APRIL
Amelie ☆☆☆☆
Avengers ☆☆☆☆
Bullet in the Head ☆☆☆
Dawn of the Dead ☆☆☆☆
Delicatessen ☆☆☆☆
North By Northwest ☆☆☆☆
The Hitcher ☆☆☆☆
The Killer ☆☆☆☆
Stage Fright ☆☆☆
Frozen ☆☆☆
13 Assassins ☆☆☆
Night of the Living Dead ☆☆☆
A Better Tomorrow II ☆☆☆
The Manchurian Candidate ☆☆☆
Uzumaki ☆☆☆
War of the Gargantuas ☆☆☆
X-Men: First Class ☆☆☆
Yojimbo ☆☆☆
Rodan ☆☆
The Desolation of Smaug ☆☆
World War Z ☆☆
White House Down ☆
Review Roundup - Get ON With It
THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG (2013)
The first installment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit as a three part series had a lot of problems. It was slow to get moving, there were too many subplots, and there were a lot of characters to introduce; many of which didn't get dialogue. The word was that this would be more direct, having setup the story there would be room to get down to business. After all the main quest involves 14 characters, sometimes 15 while many others have to be introduced along the way. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had this trick down, despite one or two anomalies you got a feeling for who everyone was, they had personality and little things that were memorable. Could they manage the same again? Well in short, no.
The first installment in Peter Jackson's adaptation of The Hobbit as a three part series had a lot of problems. It was slow to get moving, there were too many subplots, and there were a lot of characters to introduce; many of which didn't get dialogue. The word was that this would be more direct, having setup the story there would be room to get down to business. After all the main quest involves 14 characters, sometimes 15 while many others have to be introduced along the way. The Lord of the Rings trilogy had this trick down, despite one or two anomalies you got a feeling for who everyone was, they had personality and little things that were memorable. Could they manage the same again? Well in short, no.
Dragon tales, whoo-hoo
For a film called The Hobbit, Bilbo doesn't get a lot of screen time here. Considering this is such a straightforward fish of out water plot device, they don't seem to ever capitalize on that element. I would have also expected by now that the other dwarves that didn't have a speaking role in the first film would have come to the fore, particularly as Gandalf leaves them to go on another quest early on - this is a ripe time for characterisation. Unfortunately even though the story has three segments where Bilbo gets to become more heroic and show his development, they barely interact with him. Forgetting names for a moment - since even if you know them, the dwarves don't say much - what happens is just one madcap set piece after another so I just don't know who is who; I don't know them as characters or even just as placeholder titles like "guy with tattoos" and "guy with crazy axe wound". Even the leader Thorin is just "guy frowning" most of the time. There isn't enough real personality. Instead there are more unnecessary subplots, more links to the first trilogy that distract from the story in hand, and things like clichéd romantic scenes and comic relief moments shoe horned in which just brings everything down. Splitting the story up and dragging it out for this much running time could have been a good plan and I expected depth and detail, with time for everyone to have a moment. Instead there's just nothing but one note scowling, swirling camera work and effects spectacle.
Talking of spectacle, gone is the grit of Helm's Deep. The action this time is nearly all a CG mess of characters running all over the place, orcs leaping, elves spinning around and creatures running wild. It makes the Goblin Town escape in part one look restrained. Considering this is current day Weta Digital doing their best stuff, none of this is particularly convincing either. Even for a fantasy story the colours are garish and over saturated, characters leap around like something from an animation, and so the few shots of actors standing on a real location stick out instantly as having real lighting and detail. It's really strange to experience as you suddenly notice an actual landscape amongst the effects shots. And yes the titular dragon is pretty good when it finally arrives, the voice, the effects, the design work - but after their previous work on Gollum and King Kong, it's not that amazing. It stands out as being the most coherent and least messy sequence in the film, but even then there is constant editing to show other scenes and characters; it keeps cutting away when it starts to become engaging. There's a complete lack of focus all round that left me wondering what went wrong in the creative process, when even the notable themes in the soundtrack have been lost. Maybe the lack of budget constraints and studio pressure has just left the makers dizzy with the level of pure excess they can now achieve. I certainly felt that way after the credits rolled.
