Just watched The Haunted Airman. We needed a DVD that we could agree on, and this seemed to fit the bill. It’s an adaptation of a book called The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Dennis Wheatley, which I read when I was younger. It freaked the crap outta me then, and I’ve been waiting a long time to see an adaptation on the screen. My wife suggested it because it contained a healthy dose of one Robert Pattinson.
Turns out it was a made-for-TV BBC production packaged up on DVD to cash in on R. Pats’ new-found fame with the tween set. And it was awful.
See, when you’re adapting something, it usually pays to do more than just take the central premise and then turn it into something unrecognisable. The novel was tense and cerebral. The “film” was dull, slow and pointless, culminating in a nonsensical ending that made me wish I’d been more astute in Video Ezy and realised what a pile o’shite I had in my hands while I still had the chance to grab something else.
In a word: disappointing. Avoid, even if the tween in your life (or your wife!) is begging you to hire it.
R. Pats has a lot to answer for
Star Trekkin’
I’ve been fortunate enough to catch three movies on my “watchlist” in the past week: Wolverine, Flight 666 (Iron Maiden doco) and Star Trek. I’ve been a bit slack on blogging movies I’ve seen recently, having not bothered to record my thoughts on Role Models or Zack and Miri Make A Porno. I may well have continued slacking, but The Ascot asked me to provide a Star Trek review for their newsletter, so I’ve been stung into action.
First off I have to declare my colours as a Star Trek fan (but not a fanatic – no prosthetic ears or Klingon dictionary for me!), and also a fan of JJ Abrams. Consequently I went into the new Star Trek movie with high expectations, and I wasn’t disappointed.
The writers have done a fine job of interlacing aspects of classic Trek mythology and events into a story that rather cleverly allows for new adventures of a young crew. It’s not giving too much away to say that the script messes around a bit with time, but leaves very few obvious holes to get hung up on.
The cast give magnificent performances that are engaging enough for new viewers, but will recall the original players to existing fans. I have to single out our own Karl Urban for his Bones McCoy. He stamps his authority on the character while still giving a pitch perfect nod to the original actor DeForest Kelly.
Special effects pretty much shame every other Star Trek outing – the budget that Abrams had really shows here as being well above any of the other Trek films, and technology in effects is put to good use. Abrams also avoids the trap of CGI effects that are too obviously computer generated. The ships and planets have a real depth and weight on screen that can often be missed with CGI.
Overall I have to give this a solid 4.5 stars out of 5. There were only a couple of things that prevented this being a 5 star effort for me, but I can’t clue you in without getting into spoiler territory. Rest assured that they are minor nitpicks, and this is a must-see film.
Valkyrie follow up and Inglorious Basterds
After wondering out loud about whatever happened to Bryan Singer’s version of Logan’s Run in my last post, I conveniently came across this story on Ain’t It Cool News. Seems that Bryan Singer’s resisting the temptation to step back into Superman’s world, presumably because he would have been required to retread the Superman origin story again as part of a franchise “re-boot”. Not surprising given he largely avoided rehashing the ground covered so well by Richard Donner, Christopher Reeve and co back in the day.
Also of interest is the freshly released teaser trailer for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds featuring Brad Pitt, and yes, Basterds is spelt that way in the title. It’s looking like an August release, hopefully worldwide – I don’t fancy waiting an extra three months for a new Tarantino fix. Some of it looks a bit hammy (Hitler in the trailer immediately had me thinking of Mel Brooks!), but Tarantino’s take on WW2 is a must see for me.
Ride of the Valkyrie
Much has been made of the fact that no-one in Valkyrie speaks with a German accent. While the opening of the film has Tom Cruise vocalising a letter he’s writing in German, that’s about as far as it goes. From what I’ve read, it was a decision made by the cirector Bryan Singer presumably to ward off any media focus on Tom Cruise’s ability to do a credible accent. Given the fact that comedians and critics alike still reference Kevin Costner’s inability to master an English accent for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves back in the nineties, he may have had a point. Unfortunately, it is actually distracting given the mixture of accents in the film, which is really a shame as the film itself is a fine effort.
There’s a difficult line that historical films have to tread when the outcome of the events are well known in history. It’s pretty obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of history that the plot to kill Hitler failed. Therefore the filmmakers must find a way to evoke tension without relying on the “will they pull it off” scenario. In Valkyrie Singer manages to derive the tension from demonstrating just how close the conspirators got. There are moments late in the film where I found myself almost wondering whether the film would use dramatic license to show an alternate “what might have been” history.
There’s a stellar cast in action here, but this almost serves to handicap the film, as expectations bred from such an ensemble aren’t really met here. Overall Valkyrie is a competent if unspectacular film. I was surprised to hear that this was in the works as last I’d heard Bryan Singer was supposed to be directing a remake of Logan’s Run after he wrapped up Superman Returns. With a bit of luck his next project will be something that gives him a bit more room to move than the strictures of the historical drama/thriller of Valkyrie.
