The Plot: Blah blah, troubled young girl. Blah blah, mysterious box with Hebrew inscriptions. Blah blah, dead insects. Blah blah live insects. Blah blah eyes rolling up in her head while she talks funny / violent incident at school / psychologist. Blah blah the most comedic scene with an MRI scanner ever committed to film. Blah blah demon leaves child and enters father. Blah blah Jewish exorcism. Blah blah more loose ends than a rug made in a GCSE textiles class. Blah blah it's over. But is it really over? NO! IT'S NOT OVER! WOOOOO!
It's based on a true story, alright. The true story of the every other time I saw a film as tedious and predictable as this.
The only thing inherently terrifying about The Possession is Kyra Sedgwick. Natasha Calis, who plays the possessed 'Em' does a reasonable job at long, unnerving stares, but it's a sad day when the best thing about a film is a kid who's not doing anything.
When the final scene closed and the credits appeared on-screen, a ripple of laughter actually went around the cinema. I fucking kid you not.
Yeah, a 2. Hey; I laughed, at least. Probably more than in Keith Lemon, if I think about it...
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
I mean you wouldn't remake what is already a perfectly serviceable bubblegum action/thriller, obviously, you just wouldn't, but if you had to… I mean absolutely had to, would you get the director of the frankly patchy Underworld films, his wife and star of those films who also put her name on Pearl Harbour, and the Irish actor who played an Irish villain in Daredevil where he couldn't do a convincing Irish accent? Do you think that would get the project a green-light?
The Plot: Factory-worker Doug Quaid commutes every day to the other side of the world, to a dead-end job, and comes home to a dead-end slum. Haunted by a recurring nightmare, he toys with visiting Rekall, a company which can sell you any memory you desire, but his first trip unlocks more than he ever imagined, and soon Doug's boundaries between reality, memory and fantasy become terrifyingly blurred...
The Good: The most difficult thing about it is separating your brain from your own memories of the original. There are too many similarities with the 1990 movie for this to be a reboot, but too many differences for it to be classed as a remake. There's a reference to Mars in this new one, but that's it. This re-imagining of the story will no doubt irk hardcore fans of the Arnie flick and/or the short story it was based on, but let's not lionise the previous incarnation: everything we really loved about 1990's Total Recall was down to Philip K. Dick's story, not Schwarzenegger or Verhoeven.*1 Don't get me wrong, it's good, but y'know.
Anyway, Total Recall looks gorgeous. There's a definite Blade-Runner feel to the slums, albeit without the technology, and there's been a conscious decision to mash a lot of cultures and ethnicities together (as if this really is the arse-end of humanity), and the final result is stunning. The level of detail in the sets (on both sides of the globe) had me constantly searching the screen for Easter-eggs (can anyone tell me what book he's reading on the way to work?).
Farrell is surprisingly likeable as Doug Quaid, Biel is reliably fiesty as his love interest Melina, and Beckinsdale is predictably borderline-unhinged as his wife Lori. Everyone else is a cut-out character, but how much do you need from an action film? Oh, and yes; you get to see the lady with three knockers. Honestly, you lot.
Joking aside, this new version of the film is surprisingly competent on many levels. It deviates nicely from the audience's expectations and delivers new riffs on an old theme until...
The Bad: Mainly, Bill Nighy trying (and largely failing) to pull off an American accent. In all honesty, I think the only time he's ever been anything other than Bill Nighy™ was when he was Davy Jones in PotC. I mean, he doesn't ruin it, or anything, but you never forget you're watching Bill Nighy. Which more or less sums up the man's career to date.
Elsewhere, the film is let down by its third act. Prior to that, we get a layered twisty-turny thriller*2 which is pointing towards a huge psychological meltdown of at least one of the characters… then it turns into an action/chase movie. Pretty much all of the plot and dialogue up to that point has been leading up to a 25-minute chase sequence that we can all guess the end to because we already know the film. It's a damned shame, because Total Recall had been playing with so much more.
The Ugly: Now, I was going to write about the film-makers' twisted sense of geography. In particular, UK geography. The opening pre-amble to the film tells us how, in the late 21st century, chemical warfare renders most of Earth uninhabitable. Only two sections of the planet remain; The United Federation of Britain, and The Colony (ex-Australia). A pipeline runs through the planet-core to bring workers from slummy Oz to oh-so-lovely Britain (more on that later). Now the graphic at the start of the film indicates that both countries are 'inhabitable' (ie, they're the light bits on a darkened global map, with a little bit of France also included).
