Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

There isn’t anything specifically wrong with Killer Elite somehow it just manages to be ordinary.  Its the film equivalent of Magnolia Paint – a bit safe, a bit ordinary and not at all threatening.

Hence the lack of a spoiler warning as there isn’t anything really worth mentioning that you’ll not get from the poster.

The period detail is alright.  The plot is solid (none of the issues I had with Blitz and its bizarre mix of British Realism and modern genius on the loose serial killer).  The action is competent.  The acting does the job but didn’t excite and neither Clive Owen or Robert De Niro really raise Jason Statham’s acting out of the usual run of the mill delivery.

Yet somehow the key element, whatever the spice that makes a thriller thrilling was missing.  Maybe Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has spoilt me for films like this till I get used to them almost hitting the mark again.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy manages to be more thrilling with no chases and something like 5 gunshots than this does several chases and lead flying from automatic weapons.

So Killer Elite is not a bad film and not a great film.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Short Review: Brilliant

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Longer Review: Bloody Brilliant

Ok I give in but really the first two reviews say everything I have to say.

Just back from the new, film adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Gary Oldman (Smiley) doesn’t chew the scenery instead he achieves a zen like oneness with his surroundings with a nuanced performance that conveys as much, if not more, than many of his earlier roles.  The main supporting cast are note perfect in fact the supporting cast down to the smallest, none speaking part are perfect. Benedict Cumberbatch stood out for me as Peter Guillam, Smiley’s right hand, but come award season and there are going to be several potential contenders for best supporting actor here.

The plot is gripping.  The pacing is slow but perfect building to a climax without needing to resort to car chases or gunfights.  I love Spooks and it can be brilliant TV but it can’t touch Smiley’s world.  The last few years have seen the return of the slow burning thriller but this is the real deal from one of the original key texts of the genre.  I knew the outcome yet still I had to keep watching.

Everything else is pretty much on the money too from the film grading to the 1970s look to the sound track and sound effects to the cinematography.

This is a worthy, slightly more adult, successor to the 1979 BBC TV series.

There was the bizarre thing of one person at FACT laughing at moments as though it was the funniest comedy they’d ever seen and one woman as we were leaving who was overheard “I’ve read the book, I’ve seen the TV series and now the film and I still don’t get it”.

In January it was a case of if you went to one film at the Cinema this year it had to be The King’s Speech. If you go to a second go to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy.  In fact if you didn’t go to The King’s Speech Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy – it’s as good.

Or to put it more succinctly…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy is Bloody Brilliant.

I’m not sure what film some of the people who had reviewed Colombiana had been to see but it’s not the same one I went to.  Colombiana is not a classic film but its been given some really harsh reviews that often seem to amount to it not being Leon.

Colombiana is the latest Luc Besson action film and this time he’s gone back to some of the themes that made him famous with Nikita and Leon – assassins and revenge.   That makes it hard to review without referring the earlier film.  Leon had three truly memorable characters: Leon (Jean Reno), Mathilda (Natalie Portman) and Stansfield (Gary Oldman).  Colombiana has Cataleya (Zoe Saldana) and a variety of less developed supporting characters.

Personally I’d like to have seen more made of one of:

• Danny Delanay (Michael Varta) and his relationship with Cataleya
• FBI Special Agent Ross (Lennie James) and his teams pursuit of Catelyna
• Emilio Restrepo (Cliff Curtis) and Catelyna family
• The bad guys/CIA played by Jordi Mollà, Beto Benites and Callum Blue

These were all sketched in and developing any of two of those could have elevated the story.  However doing so would either require changing the pacing by losing a set piece or increasing the length of the film by 15 to 30 minutes.

What it lacks in deep characterisation of villains and allies it makes up for by putting its central character on screen and action.  The opening chase scene in Columbia and the assassination in the police station are memorable and the third is clever.

The climactic encounter with the villains is the weakest of the set pieces but it remains coherent compared to the confused mess that was The Expendables ending.  The fight scene was reminiscent of those found in the Bourne films especially the later, Paul Greengrass, directed offerings with their handheld, in the fight style.

Another thing in its favour is a sense of humour closer to the quips of a good Bond film that is more effective than the forced comedy littered through many modern action films.