A solid effort, but not one that I’ll be rushing to buy on DVD. Seven M&Ms out of ten.
The Bond Identity
When the Bourne Identity was released it changed the way action movies were thought about. Much of the visual hyperbole of the genre was replaced by gritty “realism” and steadycam shots. The marriage of the Bond mythology with this new style of storytelling was done well in Casino Royale, particularly as the film sought to capture the essence of Bond, returning to the Bond of Ian Fleming’s novels and moving away from the humour drenched cariacature that Bond of the movie world had become.
The success of Casino Royale showed that this was a popular treatment, with fans appeased over the perceived break with tradition by a movie that delivered solid action, performances and storyline. Anticipation was therefore high for Quantum Of Solace, the follow up to Casino Royale directed by Marc Forster.
It’s difficult to sum up my feelings about Quantum Of Solace. It is a good action movie that plays out well as a revenge flick. It ticks all the Bond boxes, with fast cars, expensive suits, beautiful women and exotic locations. The problem that I had with the film was that it felt like it was ticking the boxes. Many of the familiarities were conjured up by attempts at cleverness on the part of the filmmaker – references to Bond’s drink of choice and way with women felt injected rather than natural, a hamfisted nod to the fans.
When I first saw The Incredibles, I was most reminded of Connery-era Bond. The island lair, the sneaking around, the traps and contraptions. The locations were certainly there in Quantum Of Solace, but instead of scenes like Blofeld’s volcano lair, we’re treated to an eco-friendly desert hideaway, replete with hydrogen fuel cells. Bond has always made slightly topical films, but in this case the global climate chaos motif is writ large on the whole film – even the villain, Mr Greene, uses the cover of an eco-friendly tycoon.
With the story arc that started in Casino Royale being wrapped up by Quantum Of Solace – it pays to rewatch Casino before seeing Quantum – there is promise for more films, especially given the presence of the sinister Quantum organisation, the spiritual successor to SMERSH from the Bond of old. Overall the rebooted Bond is picking up some nice momentum, and it would be nice to see the elements that have been introduced into the rebooted franchise starting to expand and grow.
Overall I enjoyed Quantum Of Solace and the way that it tried to still be a Bond film while living up to its responsibilities as a modern action movie. I do have some reservations about the removal of some of the elements that made the franchise so much fun, and hope that like Christopher Nolan and co managed to do so well with the revamped Batman franchise, the Bond team can start to push the boundaries a little more to capture the fantasy elements of the character and his deeds. A solid three Snifters out of five. Or it would be if Snifters hadn’t been discontinued. I need to find a new rating system. Any ideas?
Tales of the drunk ‘n’ monkey
This is it folks, the match up of the millennium. The bout you’ve all been waiting for. Two giants of martial arts on the silver screen finally come together in the same movie. In The Forbidden Kingdom, Jackie chan and Jet Li collide, and the results are a joy to behold. Fortunately, the movie’s not bad either.
The Forbidden Kingdom is an Americanised version of the story of the Monkey King, played with glee by Li, and the quest of the seeker to return his staff. In this film the seeker is an American teen who is obsessed with martial arts films, played by Michael Angarano. I shudder to think what must have been going through this kid’s mind when he was told “hey, you’ll have to do fight scenes with Jackie Chan and Jet Li”. Must have blown his mind!
The seeker is joined on his quest by the drunken monk, played by Chan in his finest Drunken Master form, and the mysterious sparrow, who refers to herself and everyone else in the third person. Along the way they must battle the Jade Warlord and his army, and the lady with white hair.
While purists may be let down, this is both a love letter to the martial arts genre, and a pretty decent retelling of the story, albeit one that is definitely aimed at a younger audience – think Karate Kid meets The Neverending Story. While much is made in the promotion of Chan vs Li, this is just a small component of the film. Their fight is epic though, and incorporates many of the classic styles from kung fu movies.
Overall this is worth a watch, and the costumes, sets and scenery are up to the standards of other films in the genre, although not given as much screentime as in other films. I found it to be an entertaining watch, and thought Chan and Li were right in their element, and really made the film stronger than it might have otherwise been. Eight Snifters out of ten from me.
You woke up the baby
In any other year, there’s a good chance that Hellboy 2 would have been my favourite movie of the year, and the best comic book adaptation. The fact that this year also blessed us with Dark Knight is desperately unfair to Guillermo Del Toro. Tolkien fans can be in good heart that the Hobbit is in safe hands, and more than Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 is the film that proves it.
This is Guillermo’s Lord Of The Rings. Hellboy 2 carries the same air of melancholy, and of things passing that were so pervasive in Rings, and is such a large part of the appeal. I think it’s fair to say that Guillermo’s grasp of character driven fantasy will help him knock Hobbit out of the park.
