Tag: Movie

Rogue One – Review

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Last year JJ Abrams gave us the soft reboot to the Star Wars universe. It got the ball rolling for Disney and now we get the first of the spin-off movies. It comes in the form of Rogue One, a true prequel to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, as it tells the story of how the Death Star plans ended up in the hands of the rebels.

Felicity Jones plays Jyn (picture a diluted Rey). She isn’t force sensitive and has daddy issues like Luke Skywalker. A lot like Luke. It seems, to her, for some unknown reason, daddy has turned to the bad side. But we see at the start of the movie, he is reluctantly dragged away by the Empire to finish his work on the Death Star.

She has to go rogue (excuse the pun) as a kid, and is saved by an extreme rebel, Saw Gerrera. This character is played by the usually excellent Forest Whitaker. He isn’t so great here, it’s as if he took his (good) eye off the ball. The performance is somewhere between campy, empty, exaggerated.

Her father (like Luke’s, remember) is on a path to redemption and she’s the tool. TV’s Hannibal Mads Mikkelsen plays the role, he leaks a way for the rebels to get the blueprints to the Death Star and points them in the right direction when it comes to faults.

You know that major gripe about a super-space station being so vulnerable to what looks like a stupid oversight? Well, that is explained away: the designer put it there on purpose.

Mads as Galen Erso comes with only one complaint – we don’t get to see enough of him.

What begins as a darker Star Wars film, can’t help slip into a lighter version. In the final moments, I had to remind myself I wasn’t watching Star Trek Beyond. That’s right, the adult Star Wars film turns into the friendliest sci-fi of the summer.

It still manages to feel like it belongs with the original trilogy (blue milk, anyone?) and we do get some throwbacks. Peter Cushing is raised from the dead via CGI to resume his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. It’s a decent effort in terms of effects but he lacks the humanity, and the supreme acting ability, of the long-deceased legend.

He’s not bossing Lord Vader around this time, but Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic, who proves to be a worthy central, if slightly inept, villain.

Darth is back, in a few fleeting scenes. Vader now struts around like a catwalk model. Whoever says the fear factor has returned never appreciated seeing him for the first time before Lucas destroyed his mystique.

A hint of force sensitive individuals comes in the form of Chirrut Îmwe. He is a blind man that uses the force to be as effective as any fighter on screen. And fair play to Disney, they could have had him brandishing a light sabre in the final third but resisted. It means the idea that the Jedi are myth in A New Hope still rings true.

NB, George Lucas: This is how you avoid plot holes.

We know the ending, otherwise there’d be no A New Hope. How we get there is engaging. And like Star Trek Beyond, you’ll not think about it a few months from now.

It could be telling that it’s not had quite the same push as The Force Awakens. They’ve let this one out on its own merits, to find momentum under its own steam. A movie of two halves will leave all fans 50% satisfied.

7/10

(It’s touching, in light of recent events, that the final shot is a CGI Carrie Fisher as the original Princess Leia. May the Force be with her, always.)

Ghostbusters (1984) – Review

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The world is Ghostbusters crazy again. Well, sort of. The relief has been palpable as the reboot of the franchise received good reviews after months of slating. One trailer earned the dubious honour of being the worst ever to air on YouTube. Not to go against the grain here, we’ve decided to look at the original, before taking in the latest incarnation. Nostalgia is creating a haunting spectre, so who you gonna call? Simms View.

It is hard to not be nostalgic when revisiting the 1984 Ivan Reitman movie, written by stars Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. During childhood, VHS tapes of it were played to destruction. Scenes traversed the line between family and adult, comedy and horror, fun and terrifying.

On reflection, the world has moved on and those lines are more blurred in society than ever before. Ghostbusters is still dark for a kiddies’ movie, the very first ghost we see in the library will still pop chills into younger viewers, but it’s atmosphere surpasses nostalgia.

And it should be noted, that the special effects still stand up today. The reboot has been accused of looking like an Xbox game in parts. Here, the spirits look otherworldly.

That opening scene also sets the tone with some cheesy lines: “Listen, you smell something?” I always smell with my ears. But that had already been preceded with Bill Murray’s ingenious sarcasm, when admiring a spookily tall set of books, “You’re right, no human would stack books like this.”

