Review: Stratton

Stratton
Cert: 15 / 94 mins / Dir. Simon West / Trailer



Now. This was not a hate-watch. My star-rating sits above these words so the cat is already partially out of the bag at least, but I feel the need to emphasise at this early juncture that my inclusion of Stratton on a day's viewing in London was not undertaken with the intention of gleefully ripping it a new one. Okay, Simon West's film does not have a particularly wide release, but neither did A Ghost Story which I watched less than a month earlier in the self-same cinema*¹. It's got Connie Nielsen from out of Wonder Woman in it, Gemma Chan from Humans and Derek Jacobi from I, Claudius. Y'know, actual actors. And sure it stars Dominic Cooper from Mamma Mia, but he's also Iron Man's dad, remember. No, when I sat down at West India Quay in the heart of London's regenerated Docklands area (part of which features in an Act III boat-chase, no less) on Saturday evening, my expectations were by no means high, but I genuinely wanted to find the good in this movie and enjoy it on a throwaway, surface level at least.

I did not bring negativity into Screen 2. The film director Simon West did that...

Stratton raises the spectre of a European criminal mastermind with a new type of bio-weapon, to be dispersed via a drone which is to be launched from the top deck of a red London bus, hurtling through Hyde Park*². Only one man is up to the job of stopping the threat, Special Boat Service agent John Stratton, a gritty maverick who will complete a mission any damned way he sees fit just to get the result needed, before drinking whiskey alone on his houseboat and having occasional flashbacks to the fallen (and slightly less rugged) comrade he didn't manage to save*³.

I hear yer da's gone into the screenwriting business.

From the opening titles which feature animated text-kerning for no reason, to the cardboard-cutout characters and over-produced laptop readout screens, this movie has Supermarket Father's Day Gift Ideas Promo Display written all over it. In fact, at one point the villain (I'm not going to bother with character names, okay?) helpfully narrates the note which has been sent to his mole inside the SBS. We can see that the letter closes '…the penalty is death', but the accompanying monologue doesn't end with those words since the script has been tweaked in post-production. The makers have assumed their audience will be watching on a screen or resolution small enough for this to go unnoticed. Stratton is a £3 DVD on a portable TV, it can't even aspire to being a £5 Blu-ray in the living room.

Not quite sophisticated enough to be labelled mechanical, Duncan Falconer and Warren Davis' screenplay spends its 94 clock-punching minutes lumbering from one tedious set-piece to the next, the cast reading what appears to be placeholder dialogue, drafted in until plot details can be thought of. Nobody actually watches a film like this, they're just waiting for it to end. Dominic Cooper has neither the charm, gravitas nor grit to carry off the title-role, and by the time Derek Jacobi was wheeled back on to give our hero's childhood sob-story in the second act, I'd given up trying gain anything useful or entertaining.

Of course, when you're sitting trying to process Stratton, it's easy to think "the cast are better than this though, surely?". No. Connie Nielsen was in 3 Days To Kill, Gemma Chan lent her voice to the latest Transformers flick, Derek Jacobi sold his soul to Sony whilst pissing into the grave of Charles Dickens and, as I mentioned above, Dominic Cooper is at least partly to blame for the cinematic atrocity which is Mamma Mia!. No, everyone in Stratton knows exactly what they're doing, and they fully deserve to have it on their CV to remind people.

Much like Overdrive, you just know that Statham got the call for this. John Stratton isn't old enough to be pulling 'one last job' or coming out of self-exiled retirement, so Neeson is down at the first hurdle. There are probably more gunshots in this screenplay than words. That said, there are still far too many words. Over-directed to fuck like the action-thriller equivalent of an am-dram Gilbert & Sullivan production, Nielsen sounds constantly surprised at the low quality of her own dialogue.

But it's a 'Saturday night' thriller, right? Hmm. There wasn't a person under 40 or XX chromosome in the entire auditorium at West India Quay, and most of the occupants were alone*⁴. And even then, the target demographic for Stratton fucking hates Stratton. One guy in the same row as me ate popcorn for the first 25 minutes of the feature then walked out as soon as he'd finished. Another chap nearer the front left less than a minute after the final explosion, not even pretending to have the courtesy to see out the faux-reflective denouement tacked on to the back-end before the credits.

Typical dialogue exchange:

STRATTON: The charges are set. Why is there no-one here?
AGGY: This doesn't make any sense…
STRATTON: The intel on this mission is now officially bullshit!