So yes, this isn’t Leon or a classic, but if you can get past that while Colombiana is a fun Luc Besson action movie.

Last week on Doctor Who we had pulp with Let’s Kill Hitler, this week we got horror with a twist of British Social Realism.

The horror is scary, fairy tailish horror rather than gross horror. It mixed up lots of classic horror elements of abduction horror, body horror with the transformation of people into the dolls, the dolls stalking people to “play” and the spooky nursery rhymes. It’s sinister, scary but I’d think it’s the kind of scare most kids will enjoy rather than cause nightmares. The revelation of the alien and the monsters was a nice twist nicely resolved.

The social realism is more in the background than front and central to the story. We see it in urban tower block, the flats, the bin bags and the nasty landlord. With the fantasy and horror elements it’s a bit Billy Liarish.

The set dressing for the dolls house and the housing estate are quite different but both nicely done. The dolls are a good one shot villain. Daniel Mays was a good choice for the main guest star. He brings an interesting combination of normality along with something slightly disquieting. He’s a real Dad rather than an idolised one which is perfect for the story.

There are some funny lines about making a house call and after the Doctor has a bit of a monologue “You’re not from social services are you?”

All in all Night Terrors was a good episode.

A film with a title like Cowboys and Aliens you have to hope does what it says on the tin.  Cowboys and Aliens does just that and not a lot more so it comes down to if that’s enough for you or not.

The reverse of last weeks The Guard was true of this film: The Guard had no early hype in fact I don’t remember seeing an advert for it or a film trailer.  Cowboys and Aliens had loads.  The Guard had good reviews and this didn’t.  Yet I enjoyed this as much possibly because I wasn’t expecting as much.

Cowboys and Aliens borrows a fair number of its moments from generic westerns rather than taking the Back to the Future III route of name checking them.

Daniel Craig is a variation on the archetypal stranger in that other people know or deduce who he is while he has amnesia.  Harrison Ford’s ex-soldier cattle baron is bad but only for long enough to be redeemed.  The supporting cast of locals are developed enough to be identifiable and interesting which is important given some will be abducted and the survivors will make up the posse who ride out to save them.

The aliens could probably have been more interesting.   Initially only revealed with shadows, a footprint and some drops of blood revelation of one of them possibly came a little early in the film.  After that the film escalated from being Alien to Aliens with hordes of them being dispatched in later scenes.

The plot is basically logical at least in structure.  It’s also pretty simple and straightforward – it’s not a J.J. Abrams production it’s a homage to classic westerns with aliens.  Yes it does require the watcher to accept that the aliens need to abduct humans to learn our weaknesses and that they came to Earth because gold is very rare and precious to them.  Then most alien invasion films and The Matrix had similarly tenuous or worse plot devices.  At least there be gold in that there planet fits with Cowboys and Aliens.

In the end Cowboys and Aliens is a fun, silly high concept summer blockbuster that it doesn’t pay dividends to thing too hard about.  It does what it says on the tins.

Tonight’s Doctor Who, Let’s Kill Hitler, was a cracking fun episode from the start. Now I’ve been known to complain about certain issues with illogicality and this episode certainly started with plenty – writing Doctor in a corn field, introducing Amy’s best friend who’s never been so much as mentioned before with a montage and crashing the TADIS into Hitler’s office.

BUT (and it’s a big But so big I’m going to start a sentence with it, write it in capitals and underlined bold for good measure) anyone who thinks a Doctor Who episode with the title Let’s Kill Hitler is going to be another Blink their head examining. It’s going to be pulp silliness and its going to try and give Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds a run for its money on a BBC TV episode budget.

Introducing Mel and getting the episode title into the pre title sequence was nicely done. The montage has its moments. Young Rory moments are humorous. Most especially there is the scene that shows Amy and Rory get together with Amy having thought Rory was gay. It’s all topped off with a lovely 2001 reference to get us into the action in the visual of Mel throwing model TARDIS cutting to TARDIS flying erratically.

The killer robot piloted by miniaturised crew silly idea and could have been such a bad Terminator 2 rip off except completely saved by the Tessellating exterior effect. Its slightly incompetent crew and killer robots added to the episodes pulp feel and humour. There was something of Men in Black about the whole set up.

