Directed by: Andrew Jay Cohen
Written by: Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O'Brien
Starring: Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jason Mantzoukas
IMDb Link
Will Ferrell comedies are hit or miss for me. For every Anchor Man (2004), there's a Semi-Pro (2008), and unless it's some offbeat genius like Stranger Than Fiction (2006), I can't be sure just how I'm going to feel about the movie once it's over. The House falls somewhere in the middle of the spread; I liked it a little, but not enough for even the most memorable of the movie's moments to have a lasting impact.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
The set-up is pretty simple: over-attached parents Scott and Kate (Ferrell and Poehler) want to send their beloved daughter Alex (Ryan Simpkins, not the rugby player) to college, but can't afford it, so they agree to work with their friend Frank (Mantzoukas) to start up an underground casino in order to earn the money. The film glosses over a lot of details to get the plot going, but the for the sake of simply getting in to the film's funniest situations, it's serviceable. Most of the preamble is just forcibly awkward dialogue for the sake of humour and the set up for a couple of events later, nothing that grabbed my attention, but nothing aggressively unfunny either, it's just like the film takes a while to kick in to gear because they couldn't find a way to really make anything really laughable. I giggled at a line or two, but it seemed like a workable placeholder until the film could progress to the real moments of comedy.
Once the casino is actually in play the laughs become more consistent. There's definitely a case of "the best bits are in the trailers" here, as two of the funniest scenes are featured in the trailers, but thankfully the film's best work is left a stunning surprise and what we see in the trailers aren't the entirety of those scenes. What the films lacks in clever dialogue, it makes up for in slapstick; the physical gags are brutal and hilarious, and in some cases have better aesthetics than a lot of modern action movies (ooh, action movies are badly shot nowadays, never heard that one before). Honestly, the "Fight Club" scene is almost more impressive than funny. I won't directly spoil the later scenes for anyone that wants to see the movie, but as the film gets more absurd, it gets better. The corruption of character that Ferrell and Poehler go through as they become tougher and meaner leads to some of the funniest moments in the movie, covering for it's mostly flat and boring downtime.
This is where the film falls flat most of the time; there's a lot of superfluous junk that just gets thrown around, probably to pad the film's running time, but without a lot of work put in to them. Jason Mantzoukas' Frank has a bit of character conflict with his wife, which is what motivates him to help create the casino and try to put his life back together, but it's barely developed across the movie and has an unearned payoff. Nick Kroll plays a local council member who's having an affair with Allison Tolman's character (also a council member), and embezzles money for their affair, which is what motivates him to have the main characters investigated and their money 'confiscated', while Jeremy Renner shows up as a mob boss. Either of these stories would make for a decent set up for more conflict, but they're both underdeveloped, so I had little appreciation for them outside of the strong moments of slapstick that they brought. These factors aren't flat out terrible, but for a comedy, there's not a lot of laughs drawn out of them. The film tries to use them instead to create light drama to give the film some sort of emotional core, but it's not much better at that.
The Verdict: The House is fast, fun, and forgettable. While it's strong in its physical comedy, it doesn't work well when it attempts other kinds of humour, and its attempts at emotional arcs and conflict are superficial at best. It's probably not worth seeing in theatres unless you always enjoy Ferrell and/or Poehler, but if you find yourself looking at movie times and not sure what to watch, I'd take this over Transformers at least three times.
Rating: 5/10
Published June 29th, 2017
Thursday, 29 June 2017
Thursday, 22 June 2017
2017 Film Review: Transformers: The Last Knight (2017)
Directed by: Michael Bay
Written by: Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, Akiva Goldsman
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel
IMDb Link
The Transformers movies have been bad since the second film, and dipped in to truly terrible territory with the fourth installment, but The Last Knight is so bad that it's hard to come up with a word that describes it. Cancerous works, and I mean that literally too; I got myself checked after watching the movie, you can see my positive cancer test results here. Seriously though, this film drives the series down to new depths of bad filmmaking.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
The whole Transformers timeline gets retconned again, adding in a new story about how they were there to help King Arthur create civilisation, and that Merlin's magic came from a staff of the Transformers. In present day, the Transformers have been made illegal again, and are being hunted down by soldiers again. Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yeager (awful as these movies may be, that's still the coolest character name ever) is aiding and abetting the Autobots who have gone in to hiding. Megatron's back, the whole 'Galvatron' thing from the last movie completely dropped. Optimus Prime has returned to his home planet of Cybertron, only to be immediately corrupted by his apparent creator, Quintessa. There's also about a half dozen other plot points in this movie that don't have any real bearing on the outcome of the story, yet for some reason were included in the film.
As you may have guessed from my description, the film is incredibly bloated and disjointed. So little of what happens in this movie matters to the "plot" of this movie, and there's such a staggering amount of filler content that you could take out an hour of this two and a half hour waste of space and you wouldn't lose any actual story, let alone story that matters. A young girl is introduced in to the film at an early stage, and she does literally nothing for the whole story, only there to sass Mark Wahlberg a couple of times and then sit around waiting for the movie to finish. She has no actual point to her existence, and the only part of the movie where she's relevant is as meaningless to the plot as her inclusion in the movie at all. A British History Professor is included in the movie to act as Mark Wahlberg's love interest and suddenly become relevant when the plot demands her to, but the film devotes time to her family discussing her finding a man (or woman) and titters a bit over some mature women looking through Want Ads in a newspaper. The two and a half hour movie about alien robots fighting with two worlds at stake has time to indulge a few ladies (who again, have nothing to do with the plot) in discussions of finding someone in a Want Ad. That's just two examples of all the fluff and fat that blows up this movie's runtime, if I continued on about this stuff I'd be here all night. The point is the movie is pointless.
This goes for the actual plot, too. As I said before, the film retcons more in to the Transformers series' history, and in the process completely ignores the effect of everything that has happened in the previous movies while also acknowledging their existence. There's a very real cognitive dissonance that comes with trying to pretend that the writers of these movies care about the plot at all. Cybertron is coming to Earth to consume it, which triggers spikes to rise up around the Earth, which reveals that Earth is actually a Transformer known as Unicron. This is stupid enough as it is, but it's worse because the third film already dealt with Cybertron coming to Earth, and nothing about Unicron happened then. There's also plot points such as the return of John Turturro's character purely for the delivery of Anthony Hopkins' character. Turturro serves no other purpose in the movie, and the information he gives could've been retrieved in a much faster and simpler way, or even just been known by Anthony Hopkins to begin with, but for some reason the film needed to be padded with more time so they brought back John Turturro for one last paycheck. The plot could've been introduced, arisen, climaxed and resolved in about an hour, so I guess they just kept throwing ideas in until they forgot they were supposed to tell a story.
As for the direction, Michael Bay has become a caricature of himself. The best analogy I can come up with is that Michael Bay has a school for filmmakers where people learn to make films like Michael Bay, and their first practical assessment was to make this movie. The film is shaky, changes aspect ratios constantly, never focuses on anything for more than three seconds, and has no sense of tone. Give a monkey a camera, some cocaine and a few toys and he'd make a better Transformers film. Action setpieces fly by so quickly and are cut together so rapidly that you don't have time to register anything that happens as cool or interesting. Bay has become a slave to his own style here: the final point of a simple polo game can't be filmed for a few seconds from the side to establish a character's class and competitiveness, no, we have to see shots of horses legs from several different angles as they kick up dirt and grass, the ball getting hit has to be the most intense thing ever but only for a split second, everything has to look epic until epic means nothing. The film is so wrapped up in its personal idea of being epic that the film becomes the visual equivalent of white noise, just constant sprays of dirt and explosions so tiresome that it's difficult not to fall asleep. Bay seems to know this, too: there are moments of self-awareness in the film that suggests Bay is deliberately feeding his audience crap while being conscious of the fact that it's crap, similar to some of the undertones in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). This doesn't make it any better though, nor does it make it easier to watch: the movie is so futile and devoid of sense that all action and comedy blurs together in to one fat pile of mechanical mess.
The Verdict: Stay away from this abomination. Seriously, people need to stop giving money to these movies; there is no point to anything that happens in them, and what little value that can be gleaned from this film (a few lines from Anthony Hopkins, the achingly trite life lessons about humanity, heroism and protecting the world) can be seen in a thirty-second YouTube clip a few months from now when the whole film is online for free. Don't see this movie; it's the kind of movie that makes yo hate movies, and as of right now ties with Collateral Beauty as the worst movie I have seen in the cinema this year so far.