Well I suppose it matches everything else, John...

Things that used to be on Bravo in the 00s, I imagine.



Hahahahahahahahaha.



It's based on a novel.
That means this shit has actually been written TWICE, now.



Well, when Tom Felton isn't the worst thing in a movie, he's probably found his niche..



Try me.



Not that I heard
Although it could have been drowned out by the voice in my head repeatedly asking "why are you still in this room?".



Level 2: I have neither the time nor patience to IMDB the cast of Stratton on an individual basis looking for lucky bit-part actors, so let's go for Dominic Cooper playing Iron Man's dad in The First Avenger alongside stars Sam 'Windu' Jackson and Richard 'Naboo Fighter Pilot' Armitage.





*¹ Although on that self-same day, I'd watched The Emoji Movie, again at that same cinema, and that was a hate-watch…
^{[ BACK ]}

*² In the most lacklustre cinematic climax you have ever seen. in. your. fucking. life. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Question, though: if Stratton is to be believed, why do so many Special Boat Service / Navy Seal operatives have beards? Yeah I know, "rough manly character" and that, but in a job where you routinely get wet (and with river/sea water, which will be filthy), how practical is facial hair going to be? I wish that was the only illogical thing about this movie… ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ I also fall into all of those brackets of course, I'm not pretending I'm any better. I'd chosen to watch Stratton, remember...
^{[ BACK ]}


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: Warcraft - The Beginning

Warcraft: The Beginning (3D)
Cert: 12A / 123 mins / Dir. Duncan Jones / Trailer

WAR-ASSIC BERK!
Tolkien-Saurus Clone Shows Critical Gaps in its DNA...

Top Tinseltown Movieologists unveiled their newest creation to the public today, amid a level of face-palming which could set the global medical profession back years as they struggle to deal with the mass concussion caused by the blows. Blizzard Entertainment and Legendary Pictures' Warcraft: The Beginning is the first (nominally) successful attempt at Selective Celluloid Cloning, a process which takes as its basis an already well-received title or genre, then retools it to a point where the newly-produced film shamelessly evokes the visuals of its progenitor, whilst being as spiritually satisfying as eating a cardboard box.

In a move discovered after watching Jurassic Park too many times, a Universal Studios research team realised that much like the aggression and unpredictability of a Tyrannosaur, a final-draft screenplay could be created which was based entirely on a pre-existing property (even someone else's) but with any challenging or troublesome aspects surgically removed, in a bid to prevent after-film conversations in the cinema-foyer or pub. "The last thing we want is our customers dissecting the very thing they've just paid for," said CEO Ian Universal, 58, "I think we all know where that would end…"

SUBTEXT
Warcraft's director Duncan Jones, 45, told us "As creatively engaging as it was to work on Moon and Source Code, what I'd always wanted to do was re-create The Lord of the Rings, but without any of that socio-political subtext or character development. Y'know, just the fighting. When I saw Peter Jackson devalue both his own and Tolkien's work in the needlessly drawn-out Hobbit movies, I saw that as a challenge to go further with the idea. Imagine taking a world which has already been created as a shameless and unlicensed homage to arguably the most important fantasy epic of all time, and using it to tell an overly-simplistic tale of two armies that can't stop twatting each other with swords! Imagine that! Two hours of watching someone else play a computer game! In 3D! And if I make one of the 'characters' a bit grumpy or sad about all the fighting, that's the same as me having thought about it."

TELETEXT
In a statement issued this morning fro Birtley University, film historian Ken Pigby, 42, took a different view: "It's a long-standing truism of course that cinematic entertainment based on branded video-games is about as easy to get 'right' as actual alchemy. We'd be absolutely delighted to see anyone achieve it, but all historical, scientific and even anecdotal evidence suggests it simply can't be done. The fact that the Warcraft games are based on real-time strategy rather than running through rooms shooting people makes it no easier a challenge, simply a different one. Likewise, the interactive-nature and popularity of the original source material does little other than establish a larger core-audience to be disappointed by the project's inevitable failure. I mean, I quite enjoy gardening, it doesn't mean that having Dominic Cooper and Travis Fimmel bedding in shrubs for two hours is going to make a great film…"

SCOTTISH WEATHER VIEW
General critical response has also pointed out that even last year's Jurassic World wasn't this transparently insulting in its misguided dumbing-down of the source-material, since it was at least based on a thing which was inherently cinematic to begin with. "It's coming to something," said Pigby, "when the only game-to-movie adaptation that brings anything extra to its intellectual-property is the U-rated Angry Birds, developed from a game based entirely on physics and slapstick humour."

