King Arthur: Legend of the Sword

Director:

Guy Ritchie (Snatch., Sherlock Holmes, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels)

Starring:

Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy, Pacific Rim, Crimson Peak), Jude Law (The Young Pope, The Holiday, Sherlock Holmes), Djimon Hounsou (Guardians of the Galaxy, Blood Diamond, Furious 7)

Genre:

Fantasy / Action

Opinion:

A scarred and grizzled Arthur Pendragon (Charlie Hunnam) slowly makes his way up a crumbled cliff-edge.  His gritted teeth grinding on each other as his feet grind on the rock beneath them, his fingers gripping into cutting-slate and he is nearing exhaustion. 

However when he reaches the summit, he stands tall and proud as he sees his goal ahead of him. 

Shiny, silver and stuck in an enormous boulder...

Excalibur. 

Evil’s bane.  The sword of legend.  Everything he’s searched for.

When suddenly…

“You wanna get your hands round the handle!”

….Sorry?  Who said that?

“Ten digits round the hilt. And pull it!”

Is that?… is that David Beckham?  With a dash of mud on him, and a false nose trying to hide his identity?

“Left foot, right foot, back on the boat!”

Sigh, yep.  That’s GQ's Man of the Year 2013, David Beckham telling the hero of this epic how to pull a sword out of a stone.  And just like that, my immersion is broken and now I'm paying attention to the slick-haired free-kick specialist instead of our eponymous hero.

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword tells the story of the titular Arthur, orphaned at a young age and raised in a brothel, after his uncle Vortigen (Jude Law) steals the throne from his father and makes himself ruler of medieval Britain.  When Vortigen attempts to find a man to pull the infamous Excalibur from a boulder, a manhunt begins for Arthur as he plots to overthrow his deranged uncle.

SInce the plot has adopted a more family-centric plot, and done away with the 'rags-to-riches' formula that other Arthur films have done, it's no surprise that the film attempts to steal some style from Game of Thrones, combining fantasy elements with it’s medieval setting.

But that imitation is this film’s main problem; as the film frequently dips it’s toe into the fantasy world, but is then being dragged back into a grim and Cockney-Gangster London and the two just do not mix.

Now don’t get me wrong; Guy Ritchie can write and direct some damn fine Cockney-Gangster films when he wants.  Both Sherlock Holmes films, as well as Snatch. and Lock, Stock... manage to combine action seamlessly with a pithy kind of cocky-wit.  

East-End gangsters engage in bare-knuckle boxing matches and then discuss the differences in the colour of caravans, all whilst keeping the viewers eyes glued to the screen and ears primed for more amazing one-liners.

And this is the path that King Arthur should have travelled.

The King Arthur legend has been told time and time again but always relying on the standard clichés of the Sword in the Stone, Merlin, the Lady In The Lake etc.  The fantasy elements always creep in and no-one had tried to ground the story in realism.  However the same thing could be have been said for Sherlock Holmes before Ritchie and Downey Jr. created an eccentric and foppish version for their 2011 version.  Holmes always manages to disprove all the fantastical elements of his villains by showing the science behind them and that was what made interesting viewing.

Instead, Ritchie mixes RocknRolla and Fantastic Beasts, creating a rather bizarre world where he doe not fit.  One sequence features Arthur visiting a random island in the middle of a lake (I’m assuming near London) to battle gigantic snakes and spiders to train for battle against Vortigen.  It’s ludicrous.

Next for Mr Ritchie is the live-action remake of Disney’s Aladdin, so I cannot wait for him to no doubt ruin that in the same way he ruined any chance of this reboot working.  Let’s hope Vinnie Jones and Jason Statham stage an East-End intervention before that can happen.

Rating:

3/10  -  Wait until a drunken Saturday night with Netflix.

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Joy

When deciding the first film of a new year to watch, not many people spend too much time on it.  It's only a film, right?

For me, it is the bar against which to compare the rest of the year.

I try and make an educated decision to see the best on offer, and in January you often find some Oscar-worthy beauties.

Last year, Birdman blew me away.  The year before that her truly surprised me.  There was added pressure on myself to pick correctly.  With what was on offer in the first week of 2016, I thought I made a smart choice with the latest David O Russell/Jennifer Lawrence/Bradley Cooper/Robert de Niro film.

No, not Silver Linings Playbook.

No, not American Hustle.

No, not Joy.

Wait, scratch that last one.

PLOT

Slightly based on real events, Joy (Jennifer Lawrence) is a divorced mother-of-two, living with her mother and grandmother, and her ex-husband lives in her basement.

Having been very creative as a child, she decides to use that creativity to try and make a better life for herself.  Designing a self-wringing mop, Joy utilises the new concept of home-shopping television channel QVC to try and get the life she deserves.

OPINION

It probably wouldn't be fair to say that Joy bored the ever-living hell out of me, but it wouldn't be too far off.  Granted, I could watch Jennifer Lawrence all day (in a non-creepy way) and she is by far the best aspect of the film.  But like Legend showed last year, a fantastic central performance cannot carry an overall flawed film.

