Friday 31 July 2015

Review: Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

World of Blackout Film Review

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation Poster

Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation
Cert: 12A / 131 mins / Dir. Christopher McQuarrie / Trailer
WoB Rating: 5/7


It's an odd thing, flipping back to the review of the previous M:I movie and realising that I evidently enjoyed it far more than my memory suggests. It was this perceived lukewarm reaction which had led to me being resolutely not-fussed about its successor.

When the Impossible Mission Force is simultaneously shut down by the CIA and compromised by a shadowy collective known as The Syndicate, Ethan Hunt has to regroup his trusted friends to try and discover the truth - if the truth can even be said to exist. Boundaries will be broken, bonds will be tested, cars will be exploded and The Girl One™ will go diving in her vest and pants; yes, it can only be Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation*1!


First things first: the film is a lot of fun. Utterly preposterous fun, but you know that's intentional and it's better for not taking itself too seriously, no matter how many frowns the characters pull. Tom Cruise is on great form playing Tom Cruise™, and is ably assisted by Jeremy Renner, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg*2 doing likewise (playing themselves, not playing Tom Cruise. That would be weird). Rebecca Ferguson gets a relatively good spin of the wheel (for a film of this genre) as a double/triple agent, and Sean Harris is fantastic as ever but seems to have based his bad-guy persona almost entirely on Mr Lovebucket from Mr. Jolly Lives Next Door.

The film's editing (particularly in the action sequences) is marvellous, and director Christopher McQuarrie gets the cast to work together well. It also feels like Rogue Nation has the most coherent story in the series since John Woo's second installment; quite happy to be a self-contained espionage-thriller that hints obliquely at real-world politics, but is really just a delivery-method for bike chases and hanging off a plane. The film jets around the globe for its set-pieces spending, once again, a significant amount of time in London (although the plot dictates that, to be fair). Oh, and Piccadilly/Soho is never that quiet. Not ever.

Every bit as enjoyable as it is disposable, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation knows what it needs to deliver and has no difficulty in achieving it.
I've stepped in deeper puddles, but that's not the point here ;)

Oh, and I know that people variously refer to USB storage devices as 'memory sticks', 'thumb drives' and 'flash drives', but no-one calls them "disks" apart from old fogeys who don't know how their computers work.

Is that you, Ethan Hunt? Is it? Phoning your children on a Sunday afternoon because you went to 'clear out your cookies' and accidentally uninstalled Windows?



Is this film worth paying £10+ to see?
If you like 'em big and loud, it is.


Well, I don't like the cinema. Buy it, rent it, or wait for it to be on telly?
It'll be one to buy, but once it's dropped in price a little.


Does this film represent the best work of the leading performer(s)?
With the best will in the world, there's really nothing new here on the performance-front.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
It does.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
I won't.


Oh, and is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There isn't.


…but what's the Star Wars connection?
The film stars Simon 'Dengar in The Clone Wars' Pegg.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




*1 Oh, and fair play Paramount. You've made a fifth Mission: Impossible movie whose plot involves the British Secret Service, yet completely resisted the temptation to name the film 'MI:5 - Rogue Nation'. Well done on your restraint, I suppose?

*2 Although as a later-addition to the franchise's ever-expanding cast, whose primary role is to 'bring the humour and bumbling' in a voice different to everyone else's, it's ironic that Simon Pegg is essentially the Jar Jar Binks of the Mission: Impossible movies. Delightful, but ironic. I still like him as a comedic-actor, but I feel that's worth pointing out.


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Wednesday 29 July 2015

Review: Pixels

World of Blackout Film Review


Pixels (2015 film)
Pixels (3D) Poster


Pixels is a 2015 American comedy film [citation needed] produced by Columbia Picures and Happy Madison Productions, based on a 1982 video game in which the players control Adam Sandler and Kevin James, urinating over the smouldering ashes of a generation's charred memories of adolescent fun.