"Yes. A succession of anthropomorphised avians being fired point-blank into a brick wall has more to offer than Warcraft: The Beginning…"

---

Watching someone else play a computer game without explaining the difference between what they're meant to be doing and what they are doing.



Well, once the credits started rolling I pulled out my phone to send a suitably furious tweet. By the time I'd done that, the entire audience had left the auditorium, bar three people (including me). Now if the people who'd just watched it couldn't wait to leave…



I genuinely have no fucking clue.



No.



Yes.



There is, during the Orcs' first encounter with the humans*².
Not that it's any consolation.



Level 1: Warcraft: The Beginning features the work of Clancy 'Savage Opress' Brown and Toby 'additional voices in The Old Republic' Kebbell*¹.



And it only gets a 2 because some of the visuals are quite nice. But by no means all of them, and by no means all of the time.


*¹ Look, I've told you before, that shit counts. If it was on my CV, it'd be the first thing I'd tell anyone I met...

*² Speaking of which, if Ben 'Guardian' Foster can teleport over vast distances taking other people with him, what are his party doing traipsing through the forest on foot when the attack happens?



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: Captain America - The First Avenger

Captain America: The First Avenger (3D / sixth-pass)
Cert: 12A / 124 mins / Dir. Joe Johnston / Trailer



Ah, a chance to separate the hardcore filmgoers from the opportunists, a test of theatrical endurance, that rarest of treats in this modern age: the triple-bill. To usher in 2016's blockbuster season*¹ and Marvel's Captain America: Civil War, a back-to-back screening of Super-Soldier adrenaline kicked off tonight at 18:30. The First Avenger, followed by The Winter Soldier, leading into a midnight screening of the newest installment. For a viewer who's resolutely Team Iron Man*², I'm unaccountably happy with this ;)

Now I've written about Steve Rogers' first outing on several occasions in the past. It's a film I absolutely adore, therefore it's one that I have no problem watching again. One of those movies I'm always in the mood for, in fact. A lot has changed since I started reviewing here, and I find I watch films differently now. In fact, that was very much the point. I didn't want to be using my Unlimited card several times a month and just letting each screening wash over me, leaving no impression as I sat glazed in the cinema*³. Writing about each film I see, including repeat viewings, helps me build a framework by which I can appreciate and enjoy them more. And generally speaking, by the time I've picked apart what I did and didn't like about the thing I've just watched, I arrive at a conclusion I'm happy to commit to the blog.

Now people's tastes change over the years, which is entirely as it should be. Watching a bunch of old movies for the first time, I know that I wouldn't have enjoyed many of them had I seen them when I was younger (and likewise there are a few entries which young-me might have enthused about, but which I now realise are dreadful). But I do find that my opinion on a specific movie doesn't really change once I've watched it. I'll find new details to love (or new bugbears to hate), but the work as a whole will sit in pretty much the same slot.

And it's with that in mind that I'm going to do something I wouldn't normally do. Because I read back my previous mutterings on The First Avenger and I appear to have repeatedly scored it six out of seven when it's clearly a bloody seven. So I'm changing that from this point onward. I also make a point (okay, occasionally) of saying that the number attached to a film doesn't necessarily make it comparable to another one with the same score. My final ratings are more a measure of the film's potential versus its actuality. But y'know what? The First Avenger actually can be compared directly with The Winter Soldier, even though the former is a far more enjoyable movie (although more on the second shortly). In short, Cap gets ramped up to full-marks, this outing.

Against the collective stories which have followed it (and that I still love, remember), I genuinely believe that this might be the perfect Marvel Cinematic Universe film. Bolstered by Alan Silvestri's score, director Joe Johnston captures the uncynical spirit of adventure which made the Indiana Jones movies so much fun. This is a science-fiction tale which is relatively light on the unexplainable 'magic' it needs to fuel the plot. A classic underdog origins story, Steve Rogers is the archetypal hero, empowered by science and morality, but completely unbound by ego and with an innate understanding of everything he's fighting to protect, pitted against a supernatural villain who feels like a genuine threat because he's a complete psychopath and a macguffin which could destroy everything. And from the sure-footed roller-coaster of a movie comes a victorious ending laced with an agoraphobic melancholy which hasn't been matched before or since. The 1940s setting separates the film both chronologically and tonally, and sets up (and ret-cons) events to come, while owing nothing to them. With the exception of the final five minutes, this is a true standalone feature and it still encapsulates the essence of Marvel.

