Man of Steel (second-pass)
Cert: 12A / 143 mins / Dir. Zack Snyder / Trailer
Superman's mum is hot. There, I said it. I mean his Kryptonian mum (no offence Superman's Earth mum). I'd noticed this last time I watched the film, but I'd forgotten how much until now. This seemed to be a running theme, in fact. I'd also forgotten how much I enjoyed Man of Steel. I didn't forget that I enjoyed it, of course, just how much damned fun it is. Even the run-time didn't bother me too much this time around.
Another thing which slipped my mind is that both of Superman's dads here are Robin Hood. If that's not the setup for a sitcom, I don't know what the hell is.
But yeah, I had great fun revisiting Zack Snyder's retooling of Krypton's last son. I love how much time we get to spend on his home planet at the beginning of the film. It's not a throwaway setup, it's an entire prologue and everything which follows benefits massively from its inclusion. And even if the last hour of the movie is essentially an extended fight scene, it's a one which doesn't let up.
Although really, Kal? Now you sigh audibly and snap Zod's neck? Before the cowering family in the corner are bisected, but after hundreds of thousands have been crushed under the collapse of Metropolis? Oh, alright then…
Still holding up well after a few years, Man of Steel is DC proving that they can play with the big boys. Or rather, proving that they are one of the big boys.
Tonally, it's somewhere between Chris Nolan's Batman and Tim Burton's Batman.
If you get the chance, sure.
More than.
It's certainly the best I've seen Cavill.
Nope.
There certainly is.
Level 2: This film's got Larry Fishburne in it, and he was in that Apocalypse Now, as was Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
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.
The Boy Cert: 15 / 97 mins / Dir. William Brent Bell / Trailer
Oh, you know you're in a fantasy-version of England when the driver of a black-cab lets his passenger sleep in the back seat, rather than spending the entire journey complaining about cyclists and/or immigration as soon as the 'been busy?' pleasantries have been dealt with. He also gets out of the car and opens the gates to the film's stately home setting before driving up to the porch, rather than just pulling the handbrake and waiting for the meter to click up before even touching the door unlock mechanism.
Yes, welcome to Creepye Englande where an unfeasibly attractive young American Nanny (Lauren Cohan) is escaping a turbulent past by spending the summer babysitting Brahms (a haunted porcelain doll) while his parents (Diana Hardcastle and Len! from out of Father Ted) go on holiday for Plot Reasons. All that's there to keep her company is the local greengrocer (the unfeasibly understanding Rupert Evans) and every sinister item you'd expect to find in a country home with its own sinister history. So turn the volume right down and we'll bang it straight back up when there's a spooky face to show you!
The Boy is not so much A Horror Film as a case-study of their prominent features. Every trope of the haunted mansion, from the taxidermied animals and glaring portraits to the faulty electrics and reasons to go poking around photo albums in the attic is ploughed mercilessly and without a shred of irony or restraint. On a purely technical level it wouldn't be a 'bad' film if it wasn't so consistently laughable. There are plenty of jumps in the run-time, just no surprises. A Third-Act-Reveal™ tries to up the ante, but only comes across as a comical attempt to restore some credibility to the screenplay (and naturally, has the opposite effect).
Much like Annabelle, the ostebsible goal seems to have been seeing how much could be achieved with an inanimate object, some camera movement and a wide-eyed actress doing all the heavy-lifting. In all fairness, the Walking Dead star is the main draw here so it's only right that she should be saddled with trying to deliver her lines without laughing. Fans of Lauren Cohan will not be disappointed, although the scenes with her in varying states of undress lead me to suspect that this was the real point of the project.
The film does what it says on the tin and will be warming the £3 shelf in your nearest Sainsbury's before you know it. The only horrible feeling that The Boy left me with is that the entire thing - from concept to execution to the straight faces of the cast and marketing department - is a meticulously calculated joke. Mainly played on the audience.
The worst bit? Come on, the kid died in 1991. You'd think he'd have a Gameboy or some Thundercats knocking around, instead of all those clowns and wooden cars and shit. No wonder he's livid...
Every lacklustre horror flick of the last ten years.
Not particularly.
Not parricularly.
Nope.
A little.
Not at all.
Level 2: Len! out of Father Ted was in an episode of L.A. Law along with Jimmy '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.
Kung Fu Panda 3 (2D)
Cert: PG / 95 mins / Dir. Jennifer Yuh Nelson & Alessandro Carloni / Trailer
A great start to Dreamworks' latest installment in the Kung Fu Panda series is the BBFC card itself. Bearing the PG rating-logo and associated colour scheme, the only supporting information or guidance is the words "Mild martial arts action". Firstly, I love that this was worth putting on front-street for a movie called Kung Fu Panda. Secondly, it's slightly ironic that this movie has better fight-choreography than most grown-up action movies. And is a damn sight more fun.
The overall style of the saga has really come into its own now, and the very first scene in this threequel feels like throwing on an old comfortable hoodie. It's not just the quality of the animation itself that makes KFP what it is, but the cinematography and editing as well. Stylised enough to pay homage to both traditional Oriental artwork and more the schlocky martial arts movies of recent years, while still feeling entirely like its own thing.
The film is the usual mix of visual slapstick, scripted gags and a little bit of soul-searching. The latter is more muted this time around, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The more reflective moments are always fighting a losing battle with mawkishness, but there's more than enough of the silly humour to keep things rolling along well. There's certainly the feeling that these movies could push a more philosophical message if they worked harder to balance it well, but that could well be at the cost of what makes them so much fun in the first place.
A comfortable addition to the canon, Kung Fu Panda 3 does what it does well and gives the audience plenty to chortle at. Dreamworks Animation will never be Disney, but while they're able to reach this high, maybe they don't need to be…
The other Kung Fu Panda flicks.