The core cast is strong, and the characters in Hellboy 2 really come into their own this time out. Liz is given more to do this time, and it really bolsters the dynamic between her, Abe and Hellboy. The addition of Johann Kraus, voiced brilliantly by Jeremy Irons, also adds a great foil to Hellboy’s loose attitude. There were a couple of characters that didn’t entirely do it for me though. Prince Nuada, played by Luke Goss, reminded me a little too much of Richard the goth from the IT Crowd, which made it harder to take him seriously – more a result of me bringing my own baggage to the film than any deficiency on the actor’s part. I also found Jeffrey Tambor’s character a tad too boorish in this instalment, which is a shame, because I really enjoyed him in the first film.
There is so much to love in this film. The fantasy world of the film is so incredibly imaginative. The characters’ motivations are clear and true to their personalities, not contrived and plot driven. The Golden Army is spectacularly rendered. All in all I highly recommend this film. I wasn’t in the best mood when I saw it, and I still loved it to death, whcih I think is a great acid test for a quality film. I give it nine Snifters out of a possible ten, and can’t wait to see it again. This is one of those films that you just can’t wait to own on DVD so you can enjoy it over and over at your leisure.
Cameo cream
Tropic Thunder has been out for a while in the States now, and opened here last week. By now most people will have seen it, but that still doesn’t mean that I’m going to spoil what I feel is the high point of the movie: an unpublicised role for one of today’s leading actors. The cat’s been out of the bag for a while, long before the movie came out, but the role is hilarious, and really should serve to rejuvenate this actor’s popularity. He literally had me doubled over in tears of laughter at one stage.
So how’s the rest of the film? Excellent. This is the stuff that Ben Stiller is made for. His schtick in films like the Focker movies and the Heartbreak Kid is really quite annoying, and done better by others – although it’s a formula I have no taste for anyway. When Stiller turns his hand to satire, he is razor sharp and merciless, and the result is brilliant. It’s no coincidence that Tropic Thunder, which skewers Stiller’s own entertainment industry, is the best work that he has done in years – since Zoolander definitely, and possibly the best thing he’s done, period.
Robert Downey Jr is having a good year, with Iron Man and now this film – I can’t comment on Charlie Bartlett, having not seen it. He’s hilarious, and it’s ironic that in order to parody a talented actor, he brings his own considerable acting talent to bear – just another reason why the film works so well.
The rest of the cast do well, but for me Downey and the unnamed actor really set the pace, and with something of an ensemble cast, they can’t all have that much to do.
Overall I rate this film eight Snifters out of ten. If all of Ben Stillers work (acting and directing) is going to be like this, then I might suddenly consider myself a fan.
Been slacking (again)
I’ve been that scourge of the blogosphere lately: the non-updater. So normally I update the blog when I see a movie, and for not much else. I may try and change this in future. For now though, I’ve seen three films lately and not blogged my thoughts on any of them. So here are some mini-reviews to make up for it.
First cab off the rank was X-Files: I Want To Believe. And I did. Want to believe, that is. But unfortunately I couldn’t. If you’ve read any reviews, then you’ve probably heard this already, but it just felt like an overly long TV episode, replete with average special effects and a jarring moment with a portrait of George Bush that’s the sort of thing you get away with on TV a lot more than you do on film. My overall impression was that this would have been a better film if they’d made it independently of X-Files, i.e. used different characters and called it something else. The references to the characters’ history were the weaker moments of the film. Overall this could have waited for DVD, but I had won tickets, and felt obliged to use them. Six out of ten Snifters for this one.
The following night the wife and I returned to the theater for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This is a comedy from writer Jason Segel, who also stars. Segel is an Apatow alum, and the film incudes Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd, who will be familiar to fans of the Apatow stable. The reason that I think this crew are doing so well is that they provide romantic comedies that follow the formula, but manage to also treat the audience like adults. Characters tend to act true to type, rather than the inevitable crisis coming from someone doing something that they just wouldn’t do. Feelings displayed by the characters feel more real and less contrived, giving the comedy a much more real backdrop to play against, which I think makes it funnier. Overall I enjoyed this film, and it gave me a new appreciation for the, um, talents of Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell. Eight Snifters out of ten.
More recently, I saw Wanted. This actioner based on a lesser-known graphic novel and it pays to know this going it – it makes the crazy action and hyper-stylization easier to deal with. Once you’ve realised that the laws of physics aren’t going to apply consistently, you can sit back and enjoy the fun. James McAvoy is a charismatic lead, even when he’s playing a bit of a loser. He’s likeable and easy to barrack for. Angelina Jolie is made for the kind of role she plays here. She has a way of saying an awful lot without opening her mouth, with a kind of knowing smile that conveys amusement, indulgence, kindness, patience and disdain all at once, which is perfect for her character of Fox. Director Timur Bekmambetov has the “style over substance” thing down in this movie, and it’s great for a while, but when the movie takes its inevitable twist, it’s not as much fun as the first half journey that McAvoy’s character takes. Worthwhile overall, but not an instant classic. Seven Snifters out of ten.