The film is directed [citation needed] by Chris Columbus, rated 12A in the UK, runs for 106 excruciating minutes and holds an overall score of 18% on review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
It is a longer, much more painful version of its trailer.




Plot
A sort of shoddily re-hashed Ghostbusters, filtered through Wreck-It Ralph, but with the wit, warmth or inventiveness of neither. After NASA send a video-cassette of gameplay footage into the solar system in 1982, a race of aliens misunderstands the… y'know, what? Fuck it. That's already more effort than the film makes to explain itself.

Evil pixel-y things fall from sky!
Adam Sandler must save world whilst hitting on MILF!

That's about it.
[ TOP ]


Cast
Adam Sandler as a charmless, underachieving man-child in a dead-end 'cable guy' job who's chosen to save the world because he's special, see? (and is friends with the US President) Like all the best [citation needed] Adam Sandler characters, he doesn't have to change one single iota throughout the entire screenplay, as acceptance by his superiors, the admiration of his peers and the awe of humanity's enemies is all handed directly to him in return for no effort. Most importantly, for a champion video-game player, Sandler himself is never seen actually playing any video games. Not once.

Kevin James as Adam Sandler's best friend who has inexplicably (ie, it's not explained) been elected US President. At first I thought this could be a subtle play on Bill Gates' 'be nice to geeks' quip, but since his character is demonstrably thick as pigshit and every bit as charming, it hardly underlines the point.

Josh Gad, who's mostly there because Adam and Kevin are. He plays a geek and conspiracy theorist who is a closeted gay when it suits the script for cheap laughs, but is mostly enamoured by a fictional female game character (Ashley Benson) whose incarnation as an actress is markedly less lifelike than her 8-bit pixelated form.

Michelle Monaghan as Lieutenant Colonel Van Patten of the US Military who is also a single-mother, but who is still reduced to being The Girl One™ on account of this being an Adam Sandler film.

Peter Dinklage struts around the film as a cocky, self-absorbed video-game champion with no redeemable qualities until the third-act reveal that he cheated in the Finals, after which he struts around as a cocky, slightly contrite video-game ex-chamption with no redeemable qualities. Dinklage can do comedy, he just doesn't do it here.

Brian Cox as another X-Men alumnus mistakenly believing that Pixels would be a good way to show that old guys can have fun, too! Plays a constantly angry Army-major stereotype who's so crudely pencilled into the script he's more of a monotype.

Sean Bean as a Professional Yorkshireman, again, whose role as a British Army major is to unconvincingly yet unquestioningly spout a script full of Americanisms.
The entertainment industry's search for Bean's self-awareness continues.
[ TOP ]


Scripting
Sandler clumsily ad-libs his way around a script which took longer to read back than it did to write, whilst the other performers recite their lines with a a combination of disbelief and world-weary acceptance.
[ TOP ]


Effects
All things considered, the CGI interpretations of 1980s video-game classics are relatively good. Still not outstanding, but certainly more accomplished than anything else in the film. The 3D presentation is thoroughly under-used, given the film's penchant for having digital creatures flying around the screen at frequent intervals.
[ TOP ]


Critical Response
Movie-blog World Of Blackout scored the film 1 out of 7, the site's lowest rating, stating "Pixels is a towering monument to lazy and inept screenwriting and performance; the living embodiment of everything that's wrong with focus-grouped, Hot Topic nostalgia. It's the Hollywood studio-system's equivalent of Peter Kay asking you if you remember Pac-Man for two hours, by the end of which you'll wish you didn't."
[ TOP ]


Summary
The film Pixels comprises of an attack on Earth by extra-terrestrials who learned about human civilisation from a VHS cassette launched into space in 1982. The film doesn't go so far as explaining why the alien forces then go on to make references to both Paperboy and Max Headroom, both of which were developed in 1984.

If a film about popular culture can't even get its own references right, why should an audience bother?

