroom farce based on a successful stage play, Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary has dated somewhat, but for fans of the cast and this type of Fifties UK comedy, there’s much to enjoy, from the frantic mugging of Colleano and Tomlinson, Elvey’s efficient direction, and a surprisingly nuanced performance from Dors.

Eliminators (2016) / D: James Nunn / 94m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Wade Barrett, Daniel Caltagirone, James Cosmo, Ty Glaser, Olivia Mace, Lily Ann Stubbs

Rating: 3/10 – when a home invasion means his Witness Protection identity is compromised, ex-Federal Agent Martin Parker (Adkins) finds himself the target of a hitman (Barrett) and forced to go on the run; a WWE Films production shot on location in and around London, Eliminators is a bog-standard actioner that stretches credulity, invites disbelief, and warrants avoidance as it does its best to cram in as many dull action scenes as it can in ninety minutes, and serves as yet another reminder that being a WWE superstar doesn’t mean you can act.

Giant from the Unknown (1958) / D: Richard E. Cunha / 77m

aka The Diablo Giant; Giant from Devil’s Crag; Giant from Diablo Point

Cast: Edward Kemmer, Sally Fraser, Bob Steele, Morris Ankrum, Buddy Baer, Jolene Brand, Gary Crutcher, Billy Dix

Rating: 4/10 – animal mutilations and murder plague a small town – and that’s before a giant Spanish conquistador is released from suspended animation by a lightning bolt, and threatens both the town’s inhabitants and the research team trying to ascertain if the legend about him is true; not the best example of a Fifties “creature feature”, Giant from the Unknown takes so long to get going that it’s nearly over before it’s begun, features a raft of irritating performances, and is so flatly directed by Cunha that once the Giant is awakened, you can’t help but pray that he’s the first victim.

Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) / D: James Bobin / 113m

Cast: Mia Wasikowska, Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Sacha Baron Cohen, Rhys Ifans, Matt Lucas, Lindsay Duncan, Leo Bill, Ed Speelers, Geraldine James, Andrew Scott, Alan Rickman, Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Barbara Windsor, Timothy Spall, Matt Vogel, Paul Whitehouse

Rating: 5/10 – Alice (Wasikowska) returns to Wonderland to save the Mad Hatter (Depp) from suicidal depression(!) and the attentions of Time (Cohen) and the Red Queen (Carter) who are working in tandem and holding the Hatter’s family hostage for no convincing reason you can think of; another sequel no one asked for (and nowhere near as successful as its predecessor), Alice Through the Looking Glass is ravishing to look at, boasts some fine visual effects, and a great performance by Cohen, but everything else is a mess: bloated, derivative, witless, and with yet another wasteful performance from Depp (who clearly can’t be bothered).

Hard Target 2 (2016) / D: Roel Reiné / 104m

Cast: Scott Adkins, Robert Knepper, Rhona Mitra, Temuera Morrison, Ann Truong, Adam Saunders, Jamie Timony, Peter Hardy

Rating: 4/10 – ex-MMA fighter Wes Baylor (Adkins) finds himself in Myanmar with one simple objective: reach the Thai border while he’s pursued by a motley group of “hunters” who are out to kill him; a movie that definitely comes under the heading of “another sequel no one asked for”, Hard Target 2 is betrayed by its low budget origins, a script that lurches from one unmemorable action scene to another, and Knepper’s one-note portrayal of the villain.

Nine Lives (2016) / D: Barry Sonnenfeld / 87m

Cast: Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, Christopher Walken, Robbie Amell, Malina Weissman, Cheryl Hines, Mark Consuelos, Talitha Bateman

Rating: 3/10 – businessman Tom Brand (Spacey) has no time for his wife (Garner) and daughter (Weissman), so what better way for him to learn the value of family (and some humility in the process) than by stranding his mind in the body of a cat?; the kind of inane, superficial comedy that Hollywood churns out with mindless regularity, Nine Lives gives Garfield 2 (2006) a run for its money in the stupid stakes, and hammers another nail into the coffin of Barry Sonnenfeld’s once-glorious career.

Flight to Mars (1951) / D: Lesley Selander / 72m

Cast: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat

Rating: 5/10 – the first manned flight to Mars gets there safely only to learn that the planet is inhabited, and by a human-like race that may or may not have an ulterior motive for helping them return to Earth; early-Fifties sci-fi hokum that throws in a tepid romance and some very, very short skirts for the female cast, Flight to Mars retains an odd charm – perhaps because of its naïve approach – that helps alleviate some of the more daffy moments the script insists on doling out.

Mercy (2014) / D: Peter Cornwell / 79m

Cast: Frances O’Connor, Shirley Knight, Chandler Riggs, Joel Courtney, Mark Duplass, Dylan McDermott, Amanda Walsh, Hana Hayes, Pepper Binkley

Rating: 4/10 – after a spell in a nursing home, Grandma Mercy (Knight) comes home to be looked after by her family – daughter Rebecca (O’Connor) and grandsons George (Riggs) and Buddy (Courtney) – but soon exhibits strange behaviour, behaviour that includes warning George that a supernatural force is coming to get him; adapted from the short story Gramma by Stephen King (yes, him again), Mercy aims for creepy and menacing, yet succeeds instead in being confused and uninspired, and with laboured direction and performances, a situation that devotees of King adaptations will appreciate, having been there many times before.

Blair Witch (2016)

27 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Tags

Adam Wingard, Black Hills, Burkittsville, Callie Hernandez, Drama, Horror, James Allen McCune, Review, Sequel, The Woods, Witch

D: Adam Wingard / 89m

Cast: James Allen McCune, Callie Hernandez, Corbin Reid, Brandon Scott, Wes Robinson, Valorie Curry

Twenty years after his older sister, Heather, disappeared in the Black Hills woods outside Burkittsville, Maryland, James Donahue (McCune) comes into possession of a video that he believes is evidence that his sister is – somehow – still alive. Determined to find out for sure, he co-opts film student Lisa Arlington (Hernandez) – who is making a documentary about Heather’s disappearance and James’s search for answers – and friends Peter (Scott) and Ashley (Reid) into going with him. The night before they’re due to set off into the woods, they meet locals Lane (Robinson) and Talia (Curry), who agree to go with them.

Having set up camp on the first night, Lane tells the rest of the group stories he’s heard about the history of the Blair Witch. That night, noises from the surrounding woods wake James and Lisa; they discover Lane outside the camp and looking scared. The next day, the group discover lots of stick figures hanging from the trees and that they’ve slept until two o’clock. Freaked out by this, they decide to go back, but after several hours of trying to retrace their steps, they find themselves back at the campsite. Circumstances lead to Lane and Talia leaving the group and attempting to make their own way back.

The remaining four are forced to stay there overnight. Peter disappears, and when James tries to find him he encounters Lane and Talia instead. They tell him they’ve been lost in the woods for five days. The couple are allowed to stay in camp, though Lisa is suspicious of them. James sets his alarm for seven o’clock in the morning, but when it goes off it is still pitch dark. There are also, more, larger stick figures hanging from the trees. Lane runs off, and something happens to Talia that terrifies the rest. James, Lisa and Ashley become separated. When James and Lisa find each other again, they hear what they think is Ashley screaming. With it now raining heavily, they discover the same house where James believes he’ll find his sister…

When The Blair Witch Project was released in 1999, it was a massive, unexpected success. Made on a budget of $60,000, it accrued nearly $250 million worldwide and to this day, is one of the most successful independent movies ever produced. It spawned a sequel, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) that was the antithesis of the original’s tone and approach, and which was so mangled in post-production by distributors Artisan Entertainment, that they wrecked any chances of it being even a fraction as successful as its predecessor. And now, we have a second sequel, one that ignores the events of Book of Shadows, and attempts to recreate the style and tone of the original movie.

The key word here is “attempts”. Writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard have decided, somewhat wisely, to take viewers back to the Black Hills woods, but in doing so, have unwittingly reminded everyone just why The Blair Witch Project was such a major success. It was a movie that dared its audience to say this isn’t real, that three people haven’t really disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Black Hills woods in Maryland. It also made a virtue of its found-footage approach, and was all the more impressive for it. It was a simple, very effective way of detailing the increasing terror being experienced by Heather and her two friends, Mike and Josh. But since then, the found-footage genre has been done to death and back again, and its very moribund nature is the biggest obstacle any movie maker has to overcome in tackling a movie such as this one. We’ve seen too many people who are lost in the woods and are being menaced by malevolent forces. We’ve seen too many movies where the footage consists of distressed video images that tell us nothing of what’s happening, and are often set up just to provide jump scares.

And Blair Witch is no different. Barrett and Wingard – who are no slouches when it comes to horror movies – fail to provide us with anything new, or memorable. Instead they fall back on the tried and tested formula of several other, similar movies – A Night in the Woods (2012), Evidence (2011), and Willow Creek (2013), to name but a few – and make the same mistake that everyone else makes: they don’t provide us with anyone to care about. This leaves the movie feeling more like a (very) belated cash-in designed to wring a few more dollars out of an unsuspecting fanbase and/or potentially interested public. The makers went to a lot of trouble to ensure that Blair Witch wasn’t on anyone’s radar during its production, and right up until its first showing at this year’s Comic-Con, it was known as The Woods. Perhaps they already knew this wasn’t going to be as good as they’d hoped.

In the end, the movie falls way short of being a worthy successor to The Blair Witch Project, and it falls way short of being even an above average found-footage movie. Several times, and particularly during the events that take place in the house, there are shots that are clearly made by a third person. The editing, by Louis Cioffi, is haphazard and draining, stretching some scenes out to longer than necessary, while truncating others unnecessarily, and Wingard’s control of the material is similar in execution, with a lack of focus that undermines the narrative – such as it is – and keeps the audience at a distance.

The movie makes yet another huge mistake in showing the Blair Witch herself (however briefly), where the original didn’t have the inclination or the need, being scary enough without her – and it doesn’t help that she looks like the second cousin of the creature from [Rec] 2 (2009). When a sequel doesn’t follow through on one of the most important and effective decisions its predecessor made, then you know that no one’s paying close enough attention. And if they’re not, why should you?

Rating: 4/10 – professionally made but lacking in real smarts, Blair Witch arrives like an unwanted guest at a funeral – they knew the deceased, but can’t think of anything worthwhile to say about them; a sequel that squanders its predecessor’s legacy, it soon runs out of things with which to engage the audience and worse still, it can’t even come up with an ending that is even halfway as disturbing as the fate that befell Heather.

Monthly Roundup – November 2016

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Adam Schindler, All'ultimo sangue, Andrew Stanton, Animation, Annalise Basso, Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies, Beth Riesgraf, Bury Them Deep, Colin Firth, Comedy, Craig Hill, Dominik Hartl, Drama, Elizabeth Reaser, Ellen DeGeneres, Ettore Manni, Felicity Jones, Finding Dory, Fort Osage, Gabriela Marcinková, Home invasion, Horror, Inferno (2016), Laurie Calvert, Lesley Selander, Literary adaptation, Mike Flanagan, Ouija: Origin of Evil, Paolo Moffa, Patrick Dempsey, Plague virus, Prequel, Renée Zellweger, Rod Cameron, Romance, Romantic comedy, Ron Howard, Rory Culkin, Sequel, Sharon Maguire, Shut In, Ski-ing, Thriller, Tom Hanks, Western

Bury Them Deep (1968) / D: Paolo Moffa (as John Byrd) / 109m

Original title: All’ultimo sangue

Cast: Craig Hill, Ettore Manni, Giovanni Cianfriglia (as Ken Wood), José Greci, Francesco Santovetti, Luciano Doria, Pino Patti (as Giuseppe Sorrentino), Ruggero Salvadori

Rating: 5/10 – when an Army payroll is stolen by notorious outlaw Billy Gun (Cianfriglia), expert tracker Clive Norton (Hill) is hired to get it back, but in the process he finds himself up against a variety of obstacles, not the least of which is Billy’s brother, El Chaleco (Manni); an average Spaghetti Western given a much needed dose of energy thanks to Manni’s muscular, spirited performance as the conniving El Chaleco, Bury Them Deep rarely rises above its perfunctory level, and despite cramming in several lengthy action sequences.