2/5
BONUS REVIEW
RIDDICK (2013)
After the headache of overblown exposition and endless Dutch angles that was The Chronicles of Riddick, those involved have stripped down the number of words in the title and gone back to basics - by doing Pitch Black again instead. Surprisingly though, it mostly works - and they hold off the more direct recycling until the third act.
This gets points for some neat creature effects, some silly B movie moments, and ultimately making me laugh and keeping me entertained with a mix of survival scenes and sci-fi nonsense as our friend Richard fights off monsters and bounty killers. But while some dialogue is so bad it's good, a lot is just plain bad, and there are some sexist
elements that are kind of embarrassing. But it's shlock I suppose, and doesn't try to be anything else at least.
3/5
ScoreCard
MARCH
- Captain Phillips ☆☆☆☆
- Ender's Game ☆☆☆
- Escape Plan ☆☆
- Filth ☆☆☆
- Gamera 2: Advent of Legion ☆☆☆
- Gravity ☆☆☆
- Hard Boiled ☆☆☆☆☆
- Ichi the Killer ☆☆☆☆
- Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade ☆☆☆☆
- Machete Kills ☆
- Meat Ball Machine ☆☆
- Riddick ☆☆☆
- Saving Mr Banks ☆☆☆
- Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home ☆☆☆☆
- The Darjeeling Ltd ☆☆☆
Review Roundup - I'm doing my part!
ENDER'S GAME (2013)
Asa Butterfield stars as ridiculously named space cadet Ender Wiggin (or is it the other way around? These both sound like bad fantasy monikers) in this mix of teen melodrama and creepy war time dystopia story. There's a lot of war games, training camp (high school) angst and character alienation along the way. It's surprisingly dark at times, and those moments are easily the most interesting parts as the morality of what is being done is questioned and the concerning training methods involved are set out. In a world obviously indoctrinated into preparation for an alien attack, children are drafted into military service for their apparently faster minds and unpredictable thought patterns - though the ease of brainwashing them would seem to be the most obvious factor when the battlefield is controlled by screens and not physical ability. There are some neat visual set pieces and the pacing isn't too bad but whether this is all executed well enough to form a compelling narrative is another question.
The cast are hit and miss as you'd expect from a child actor heavy film, but nobody is distractingly awful. The veterans fare less well and though Harrison Ford has a few good moments he never looks or sounds too pleased to be on camera, perhaps part characterisation and part phoning it in, it's hard to distinguish at times. Later on Ben Kingsley arrives to add a bit of personality but never gets anything notable to do. Butterfield isn't bad in the title role but the protagonist's character arc is a little underwritten which is a shame as his development has a few interesting pitfalls such as violent behaviour in his genes and social problems in his brain. The problem seems to be there is too much material and not enough focus - there's a lot of psychological trauma to be mined, there are hints of what life on Earth has become, war as a game for kids; and these elements could be stronger if they'd pulled it together.
The effects sequences are reasonable with some fun zero gravity moments. However the climactic space battle is like a mix between those magic touch screens in Minority Report and watching someone play Galaga. I have no idea why they chose to portray it with so much on screen display imagery instead of mixing it up with actual battle perspective shots and being able to see what is happening on a smaller scale; it gets tedious incredibly fast. They reuse footage of the first alien attack several times as a propaganda message early on to set the story up, and the dog fight sequence shown there is a lot more impressive. Add to this some mixed messages about what the enemy forces are really planning just before the whole thing is suddenly cut short and the result is unsatisfying. I presume they meant to expand on the idea of two forces clashing because of a failure to communicate, but like the best ideas presented during the film it's never fleshed out properly.
3/5
BONUS REVIEW
MACHETE KILLS (2013)
There's a short teaser done for laughs at the start of this, where the dumb factor is high and it ends quickly enough to warrant a quick smirk - the opposite effect of the film itself. It's hard to understand how the feature itself is done in such a boring way, after all they don't exactly have a lot of material to work with here. Machete kills the bad guys and gets the ladies. That's it. But instead of a quick say 80 minutes or less (it could be less) they drag it out for a lot longer right up to the point where the joke is dead. And it was pretty DOA the last time.