So yeah, I've changed my mind. The First Avenger isn't a great film, after all.
It's a brilliant one.

Indiana Jones, The Rocketeer.



If you can.



Absolutely.



It may well be.



I very well might.



There absolutely is.



Level 1: Mace Windu's in it. And Richard Armitage from off of The Phantom Menace.





*¹ Sorry Clark and Bruce, you don't count. I wish you did, but there we go.

*² Yup. Style over righteousness, I'm afraid. Every time.

*³ Although some movies just have that effect anyway, to be fair. But I try.



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: The Lady In The Van

The Lady In The Van
Cert: 12A / 104 mins / Dir. Nicholas Hynter / Trailer



I'll freely admit that I took my seat*¹ in Screen 3 with a faint sense of dread. Usually, a Friday afternoon viewing is a relatively sparse affair, with the low-numbers dispersed around the auditorium so that interaction and distraction are relatively discouraged. But given that the target audience for The Lady In The Van is the generation who no longer have to wait to get out of the office on a Friday, I was joined by a rather senior crowd, and a sizeable one at that*². And while this lot may not be checking Facebook every twenty minutes, experience has taught me that age is no barrier to the disregard of the Code Of Conduct, and the first twenty five minutes of the film were indeed accompanied by a near-constant rustling of confectionery bags and hushed conversation…

Luckily, the second Jim Broadbent movie of the week more than held its own against this initial torrent, although The Lady In The Van is also another film which has been harshly undercut by its own trailer. Watching the promo-reels for Nicholas Hynter's adaptation (as I have, many times over the last six months or so), you'd be forgiven for thinking that this film could only be more twee if Maggie Smith was joined by Julie Walters and they sat in the Bake-Off tent knitting bobble-hats while Zooey Deschanel played a ukulele in the background surrounded by kittens and Stephen Fry narrated the whole thing. Amazingly, this somehow isn't the case.

The semi-ironic kitsch is still there, of course, and the story itself of Alan Bennett's long-time visitor is neither surprising or demanding. Maggie Smith is fantastic in the role, but then you'd expect nothing less.

But the other half of the film - the half which the trailer doesn't even hint at - circles uneasily around the conflict of the professional writer, personified in this case by two Alan Bennett's inside the house ('one to live the life, the other to write it') snarking and sniping at each other's shared shortcomings. It's boldly presented early in the proceedings as a device whereby the author of the story/play/book/film can talk to himself whilst narrating and deconstructing the tale as it's being told, and brings a massive self-awareness to the point of being far more interesting than the film the audience were expecting to watch (which does 'Miss Shepherd' herself something of a disservice). That said, the final few scenes threaten to jump the shark of Meta™ completely, and I thought the "ascension" sequence to be jarringly out of place.

In a screenplay which doesn't delve too deeply into Bennett's personal life but gives the audience enough to have him be unfailingly relatable, Alan Bennett comes over as being sometimes sad, sometimes bitter, but always far too understanding of himself. There's also a remarkable amount of Effing and Jeffing in Alex Jennings' portrayal considering the 12A certification; but context and intention are everything, and you've rarely heard more charming profanity. Spanning twenty years in which no-one seems to physically age too significantly, the film arguably paints a far more detailed portrait of the artist than it does the subject.

But what stood out for me the most is that I know Broadstairs fairly well, and it says a lot that the small Kentish seaside town evidently doesn't have to be set-dressed at all to passingly depict the 1970s…*³

With certain reservations (ie the film won't be for everyone, despite me finding it surprisingly enjoyable), yes.



Oh, it's a Sunday-afternoon DVD without a doubt, but you may not get too many repeat viewings out of it.



I don't think this is Maggie Smith's best work, although that's only because she's consistently great. Alex Jennings is fantastic too, though



It does.



Not really.



Unsurprisingly, no.



