Review: Ghostbusters (2016 / second-pass)

Ghostbusters (2016 / second-pass / 3D / SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Paul Feig / Trailer


Okay, after watching the 2016 iteration of Ghostbusters again, I find I don't have that much to add to my first review. It's certainly not that I enjoyed the movie any less the second time around but for obvious reasons, familiarity with the story and the script takes the shine off the majority of one-liners and witticisms which made the film so pleasantly surprising on the opening night.

And if I'm being honest, re-watching the film only serves to underline a couple of gripes. While I'd remarked that the screenplay takes a while to click into gear, it turns out that precise moment is when Patty officially joins 'the gang' and the four characters start working seamlessly together, instead of slightly-unconvincingly edging around each other. The film instantly goes from not bad to great at that point, and with performers this comfortable in each other's space, that's got to come down to the writing.

And the film's bad guy, Rowan. Has he really been able to manufacture a bunch of psychic-amplifier bombs to tear a hole in reality after reading a single textbook on the paranormal (which, given its age in the movie, won't have anywhere near the level of technical or theoretical detail that the actual Ghostbusters are later using) and still harbouring an unresolved complex over being bullied when he was younger? Because that'd be bland as a plot-device alone, never mind the entire setup for the film's antagonist. Almost as insulting as the climax of the movie being resolved by the portable nuclear-reactor, Ecto-1, being driven into a dimensional-portal in order to seal it, but by Slimer, rather than any of the actual heroes, and accidentally as the heroes didn't really engineer it. Still, at least the subsequentally-destroyed Times Square is magically restored to its former state for reasons which aren't even hinted at, never mind exposited.

Seriously though, never mind all that. The film's great.

Oh, and how come Abby and Erin's hair turns white, but their eyebrows don't?

I'm just going to come out and say it: Men in Black and RIPD.
Neither are particularly great movies, but if you enjoyed them, you'll love Ghostbusters.



You should.



It does. Not always as effortlessly as it'd like, but it does.



Quite possibly



Probably not.



Didn't hear one, no.



Level 2: Well, Ed Begley Jr's in this movie, and he appeared in a couple of episodes of the TV series Outlaw along with Jimmy 'Bail Organa' Smits.







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.

Review: Pixels

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Pixels (2015 film)

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.

. Contents
. 1 Plot
. 2 Cast
. 3 Scripting
. 4 Effects
. 5 Critical Response
. 6 Summary

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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?

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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.

Review: Blues Brothers 2000 (#CrapSequels)

We've all been there; Browsing in Blockbuster, the HMV sale or the bargain-DVD section in Sainsbury's, and we come across a plastic case which gives us an involuntary tingle of excitement. Someone's made a sequel to that movie we like! How did this slip under our radar? Why wasn't this on at our local cinema? Why are we only hearing about this now? Well, there's only one way to answer that question; it involves spending the requisite £3 and usually ends with the question 'Why did this get made, never mind how?'.

The rules for selection are as follows: 1) The film needs to be a poorly received sequel to a generally successful film (so no crap sequels to crap originals, and no crap remakes of originals), 2) Films from longer series are fine, but the choice needs to be part two of that line, 3) I'm not intending to watch any of the associated part-ones as part of this run (whether I'm familiar with them or not), so there'll be extra pressure on the crap sequel to work on its own terms. So join me as I delve into some of the crappest, most unwarranted follow-ups of all time (hopefully with a couple of underrated, misunderstood gems thrown in).

How bad can it be, right? I mean, the original was good…

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#CrapSequels: Blues Brothers 2000
Cert: PG / 119 mins / Dir. John Landis
Year: 1998 (18 years after the first movie*¹)

The general feeling: RT Score: 45% / IMDB Score: 4.8



This film was released in the same year as The Big Lebowski. Think about that for a second. Although I'm sure John Goodman tries not to. I'm not even a fan of 1980's The Blues Brothers, but I can still recognise a classic from the love its shown by its fanbase, and even I know when that should be left the fuck alone. Having the words "For John Belushi" appear on screen immediately after the Universal logo doesn't make it any less of an insult, surely? If anything it's just more of a tacit admission of guilt, as John Landis and Dan Aykroyd blithely return to the well just like no-one asked them to…

A slow, dialogue-sparse opening gives way to a slower dialogue-heavy setup scene whilst Dan Aykroyd gets hit with a stick (from whence the hilarity ensues). This clunky scripting continues throughout the film, leaving 'laugh gaps' for jokes which aren't there as Landis directs comedy like it's 1982. That so many of the original cast returned for this is either indicative of their faith in the project, or their utter naivety. In addition to this, there are also a range of established musicians apparently keen to jump on the bandwagon (which, comparably, would be a bit like Tom Hardy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Cate Blanchett deciding that The Beatles' White Album could do with a sequel…)

This first-draft of a script features gags and witty asides that land with all the grace of a steel bin full of manure. But there isn't a pair of RayBans in this world dark enough to hide the desperation in Dan Aykroyd's eyes as he stands on-stage, crooning to a disinterested audience (both on-set and on the other side of the camera lens) with a pleading 'I've still got it, haven't I? Please tell me I've still got it' look burning through those tinted lenses. His acting's all over the place, giving the impression that his most awkward scenes were filmed at the front-end of the shoot, when he still wasn't entirely convinced that this was going to work (rightly, as it turned out). And while there's no shame in dubbing separately recorded sessions over in-movie musical scenes, if your cast are going to record a heartfelt, larynx-scorching vocal track, then their facial expressions on-set probably shouldn't look like they're ordering replacement hoover-bags…

By the time the film's third-act kicks in and the Blues Brothers Band are playing a gig to a voodoo priestess with magicked instruments, it's like a warning to never leave the tops off all the markers at once. I think the problem seems to be that the film's desperately trying to claw back something which I never loved in the first place. But since the film seems even more derided by fans of the original, I'm going to go so far as to say that it's not working for anybody. And yeah, the soundtrack makes up for it in some small, small way; but I can play Muddy Waters any time I want without rubbing sewage into my own eyes…

'Getting the band back together' has never felt so much like a midlife crisis as it does here.
Excruciating.

