The Wolverine is actually the second stab at a film starring one of Marvel Comics’ favourite X-Men. The first one fell over a bit from being a bit too long and boring. The second one, avoiding the “2” label, tried to distance itself from that critical failure and the previews promised something a bit more action oriented and stylish.
The Wolverine failed.
Changing the scene to Japan with one of the Wolverine’s longer story arcs (I know a little bit about it from the comics) was one way of bringing in a serious tone and a relatively good excuse for martial arts madness. However, the execution of the idea is frankly quite poor, with the storyline itself confusing and the editing abysmal (keep a track how many times does Mariko place Wolverine’s chopsticks on the table; and how many pairs of gloves is Viper taking off?).
The new characters too are all terrible. Mariko, Logan’s love interest, is a bad tempered, sour cow, and there is no chemistry between the actors playing them (a totally ripped Hugh Jackman and the stunningly beautiful Tao Okamato) whatsoever. The villainous Viper struts around all sultry but is just irritating. The good looking martial arts expert who in theory is the love of Mariko’s life seems to be completely malleable with his allegiances and easily dumped when some tall and frequently shirtless Gaijin comes along.
The story concerns Logan, the Wolverine, returning to Japan where a man he saved during the atom bombing of Nagasaki is dying but offers to take away Logan’s immortality, to be transferred to another. But there is a disgruntled son and a chosen granddaughter to deal with, and the Yakuza and ambitious politicians in there to boot. He's also dealing with the death of Jean Grey, so Famke Janssen shows up more frequently than she seemed to in X-Men: Last Stand, though after the initial surprise, her appearances just bored me.
When the action comes, it is fun, though considering Wolverine rips through people with his claws, it is all remarkably bloodless. There are also lots of slow motion scenes as Wolverine takes damage, emphasising his now mortal state but also causing the scenes to drag a lot more than they should have. One of the final show downs in a small Japanese town is basically all slow and no action, which is a bitter disappointment – and of course, basically pointless in the end, as Wolverine just gets taken to where he wanted to go in the first place.
And so, yes, back to the plot and the stupidity thereof. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense in the end, despite the fact it is completely predictable how things end up. Mariko’s Dad decides to fight Wolverine for no real reason after his entire household is slaughtered by someone else completely, and Yukio shows up several hours after Wolverine at a pivotal scene as perhaps she had a pit stop somewhere along the way.
It all seems a bit lazy and haphazard and, like Man of Steel, humourless (though Man of Steel was not lazy nor haphazard). About the only excitement came from the small “trailer” for the next X-Men movie that came a little while into the credits.
Verdict: Hugh Jackman owes a lot to the character of Wolverine and he brings a lot to the table, but unfortunately, the script of The Wolverine on that table is pretty threadbare, missing a few pages (if not chapters) and there are quite a few typos to boot. It has a pretty cover, but really is far too long as well. 6 ounces of adamantium out of 10.
Shaun of the Dead. Hot Fuzz. Dave. These are movie titles which bring a smile to the face of many a hard drinking man. Well, perhaps not Dave.
But the other two are part of what is known for fairly random reasons as the Cornetto trilogy. The final of the three, The World's End starring stalwarts Nick Frost and Simon Pegg, has finally arrived.
Like the others, a few characters stumble across a situation which at first appears normal but underneath the veneer of normalcy, something untoward is brewing. In Shaun of the Dead, it was a mini Zombie apocalypse. In Hot Fuzz, an ordinary town was actually populated by characters with very, brutally dark sides.
In The World's End… well, something goes astray as well, and while you probably know what it is, I won’t go into those details here. Suffice to say that the “normal” part involves a bunch of mature men in comfortable jobs being brought together by their teenage “leader” to complete the 12-bar pub crawl that they began, but never commenced, in their final year at high school.
Pegg plays Gary King, a man stuck in the past and trying to relive old glories, taking his old school chums, including Frost (playing a respectable, intelligent lawyer rather than his usual mostly thick sidekick, for a change), Martin Freeman and some other well familiarly-faced British thespians (Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine) back to the town they left a long time ago and revelling (to varying degrees) in the familiar but not quite the same scenery.