Rating: 2/10
Published June 22nd, 2017
Written by: Art Marcum, Matt Holloway, Ken Nolan, Akiva Goldsman
Starring: Mark Wahlberg, Anthony Hopkins, Josh Duhamel
IMDb Link
The Transformers movies have been bad since the second film, and dipped in to truly terrible territory with the fourth installment, but The Last Knight is so bad that it's hard to come up with a word that describes it. Cancerous works, and I mean that literally too; I got myself checked after watching the movie, you can see my positive cancer test results here. Seriously though, this film drives the series down to new depths of bad filmmaking.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
The whole Transformers timeline gets retconned again, adding in a new story about how they were there to help King Arthur create civilisation, and that Merlin's magic came from a staff of the Transformers. In present day, the Transformers have been made illegal again, and are being hunted down by soldiers again. Mark Wahlberg's Cade Yeager (awful as these movies may be, that's still the coolest character name ever) is aiding and abetting the Autobots who have gone in to hiding. Megatron's back, the whole 'Galvatron' thing from the last movie completely dropped. Optimus Prime has returned to his home planet of Cybertron, only to be immediately corrupted by his apparent creator, Quintessa. There's also about a half dozen other plot points in this movie that don't have any real bearing on the outcome of the story, yet for some reason were included in the film.
As you may have guessed from my description, the film is incredibly bloated and disjointed. So little of what happens in this movie matters to the "plot" of this movie, and there's such a staggering amount of filler content that you could take out an hour of this two and a half hour waste of space and you wouldn't lose any actual story, let alone story that matters. A young girl is introduced in to the film at an early stage, and she does literally nothing for the whole story, only there to sass Mark Wahlberg a couple of times and then sit around waiting for the movie to finish. She has no actual point to her existence, and the only part of the movie where she's relevant is as meaningless to the plot as her inclusion in the movie at all. A British History Professor is included in the movie to act as Mark Wahlberg's love interest and suddenly become relevant when the plot demands her to, but the film devotes time to her family discussing her finding a man (or woman) and titters a bit over some mature women looking through Want Ads in a newspaper. The two and a half hour movie about alien robots fighting with two worlds at stake has time to indulge a few ladies (who again, have nothing to do with the plot) in discussions of finding someone in a Want Ad. That's just two examples of all the fluff and fat that blows up this movie's runtime, if I continued on about this stuff I'd be here all night. The point is the movie is pointless.
This goes for the actual plot, too. As I said before, the film retcons more in to the Transformers series' history, and in the process completely ignores the effect of everything that has happened in the previous movies while also acknowledging their existence. There's a very real cognitive dissonance that comes with trying to pretend that the writers of these movies care about the plot at all. Cybertron is coming to Earth to consume it, which triggers spikes to rise up around the Earth, which reveals that Earth is actually a Transformer known as Unicron. This is stupid enough as it is, but it's worse because the third film already dealt with Cybertron coming to Earth, and nothing about Unicron happened then. There's also plot points such as the return of John Turturro's character purely for the delivery of Anthony Hopkins' character. Turturro serves no other purpose in the movie, and the information he gives could've been retrieved in a much faster and simpler way, or even just been known by Anthony Hopkins to begin with, but for some reason the film needed to be padded with more time so they brought back John Turturro for one last paycheck. The plot could've been introduced, arisen, climaxed and resolved in about an hour, so I guess they just kept throwing ideas in until they forgot they were supposed to tell a story.
As for the direction, Michael Bay has become a caricature of himself. The best analogy I can come up with is that Michael Bay has a school for filmmakers where people learn to make films like Michael Bay, and their first practical assessment was to make this movie. The film is shaky, changes aspect ratios constantly, never focuses on anything for more than three seconds, and has no sense of tone. Give a monkey a camera, some cocaine and a few toys and he'd make a better Transformers film. Action setpieces fly by so quickly and are cut together so rapidly that you don't have time to register anything that happens as cool or interesting. Bay has become a slave to his own style here: the final point of a simple polo game can't be filmed for a few seconds from the side to establish a character's class and competitiveness, no, we have to see shots of horses legs from several different angles as they kick up dirt and grass, the ball getting hit has to be the most intense thing ever but only for a split second, everything has to look epic until epic means nothing. The film is so wrapped up in its personal idea of being epic that the film becomes the visual equivalent of white noise, just constant sprays of dirt and explosions so tiresome that it's difficult not to fall asleep. Bay seems to know this, too: there are moments of self-awareness in the film that suggests Bay is deliberately feeding his audience crap while being conscious of the fact that it's crap, similar to some of the undertones in Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014). This doesn't make it any better though, nor does it make it easier to watch: the movie is so futile and devoid of sense that all action and comedy blurs together in to one fat pile of mechanical mess.
The Verdict: Stay away from this abomination. Seriously, people need to stop giving money to these movies; there is no point to anything that happens in them, and what little value that can be gleaned from this film (a few lines from Anthony Hopkins, the achingly trite life lessons about humanity, heroism and protecting the world) can be seen in a thirty-second YouTube clip a few months from now when the whole film is online for free. Don't see this movie; it's the kind of movie that makes yo hate movies, and as of right now ties with Collateral Beauty as the worst movie I have seen in the cinema this year so far.
Rating: 2/10
Published June 22nd, 2017
Wednesday, 21 June 2017
2017 Film Review: Kedi (2016)
Directed by: Ceyda Torun
IMDb Link
Kedi is a small documentary about several cats that live on the streets of Istanbul, Turkey. The film follows these cats around during their daily lives and their interactions with people, and splices in interviews with the local people, any stories that they might have about the cats being followed, and platitudes or lessons that people have learnt from interacting with cats.
The film is light as a feather. There's no heavy drama, the film doesn't focus on one cat's struggles to keep her children a live, or intensely watch as a cat goes on some epic journey to find food. Kedi is simply realistic, gathering together anecdotes from the actions of the cats and the words of the people to give us a little look in to not just how cats are, but how cats being what they are changes and uplifts people. It's a simple, tender, passionate work that doesn't pursue any grand ideas and just focuses on the little things that cats do that shows their personality, and lets the people talk about the positive impact of cats in their daily lives. While the film had moments where it seemed obvious that it was a first-time director, occasionally throwing in shots over dialogue that had no meaning and only served to look pretty, the overall tone of the film was a genuine effort to just look at life for a little while, and it left me feeling in a pleasant and peaceful state for its runtime.
The Verdict: Kedi is a lovely slice of life piece that offers comfort in what cats are and what they do for people, and is a little enhanced by the culture in which it's set. It won't blow you away with some significant revelation about cats or anything to that effect, and there isn't any forced drama to pull a heartstrings or jerk a tear; however, there's a certain remedial effect that permeates the movie as it reminds you the tenderness and playfulness of cats and the effect that this can have on people. If you like cats, go see it. Likewise if you appreciate culture.
Rating: 7/10
Published June 22nd, 2017
IMDb Link
Kedi is a small documentary about several cats that live on the streets of Istanbul, Turkey. The film follows these cats around during their daily lives and their interactions with people, and splices in interviews with the local people, any stories that they might have about the cats being followed, and platitudes or lessons that people have learnt from interacting with cats.
The film is light as a feather. There's no heavy drama, the film doesn't focus on one cat's struggles to keep her children a live, or intensely watch as a cat goes on some epic journey to find food. Kedi is simply realistic, gathering together anecdotes from the actions of the cats and the words of the people to give us a little look in to not just how cats are, but how cats being what they are changes and uplifts people. It's a simple, tender, passionate work that doesn't pursue any grand ideas and just focuses on the little things that cats do that shows their personality, and lets the people talk about the positive impact of cats in their daily lives. While the film had moments where it seemed obvious that it was a first-time director, occasionally throwing in shots over dialogue that had no meaning and only served to look pretty, the overall tone of the film was a genuine effort to just look at life for a little while, and it left me feeling in a pleasant and peaceful state for its runtime.
The Verdict: Kedi is a lovely slice of life piece that offers comfort in what cats are and what they do for people, and is a little enhanced by the culture in which it's set. It won't blow you away with some significant revelation about cats or anything to that effect, and there isn't any forced drama to pull a heartstrings or jerk a tear; however, there's a certain remedial effect that permeates the movie as it reminds you the tenderness and playfulness of cats and the effect that this can have on people. If you like cats, go see it. Likewise if you appreciate culture.