When Colin Farrell and Jessica Biel pop up in London and crash their hover-car*3, we go from the elevated sky-lanes where everything's all space-age, to the streets of London Town. You can tell that because the Palace of Westminster*4 is in the background. Ground-level London looks suspiciously 'the same as now', but that doesn't bother me. At least it didn't until Colin and Jessica have to leave the safety of the habitable area to go into the 'No-Zone' to see the terrorist Bill Nighy (with Jessica saying 'oh, the baddies can't catch him because he hides further out of London). Firstly, they go on a disused Tube train, so it's not going to be that far out of London. Secondly, when they don their gas masks and get off the train into the smoky ochre wasteland, you can see the BT tower in the background. That's in central fucking London. Westminster and the BT tower are less than three miles apart. How is that 'the wasteland', and what does it say about the rest of Britain?
Anyhow, when Colin Farrell steals a future-helicopter and belts back into London*5, it only takes him a minute or so. So I guess the people who dreamt that scenario up are geographically sound, they just have no fucking clue as to how pointless it would be to inhabit the South East of England when you've got all of Australia to play with.
So. It turns out that wasn't The Ugly, just a minor point. No, what really hacked me off is this through-planet lift system they've got going from London to Australia. Not the concept (I can handle that silliness), more that they've got people commuting on it. The diameter of the earth is just under 8,000 miles. Even assuming that the evil corporation that ferries people from the other side of the globe to work every day*6 would rather spend time/money on transport rather than just housing people in the No-Zone, in order to make a sensible commute, the shuttle would have to be travelling at at least 2,000 miles an hour. Now, I wouldn't have a problem with that if our heroes didn't end up having a jump-about barney on the outside of the shuttle while it's in transit. Even accounting for the fucked-up gravity (which I'm not sure is handled properly), the amount of drag/g-force you'd get at that speed would be ridiculous.
Yes, that really was four paragraphs over 'not much, really'. Apart from a 2,000mph car that doesn't kill its inhabitants with g-force alone.
All in all: I enjoyed it, make of that what you will. On a technical level, it's head and shoulders above its predecessor. And Farrell acts better than Schwarzenegger*1. That said, he doesn't get to say The Quaid Line™, so perhaps we will never know.
Worth £8+? To see it massively on a massive screen? Yes.
Better than it has any right to be.*7
*1 There. I said it. *2 It's no Inception, but there are certainly visual cues buried underneath the Blade Runner facade. *3 1) It's the future, see? 2) Yes, Spoilers. I did warn you. No, you shut up. *4 Y'know. 'Big Ben'. I didn't want to call it Big Ben because of pedants and that, but there you have it. We both know what it is. *5 Yes, he's already 'in' London, I know. I'm not sure this film was made with me in mind. *6 Yeah, time/cost-effective. Absolutely. *7Listen, thank you for putting up with all these footnotes. No, I appreciate it. Really.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
My first-draft review of Total Recall sprawled out to be a right old beast. It's at the link above if you really want that much detail.
The short version? This is a good film. Not 'great', but so much better than it could have been. Enough new things have been put in that it'll keep you on your toes for the first hour or so. After that, it pretty much dissolves into action/chase film. Not a bad action/chase film, but so much more by-the-numbers than what's gone before.
All in all: If you can trick your brain into forgetting the Arnie version, you'll enjoy this immensely. Stop looking for connections, the film deliberately throws you off that track.
In and of itself, it's pretty damned good.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
I mean, it looks alright, doesn't it? Y'know. Alright..?It's not.
This is the third attempt at my review of Keith Lemon: The FIlm. I tried a lengthy description of where I think it's failing as a big-screen adaptation of a televisual vehicle, but I was getting too bogged down in the details. Next, I tried addressing those points in the form of a fictional/hypohetical scripted meeting between LionsGate Entertainment executives, writer Leigh Francis and director Paul Angunawela, but again the pithy observations I was wanting to make were hamstrung by needing to make Leigh and Paul defend their project to the point where it gets greenlit. I can't imagine how they did it.
In other words, I've already spent more time on this review than they did on the screenplay. So, back to my usual review format. I'll try and keep it brief.
The Plot: There isn't one. Some bollocks about mobile phones, but it's very loosely strung together. A series of sketches, with an interweaving narrative that makes no sense, even within the confines of a borderline-surreal story. Leigh Francis knows some famous people, you will see them in this.
The Good: I did laugh, albeit semi-regularly, and albeit often at the absurdity of what I was seeing rather than the jokes indicated in the script. This would have made a passable Christmas TV Special (by which I mean that if you made it an hour's air-time, subtracted advert-time from that, you'd be left with 42 minutes of celebrity-infused set-pieces with an overriding narrative that's ripped off from a Christmas movie anyway. Bung it on ITV2 at 10pm on December 23rd, and it'd be perfectly acceptable.) Oh, and Kelly Brook's in it, if that's your thing. And trust me, LionsGate have distributed this with the sincere, desperate hope that that's your thing.