Ouija: Origin of Evil (2016) / D: Mike Flanagan / 99m

Cast: Elizabeth Reaser, Annalise Basso, Lulu Wilson, Henry Thomas, Parker Mack

Rating: 6/10 – it’s 1965, and the Zander family – single mother Alice (Reaser) and her two daughters, Lina (Basso) and Doris (Wilson) – become imperilled by an evil spirit thanks to the misguided use of a ouija board; a prequel to the events seen in Ouija (2014), this does nothing new in terms of scares and special effects, but thanks to the involvement of Flanagan, at least gives you characters you can actually relate to and care about, and which is a rare and valuable thing indeed.

Finding Dory (2016) / D: Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane / 97m

Cast: Ellen DeGeneres, Albert Brooks, Ed O’Neill, Kaitlin Olson, Hayden Rolence, Ty Burrell, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Sloane Murray, Idris Elba, Dominic West, Bob Peterson, Kate McKinnon, Bill Hader, Sigourney Weaver

Rating: 7/10 – Dory the blue tang fish (DeGeneres) starts having flashbacks to when she was younger and lived with her parents, and these in turn prompt her to try and find them, much to the continuing consternation of clown fish Marlin (Brooks) and his more positive son Nemo (Rolence); a sequel to one of Pixar’s most cherished movies, and one of this year’s most anticipated releases, Finding Dory lacks the original movie’s winning charm, and settles instead for being a guilty pleasure retread of Finding Nemo, while being saved from a lower score thanks to DeGeneres wonderful, and still inspired, vocal performance.

Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) / D: Sharon Maguire / 123m

Cast: Renée Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey, Sarah Solemani, Gemma Jones, Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson, Neil Pearson, Joanna Scanlan, Kate O’Flynn, Celia Imrie, Ed Sheeran

Rating: 7/10 – at the dreadfully old age of forty-three, Bridget (Zellweger) feels like love is passing her by, until two one night stands – with old flame Mark Darcy (Firth) and new beau Jack Qwant (Dempsey) – lead to her being pregnant but unsure as to which one of them is the father; a welcome return for Bridget, and with much of the pizzazz and feelgood humour of the first movie, but the whole “who’s the father?” storyline is a poor conceit to hang a whole movie on, and it shows, leaving standout moments such as Bridget miming to House of Pain’s Jump Around, as a much better reason for splurging on this latest installment.

Shut In (2015) / D: Adam Schindler / 90m

aka Deadly Home; Intruders

Cast: Beth Riesgraf, Rory Culkin, Martin Starr, Jack Kesy, Joshua Mikel, Leticia Jiminez, Timothy T. McKinney

Rating: 5/10 – when Anna (Riesgraf), who’s agoraphobic, doesn’t attend her recently deceased brother’s funeral, the three men who arrive at her home to rob her soon find that Anna has a dark secret that will endanger them all; a brave attempt to do something different in the home invasion genre, Shut In nevertheless remains an intriguing idea that never coalesces into a completely successful whole, but does feature a terrific performance from Riesgraf.

Inferno (2016) / D: Ron Howard / 121m

Cast: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ben Foster, Ana Ularu, Ida Darvish

Rating: 6/10 – despite suffering from short term memory loss, symbologist Robert Langdon must endure a race against time in order to stop the release of a deadly toxin that will wipe out billions of people; another year, another Dan Brown adaptation, but this time it’s an adaptation that’s at least bearable, thanks to Tom Elkins’ and Daniel P. Hanley’s editing skills, an enjoyable, knowing performance from Khan, and a script that doesn’t hang around getting bogged down by endless exposition, which, considering Brown’s reliance on it in his novels, is a massive step forward should The Lost Symbol or any further novels be adapted for the screen.

Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2016) / D: Dominik Hartl / 77m

Cast: Laurie Calvert, Gabriela Marcinková, Oscar Dyekjær Giese, Margarete Tiesel, Karl Fischer, Patricia Aulitzky, Kari Rakkola

Rating: 5/10 – a formula for producing snow proves extremely harmful if ingested, and soon the guests at a remote mountain top ski resort are knee deep in zombies, both human and animal; similar in tone to the Dead Snow movies, Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies combines daft humour with gross-out gore and flying body parts a-plenty, but as usual with this type of movie, it pays lip service to cohesive plotting, or credible characters, and focuses instead on providing a series of inventive zombie kills – which is pretty much the only aspect it gets right.

Fort Osage (1952) / D: Lesley Selander / 72m

Cast: Rod Cameron, Jane Nigh, Morris Ankrum, Douglas Kennedy, John Ridgely

Rating: 6/10 – homesteaders looking to head west through Indian country are exploited by a crooked businessman (Ankrum) and have their lives put at risk by his decision to cheat said Indians out of the rewards of a peace treaty, leaving would-be wagonmaster Tom Clay (Cameron) to get the bottom of all the corruption; an enjoyable way to spend seventy-two minutes thanks to Selander’s typically intuitive direction, Cameron’s no-nonsense approach to dialogue, and the joy of watching so many standard Western tropes being trotted out and given such a good airing.

Mini-Review: Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

06 Sunday Nov 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Cobie Smulders, Conspiracy, Danika Yarosh, Drama, Edward Zwick, Father/daughter relationship, Lee Child, Literary adaptation, Murder, New Orleans, Sequel, Thriller, Tom Cruise, US Military

D: Edward Zwick / 118m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Cobie Smulders, Aldis Hodge, Danika Yarosh, Patrick Heusinger, Holt McCallany, Austin Hébert, Robert Knepper, Madalyn Horcher, Robert Catrini

After helping the US Military apprehend a crooked sheriff – it doesn’t matter why – Jack Reacher (Cruise) begins flirting by telephone with his contact, Major Susan Turner (Smulders). When he arrives back at his old military HQ to meet her for the first time, Reacher finds she’s been arrested on suspicion of treason. It’s all to do with an investigation she was overseeing in Afghanistan, and which involves the murder of two soldiers out there. Reacher is instantly suspicious himself, but when Turner’s attorney winds up murdered, he finds himself framed for the killing, and with only one option going forward: break Turner and himself out of military prison and go on the run while also trying to solve the conspiracy surrounding Turner’s arrest.

While all this is going on, Reacher also learns that he may have a daughter. Her name is Samantha (Yarosh), she’s fifteen years old, and she becomes involved when the mercenary assassin (Heusinger) charged with tracking down Reacher and Turner links her to her possible father. With the guilty party looking like defence contractor, Parasource, the trio travel to New Orleans and try to find the company’s middle man in Afghanistan, Daniel Prudhomme (Hébert). Frightened and in hiding, Prudhomme is eventually found, and what he tells them reveals a puzzling conspiracy involving the illegal smuggling of weaponry owned by Parasource itself, the rewards of which are outweighed by the potential worth of government contracts.

Jack Reacher (2012) made just enough money (if $218,340,595 can be considered “just enough”) to allow Jack Reacher: Never Go Back to be made. Making this only the second time that Cruise has reprised a character role, the movie again dispenses with any intention of following the sequence of Lee Child’s novels, and plumps for a more recent effort. Given that it provides Reacher with a potential daughter, you can see why Never Go Back was so attractive to the producers, including Cruise himself: let’s show the action man can be a big softie as well (though, actually, not too much of a big softie). But in the end, all this means is that the viewer is subjected to dozens of close ups of Cruise manipulating his facial expressions as if with strings, and a handful of awkward father-daughter moments that are played by rote. You can guess the outcome of this particular “mystery” from a mile away, but the movie goes through the motions with it, and never once makes it seem that Reacher and Samantha could achieve a really meaningful relationship.

This leaves the conspiracy story to lead the rest of the movie, but sadly, the movie never springs to life with it, leaving everything feeling flat and unnecessarily bland. Part of the problem is that you don’t really care what happens to anyone, even Samantha, and the mechanics of the villain’s deadly plot never catch on in the way that the writers and producers and Edward Zwick would like. None of it seems relevant, and all of it is coated with a thin layer of effort. Cruise looks determined, but often it’s difficult to work out if he’s in character or just trying to get through the filming stage. Smulders at least tries to inject some passion into things, but she’s held back by a script that actively ignores her character’s role in the military whenever it can, and at one point sidelines her as a babysitter to Samantha. It all makes the viewer “glad” that sexism can rear its ugly head in a movie, and if it’s supported by Tom Cruise then it’s all the better, and perhaps, even acceptable.

Rating: 5/10 – a sequel that lacks the bite of its predecessor, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back could also be called Jack Reacher: Never Knowingly Exciting; professionally done but a little too generic in its approach and presentation, it’s a movie that never strays out of its comfort zone, not even by accident.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Bad Neighbours 2, Chloë Grace Moretz, Comedy, Kappa Nu, Neighbours, Nicholas Stoller, Review, Rose Byrne, Sequel, Seth Rogen, Sorority, Zac Efron

aka Bad Neighbours 2

D: Nicholas Stoller / 92m

Cast: Seth Rogen, Zac Efron, Rose Byrne, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ike Barinholtz, Kiersey Clemons, Beanie Feldstein, Dave Franco, Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Elise Vargas, Zoey Vargas, John Early, Hannibal Buress, Selena Gomez, Kelsey Grammer, Lisa Kudrow

Meh (see also Mechanic: Resurrection and Bastille Day).

Rating: 3/10 – a disastrous sequel that should be subtitled The Movie Laughs Forgot, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising is another “comedy” that barely succeeds in raising a smile, let alone any genuine outbursts of laughter; a lame retread of the original, the cast sleepwalk through their roles, the script allows for long stretches of tedium, Stoller appears to have been on holiday for the whole of shooting, and any chance of a good time is dismissed from the off, leaving the audience to wonder how on earth this was made in the first place.

Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Arms dealers, Australia, Crime, Dennis Gansel, Drama, Hitman, Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Malaysia, Michelle Yeoh, Review, Sequel, Thailand, Thriller, Tommy Lee Jones

D: Dennis Gansel / 99m

Cast: Jason Statham, Jessica Alba, Tommy Lee Jones, Michelle Yeoh, Sam Hazeldine, John Cenatiempo, Toby Eddington, Femi Elufowoju Jr, Anteo Quintavalle

Meh.

Rating: 3/10 – a terrible sequel that lies dead on the screen, Mechanic: Resurrection features some of the worst green screen work ever (the opening fight in Buenos Aires), a plot that makes absolutely no sense at all, and performances from all concerned that border almost on perfunctory – if only they could have made that much effort; action movies don’t have to tie up every loose end or narrative loophole, but this has a script that just doesn’t know when to give up and go home, making it one of the worst experiences you’re likely to have at the cinema all year.

Jason Bourne (2016)

20 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Alicia Vikander, Asset, Athens, Berlin, Black ops, CIA, Drama, Iron Hand, Las Vegas, London, Matt Damon, Paul Greengrass, Review, Sequel, Thriller, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel

D: Paul Greengrass / 123m

Cast: Matt Damon, Tommy Lee Jones, Alicia Vikander, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles, Riz Ahmed, Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd, Bill Camp, Vinzenz Kiefer, Stephen Kunken, Gregg Henry

The original Bourne movie trilogy was smart, inventive, thrilling, and a massive boost for the ailing spy genre. It made an action hero of Matt Damon, featured action sequences that were fresh and exciting, and had an emotionally complex through-line that bolstered the already intense plotting. At the end of The Bourne Ultimatum, David Webb had gained the answers to questions that had plagued him ever since he’d been saved from a watery grave by the crew of a fishing boat.

Except… he hasn’t, not really. The closing lines from The Bourne Ultimatum – “I remember. I remember everything.” – are repeated here at the movie’s beginning, and are followed by a montage of scenes from the original trilogy (as far as this movie is concerned, The Bourne Legacy (2012) never happened). But in amongst these memories are flashes of scenes we haven’t seen before. And when Jason Bourne snaps out of his reverie, we find him in the back of a truck and heading for an illegal fight ground in Greece. Clearly the years since he took down Treadstone and Blackbriar haven’t been good to him: despite his fighting prowess he still looks lost. And the bad dreams, or reveries, he’s experiencing aren’t helping. For someone who “remembers everything”, he’s having some of the most spectacularly disturbing and disorienting dreams ever. And he can’t make sense of them, especially the ones that involve his father, Richard Webb (Henry).