Having knowledge of the lead-ups is desirable, but you'll still have fun if this is your first.
For the quality of the animation, yes. Everything else will be fine once it hits DVD/BRD.
Pretty much, although that could be because it's not stretching too far this time around.
Really not sure I'd go that far, but everyone can safely put this on their CV, yes.
Nope.
I didn't hear one..
Level 2: KFP features the voice of Bryan Cranston, who also stars in Trumbo along with Alan 'as yet unnamed role in Star Wars: Rogue One Tudyk.
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.
The Witch, aka The VVitch (SPOILERS)
Cert: 15 / 93 mins / Dir. Robert Eggers / Trailer
Now, as a rule I don't read reviews of a movie before I've watched it. Verbal recommendations (or otherwise) are fine, but I don't think it's really fair for me to be predisposed to a movie based on someone else's detailed interpretation of it. I tend to limit my exposure to trailers and whatever promo-hubbub happens to be going on at the time. So sitting in the more upmarket end of London on Saturday for The Witch, I could already imagine the umbrage of audiences expecting a mainstream horror movie, instead having to deal with actual dialogue and slow-paced plot-building, rather than a haunting-by-numbers shriek-fest. Let's not mess around here, this movie is slow-paced, and very deliberately so. And from what I've seen afterward of the largely favourable reaction online, there is indeed a proportion of the audience who feels short-changed. Yet from a production standpoint, writer and director Robert Eggers appears to offer far less than his contemporaries but the film gains so much more as a result...
After a comparatively brisk opening sequence in settler-era America, during which William's (Ralph Ineson) family is banished from the fledgling township for being very religious but not quite puritanical enough, the film trundles a few miles out into the countryside*1 and drops into a much lower gear, whereby the father, mother and four children are sporadically but methodically tormented by (purportedly) dark forces in the nearby woodland. And it's this grim claustrophobia which hangs around the audience's shoulders for much of the film, as events do unfurl, but at a pace designed to un-nerve rather than exhilirate.
And what a pleasant change it makes to have a 'horror' film which isn't just a shaky-cam padding around the cellar of an old house to a Quiet/Quiet/LOUD!™ audio-reel. I use the term horror fairly loosely as The Witch is more of a supernatural/psychological thriller, rather than the jump-circus that the genre has been prone to sliding into (for a long time, to be fair). And while even the movie itself shuns the H-word ("A New-England Folktale""), its marketing material can't quite bring itself to do the same. I suspect this genre-muddying will lead to a few disgruntled ratings from casual viewers scrolling through the EPG for something to go with the popcorn on a Saturday night. C'est la mort.
In fact, The Witch is such a well made film that I was rather put out by a couple of sticking points which stopped me from loving it...
The first thing is, you can have broad Lancashire accents for your boat-fresh, American settlers; you can have authentic 17th century period-dialogue for them; you can even have the cast mumbling their lines. But not all at once. As much as I admire the craft of what's been made here, whole scenes were pretty much lost to me just guessing what was being discussed through intonation and physical acting (which the performers achieve, to their credit). And I say that as someone who likes to think they have a good ear for accents (I certainly delight in spotting bad ones). Elsewhere Ellie Grainger and Lucas Dawson, the two youngest members of the (speaking) cast are quite remarkable given what's required of them, but are constantly tripping over the unwieldy script. The overall effect is of a nice touch, taken slightly too far by an on-set continuity advisor. Probably the kind of thing I'd be responsible for, let's be honest.
And the other thing is that the film loses points for its thoroughly unnecessary final sequence (basically everything which happens after William's eldest daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy) wakes up in the dark). Although we do indeed see 'The Witch' at regular intervals, the film is very careful to show us a highly subjective view of outré events, only ever from one character's point-of-view. Although these are far more 'primitive' times than we as an audience are used to, we see that William's family are rooted in the practical traits of self-sufficient survival first and foremost. While they're as susceptible to folklore and superstition as most people were at that time, the events befalling the family are only put down to Witchcraft™ once all feasible alternatives have been exhausted, and even at the crescendo of the story we're not sure if what we're seeing is the work of the supernatural or psychosomatic insanity. Then the final few minutes of the film lifts this painstakingly crafted orb of nuance and ambiguity, and boots it over the fence into the pigshit yelling "Look, witches! Nudey ones an'all! And they're flying! Do you see?"
But y'know, apart from those gripes, The Witch is really rather good...
Having watched this directly after a Ben Wheatley film, I think it has a lot in common with A Field In England, funnily enough.
You shouldn't lose too much if you watch this at home, but you'll want to keep the lights low/off.
Despite my grumbling, it actually does.
This is Eggers' first feature film and he's set his bar pretty high. But a great cast reflect his work and vice-versa.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 2: Well, Ralph Ineson has been in pretty much everything except Star Wars, so let's slot him as appearing in Kingsman: The Secret Service, a movie which starred Mark 'Skywalker' Hamill and Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
No, I said it loses points for the ending and I bloody well meant it! :P
*1 Seriously though, is no-one else impressed that he's build a house, out there? Not like some hut or a luxury shed, but an actual house. With like wattle and daub walls and an upstairs and everything! He's built it out of, like, nothing (well y'know, the materials, obviously). But he's built it like, on his own (well, I imagine he got his four kids to help him, but anyone who's asked the kids to assist with any chore will know how much good they're going to be). No-one from the town would have been involved, because they're the ones who banished him out into the wilderness in the first place. I mean, the shed and the goat-pen are one thing, but this guy's built a bloody house! Hmm, well I thought it was good, anyway.
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.