The film flits between different tones and dramatic styles, from kitchen-sink realism to surreal fantasy, back to manic farce, and you don't know what to think.  Should I be laughing?  Should I be crying?  Should I leave the cinema?  And this is all in the first hour before Bradley Cooper has even shown his handsome, handsome face.

With taking so long to get going, by the time Joy starts trying to fix her mundane life, I had so little interest in her character or the horribly selfish people that fester her existence.  The only enjoyable character is Joy's grandmother and she hardly gets any screen time at all!

Whilst rightfully getting attention due to Ms Lawrence acting the hell out of her role, Joy doesn't live up to other expectations.  Similar to the QVC channel on which Joy stars, it looks bright, shiny and well-crafted, but ultimately it is off-putting, extortionate and leaves you feeling rather empty.

Rating - 3/10

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Spectre

Skyfallen From Grace

INTRODUCTION

You know what was fantastic about Skyfall?  It didn’t feel like a Bond film.  It was just a fantastically-shot, incredibly-acted, interesting, equally mature and silly spy film.

It didn’t rely on misogyny, fast cars and one-liners to appeal to audiences.  It was an enthralling, intriguing and exciting story of betrayal, honour and retribution, focussed on three very credible actors (Daniel Craig, Judi Dench and Javier Bardem) and all thanks to one fantastic director (Sam Mendes).

Despite the fact that owning GoldenEye64 was the pinnacle of coolness growing up in North West England, the Bond films never really enthralled me as I felt they took themselves way too seriously and I couldn't really differentiate between them all.  However I saw the start of the Daniel Craig-era as the perfect time to try again.

Casino Royale grabbed my attention, Quantum of Solace nearly lost it, but Skyfall was easily one of my favourite films of 2012.  It felt like the Bond franchise had grown up.  It was ready to present itself as this new gritty entity, not reliant on campy megalomaniacal villains, silly throw-away gadgets and an overall outdated attitude.

Three years pass and here comes Bond 24, otherwise known as Spectre.  The same cast as Skyfall, the same crew as Skyfall, the same director as Skyfall.  What could go wrong?  Sigh.

PLOT

Spectre takes place in the fallout of Skyfall.  Bond is taking orders from the new M (Ralph Fiennes), trying to uncover the shady operations of the titular 'Spectre' organisation, whilst still saving damsels-in-distress, taking down world-dominating bad guys and… Wait a minute…  I thought we were past this?  I thought Skyfall showed audiences that a Bond film didn’t have to rely so much on the typical 'Bond formula' to be entertaining?

“Nope!  Instead we’re going to revert back to the old method!  Now give us your money!”

ANALYSIS

If the 'Blonde Bond' films have proven anything, it’s that inserting respectable and talented actors into these ridiculous films still achieves impressive performances.  

Mads Mikkelsen, Eva Green, Javier Bardem; all of them credible actors who gave memorable performances.  

So when I heard that Monica Bellucci, Léa Seydoux and mainly Christoph (freaking) Waltz were going to be in Spectre, my expectations rose very high!  But they are given nothing to work with! 

The script is poor, the plot twists are tired ideas that can be seen in other films and the actors are so annoyingly wasted in their roles, especially Monica Bellucci!  At least Seydoux stars in most of the film, and Waltz gets the early creepy and seemingly-omnipotent scenes under his belt before they ruin him, but the incredibly talented and beautiful Bellucci is hardly in the damn film!  

Two scenes and that’s her lot!  She’s just used by Bond for get important information (but not before he beds her first, hours after her husband’s funeral!... The husband that Bond killed by the way!)

The fantastic and versatile Léa Seydoux is unfortunately shelved and used as window-dressing.  Not to be glib but her iconic Spectre moment is walking down the middle of a train’s dinner carriage in a silver dress.  All before falling madly in love with the man who hasn't given her any reason to do so.  It’s just so flimsy.

And that leads me to the man of the hour, Christoph Waltz, the man who we all expect to be Hans Landa, but hasn’t met that standard since he broke onto the scene in Inglorious Basterds and stole our hearts.  Similar to Landa, Waltz’s villainous Franz Oberhauser successfully captivates the audience and appears very much in control of events early on, but just falls flat when it comes to providing genuine menace and a worthy adversary to the world’s number one spy.

That goes double for Dave Bautista’s Mr. Hinx.  Fresh off his amazing portrayal as Drax The Destroyer in Marvel’s off-beat gem Guardians Of The Galaxy, and being a huge WWE fan myself, I was eagerly anticipating Hinx kicking Bond’s ass all over Spectre.  

His size and surprisingly comedic timing, twinned with Hinx’s apparently-signature silver-spiked thumbnails made me excited for the possibility of Hinx going down in Bond-lore as an iconic henchman similar to Jaws or Oddjob.  