Help comes in the familiar but unexpected form of ex-CIA analyst Nicky Parsons (Stiles). Having hacked into the CIA mainframe, she’s done so with the aim of helping Bourne learn more about his past, and has discovered that his father had a greater role in the Treadstone programme than Bourne has been led to believe. But in hacking the CIA, Nicky has become a target and her contacting Bourne in Athens leads to his getting “back in the game”. With CIA operatives on their trail, as well as an Asset (Cassel), Bourne gains access to the information Nicky hacked, and once he becomes aware of his father’s involvement, he finds his enrolment in the Treadstone program wasn’t as clear cut as he thought. But as before, his reappearance has senior members of the CIA, including Director Robert Dewey (Jones), unwilling to let Bourne expose their Black Ops programs. Using a combination of the Asset and the head of the Cyber Crimes Division, Heather Lee (Vikander), to track down Bourne and eliminate him once and for all, Dewey plots to keep the CIA’s secrets as hidden as ever.

Fans of the Bourne Trilogy are generally dismissive of The Bourne Legacy, the Jeremy Renner starring addition to the series that failed to add anything new to the mix, and which felt like an uninspired retread of everything that had gone before. Matt Damon famously turned down the chance to cameo in Legacy, and made it clear that he wouldn’t return to the franchise unless Paul Greengrass was back on board as well. Well, Damon got his wish, and Greengrass is back as the movie’s director. But perhaps Damon should have made another stipulation: that Greengrass didn’t write the script.

Jason Bourne has many of the same attributes that The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum share. There’s the generous use of “shaky cam”, Christopher Rouse’s exemplary editing, excellent location work, and a series of intense and very well-staged action sequences (one of the series major strengths). But there’s one aspect that’s missing this time round, and aside from Greengrass’s muscular directorial style, it’s perhaps the series’ most important component: the contribution of Tony Gilroy. As screenwriter of the first two movies, and co-screenwriter of the third (though his input was drastically reduced), as well as Legacy‘s writer/director, Gilroy helped guide the series from its inauspicious beginnings to a position of critical and commercial success worldwide. His scripts had intelligence, depth and subtlety, and his villains were drawn with a vividness and care that made them worthy adversaries.

But without Gilroy (no doubt a casualty of The Bourne Legacy‘s poor reception), Jason Bourne proves just as disappointing as its unacknowledged predecessor. Nearly ten years on from the events of Ultimatum, Bourne is still an emotional mess, haunted by memory fragments that cause him pain and regret. He looks awful, and Damon plays him like a man besieged. For a man who found all the answers he needed, Bourne looks even more tormented than when he was in the dark. The movie never really attempts to explain why this is the case, preferring instead to give audiences a tortured Bourne without expanding on his back story. As a result, his decision to jump back in, prompted by some spurious nonsense involving his father, seems perfunctory instead of necessary.

With Bourne himself treated in such a cavalier fashion – he’s really just a one-man wrecking crew here – the other characters fare just as badly. Dewey is a stock villain, one step removed from twirling an invisible moustache and muttering “mwah-ha-ha!” whenever the script has him do something nefarious. Jones has no chance with the role, and there are times when his awareness of this comes through loud and clear; just watch his scenes with Vikander, and ask yourself if he looks committed. Cassel’s Asset is fuelled by revenge for the torture he suffered through Bourne’s exposure of the Blackbriar program, but as the character spends an inordinate amount of time running around chasing Bourne without actually catching him, his anger (and his back story) gets shoved to the side. And then there’s Heather Lee, the Cyber Crimes head who acts as this movie’s Pamela Landy. There’s supposed to be some mystery as to which side she’s on (she helps Bourne in various ways while pushing a separate CIA agenda), but thanks to Greengrass’s less than subtle direction, Vikander never looks anything other than extremely distrustful.

And then there’s the small but important matter of how Bourne gets about. From Greece he travels to Berlin, then to London. He does so on his own, without any help from anyone, and manages to elude detection at every turn (a facet of the series that was usually, and very cleverly explained away – but not here). And yet when he travels from London to Las Vegas he does so by commercial aircraft, and though he receives assistance from Lee in getting through US Customs, it still begs the question how UK Customs didn’t flag him up in the first place. (Also, it seems that outside of Athens and Las Vegas there’s not the CCTV infrastructure to allow the CIA to track Bourne efficiently anywhere else.) And stop and think about this: in Las Vegas, at an expo for a communications platform that Dewey wants to appropriate – don’t ask – Bourne picks up various conveniently placed bugging devices that he uses to get to Dewey, all of which begs the question, what plan did he have originally (as he couldn’t have known they were there beforehand)?

Gaping plot holes like these only add to the realisation that Jason Bourne is a less than rewarding, less than necessary sequel to four previous movies (three of which had already told the story effectively and with impressive style), that throws in a handful of rousing action sequences, makes Bourne indestructible, has a subplot involving a communications platform – actually, still don’t ask – and features some of the blandest characters in the whole series. Greengrass is a mercurial director, with a great visual style, but he’s not as good a screenwriter as he might think, and along with Rouse, he makes things too simplistic for the movie’s own good. The end result? A movie that only takes off when it’s throwing punches or chasing SWAT vehicles.

Rating: 5/10 – a missed opportunity to enhance and expand on the series, Jason Bourne trades on nostalgia instead of bringing something new to the franchise; Bourne looks tired throughout, as does Jones, and by the movie’s end the viewer will feel exactly the same way.

Sharknado: The 4th Awakens (2016)

07 Sunday Aug 2016

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Action, Anthony C. Ferrante, Astro X, David Hasselhoff, Drama, Ian Ziering, Masiela Lusha, Niagara Falls, Nukenado, Review, Sequel, Sharks, SyFy, Tara Reid, The Asylum, Thriller, Tommy Davidson, Tornados

D: Anthony C. Ferrante / 85m

Cast: Ian Ziering, Tara Reid, Masiela Lusha, Tommy Davidson, Cody Linley, Ryan Newman, Imani Hakim, David Hasselhoff, Cheryl Tiegs, Gary Busey, Christopher Shone, Nicholas Shone

The title says it all. In fact, it says too much, because in hitching their bandwagon to that of Star Wars, and unleashing a torrent – a veritable Forcenado, if you like – of bad in-jokes and awkwardly added references to their own franchise, the producers of the Sharknado series have pretty much indicated that their confidence isn’t as high as it was this time last year, when Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! proved surprisingly enjoyable. Judging by the look of the movie, there was a much smaller budget available this time, despite the series’ growing success, and the calibre of familiar faces making cameo appearances couldn’t be maintained either.

But Star Wars isn’t the only movie to be given the subtlety-free tribute treatment. There’s also Pirates of the Caribbean, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Twister (“It’s a cownado!”) to name but a few. This leaves the already fragmented plot, what there is of it, feeling like it was made up as filming went along, with returning screenwriter Thunder Levin handing out new script pages each day. As the series’ put-upon hero, Fin Shepard (Ziering), aided by the same core group as in number three, is called upon to battle a variety of shark-infested tornados when a high-tech defense system designed to stop them from forming in the first place, goes wrong. Cue a trio of sharknados, all of which mutate thanks to whatever blatantly ridiculous idea Levin had that day. As a result we have a sandnado, an oilnado, a firenado, a bouldernado, a lightningnado, the aforementioned cownado, a hailnado (a hailmarynado might have been more appropriate), a lavanado, and to top them all, a nukenado.

Part of the series’ appeal – at least until now – has been its self-awareness, and the audience’s knowledge that the makers aren’t taking any of it seriously at all. The series’ humour has been an asset in this respect, but here it’s so tired, and conveyed with such a lack of energy that the one-liners which would previously have raised at least a smile, now induce groans instead. To paraphrase the tagline from Alien, In Sharknado: The 4th Awakens, no one can hear you sigh. Even the celebrity cameos, usually the source of much of the series’ merriment, aren’t able to raise the stakes, and there’s precious little fun to be had when the likes of Alexandra Paul and Gena Lee Nolin are drafted in (for a Baywatch-themed skit with Hasselhoff), only for them to be summarily eaten moments later (now if they’d managed to get Donald Trump…).

For many though, the main source of amusement will come from the so-bad-they’re-terrible special effects. Sharknado: The 4th Awakens reaches new heights (or should that be lows) in low-budget special effects, with some of the worst CGI ever committed to the small screen. The tornados themselves give new meaning to the word “appalling”, while any attempt at combining two separate film elements always looks like the worst kind of cut and splice effect, with backgrounds looking a different colour to what’s intended, and any of the cast unlucky enough to be in the foreground often highlighted by a soft white outline. While none of the Sharknado movies will ever be known for their use of cutting edge computer wizardry, the lack of attention to detail, and a “that’ll do” attitude harm the movie even more than usual.

And if the movie’s less than half-hearted approach to special effects hurts it, spare a thought for the acting – if it can be called that. Out of everyone, Ziering can be considered lucky: he’s got the most physical role, he has no choice but to play it seriously, and even though he knows it’s all as daft as a box of frogs, all he has to do is keep a straight face when he says his lines. As Fin’s supposedly dead wife, April, Reid also keeps a straight face throughout but instead of making the best of things she looks like she’s wondering when her character is really going to be killed off and she can get out of making these movies each year (it doesn’t help that Reid isn’t the best of actresses and uses the same expression for any and all feelings or emotions).

Further down the cast list we have Lusha as Gemini, a character that’s new to the series but who helps Fin in his endeavours (though exactly what her relationship is to Fin is never explained). She’s a replacement for the part of Nova, played in previous instalments by Cassie Scerbo, and while she attacks the role with relish, she’s too intent on making everything she does overly dramatic; as a result she offers a one-note performance that does her no favours. As Fin’s kids, Linley, Newman and the Shone twins are adequate but have little to do; Hakim’s character, though the latest member of the Shepard family (son Matt’s wife), also has little to do but run around after everyone else; Hasselhoff is in the same boat; Davidson tries to inject some much needed energy into his role as the tycoon behind the high-tech defense system, and succeeds largely because he makes more of an effort than anyone else; and then there’s Gary Busey, on board as April’s father and a mad scientist-type, who literally recites the majority of his lines standing up behind a table. It looks like he did all his work in under thirty minutes, or possibly twenty.

In charge once again is Ferrante, directing with all the flair and excitement of a man who can see any chance of a better career ebbing away with every entry in the series (and the movie ends on a set up for Part 5 – lucky guy). In conjunction with returning DoP Laura Beth Love, Ferrante drops any pretence at knowing how to frame a shot or a scene, or how to give direction to a cast who can only muster the enthusiasm to pick up their paycheck. It makes for an often embarrassing collection of stitched together moments that barely add up to a fully-fledged movie.

Rating: 2/10 – for a series that was improving – however gradually – with each successive entry, Sharknado: The 4th Awakens is a massive backward step, and easily the worst entry to date; shoddy in almost every department, with just Chris Ridenhour and Christopher Cano’s driving score to recommend it, the makers have got to go a long way to justify any further adventures for the unlucky Fin and his family.

Star Trek Beyond (2016)

02 Tuesday Aug 2016

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Action, Bones McCoy, Chris Pine, Drama, Federation, Idris Elba, James T. Kirk, Justin Lin, Karl Urban, Krall, Review, Sci-fi, Scotty, Sequel, Simon Pegg, Spock, Uhura, USS Enterprise, USS Franklin, Yorktown, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana

D: Justin Lin / 122m

Cast: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Idris Elba, Sofia Boutella, Joe Taslim, Lydia Wilson, Deep Roy, Shohreh Aghdashloo

It’s unfortunate, given the response to Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013), that the latest instalment in the JJ Abrams’ revamped movie franchise opens with über-Captain James T. Kirk (Pine) lamenting his time in space as part of the Enterprise’s five year mission. After nine hundred and sixty-six days, Kirk is, frankly, bored, and as he puts it, “wondering what it is we are trying to accomplish”. It’s like a listening to a man who’s treading water in the ocean, far from land, and hoping a shark comes along to break the monotony. Harking after further adventure, Kirk sounds petulant rather than unhappy. But if it’s a challenge he’s after, then he need wait no further, because once the Enterprise has docked at the Federation’s new super-duper starbase, the Yorktown (a nod to the Enterprise’s original name in the original series’ pilot), an alien craft seeking help arrives and propels Kirk and his long-suffering crew into just the kind of adventure that he craves.