It’s nice to see Rory’s transformation into action hero continuing. He gets stuff to do and good lines: Knocking out Hitler, a German soldier, riding a motorbike with a hint of The Great Escape and driving a mini through a cornfield. The contrast of post plastic Roman with early Rory as seen in the montage is telling of his character’s development. Amy gets her moments too.

That Amy’s childhood best friend turns out to be Melody Pond and her regeneration is triggered by being shot by Hitler. She gets one of the best pre regeneration lines ever in “shut up Dad I’m focusing on a dress size” and lovely post regeneration fun. Yet this is River as we’ve never seen her before. This River reminds me of Angelica in The Stainless Steel Rat books. Like Angelica we see the character transform from psychopath to the River we’ve previously seen.

Which brings me to her attempts to kill the Doctor. Their little duel of intelligence with Melody trying to kill him with knives and guns. Yet she succeeds by poisoning him with a kiss – the one strategy he wouldn’t be expecting – with the poison of the Judas tree. I wonder if the two religious references were slipped into the section on regeneration deliberately or accidentally.

It all gets wrapped up with the Doctor’s death plenty of sillyness which fits this episode perfectly. The temporally convoluted story of the Doctor, Rory, Amy and River takes more steps forward. I was going to call it a soap opera but it’s something older than that.

The set dressing, costumes and period detail throughout was deserve a mention. Going to the trouble of making Hitler’s office based on photographs of the actual office just to smash it up was a good idea. Dressing the Doctor in top hat and tails was a nice touch.

The Guards is a film that isn’t bad but doesn’t really manage to be more than a pleasant diversion while it was probably hoping to be a cult classic.

The characters, setting and story have the potential to be interesting: an unorthodox, slightly corrupt Irish policeman, Sergeant Gerry Boyle (Brendan Gleeson) in a quirky, rural County Galway community finds himself at the heart of a multibillion dollar drugs smuggling inquiry. He’s teamed up with FBI special agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and up against a trio of nasty characters Clive Cornell, Francis Sheehy and Liam O’Leary (Mark Strong, Liam Cunningham and David Wilmot). His only significant relationship is with his terminally ill mother, Eileen (Fionnula Flanagan) and some affection for prostitute, Aoife O’Carroll (Dominique McElligott).

Mix in some jet black humour and it’s a summer sleeper hit winner that will turn its budget into a huge pile of cash. Think Local Hero, Hot Fuzz or In Bruge. It must have looked like that on paper to the seven production companies that funded it.

The films main problems can be seen on the poster – a cast of almost interesting characters that end up in little bubbles and a desire to be funny which it never really achieve.

The chief problem is that it wants to be a character piece but the characters are all a bit too disposable. Its thin plot would provide a nice scaffoling for some real nice bits of acting but it never really lets the characters get going.

Boyle and Everett need more time on screen together building their characters. They start to have something and then are split up until the end of the film when they’re brought back together for the climax. Along the way various characters pass through Boyle’s life just long enough that you want to see more of them. Certainly when they are together the “chemistry” mentioned on the poster is there but they’re just not together enough.

In parallel to the police we get a few scenes with the criminal trio as they corrupt the Garda, kill some people and go about smuggling a boat load of drugs into Ireland. Sadly they are saddled with some sub Tarantino wittering as they debate philosophy in a car and then life in front of a shark tank at an aquarium.

The secondary problem is that if you’re going for darkly humorous you need to be actually funny. There are a few places this was amusing and a few it raised a laugh from someone in the small audience at the cinema I saw it in. It had opportunities but it didn’t take them. What the reviewer who said it was “A Raucous Comedy” thinks Raucous means I don’t know but it’s not how I’d describe it.

There is some nice cinematography of rain-swept County Galway. I can’t really say the music has stuck with me long enough to be remembered. The story has a slightly ambiguous ending – maybe there was a wrap up after the credits but I wasn’t bothered enough to sit through them to find out.

Overall I thought The Guard was an alright film but I was disappointed. With a stronger script the central and incidental characters could have been more interesting and hence funnier. I’m sure that the makers will be hoping it becomes a cult classic and that strong DVD sales will make it into a profitable success but I think they’ll be disappointed.