[ TOP ]

And if I HAD to put a number on it…



DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Review: Southpaw

World of Blackout Film Review

Southpaw Poster

Southpaw (PLOT SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 124 mins / Dir. Antoine Fuqua / Trailer
WoB Rating: 5/7


Okay, full disclosure (although regular readers will probably already know), I don't really do boxing-movies. Nothing personal against boxing-movies, but I don't really do boxing, because I don't really do sport. If you want to watch sport, watch sport; it's not inherently cinematic in itself, and it's generally not narratively interesting. That said, there are movies (case in point, Rush) which use sport as a background to tell great stories, and in doing so become great films. And for the first 45 minutes or so at least, Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw is a great movie.

The film begins with Billy 'The Great' Hope securing the World Light Heavyweight championship title winning his 43rd consecutive match, and then guides us to a tragic event, following which Billy loses everything; his family, his job, his house and the vast majority of his friends and entourage as he uncovers a clearer picture of who had his back all along. The events of the film's first act are emotionally stunning, and Jake Gyllenhaal, Rachel McAdams and Oona Laurence give incredible performances accordingly.

Once Billy hits rock bottom however, and arrives at a run-down gym owned by Forest Whitaker's grizzled veteran trainer Wills, it seems that director Antoine Fuqua loses interest in the human drama and just wants to make a boxing-movie after all. Every tired old trope is duly rolled out, from the starting-again-at-the-bottom approach to Billy's training, through the I'm-a-disappointment-to-my-kid and the associated quivering bottom-lip, all the way to a-training-montage-set-to-music (yes, really). I should point out that it's never a bad boxing movie, but it certainly becomes a one you've seen before (and as mentioned, I don't watch boxing-movies and even I've seen it before). Because quite frankly, when the promo-material trumpets that it's "from the director of The Equalizer", how groundbreaking do you expect the end product to be?

But saving the film, indeed lifting it triumphantly, is Gyllenhaal's performance. Even in its most pedestrian moments, the screenplay is graced with the presence of one of the finest screen actors of his generation. Countering this perfectly is Oona Laurence as his daughter Leila, a role which could easily have come off as bratty and contrary with any other actress, but to which she brings a genuine sense of internal conflict*1. And last but not least is Rachel McAdams, demonstrating once again that while she doesn't always pick the most challenging roles, she's got the skills when the part calls for them*2.

Jake Gyllenhaal is giving everything he's got as an immersive screen performer to a story of trust, loss, regret and redemption.

Forest Whitaker is in a boxing movie.


Oh, and I mentioned plot spoilers.
Do not read if you haven't seen the film.
Now, as the film goes on, the converging screenplay makes it perfectly clear that this underdog-story is only going to end one way. And I'm fine with that. Of course Billy is going to accept the grudge-match fight against his moral enemy. Of course that fight is going to go on for twelve rounds with both fighters in increasing states of disrepair. Of course that last round is going to go on until the final few seconds when our hero will land one final uppercut which sends his nemesis flying backwards in a high-framerate/slow-motion spray of blood, sweat and saliva. But when Escobar then gets up again before the bell rings; when the winner is decided by the judges and even then Billy only squeezes through by two points, he hasn't really redeemed himself, has he? It may be a technical victory, but it's not the moral, narrative one if he's only "slightly" better than his opponent. He hasn't spent the last two hours of our time proving that he's "about the same" as the major-league arsehole from act 1, has he? He hasn't gone on this elliptical journey of self-realisation and fulfilment only to be validated not by his own actions and determination, but by a judge who frankly couldn't made a decision either way, has he? Really, Fuqua? Really?
Apart from that, I really enjoyed it.