Told that an alien menace headed by someone called Krall (Elba) is responsible for the abduction and imprisonment of her crew, Kalara (Wilson), leads Kirk and co to the planet where her crew are being held. Orbiting the planet, the Enterprise suffers a devastating attack, and the main saucer is forced into a crash landing – but not before Krall and his men have invaded the starship and made it clear they’re after an artifact – the Abronath – that is on board, and not before the crew have been either captured by Krall or gotten away by means of the Enterprise’s escape pods. Spock and Bones escape together, as do Kirk and Chekov, while Scotty gets clear by himself. Down on the planet, Scotty meets Jaylah (Boutella), a scavenger whose people were captured and imprisoned by Krall in the past. She takes him to what she calls her ship, and Scotty is amazed to find it’s the remains of the USS Franklin, a ship long considered to have been lost.

Meanwhile, Spock has been injured, and Bones is doing his best to keep him alive. Sulu and Uhura have been captured, and Kirk and Chekov head for the downed Enterprise to see if they can make it operational again. Krall appears to be one step ahead of everyone, and his motive for gaining the Abronath is revealed to be part of a plan of revenge on the Federation. Aided by Jaylah, the crew of the Enterprise come together to fight back against Krall’s homicidal intentions, and in the process, find some very unique ways of taking the fight to him.

When Paramount announced that they were rebooting the original Star Trek franchise and had given the project to JJ Abrams, it seemed like a risky proposition, what with William Shatner et al having become so completely associated with the roles of Kirk and Spock and Bones etc, that it was hard to imagine anyone else portraying them. But Abrams was more than up to the task, and even managed to come up with a plot device that allowed his “new crew” to have their own adventures independently of the original movie series’ timeline. Quinto was a great choice for Spock, Pine had the cocksure audacity of a younger Kirk down pat, and Urban was possibly a better (if underused) Bones than DeForest Kelley. Only the lack of a convincing villain stopped Star Trek (2009) from being a complete triumph. And then Star Trek: Into Darkness tried to be too clever for its own good with its “He’s not Khan/Okay, he is Khan” shenanigans, and overwrought plotting.

Perhaps realising that going “darker” on the first sequel works only on other sci-fi franchises, the producers have decided with this third outing to go lighter and make Star Trek Beyond more like an episode of the original series; or to be more accurate (or cynical – you decide) a retread of Star Trek: Generations (1994). The script, by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung (who appears briefly as Sulu’s husband, a gender acknowledgment that carries no weight whatsoever in the grand scheme of things), coasts along for the most part, and does what the original series always did so well: focuses on the relationships between Kirk, Spock and Bones, gives Scotty a chance to shine when something needs fixing (which happened pretty much every week), adds an alien collaborator to help the crew overcome the villain, throws in said villain and ensures they have a grudge against everyone else, and sidelines Uhura at every opportunity (though she is involved, by reference, in one of the movie’s funniest scenes). A tried and tested formula, to be sure, and one that on this occasion makes for an enjoyable if underwhelming experience.

But while enjoyable is good – and in a loud, dumb, fun kind of way the movie is enjoyable – there’s something missing that stops it from becoming a Star Trek movie that makes you want to go back and view it again because you had such a great experience watching it the first time. Partly because Krall is yet another weak villain, partly because there are too many occasions when the solution to a problem is to “couple the doohickey to the whatchamacallit and transverse the first number you thought of” (and who knew Kirk was so familiar with the properties of FM radio frequencies?), and partly because any plot development that relies on the presence of a fully functioning motor bike on the bridge of a downed starship, is stretching credibility to snapping point. (There are other moments where the viewer’s jaw is in danger of hitting the floor, but to reveal them all would take too long.)

In the director’s chair, Fast & Furious alumni Lin makes a decent enough fist of things but doesn’t manage to provide audiences with anything really memorable to go away with. It’s a turbo-charged experience, to be sure, and Lin, along with his editing team (Greg D’Auria, Dylan Highsmith, Kelly Matsumoto and Steven Sprung) ensures that the movie zips along at an exciting pace. The visuals are as crisp and vibrant as you would expect, and even though there’s an over-reliance on CGI, this is to be expected: it’s a science fiction movie, for Pete’s sake; how else is it going to look? The cast enter into the spirit of things, though Elba struggles with his dialogue thanks to the kind of alien mask that looks great but probably isn’t that functional; and there’s a touching moment where Spock looks at a picture from the past (that he can’t possibly have).

All in all, Star Trek Beyond is a movie that falls under the heading of “honourable mention”. It’s not going to be at the top of anyone’s list of all-time favourite Star Trek movies, but it won’t be anywhere near the bottom, like Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). It zips along like a young child eager to show off the neat-looking toy it’s just found, but as any parent will tell you, even neat-looking toys can lose their attraction quickly and without warning.

Rating: 6/10 – a middling, superficially diverting entry in the Star Trek canon, Star Trek Beyond is nothing new or special, and only occasionally rises to meet the demands of franchise (and genre) expectations; more a case of “boldly going where everyone has been before” than anything else, the movie is yet another reminder that the odd-numbered entries in the series are the ones that don’t always work.

Trailers – xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017), Hands of Stone (2016) and In a Valley of Violence (2016)

22 Friday Jul 2016

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Action, Biopic, Ethan Hawke, Hands of Stone, In a Valley of Violence, Movies, Previews, Ray Arcel, Robert De Niro, Roberto Duran, Sequel, Ti West, Trailers, Vin Diesel, Western, xXx: Return of Xander Cage

In the trailer for xXx: Return of Xander Cage, one thing stands out: that pretty much all the action beats we see, involve, or are performed by, everyone with the exception of Vin Diesel (aside from one leg swipe and an elbow to the neck). So straight away this seems less of a movie about the return of Xander Cage, and more of a movie where the star of the Fast & Furious franchise reinvigorates another, minor franchise by inserting his character into a storyline Cage didn’t originally feature in. If that’s so, then Diesel and director D.J. Caruso have an uphill battle on their hands to make Cage a still-relevant action hero at a time when Jason Bourne is back on our screens, and the best action movies are being made by a little outfit called Marvel. But if this really is a brand new outing designed and written specifically for Cage, and is intended to restart the franchise with Diesel firmly in place this time, then on first glance, it’s not looking too good. And it’ll be interesting to see where Tony Jaa fits into the scrapping order (first Paul Walker, now Diesel – who’s next? Michelle Rodriguez?). Let’s hope the two have a thumping good fight scene together, and one that doesn’t rely on the kind of editing that makes you wonder if their stunt doubles should be sharing top billing.

Real violence is on display in Hands of Stone, the story of boxer Roberto Durán’s rise from the poverty-stricken streets of Guarare in Panama, to glory in the ring, and two historic fights with Sugar Ray Leonard. The trailer makes it look as if Durán’s story is being told from the perspective of legendary trainer Ray Arcel, so it may be that the movie carries a degree of objectivity in its approach, and isn’t out to simply lionise Durán’s achievements. The boxer had his demons, and though the trailer touches on these, it’s hard to tell how much time will be spent on the man outside the ring instead of or rather than, the man inside it. Ramirez seems an obvious choice to play Durán (and he may be hoping to erase moviegoers’ memories of his performance in the Point Break remake), but he’s not an actor who’s really proven himself to date. De Niro has proven himself (many times) but the trailer doesn’t make it look as if he’s really trying, so let’s hope he’s more engaged than he’s been in recent years. And let’s hope the fight sequences are more Raging Bull (1980) than Grudge Match (2013).

Ti West is an indie movie maker in the best sense: he writes and directs his own movies, and he has a intriguing visual style that means you’re never sure where he’s going to take you next. Sometimes, as in The Sacrament (2013), he can surprise you just by getting the camera to turn a corner; other times, as in The Innkeepers (2011), he can surprise you by not surprising you (you’ll have to see the movie to know what that’s like). In a Valley of Violence has been on West’s to-do list for some time, and now that the first trailer is here we can see that it’s been well worth the wait. There are few trailers that can adequately instill a sense of foreboding from its assembly of clips, but this is one of those trailers. The lone stranger in town isn’t exactly a new twist on the Western genre, but under West’s stewardship, this looks like meaty, thrilling stuff indeed. With a great cast that includes Ethan Hawke, John Travolta (let’s hope it’s the kind of role he can do real justice to), James Ransone, Karen Gillan and indie favourite Larry Fessenden, this should be a rousing treat come the end of the year.

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)

04 Monday Jul 2016

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Action, Aliens, Bill Pullman, Drama, Invasion, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T. Usher, Judd Hirsch, Liam Hemsworth, Maika Monroe, Review, Roland Emmerich, Sela Ward, Sequel, Spaceships, Thriller, Twenty years, William Fichtner

D: Roland Emmerich / 120m

Cast: Liam Hemsworth, Jeff Goldblum, Jessie T. Usher, Bill Pullman, Maika Monroe, Sela Ward, William Fichtner, Judd Hirsch, Brent Spiner, Travis Tope, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Angelababy, Deobia Oparei, Nicolas Wright, Patrick St. Esprit, Chin Han, Vivica A. Fox

The tagline says it all: “We had twenty years to prepare.” And after all the waiting, this is the sequel we get, a bloated, lumbering, obscenely stupid movie that takes its predecessor’s legacy and repeatedly takes a dump on it. It’s a movie that insults the audience’s intelligence, and patience, at almost every turn in its efforts to tell the kind of half-baked story that should have been abandoned at the earliest stage possible. It took five people to pen the screenplay, two of them Emmerich and his long-time producing partner Dean Devlin, and it shows in the way that no two scenes run together seamlessly or with any sense of on-going purpose. Make no mistake about it: Independence Day: Resurgence is not worth your time.

The signs are there early on. Ex-President Whitmore (Pullman) is having dreams that anticipate the aliens returning. Once awake he’s plagued by a vision of an image he takes to be another of the aliens’ spaceships. Meanwhile, in Africa, a tribal warlord Dikembe Umbutu (Oparei), is visited by David Levinson (Goldblum), but there’s no reason given for Levinson’s being there. When Umbutu takes him to the site of a crashed alien spaceship they discover that it’s been sending out a distress call. Uh oh, we all know what that means!

Cue the Moon-based planetary defence systems coming under apparent attack from a giant sphere that appears out of some kind of black hole. Taking the approach that it’s safer to shoot first then ask questions later, current US President Lanford (Ward) orders its destruction. Maverick pilot Jake Morrison (Hemsworth), though grounded for saving a weapon from destroying the moon base (don’t ask), “borrows” a spaceship and heads for Africa to pick up Levinson so that he can take a look at the wreckage of the sphere (again, don’t ask). Umbutu tags along, as does Dr Catherine Marceaux (Gainsbourg), Umbutu’s shrink-cum-alien researcher, and a cowardly auditor, Floyd Rosenberg (Wright), who’s followng Levinson around for no other reason than the script has put him there. (Is it bizarre enough yet?)

Other characters are added to the mix. There’s ex-President Whitmore’s daughter, Patricia (Monroe), an ex-fighter pilot now working as part of President Lanford’s entourage. There’s Dylan Hiller (Usher), the son of Steven Hiller, the hero of the first movie who has died in a training exercise; he’s in a relationship with Patricia. Then there’s Dr Brakish Okun (Spiner). He’s been in a coma for the last twenty years since his “close encounter” with one of the aliens. Once the distress call goes out, he wakes up, older certainly, but suffering none of the side effects of being in a coma for such a long time (there’s certainly no muscle atrophy). Falling into line are General Adams (Fichtner), the military leader of the US forces, Dylan’s mother, Jasmine (Fox), who works in a hospital, and Jake’s co-pilot/gunner Charlie Miller (Tope), who acts as a comic alternative to Jake’s more serious demeanour. Oh, and let’s not forget Julius Levinson (Hirsch), David’s father, another character from the first movie who’s shoehorned into this one to add even more familiarity to the proceedings (and who miraculously survives what should be the world’s most destructive tsunami). (And that’s all without even mentioning the giant sphere that proves to have the personality of a stuffy doctor’s receptionist – still not bizarre enough?)

All these characters flit in and out of the narrative, adding little beyond their required presence at various points, and only occasionally making an impact. Even Levinson is sidelined by events, while Whitmore fills the role of this movie’s Russell Casse, and President Lanford proves expendable in a sequence that comes and goes without making audiences feel anything other than apathy. Even the movie’s principal hero, Jake, is cruelly underwritten, leaving Hemsworth in the unenviable position of playing a role that highlights his shortcomings as an actor. With the likes of Monroe, Usher and Fichtner reduced to the status of bit part players, the movie ignores its cast for the most part and concentrates on providing more spectacle than you can shake a giant spaceship at.