However he is given so little to do, it perfectly sums up the problems I had with the film.  There is so much potential in its components and the result is so much more disappointing because of it.

Returning to Waltz’s Oberhauser, his motive is so flimsy and stupid that it just lost all credibility for me.  His methods of torture were ineffective and pointless, his main goal is a petty and immature one; certainly one that doesn’t effectively explain the events of the three previous films and he just doesn't come across like much of an obstacle for Bond to overcome.

Oberhauser confidently explains that he is ‘the author to all [Bond’s] pain’, but it never explains this or goes into detail, and seemingly never will.  There are mentions to the plotpoints of Casino Royale and Skyfall (making sure not to mention the rather mediocre Question of Sport ... Quantum of Solace) but only as pointless nods to the audience.  I’d expect much more detail explaining just a small fraction of his actions when it is apparently Bond’s Big Bad we’re talking about.

COMPARISON

Such failure just shows how Spectre falls short in nearly every area Skyfall flourished.  It disregards all the hard work and effort spent by its previous instalments trying to present the Blonde Bond era as a gritty, realistic and Jason Bourne-like modern spy epic.  I hate to use an example from another franchise, but it felt like The Dark Knight Rises after the brilliance that was The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight struck a certain chord due to the film’s message that sometimes an honourable lie is better than the disappointing truth, when it’s all for ‘the greater good’.  An interesting concept for a blockbuster comic-book adaptation to champion.

However during Bane’s takeover of Gotham in The Dark Knight Rises, he reveals the disappointing truth of Harvey Dent's downfall, causing outrage from the public who are not interested in why they were lied to and all the benefits gained from it.  And then they just move on to trying to defuse a nuclear bomb.  That’s it.  That’s all that’s mentioned of it.

All the good that The Dark Knight did to discuss moral ambiguity and question what is allowed for the sake of the greater good.  Nope, not for The Dark Knight Rises.  Now it’s just “Don’t tell lies! Never ever!” and the poignancy of the ethical quandary just disappears.

Whilst The Dark Knight managed to use a vigilante billionaire and a sociopathic clown to discuss questionable morality and the fairness of chaos, The Dark Knight Rises resorted unnecessary comic-book tropes like a masked maniac holding a city to ransom with a nuclear device.  Not really that ground-breaking or memorable.

WRAP IT UP

That’s how it felt watching Spectre.  Everything that Skyfall did well, Spectre threw it away.  The goodwill a non-fan like me earned, gone in a 120-minute-long instant.  I was left with a very bad taste in my mouth and felt like all my preconceptions about Bond from my youth had returned.

I understand why fans of Bond may adore Spectre and see it as a return to form, but in my opinion, Bond didn’t need to return to anything, it was doing great as it was.  However now with Spectre tying up all it's loose ends, here's hoping that this will be Daniel Craig’s final Bond film, as I feel the franchise needs to be shaken.  Not stirred.

Rating - 3/10

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Lucy

In The Sky With Diamonds

I watched an interesting film recently.  A lovable loser stumbles upon a mystery drug that manages to unlock their brain's full potential.  They are able to learn new languages, skills and become more powerful than they ever have before.  Whilst the film has its problems with nonsensical plot-lines and unnecessary characters, the film is balanced with effective performances from the cast, an amazing soundtrack and an overall interesting idea, which probes certain aspects of science-fiction but doesn't lose it's way. Yes, Limitless was a fantastic film.

Luc Besson must have thought the same thing, as he has basically taken that premise, replaced Bradley Cooper with Scarlett Johansson and turned everything up to 150% for his newest release, Lucy.

In present day Taiwan, Scarlett Johansson plays the titular ditzy blonde American, who falls in with the wrong crowd. After making a drug drop to the amazing Min-sik Choi's crazy-insane crime lord, Mr Jang, Lucy is kidnapped and has a bag of brand new drugs surgically inserted into her body, with the intention for her to be a drug mule into America. However the bag of drugs begin to leak inside her and 'unlocks her brain's full power'.  (God, how I hate that phrase) Eventually her mental capability begins to grow and she starts to gain previously unknown levels of power, whilst steadily losing her humanity.  Morgan Freeman plays an expert conveniently in this exact science, who Lucy contacts to help her control her new-found abilities.

The main problem I had with Lucy was the extent that Besson pushes ScarJo's growing powers and the repercussions that follow.  Whilst Bradley Cooper's failure of a writer in Limitless uses a drug to use his brain's full potential, the film never leaves frames of reference the audience's brain can handle, such as questioning metaphysical theories and entering the veritable minefield of time travel.

The central myth about mankind failing to use more than 10% of their brains gives screenwriters a huge blank canvas of possibilities when the idea of a fully 100% used brain is brought up. A screenwriter must therefore not go completely over the top and make a person a god as Besson does with Lucy. Limitless kept it short and sweet; a person is able to recall every single one of their past memories and therefore have an infinite knowledge of facts they have ever stumbled across. They can master foreign languages in days rather than months. They can make the stock market their bitch.

