So it turns out I did the right thing by going home halfway through last night's ID4 double-bill after all. I'll say from the outset that I didn't actively dislike Independence Day: Resurgence, but I had so many gripes with it that I'm glad I didn't sit up until the small hours having them thrown at me immediately after the first lot...
The film opens twenty 'real-time' years after the events of Independence Day, in the radically different 2016 that sprang from the events of that movie. But rather than let the social and technological details of this timeline seep through to the audience over the course of the first act, the screenplay mechanically explains them all in very small words, with a pseudo-narration to begin with, followed up by the exposition-heavy conversation that no-one has, even in fiction ("Alright Terry, how's your alien-powered magic bladeless helicopter like we all have here in the present day?").
The film spends so much time explaining minutiae and introducing characters we don't need to meet, that it almost forgets to be a movie about aliens who want to smash the living-shit out of the Earth. Almost, but not quite. There's more up-close ET involvement in this sequel I'm glad to say, and while they're still effectively personality-free drones, the film's best scenes are the melee and ground-battle engagements. The rest is entirely formulaic blockbuster fluff, though.
Now, unlike the modern breed of city-smashing superhero movies, Resurgence doesn't spend its climactic battle committing bystander-genocide. No, it does this off-handedly in the middle of the film, apparently for no other reason than making our heroes pull slightly concerned faces at monitors and news reports as millions of civilians die because they were in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Still, as any good despot knows, the more you kill, the less it seems to actually matter, somehow.
Another regular complaint of modern movies is that the CGI effects feel hollow and without punch while the cast over-emote against greenscreen backdrops. But the opposite seems to be in play here, as the film's visuals are detailed and vibrant, while it's the acting that's completely weightless. Roland Emmerich seems completely satisfied that his cast have learned their lines, so he doesn't bother getting them to put any actual feeling into reciting them. No-one appears to be enjoying themselves on-set (although with a script as laboured and cumbersome as this, it's hardly surprising), and as I've seen most of the cast be much better elsewhere, that's got to come down to poor direction.
This really feels like a generic alien-invasion movie that's been retrofitted with Independence Day continuity in its third draft, presumably on the promise of a bigger budget. While Independence Day: Resurgence is distracting enough, I didn't exactly find it entertaining.
It's not that the film left me with nothing afterwards, more that it left me with nothing while I was watching it...
Best bit: How, when ex-president Whitmore has his third-act hero shave and pops on his old flight suit, he suddenly doesn't need that walking stick any more. #Bang! #Heroism!
For the visuals? Sure.
For the performances? HAHAHAHAHA!.
Blatantly set up its next installment? Absolutely.
Cast, no.
Director… well that's a tough call. It's certainly not Emmerich's worst.
Nah.
There is.
Level 2: Independence Day: Resurgence stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in 2003's 21 Grams, as did Benicio 'going to be rocking up in Star Wars Episode VIII in an as-yet un-named role' Del Toro.
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.
This film, (this 12A certificated film) was preceded by not one, but two separate adverts for gin. Never let it be said that either Entertainment Film Distributors nor Digital Cinema Media don't know their intended audience…
Kate Winslet stars in The Dressmaker as Myrtle 'Tilly' Dunnage, a fashion designer who returns unannounced to the dilapidated home-town she was removed from as a child, looking for answers, connections and perhaps a little bit of revenge. Director Jocelyn Moorhouse captures the claustrophobia, paranoia and squalor of the film's sole setting with suffocating glee, and with the screenplay's humour shining through the blackest moments. However, the film seems torn between wanting to be funny and meaningful. It's not that there's any reason it can't be both, it just has issues balancing them.
Winslet is great in the film's lead role, but it's really Judy Davis as her eccentric mother who steals the show in terms of both performance and character development. And I'll go on record now as saying that Hugo Weaving is nothing short of fucking magnificent in this film.
The Dressmaker is far better at being a genuinely quirky indie-comedy than it is a homecoming melodrama. And although it ploughs both furrows with equal earnestness, the screenplay never quite manages to merge them successfully. With an alarmingly high body-count for a 12A movie set in rural Australia and featuring no firearms, the humorous vein is far more interesting than the ponderous one of poetic justice.
But fair play for the references to X-Men, Pet Cemetary and The Empire Strikes Back. There aren't many films set in the 1951 Australian outback that would manage those so seamlessly…
For the right audience, yes.
Sunday night, bottle of wine, sorted.
For Kate Winslet, not really.
But I'll be amazed if Hugo Weaving doesn't get some major props…
I think it does, it's just not a thing which was aimed at me in any way.
Nope.
There isn't.
Well, Hugo Weaving appeared in those Matrix movies, of course, one of which starred fellow Aussie Bruce Spence; Tion Medon from out of Revenge Of The Sith.
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.
Okay, the problem (my problem, not this film's) is that the events in and between the Hunger Games movies happen in relatively rapid succession from each other (moreso in this Part II), and tell a solid, continuous story. Even though the films have been released one a year, I watch a lot of movies between each screening. I don't generally play catch-up before sequels, and was unable to make last week's double-bill of Mockingjay Part 2 and its predecessor. And the part of my brain that I use for storing cumulative back-references etc is already pretty much full of the Galaxy Far, Far Away's events.
What this meant is that other than the "Here's the map, we're going there to kill him" segments, the moment the characters started referring to the minutiae of the ongoing plot, I sat there thinking 'Right, what the hell are they talking about again?'. I know the general gist, but my brain could barely remember the names of the characters I was watching, never mind ones they were alluding to off-screen. I guess this is what civilian audiences feel like watching Star Wars.
And as much as this fourth installment of The Hunger Games has a lot of plot-wrapping to do, the film takes its own sweet time getting there. There are some great action sequences on display*1, but far too much downtime in between them, as if the screnplay is frightened to build up too much momentum and peak too early. This pacing is fine for the actual story being told, but not so much for the film.
As with Hunger Games series in general, there are many aspects I enjoyed and more than a few I had problems with. Although my overriding feeling was 'wow, this really wasn't made for me…'
[ …and for all that fannying about getting across town in secret for half the film; couldn't they have just stolen some of those Stormtrooper-lite outfits?
Oh, and when they come back out of that building once the oil-lake's drained away, how come they're not slipping all over the place? ]
Oh, probably. As a Maze Runner kid, I'm probably the wrong person to ask…
It looks great on a big screen, and you'll already know if you want to make the cinematic committment.
I don't even think it's the best one of the series, in all fairness.
Why, this movie stars Captain Phasma herself, Gwendoline Christie.
*1 Oh, and as much fun as the sewer-battle is, it feels woefully out of place in a dystopian socio-political adventure movie. It also reminded me that I really must watch Aliens again…
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.