The Bad: In its current format, it is not acceptable. There's enough swearing and crudeness to earn an edgy 15 Certificate, Leigh Francis deftly inserts all of his characters to date into the film hoping audience recognition will be an adequate substitute for a screenplay, and there's a subplot about mobile phones that's like satire for Nuts and Zoo readers. When it's not beating you round the head with cock-jokes (even Brook looks embarrassed to be there half the time), it's baffling you with how little effort it's making to be A Film. And yes, I'm aware that this could indeed be the real joke here, but it's a joke that holds its own audience in absolute contempt.
The worst thing is, I liked Francis' work up until Keith Lemon. I think he's a weak character, comedically, and leaning on appearances from Cotton/Willoughby/Bunton etc just reinforces how little he has to offer. But the laughs I had, actually came from Lemon (and no-one else). The funniest thing in the film is a character I don't particularly like. If Francis had ramped up the surreal qualities of his universe, this could have been a lot more fun to watch (or indeed, 'clevererer' haha I made a joke). As it stands, you'll be seeing the DVDs of this movie in charity-shops for a long time to come…
The Ugly: THIS FILM CONTAINS KEVIN BISHOP AND PADDY McGUINNESS. WITH SPEAKING ROLES.
IT'S NOT A FILM
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
...just because.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
First things first, Brave looks fantastic, and much of the scenery is borderline photo-real until the stylised characters come galloping into view. The 3D is nicely done (as usual with animated features) up to the scenes which take place in near-darkness, then it's a matter of guessing what's happening on-screen, what with the glasses helpfully protecting your eyes from the cinematic glare to begin with.
My biggest bugbear with the film is that it's a Classic Fable™ plot structure, told in an Exciting Adventure™ format, and the two don't quite meet in the middle. This kind of storytelling would work so much more convincingly if it'd been animated 20-30 years ago in hand-drawn 2D. I've nothing against 3D CGI, but it's really the wrong tool for the job here. There are frequent visual gags and slapstick which work, but again feel slightly out of place in what should be a grander telling, somehow. The voice-acting's largely on-par, but with characters as generic as these, the performers are limited to what they can actually inject into the proceedings. The only stand-out performance is Billy Connolly's, but a voice and delivery like his only serve to remind you that 'hey, that's Billy Connolly'.
But it's alright in a sort of largely generic way. Disney's writers have submitted a second-draft detailed outline, and Pixar's animators have made it look great. It's certainly better than I feared it might be, but nowhere as good as I'd hoped. The overriding theme is supposed to be about child-parent bonding and mutual communication, but what I picked up from it was 'Don't try and alter the future your parents have mapped out for you, you'll only fuck things up and it'll be all your fault.' Way to go, Disney.
Brave has all the edge of a marshmallow, and at times is just as sickly. It's heart's in the right place, but it lacks sincerity.
Enjoyable enough, all in all, but it left me with nothing.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
I've got to be honest, I'd already judged this film by its poster. Twee, isn't it? Now the thing about books and covers isn't supposed to be true*1, but can the same be said for movies? Exorbitant amounts of money are shovelled into marketing films to their chosen demographic by assembling a poster than does not accurately portray the cinematic work it's advertising, but instead pushes the buttons of its respective target audience. If they're mis-sold a movie? Who gives a shit, you've already got their £8. Damn, I'm cynical. If any of you lovely people have ever been in a room when someone's asked my about my opinion*2 on Love, Actually, then you'll know what I've got against this type of cinematic setup.
Anyhow, looking at the poster you see above, my mind had decided 'Ensemble Britcom, laboured farce, Bill Nighy lurking somewhere playing himself. Again.' Amazingly (and thankfully), I was proved wrong…
The Plot: As a gift for his brother Tim's wedding to Saskia, Raif plans to shoot a video documenting the big day, and the six weeks leading up to it. But the path of true love never runs smooth, and neither does a British wedding! With hilarious consequences…
The Good: Yes, I was pleasantly surprised. I like Rufus Hound, Robert Webb and Lucy Punch anyway, but all of their performances are dialled much further down than you'd expect, and it makes for a stronger film as a result. The entire movie is shot first-person (and is essentially The Wedding Video), a device which works far better than it should. On a technical level, devices are put in place to facilitate all three leads being in shot at the same time (and simultaneous shots, miles apart, being intercut) and they work 95% of the time. It's only going to be film geeks and tapeheads who sit and raise an eyebrow at the finalised professionalism of what they're watching (even though that's alluded to, albeit slightly unconvincingly).
But ultimately The Wedding Video is funny. To the point where I laughed out loud a lot. And that's the point, right? It gets a bit Whiny™ toward the end, sure, but it's kept pretty much to a minimum (albeit with implausible results). If this film had come out of one of the Hollywood majors, it would have been so much more hard work. Shit, I smell a re-make already. Has anyone got Paul Rudd's number?