Lucy's universe, on the other hand, theorises any person capable of achieving 100% brain power is somehow capable of anything, such as being able to control radio signals, regrow limbs and most incredibly time travel. Besson probably knew that the audience wouldn’t believe what they were seeing and so decided to give the straight role to Morgan Freeman to add credence to the claptrap being spouted.

Lucy is the classic case of a film being fantastic until it isn't, and unfortunately it stops pretty early. Halfway through the film, Lucy worries that she is slowly losing her humanity as she becomes more and more powerful. She saves a random French police officer and makes him her pseudo-sidekick to keep her grounded, However, this is barely touched upon again and as a result, Lucy starts becomes uninteresting. The audience cannot connect to her plight and apparent struggle as her powers become too unnatural and her plan to overcome everything is never fully explained.

Despite all these shortcomings, the greatest flaw of the film is its under-use of its villain, Mr Jang played by personal favourite, Oldboy's leading man Min-sik Choi. His vendetta against Lucy reaches ridiculous proportions (similar to the rest of the film) and despite providing entertaining gun fights, he feels wasted as a two-dimensional villain who is just evil for evil's sake. Besson once gave the world memorable villains such as Leon's Stansfield and The Fifth Element's Zorg, played with such glee and sadism by Gary Oldman. Now he resorts to a drug kingpin with pride issues.

If it weren't for it's heightened sense of importance and ego, I would have recommended Lucy as a mindless action film with a kick-ass heroine, but it tries to be too smart and overly-complicated. The film would have benefited from gaps in the action for the audience to wrap our collective heads around the nonsensical development in Lucy's powers, but of course modern-day Luc Besson doesn't believe in gaps in the action. This is why Leon (The Professional in other countries) is considered such a classic.  Character development and empathy is essential in films such as this and that's where Lucy fails in large amounts.

My recommendation? Stay in and watch Leon or Limitless instead.  I wish I had.

Rating - 3/10

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Top Five Friday: August (Yes, All Of It)

Good Lord, has it really been over a month? I am so ashamed. I promised myself I wouldn’t get back to these lazy ways of only updating every so often. I wanted constant updates, news and reviews coming from this website, which is what I will strive towards once again. Thank you for sticking with me.

Now, since my last review (The End is Nighy) I have been still watching my films, although I have been attending weddings, crashing cars etc., so not as many have been watched as I would like. So I will quickly run through the Top Five films I have seen in August.

5) Now You See Me

Let me just start by saying this crime-caper is only in my Top Five because I only managed to watch five movies this month. It is here by default.  This shouldn't be in anyone’s Top Five Films, unless it’s the Top Five Pale Imitations of Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (where it would sit pretty as #1).

Four wise-cracking, obnoxious street magicians form a Las Vegas stage act after being grouped together by a mysterious non-figure with fancy looking blueprints and begin stealing money and distributing it to the public. This attracts the attention of the FBI and Interpol as mad-capped, magic-fuelled confusion unfolds between the hapless police and the seemingly-omniscient magicians.

Magic is a difficult thing to perform on film. With the special effects generated by smarter-than-your-Dad computers, current filmmakers have no problem with showing a woman sawn in half, a coin appearing behind a person’s ear or a rabbit being pulled out of a hat. The secrets are all in post-production editing, but when you see magic in person, there is the temporary suspension of disbelief, which is what films used to inspire in audiences.

The Prestige was such a fantastic and innovative film because it analysed the art of magic and the intricacies behind tricks and misdirection. The main spine to the film was the ultimate dedication to your art, your desire and your profession. Now You See Me may have a few fun special effects, some witty one-liners and an impressive cast, but it is mainly a sloppy mess of a film, too interested in confusing the audience and appearing smarter than it is. It seems to have successfully misdirected the public as it has made $317 million worldwide, despite being The Prestige… For Idiots.

Rating – 3/10

4) A Field In England

I came to A Field In England with a complete blank slate, apart from what I could gather from the title. There would be grass. There would be no need for subtitles. And what followed was 90 minutes of beautiful cinematography, cryptic subject matter and some chilling performances, especially from Reece Shearsmith and Michael Smiley, two actors very close to my television-loving heart.

Admittedly, Field is not for everyone, with some friends of mine justifying their hatred for it by saying that “…it was just five guys standing in a field, digging a hole. It was boring; nothing happened!”

This is precisely why A Field In England stood out for me.   Whilst my friends were correct in their description of the plot’s lack of explosions and car chases, the action instead came within the tensions of the central group of Civil War soldiers and the importance that they gave black magic. It wasn’t a drama film dependent on bleak outlooks; a comedy film that resorted to pratfalls; or a horror film that relied on silence followed by loud noises. However the director Ben Wheatley and writer Amy Jump managed to combine all three genres into one unnerving black comedy that made me physically uncomfortable and gripped to the screen ‘til the end.