The Planet of the Apes franchise isn’t one of my personal science fiction classics – I always found the actors in ape costumes distracted me.  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to see this addition to the series like X-Men First Class though this proved to be well worth the price of admission.  However I’m glad I did because the CG apes are really good and several of the motion capture performances are exceptional.

When the credits roll don’t get up to leave because almost immediately the film starts again.

The film is very much a morality tale with acts of violence, anger, fear, greed,  hatred, love and kindness along the road to the doom of humanity and the rise of the apes.  Although it made for simple story telling one minor character accidentally is responsible for much of humanities doom which did feel a little contrived.

James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Tom Felton and David Oyelowo are all excellent.  I almost expect more from Brian Cox who played his part well but didn’t seem to have a huge amount to work with.

The real stars though have to be the CG apes and the performances by the actors who played them.  There has been a fair amount of coverage of Andy Serkis’ central performance as Casear but many of the other apes have smaller parts but are equally well acted.  Those performance include real emotional depth and have character arcs that are better developed than many of the human characters.

The CG itself is outstanding especially given the huge number of CG shots in the film.  There were a few slightly dodgy shots where they tried just a bit too hard but they were hardly on a par with the dubious CG man running on collapsing crane of last year’s film of  The A-Team.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is another fun summer movie that probably just misses out on being a true classic despite the exceptional performances of the apes.

Super 8 is classic Spielberg late 70s / early 80s teenagers have an encounter / coming of age film fun made with the sort of effects that are very much 21st century state of the art. Think Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial or The Goonies.

I’m going to keep this short because its late and I don’t want to give anything away that might spoil the film.

The cast is excellent and their acting perfectly pitched for the film.  JJ Abrams direction is perfect.  The period detail is spot on.  The story has a strong, logical plot and well-developed characters.  The special effects, especially the train crash, are really well done.  The mystery is suitably mysterious.  And there is just enough sentimentality in the mix without it becoming cloying or annoying.

Oh and including the film the teenagers are shooting on Super 8 during the film with bad acting, dodgy effects and dubious make up alongside the credits is a simple but inspired touch. Don’t leave the cinema till it’s over.

Overall I’d recommend Super 8 as a thoroughly enjoyable movie.  Probably not the best film of the year but certainly a strong contender for a high placing in my top 10.

Captain America: The First Avenger tonight.  Really enjoyed it.  I’m starting to think that (after X-Men First Class and The Watchmen) I prefer my super hero movies with period settings rather than modern day.

Hugo Weaving on top bad guy form.   Richard Armatage’s appearance fun if somewhat truncated.  Tommy Lee Jones, Stanley Tucci, Hayley Atwell, Toby Jones, Neal McDonough, Dominic Cooper, Sebastian Stan and the rest of the supporting cast all gave excellent supporting performances.  Of course it all lives or dies by the central, name on the poster, performance of Chris Evans as Captain America / Steve Rogers.  Fortunately he pulled off the lanky teenager and chisel jawed hero equally well.

Plot wise it’s a bit formulaic.   As with a lot of super hero films it shows us Captain America before powers, gives us the back story on getting the powers and then moves to the using the powers.  Along the way some of the inevitable tropes get played out – he loses people close to him, he messes up getting the girl and he has a standoff with the villain.

The costumes, sets, graphics and most of the design have a really strong 1940s feels to them.   I did find some of the design of Hydra’s vehicles and equipment a little jarring.  Some through its size and some because it had an aesthetic that felt more post 1960 than World War II.

One aspect I really enjoyed was the way the sound track built through the film.  Early on, before Captain America became a super hero, it had a strong Saving Private Ryan / Band of Brothers vibe that was very John Williams / Michael Kamen.  When Steve Rogers truely takes on the persona of Captain America the score moved from the traditional straight war movie theme towards something more in tune with a men on a mission film like Where Eagles Dare / The Dirty Dozen riff – still with a heavier military feel but bigger brassier and with more percussion.

One thing I did find interesting was the number of people who sat through the credits to see the teaser for The Avengers.  I’d say almost half of a pretty full cinema waited right to the end for the brief glimpse of the next part of the series.

So overall I thought Captain America: The First Avenger  an enjoyable, by the book, popcorn, superhero movie.