It’s while Emmerich piles on the destruction that the tagline for Gareth Edwards’ reboot of Godzilla (2014) springs to mind: “Size does matter.” For as the director gets carried away crashing an enormous spaceship into the North Atlantic, and displacing Singapore only as long as it takes to float it halfway around the world and drop it on London, the message comes across loud and clear, that this movie is better because it’s bigger, both in scope and special effects. But it’s all soulless and uninvolving, populated by whizz-bang dogfights and lacklustre retreads of moments from Indepedence Day that only serve to remind viewers just how enjoyable that movie was, and still is.

And where Independence Day kept its laughs to a minimum, its bloated but thankfully shorter sequel adds humour and silliness by the bucket load, largely whenever Okun or Floyd is on screen, and in the plethora of one-liners sprinkled throughout the script. This may have seemed like a good idea at the time but this reliance on making the audience laugh undercuts the seriousness of the situation, leaving the movie feeling uneven and, sometimes, crass in its efforts to entertain instead of having us on the edge of our seats. The world is about to end, but that’s okay, here comes Brent Spiner with another less-than-pithy wisecrack.

That this is so woeful proves the old adage, penned by William Goldman, that in Hollywood, “nobody knows anything”. If they did, then Messrs Emmerich and Devlin wouldn’t have transferred such a dreadful script to the screen and attempted to pass it off as a worthy successor to the movie that made both their names. Where Amy Schumer appeared in a movie called Trainwreck (2015), it wouldn’t be inappropriate for this farrago to be re-titled Spaceshipwreck – it’s a far more apt description.

Rating: 3/10 – without a doubt the worst – so far – of this year’s summer blockbusters, Independence Day: Resurgence lacks apppreciable thrills, appreciable drama, appreciable tension or emotion, and any clear idea of the story it wants to tell; frustrating on so many levels, it’s a movie that consistently defies belief, and does the one thing the viewer will be praying it won’t do: set things up for another sequel.

Mini-Review: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (2016)

30 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Comedy, John Corbett, Kirk Jones, Lainie Kazan, Marriage, Michael Constantine, Nia Vardalos, Review, Sequel, The Portokalos family, Wedding

D: Kirk Jones / 94m

Cast: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett, Michael Constantine, Lainie Kazan, Andrea Martin, Gia Carides, Joey Fatone, Louis Mandylor, Elena Kampouris, Alex Wolff, Bess Meisler, Rita Wilson, John Stamos, Mark Margolis, Rob Riggle

The extended Portokalos family are back, but since we saw them in My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), things haven’t remained the same: Toula (Vardalos) has had to close her travel agency due to the recession, and the family dry cleaning business has gone the same way. All that’s left is the restaurant started by her father, Gus (Constantine). On the home front, Toula and her husband, Ian (Corbett) have a grown-up daughter, Paris (Kampouris), who can’t wait to head off to college and escape her family’s overbearing attempts to make sure she’s okay – and Gus’s constant reminders that she needs to marry at the first opportunity. Some things though haven’t changed: Gus is still convinced that the Greeks invented everything, and that he’s a direct descendant of Alexander the Great. When this assertion is challenged he decides to prove his claim by entering his ancestors’ details on an online ancestry site. But when he starts going through his paper records he discovers that his marriage certificate was never signed by the priest, and that he and wife Maria (Kazan) aren’t officially married.

Expecting Maria to go along with his idea of renewing their vows, Gus is horrified when she tells him she wants a proper wedding, and more importantly, a proper proposal, something Gus failed to provide fifty years before. Gus baulks at this and a stalemate ensues, with each proving as stubborn as each other. It’s only when Gus falls ill and Maria refuses to go with him to the hospital that Gus relents and proposes. Maria accepts his proposal and when Gus is well again, she begins to plan their wedding. Meanwhile, Paris gets accepted to a college in New York, Toula and Ian try to spend more time together and rekindle the romance that brought them together, Gus’s estranged brother, Panos (Margolis) arrives from Greece for the wedding, and the ancestry site replies to Gus’s application.

If you liked My Big Fat Greek Wedding then you’ll definitely like My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2. There’s very little here that’s different from the first movie (“Now, give me a word, any word; and I will show you how the root of that word is Greek.”), and Vardalos, who wrote the script, wisely plays up the original’s strengths in favour of doing anything too new or complicated. The end result is a movie that complements the original without challenging it any way, and which offers a pleasant if unexceptional viewing experience for anyone meeting the Portokalos family for the first time.

Vardalos has also been lucky enough to reassemble everyone from the first movie, and everyone reconnects with their characters as if they’ve only been away from them for a couple of months instead of fourteen years. Martin is wisely given ample opportunity to show off her particular brand of forthright comedy, while Meisler, as Mana-Yiayia, steals every scene she’s in. It’s a tribute to Vardalos’ skills as a writer that she manages to find moments for all the characters to shine, and she doesn’t make Toula the main focus of the movie as she did before. That said, there are still the usual themes surrounding family, and mutual love and support, and director Kirk Jones adds a degree of sparkle to proceedings, raising this way up and above the level of unnecessary sequel.

Rating: 6/10 – while it’s not the most original of sequels, nevertheless My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 is much better thanks to Vardalos’ decision to not tinker too much with the original format; still, it is formulaic, and it doesn’t stretch itself in any new directions, but it’s a nice, friendly movie that just wants to entertain – and by and large, it does.

The Conjuring 2 (2016)

17 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Amityville, Demon nun, Drama, Ed Warren, Enfield, Frances O'Connor, Horror, james Wan, Lorraine Warren, Madison Wolfe, Paranormal activity, Patrick Wilson, Review, Sequel, The Hodgson Family, Thriller, True story, Valak, Vera Farmiga

aka The Conjuring 2: The Enfield Case

D: James Wan / 134m

Cast: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Frances O’Connor, Madison Wolfe, Lauren Esposito, Benjamin Haigh, Patrick McAuley, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Simon Delaney, Franka Potente, Bob Adrian

In the world of paranormal investigations, the plight of the Hodgson family, who resided in Enfield during the Seventies, is one of the most well-documented cases on record. Between 1977 and 1979, the family – single mother Peggy and her four children, Margaret (13), Janet (11), Johnny (10), and Billy (7) – were reported to have been plagued by poltergeist activity. Among the various investigators who looked into the case were Ed and Lorraine Warren. Their findings were that the activity was the result of “inhuman spirit phenomena”, and this despite a general consensus that the alleged poltergeist activity was a hoax perpetrated – largely – by Janet.

The Warrens were just two of many investigators who visited the Hodgson’s home during the late Seventies, but for the purposes of The Conjuring 2, their involvement has been beefed up to the point where lead investigator Maurice Grosse becomes a secondary character, left behind in the wake of the Warrens’ more experienced involvement with the paranormal. And in beefing up the Warrens’ involvement, the movie also connects the events that occurred in Enfield with events related to the Warrens’ investigation into the Amityville haunting.

And this is where the movie starts, in Amityville, and where it introduces us to the movie’s principal villain, a demon nun intent on claiming Ed Warren’s life (Lorraine witnesses his death while in a trance). This early sequence serves as the set up for the ensuing events based in Enfield, and widens the scope of the Warrens’ investigation once they’ve been persuaded to look into the case. In the hands of director James Wan and his co-screenwriters, Carey and Chad Hayes, and David Leslie Johnson, this gives viewers a mix of “true” occurrences and fictional explanations that works well for the most part, but which relies heavily on the style of horror movie making established in recent years through the likes of the Insidious series, the first Conjuring movie, and its spin-off Annabelle (2014).

It’s a style of horror movie making that is fast becoming too predictable for its own good, but as one of its creators, Wan is better placed than most to squeeze more life out of it. The Conjuring 2, with its demon nun and shaky dramatics, is a better sequel than might have been expected, but it still contains too many moments that shatter the ilusion of heightened reality that the script carefully tries to maintain throughout. With its flooded basement, final act heroics, and expository trance sequences, the movie identifies more with its own place in the modern horror landscape than it does with the requirements of telling a good story. And one or two standout sequences aside, the movie is too heavily reliant on the template established through previous movies to be entirely effective.

But that’s not to say that Wan doesn’t give it a good try. The opening sequence set in the house at Amityville is beautifully set up, with a reverse dolly shot that brings the viewer into the house via one of the two windows that are so iconic to the look of the property from the outside. A seance sees Lorraine (Farmiga) wandering the house and imitating/reliving the murders committed by a former occupant. It’s an effective collection of scenes but as they go on there’s a feeling that this is a sideshow, a gory hors d’oeuvre before the main course set in Enfield. The Warrens’ investigation into the events at Amityville made their names (and could have made for a movie all by itself), but we’re quickly moved on, and are introduced to the Hodgsons. Peggy (O’Connor) is an harrassed single mother struggling to keep her family afloat amid issues involving an absent husband, mounting money problems, and a house that looks in places like it’s suffered from fire damage (the set design is curious to say the least).

When Janet (Wolfe) begins to experience strange phenomena, Peggy is initially dismissive until she herself witnesses the same sort of thing. The police are called but can offer little help except as witnesses to the self-same phenomena, though this does lead to the Press taking up the story. Paranormal researcher Maurice Grosse (McBurney) begins his investigation while back in the States, Lorraine convinces Ed (Wilson) they should take a break from their own investigations (though in the end it doesn’t take much to convince Lorraine to change her mind). Once they arrive, Ed and Lorraine waste no time in contacting the spirit of the house’s previous owner, a man named Bill Wilkins (Adrian). Bill died in the house and it’s he who is responsible for all the paranormal goings-on. Unable to convince him to move on, Bill’s malicious behaviour begins to put everyone at risk. But when a video recording shows Janet causing damage that everyone had attributed to Bill Wilkins, Ed and Lorraine have no option but to leave as it throws too much doubt on the veracity of what’s happening. Until Ed has a breakthrough in relation to two recordings made of Bill talking through Janet…

While The Conjuring 2 is handsomely mounted with a touch of Grand Guignol here and there to add to the visual gloominess, and Wan orchestrates proceedings with a confidence and deftness of touch that benefits and enhances the mood of the movie to good effect, it’s still let down by the vagaries inherent in the script and its decision to include as many of the recorded events as possible (though the script seems to be saying that these events aren’t dramatic enough on their own and they’re bolstered by the inclusion of extra phenomena such as the Crooked Man and dozens of crosses that turn upside down). Narrative leaps make the movie feel disjointed at times, particularly in the stretch before Ed and Lorraine arrive in Enfield, and there’s little investment in the characters or their development, with only Grosse given a poignant (and true) reason to believe in the paranormal.

The cast perform efficiently enough, with Wilson and Farmiga settled into their roles, and there’s excellent support from Wolfe and O’Connor (though her accent, like Esposito’s, does wander from scene to scene). Don Burgess’s cinematography is a bonus, providing the movie with a sense of compressed space that feels appropriately claustrophobic when characters are shot in close-up, and there’s a subtle, “insidious” score by Joseph Bishara that adds to the effectiveness of the supernatural events. But if there’s one grumble to be made above all others, it’s why Valak, the demon nun in question, had to look like Marilyn Manson.

Rating: 7/10 – a solid if predictable horror sequel, The Conjuring 2 lacks cohesion in its narrative, but makes up for it with some impressive visuals and its recreation of the era; unnerving for the most part and featuring a couple of effective jump scares, viewers should take its assertion of being from “the true case files of Ed and Lorraine Warren” with a huge pinch of salt, and view accordingly.