Rating – 6/10

3) The Wolverine

Back in 2009, I was very excited to see the newest adventure of the invincible Wolverine in his X-Men: Origins prequel.  However, since that disappointed the hell out of me, as well as critics and audiences worldwide, I was a little worried when I sat down in the theatre, preparing to watch Hugh Jackman’s sixth outing as the adamantium-clawed member of the X-Men. Bryan Singer managed to perfectly balance edge-of-your-seat action with genuine character development in the first two X-Men films, exploring prejudice and inequality issues currently in America.  Brett Ratner took all of that and threw it away with X-Men: The Last Stand, preferring to end the trilogy with an all-guns-blazing approach that left many audiences cold and Origins: Wolverine didn’t do much to convince us that things were going to change. The Wolverine, thankfully, manages to buck that trend.

The Wolverine takes place after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand and Logan has become a vagrant, pining for the loss of his love, Jean Grey.  A powerful dying businessman, who Logan saved during the Hiroshima bombing, tracks Logan down to offer his thanks and repay him with the chance of mortality.

Focussing more on Logan’s time in Japan and his clash with a powerful Samurai-descended family provides ample time for Jackman to sink his claws into a more thought-provoking and interesting storyline, filled with romantic entanglements, bullet-train fights and Wolverine finally realising his inner-demons have led him to be a powerful, yet leaderless warrior.

The film does sometimes lose it way with pointless sub-plots and assassination attempts, and where some X-Men films seem to overdo the number of mutants on-screen, there is a certain lack of superpowers displayed in The Wolverine. However the lack of Logan's invincibility is a nice change of pace. When Logan decides to relinquish his power of regeneration, he is finally put into mortal danger and the audience can actually worry about his safety, a rare treat. Emotional investment means that The Wolverine is a big step in the right direction. Plus, thanks to a mid-credits scene, I ended up squealing like a young teenage girl at a No Direction gig. I really cannot wait for X-Men: Days of Future Past!

Rating - 6.5/10

2) Elysium

Back in 2009, South African director Neill Blomkamp wrote and directed District 9, a film that centred around the tensions between humans and a refugee alien race that landed in 1980s Johannesburg. The film did a fantastic, if sometimes heavy-handed, job of mirroring the real-life tensions between the two main ethnicities of modern South Africa.

Cut to summer 2013 and Blomkamp's second feature film Elysium, just like all good sci-fi films, focusses on other prevalent issues in today's society; namely immigration, health care and class.

The premise is that in the future, society's wealthiest live on the floating space station known as Elysium which is overrun by Jodie Foster and the inhabitants enjoy all of life's pleasures. Meanwhile the rest of humanity live back on the overpopulated Earth and get by as best they can. Often they try and sneak onto Elysium just to access the cure-all medicine tubes but most are arrested or killed trying. After an accident leaves him with less than a week to live, Matt Damon decides to storm Elysium to save his life, making Foster resort to using her secret weapon, a psychotic mercenary known as Kruger.

Let me start by saying that Elysium looks incredible. It is obvious that Blomkamp has an eye for iconic images, as both District 9 and Elysium are filled with them.  However, unlike District 9, the storyline tires pretty quickly and the arrival on Elysium doesn't really seem like such an important goal to the audience, but just to Damon's character.   Foster is wasted in her role, painting her and the rest of the wealthy as two-dimensional, stuck-up snobs who don't care for the lower classes.

Whilst District 9 mainly dealt with the satirical alien discrimination, the film really picked up when the action was introduced, but it is only reserved for the final third and thankfully, Blomkamp doesn't follow the same routine in Elysium. The action is there right from the start, and it is directly in your face.  This is mostly due to the previously-mentioned mercenary Kruger, played with such enjoyment by District 9's Sharlto Copley. Copley’s menacing presence instantly lights up the screen and he is a truly detestable screen-villain, if used a bit too sparingly to properly utilise him.

Overall a fantastic thrill-ride with a memorable villain that is a much better example of true science-fiction than the year’s earlier Oblivion and After Earth.

Rating - 7.5/10

1) Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

AHA! We come to the best film of the past few weeks, and it’s the long-awaited screen debut of Steve Coogan’s beloved character, Alan Partridge. Set after the mini-series, Mid-Morning Matters, Alan is still a radio DJ, working at North Norfolk Digital as it is being bought out by a corporate mogul, Shape. In the streamlining process, Shape sack Alan’s fellow DJ Pat Farrell, who takes his revenge by holding the employees hostage until his demands are met. Who does he request for a negotiator? The one and only, Alan Partridge.

What follows is 90 minutes of sheer hilarious comedy and a very successful television show adaptation, which is harder than you may think. For every fantastic TV-to-film adaptation such as In The Loop and The Inbetweeners Movie, you get the failures such as Ali G Indahouse, Kevin & Perry Go Large and the abysmal Keith Lemon: The Movie, and this thankfully slots in the former.  Fans of the show will love the attention to detail that the writers Coogan, Iannucci and Baynham have included in the script, as well as how home-grown it feels despite including some inevitable Hollywood tropes. Whilst John McClane is blowing up skyscrapers in Die Hard, Partridge is diving through drywall and creating anti-corporate radio jingles under duress. The story remains in Partridge’s Norfolk roots and his relationships with his ever-present PA Lynn and best friend Michael The Geordie.