The Bad: It lurches towards the aforementioned Britcom Farce from time to time, which seems out of place only because the rest of the film's so much better than that. There are pacing issues I really can't go into without majorly spoiling the film, but they don't spoil the film, if that makes any sense. Key plot points aren't so much telegraphed as handed to audience members on Post-It notes when they buy their tickets. If you treat The Wedding Video as a series of sketches, rather than a narrative, it's a lot easier to watch.
The Ugly: There ain't a lot of Robert Webb in this Robert Webb film. I've already been shortchanged by Batman this year, ffs. In all honesty, I can see why the film has him in such a surprisingly muted role (in many senses), but I think it could have been fleshed out with more Tim. And that's my only major gripe with it. Yes, I can't remember the last time that happened, either. I like Robert Webb.
Worth £8+? Just about. I mean, if you can hold off, it'll be on DVD for £3*3 in less than a year. I actually paid to see this at a Vue cinema, so it wasn't included in my Cineworld thing. What I'm saying is, for a £9 layout, this blog could have been a lot angrier. Now if I'm happy, the civilians should be more than. Look, it's good, but my expectations were incredibly low. I may well have just raised yours. Disregard all this if you haven't seen the film yet, but come back and congratulate me later if you agree*4.
Geek Point: During Tim's speech in the church, I could have sworn I saw Julian Glover (General Veers/Walter Donovan) sitting behind Saskia's mother, filming proceedings on his phone. I'm probably mistaken, but I'd spent the film thinking I might have heard a Wilhelm Scream, so that sort of thing was on my mind. Let me know if it is him, yeah?
*1 Even though it is. That said, I usually judge any particular book by the kind of people that read it. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. *2 By which I mean, been in a room when someone's mentioned Love, Actually and I've been within earshot. 3 Such is the way of things. It's why people don't pay £9 to see films at the cinema. *4 Meta, isn't it?
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
So I've done it. After resisting the urge for a few years, I've finally got me one of those Smart Telephones, as I believe the kids are calling them (Not pictured. Clearly). Given the eyebrows that I've raised by my insistence of using a phone with buttons on it (it may as well have a dial, grandad), I've switched to what is essentially a battery-draining TFT screen which will be perpetually covered in fingerprint-grease. Android, if you're interested.
I've been pestered by friends and contemporaries for a long time now, usually with the dangling carrot of 'It does Facebook, and we know you like Facebook!'. So does my computer, and that has an actual keyboard, thanks (this is also why I don't have an iPad). The real reason behind the move isn't the functionality of the handset, but the ridiculous Pay-and-Go tariff I was on. So I'm on a contract now, and with that I get a handheld screen so that I can check in to places to save my stalkers some time/effort, and share polaroid-style photos of sunsets and whatever it is I'm about to eat*1.
Anyway, it occurred to me that I don't consider myself to be someone who's constantly switching phones, and yet there they all are. The new one's my eighth phone in about ten years, which isn't a fantastic track record. The three Nokia sets I've used have been functional, hard-wearing and had excellent signal reception. The three Samsungs have failed on each of those levels. The Sony was somewhere in the middle; a good phone but I couldn't get on with the interface.
Oh yeah, you can only see two Samsungs in that picture. I'm afraid the D900 didn't make the grade. Although I do have a photo of it.
It turns out the Samsung D900 has poor heat-resistance. And poor drill-resistance. Who knew? Sleep well, number five. May flights of demons wing you to your rest.
Oh, you're welcome.
*1 Oh, come on. Instagrams are like children. Other people's are annoying, even though you think your own are the best thing in the world. And I include myself in that. I'm not really that grumpy about the whole thing, but spending ten minutes on your Facebook news-feed will illustrate my point.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
@LauraSparling - That's a lot more creepy a) Now he's dead, b) Having you singing it, c) a & b.
@MightyBlackout ZOMBEADLE
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout HAHAHA! Oh how I love thee, Laura!
@Donna_Gallers @MightyBlackout Ha! God, though, imagine a zombie Beadle coming after you. *shudders*
@LauraSparling - Oh, *yes*! Springing out of a bin dressed as a traffic warden and biting someone's face. What a card! #ZomBeadle
@MightyBlackout I want this to happen.
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout Jesus, that's enough to give me nightmares!
@LauraSparling @Donna_Gallers He uses his withered hand to create the optical illusion that he's further away. More withered now, obviously.
@MightyBlackout @Donna_Gallers *snortles*
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout good enough reason to bring him back.
@MightyBlackout @Donna_Gallers This is rad. I want this as a TV movie. I'm thinking Channel 4.
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout Charlie Brooker/ Zombie Big Bro style.
@Donna_Gallers @MightyBlackout Yes. Exactly like Dead Set.
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout that's it, couldn't think of the name!