The Scorch Trials (2015)

04 Saturday Jun 2016

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Action, Cranks, Drama, Dylan O'Brien, Gladers, Immunes, James Dashner, Kaya Scodelario, Literary adaptation, Patricia Clarkson, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, The Flare, The Right Arm, The Scorch, Thriller, WCKD, Wes Ball

D: Wes Ball / 132m

Cast: Dylan O’Brien, Kaya Scodelario, Ki Hong Lee, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Dexter Darden, Alexander Flores, Jacob Lofland, Rosa Salazar, Giancarlo Esposito, Aiden Gillen, Patricia Clarkson, Barry Pepper, Lili Taylor, Alan Tudyk

Following on immediately from the events of The Maze Runner (2014), The Scorch Trials begins with Thomas (O’Brien) and his fellow Gladers – Teresa (Scodelario), Minho (Lee), Newt (Brodie-Sangster), Frypan (Darden), and Winston (Flores) – having escaped the maze and finding sanctuary in a facility run by Mr Janson (Gillen). All seems to be well, and Janson refutes any connection to WCKD, the organisation that’s behind the maze and the reason for its existence. But strange things are going on in the facility; each night selected Immunes from other mazes are chosen to be taken to a place of safety, far away from WCKD’s clutches. And Teresa is separated from the group. When Thomas tries to see her he’s prevented from doing so.

Help comes in the form of Aris, one of the first survivors to be brought to the facility. He shows Thomas proof that Janson is lying about the Immunes being safe, and that he works for WCKD. Rescuing Teresa from some kind of medical procedure, Thomas and the rest of the Gladers, and Aris, escape from the facility and find themselves in the hostile environment of the Scorch. There they encounter Cranks, people infected by the Flare, the disease that has brought worldwide destruction to the planet. Thomas and the rest head north to a range of nearby mountains where they hope to meet up with a resistance group called The Right Arm.

Circumstances find them taking shelter from a thunderstorm, where they meet Brenda (Salazar) and her surrogate father, Jorge (Esposito). Their hideout is discovered by WCKD forces led by Janson. In the resulting firefight, Thomas and Brenda find themselves separated from everyone else, but they manage to escape. At a nearby night club run by the duplicitous Marcus (Tudyk), the pair fall foul of a powerful narcotic but are saved by Jorge and the others. Marcus is forced to reveal the location of The Right Arm’s location in the mountains, and the group travels there quickly. But when they reach the Right Arm’s camp – led by Vince (Pepper) – Thomas is dismayed to discover that one of his friends has contacted WCKD, and more of their forces are on their way.

Where The Maze Runner was a surprising, tightly structured introduction to the world of the Flare and the young people known as Immunes, The Scorch Trials alas suffers very definitely from Middle Movie Syndrome. It tries hard to be as dramatic and as intense as its predecessor but the narrative is against it from the start. This is a movie that gives sporadic clues as to the larger back story, and even seems on the cusp of revealing some really important information about Thomas and his time working for WCKD, but ultimately it holds back from doing so, leaving any revelations for the final movie, The Death Cure, now due in January 2018 thanks to Dylan O’Brien’s on-set injuries suffered back in March of this year.

With the plot put largely on hold until then, The Scorch Trials becomes one long chase movie, with Thomas once again acting as unofficial leader of the Immunes, and Clarkson returning as WCKD head Dr Ava Paige. Character development is also put on hold, and the introduction of new antagonists such as Janson and Brenda is done in such a perfunctory way that it becomes impressive that both Gillen and Salazar are able to inject anything of note into their performances. And with Thomas front and centre throughout, O’Brien’s co-stars are left wth little to do but stand around while he agonises over his past, and monopolises the action scenes.

But where the plot struggles to make itself felt, the movie does impress with said action scenes, and several of the encounters with the Cranks are filmed with a sweat-inducing energy that makes what are essentially zombie attacks that much more inventive. It’s difficult enough to come up with a new look for any flesh-eaters, but the makeup and visual effects departments have done a great job here, and those that Thomas et al encounter in a ruined shopping mall are a terrific addition to the canon. It’s worth bearing in mind that this is still an adaptation of a YA novel, and the movie should be congratulated for keeping the darkness that is inherent in James Dashner’s novel (even if certain changes have been made in terms of the story).

More troublesome is the night club sequence which slows down the movie in its attempt to remind viewers that Thomas has a shared past with WCKD (it also seems to have been included to further remind viewers that when it comes to narcotics they should Just Say No). T.S. Nowlin’s script hits an awkward stretch at this point, almost as if it couldn’t find a way forward unless Thomas found himself in even more jeopardy than before. And the subsequent “interrogation” of Marcus by Jorge sees the kind of strong-arm tactics used that doesn’t sit well with the idea that this is being carried out by one of the “good” guys (there’s only a token objection made to Jorge’s methods of information gathering).

Away from troubling notions of the means justifying the ends, the movie lacks a suitable hook for the audience to cling on to. With the movie’s raison d’etre being to set up the final movie (no two-parter, thankfully), returning director Wes Ball can do little except keep things ticking over until next time. That he does this with a certain amount of conviction is evident enough, but it doesn’t help with a number of scenes that prove listless and ineffective, and there’s too much repetition as the characters move from one new introduction to yet another. This also leaves new cast members such as Pepper and Lili Taylor failing to make an impact, an oversight that points once more to the problems of trying to cram so much into a movie that runs for over two hours and lacks an overall focus.

Rating: 6/10 – although it moves (for the most part) with alacrity, The Scorch Trials isn’t as rewarding as The Maze Runner, and tries its best to make up for this by putting all its efforts into making its action scenes as thrilling as possible; in between times though, some viewers may be wondering why so much has been included and why so very little of it builds upon what’s gone before.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

22 Sunday May 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Action, Angel, Apocalypse, Beast, Bryan Singer, Cyclops, Drama, Evan Peters, Havok, James McAvoy, Jean Grey, Jennifer Lawrence, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Magneto, Marvel, Michael Fassbender, Mutants, Mystique, Nicholas Hoult, Nightcrawler, Oscar Isaac, Professor Xavier, Psylocke, Quicksilver, Review, Rose Byrne, School for Gifted Children, Sci-fi, Sequel, Storm, Superheroes, Thriller, X-Men

D: Bryan Singer / 144m

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Lucas Till, Olivia Munn, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp, Josh Helman, Ally Sheedy

It’s okay.

Rating: 6/10 – an average sequel that offers a muddled storyline complete with yet more disaster porn, the best thing you can say about X-Men: Apocalypse is that it’s competently made; without a strong emotional core to help the audience care about the characters, or a real sense of impending apocalypse to make the stakes all the more gripping, this is a sequel that fails to build on the good work achieved in the previous two instalments.

Zoolander 2 (2016)

19 Thursday May 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Ben Stiller, Blue Steel, Cameos, Comedy, Fashion, Fashion designers, Father/son relationship, Justin Bieber, Models, Murder, Owen Wilson, Penélope Cruz, Review, Rome, Sequel, Will Ferrell

D: Ben Stiller / 102m

Cast: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell, Penélope Cruz, Kristen Wiig, Kyle Mooney, Justin Theroux, Cyrus Arnold, Benedict Cumberbatch, Nathan Lee Graham, Billy Zane

Zero

Originality

Laughs

Applied,

Now

Don’t

Ever

Repeat!

2 (for the money)

Rating: 3/10 – Stiller and co re-team for another crack at making idiot male model Derek Zoolander funny – and still miss the boat, the dock, hell, the whole damn harbour; the above photo says it all, as Zoolander 2 strikes out by repeating much of the same material the original trotted out, and (using just the one example) by thinking that “jokes” such as Susan Boyle giving the finger to a bunch of paparazzi is equal to side-splitting hilarity.

For One Week Only: Unnecessary Sequels – 6. S. Darko (2009)

15 Sunday May 2016

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Briana Evigan, Chris Fisher, Conejo Springs, Daveigh Chase, Donnie Darko, Drama, End of the world, For One Week Only, Iraq Jack, Jackson Rathbone, James Lafferty, Meteorite, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Thriller

Introduction

Cult movies are often beloved by their admirers beyond all other movies – passionately, fiercely, and with little truck for anyone or anything that tarnishes that movie’s reputation or their belief in it. Tell a fan of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) that anyone who attends a midnight screening in costume is a few sexual peccadilloes short of an orgy, and you’re likely to be slapped round the face with a posing pouch. But cult movies, by the nature of their fans’ love for them, will often attract producers with an eye to making a quick buck by exploiting said fans’ love and affection. Here’s one such movie, apparently made with the best of intentions but which in practice proved to be as far from those intentions as it’s possible to get.

S. Darko (2009) / D: Chris Fisher / 103m

Cast: Daveigh Chase, Briana Evigan, Jackson Rathbone, James Lafferty, Ed Westwick, Matthew Davis, John Hawkes, Bret Roberts, Elizabeth Berkley

By now – unless they’re trapped somewhere in the Fragmentary Universe – fans of Donnie Darko (2001) will have realised or heard that S. Darko is a less than satisfactory follow up to Richard Kelly’s surreal mindbender of a movie. With zero involvement from Kelly himself (not even a “good luck guys!”), this independently made sequel was created with the intention of taking place in “a similar world of blurred fantasy and reality”. Watching the movie, one thing is abundantly clear: neither director Chris Fisher nor screenwriter Nathan Atkins has any real idea of the world that Kelly created for Donnie Darko, or more importantly, the elements that made it all work.

The worst idea they have is to focus on Donnie’s younger sister, Samantha (Chase), as if by using one of Kelly’s original characters (and persuading the original actress to return to the role) it will lend their movie a degree of legitimacy it otherwise wouldn’t have. That this doesn’t work is evidenced by the way in which the character is treated. Samantha has run away from home, aged seventeen, with her best friend Corey (Evigan). When their car breaks down in Utah, the two friends accept a lift into the nearest town, Conejo Springs. Once there, Samantha finds herself sleepwalking; in this state she sees a future version of herself talking to a disturbed man nicknamed Iraq Jack (Lafferty). She tells him that the world will end in a few days’ time on July 4th.

Aside from passing on these messages, Samantha tends to wander aimlessly around town bumping into various locals and being treated like a bystander in her own storyline. She does get involved in the mystery of a missing child but it’s a subplot that, like large portions of the movie, hasn’t been thought through enough, and it feels like a distraction from the larger story. References to Donnie are made but Samantha’s reactions are muted, as if both Atkins and Chase don’t really know how to articulate her feelings over what happened to him at the end of Donnie Darko. What the script does do however, is saddle both the character (and the unfortunate Chase) with little motivation and even less development, preferring instead to treat Samantha in a callous (and careless) manner not once but twice (you’ll know how when you see the movie – not that you should, of course).

Atkins’ script is further muddled by its end of the world plotting, incoherent notions of time travel, secondary characters such as creepy bride of Jesus Trudy Kavanagh (Berkley), and inclusion of local nerd Jeremy (Rathbone) who develops a nasty looking rash that remains unexplained and immaterial to the narrative. There are further problems that Atkins can’t overcome, but the main one is his inability to craft dialogue that sounds like a real human being would say it. Here’s just one deathless exchange, between Samantha and local bad boy Randy (Westwick):

Samantha: I didn’t tell you something before. My brother died too. I was ten. Ever since that day, nothing’s ever been the same.

Randy: Never will be. We can’t change that.

Samantha: Think it’ll ever get easier?

Randy: Probably get worse.

Samantha: Maybe it’s up to us.

Randy: No.

Samantha: Wake up, start over?

Randy: I wish I could believe that. We have the same holes in our hearts, you and me.

That exchanges like that one are delivered with such po-faced sincerity makes it almost impossible to take the movie seriously. It’s like watching a teen movie where the leads are trying to make sense of relationship issues rather than fathom the mystery they’re all involved in. The plot – such as it is – is developed in fits and starts, and in such a haphazard manner that when it’s all wrapped up neatly (and with the cinematic equivalent of a bow on top), the viewer who’s managed to reach the end will be wondering what the previous ninety-five minutes were all about (or for).

Fisher may well be a fan of Kelly’s (emphasis on the) original movie, and he and Atkins may have set out to make a companion piece to that movie, but they show their complete lack of understanding of what made Donnie Darko such an extraordinary experience at every turn. Even on its own merits the movie struggles to perform effectively, with Fisher failing to inject any tension into the material, and leaving scenes feeling listless and uninvolving. The spirit of the original is missing entirely, as is the sense of mystery and chaos just beyond the veil of everyday life. And anyone waiting to see Frank put in an appearance, be prepared for disappointment; here his presence is entirely symbolic.

Rating: 3/10 – while using time lapse shots of clouds as indications of a portentous enigma may work in some movies, in S. Darko it merely serves to remind viewers of just how devoid of purpose and originality the movie really is; jumbled and unnecessary, it’s a movie that doesn’t even try hard enough to match its predecessor for subtlety or thought-provoking drama.