This is a marker and an insight to the perfect balancing act the film pulls off. Great smarmy wit from the legend that is Bill Murray, action scenes that jump out, slapstick moments (men get slimed), to great confrontations (Walter Peck), and a sense of the mystic.

A strong cast keep it rolling along. Has Sigourney Weaver ever been sexier. Her character is the love interest for Murray’s Peter Venkman and becomes possessed by Zuul. She becomes the Gatekeeper to Rick Moranis’s Keymaster. The scenes before his possession as Louis Tully add the light humour, again, balancing what is to come. His run across New York to escape the beast is one that stuck in the mind from childhood.

Weaver Ghostbusters.png

As do countless lines: “And the flowers are still standing.” “It’s a sign all right, a sign we’re going out of business.” “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together…mass hysteria!” “Don’t cross the streams.” “I couldn’t help it. It just popped in there.”

The whole team get in on the act, again, perfect balance. Aykroyd’s Ray Stantz brings the childlike enthusiasm to the team and is one half of the technical side. His knowledge is surpassed by Ramis’s Egon Spengler, who can appear too serious but Venkman is the polar opposite – you guessed it: balance.

Ernie Hudson plays the late addition to the team. His character, Winston Zeddemore, is the everyman in need of a job. He does the best with what he’s given but it does feel as if he was shoehorned into the movie. They should have brought him in earlier or given him better screen time. That’s not to say he’s unimportant but he is poorly utilised.

It’s when Winston is sat chatting about the end of days, Mick Smiley’s “I Believe in Magic” starts playing, and the ghosts escape across the city.

Nowadays, the big finale has to be OTT, and often misfires. The original Ghostbusters hits the spot. I mean, how can an ending not be good when you see a giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man traipse through New York?

Very few popular movies age as well as this one. The anger aimed at a reboot is understandable when you walk through the original again. Time has not diminished the finished product. It isn’t perfect but therein lies some of its charm.

9/10

A Touch of Grey – Review

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On the face of it, A Touch of Grey, had the chance to be an understated work of intelligence. Its premise is to reunite four women after twenty-five years. The former high school friends would compare notes, and with a comedic angle, examine one another’s lives.

That was on the face of it, at least. Instead the early moments in the film are far from funny. Cringe, yes, but not in a deliberate way. Less The Office and more like it’s been produced by people that normally work in a paper mill.

Terrible camera work is only spared the title of worst element by the dire dialogue. Clichéd, forced and delivered by actresses that prove why some are suited to commercials and others meant for the big screen.

The soundtrack would have sounded bad on a bad seventies daytime TV show even back in the seventies. The little snippets of this remove you further from anything remotely natural feeling – if that’s at all possible, with the jarring conversation that sounds like a primary school student has written it for a lazy homework piece.

In the early going, it’s understandable if you give up before the thirty-minute mark. After all, there’s still time to press Stop on the player and find another movie. But then enters our fourth and final woman. Angela Asher’s Liz saves the setup from descending into something even worse.

She delivers her lines in the informal but natural way they were intended. The bigger life issues come up. Suddenly it’s not middle-aged women acting like they think girls do on a get together, but relatable issues we all face.

It begins to feel less forced, more natural especially when Barb opens up her heart. This is another saving grace because up until this point the actress who plays Barb, Maria del Mar, was the figurehead of the film. She was carrying a failing concept on her back and was looking as broken as her character.

Her little nuances and facial expressions give the depth to the later scenes that were wasted early on. The gloss is removed and it actually goes a little dark. If the initial annoying stages were set to act as a contrast, it was unnecessary, what follows is poignant enough.

It goes from touching, Patti breaking down about age catching up with her body but her mind feeling young. To the ridiculous, when Barb puts a lemon in Patti’s eye to disguise her tears from the others.

It is moving, just about. It suffers from all the additional and unnecessary components the filmmakers assumed were required to get it on film. These only serve to detract from the core messages.

It should have been played out as if on stage, delivered in monologue rather than moanalong.

The final third of the film saves it from a terrible score. Although it should feel lucky it hasn’t suffered a lower mark in spite of this.