Even if you aren’t a fan of Coogan, or ever watched I’m Alan Partridge, the quick-fire comedy and genuine heart at the centre of this film will soon convert you to be screaming “A-HA!” every time you hear Abba’s Knowing Me, Knowing You. I whole-heartedly recommend this film, you won’t regret it.

Rating – 9/10

Two For Tuesday: After Earth / Oblivion

Sci-Fi Supermarkets and The Pursuit of Apathy

In true Hollywood fashion, a duo of films have been recently released that share an overall theme.  Where before there was Armageddon and Deep Impact, Dante's Peak and Volcano, Antz and A Bug's Life, we now have After Earth and Oblivion.  Unfortunately for us Earth-dwelling humans, the theme is the collapse of human civilisation and the Earth becoming inhospitable.  Even more unfortunate, Hollywood has chosen Tom Cruise and Jaden (son of Will) Smith to star in these post-apocalyptic futures.

We get it;
Ruined Earth = Big,  One Man = Small

So since they share a common theme, they are bound to share other features and they ultimately do.  Both of these films feature an annoying lead character travel on an annoyingly boring quest, whilst an underutilised and more competent secondary character sits in a control room for most of the film's duration, culminating in a disappointing conclusion stolen from another film entirely.  Let's analyse, shall we?

Oblivion takes place years after an alien invasion of Earth, which humans 'won' by deploying nuclear weapons that leave the planet inhospitable.  One of the only people left is Tom Cruise, a security drone repairman who lives with fellow technician Andrea Riseborough.  The drones they repair keep huge Earth-restoring machines safe from pesky sabotaging aliens that keep Tom on his toes. But he keeps getting distracted of visions of a woman he feels like he once knew. Until he conveniently finds a mysterious pod with the woman inside! Plots slowly unravel and Morgan Freeman appears out of nowhere to tell Tom that not everything is as it seems.

And so the Giant Tom Cruise watched
over his sea vacuums patiently...

Sounds promising, yeah? The film truly begins to slide downhill after the discovery of the mystery woman and the conspiracy surrounding Earth's true history. Despite the film trying to pay homage to the science-fiction films of the 1960s and 70s, such as Logan's Run, it never reaches those dystopian goals, falling down on the weak plot, foreseeable narrative twists and sloppy character development.

I wanted to like Cruise in this, as he seemed to fit the character well, but ultimately the story becomes boring and predictable. There is a sleek, intriguing opening act, but the rest of the film fails to deliver on a promising premise, stealing so many references from other science-fiction films. It's almost like the director Joseph Kinsinski simply sat down, watched classic sci-fi films and went “That. I want all of that.” A proverbial sci-fi supermarket for him to pick and choose without having to come up with anything original.

You can plagarise Moon all you like,

but no-one rips off Wall-E 

Speaking of unoriginal directors, shall we move on to M. Night Shyamalan's newest venture? After Earth also holds a rather intriguing plot, with a half-hearted, disappointing payoff. It's a long explanation so bear with me.

This is the face
of a fearless monster killer

In the future, Earth, again, becomes inhospitable due to our extended interference with the atmosphere.  This is twinned with all of the Earth's animal kingdom beginning to evolve into human killers.  So we humans all scarper off to another habitable planet, only to find it populated by other human-killing monsters. Humans can not catch a break in the future. These monsters are also perfect at hunting us... except that they don't have eyes.  Don't know why but instead they sense our fear.  And excitement.  And happiness.  Like any feeling, they can sense it.  Again in true Shyamalan fashion, it's never explained how they do this; they just do.  So, in order to avoid and kill them, a human must not feel fear, and Will Smith is the most cold-hearted SOB in the fleet.

Will and his son, Jaden, go off on a space flight with one of these monsters, for some silly reason, and the ship crashes onto the dreaded inhospitable Earth! Will breaks both of his legs in the crash but healthy Jaden has to retrieve the emergency beacon from another part of the jungle in which they find themselves. He has to evade evil baboons, oversized condors and a dreaded pack of ligers (that's the offspring of a lion and a tiger) and learn to tame his fear to overcome the escaped alien beasty that inexplicably escapes.

Evil, evil monkey...

Let's start off with the obvious stuff. Will Smith should not do a role that is this serious and boring. Neither should his son. They both are so badly-cast, I felt angry at their obvious vanity in casting themselves when other actors would have been better suited for the roles. Actors such as Josh Brolin, Kiefer Sutherland and Idris Elba have made careers playing serious and stoic roles such as this, and could have provided more gravity and intensity that the character needed. I couldn't help look at the poe-faced father and son, and just see a very moody Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Karate Kid.