@MightyBlackout @Donna_Gallers *closes eyes and nods* Boom. This is gonna be massive. (Unlike Zombeadle's death paw.)
@LauraSparling @Donna_Gallers - With the tagline "...the final joke is on humanity" #ZomBeadle
@Donna_Gallers @LauraSparling - When there's no more room in Hell, Beadle will walk the earth... #YoudBetterWatchOutBeadlesUndead
@LauraSparling @MightyBlackout Question, if he happens to, you know, accidentally bite someone, does that create another #Zombeadle?
@Donna_Gallers @LauraSparling - Yes. A worldwide army of reanimated pranksters all wearing false beards over their decomposing beards...
@MightyBlackout @LauraSparling Sweet Jesus.
@Donna_Gallers @LauraSparling Yep, he's already got a beard, so the incubation period would be shorter for him. One hand shrinks & he wakes.
@MightyBlackout @Donna_Gallers Write this down. Write. It. Down
…and thus it begins. A TV series in October 2012, with tie-in novels and comics, and a full-length film planned for third-quarter 2013. Who says social-networking's a waste of time, eh?
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
You've got to feel a bit sorry for Stallone. Doing the press for the Expendables he said he hoped to re-invigorate the genre, seemingly not realising that the ideals he thinks encapsulate and elevate The Action Film™ are the very factors that pushed it towards straight-to-video sequels. Baffling, blinkered moralising, high-end pyrotechnics and poor acting leads you down a one-way street that's not easy to escape; hence the trapped passengers of that inexorable journey all being wheeled out to auto-pilot their way through 2010's ensemble-flick that took itself a little too seriously. So it'd be an appropriate technique to just do the same thing again two years later, yeah..?
The Good: I found it to be far more fun than the first Expendables movie. There's a real lightness of touch considering how many un-named characters get killed, and for the most part there's a great chemistry between the leads. There are no real surprises in there, although wasn't expecting The Character Death™ to happen at the point it did (that's not a spoiler, get off my case).
I found myself grinning on more than one occasion, if only due to the sheer scale of the effects on display. There are shoehorned-in scenes of exposition and the gang chilling in their downtime, but they do provide breathing points between the explosions. There's also a very clearly marked line between who is Good™ and who is Bad™, but in the context of this film it's entirely excusable; enough extras have been hired with the sole purpose of dying on-screen that they really need to justify that these people are just too naughty to live. And it's not strictly the USA vs The World either, as one scene points out when Ross (Stallone) introduces his team as "Americans", only to be corrected by them one by one. Sort of like a United Nations of Blowing Shit Up.
For better or worse, The Expendables 2 is a fairly easy-watch, which works in its favour given the brooding nature of its contemporaries, Bourne and Batman. There are brightly flagged jokes in there (some work, some don't), and the moral ambiguity of the agency Bruce Willis is working for is barely even addressed, but the sense of adventure is undeniable.
The Bad: As with the previous film, the problems creep in when the characters aren't shooting, stabbing, punching or kicking each other. Or blowing each other up. Anything that isn't driven by immediate, gleeful violence veers between charmingly silly and flat-out stupid. Now while you may think that's acceptable for a film of this type, you soon realise it's not while you're being subjected to it. I don't care how large Stallone's IQ is, he can't write, and he can't deliver dialogue. And if you're thinking of pulling out magical evidence that he can, then I'll use Expendables 2 as proof that he's chosen not to. Which is worse, if anything.
Can you imagine how dire the situation is when I tell you that all the charm in the movie comes from Jason Statham and Dolph Lundgren? No, seriously, they're both pretty great. Generally speaking, the whole cast is great. But Stallone keeps pulling the train to a crawl, and Schwarzenegger and Van Damme threaten to de-rail it completely.
But those are just acting quibbles. Elsewhere we have a massive shootout in a civilian airport where our heroes are firing every bit as indiscriminately as The Baddies™, and some batshit-crazy subplot about five tonnes of weapons-grade plutonium being handled and transported with no protective measures whatsoever. My point is, this didn't have to be a dumb movie... but they made it one, anyway.
The Ugly: You know that bit in the trailer where Arnie leans out of that car door, and with delivery and comic timing that can only be matched by his Quaid line, spurts out "...I'M BACK!"? You know how you thought, 'Oh. They've taken one of the most iconic verbal references of 1980's cinema, and rather than parodying it in a self-aware manner (which would still be clunky), they've bludgeoned it to death with the actor who can act less now than he could when he first delivered it'? I thought it, anyway*.
Well, there's a moment during the shootout in the airport that trumps that. This moment steamrollers in like a toddler with a claw-hammer, and manages to make that earlier reference look like Oscar Fucking Wilde by comparison. Schwarzenegger and Willis stumble over the dialogue, barely able to believe what they've been scripted to say, while the audience are barely able to believe that they agreed to it. At least Willis has the decency to deadpan his lines to try and mask his shame a little...