Rating: 7/10
Published June 22nd, 2017
Sunday, 18 June 2017
2017 Film Re-View: Avatar (2009)
Directed by: James Cameron
Written by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver
IMDb Link
This year I decided to review every single movie I see at the cinema. Thanks to a special screening, I was able to re-watch Avatar in the cinema, so even though it's not a new movie, I have to review it. This time I wrote my review in a before-and-after format, gathering my thoughts about the film before seeing it again in the cinema for the first time in almost eight years, and then relaying my new experience after.
Before
Avatar was actually the first movie I ever wrote a review for. Back in 2009, when I was just fifteen years old, I witnessed what was (at the time) one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life, and for the first time, I actually wanted to try to articulate that feeling. It was truly amazing to me at the time, and the film stand as one of the reasons that I love film as much as I do. People have complained over the years about Avatar's derivative plot and characters, and some have written or spoken about a lack of 'cultural impact', but the night I saw the film, the very night it premiered in Australia, I didn't care about any of that. I love James Cameron's movies, and I had read up on Avatar constantly leading up to the film, learning bits and pieces about the technology that they invented for the movie and the process that went in to making the CGI as realistic as possible. I recall Sam Worthington saying in an interview something along the lines of "Avatar is a f*cking beast and it is going to blow you all away". Such a truly blunt and Australian way of putting it; needless to say I was pumped for it. I remember going to see it in IMAX 3D on opening night as a present to my best friend, whose birthday was the day before. Sitting down in that theatre, with three of my best friends, I was prepared for something awesome, but I had no way to account for what I was about to see.
The film didn't just tell me a story; it immersed me in another world. In my first experience, I was positively enthralled, my attention captured by the film completely. I hadn't seen Pocahontas or Fern Gully in years, and didn't even know what Dances With Wolves was at the time, so all the plot comparisons people drew were totally lost on me. I was familiar with the type of story being told, but I wasn't concerned with how the story beats were the same as or similar to others, the dialogue worked on me no matter how cliche, because I was absolutely in to the movie from start to finish.
Every audiovisual detail of the film just added to what the movie was capable of making me feel, and it made each moment compelling to me, even those that others would roll their eyes at. The sheer amount of effort that went in to making the look of this film detailed enough to feel real is staggering, and the way that the world is built is what made it work so perfectly for me. We're told bits and pieces of culture to try and get us invested in the story and the people of Pandora, but it's what we're shown that keeps me attention. This was a fully realiised world, teeming with life and just begging to be explored, and for the duration of the movie, that was the only place I wanted to be. When the story beats came, I wasn't disappointed that they were re-treads, because we were treading new ground every second of the film that was spent on the planet. I felt my emotions rise and fall with each step taken, not concerned that I knew that they were coming, because I was being given an experience in film like no other, something that took years of dedication to make that well and truly dwarfed any story that this film could've told. I loved how much the soundtrack added to the film as well, my heart swelled and pumped with the music because it was moving as the world did, and it was just one more factor that aided in encapsulating me in the moment. Each moment is played completely straight, never questioning the potential silliness of anything it did, letting the plausibility of the world speak for itself, which, once again, worked on me without a second thought. I appreciate that I got to watch this film for the first time in the perfect environment for it , and through a much less experienced lens. I've watched the film a few times since, but the time spent watching it on the small screen at home is wasted by comparison. I recognise what people point out as the film's flaws now, and while they don't diminish the memory of my experience, I know that had I seen this film under different circumstances I wouldn't have had such a glowing opinion of it as I do. That said, before I go to re-experience the film one more time in the vein of how I did the first time, I can recall the exact words that I spoke as the credits rolled for the first time: "BEST. MOVIE. EVER." Not my most eloquent reflection, but one that expressed exactly how I felt about the film at the time.
After
This was good to see again. It wasn't 3D, it wasn't even IMAX, but to sit in the theatre with some of my best friends and watch again, a movie that has had significant impact on my love of film, was a more than worthwhile afternoon.
Without the full advantage of IMAX 3D, the world was not nearly as immersive, so the core experience was still there, but I could see the cracks and frays around the edges that reminded me why people don't consider this film perfect. The dialogue really is poor at points, exposition sometimes plainly shoved in your face just to get on with putting you in the world. "Unobtanium" is a screenwriting term for something that's extremely rare and hard to obtain. It's generally used as a placeholder name So much effort was put in to creating Pandora, but the script seems almost like a first draft, and while that doesn't defeat what the film is trying to do, it does become more difficult to swallow on repeat viewings, as the scenes inside facilities that are mostly dialogue-oriented become boring and hackneyed, filled with exposition with a slight military edge that clearly didn't have as much effort put in to it as the world itself. It's like James Cameron had a brilliant idea for a world, spent all his time developing the technology that would let him see this world brought to life, and then realised after all he had worked on that he needed a reason for people to want to go there, so he took a general, well-known story framework and rushed the script.
Like I said, though, the core experience is still there. A little muted and less mesmerising than what I first knew, it's still amazing to just sit and watch Pandora unfold before you, and a little amazing when you consider that it's all CGI. The Na'Vi people still look amazing in their design to this day, but what's really incredible is the fact that everything around them is designed and animated too. They really did build the world first and figure out the story later.
All that was true for my first experience with the film remains relatively true with this one. While the effect was a dulled by a combination of a weaker viewing format and the fact that this is actually my fifth time watching the movie overall, the memories of the emotions the film stirred in me echoed in the moments that they did the first time. Even as the weaknesses in the film became more apparent to me, they're still nothing compared to the world, and the clear sincerity and passion and skill with which it was designed. The cliche story and dialogue are the way that they are because what matters to this film is getting you in to the world as soon as possible, using film as the medium with which to show Pandora. Form is function here.
Rating: This is a difficult movie to rate, and that's because the way you watch it entirely defines your experience with it. While seeing in IMAX 3D, with no other opinions prefixing your judgement and little to no exposure to the film's advertising is easily a 10/10, I also have to acknowledge that there is a lot that is lost by using another format. While the film also absolutely achieves the core idea of what it wants to achieve, by leaving story and dialogue consideration to the wayside so blatantly it becomes hard to ignore them as flaws entirely. My personal bias can't let the rating drop much, but if I step outside my perfect original experience of Avatar and look at the cracks, I feel ok giving it 8.5/10.
Published June 18th, 2017
Written by: James Cameron
Starring: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Sigourney Weaver
IMDb Link
This year I decided to review every single movie I see at the cinema. Thanks to a special screening, I was able to re-watch Avatar in the cinema, so even though it's not a new movie, I have to review it. This time I wrote my review in a before-and-after format, gathering my thoughts about the film before seeing it again in the cinema for the first time in almost eight years, and then relaying my new experience after.
Before
Avatar was actually the first movie I ever wrote a review for. Back in 2009, when I was just fifteen years old, I witnessed what was (at the time) one of the greatest cinematic experiences of my life, and for the first time, I actually wanted to try to articulate that feeling. It was truly amazing to me at the time, and the film stand as one of the reasons that I love film as much as I do. People have complained over the years about Avatar's derivative plot and characters, and some have written or spoken about a lack of 'cultural impact', but the night I saw the film, the very night it premiered in Australia, I didn't care about any of that. I love James Cameron's movies, and I had read up on Avatar constantly leading up to the film, learning bits and pieces about the technology that they invented for the movie and the process that went in to making the CGI as realistic as possible. I recall Sam Worthington saying in an interview something along the lines of "Avatar is a f*cking beast and it is going to blow you all away". Such a truly blunt and Australian way of putting it; needless to say I was pumped for it. I remember going to see it in IMAX 3D on opening night as a present to my best friend, whose birthday was the day before. Sitting down in that theatre, with three of my best friends, I was prepared for something awesome, but I had no way to account for what I was about to see.
The film didn't just tell me a story; it immersed me in another world. In my first experience, I was positively enthralled, my attention captured by the film completely. I hadn't seen Pocahontas or Fern Gully in years, and didn't even know what Dances With Wolves was at the time, so all the plot comparisons people drew were totally lost on me. I was familiar with the type of story being told, but I wasn't concerned with how the story beats were the same as or similar to others, the dialogue worked on me no matter how cliche, because I was absolutely in to the movie from start to finish.