For One Week Only: Unnecessary Sequels – 5. Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004)

14 Saturday May 2016

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Cuba, Cuban Revolution, Dance, Dance competition, Diego Luna, Drama, For One Week Only, Guy Ferland, Havana, John Slattery, Music, Patrick Swayze, Review, Romance, Romola Garai, Sela Ward, Sequel

Introduction

There are dozens of sequels that turn up uninvited, years after their predecessor was first released. Some arrive without any kind of fanfare, while others appear with all the promotional backing available under the sun. Beware of those that arrive under the latter circumstances – sometimes the hype is designed to grab as much at the box office as the movie can manage before word of mouth kicks in and people begin to realise the movie is one to avoid. When the movie in question is a belated sequel to a much-loved original, any abundance of hype is perhaps the biggest clue that the sequel should be avoided. Here is one such example, a movie that came along seventeen years after the original, and still begs the question, why? (Read on for the answer.)

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) / D: Guy Ferland / 86m

Cast: Diego Luna, Romola Garai, Sela Ward, John Slattery, Jonathan Jackson, Mika Boorem, January Jones, René Lavan, Patrick Swayze, Mya

If you watch the opening credits of Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights closely, you’ll find that one of the producers is called JoAnn Fregalette Jansen (she also has a small, non-speaking role in the movie itself). Jansen lived in Cuba, aged fifteen, during the period the movie is set in, 1958. Playwright Peter Sagal wrote a screenplay based on Jansen’s experiences of the Cuban Revolution, and her relationship with a Cuban revolutionary. The screenplay was titled Cuba Mine and was a serious examination of the events that occurred in Cuba at the time, and how the country’s political idealism became polluted by the Communist ideology that replaced the more liberal regime that existed in the Fifties.

The script was commissioned by Lawrence Bender in 1992. Bender was fresh from the success of producing Reservoir Dogs (1992), but the script went unproduced until Bender revisited it again ten years later. However, Sagal’s script was only used as the basis of a completely new script by Boaz Yakin and Victoria Arch. The end result? A disastrous attempt to recreate the magic of Dirty Dancing (1987).

With the original having proved so successful, and having gained a place within the cultural zeitgeist (“Nobody puts Baby in a corner”), a sequel was always likely to appear eventually, but this is a movie that spends its thankfully short running time replicating the original’s storyline instead of coming up with something new. It’s the eternal problem facing sequels everywhere: how to combine enough DNA from the original movie with newer, fresher elements to make a satisfying whole. Sadly, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights is a sequel that can’t even assemble enough DNA from its predecessor to make much of a difference. It’s perfunctory, lazy, and lacks impact.

It also has a hard time doing the one thing that it should get right above all else, namely the dance routines. Thanks to the movie’s Cuban setting, the music and dance numbers are meant to be energetic, effortlessly fluid, and somewhat mildly erotic, but thanks to the movie’s determined efforts to edit the dance sequences into bite-sized shots that often don’t match the moves on show immediately before and after each shot, the very elements that are meant to draw in an audience are undermined from the word go. Now this could be a conscious, artisitic decision made by director Guy Ferland and his editors, Luis Colina and Scott Richter, in which case the trio have no idea of how to put together a dance sequence; or it could be that Luna and Garai’s moves weren’t quite as impressive as everyone hoped and they needed a little “help” in looking so accomplished (you decide).

Elsewhere the movie is equally determined to rely on cinematic and cultural clichés in order to tell its story. If the movie was even remotely realistic, it would be easy to believe that, before the revolution, all Cubans were happy-go-lucky souls who never tired of singing and dancing on pretty much every street corner. There are moments of casual racism that don’t amount to anything in terms of the drama, as well as cursory references to the political struggle happening at the time. Luna’s hotel waiter, Javier, evinces his distrust of Americans only until Garai’s preppy Katey waves the lure of competition prize money under his nose, while Katey’s family hang around in the background waiting to be given something to do.

The performances are average, with Luna and Garai developing an uneasy chemistry that seems more convincing on the dance floor than anywhere else, while Ward and Slattery get to play good cop/bad cop once Katey’s relationship with Javier is revealed (the scene in question is notable for playing like an outtake from a TV soap opera). Spare a thought though for poor old Patrick Swayze, co-opted into the script as a dance class instructor who gets to show Katey some moves before being reduced to providing reaction shots during the dance competition. Swayze looks uncomfortable in his scenes, as if he’s having second thoughts about being in the movie but also realising it’s too late to back out.

The movie is a sloppy mess, shot through with an earnest quality that wants to be taken for drama. But like so much on display it’s often involuntary, as if the various elements of the screenplay were put together in a blender rather than a word processor. Ferland directs it all with little or no attention to the emotions of the characters – Garai spends quite a bit of time looking upset but gets over it all just as quickly as it’s started – but at least he manages to make the Puerto Rican locations look suitably beautiful, throwing in wondrous sunsets and sunrises with giddy, artistic abandon.

Rating: 3/10 – unimaginative, even in its dance routines, Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights lacks a compelling storyline and characters to care about; with so many aspects not working to their full potential, the movie proves to be inferior in almost every way to its predecessor – and no one should be surprised.

For One Week Only: Unnecessary Sequels – 3. The Wicker Tree (2011)

11 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

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Britannia Nicol, Cowboys for Christ, Fertility, For One Week Only, Graham McTavish, Henry Garrett, Horror, May Day, Pagan rituals, Robin Hardy, Sequel, Sir Lachlan Morrison, Tressock

Introduction

Horror movies – God bless ’em for their ability to have audiences shaking their heads in frustration as yet another group of teens head off to the haunted woods/abandoned building/kill zone of their choice, only to have their now ritualised behaviours interrupted and curtailed by whichever masked serial killer/escaped demon/demented whackjob happens to be lurking nearby. (And before anyone complains, yes, that description doesn’t cover every horror movie, but it is indicative of a great deal of modern “horror”; the true horror is that these tired, hoary old storylines are trotted out time and again.)

With horror movies becoming increasingly derivative and lacking in originality, the idea of watching one of them with a number at the end of the title isn’t exactly thrilling. Horror sequels rarely ever live up to the promise that may have been delivered by their predecessor, and it’s a very rare horror sequel indeed that expands effectively on, or outstrips, its parent. Not even the prospect of the same writer/director at the helm is a guarantee of quality. Here’s one example of a horror sequel that was much anticipated, but which didn’t live up to everyone’s expectations.

The Wicker Tree (2011) / D: Robin Hardy / 96m

Cast: Britannia Nicol, Henry Garrett, James Mapes, Lesley Mackie, Clive Russell, Graham McTavish, Jacqueline Leonard, Honeysuckle Weeks, Christopher Lee

The Wicker Man (1973) is an acknowledged horror classic, a brooding, unsettling movie that lingers in the memory, and features one of Christopher Lee’s finest performances. The news that the movie’s writer/director Robin Hardy was working on a sequel first surfaced in 2002, and Lee was set to return as Lord Summerisle. But problems with financing kept the movie from being made, and Hardy turned his screenplay into a novel (unfortunately titled Cowboys for Christ). Hardy next adapted his novel into the screenplay that was used for The Wicker Tree, and it’s this process that perhaps gives the best clue as to why the movie doesn’t work as successfully as it should.

Returning to themes set around the belief in paganism in the modern world, The Wicker Tree could, and perhaps should, have been a worthy follow-up to Hardy’s classic original. But the flaws are there from the beginning, and it’s not long before the viewer has no option but to realise that this sequel isn’t going to live up to expectations. Hardy’s story is as basically simple as in The Wicker Man: a religious individual finds themselves caught up in a pagan community, and learns that they are being used as part of a fertility rite that will ensure the community’s survival. But where The Wicker Man had subtlety and a well-judged sense of impending doom for its central character, The Wicker Tree lacks both these elements, and struggles to establish itself as a worthy successor. Part of the problem is the central character of Beth (Nicol), an evangelical Christian from Texas. Thanks to Hardy’s script, and Nicol’s performance, Beth is a character we never get to really know or sympathise with. With no one to root for, or get anxious about, the movie lacks tension as a result.

There’s also a problem with another character, Sir Lachlan Morrison (McTavish). Originally meant to be played by Christopher Lee, the role is this movie’s equivalent of The Wicker Man‘s Lord Summerisle. But Hardy doesn’t do enough with the role to give McTavish a chance of making him as mesmeric as Lee, or as quietly chilling. McTavish was originally meant to play the role of Morrison’s butler, Beame (Russell), but when Lee was unable to fill the part, McTavish was “promoted”. In doing so, Hardy appears to have recast the part without rewriting the character to match the actor’s skill and ability (McTavish isn’t a patch on Lee). This leads to scenes where McTavish looks uncomfortable, and where his credibility is often in question.

The actions of the community lend themselves to some unfortunate moments of unintended levity, and the May Day celebrations that will culminate in another sacrifice. There are too many of these moments for comfort, and Hardy seems unable to recognise that these are hurting the movie rather than supporting it. Echoes of the first movie abound, but lack a similar effect: where Britt Ekland’s naked dance is rightly remembered for its eerie, yet uncompromising sexuality, here we have Honeysuckle Weeks topless in a river; with apologies to Ms Weeks, it doesn’t evoke the same response.

Tonally the movie is all over the place, with scenes not having even the barest impact and the plot being propelled forward without any sense that there’s a real through line. As it moves forward, the movie struggles to maintain a sense of the impending horror that awaits Beth come May Day, and although knowledge of the first movie isn’t necessary, the fact that it does exist, and that it is so good, makes Hardy’s mistreatment of his own material so hard to understand. He’s like a man adrift, failing to connect with a story that he’s spent so much time developing, and that translates to the screen. In taking so long to get his movie to the screen it appears that he’s lost sight of almost everything that made The Wicker Man so compelling.

Rating: 3/10 – a movie that makes you wonder just how its creator could have got it so badly wrong, The Wicker Tree is a lumpen, dreadful mess full of equally dreadful performances, and a storyline that defies logical appreciation; that it tarnishes the memory of The Wicker Man is bad enough, but being a bad movie through and through is worse still.

Ride Along 2 (2016)

23 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Action, Atlanta, Benjamin Bratt, Comedy, Crime, Drugs, Ice Cube, Ken Jeong, Kevin Hart, Miami, Olivia Munn, Review, Sequel, Tim Story

D: Tim Story / 102m

Cast: Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, Ken Jeong, Benjamin Bratt, Olivia Munn, Tika Sumpter, Bruce McGill, Michael Rose, Sherri Shepherd, Tyrese Gibson

Overheard at a cinema in Boise, Idaho (or somewhere like that – you get the idea):

Assistant: Hi, how can I help you today?

Customer: Hi. I’d like two tickets for Ride Along 2, please.

Assistant: Two tickets? Why?

Customer: I’m sorry?

Assistant: Why do you want two tickets? Don’t you like the person you’ve come with?

Customer: I beg your pardon.

Assistant: Look, it’s no skin off my nose, but wouldn’t you rather see something else? Like Norm of the North perhaps?

Customer: No, we’d like to see Ride Along 2. We like Kevin Hart. He’s funny.

Assistant: He is, yes. But unfortunately the movie isn’t.

Customer: Well, that’s your opinion. Now, can I have two tickets to see Ride Along 2? Please.

Assistant: Well, okay, I guess you’re old enough to know what you’re doing.

Customer: You know, you’re being very rude. I don’t think I’ve ever been so insulted before.

Assistant: Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, shall we? Wait until you’ve seen the movie, then decide, huh?

Rating: 3/10 – a dire sequel that recreates several of the first movie’s so-called “funniest moments”, Ride Along 2 proves that recycling isn’t as good for the environment (and particularly a cinema screen) as we’ve all been told; formulaic in the extreme, and low on real laughs, this is the kind of movie that studios make when they can’t think of anything that’s better/more original/more entertaining to make.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Amy Adams, Batman, Ben Affleck, Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Daily Planet, Diana Prince, Doomsday, Drama, Gal Gadot, General Zod, Gotham, Henry Cavill, Jesse Eisenberg, Justice League, Lex Luthor, Metropolis, Review, Sci-fi, Sequel, Superheroes, Superman, Wonder Woman, Zack Snyder

D: Zack Snyder / 151m

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Lane, Laurence Fishburne, Jeremy Irons, Gal Gadot, Holly Hunter, Scoot McNairy, Callan Mulvey, Harry Lennix

$250 million budget + uneven script + wayward direction + awkward performances + Jesse Eisenberg (“The red capes are coming, the red capes are coming”) + Doomsday looking too much like the Abomination from The Incredible Hulk (2008) + Batman and Superman being upstaged by Wonder Woman = the longest, most uninteresting, most bloated and unwieldy Batman and Superman movies yet. ‘Nuff said.