Also the film came across as simply a Smith-production, and I had an instant dislike to Jaden Smith and the character he portrays, merely due to the fact I know both he and the character got their jobs because of who his father is. It really put me off his character, failing from the start to create an emotional bond with him.  It seemed that the Smiths hadn't gotten enough audience attention from The Pursuit of Happyness, and so felt like making The Pursuit of Apathy instead.

This is what the Smiths should stick to

Technically-speaking, for a movie with this much budget and filmed on so much green screen, the effects looked pretty poor from today's standards.  The threatening Earth animals and interstellar nasties equally looked fake and unrealistic, leaving you with little concern for little Jaden's well-being. The main peril in the film comes from these animal encounters and since I had little care for Jaden's character from the start, the tense chase sequences and animal attacks didn't react with me at all. I wouldn't have cared if he bit the bullet, giving someone more deserving a chance to go to space. Selfish Jaden Smith.

Whilst I had no high hopes for either film, I was still left with a sense of disappointment after watching them both. Oblivion's opening act lifted my expectations, only to dash them in the end, as did the appointment of M. Night Shyamalan's position as After Earth's director. I always go into a film of Night's, hoping he can rekindle the respect I held for him before the débâcle that was The Happening. But he continues plunging ever further away from ever gaining the respect that was awarded him after the release of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.

But should I keep holding on hope for that one next film that Mr M. Night or Mr Cruise could potentially make next?  They could become another Eddie Murphy or Mike Myers, slowly slinking away, occasionally bringing the public some pale imitation of what they once were. Or they could possibly follow in the footsteps of Matthew McConaughey; slowly rebuilding credibility, film by film, until they find themselves working on a Christopher Nolan science-fiction film.  Surely the sky (and beyond) is the limit.

Oblivion : 5/10
After Earth : 3/10

Deadfall

Sibling Rivalry

Deadfall is a film I watched on a whim, and by doing so, only did the smallest amount of plot research before watching it. Usually I pride myself on knowing a released film's plot, in case it comes up in conversation and also because I'm a huge nerd when it comes to film knowledge and trivia. However, the tiny plot synopsis I read gave me slightly high expectations of the 90-odd minute drama, which weren't going to be met any time soon.

The synopsis in question read:

“A thriller that follows two siblings who decide to fend for themselves in the wake of a botched casino heist, and their unlikely reunion during another family's Thanksgiving celebration.”

Unfortunately, this led me to believe that the film was going to centre around the family's Thanksgiving celebration and the tension between a normal American family and the Bonnie and Clyde siblings. Let me just point out, I am a massive fan of these type of films. In recent years, some of my favourite releases have been small, independent films that feature a sparse cast with the action often taking place in just one room. Fantastic examples of these would be Hard Candy, Right At Your Door and Michael Haneke's original Funny Games. So when I expected a film along those lines, I was quite disappointed by what I saw.

The film begins just after the siblings (Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde) pull off their heist and crash their car. For unknown reasons, they split up and plan to meet over the Canadian border. The sister hitches a ride with a fleeing criminal (Charlie Hunnam) who is on his way to his parents for Thanksgiving, whilst the brother starts a murderous trail that alerts the local sheriff's department. It all culminates with the tense Thanksgiving dinner and a shoot-out where family ties on both sides are tested.

Going back to the original synopsis, I shall pick out phrases used to describe Deadfall:

“...thriller...”,

“...fend for themselves...”,

“...botched casino heist...”.

The film is in fact a drama with some sudden gory moments and the occasional fight or chase sequence; it is hardly a thriller. I rarely leave a cinema auditorium for a bathroom break, however with Deadfall, I felt comfortable in the belief that I wasn't going to miss any relevant plot developments, and unfortunately, I was correct.

The siblings hardly 'fend for themselves'. Like I described, Olivia Wilde, the initially dim-witted sister instantly relies on a stranger's charity and possessions to survive, leeching his resources for most of the film. Eric Bana, on the other hand, starts two-dimensionally causing chaos everywhere he goes, indifferent about the attention he inevitably attracts. He might have to contend with injuries and a lack of winter clothing, but he just wanders around snow-covered forests like he is Bear Grylls on a pleasure stroll. There is as much tension in these tedious build-up scenes as in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

“But wait! What about that botched casino heist that started this whole escapade off?! Surely that's going to get explained and maybe even featured in a flashback scenario?” Nope. Swept under the floorboards like a shameful second-family.

So that leaves us with the finale, where the siblings reunite during the convict's Thanksgiving family meal. Thankfully, this is the best section of the film, but it's too late. By now, you have no interest in anyone apart from the sweet, innocent parents (played by an alliterator's dream couple: Sissy Spacek and Kris Kristofferson).  The film has taken too long setting up too many pointless scenarios for you to fully pay attention to it's climax!  

Does that spunky bar-owner finally separate herself from the company of her ex-husband's family? 

Did the innocent kid get shot during one of Eric Bana's pointless gunfights? 