Worth leaving the house for? Despite the above, The Expendables 2is a lot more of a fun, relaxed ride than the first installment. Embrace-the-stupid, you'll enjoy it immensely. A movie this big and unashamedly silly really holds more water when it's on a massive screen, so stroll down to your multiplex next Orange Wednesday.
Geek Point: On the plant-flight into Albania, Dolph Lundgren's Jensen is wearing a Star Wars t-shirt. This Star Wars t-shirt, to be precise. Fucking high-five, Dolph! Now, that's not the only reason I like him in this film, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't one of them. Vader represent.
*To be fair, some people might have thought 'Oh! It's funny because he said "I'll be back!" in a film about 30 years ago AND NOW HE IS SAYING HE IS BACK AND I HAVE MADE A CONNECTION WITH THE TWO THINGS AND I AM CLEVER!'. To be fair, these are the same people who found the Expendables 2 Orange Promo funny as well. Y'know, the people who check their e-mails during films at the cinema. Yes, those people. Incidentally, I can't find the Orange promo anywhere online. It's that great that Lionsgate keep taking it down from YouTube.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
Gotham. Sunlight gleams on the upper floors of skyscrapers, casting a golden glow around the rooftops, and reflecting down to the streets below. It's the end of the afternoon, or early evening at latest, and the Stock Exchange is still open, the city's financiers are hard at work, trading shares to make a profit for their respective companies, and raise the profile of Gotham as a whole. Inside, as two traders exchange speculative smalltalk while getting their shoes polished, a motorcycle courier enters and is buzzed through the security barrier. A supervisor tells him he has to remove his helmet for security reasons. The courier complies. Hell erupts now.
After disposing of the security staff, the masked mercenary known as Bane walks onto the main trading floor, his armed support team already in place. In a hail of gunfire he gains the attention of everyone that hadn't already noticed something was amiss. Bane approaches a young, terrified, but petulantly defiant trader. "This is a stock exchange!", he spurts, "There's no money here for you to steal!". The mercenary is unperturbed "Oh? Then why are you people here?" he retorts before slamming the yuppie into a console and using his credentials to open the computer. This is when the real work takes place. Bane's hacking team gain hardwired access to the trading program, and place several high-risk transactions in Bruce Wayne's name, using his stolen thumb-print as verification. The investments they make are almost guaranteed to fail, bankrupting Wayne and placing his company into crisis, whereby Wayne Enterprises board member John Daggett can use one of his other companies to subsume Wayne Ent and use the company for his own ends. "How long will the uploads take?", Bane asks his technologically adept henchman. "Eight minutes..." he confirms, and sets the automated program in place. We see a timer on the otherwise nondescript TFT screen, and a percentage indicator slowly increases above it.
Outside, the sunlight has disappeared and rain is beginning to fall on the now-grey streets. Alarms inside the Stock Exchange have alerted the police, who are arriving in their droves. Whether this is a robbery or a hostage situation is in dispute, and Deputy Commissioner Foley decides the best course of action in the interim is to cut the cabling to the building's cell-tower while they await contact with the criminals. Back on the trading floor, this move has let Bane's team know they have company outside. "Looks like they've taken out the wire", the lead-hacker reports. Bane takes this in. "Then it's time to go mobile!" he informs them. The upload is switched to wireless, and the raiders prepare to exit the building.
At the main entrance in the grey early evening, the assembled GCPD points its guns toward the doors, where a commotion is beginning to form inside. The doors swing open, and traders and staff members begin to swarm out on to the street, with Foley's call to his men to hold fire. Suddenly from behind the doors, three motorcyclists burst through the crowd still exiting the building, each with a hostage / human-shield riding pillion. The lead biker is Bane, following is his hacker associate, and another member of his team, all riding in the same general direction, but hoping to pull a police pursuit in different directions if the need arises. The police have begun to erect roadblock-ramps, thinking the criminals would be escaping in one four-wheeled vehicle, but the bikes clear these easily, and they're hastily lowered so that a chasedown can begin.
As predicted, the police have no knowledge of which biker takes priority, and they attempt to catch all three, although they're fairly sure the one in the lead is Bane. Racing through the undercity, we see the hacker take his tablet computer out of his bag to check on the upload; he still needs more time. We cut to the interior of a pursuing police car, as the officers inside notice the surrounding streetlights dip out and they're momentaily plunged into darkness, the result of an Electro-Magnetic Pulse device. A thundering growl approaches them from behind, and a vehicle with two massive wheels roars out of the night... the BatMan has returned. For the first time in eight years, Gotham's dark knight races through the rain-wet streets on the Batpod, chasing an adversary that only he stands a chance of catching. His brings his first target off his bike, leaving him for the police to arrest, and sets after his second - the hacker carrying the tablet that's in the process of bankrupting Bruce Wayne. Batman dismounts the rider, and pulls the computer out of his backpack in time to see the upload complete. Time has run out and the transactions have been made. Nothing more can be done from here, and the only option for Batman is to flee the police.