Every audiovisual detail of the film just added to what the movie was capable of making me feel, and it made each moment compelling to me, even those that others would roll their eyes at. The sheer amount of effort that went in to making the look of this film detailed enough to feel real is staggering, and the way that the world is built is what made it work so perfectly for me. We're told bits and pieces of culture to try and get us invested in the story and the people of Pandora, but it's what we're shown that keeps me attention. This was a fully realiised world, teeming with life and just begging to be explored, and for the duration of the movie, that was the only place I wanted to be. When the story beats came, I wasn't disappointed that they were re-treads, because we were treading new ground every second of the film that was spent on the planet. I felt my emotions rise and fall with each step taken, not concerned that I knew that they were coming, because I was being given an experience in film like no other, something that took years of dedication to make that well and truly dwarfed any story that this film could've told. I loved how much the soundtrack added to the film as well, my heart swelled and pumped with the music because it was moving as the world did, and it was just one more factor that aided in encapsulating me in the moment. Each moment is played completely straight, never questioning the potential silliness of anything it did, letting the plausibility of the world speak for itself, which, once again, worked on me without a second thought. I appreciate that I got to watch this film for the first time in the perfect environment for it , and through a much less experienced lens. I've watched the film a few times since, but the time spent watching it on the small screen at home is wasted by comparison. I recognise what people point out as the film's flaws now, and while they don't diminish the memory of my experience, I know that had I seen this film under different circumstances I wouldn't have had such a glowing opinion of it as I do. That said, before I go to re-experience the film one more time in the vein of how I did the first time, I can recall the exact words that I spoke as the credits rolled for the first time: "BEST. MOVIE. EVER." Not my most eloquent reflection, but one that expressed exactly how I felt about the film at the time.
After
This was good to see again. It wasn't 3D, it wasn't even IMAX, but to sit in the theatre with some of my best friends and watch again, a movie that has had significant impact on my love of film, was a more than worthwhile afternoon.
Without the full advantage of IMAX 3D, the world was not nearly as immersive, so the core experience was still there, but I could see the cracks and frays around the edges that reminded me why people don't consider this film perfect. The dialogue really is poor at points, exposition sometimes plainly shoved in your face just to get on with putting you in the world. "Unobtanium" is a screenwriting term for something that's extremely rare and hard to obtain. It's generally used as a placeholder name So much effort was put in to creating Pandora, but the script seems almost like a first draft, and while that doesn't defeat what the film is trying to do, it does become more difficult to swallow on repeat viewings, as the scenes inside facilities that are mostly dialogue-oriented become boring and hackneyed, filled with exposition with a slight military edge that clearly didn't have as much effort put in to it as the world itself. It's like James Cameron had a brilliant idea for a world, spent all his time developing the technology that would let him see this world brought to life, and then realised after all he had worked on that he needed a reason for people to want to go there, so he took a general, well-known story framework and rushed the script.
Like I said, though, the core experience is still there. A little muted and less mesmerising than what I first knew, it's still amazing to just sit and watch Pandora unfold before you, and a little amazing when you consider that it's all CGI. The Na'Vi people still look amazing in their design to this day, but what's really incredible is the fact that everything around them is designed and animated too. They really did build the world first and figure out the story later.
All that was true for my first experience with the film remains relatively true with this one. While the effect was a dulled by a combination of a weaker viewing format and the fact that this is actually my fifth time watching the movie overall, the memories of the emotions the film stirred in me echoed in the moments that they did the first time. Even as the weaknesses in the film became more apparent to me, they're still nothing compared to the world, and the clear sincerity and passion and skill with which it was designed. The cliche story and dialogue are the way that they are because what matters to this film is getting you in to the world as soon as possible, using film as the medium with which to show Pandora. Form is function here.
Rating: This is a difficult movie to rate, and that's because the way you watch it entirely defines your experience with it. While seeing in IMAX 3D, with no other opinions prefixing your judgement and little to no exposure to the film's advertising is easily a 10/10, I also have to acknowledge that there is a lot that is lost by using another format. While the film also absolutely achieves the core idea of what it wants to achieve, by leaving story and dialogue consideration to the wayside so blatantly it becomes hard to ignore them as flaws entirely. My personal bias can't let the rating drop much, but if I step outside my perfect original experience of Avatar and look at the cracks, I feel ok giving it 8.5/10.
Published June 18th, 2017
Tuesday, 13 June 2017
A Look at the Worst: Baby Geniuses (1999)
Directed by: Bob Clark
Written by: Bob Clark, Greg Michael, Steven Paul, Francisca Matos, Robert Grasmere
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Catrall
IMDb Link
Alright, let's do another one of these. This time I thought I'd look at one of the films that is generally considered one of the worst, one that people may have actually heard of and even enjoyed when they were babies themselves.
Baby Geniuses is about genius babies. Shocked, aren't you?
The film sets up the dumb premise that before the age of two, babies are actually super intelligent, containing great secrets to the universe in their little minds, only understood in their babbling language, which is apparently ancient and impossible to translate. A group of scientists have determined this and work to keep it a secret because they're evil, going about getting their hands on several babies to build and study their genius. You'd think that these babies were already geniuses given the film's premise, but the film goes against itself, muddying the whole affair with something called the Kinder Method, which apparently raises even better genius babies. How the method does this, no-one knows, it just seems to be an excuse to make one of the babies that much more genius than the rest of them, and it's apparently too easy to just have one baby be naturally smarter. They also try to cover their bases by suggesting that this genius only occurs in one in ten thousand babies, while also offering the idea that this genius could happen to every baby. Isn't it great when you can just make up stuff as you go along so that you can have something both ways? Man, there's so much wrong with this movie and I haven't even got to the film's not even half-arsed attempt at a story.
The even-more-genius baby, Sylvester, is raised on the Kinder Method to test its superiority, against his twin, Whit, who is raised in a normal home by a man trying to decipher the ancient baby language. Apparently the twins share a telepathic connection, but are also completely unaware of each other's existence (figure that one out on your own time), and the two must never meet or know about each other... because. The film never gives a reason for them to not meet, doesn't imply that their psychic connection has something to do with it, or perhaps that the Kinder Method will be ruined by it, or even something as basic as it affecting the variables of the scientific study, it just says they can never meet. I mean the film literally says it: because the filmmakers apparently couldn't be bothered to find another way to explain this, they literally have a computer spit out the exposition for Sly and Whit's backstory to Christopher Lloyd, who is literally the scientist in charge and already knows all of it. They didn't put any thought in to the plot, I suppose we can't expect them to put any in to the plot delivery, either. What makes it funnier to me is the fact that, after being told explicitly that Sly and Whit can never meet, when the two inevitably do, nothing happens. They just sort of see each other, yell in shock, and then pass each other by, before the obvious mix-up that happens as they're identical twins. The film just doesn't even try to do anything right.
Now, some may find it unfair that I'm picking this thing apart when it's a movie called Baby Geniuses, after all it's a movie for babies, their gauge for complete crap doesn't really exist yet, but first, children have been offered good filmmaking targeted at them for years, with filmmakers continuing to make quality content that appeals specifically to kids while also being worthwhile for all ages (seriously, I don't think I have to remind people that Pixar exists), and second, Baby Geniuses isn't even really appropriate for babies, because it manages to slip in a surprising number of adult jokes and weirdly dark situations, while also encouraging bad behaviour with the actions of the babies in the film.
A casual "Gimme your clothes" "Okay slick, but buy me dinner first" joke is just strange when it comes from two babies; the film tries to get by on making jokes out of babies doing things that they wouldn't normally do, but it gets bizarrely inappropriate when it comes to moments like this. It definitely doesn't help when you're dealing with the film's biggest problem: the fact that most of the main characters are babies. They don't know what's going on around them, so the baby actors are just staring in to space or not really looking where they should be; it's clear that the babies simply don't have a grasp on what's happening, let alone the basics of acting. This isn't a knock on the actors (they're babies, what do you expect?) but on the filmmakers; it should've been clear at this point that the film simply wouldn't work, because having every baby be an actual character with lines in the film causes a lot of scenes to seem disconnected from reality, as their expressions have nothing to do with the emotions in their voice. Heck, they even had to use CGI to make the baby's mouths speak their lines, so voice and expression are separate altogether. It's such fundamental stuff that it baffles me they thought that the film would work without it. It probably doesn't help that all the babies talk like movie versions of 90s hipsters.
One last thing to poke at : Big Baby. Click the links at your own peril. This monster is more terrifying than half the creatures in horror films today, and it's absolutely hilarious to me that they thought this thing wouldn't give kids nightmares.
The Verdict: Baby Geniuses is easily one of the worst films I've ever seen; in fact, as of right now it's #5 on my bottom 5 worst movies list. Literally nothing about this film works; it fails to tell a coherent story, it barely manages to set up a premise, and while it tries to get by on the saccharine and silly things that only appeal to babies and young children, it also manages to make itself inappropriate to a children audience with some of its jokes and events. Any appeal that the more 'mature' jokes may have for an older viewing audience gets lost in the constant poo, wee, and kicking-people-in-the-dick jokes, and whatever potential there could be for enjoyment from the film's obviously ridiculous premise is null and void in the film's presentation. I chose this film as part of my 'A Look at the Worst' series for a reason.