The unstoppable force meets the immovable object
I remember when the first Tim Burton directed Batman film came out. I was 13, and well hyped for it, as you’d expect. The overwhelming talk in the entertainment media was about the choice of Michael Keaton for Batman, and about the peripherals: the Batmobile, the gadgets etc. For Burton’s sequel there was more discussion of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman suit and what new gadgets we might see from Batman. Burton set up his Gotham and his Batman universe, and while it owed a lot to his own sensibilities as a film maker, it also leaned fairly heavily on the established Batman cachet, including the campiness of the sixties TV series. The first film was considered dark, almost extreme at the time for a “comic book movie”.
Fast forward to today, and Christopher Nolan has just released the second film in his rebooted Batman franchise, and it is a brutal masterpiece. Any trace of the campiness have gone, expunged in a film that owes far more to the renaissance that Batman underwent in the graphic novels of the nineties, and the films of Michael Mann than it does to Batman’s comic book roots and sixties image. The Batman of Nolan’s second film treads the tightrope of the antihero, never quite crossing the line into villainy, and yet going beyond the law to achieve his ends.
Firstly, let’s deal with the elephant in the room: the hype. The untimely death of Heath Ledger and his masterful portrayal of the Joker in this film sent the Hollywood hype machine into overdrive. The film has outsold 2007’s Spiderman 3 to leap to the biggest box office opening for a film ever. That tickles me pink, as it’s brilliant to see a film of this quality succeed so completely. Despite the fact that this isn’t technically Ledger’s last film, the popular misconception that it was has contributed to a crossover audience for the movie that it might not otherwise have had.
And what about Ledger’s Joker? It’s difficult to talk about, as this would have been a career defining role for Heath had he lived to see it. As it is, it will almost by definition define his career, but for the wrong reasons. His performance reveals fully an acting talent that had previously only been glimpsed. The Joker in this film is brilliant, unhinged and even has a degree of likeability. A large part of that is the nuanced performance by Ledger – the subtleties that he brought to the portrayal add up to a character that is never over the top, but rather balanced on the head of a pin.
The Joker never has the larger than life persona that villains in previous Batman films have had. Instead he is a self-described “agent of chaos”, a small, smart man using his wits and cheap materials to orchestrate a campaign of terror on Gotham. The credit for this aspect of the character goes as much to the writing of the Nolan brothers as to the performance. The pair have crafted a strong script, where characters are all given solid motives for their actions, and always act true to type. I’m not the quickest when it comes to predicting where the plot is going to go during a movie, but even so I feel that some of the Joker’s manipulations when they are revealed give real weight to his mad genius and you can readily believe that he’s always a step ahead of the Police, and the Batman.
The rest of the cast are all very solid. It’s odd to be talking about Christian Bale in the title role as being part of “the rest of the cast”, but that’s kind of the way this film shakes out. It’s probably appropriate too in the greater Batman context that the villain is more memorable than the hero, as Batman is a silent protector that hides in the shadows. Bale’s work is strong as you’d expect from an actor of his calibre, and he’s ably supported by Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Eric Roberts. I’d like to give a special mention too to Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s taken a thankless role and brought something more to it, and yet managed to keep some continuity from the Katie Holmes portrayal of the character in Batman Begins. It’s a slight role, and destined to be an underrated performance. So too the performance of Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent. Eckhart does some really good work here, yet it’s unlikely to be talked about given that it’s in the same film as Ledger’s Joker.
The real question that I was left with is “where to now?”. Where can this franchise go that won’t do a disservice to this instalment – and there will be another. No movie that does this kind of box office goes without a sequel. Movie history is littered with weaker follow-ups to strong sequels – The Godfather 3, Return Of The Jedi (reputedly, although I still love it), Spiderman 3 and so on. The focus in the previous incarnation of the Batman franchise was on which villains they would go for next, but that’s not the way Nolan’s world seems to have been set up. There’s unlikely to be a Robin, but will we see a Catwoman? Could The Penguin, Poison Ivy or Mr Freeze work in this world? I for one think a very straight, cold and evil Riddler would be the way to go, but that’s just me. The saddest fact is that we’re unlikely to see the Joker again, not after this. Any actor willing to take on the challenge laid down by Heath Ledger in this film would have to be very, very brave.
I wholeheartedly recommend this film, and rate it the best of the year so far. I couldn’t fault it, and the audacity of some of the set pieces, particularly Hong Kong, really blew me away, as did the quality of the craftmanship on display. I give it ten Snifters out of ten.