Bane has escaped both pursuers, and the Deputy Commissioner's priorities change, now. Ever the career-cop, and with the recent revelation that Commissioner Gordon will soon be put out to pasture by the mayor, he decides that the armed robbers aren't as great a priority as usurping Gordon's position by achieving what he failed to do: apprehend Batman. All units are diverted into chasing the vigilante through Gotham's streets, and Batman is finally cornered in the dead-end of an unlit side street. The police wait at the junction, knowing that their quarry is trapped, and that one way or another he'll have to emerge from the darkness.
As Foley is about to address Batman over a loudhailer, an engine starts up, and two piercing blue headlights stab out of night. Headlights that are too high off the ground to be the bike they chased in there...
Now, there are several things that bug me from this particular set-piece.
• The notion that a group of elite hackers can only access the stock exchange computers from inside the building, in this day and age, is comical. The entire point of the trading system is that people don't have to be in the same room, and even if a hardwired connection was needed (which is wasn't, they went wireless), they could have surreptitiously entered the system with far greater ease, even out-of-hours if they'd falsified times as well.
• It's ridiculous to believe that any trading performed from that room during the time of an armed raid would be allowed to stand. The later assertation that 'it'll take time to prove fraud' is a complete falsehood as all the raiders were unmasked, and there will be no evidence of Bruce Wayne on the premises other than a convenient thumbprint on the only item that requires it.
• How did Bane and his goons get the three bikes inside the building? He walks in from the street at the start of the scene, and his minions are already in place in there. Unless he has other people to bring bikes into reception areas constantly following him around?
• How can the standard motorcycle helmet we see Bane wearing fit over his face-mask? They're not exactly designed to leave a lot of wiggle-room, and it doesn't look especially bulky or unusual.
But I can brush those aside if I have to. They don't make any sense from the surface, but they're easy to skim over. No, what really boils my piss is this: How come Gotham goes from broad daylight to pitch-black night in eight minutes? The race against time is a recurring theme, literally and metaphorically, in the Nolan Batmanverse, and they make a point of giving visual and verbal indicators that eight minutes is the timescale, here. Fuck it, less than eight minutes. The timer's already on its way when Bane's bikers leave the Stock Exchange in daylight, and when Batman joins in it's dark. Everywhere. Dark. What the actual fuck? In order for night to fall that quickly, the Earth would have to be cube-shaped.
And it's no better later on in the film when Batman and Catwoman have their final talk before trying to stop the bomb*. They're talking in darkness when he tells her that they have a 45-minute window before detonation, and the next thing you know, it's daylight. Broad daylight.
It's not that big a deal though, really. Not worth, say, writing over 1300 words for, or anything...
*Don't even get me started on a bomb which is described as "becoming gradually more unstable", yet the uranium breakdown can somehow be timed to the very second with a clock on the side. A device that's been degrading to explosion-point for four months, yet 10 minutes before it's due to go off, can be thrown around in a 40-ft container as the truck makes a 20-ft drop onto concrete with no adverse effects. A nuclear device with a 6-mile blast radius that can fly to the horizon (ie 3 miles) and detonate without still taking out Gotham, or causing a tidal-wave that would take out Gotham. Actually, the bomb might annoy me more than the day/night thing, but that would make more sense, so I can't have it as my Major Beef™.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
So with a new director, a new cinematographer and, perhaps most pertinently, a new leading man, can the Bourne franchise finally hook me in as it's done so many of my contemporaries? I'll be honest, I wasn't a fan of the first three Bournes. My dislike was split equally between the slapdash, overly complicated storytelling, the handheld shaky-cam that made it next to impossible for me to focus on anything, and Matt Damon. I found his Jason Bourne to be unlikeable enough that I didn't mind if he lived to the end of the movie or not, and uninteresting to the point where I couldn't care less about his mysterious past. And when you think about the point of those films… well, I was going to take some convincing…
The Plot: Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), an operative in the CIA's Outcome program, finds himself on the wrong side of his employers when the Bourne-situation forces their hand in damage-limitation and they decide to terminate their other covert operations… literally. Cross finds an ally in Dr Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), a scientist who's been developing the CIA-prescribed medications that Cross finds himself dependent on. After a sinister turn of events in Shearing's lab, she also finds herself the target of the very people she works for, and with no-one to trust, Cross and Shearing can only hope to run, and perhaps hide…
The Good: A structured, coherent narrative and a sympathetic lead left me liking Legacy way, way more than its predecessors. There are characters from the previous Bourne films, mostly reduced to cameo-level, and the first 30 minutes lay on the connection pretty thickly. But the film's at its strongest when it concentrates on Cross, Shearing and their CIA nemesis, Byer (Edward Norton). The story in itself isn't startlingly original (I've mentioned elsewhere the alarming number of films this year featuring CIA backstabbing), but it's reliable. It's this simplicity which makes the story flow in a far more linear fashion than the other entries in the canon, and it's an easier watch as a result.