Rating: Obviously 1/10
Published June 14th, 2017
Written by: Bob Clark, Greg Michael, Steven Paul, Francisca Matos, Robert Grasmere
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Catrall
IMDb Link
Alright, let's do another one of these. This time I thought I'd look at one of the films that is generally considered one of the worst, one that people may have actually heard of and even enjoyed when they were babies themselves.
Baby Geniuses is about genius babies. Shocked, aren't you?
The film sets up the dumb premise that before the age of two, babies are actually super intelligent, containing great secrets to the universe in their little minds, only understood in their babbling language, which is apparently ancient and impossible to translate. A group of scientists have determined this and work to keep it a secret because they're evil, going about getting their hands on several babies to build and study their genius. You'd think that these babies were already geniuses given the film's premise, but the film goes against itself, muddying the whole affair with something called the Kinder Method, which apparently raises even better genius babies. How the method does this, no-one knows, it just seems to be an excuse to make one of the babies that much more genius than the rest of them, and it's apparently too easy to just have one baby be naturally smarter. They also try to cover their bases by suggesting that this genius only occurs in one in ten thousand babies, while also offering the idea that this genius could happen to every baby. Isn't it great when you can just make up stuff as you go along so that you can have something both ways? Man, there's so much wrong with this movie and I haven't even got to the film's not even half-arsed attempt at a story.
The even-more-genius baby, Sylvester, is raised on the Kinder Method to test its superiority, against his twin, Whit, who is raised in a normal home by a man trying to decipher the ancient baby language. Apparently the twins share a telepathic connection, but are also completely unaware of each other's existence (figure that one out on your own time), and the two must never meet or know about each other... because. The film never gives a reason for them to not meet, doesn't imply that their psychic connection has something to do with it, or perhaps that the Kinder Method will be ruined by it, or even something as basic as it affecting the variables of the scientific study, it just says they can never meet. I mean the film literally says it: because the filmmakers apparently couldn't be bothered to find another way to explain this, they literally have a computer spit out the exposition for Sly and Whit's backstory to Christopher Lloyd, who is literally the scientist in charge and already knows all of it. They didn't put any thought in to the plot, I suppose we can't expect them to put any in to the plot delivery, either. What makes it funnier to me is the fact that, after being told explicitly that Sly and Whit can never meet, when the two inevitably do, nothing happens. They just sort of see each other, yell in shock, and then pass each other by, before the obvious mix-up that happens as they're identical twins. The film just doesn't even try to do anything right.
Now, some may find it unfair that I'm picking this thing apart when it's a movie called Baby Geniuses, after all it's a movie for babies, their gauge for complete crap doesn't really exist yet, but first, children have been offered good filmmaking targeted at them for years, with filmmakers continuing to make quality content that appeals specifically to kids while also being worthwhile for all ages (seriously, I don't think I have to remind people that Pixar exists), and second, Baby Geniuses isn't even really appropriate for babies, because it manages to slip in a surprising number of adult jokes and weirdly dark situations, while also encouraging bad behaviour with the actions of the babies in the film.
A casual "Gimme your clothes" "Okay slick, but buy me dinner first" joke is just strange when it comes from two babies; the film tries to get by on making jokes out of babies doing things that they wouldn't normally do, but it gets bizarrely inappropriate when it comes to moments like this. It definitely doesn't help when you're dealing with the film's biggest problem: the fact that most of the main characters are babies. They don't know what's going on around them, so the baby actors are just staring in to space or not really looking where they should be; it's clear that the babies simply don't have a grasp on what's happening, let alone the basics of acting. This isn't a knock on the actors (they're babies, what do you expect?) but on the filmmakers; it should've been clear at this point that the film simply wouldn't work, because having every baby be an actual character with lines in the film causes a lot of scenes to seem disconnected from reality, as their expressions have nothing to do with the emotions in their voice. Heck, they even had to use CGI to make the baby's mouths speak their lines, so voice and expression are separate altogether. It's such fundamental stuff that it baffles me they thought that the film would work without it. It probably doesn't help that all the babies talk like movie versions of 90s hipsters.
One last thing to poke at : Big Baby. Click the links at your own peril. This monster is more terrifying than half the creatures in horror films today, and it's absolutely hilarious to me that they thought this thing wouldn't give kids nightmares.
The Verdict: Baby Geniuses is easily one of the worst films I've ever seen; in fact, as of right now it's #5 on my bottom 5 worst movies list. Literally nothing about this film works; it fails to tell a coherent story, it barely manages to set up a premise, and while it tries to get by on the saccharine and silly things that only appeal to babies and young children, it also manages to make itself inappropriate to a children audience with some of its jokes and events. Any appeal that the more 'mature' jokes may have for an older viewing audience gets lost in the constant poo, wee, and kicking-people-in-the-dick jokes, and whatever potential there could be for enjoyment from the film's obviously ridiculous premise is null and void in the film's presentation. I chose this film as part of my 'A Look at the Worst' series for a reason.
Rating: Obviously 1/10
Published June 14th, 2017
Friday, 9 June 2017
2017 Film Review: 20th Century Women (2016)
Directed by: Mike Mills
Written by: Mike Mills
Starring: Annette Bening, Lucas Jade Zumann, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, Billy Crudup
Every now and then I do love to go in to a film that hasn't been shoved down my throat for a couple of months straight. 20th Century Women was a quiet and pleasant experience, and I do recommend it if you appreciate stories about people.
We follow the lives of five people all living in the same house in Santa Barbara in 1979. Jamie (Zumann) is a 15-year old boy who's growing up and finding his place in the world. His mother is Dorothea (Bening), a woman who can't seem to be happy and is worried she's not enough for her son. Dorothea enlists the help of Julie (Fanning), a friend of Jamie's who secretly sneaks in to their house at night to talk with him and sleep beside him, and Abbie (Gerwig), a young lodger who's struggled with cancer is now making connections with the people around her. There's also William (Crudup), another tenant who manages to find a small place in the lives of the rest.
The film works because it gives each of these characters depth and takes the time to make you feel calm in your presence, even as they make mistakes and struggle with their various personal issues, drama in the film doesn't rise in tension before it explodes and cascades like a tsunami; 20th Century Women is more akin to a stream. tensions are smaller, climaxes muted, and the film doesn't dwell on its events until it comes to its end. Some may find this a weakness, but I appreciated that lack of exaggeration in the film's storytelling. The film toed that line between being a realistic depiction of life and a story that takes advantage of its medium, like taking snapshots of a real experience. Each character has their life and their circumstances explored, while the film also takes a look at the nature of feminism, the punk scene, and some of society's attitudes at the time. It's an interesting mix, as each character's actions and attitudes can be attributed to their experience, and it all comes back to how these things influence Jamie, and ultimately how that affects Jamie's relationship with his mother. It's ultimately a coming-of-age story in some ways, but it never forgets the significance of each character.
There was a strange calm that accompanied my experience with this film. I compared it before to a stream, and it's really the most apt way of putting it. The film presents its events realistically, but the music and the tone of the characters are maintained steadily throughout most of the film. There are moments where it gets a little louder, as Jamie explores the punk scene, but it always comes back to a certain serenity. I think this is largely because the film is told in retrospect; everything that happens in the story has already happened, and is told as if it's already happened, so there isn't a reason to worry as the path the story takes is one that's looked back on with a kind of indescribable fondness rather than fret. The characters have their troubles, but this film feels distinctly like a memory, so you're detached knowing you can't do anything about it, and calm knowing that there's a fondness in the remembering of what's happened. Even as you become conscious of strife and even tragedy that will eventually happen to these characters, as it has already happened, there's solace in the fact that these events mean something to someone.
The Verdict: 20th Century Women is a nostalgic human story told with restraint. It avoids dramatic highs and lows, opting instead for a level-headed, if a little misty-eyed look at growth, change and identity in the lives of its five characters. Some may find its lack of drama as a flaw, others may not like the purposely disjointed narrative that creates snapshots of this time in the characters' lives, but I loved how thoughtful it was with the presentation of each character, not letting even the least significant go by the wayside without consideration. This isn't for everyone, it takes things at a pace that may require patience if you can't get invested, but there was an intangible yet definite purity to the story it told; part coming-of-age, part relationship between mother and son.