Well, let's go for Maggie Smith, Frances de la Tour and Jim Broadbent, who have appeared in all/various Harry Potter movies along with Domhnall 'Hux' Gleeson, Jason 'Inquisitor' Isaacs, Warwick 'Wicket/Wald' Davis, David 'Huyang' Tennant, Julian 'Veers' Glover

Which, when you consider that list covers all three Star Wars trilogies and two animated TV series, isn't bad going at all…







*¹ Truth be told, I didn't actually take my seat, as there was already someone sitting there. I'm not a massive fan of the allocated-seating system but I've adapted to it, and while I've been 'that guy' telling someone to get the fuck into the seat printed on their ticket and out of mine, when that person is a lady in her seventies, it's debatable whether a lecture on theatrical etiquette (polite or otherwise) is going to achieve any worthwhile outcome. So, I was the better person and just sat in the row in front, bracing myself for the next patron to walk in and ask me to kindly get the fuck out of their seat. Luckily for everyone concerned, this didn't happen as I'd chosen a vacant one. The system is generally self-policing, but at what cost? The pre-film tension is unbearable. This is what happens, Cineworld! This is what happens! And it'll be me who gets thrown out for punching a pensioner who was technically breaking the law…

*² And despite my antisocial moaning, the one thing I'll never moan about is the number of bums-on-seats. That's what the cinema is there for, and I want my local to be as successful as possible. No, it's the general conduct of those patrons which irks me.

*³ Yet ironically, Weston-Super-Mare is mentioned in the film, and for the exterior shot there they've used the cliff-tops in Ramsgate (next door to Broadstairs in Kent, rather than the Somerset location), and even in this day and age, Weston looks far more 1970s than anywhere else in the UK…

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: Dracula Untold

Dracula Untold
Cert: 15 / 92 mins / Dir. Gary Shore




You have to admire the self-effacing attitude of anyone who makes a sweeping historical horror epic in this day and age, and who gives it a final runtime of 92 minutes. It's like the film-makers have given up trying to salvage anything enjoyable from the footage, and have admitted that apart from anything else, the duration of the audience's discomfort will at least be short...

Set in 1442, Dracula Untold gives a sort of prequel/reboot treatment to the 1992 Francis Ford Coppola film, and rest assured that its biggest debt is to that movie and not to any other source-material. That said, the clunky inclusion of the final 'present-day' scene means that the events in Coppola's film can't have happened. Dracula Untold can't even pay a compliment to the one thing it clearly loves. The film's story follows young Prince Vlad (Luke Evans) as he strikes a Faustian pact with a strange hermit (Charles Dance) to give him the strength and resources he needs to free his people from their oppressors (led by Dominic Cooper). Which seems like an odd casting choice as Luke Evans and Dominic Cooper are basically the same actor, aren't they? Anyway, things go a bit wrong and Vlad spends a lot of time wiping out his enemies by turning into a cloud of bats. Somehow. During the day. Somehow. Apparently vampires don't immolate if it's overcast outside.

At a conceptual level, this isn't necessarily a bad vampire story, it just shouldn't have the Dracula label on it. At the practical level of execution, however, the film is laughable. The script is full of pompous, empty soundbites rather than any actual dialogue, and Bram Stoker spins in his grave with every thuddingly expository word than Evans mumbles into the film with a barely concealed Welsh accent. Even if the screenplay was a worthy addition to the mythos (it isn't), Evans displays neither the range nor presence for his role. Worse still is Cooper whose Turkish accent seems to feature more of Connery than of Constantinople. The only performer to escape with any dignity is Charles Dance who gives good menace in his early scenes, although I think that's more his default setting than any real commitment to the film. There's also a comedic contrast between the shots of his troubled speech with his vampire teeth in, and those where he's speaking off-camera and his voice is suddenly clear and not spraying saliva with every word.

Dracula Untold is shite. It's not quite at the same level of insulting awfulness as I, Frankenstein but it's in the same class, certainly. I suppose we should feel lucky that Universal didn't post-convert it to 3D just to add insult to injury. At least there's no sparkling in this vampire film, although sadly that applies across the screenplay and performances, as well.

There was no need for Dracula Untold to have been produced, and nothing is made better by its existence.

There. I said it.

Oh, it's fairly close, yes.



Not exactly…



In no way, shape or form.
Unless it's set out to annoy the Stoker estate, of course.



If you're going to see it, you may as well go to the cinema. The film is so murkily lit that it'll be almost impossible to watch on your TV unless you have blackout curtains drawn and all the lights switched off.



You know what? I just might. A bit.



Will I bollocks.



Not that I heard, although the eagle/hawk sound-effect is used.

How come Paul Kaye is the only one in Dracula's entire camp doing a dodgy Eastern-European accent when no-one else bothers? This doesn't apply to The Baddies™ mind, they're all following Cooper's lead and trying to sound like evil henchmen in a Liam Neeson film

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.