Was that a hint of incest in the opening scene between the siblings?

It doesn't matter, because these threads are never touched on again!

It irritates me how the film's writer had this fantastic premise of a finale, and then wasted most of the film on pointless nonsense.  In my opinion, Deadfall could have been greatly improved just by having the siblings take the family hostage in the film's first act, and then allow their respective back-stories to be seen through realistic exchanges between the characters over the course of the film. This would have made me care about what was going to happen to Jay The Convict's family.   It also would have given the brother-sister relationship much more depth and realism, instead of having Eric Bana briefly look at young childhood pictures and then pointlessly explain how he used to take care of his little sister, to that very sister.

It is a pity that the script and storyline let the film down so much, as the director does a very good job with the film's overall stylish and crisp aesthetic. However whilst beauty does captures attention, personality captures the heart, and this is where Deadfall falters.

Rating: 4/10

Gangster Squad

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**NOTE** 

Hey guys, thanks for coming to my blog to read this, my first written review in over a year.  In the beginning of 2012, I tried branching out into video reviews and uploaded several to YouTube, but complications with my workplace meant I had to stop reviewing until I left there late last year.  Now I'm currently struggling in creating my own website, rather than using this blog to share my opinions on this year's film releases.  But since it's taking me a while to get any traction with it, I felt like I could still write my reviews on the blog until the site's ready.  So here we are.  

Please enjoy, and I apologise for how late these reviews are, but I've got a few stored up that I'd like to share.

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as empty as Nick Nolte's fridge...

My experience with gangster films hasn't been vast. Apart from the classic mafia films such as The Godfather trilogy and Goodfellas, I'm not that well versed. 

'Cops vs. Gangsters' films were introduced to me by L.A. Confidential, a slick and stylish film noir that showed me how a crime film could look visually stunning amazing whilst still having an interesting mystery running throughout. This first taste led me to gritty crime dramas such as Roman Polanski's Chinatown which helped propel Jack Nicholson to limelight, and the true story of the takedown of Al Capone in Brian De Palma's The Untouchables.

As I watched these films, I began to notice similarities and difference between certain types of gangster movies. Whilst Chinatown and The Untouchables focussed on the gritty crime and injustice underpinning the storyline, conversely LA Confidential centred on portraying the atmosphere, fashion and style of 1950s Los Angeles, as it was not really based in reality but of a fictionalised LA, found in pulp fiction novels. In between these styles of gangster films, we find one of 2013's earliest releases: Gangster Squad.

Set in the late 1940s, the men of Los Angeles are still recovering from the end of the Second World War.  Honest policemen like Josh Brolin and walking-smoulder Ryan Gosling are trying to reacquaint themselves back to the homeland and the ex-boxer-turned-gangster Mickey Cohen, played by Sean Penn, is slowly establishing a crime syndicate in Los Angeles.

To fight him, the gigantic bear of a police chief, played by Nick Nolte, puts Brolin in charge of an elite crime-fighting squad with the objective of taking Cohen's empire down. Think The Avengers but with tommy-guns and coquettishly-worn trilby hats. They start using violent means to fulfil their task, but obviously Cohen doesn't take kindly to anybody getting in his way.

Like I mentioned earlier, the way I see gangster films is that they are either the gritty 'law must survive' films, or the suave 'good guys wear trilbys, bad guys wear pinstripe suits'.  The problem with Gangster Squad is that it was trying to be LA Untouchafellas... or Good China Confidential.   It wants to showcase the tension and anguish of the reality of 1950s Los Angeles, but also show how classy and sophisticated it was at the time.

That might be admirable of the relatively-new director Ruben Fleischer, but unfortunately the experiment doesn't seem to work; the film juxtaposes the real-life scenario of underdog cops fighting for what's right against a maniacal gangster's empire, whilst all the time having a glossy sheen of a fictional Los Angeles. A scene where Ryan Gosling swoons and smoulders across his screen, entirely for the ladies in the audience, is followed by a torture sequence where Penn kills an informant with a drill into his forehead. Trust me, no amount of Gosling in your film will keep your women smiling after a grisly scene like that.

The film doesn't give these real-life heroes any real screen time or interaction to establish their characters fully, only giving brief clichéd glimpses into their home and work lives and leaving the rest up to you. Brolin's got a wife who's having a baby and waits up all night worried about when he will come home, Gosling is just a womaniser who foolishly sets his sights on the local kingpin's girlfriend, played by the wasted talent of Emma Stone, the ever-supporting Giovanni Ribisi has a wife and kids therefore doesn't want to get involved with such people, but does anyway because of what's right. It desperately lacks inspiration.

If your aim is to watch an visually interesting and still mysterious crime film, there are much better examples out there then Gangster Squad. Usually anything from Al Pacino or Robert de Niro's early film career.  So please stick to those fantastic films and don't waste your money with Gangster Squad.   It'll leave you feeling as empty and drained as Nick Nolte's fridge.

Rating - 3/10