Rating: 7.5/10
Published June 9th, 2017
Thursday, 8 June 2017
2017 Film Review: The Mummy (2017)
Directed by: Alex Kurtzman
Written by: Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet, Jon Spaihts, David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis
IMDb Link
Not at all related to the silly-but-never-serious Brendan Fraser films, The Mummy is Universal's second attempt at creating their own cinematic "Dark Universe", after they failed to drum up excitement with the now decanonised Dracula Untold (2014). Unfortunately for Universal, The Mummy manages to be somehow worse and even more forgettable.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Ancient mummy Ahmanet (Boutella) is unearthed by Nick Morton (Cruise) and sets out to perform a ritual with Nick that possesses him with the spirit Set, the Egyptian god of death. Because Universal wants to hurry this Dark Universe along, they also include a shadow society that seeks out and destroys evil, run by Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe).
The movie has problems from the start, in the sense that it starts about three times. The film is front-loaded with multiple unnecessary scenes that are there purely for exposition, delivered through flashbacks and narration from a bored-sounding Crowe. They simply slow the movie down, giving us information that is sometimes unnecessarily complex and sometimes just plain unnecessary. We don't need to know about the Templar Knights right away, yet we're subjected to two scenes of their involvement in the story before having a pile of exposition dumped on us that's just a spin on the original film's backstory It's essentially what was weakest about the original film, but here less interesting and without charm following it up. It's also worse in this case because they immediately remove all of the mystery from the film's horror aspect, which is leaned on much more heavily this time around. So much happens in the film that could have an air of curiosity or intrigue attached to it's more brutal moments, but by telling us everything about the cause of the film's horror before the film begins, we're given nothing to wonder about what's to come, which gives us nothing to think about, which makes the film's smaller weaknesses, conveniences and nitpicks more apparent. When nothing compelling is happening on-screen, all I can think about is how the film's plot would essentially be void if they'd destroyed the all-important ruby as soon as it was found, or how the film's finale starts defining nuances to the ritual on the fly to fit the story's needs. It's a shame, too, because some of the action and horror sequences could've been considerably more effective if they'd at least tried to be enigmatic about it; we know that a mummy is gonna come along and do some freaky stuff, we don't need our hand held throughout the entire experience.
Acting was all over the place, thought that seems to be down to the writing: Cruise seemed to be having fun, but that fun was an anomaly in the film in and of itself, and for the most part his character was flat and had a very simple arc, so there wasn't much to work with. Crowe was just an exposition machine as Jekyll, ragging on about good and evil with no other purpose than to set up the Dark Universe. Boutella was a prop more than a character for the most part, there to look menacing and occasionally say some Ancient Egyptian. She gets a chance to be more convincingly threatening in the finale, but by that point the film is so loaded with fantasy bother that the scenes where she should be most effective are simply confusing.
One final thought, only here because it crossed my mind as I watched the movie and a few of my friends will understand, but The Mummy is seriously the darkest film I've seen since Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), and I mean that in the physical sense. There are several scenes in the film that are incomprehensibly dark, so poorly lit that you can barely make out definable features, and they were so notably bad in this regard that they reminded me of AvP: R.
The Verdict: The Mummy is unnecessarily convoluted and bland. The film struggles to balance its elements of action, adventure and horror, in the process creating a lot of scenes that simply have no impact. It doesn't help that the film's story happens only because of a combination of fantasy rigmarole and poor character decisions. I don't recommend seeing the film, if only to stem the tide of Universal's attempt to flash-fry yet another cinematic universe together; it's also nothing like the original, so if you're a fan then this film doesn't offer appeal in that regard.
Rating: 4/10
Published June 8th, 2017
Written by: Alex Kurtzman, Jenny Lumet, Jon Spaihts, David Koepp, Christopher McQuarrie, Dylan Kussman
Starring: Tom Cruise, Sofia Boutella, Annabelle Wallis
IMDb Link
Not at all related to the silly-but-never-serious Brendan Fraser films, The Mummy is Universal's second attempt at creating their own cinematic "Dark Universe", after they failed to drum up excitement with the now decanonised Dracula Untold (2014). Unfortunately for Universal, The Mummy manages to be somehow worse and even more forgettable.
*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*
Ancient mummy Ahmanet (Boutella) is unearthed by Nick Morton (Cruise) and sets out to perform a ritual with Nick that possesses him with the spirit Set, the Egyptian god of death. Because Universal wants to hurry this Dark Universe along, they also include a shadow society that seeks out and destroys evil, run by Dr. Jekyll (Russell Crowe).
The movie has problems from the start, in the sense that it starts about three times. The film is front-loaded with multiple unnecessary scenes that are there purely for exposition, delivered through flashbacks and narration from a bored-sounding Crowe. They simply slow the movie down, giving us information that is sometimes unnecessarily complex and sometimes just plain unnecessary. We don't need to know about the Templar Knights right away, yet we're subjected to two scenes of their involvement in the story before having a pile of exposition dumped on us that's just a spin on the original film's backstory It's essentially what was weakest about the original film, but here less interesting and without charm following it up. It's also worse in this case because they immediately remove all of the mystery from the film's horror aspect, which is leaned on much more heavily this time around. So much happens in the film that could have an air of curiosity or intrigue attached to it's more brutal moments, but by telling us everything about the cause of the film's horror before the film begins, we're given nothing to wonder about what's to come, which gives us nothing to think about, which makes the film's smaller weaknesses, conveniences and nitpicks more apparent. When nothing compelling is happening on-screen, all I can think about is how the film's plot would essentially be void if they'd destroyed the all-important ruby as soon as it was found, or how the film's finale starts defining nuances to the ritual on the fly to fit the story's needs. It's a shame, too, because some of the action and horror sequences could've been considerably more effective if they'd at least tried to be enigmatic about it; we know that a mummy is gonna come along and do some freaky stuff, we don't need our hand held throughout the entire experience.
Acting was all over the place, thought that seems to be down to the writing: Cruise seemed to be having fun, but that fun was an anomaly in the film in and of itself, and for the most part his character was flat and had a very simple arc, so there wasn't much to work with. Crowe was just an exposition machine as Jekyll, ragging on about good and evil with no other purpose than to set up the Dark Universe. Boutella was a prop more than a character for the most part, there to look menacing and occasionally say some Ancient Egyptian. She gets a chance to be more convincingly threatening in the finale, but by that point the film is so loaded with fantasy bother that the scenes where she should be most effective are simply confusing.
One final thought, only here because it crossed my mind as I watched the movie and a few of my friends will understand, but The Mummy is seriously the darkest film I've seen since Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007), and I mean that in the physical sense. There are several scenes in the film that are incomprehensibly dark, so poorly lit that you can barely make out definable features, and they were so notably bad in this regard that they reminded me of AvP: R.
The Verdict: The Mummy is unnecessarily convoluted and bland. The film struggles to balance its elements of action, adventure and horror, in the process creating a lot of scenes that simply have no impact. It doesn't help that the film's story happens only because of a combination of fantasy rigmarole and poor character decisions. I don't recommend seeing the film, if only to stem the tide of Universal's attempt to flash-fry yet another cinematic universe together; it's also nothing like the original, so if you're a fan then this film doesn't offer appeal in that regard.
Rating: 4/10
Published June 8th, 2017
Saturday, 3 June 2017
2017 Film Review: Baywatch (2017)
Directed by: Seth Gordon
Written by: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario
IMDb Link
There's a scene in Baywatch where David Hasselhoff shows up to motivate Dwayne Johnson to get back to the beach, after getting fired and starting work at a phone shop. During this scene, there's brief cut to a kid, only half-paying attention and bored out of his skull. At that moment, the kid exemplified how I was feeling towards the film exactly.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
Dwayne Johnson is devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchanan of Baywatch. Zac Efron is Matt Brody, reckless new recruit who butts heads with Buchanan over his actions. Together, they and the team at Baywatch work to investigate a drug scheme run by Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). It's a basic crime plot reminiscent of what's been done recently in the Jump Street movies, but without nearly as many jokes along the way.