1/5
Asa Butterfield stars as ridiculously named space cadet Ender Wiggin (or is it the other way around? These both sound like bad fantasy monikers) in this mix of teen melodrama and creepy war time dystopia story. There's a lot of war games, training camp (high school) angst and character alienation along the way. It's surprisingly dark at times, and those moments are easily the most interesting parts as the morality of what is being done is questioned and the concerning training methods involved are set out. In a world obviously indoctrinated into preparation for an alien attack, children are drafted into military service for their apparently faster minds and unpredictable thought patterns - though the ease of brainwashing them would seem to be the most obvious factor when the battlefield is controlled by screens and not physical ability. There are some neat visual set pieces and the pacing isn't too bad but whether this is all executed well enough to form a compelling narrative is another question.
The cast are hit and miss as you'd expect from a child actor heavy film, but nobody is distractingly awful. The veterans fare less well and though Harrison Ford has a few good moments he never looks or sounds too pleased to be on camera, perhaps part characterisation and part phoning it in, it's hard to distinguish at times. Later on Ben Kingsley arrives to add a bit of personality but never gets anything notable to do. Butterfield isn't bad in the title role but the protagonist's character arc is a little underwritten which is a shame as his development has a few interesting pitfalls such as violent behaviour in his genes and social problems in his brain. The problem seems to be there is too much material and not enough focus - there's a lot of psychological trauma to be mined, there are hints of what life on Earth has become, war as a game for kids; and these elements could be stronger if they'd pulled it together.
The effects sequences are reasonable with some fun zero gravity moments. However the climactic space battle is like a mix between those magic touch screens in Minority Report and watching someone play Galaga. I have no idea why they chose to portray it with so much on screen display imagery instead of mixing it up with actual battle perspective shots and being able to see what is happening on a smaller scale; it gets tedious incredibly fast. They reuse footage of the first alien attack several times as a propaganda message early on to set the story up, and the dog fight sequence shown there is a lot more impressive. Add to this some mixed messages about what the enemy forces are really planning just before the whole thing is suddenly cut short and the result is unsatisfying. I presume they meant to expand on the idea of two forces clashing because of a failure to communicate, but like the best ideas presented during the film it's never fleshed out properly.
3/5
BONUS REVIEW
MACHETE KILLS (2013)
There's a short teaser done for laughs at the start of this, where the dumb factor is high and it ends quickly enough to warrant a quick smirk - the opposite effect of the film itself. It's hard to understand how the feature itself is done in such a boring way, after all they don't exactly have a lot of material to work with here. Machete kills the bad guys and gets the ladies. That's it. But instead of a quick say 80 minutes or less (it could be less) they drag it out for a lot longer right up to the point where the joke is dead. And it was pretty DOA the last time.
1/5
Review Roundup - Lost in space
GRAVITY (2013)
Finally, a new space movie. They don't come around that often so besides a level of hype the size of the known universe, a big draw for me was seeing someone put a level of effort and expertise into making a film with astronauts in it. And it's pretty amazing to sit through in places, the technical aspects are pretty mind boggling and the line between real sets and visual effects are almost indistinguishable. Using from what are as far as I can tell is a lot of new toys, they've created some great set pieces and managed to include some dizzying camera work. As far as action packed adventure material goes, this is visually amazing, well paced and meticulously put together. I'm not sure if tracking shots count if they are animated on a computer, it's impressive nonetheless. But how does the rest fare, in particular the parts that didn't soak up millions of dollars from the budget or require any graphics to be rendered?
First things first, the casting and characterisation. For all the advances in effects the real meat of any story is well, storytelling after all. As I said it's perfectly made which can be said for the way events come together on screen - a plot that unfolds without words is one of my favourite things in cinema; show don't tell. Thankfully there are no dry expository narrations, no on screen text or prologue moments. This is 90 minutes of film, it's the essentials. The blend of images and music excellent too, keeping the sound in space minimal while keeping things interesting. But for all the quality in it's execution I did feel that the writing lacked a lot of real personality. I couldn't get invested outside a couple of scenes. Now I quite liked Sandra Bullock here, it's a good central perfomance. But the dialogue wasn't up to scratch for me, it was very thin and had too much in the way of clunky hero banter instead of playing on the darker elements of death in space and providing real insight into the level of fear involved. George Clooney didn't help - whether it's intentional or not he was far too robotic and overconfident. Now I appreciate that veterans in space exploration are likely to have a lot of the right stuff but it never felt like he was a real person. Comparisons to Buzz Lightyear may be unwarranted but I can see their point. I imagine star power was what provided some of the money from the studio but maybe someone else would have been a better choice.