Oh, and…
When Maureen is shot in the scuffle at the hotel lobby, the police tell Billy that they suspect it was one of his minders that had the gun, but they can't go any further because "no-one's talking". What the actual fuck? A hotel that opulent would have CCTV everywhere, especially in a public-area like the lobby. Even if the gun was concealed at the time of the shot, the CCTV would pick up the muzzle-flare and/or the recoil easily. Are the NYPD really lazy enough to suspend a murder investigation of an international sporting champion's wife in public because "no-one wants to talk"? What's worse is that no-one outside of the police force really seems to give a shit about it for the rest of the film, either.
…it's still rather good, though. Really.


Is this film worth paying £10+ to see?
If boxing movies are your thing, yes.


Well, I don't like the cinema. Buy it, rent it, or wait for it to be on telly?
Probably a rental, you may not get enough rewatch-value to buy it.


Does this film represent the best work of the leading performer(s)?
Gyllenhaal is on fire, once again.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
Only just.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
Nah.


Oh, and is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There isn't.


…but what's the Star Wars connection?
Southpaw stars none other than Forest Whitaker, due to make an appearance in 2016's Star Wars: Rogue One.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




*1 Although during the final, climactic match, her section of the script devolves to "Oh! Daddy's getting hurt!", as if she's been previously unaware that he's a boxer and has forgotten all the nights he's come home and kissed her goodnight, drooling blood all over her duvet. No seriously, this happens in the film. That won't come out at forty degrees...

*2 One of McAdams' first scenes sees her sending an apparently surreptitious text to an unknown recipient, in a sort of "oh, we'll be coming back to this one later" type way. Then it's never mentioned again. What gives there, then? Trust-issues sub-plot lost in the edit?


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Monday 27 July 2015

Review: Maggie

World of Blackout Film Review

Maggie Poster

Maggie
Cert: 15 / 95 mins / Dir. Henry Hobson / Trailer
WoB Rating: 6/7


What a weird state of affairs this is for zombie-fans; where a box-office draw who is also a generally underrated actor brings us one of the lamest examples of what can be achieved with the genre, and an equally powerful (commercially, at least) figure who is usually the cinematic equivalent of a paperweight brings us one of the best.

In a time not too far from our own, humanity, indeed global civilisation, is being royally challenged by the Necroambulist virus, a contagious disease which transforms its victims into snarling, drooling carnivores devoid of empathy (or indeed civilisation). After becoming infected whilst exploring alone in a devastated city, Maggie is detained by the authorities, kept under medical supervision and is about to be shipped to one of the government's approved Quarantine Centres when her father Wade, a crop-farmer from Kansas, locates her and persuades the doctors to let her come home until the infection reaches the critical point of The Turn. But can Maggie be trusted to roam freely with a dangerous condition that the medical establishment are still learning about? And can the inhabitants of her small hometown be trusted to let a flesh-eating timebomb roam in their midst..?

Most importantly, Maggie works perfectly well as a zombie-flick; if you want to enjoy it on a literal level, that won't be a problem. The film's undead-epidemic follows (mostly) the established structural format, so the script keeps medical and social exposition to a minimum, relying on the audience knowing how this sort of thing works by now. The area where it slips away from the pack (yet still doesn't feel the need to over-explain itself) is the progression of the virus itself. Whereas in most films of the genre a bite results in a fatal fever and reanimation usually within a matter of hours, the Necroambulist infection takes around eight weeks to reach its conclusion, over which time the subject can walk, talk and interact as normal, albeit with progressing symptoms of zombie-ness. Most intriguingly, because the virus in the film is a slow transformation which doesn't use host-death as the binary division-line, "The Turn" (as it's called in the film) can be effectively snapped-out-of, up to a point at least. Dramatically, this is the film's trump-card as the central character can both beloved daughter and feared monster, if not simultaneously then alternately at least.