The film starts out as it continues: with quite a few jokes and humourous 90s references amongst quite a bit of what feels like filler. It’s all very pleasant (in an occasionally offensive way), and it doesn’t seem to want to rush to where it has to go. That could be seen as being “leisurely” and “comfortable” with the characters, the dialogue and the actors, but for me it bordered on being just a little boring. Indeed, the boys bar hopping seems to go on far past the point I would have ever thought it would have been allowed to, considering how other aspects of the plot develop.
This is a completely laddish film through and through, with barely any female characters and only one that gets more than a couple of lines (the rather awesome Rosumund Pike, putting on her best unimpressed face). And it’s hilarious at times, amusing at others, and a little… easy at critical aspects as well.
Nonetheless, despite the fact it didn’t strike me as quite as amusing as the other Cornetto Trilogy entries, it’s a film determined to have a good time (sometimes a little too calculated) and for the most part it succeeds.
Verdict: The World's End treads more familiar ground than the other films in the Cornetto Trilogy, but nonetheless, it’s a lot of laddish fun starring familiar actors (if not characters) doing the loveable, oafish and stupid things they do best. 7 plastic limbs out of 10.
The greatest movie ever! Is not Pacific Rim.
Nah, I was never expecting his Gundam versus Godzilla special effects fest to be filled with Oscar winning performances or an innovative, creative screenplay. I was expecting lots of giant beasties striding across the Pacific and only setting foot in major cities on the continents around the Rim, with the human-piloted Jaeger robots casusing almost as much mayhem and destruction as the creatures in their mission to save us all. And on all these points, Pacific Rim delivered.
This film is incredibly stylish, perhaps not completely surprising considering it is Guillermo del Toro at the helm.
He has selected an impressive cast of well know (if not necessarily A-list) celebrities to bring his boys toy story to life, including a lot of the cast of Sons of Anarchy (well, Ron Perlman had to be in his film, didn't he?), The Wire (Idris "Awesome" Elba) and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (likeable but also annoying Charlie Day). There is one token female with a speaking part in there as well, and some spectaculary stereotyped Australians, Russians and Chinese, but this is about a good looking American lad Raleigh (the square jawed, charismatic and occasionally (pointlessly) shirtless Charlie Hunnan, though he is English from memory) saving the planet , backed up by a cast of international characters (including his "soul make" Mako, Rinko Kikuchi) who are good but not quite as good as him.
Unfortunately for them, this is not really a tale that is based on anything like character development or originality (some of the publicity said it was quite an original film, but maybe that is from people who have never seen Japanese anime, Voltron, or perhaps even Transformers), so its a shame when attempts to prove otherwise take a huge amount of time to unfold. Traumatic childhoods, burgeoning love affairs, and humble origins are slowly, laboriously exposed and sometimes tediously so. And some crucial plot points, like how a wall around the continents could possibly be less expensive and more protective than twenty mobile, weapons laded robots against the increasingly menacing alient threat is never really explained.
But then, logic was never really going to enter into this. Just lots of explosions, destruction and gross out moments. And in 3D, these are all particularly impressive.
Overall then, the film flags a bit at times whenever there are humans running around attempting to be funny, but when the robots are going full throttle, ripping through beasties and cities alike, everything else is pretty much forgotten.
Verdict: Pacific Rim is a big budget bash fest, with a human cast to try and bring some levity and love to proceedings, but they more or less fail. Logic also takes a back seat to the usual conventions to these kinds of films, which would be fine if they didn't allow you to dwell on it for so long. No matter. Pacific Rim delivers what the box and posters promise. I wouldn't count on there being a sequel, but then again, you never know...
When I saw some of the "funny" clips on the Graeme Norton show, I have to admit, I was not convinced by the merits of Despicable Me 2. The first film was based on the idea of a bad guy with ridiculous inventions going good, whereas the second seemed to be all about a love story.
But then, heading into the film, I realised that I had overlooked the real reason to see Despicable Me 2, and in fact the only reason worth going at all: the Minions, those cute little hostess twinkie shaped assistants of exceptional good humour and incomprehensible (yet somehow understandable) language.
Strange really: considering Steve Carrell and the incredible Kristen Wiig are the main characters in this film, I had kind of thought that Gru (Carrell) and his love interest Lucy (Wiig) would get lots of good lines and amusing repartee. But no, Carrell seems happy to let Gru's frankly annoying accent generate most of his laughs, and while Lucy is very... perky, it seems that she is meant to be a physical comedy kind of side kick, though that function has already been taken by the minions.