That's not to say that they don't try and do more than just have spectacular disaster sequences of course. There is a strong visual and literal narrative about isolation, being lost and finding reasons to live. A little to on the nose in a few places but ultimately suitable for the tone which is consistently popcorn movie. Maybe the wow of an IMAX presentation has been lost on me, but it's no excuse when stories like Moon have more humanity and no money to create entire space stations and weightlessness simulations. After all these kinds of plots are never about space and technology itself, but using those elements to build something interesting. Perhaps it should have pushed harder on the space madness themes but I'm not sure if it's appropriate. Maybe it just needed more real human angst and made better use of the few backstory elements that are presented. There are a few good moments of real movie magic here - none of which include explosions or speeding objects I have to say - but I would have appreciated a stronger script in a few key places to seal the deal. It left me entertained but a little cold, much like the view - dazzling but too much of a vacuum in a few places.
3/5
Finally, a new space movie. They don't come around that often so besides a level of hype the size of the known universe, a big draw for me was seeing someone put a level of effort and expertise into making a film with astronauts in it. And it's pretty amazing to sit through in places, the technical aspects are pretty mind boggling and the line between real sets and visual effects are almost indistinguishable. Using from what are as far as I can tell is a lot of new toys, they've created some great set pieces and managed to include some dizzying camera work. As far as action packed adventure material goes, this is visually amazing, well paced and meticulously put together. I'm not sure if tracking shots count if they are animated on a computer, it's impressive nonetheless. But how does the rest fare, in particular the parts that didn't soak up millions of dollars from the budget or require any graphics to be rendered?
First things first, the casting and characterisation. For all the advances in effects the real meat of any story is well, storytelling after all. As I said it's perfectly made which can be said for the way events come together on screen - a plot that unfolds without words is one of my favourite things in cinema; show don't tell. Thankfully there are no dry expository narrations, no on screen text or prologue moments. This is 90 minutes of film, it's the essentials. The blend of images and music excellent too, keeping the sound in space minimal while keeping things interesting. But for all the quality in it's execution I did feel that the writing lacked a lot of real personality. I couldn't get invested outside a couple of scenes. Now I quite liked Sandra Bullock here, it's a good central perfomance. But the dialogue wasn't up to scratch for me, it was very thin and had too much in the way of clunky hero banter instead of playing on the darker elements of death in space and providing real insight into the level of fear involved. George Clooney didn't help - whether it's intentional or not he was far too robotic and overconfident. Now I appreciate that veterans in space exploration are likely to have a lot of the right stuff but it never felt like he was a real person. Comparisons to Buzz Lightyear may be unwarranted but I can see their point. I imagine star power was what provided some of the money from the studio but maybe someone else would have been a better choice.
That's not to say that they don't try and do more than just have spectacular disaster sequences of course. There is a strong visual and literal narrative about isolation, being lost and finding reasons to live. A little to on the nose in a few places but ultimately suitable for the tone which is consistently popcorn movie. Maybe the wow of an IMAX presentation has been lost on me, but it's no excuse when stories like Moon have more humanity and no money to create entire space stations and weightlessness simulations. After all these kinds of plots are never about space and technology itself, but using those elements to build something interesting. Perhaps it should have pushed harder on the space madness themes but I'm not sure if it's appropriate. Maybe it just needed more real human angst and made better use of the few backstory elements that are presented. There are a few good moments of real movie magic here - none of which include explosions or speeding objects I have to say - but I would have appreciated a stronger script in a few key places to seal the deal. It left me entertained but a little cold, much like the view - dazzling but too much of a vacuum in a few places.
3/5
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