The comedy just didn't work for me here most of the time; the opening moments of the film, played out in ridiculous slow motion and emphasising the fact that Johnson is a higher being on this beach suggested that the film would be a light-hearted jab at the silly source material, but the film doesn't go on to make fun with what it has often, and when it does there's no many actual jokes or gags. The film comments about how it's ridiculous for life guards to be doing the things that the characters do in the film, but that's literally the one commentary they make and they just make it over and over again without changing it up or taking it any further. The characters still end up doing what they do, and these scenes of action are played so straight that they could've been used in a non-comedic film and there wouldn't have been much of a difference. When the film does make jokes they're generally just (sometimes literally) in-your-face dick jokes and gross-out jokes with little set-up. There's potential for some real funny stuff there, but there isn't much creativity going on. Dwayne Johnson's Buchanan being literally idolised and loved by everyone at the beach could've made for a potentially hilarious running joke throughout the whole film, but it's used for about five minutes to make two jokes and an unnecessary plot convenience. It would've been funny to see that go absurd, such as the sand statue of his getting bigger every day, or him being so loved that people literally just walk up to him on the beach and give him cocktails, or have people come from nowhere to anoint the ground he stands on with gifts, just something to totally overblow the fact that the people on the beach essentially worship Buchanan for his efforts. Unfortunately, it's a joke that doesn't really go anywhere, and that's about the same for every joke in the film; there aren't any long set up jokes with a strong payoff, and the throwaway jokes are weak and too few and far between to maintain my interest.
Aside from the comedy, there's obvious appeal to a general audience in the fact that Johnson and Efron have their shirts off for a considerable amount of the film, and while the exploitation is tame by comparison, the same can be said for the bikini and swimsuit-clad women that pepper the screen at all times. Seriously, I think most people would enjoy being the director of photography on one of these types of films. That's all there is to the movie, really, and that's fine in and of itself, but it doesn't stop the movie from being a relatively straight action flick with the usual emotional beats that doesn't take nearly as much of an advantage of its opportunity to have fun with its silliness. It's so tone deaf of the film to give Efron's Brody a tragic backstory and create an arc for him to learn to work with a family because he never had one; it's a progression that never really has a climactic moment and just sort of happens as the film wraps up its drug plot. With the drug plot in mind, I appreciated the way Chopra hammed up her performance on-screen, but her breasts got more development than her character (that's not necessarily a criticism and generally expected in these types of movies, but I couldn't get that line out of my head and had to write it down somewhere). I didn't hate this film, but it never engaged me or entertained me much more than mildly; I can recall only one joke really making me laugh more than a slight 'ha'.
The Verdict: I found Baywatch to be entertaining for about thirty minutes total, which is a shame considering it goes for nearly two hours. The film seems to desperately want to be like the successful 21 Jump Street reboots, falling flat on all of the same emotional beats, but it simply isn't consistently funny or endearing enough to do so. It's never aggressively unfunny, but the film seems caught between trying to play up its own ridiculousness and telling the story and characters straight, so we get an odd mix of not quite screwball and not quite comedic drama.
Rating: 4.5/10
Published June 3rd, 2017
Written by: Damian Shannon, Mark Swift, Jay Scherick, David Ronn, Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant
Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron, Alexandra Daddario
IMDb Link
There's a scene in Baywatch where David Hasselhoff shows up to motivate Dwayne Johnson to get back to the beach, after getting fired and starting work at a phone shop. During this scene, there's brief cut to a kid, only half-paying attention and bored out of his skull. At that moment, the kid exemplified how I was feeling towards the film exactly.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
Dwayne Johnson is devoted lifeguard Mitch Buchanan of Baywatch. Zac Efron is Matt Brody, reckless new recruit who butts heads with Buchanan over his actions. Together, they and the team at Baywatch work to investigate a drug scheme run by Victoria Leeds (Priyanka Chopra). It's a basic crime plot reminiscent of what's been done recently in the Jump Street movies, but without nearly as many jokes along the way.
The comedy just didn't work for me here most of the time; the opening moments of the film, played out in ridiculous slow motion and emphasising the fact that Johnson is a higher being on this beach suggested that the film would be a light-hearted jab at the silly source material, but the film doesn't go on to make fun with what it has often, and when it does there's no many actual jokes or gags. The film comments about how it's ridiculous for life guards to be doing the things that the characters do in the film, but that's literally the one commentary they make and they just make it over and over again without changing it up or taking it any further. The characters still end up doing what they do, and these scenes of action are played so straight that they could've been used in a non-comedic film and there wouldn't have been much of a difference. When the film does make jokes they're generally just (sometimes literally) in-your-face dick jokes and gross-out jokes with little set-up. There's potential for some real funny stuff there, but there isn't much creativity going on. Dwayne Johnson's Buchanan being literally idolised and loved by everyone at the beach could've made for a potentially hilarious running joke throughout the whole film, but it's used for about five minutes to make two jokes and an unnecessary plot convenience. It would've been funny to see that go absurd, such as the sand statue of his getting bigger every day, or him being so loved that people literally just walk up to him on the beach and give him cocktails, or have people come from nowhere to anoint the ground he stands on with gifts, just something to totally overblow the fact that the people on the beach essentially worship Buchanan for his efforts. Unfortunately, it's a joke that doesn't really go anywhere, and that's about the same for every joke in the film; there aren't any long set up jokes with a strong payoff, and the throwaway jokes are weak and too few and far between to maintain my interest.
Aside from the comedy, there's obvious appeal to a general audience in the fact that Johnson and Efron have their shirts off for a considerable amount of the film, and while the exploitation is tame by comparison, the same can be said for the bikini and swimsuit-clad women that pepper the screen at all times. Seriously, I think most people would enjoy being the director of photography on one of these types of films. That's all there is to the movie, really, and that's fine in and of itself, but it doesn't stop the movie from being a relatively straight action flick with the usual emotional beats that doesn't take nearly as much of an advantage of its opportunity to have fun with its silliness. It's so tone deaf of the film to give Efron's Brody a tragic backstory and create an arc for him to learn to work with a family because he never had one; it's a progression that never really has a climactic moment and just sort of happens as the film wraps up its drug plot. With the drug plot in mind, I appreciated the way Chopra hammed up her performance on-screen, but her breasts got more development than her character (that's not necessarily a criticism and generally expected in these types of movies, but I couldn't get that line out of my head and had to write it down somewhere). I didn't hate this film, but it never engaged me or entertained me much more than mildly; I can recall only one joke really making me laugh more than a slight 'ha'.
The Verdict: I found Baywatch to be entertaining for about thirty minutes total, which is a shame considering it goes for nearly two hours. The film seems to desperately want to be like the successful 21 Jump Street reboots, falling flat on all of the same emotional beats, but it simply isn't consistently funny or endearing enough to do so. It's never aggressively unfunny, but the film seems caught between trying to play up its own ridiculousness and telling the story and characters straight, so we get an odd mix of not quite screwball and not quite comedic drama.
Rating: 4.5/10
Published June 3rd, 2017
Thursday, 1 June 2017
2017 Film Review: Wonder Woman (2017)
Directed by: Patty Jenkins
Written by: Allan Heinberg Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs
Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright
IMDb Link
The DCEU has been rough; Man of Steel (2013) wasn't anything special, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) was a monumental waste of potential, and the less said about Suicide Squad (2016) the better. The quality of these films did not bode well for what else there was to come, and I must say I had little hope for this year's Wonder Woman and Justice League. That's why it's such a pleasant surprise to say that Wonder Woman is a very good movie, one that kept me interested for its entirety and one that I may even go out and see again.
Diana is a princess and warrior of the Amazons, living on an island that's obscured and safe from the rest of the world. However, when a man crash lands on her island, talking of a war to end all wars, she feels compelled to leave her home and save humanity.
First and foremost, Wonder Woman herself: Gadot portrays her excellently. She breathes such life in to the character, conveying her strength and stubbornness as much as her innocence and naivety. It helps that she's also well-written character with defined traits and a believable motivation that gets challenged and changes her over the course of the movie. Diana is a fish out of water, a being that represents all that is good and brave, learning about a world at its worst, and Gadot offers every conflicting emotion that you'd expect her to feel. The character is faced with ideas and issues that are at odds with her worldview, and it's great to see her visibly deal with her inner turmoil regarding war and the nature of humanity. A particularly compelling scene, at least for me personally, involves Diana witnessing people running from their home village, horses being abused to move faster, injured men being carried out, the horrors of innocents embroiled in war. You can see in her eyes and hear in her voice the way she slowly breaks down, as the men she is with try to keep her focused on the bigger picture, to remember the goal of their mission is to stop the war in order to prevent more atrocities like this from happening. You know from the development of her character that she won't go on until the injustice in front of her is put an end to, she can't be cold to the world she's only just learning about, she can't forget the innocents surrounding her, and she sidesteps her mission to deal with the problem at hand. It's the sort of characterisation you want in a good movie, and it feels odd to write that, but necessary given the lack of it given in previous DCEU films. I really want to emphasise that Wonder Woman is a very good movie, and does a great job of building its titular character.