The animation is good, and some of the secret gadgets are hilarious, but El Macho's character (voiced by Benjamin Bratt) seems to be an idea rife with amusing possibilities that are never fully realised. And then there are Gru's girls, his adopted family and reason for the first film, who are more or less sidelined, the cuteness of the smallest amped up to almost nauseating levels and the older girls get almost nothing to do.
But, as mentioned, I had kind of missed the point by assuming the animated humans were meant to provide most of the entertainment. No, those cute lovable minions are the real star of the show and the series, their bumbling antics and amusing chatter winning me over in all the ways the main characters and what passes for a plot does not.
And yes - there is really no story in there at all. Last time, it was all Gru's determination to be evil. This time... there is something about an Anti Villain League and tracking down a baddie, but it all seems very thin and a series of separate scenes rather than one cohesive story line. Though perhaps in a kiddie film, more than that is not required.
Verdict: Despicable Me 2 is, in every fibre of its being, a minions movie. It's just a shame the human characters and voice actors feel they need to attempt to have a storyline and love story in the same movie as well. 3 Minions out of 5.
Man of Steel is the latest in a line of super reboots. As Superman is not a Marvel comic book hero and has not been blessed with the gift of Joss Whedon’s vision, this reboot looks to the dark side of the Dark Knight to draw its inspiration and (I am sure Warner Bros hopes, after Superman Returns and Green Lantern) its success.
Which means the film is all very serious. There are a few slight one liners in there (mainly referring to how good looking Superman is, and Henry Cavill definitely fills that role both in and out of the Super suit), but mostly the two and a half hour running time is devoted to brooding and violence and being, well, serious.
The film has three parts to it: there’s Jor El’s (Russell Crowe, who was in the film a lot more than I expected) Avatar action piece; then there is Lois Lane investigates; and then Kal El fight baddies in densely populated areas.
As you can probably tell, Lane (a serious Amy Adams) gets the most to do, though her character comes across as hard nosed and intelligent but pretty joyless.
Meanwhile, Henry Cavill frowns a lot as Clark and seems to get no respect despite the fact he is relatively tall, good looking and incredibly well built, with no glasses or mild manner to be mistaken for anything other than a bit of a jock. Cavill is reasonably tall (though I presume a tad shorter than Christopher Reeve), but oddly, I got the impression he was shorter as they kept putting him opposite men who are rather short to make him seem taller (if that all makes sense). His motivations for becoming the saviour of the human race (age 33, lots of religious symbols… the whole Jesus allusions are laid on a bit thick) are mainly due to the influence of his rather austere father (played by a serious Kevin Costner) and his fairly lovely mum (an always luminous Diane Lane), his defence of being an all American Midwestern boy at heart not really satisfying me who remembers Timothy McVey and a whole raft of High School shootings.
No matter: the baddies are bad and need to be stopped, and humanity is pretty defenceless against them, so Superman needs to smash. The Evil General Zod (played with a serious frown by Michael Shannon) and his minions (all in black), all well trained soldiers with decades of experience behind them, vastly advanced Kryptonian technology (what is with the tentacles though?) and made super powerful by Earth’s environment versus Superman and the might of the American Army. Who will win? Much special effects and questionable tactics and use of powers later, and much of Indonesia and downtown Smallville and Metropolis are in ruins (hundreds of thousands may have died, who knows?) and we find out.
Look, it all makes very little sense (why does Krypton need an army again?), but that is really not the point here. This reboot aims to get another franchise back in the sequel business through action, and I presume that the Earth-bound cast will get the chance to flesh out their characters in the next few films.
Verdict: The big blue boy scout is back and this time he is… serious. The cast look great but, besides Crowe and Adams, aren’t really given a lot to do. Cavill fits the tights of Superman very well, but doesn’t really get much of a chance to create a character out of him, Clark or Kal El. Maybe next time. Meanwhile, Man of Steel is a visually spectacular piece of incredible effects and action, missing only a human heart. 7 super suits out of 10.
I laughed quite a bit in This Is The End, the new “gross out” comedy from the minds and actors that brought us films like The Pineapple Express and Superbad and other fairly stupid movies that are good for a guffaw.
Its not that the film shone with intellectually stimulating gags or witty puns. Mostly, there was lots of laddish talk of smoking weed and getting it on (or not as the case may be), and, considering that is what I expected from the outset, the film met my fairly lazy criteria.