Jeremy Renner's on good form, and puts Matt Damon to shame. For the first 10-15 minutes of the film, he doesn't say a word, and he's already more likeable and relatable. Similarly, Edward Norton plays his CIA badguy without any of the pantomime theatrics employed by the fat, middle-aged actors in the earlier films. You don't like what he's doing, but you accept why he's got to do it. Rachel Weisz makes the best of what she's given, but her character has to spend a lot of time shrieking/crying/flinching and generally Being The Girl™, which is a shame because she's capable of more.
The Bad: The shaky-cam's back. It's nowhere near as irritating as the other Bournes, but it's not constant like it was in those, and it's not as severe either. Elsewhere, government types and incidental characters from Bourne 1-3 return either in newly-shot scenes, or in lifted-flashbacks, and it often feels like they're making the point that this is a Bourne movie, see? The truth is, it's not a Bourne movie. It's set in the same universe/continuity, obviously, but it'd work equally as well if it wasn't. The film-makers insistence on dragging the plot over from Matt Damon's days is almost its undoing, and it feels like they don't have the confidence to just go-for-broke with a new strand.
The Ugly: At the two-hour mark, the film ends. I'll be honest, I was starting to wonder how much longer they could keep the chase sequences going, but there doesn't seem to be any real payoff to Legacy, it just sort of 'ends'. It feels like a couple of pages have been torn out before the last one.
Worth leaving the house for? If you're already a fan, sure. But it's notably different from the earlier entries, and it won't be to everyone's taste. The Bourne Legacy is good. I don't think it's great, but it's certainly a solid thriller in its own right.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
CAUTION: Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
The Lost Boys @Caversham Court Gardens Summer Screens 97 mins / Dir. Joel Schumacher
Well if the major distributors won't release any films during the sports day period, I'll just have to go elsewhere for my cinematic entertainment, won't I? How about an summer-evening outdoor screening of a film that I used to watch religiously*1 during my formative late-teens? Deckchairs and Pinot Grigio? Go on, then.
About twenty minutes amble from Reading station, lies Caversham Court Gardens, home to a Summer's worth of outdoor classic viewing. Ten earth pounds buys you a deckchair to watch a movie that you've probably got at home anyway, but you maybe never got to see on a big screen before. Back projected in hi-def onto an inflatable-framed screen, accompanied by a sound-system that's quite impressive given it's outside, and assisted by a not-unreasonably-priced bar.
9pm arrives, dusk strikes, and a single bat fluttering above the trees heralds the Warner Bros logo onscreen…
As is often the case with classics, I can't review The Lost Boys objectively because I've watched it too often. In fairness, I hadn't seen it for three or four years, but I still knew every line, every cue, every wiggle of Jami Gertz…
Let's be honest, this isn't a good film, is it? You remember it as the counter-culture cornerstone of the 1980's that it rightfully is. You remember the clothes, the soundtrack, the effortless cool. You remember that there was a character you wanted to have, and a character you wanted to be…
But do you remember the clichéd script, delivered terribly by people who couldn't act properly yet, and allowed to do so by a director for whom 'style over substance' is a bullet-point at the top of his CV? Do you remember how immensely irritating Lucy, the boys' mother, is? Do you remember looking at the vampire-pack, and thinking that they obviously cast Kiefer Sutherland for his charisma, Brook McCarter and Billy Wirth for their looks, and then wondering how the hell Alex Winter slipped through the net? Do you remember how overly-soundtracked the film is, and you thought 'wow, I have to buy this!', and you got the CD/tape/record home and realised there's two, maybe three good tracks on the whole thing?
In all honesty, and with the best will in the world, this shouldn't work. And yet it's fantastic. Way more than the sum of its parts, it's a textbook time-capsule of a film. We took it seriously at the time, just as the characters in the story do. Standing on the outside now, we can see how ridiculous it all is, but there's so much charm that it doesn't matter. Like a child who hasn't grasped the telling of a joke, the flaws in the delivery only make it more endearing.
And is it just me that thinks in the scene at the end, when Max has his vampire face on*2, he looks like he's being played by Anton Rodgers? He'd have been fucking awesome in that role.
*1 That's barely even an exaggeration, sadly. *2 Yeah, spoilers. Sorry.
DISCLAIMERS: • ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• 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.