Rating: 4/10 – dreary, overlong, and lacking a coherent storyline, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is neither a DC Universe movie that works, or a superhero movie that gives viewers anything new; with too many short cuts in the narrative to help overcome its sluggish construction, the movie provides further evidence – if any were needed – Snyder should move on, David S. Goyer shouldn’t be an automatic choice for DC screenplays, and Henry Cavill is still so awfully po-faced as the son of Kal-El.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War (2016)

05 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Drama, Dwarves, Emily Blunt, Fantasy, Goblins, Ice Queen, Jessica Chastain, Magic, Mirror, Nick Frost, Prequel, Review, Rob Brydon, Sequel, Sorcery

D: Cedric Nicolas-Troyan / 114m

Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Jessica Chastain, Nick Frost, Rob Brydon, Sam Claflin, Sheridan Smith, Alexandra Roach, Sope Dirisu

Once upon a time there were two sisters. One, Ravenna (Theron), lusted for power, and used her dark magic to take over kingdoms and rule them with an iron fist. The other, Freya (Blunt), had yet to find the magic gift she possessed, but Ravenna assured her the day would come when her power would assert itself. And then Freya fell pregnant, and had a baby. But then a tragedy occurred and her baby died in a fire, apparently caused by her baby’s father, her one true love. Her powers exerted themselves then, and Freya’s gift was to be able to control ice in all its forms. She exerted her revenge on her one true love, then left Ravenna’s care to make a kingdom for herself in the North. She became known as the Ice Queen, and she was feared by all.

Her pain found expression in a strange way. She would order the children from the villages in her kingdom to be rounded and trained as warriors for her growing army. All these children had to do was swear allegiance to her and foreswear any notion of love. In return she would give their lives meaning in their service to her. But love will out, and two children grew up to love each other, despite Freya’s law. Eric (Hemsworth) and Sarah (Chastain) made plans to leave Freya’s stronghold and their roles as huntsmen. But Freya learned of their plans and saw to it that they didn’t come to fruition. Eric saw Sarah killed, and he was knocked unconscious and thrown into the river to die.

But Eric survived. Time passed. Seven years, during which time he helped Snow White rid her kingdom of the villainous Ravenna. But now a new threat is in place. Ravenna’s mirror, a source of very powerful magic, has been stolen, and Eric is tasked with finding it and taking it to a sanctuary where it can be made safe. He agrees to the task, and is joined by two dwarves, Nion (Frost) and Gryff (Brydon). Soon they discover that Freya is trying to find the mirror as well. They seek help from two female dwarves, Mrs Bronwyn (Smith) and Doreena (Roach), and journey into a hidden forest inhabited by goblins to take back the mirror. But once they do they find themselves caught in a trap of Freya’s devising, leading to the mirror’s capture, and only one course of action left to them: to follow the Ice Queen back to her stronghold and destroy her and the mirror once and for all.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012) was an unexpected success, trading on Theron’s evil hearted queen and Kristen Stewart’s take on Snow White as a fantasy version of Joan of Arc. It had an impressive budget – $170 million – and made back nearly $400 million at the international box office. A sequel was always on the cards, it was just a matter of when. But here’s the rub: The Huntsman: Winter’s War isn’t just a sequel, it’s also a prequel. In it we see the Huntsman’s back story, his childhood years as a trainee in Freya’s huntsman army and his eventual love affair with Sarah, whom he marries in secret. When she dies, fate spares his life and the movie skims over the events of its predecessor with a single line of narrated dialogue (courtesy of Liam Neeson).

Then we’re fully in sequel mode, as Sam Claflin’s earnest prince convinces Eric to look for the mirror. And Freya, who has been adding nearby kingdoms to her own over the past seven years, gets wind of the mirror and its magical properties. A race against time, then, to see who reaches the mirror first. Alas, no, not really. Instead, after an eventful and encouraging first half hour, the movie settles down into fantasy adventure mode, with humour provided by Frost and Brydon. Freya’s threat is put on the back burner and Eric is confronted with a figure from his past who provides complications for his quest. It’s all serviceable enough, and despite everyone’s best efforts, all entirely forgettable.

The problem lies both with the script by Evan Spiliotopoulos and Craig Mazin, and Nicolas-Troyan’s direction. The script lumbers from one unconnected scene to the next, straining the audience’s patience thanks to semi-amusing quips and snide remarks courtesy of Brydon, cowardly assertions from Frost, an drab, wearing performance from Chastain, and Hemsworth’s assumption that a big grin can pass for acting when he so desires (sorry, Chris, it doesn’t). Ravenna remains the primary adversary, despite being off screen for two thirds of the movie, and Freya’s delusional take on love and its inability to offer true contentment is recounted so often it’s as if the makers weren’t sure an audience would grasp the idea the first time around.

But if the movie’s storyline and plotting are a cause for alarm, spare a thought for Nicolas-Troyan, bumped up from second unit director on the first movie, and a poor second choice after Frank Darabont, who was attached to the project for some time before he dropped out. He’s not so bad when it comes to the action sequences, but in between times, when the characters have to display their feelings, or the script calls for another bout of humorous insults (which are pretty much all of Brydon’s lines), his lack of experience shines through. Too many scenes fall flat or fail to make much of an impact, and the cast are left to inject whatever energy they can, but with the script and their director seemingly working against them, it’s an uphill struggle for all of them.

This being a big budget fantasy movie, however, it does score highly for its production design, its costumes, and its special effects (though an encounter with a goblin isn’t as effective as it should be, thanks to its looking like an angry ape with a liking for bling). The ice effects are cleverly done, and there’s a pleasing sense of a real world lurking behind all the CGI, while James Newton Howard contributes a suitably stirring score to help prop things up when it all gets a little too silly (which is most of the middle section). And of course, the makers can’t help themselves at the end, and leave a way open for a further (full-fledged) sequel. But if anyone really cares by that stage, then the movie will have truly worked its magic.

Rating: 5/10 – a superficially appealing prequel/sequel, The Huntsman: Winter’s War isn’t the most memorable of fantasy movies, and chances are, viewers will have forgotten most of its content a short while after seeing it; it’s not a bad movie per se, but then it’s not a good movie either, and sometimes, that’s the worst anyone can say about any movie.

Allegiant (2016)

03 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ansel Elgort, Bureau of Genetic Welfare, Chicago, Divergent Series, Drama, Jeff Daniels, Literary adaptation, Miles Teller, Naomi Watts, Providence, Review, Robert Schwentke, Sci-fi, Sequel, Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Thriller, Veronica Roth

D: Robert Schwentke / 120m

Cast: Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Naomi Watts, Octavia Spencer, Jeff Daniels, Zoë Kravitz, Ansel Elgort, Miles Teller, Keiynan Lonsdale, Daniel Dae Kim, Maggie Q, Bill Skarsgård, Jonny Weston, Ray Stevenson, Mekhi Phifer, Ashley Judd

And so Jeanine is dead, killed by Four’s mother, Evelyn (Watts). Everything’s okay and peace has been restored. Except that Evelyn is making sure it comes at a further price: everyone who was on Erudite’s side has to be put on trial and their “crimes” answered for. This means executions on a wide scale, and although Tris (Woodley) has disowned her brother, Caleb (Elgort), he faces the same fate. With the message from outside Chicago still indicating that there are more answers to be found outside the city than in, Tris and Four (James) opt to breach the wall and go in search of those answers. Four decides to help Caleb escape, and the trio are joined by Christina (Kravitz), Tori (Maggie Q), and Peter (Teller). Despite an attempt to stop them by Evelyn’s lieutenant, Edgar (Weston), they climb over the wall and down to the other side.

There they find a toxic wasteland, where the earth is a scorch blasted red. Having been followed by Edgar, the group are relieved when they reach a force field that opens to reveal an armed force. This group protects Tris and her friends from Edgar, and with his threat neutralised, they take Tris and company to their base far out in the wasteland, the so-called Bureau of Genetic Welfare, where Tris in particular is welcomed by the Bureau’s director, David (Daniels). With Tris being the fruit of an experiment to right a wrong perpetrated long ago, David is keen to run tests on her, while keeping Four and the others occupied and away from her as much as possible. But Four is quick to suspect that David isn’t as honest as he makes out, but Tris doesn’t see it.

Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Johanna (Spencer) has formed a group she calls Allegiant, and who are at odds with Evelyn’s way of running things. Another war of attrition is about to take place between the two factions, and though Tris wants David to intervene – after all, he has been monitoring Chicago for a long time because of the experiment – but instead of doing so, he sends Peter back with a nerve gas that will render everyone who comes into contact with it, unable to remember anything that happened to them before they were exposed. And while David takes Tris to meet the Council who ultimately decide everyone’s fate, Four discovers what the gas has been used for in the wasteland. And when Tris finally becomes aware of David’s duplicity, she and Four, along with Christina and Caleb, return to Chicago to stop Evelyn from using the gas on Allegiant.

Three movies in and the Divergent series is showing serious signs that it’s running out of ideas. Allegiant is superficially entertaining, but in comparison with parts one and two, it lacks anything fresh to entertain either fans or newcomers. It’s also the first time that the series gives up on Tris as an independent, strong-minded female, and instead hands over leadership duties to Four – which wouldn’t be such a bad idea if he wasn’t written as a bit of a pompous told-you-so kind of character. (Throughout the series, Four has been the gloomiest character of them all, unable to smile or express his feelings about anything without a frown.) And with Tris relegated to a secondary role, there’s only Daniels left to pick up the slack, as everyone else (James excepted) is afforded only enough screen time to either provide any relevant exposition, or keep the plot ticking over (Spencer and Watts are wasted, while Judd is brought back yet again to add some more of her character’s turgid back story).

The problem with the movie is twofold: one, it’s the first half of the third book in the series, and as such, doesn’t have a credible ending, just another narrowly avoided cliffhanger that leaves things open for part four (or should that be part three-point-five?); and two, the action seems more than usually contrived once Tris et al leave Chicago. The wasteland is less than threatening, and the Bureau is predictably shiny on the surface (and in David’s “office”), while the barracks Four and Christina are assigned to are remarkably similar to those inhabited by Dauntless in the first movie. It’s all brightly lit and commendably shot by esteemed DoP Florian Ballhaus (returning from Insurgent (2015) and already hired for the next instalment), but it’s becoming hard to care what happens to anyone.

At its heart, the Divergent series is about DNA profiling and the perils that can follow on from it. It’s a concept that’s been there in the first two movies, but which hasn’t been addressed directly. But now that it has, and through the medium of video no less, the truth behind the use of Chicago as a test ground, and the true meaning of being Divergent, all sounds quite dull and unexciting. The movie fails to make Tris’s nature important to its own story, and instead opts for being yet another race-against-time thriller, abandoning the ethical and moral debate it wants to engage in and relying on tried and trusted action movie clichés to wind up its narrative.

It’s no surprise that the movie has underperformed at the box office (leading to the final movie, Ascendant, due next year, having its budget cut), because even though Tris makes it out of Chicago, once she does, the movie doesn’t know what to do with her, and for a character as intriguing and interesting as Tris, that’s a terrible decision to make on any level. And it doesn’t help that your central villain is ultimately a harried bureaucrat, a futuristic pen-pusher if you will. That’s another stumble, and especially bad after having Kate Winslet fill the villain’s shoes for the first two movies. It all adds up to a movie that coasts on the success of its predecessors, and feels and looks like a stopgap before the real conclusion in part four.

Rating: 5/10 – another series instalment that will have newcomers wondering what all the fuss has been about, Allegiant is a movie that has little to offer in terms of its characters’ development, or in terms of expanding the wider narrative; Woodley – this series’ biggest asset – is sidelined for much of the movie, and though James is a competent enough actor, he doesn’t have his co-star’s presence on screen, which makes large chunks of the movie something of a chore to sit through.

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