The basic plot is: the actors are all playing themselves (kind of), and Seth Rogan (always awesome) and Jay Baruchel go (reluctantly in Jay’s part) to a big party at James Franco’s new place, rubbing shoulders (and other things) with Rhianna, an unhinged Michael Cera, Emma Watson, and a whole lot of other familiar faces. Well, for a little while anyway. Until the end of the world comes to Hollywood.
What follows from there on is… well, a continuation of the jokes that came before really, just with a sense more urgency and with a dwindling number of house guests. The remaining characters get more and more mental, with Jonah Hill’s take on himself as a guy so nice it borders on the insane. Emma Watson shows up now and again, though her character seems an odd mix of high class, do no nothing girl and... well, what is she really doing in the film?
As much as the story is almost non existent and the jokes puerile, it all seems to work, mainly as the characters/actors involved are completely at home making fun of themselves and they do it all so well. It's not mean spirited... well, it is actually, but everyone about whom it is mean spirited seems to be in on the joke and happy to go along with it.
There are major fluctuations in tone and style and pace that hint that this is more a labour of love than a labour of work, but as long as these kinds of things are not any of the reasons you went to see the film for (and really, they shouldn't be), then you won't be disappointed. Well, you might, but you should be expecting that from the get go.
Verdict: This in the End is the type of movie that already has someone drawing a big d!ck over the poster, because it is a load of cobblers. But its aimiable rubbish, acted by guys used to mocking themselves and using the basest of slacker humour at its best... or at least, its most easily digestable. And the number of cameos (and some of their nature) are pretty impressive too. 6 hell fire and damnations out of 10.
World War Z had a lot of good things going for it: Brad Pitt is almost always watchable, and Zombies.
Zombies are so hot right now – the ultimate brain dead baddie, not taken to shimmery sparklingness and fairly hard (though not impossible) to turn into romantic ideals (there has yet to be a Zombie that has fallen in love with Sookie on True Blood, but maybe that is next season).
And ever since 28 Days Later, they run and are so much the scarier for it.
World War Z starts with everywhere all at once being infected by a Zombie plague. Quite how the virus spreads between continents considering the change takes about 12 seconds to occur is never really explained, nor how the only safe place on the planet appears to be Nova Scotia (surely a tropical island would be safer, and more appealing weather wise?).
Pitt plays Gerry Lane, an ex UN Special Agent (or somesuch), who seems surprised when, after being singled out for rescue because of his status, is then called upon to actually contribute to the planet-saving cause. He then goes around the world to try and find a cure, encountering many a Zombie on the way.
As these Zombies do run, and bite, and overwhelm, and there are billions of them (overblown graphics show projected infection rates based on…?), they pose a lot of problems – which is all the fun in a Zombie movie. Relentless, and stoppable only through acts of extreme violence, it is a lot of fun seeing them get mowed down, blown up, and otherwise incapacitated only to end up, eventually, victorious.
There is one huge drag factor to the whole film, and it is Lane’s family. It is one thing to show him as a family man; it’s another thing to show the family as a burden, putting Lane into all sorts of danger even when they aren’t physically in his presence. Once we are past the initial scene setting, they actually just become incredibly annoying, slowing things down and generally getting in the way of the action.
Elsewise, the characters other than Lane are all rather disposable. Most are just cannon fodder, but some impart useful snippets of information that allow Lane to piece together an idea of what to do. It is fairly clumsily handled to be honest, but it joins the dots in a way that makes it obvious to all.
Oddly enough, for a Zombie film, the movie refuses to show almost any blood on screen. Limbs are hacked off, people (well zombies) beaten to bloody pulps, and there is much mastication on the bodies of the living, but almost none of this makes it on to the screen. In fact, the whole thing seems a lot tamer than any episode of The Walking Dead, despite the much bigger budget and scope.
Nonetheless, it all comes together well enough to form a Zombie film that can entertain the whole family. I wouldn’t go so far as to say completely enjoy it, as the family is just irksome and there are far too many zombie movie tropes in there to make this seem terribly original, but the final showdown is creepy and tense, and not even a terrible epilogue monologue (it is pretentious and awful and completely out of character with what came before) can spoil it. Well, not much.
Verdict: World War Z is a solid, G-(ish) level Zombie movie. Pitt plays Lane well, but then he has to as the only character who gets more than 10 lines. It wasn’t worth seeing in 3D, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. 6.5 Zeds out of 10.