WARNING: Features a worryingly large number of cars doing jumps, flips and leaps for no apparent reason and with no apparent mechanics of it happening, as well as a small cabin-boat apparently loaded full of explosives being flipped 80-feet into the air by a car going over a slight bump. Apparently.


I haven't. Amazingly.



Not for a long, long time. To the point where I don't really remember it. It was TV on at a friend's house within the last year and seemed largely awful if I'm being honest, so we only ended up watching about ten minutes of it.



I'm getting the impression it would have helped, since the screenplay spends the first act making references to people and places it hopes the audience will find familiar.



Oh, shitloads. Dan Aykroyd is at the head of a conga-line full of the nostalgically deluded…



HAHAHAhahahaha, you are funny. Just don't ask that question within earshot of John Landis…



Whatever; on your own head be it…



Not that I heard, but then I was busy for a lot of the film banging a metal tray over my own head, so I could well have missed it if it's there.

Why did this happen, though? I mean other than The Money, obviously...

*¹ This 18-year gap at least meant that the original film was old enough (in the UK at least) to go into a bar and get fucking wasted when it saw what it had spawned.

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.

Review: Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters (30th Anniversary Screening)
Cert: 12A / 100 mins / Dir. Ivan Reitman




Well, it's difficult to know what to really say about Ghostbusters. My last review (ie cinema vewing) of the film was only back in 2011, and I wrote (albeit briefly) about why the film is still great a couple of weeks ago. What can I tell you? I love Ghostbusters

I love Ghostbusters even though the '4K remastered' version still goes incredibly grainy in some of the shots. I love Ghostbusters even though the claymation looks like claymation, and in an early establishing shot of the stone-Zuul looking down on the New York street, you can see the yellow lines running through his 'opaque' fang (and again later on, when the spirit-orbs are escaping from the containment facility and swooping behind buildings). I love Ghostbusters even though poor old Winston Zeddemore seems to serve little purpose other than being introduced with sparse fanfare in the second act to add (a little) diversity to the colour-palette and to be the voice of pragmatism in the company of three eccentric scientists. I love Ghostbusters even though the mini-earthquake outside the apartment building is so unfounded and non-committal in its existence that it seems like a padding device before the screenplay begrudgingly propels its heroes to the climax which, riding on the coat-tails of the awesome Mr Stay Puft, is actually just a cop-out of 'fire the guns at the portal utilising the callback we set up in the ballroom scene earlier, and then the bad guy will just disappear'.

What? I love Ghostbusters.

As a trailer for selling the film, not really. As a device for getting people back to the cinema, just maybe.



I did. Again.



Every time.



Cinema as and when you can, but this is a movie made to be watched at home with friends and drinks.



Just a touch.



I will. Again.



Y'know what? I didn't hear one.

Is it just me that still doesn't quite get the geography of Dana's flat, what with the secret door and then the exterior shot once the walls have been blown off?
It is, isn't it?
Just me.

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.

Review: Behind The Candelabra

Behind The Candelabra
Cert: 15 / 118 mins / Dir. Steven Soderbergh



As much as I enjoyed Behind The Candelabra (and I did enjoy it), I felt a sort of disconnect throughout; as if we were being shown a series of snapshots down a timeline, with little to connect them as a flowing story other than the characters. Whether this is the result of Richard LaGravenese's screenplay or Steven Soderbergh's directing is up for debate, but I think there's a much more involving film to be made from the footage they shot. At times the pace seems to drag (the opening 15 minutes), while other sections don't seem to get the screen-time they deserve (Douglas and Damon's last scene together), and the episodic structure prevents any real momentum from building up.

But… it's a thoroughly fascinating couple of hours. The film looks as gorgeous as you'd expect it to, both on and off the stage, and it's rich with period-detail that never seems overdone. Given the nature of the story, 'Candelabra' is surprisingly light on the overblown camp that you'd expect, although it's frequently funny and frequently sad, frequently at the same time.

This film really belongs to Michael Douglas, and he looks like he's having the time of his life playing Liberace. He's pretty much the only character I warmed to, but I get the impression that's intentional. Matt Damon puts in a fairly solid turn as Scott Thorson, Liberace's lover and companion. While I had no problem buying into the characters individually, I wasn't convinced of the emotional connection between the two, and that is what the film's supposed to be about, isn't it? But as I said above, I think this is more down to how the film has been written and edited rather than the performances themselves.

Dan Aykroyd and Scott Bakula provide an understated backup presence, and Douglas's only real competitor for audience attention comes in the form of Rob Lowe as a pill-dealing plastic surgeon who can't close his eyes properly.

All in all, it's a film that I do recommend, but as a snapshot of the private life of an amazing entertainer, not as a love story.

I wanted to love Behind The Candelabra, but ended up only being able to like it. It never becomes more than the sum of its parts, and the potential is there for a much greater film.

Mostly, although the trailer's a lot more dynamic than the film.



Not as much as I wanted to.



I think it achieves what Soderbergh set out to do.



DVD.



No.



Yes.



No.

In the hands of a different director, I think 'Candelabra' could have been more emotionally engaging. But who would be right for the gig?

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.