4/10

The Revenant – Review

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For the second movie review running the delightful Tom Hardy graces the screen. But The Revenant is a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle. All plaudits and attention have gone to him. After all the hype, thousands of memes fighting to ensure he bagged an Oscar, the dust has settled. What remains in the cold light of day raises a few problems.

Alejandro G. Iñárritu, director and screenwriter, hasn’t done a bad job. Let’s get that out of the way. The criticisms that follow are more down to the burden of the film’s own hype. It’s a visual feast and he has captured the harshness of the environment. At times it is a moving canvas. Sadly, a picture here doesn’t paint a thousand words. It just fills in some time before Leo rolls around in the snow and/or dirt again.

That brings us to the leading man. Before we go on, he didn’t deserve an Academy Award for this performance. Yeah, yeah, he did deserve one on his mantelpiece at some point. But not in this turn. At times the suspension of belief asks too much. At others he mumbles through plot holes. Like, literally.

After being mortally wounded after the famous bear scene (I’m sure you’ve all seen the publicity surrounding it) he is left unable to speak (took a nasty scrape to the throat). But he did manage to muster some words for his son when an emotional scene required it. Then he was silent again for an hour.

He also musters up energy when seconds previous he couldn’t raise an eyebrow. It made me raise mine. Numerous other scenes had the same effect. He fell off a mountain but survived the fall thanks to a tree and then copied Han Solo’s survival techniques from the Empire Strikes Back‘s Hoth scene, a whole 160 years before that movie had made its way to cinema screens.

Pointing fun at the film is the only way to not feel saddened at a missed opportunity.

This could have been a modern day Deliverance. Instead it is a film only powerful at times, at others it is more vacuous than the landscape it is set in.

And like his effort in Legend, Tom Hardy once again has a stellar performance overlooked. Last time it was down to a poor script. This time the story is better, but the focus all wrong.

It’s rating is based on the touching scenes, the moral of connection through adversity, Hardy’s contribution, and the visual delights.

7/10

Legend (2015) – Review

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Everyone loves a gangster flick. The Americans have a plethora to choose from. It’s debatable if Goodfellas bests The Godfather, or maybe Scarface is more your thing. British efforts are a bit more wide boy and in your face. So what happens if you take a real life British gangster crime story and turn it into a movie?

If you choose to dabble with the most famous of all British gangsters you are dealing with the Kray twins, Ronnie and Reggie. The film you’ll end you with is The Krays from 1990. Hold yer horses, guv. What if we want to make the Krays fit into an Americanised biopic? Ah, should have said. Then you’ll end up 2015’s Legend.

Director Brian Helgeland is better known for his writing credits (L.A. Confidential) but did direct Payback (you may have missed that corker). He has taken the history of the most notorious London criminals and decided the truth shouldn’t get in the way of a good story. Unfortunately, the story of The Krays is good enough. Instead, his fictionalised version of events lacks direction and purpose.

Key moments, like the murders that eventually convicted the twins, are shoehorned into a story narrated by Emily Browning’s Frances Shea. Yeah, that’s right folks, the story is told from the perspective of a ghost whose real life interactions vary depending on which person’s account you believe.

It’s a shame to degrade her input when Browning’s performance is so strong. That is a running theme of the film, cracking performances hidden in a below average flick.

Christopher Eccleston, as always, proves what a versatile actor he is. His hunting as Scotland Yard’s Nipper Read deserved more screen time.

The true star of the show is Tom Hardy. So powerful and diverse are his turns as both twins, it has you believing two separate actors are playing the roles. His appearance here further underlines his place as one of the best performers of this generation.

If only the script could have given Hardy the platform he richly deserved. Instead the movie labours through cockney narration plastered onto a disingenuous wannabe Hollywood background. The result is something that could easily drift to TV movie, if not for the star power on display.

The story only charts the peak years of The Krays’ rule, from cutting deals with Las Vegas bosses to ruling London without opposition. Their downfall was portrayed as an inward problem rather than being taken bested.

Sadly, that sums up the film. It should have been the peak of the boys on camera, an all-star cast and decent budget. Instead it moves them into mediocrity. Often gangster films are criticised for glamorising the lifestyle. No such problem here. It looked pretty mundane through the eyes of Brian Helgeland.

Worth watching to enjoy Tom Hardy, but have a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku on the go for (the many) sections where the film stutters along.

5/10