But like all the best zombie movies, Maggie purposely doesn't use The Z-Word, and works better when it's viewed as an allegory for another issue; in this case, the coping mechanisms of AIDS sufferers*1, their families and communities. Leaving aside the cataracting eyes, pitch-black blood and decaying flesh, it's a remarkably delicate film. While Abigail Breslin is magnificent in the title role, it has to be said that the film wouldn't work without Ol' Arnie as her father, either. I have to join the crowd on this one and say how refreshing it is to see Schwarzenegger in a role which is genuinely different for him, and he's a good casting-choice for Wade, as he doesn't over-egg the pudding of earnestness (although credit is also due to director Henry Hobson for not letting him, either). Arnie still doesn't have a massive range, of course, but at least the screenplay lets him try his hand and doesn't reduce him to a gurning catchphrase-machine.

Visually, the film is of The Walking Dead school, with all but one of the scenes desaturated to the hilt. Rather than the lingering desolate landscapes however, lens-master Lukas Ettlin prefers the hand-held closeup, yet the agoraphobic result is still the same: the person who's the most scared in the film is the monster herself.

I promise you, you've never seen such a thought-provoking film which also features two zombies making out. If your cinema is showing two Arnie films this week, pick this one.



Is this film worth paying £10+ to see?
Maggie is another film with a very sparse cinematic release, but if you can, do.


Well, I don't like the cinema. Buy it, rent it, or wait for it to be on telly?
Rental; you may not get too many watches out of it before the metaphor becomes too apparent to make it properly enjoyable.


Does this film represent the best work of the leading performer(s)?
Breslin is outstanding, Richardson is capable, Schwarzenegger is far better than he has any right to be.


Does the film achieve what it sets out to do?
Absolutely.


Will I think less of you if we disagree about how good/bad this film is?
Probably not too much.


Oh, and is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
There isn't.


…but what's the Star Wars connection?
Abigail Breslin starred in 2013's August: Osage County, as did Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor.
(All roads lead to Kenobi, today.)


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




*1 It could well apply to all terminal (especially contagious) diseases, but the attitude of the non-infected characters in the film leans heavily toward that of the early days of HIV/AIDS when little was known and treatments were as optimistic as they were pharmaceutical. And it's a heavy-handed allegory, sure, but how much to you want to tiptoe around small-town prejudice?

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Sunday 26 July 2015

Review: Heat

I can't believe I haven't seen…

Heat Poster

Heat (1995)
Cert: 15 / 163 mins / Dir. Michael Mann / Trailer
WoB Rating: 4/7


How can a film which is held in such universally high esteem be so difficult to love? Michael Mann's 1995 crime epic owes so much to Tarantino that it's had to take out a loan with Coppola just to keep up the repayments.

For all the fantastic set-pieces and ambitious story-weaving, Heat is three hours of grimacing and mumbling, padded out with needless back-story masquerading as character-building. It feels like a great TV series has been compressed down into a movie, but the writers didn't want to leave anything out so the incidental characters still appear, but without any real purpose or closure.

The real problem (for me, admittedly) is that the film's characters are so inherently unlikeable or poorly drawn that I didn't care if they lived or died come the final credits. And if your characters are that uninteresting to begin with, spending time watching their home-lives deteriorate isn't going to help matters either.

Don't take my moaning to heart, I didn't actively dislike Heat, and the dynamic between Pacino's over-acting cop, Hanna and career-criminal McCauley is the fascinating linchpin of the movie. But aside from their restaurant-conversation scene, it's a drawn-out cops'n'robbers-by-numbers with any actors who didn't star in The Godfather films left to fend for themselves as the plot moves on the the focus is whittled down to two threads.

There's a really great 100-minute thriller in here, somewhere, but Heat needs less characters and more character development.



Have you really never seen this before?
Really.


So are you glad you've finally have?
*shrugs*


And would you recommend it, now?
If you like overly-long movies that have been done before in half the time, sure.


Oh, and is there a Wilhelm Scream in it?
Not that I heard.


…but what's the Star Wars connection?
Heat stars Queen Amidala herself, Natalie Portman.


And if I HAD to put a number on it…




DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.