With characterisation in mind, I also want to talk about Chris Pine's Steve Trevor. A spy for British Intelligence, Steve is no stranger to the grey areas of life. He's the perfect counter-point to Diana; world-weary and burdened by war, with right and wrong not really playing in to how he acts. It makes their pairing very interesting, as he tries to navigate her through his world. As she learns about the world from him, he re-captures some of his innocence and sense of right through witnessing her actions. The two are written well together, and its made all the more worthwhile by the great chemistry between Pine and Gadot. They are the glue of the movie, and it's clear that the filmmakers understood this, as they spend most of the film together. This also allows for their relationship as characters to develop rapidly while remaining believable. It's worth seeing this movie for these two characters alone. It's hard to pick a favourite of their scenes together; their comedic moments are charming, their tender scenes ring true, perhaps their serious scenes aren't as compelling, but that seems to be down to dialogue rather than chemistry.
Considering dialogue, I want to spend some time looking at the movies flaws before I finish. While the film is very good, it's not perfect. The pacing is rushed in the first act, leaving some moments of bizarre editing and dialogue. Diana's origin is delivered in a clunky manner, because the story demanded that they be unknown to her, which means that we're first offered her fake origins through awkward dialogue, only to be told, as an audience, that it's fake shortly afterwards. This is then nullified by the reveal to Diana that she isn't normal, which seems like it should be a big moment, but is offered no emotion and passed over quickly. Likewise, before leaving her home island it is revealed that if she does, she can never return. Once again, this seems like it should be a big moment, one that would be conflicting to her character, but Gadot offers no emotion her, and the film treats that revelation like nothing. I can understand not wanting to spend too much time on it, as Diana is a driven woman and we know that she's going to go, but this reveal and her departure are literally one after the other, as if leaving her home forever is something that means absolutely nothing to her. It's this rushed editing that really took me out of the film in its early stages. Thankfully Gadot and Pine together were compelling enough to pull me back in.
I also think I should consider the action in this action-heavy film. Some of it is high-quality, some of it is unexpectedly poor given the film's production value. The build up of these scenes are effective, such as Diana stepping up and over the trenches, which is easily one of the most badass moments in film this year so far, but the action swings between rapidly edited, sometimes unwatchable fist fights mixed with shootouts and heavily stylised, well choreographed fist fights mixed with shootouts. When the camera gives the characters a real space to move in, we see good choreography and style, and a real showing of Diana's training as she stays consious of her surroundings, often doing two things with one action, such as picking up her shield as she rolls to kick an enemy. However, even these scenes fall plague to an over-reliance on CGI that makes the whole thing look undeniably fake at points. It's a mixed bag as far as the action is concerned, but given the cleverness of the choreography I'm mostly forgiving of the sometimes surprisingly poor effects.
The Verdict: Wonder Woman is charming and compelling in all the right ways. Gadot and Pine play wonderfully (yes, I know) off each other and make their every scene together work, with a combination of a clear understanding of their characters and sheer chemistry. The more serious scenes that deal with the film's heavier themes and issues don't always work as well, as both the dialogue and the action is a little hit-or-miss, but there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had here with a surprising amount of consideration of the war the film portrays. I definitely recommend seeing Wonder Woman if you get the chance; it's easily one of the better blockbusters this year so far.
Rating: 7.5/10
Published June 1st, 2017
Written by: Allan Heinberg Zack Snyder, Jason Fuchs
Starring: Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright
IMDb Link
The DCEU has been rough; Man of Steel (2013) wasn't anything special, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) was a monumental waste of potential, and the less said about Suicide Squad (2016) the better. The quality of these films did not bode well for what else there was to come, and I must say I had little hope for this year's Wonder Woman and Justice League. That's why it's such a pleasant surprise to say that Wonder Woman is a very good movie, one that kept me interested for its entirety and one that I may even go out and see again.
Diana is a princess and warrior of the Amazons, living on an island that's obscured and safe from the rest of the world. However, when a man crash lands on her island, talking of a war to end all wars, she feels compelled to leave her home and save humanity.
First and foremost, Wonder Woman herself: Gadot portrays her excellently. She breathes such life in to the character, conveying her strength and stubbornness as much as her innocence and naivety. It helps that she's also well-written character with defined traits and a believable motivation that gets challenged and changes her over the course of the movie. Diana is a fish out of water, a being that represents all that is good and brave, learning about a world at its worst, and Gadot offers every conflicting emotion that you'd expect her to feel. The character is faced with ideas and issues that are at odds with her worldview, and it's great to see her visibly deal with her inner turmoil regarding war and the nature of humanity. A particularly compelling scene, at least for me personally, involves Diana witnessing people running from their home village, horses being abused to move faster, injured men being carried out, the horrors of innocents embroiled in war. You can see in her eyes and hear in her voice the way she slowly breaks down, as the men she is with try to keep her focused on the bigger picture, to remember the goal of their mission is to stop the war in order to prevent more atrocities like this from happening. You know from the development of her character that she won't go on until the injustice in front of her is put an end to, she can't be cold to the world she's only just learning about, she can't forget the innocents surrounding her, and she sidesteps her mission to deal with the problem at hand. It's the sort of characterisation you want in a good movie, and it feels odd to write that, but necessary given the lack of it given in previous DCEU films. I really want to emphasise that Wonder Woman is a very good movie, and does a great job of building its titular character.
With characterisation in mind, I also want to talk about Chris Pine's Steve Trevor. A spy for British Intelligence, Steve is no stranger to the grey areas of life. He's the perfect counter-point to Diana; world-weary and burdened by war, with right and wrong not really playing in to how he acts. It makes their pairing very interesting, as he tries to navigate her through his world. As she learns about the world from him, he re-captures some of his innocence and sense of right through witnessing her actions. The two are written well together, and its made all the more worthwhile by the great chemistry between Pine and Gadot. They are the glue of the movie, and it's clear that the filmmakers understood this, as they spend most of the film together. This also allows for their relationship as characters to develop rapidly while remaining believable. It's worth seeing this movie for these two characters alone. It's hard to pick a favourite of their scenes together; their comedic moments are charming, their tender scenes ring true, perhaps their serious scenes aren't as compelling, but that seems to be down to dialogue rather than chemistry.
Considering dialogue, I want to spend some time looking at the movies flaws before I finish. While the film is very good, it's not perfect. The pacing is rushed in the first act, leaving some moments of bizarre editing and dialogue. Diana's origin is delivered in a clunky manner, because the story demanded that they be unknown to her, which means that we're first offered her fake origins through awkward dialogue, only to be told, as an audience, that it's fake shortly afterwards. This is then nullified by the reveal to Diana that she isn't normal, which seems like it should be a big moment, but is offered no emotion and passed over quickly. Likewise, before leaving her home island it is revealed that if she does, she can never return. Once again, this seems like it should be a big moment, one that would be conflicting to her character, but Gadot offers no emotion her, and the film treats that revelation like nothing. I can understand not wanting to spend too much time on it, as Diana is a driven woman and we know that she's going to go, but this reveal and her departure are literally one after the other, as if leaving her home forever is something that means absolutely nothing to her. It's this rushed editing that really took me out of the film in its early stages. Thankfully Gadot and Pine together were compelling enough to pull me back in.
I also think I should consider the action in this action-heavy film. Some of it is high-quality, some of it is unexpectedly poor given the film's production value. The build up of these scenes are effective, such as Diana stepping up and over the trenches, which is easily one of the most badass moments in film this year so far, but the action swings between rapidly edited, sometimes unwatchable fist fights mixed with shootouts and heavily stylised, well choreographed fist fights mixed with shootouts. When the camera gives the characters a real space to move in, we see good choreography and style, and a real showing of Diana's training as she stays consious of her surroundings, often doing two things with one action, such as picking up her shield as she rolls to kick an enemy. However, even these scenes fall plague to an over-reliance on CGI that makes the whole thing look undeniably fake at points. It's a mixed bag as far as the action is concerned, but given the cleverness of the choreography I'm mostly forgiving of the sometimes surprisingly poor effects.
The Verdict: Wonder Woman is charming and compelling in all the right ways. Gadot and Pine play wonderfully (yes, I know) off each other and make their every scene together work, with a combination of a clear understanding of their characters and sheer chemistry. The more serious scenes that deal with the film's heavier themes and issues don't always work as well, as both the dialogue and the action is a little hit-or-miss, but there's still plenty of enjoyment to be had here with a surprising amount of consideration of the war the film portrays. I definitely recommend seeing Wonder Woman if you get the chance; it's easily one of the better blockbusters this year so far.
Rating: 7.5/10
Published June 1st, 2017
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