Posts Tagged ‘brian cox’

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.

RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) probably won’t appeal to everyone but I really enjoyed it.

I’ve made no secret that RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) was a film I wanted to see since the teaser trailer turned up on You Tube.  Even once I’d read some reviews that compared it to rotten vegetables I still wanted to see it.  I went last night and I’m Extremely Glad I did.

It’s a fusion of comedy, road trip, spy and action genres.

The comedy is of a sort we don’t get enough of these days.  It didn’t fall back on body function, profanity or any of a thousand easy jokes for cheap laughs.  They could have milked it for twice as many laughs but lost the spirit of the film in the process.

The road trip element, emphasised by the postcards that appeared as the action moved to a new location, allowed the introduction of characters gradually.  This gives each of them time and space to breathe.  We get to see them interact and develop so we get a chance to care about them.

Bruce Willis is excellent in the lead as Frank Moses.  He brings the ability he has to pull off action effortlessly from the Die Hard series.  He also brings the twinkle in the eye from Moonlighting.  Sometimes his skill at comedy and romance is forgotten which is a shame as he brings a really light touch to both.

Mary-Louise Parker was perfect casting as Sarah Ross.  She is an outsider to the spy world that allows for a few good jokes.  Sexy, funny and just vulnerable enough.  I’d contrast her scene where she doesn’t invite her date in even though he bought her dinner with Charisma Carpenter’s in The Expendables who is purely a victim.  Both of them need the heroes help but  Sarah Ross is more than just a victim.

John Malkovich brings the craziness only he can and is wonderful as an agent who’s brain was fried by exposure to drugs.   There is something of Mitch Leary from In the Line of Fire to his performance.  If Mitch hadn’t tried to kill the President but hidden himself out in the Bayou this Marvin Boggs is what he might have become.

Morgan Freeman plays his part nicely as the elder statesmen of the group.  Brian Cox brings the Connery school of Scottish Russian to the film.  His accent slips just often enough into Scottish to add a nice level.   His interplay with Willis and Helen Mirren works.

Helen Mirren’s appearance in the trailer was one of the bits of the trailer that sold me on the film originally.  Like the gun toting citizens in Hot Fuzz there is something unexpected about her with a gun.  When the gun is a tripod mounted heavy machine gun there is an element of genius in casting her against type.  Her steely cold portrayal of an agent who will kill anyone who hurts her friends and who will give up her life for them is again nicely played.  Even though she is added late she acts as a second character who glues the other characters together.

Up against them are the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service and some mercenary hit squads.  Karl Urban connects most of these and while the other characters are on a road trip he takes his own journey.  If one character develops through the film it is his.  He starts out as a cold blooded assassin but along the way we see more of him and he grows.  He isn’t a two dimensional villain pitted against three dimensional heroes.

Then to ice the cake we have two important cameos – Ernest Borgnine’s Henry, The Records Keeper and Richard Dreyfuss’ Alexander Dunning.

Borgnine may not get much screen time and he doesn’t try and steal his scenes.  They could have given his part to an unknown extra but just his presence in the film makes his part interesting.  It adds weight to the character.  Most importantly he beautifully plays a role.  I could happily watch a spy series where his character acts as the link between everything going on around him.

Dreyfuss has more of a role although not a huge amount of screen time.  His character isn’t as well developed as the others although he does get a line where he succinctly sums up his characters purpose.   For that the scriptwriters deserve an award.

The plot holds together, it makes sense.  I’ve heard quibbles about Frank and Sarah getting together but the age gap isn’t unbelievable.  Lonely single guy falls for bored single woman. The only part that’s hard to accept is that he gets to form a relationship with her by calling a call centre. I’ve never spoken to the same person at a call centre twice so he had to get her direct number the first time he called.

The action sequences are clever and the good guys have a level of smarts and improvisation that is amusing from bullets in a frying pan to the way they steer the Vice President into their trap.  The action was well played, not over the top.  It didn’t force them to rely on unbelievable CG shots like The A-Team.  The internal geography of the film was consistent.  The last major action sequence could have become a confused mess of characters in a rather none descript building but it didn’t.  So it didn’t become confused like The Expendables.

My biggest gripe is actually with the trailer.  It stole too many of the best bits from the film.  Not all of them.  However by doing that the film has less impact.  I almost wonder if the trailer shouldn’t have just been just enough to sell the film.

So overall I really liked RED.

Pick any one of Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman or John Malkovich and you’d have my attention for RED.

Brian Cox or Ernest Borgnine would push this into my want to see list.

Helen Mirren flower arranging is a bit a bit Calendar Girls. Helen Mirren with a machine gun? Helen Mirren with a Machine Gun! Ok I’m buying this. Heading into not just the danger zone but Hot Fuzz territory.  I don’t care about the reviews.

Then they ice a rather fruit looking cake with Mary-Louise Parker who was both funny and smart in the West Wing.  Tasty.

Looks like REDs at least one must see film in October.

Fanstastic Mr Fox is probably my favourite Roald Dahl children’s story.  So today I decided I’d go and see it at the Odeon in Liverpool 1 and crossed my fingers they’d not treated the source material as a slum clearance job it like Disney did with Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

Given the source materials brevity it’s unsurprising they had to pad it to make it up to feature length.  The core story still sits at the heart of the film but a additions at the start and the end along with some padding in the middle brought it up to its 87 minutes.  While none of the additions were bad the incomprehensible sport seemed to me to be a joke forced a little to hard.  On reflection and a quick reread of the original story the ending is probably, saddly a little two Hollywood.  Maybe something less action orientated and closer to the heist movie theme that works so well earlier on.  They were almost there but not quite.  One last big job to break into a highly secure supermarket knowing it was a trap might have worked.

George Clooney and Meryl Streep had a lot of work to do and both delivered good performances.  Willem Dafoe’s take on the rat made his my favourite character of the film.  It was completely different from his Raven Shaddock performance in Streets of Fire (1984) but just as distinctive.  Part of me wonders what his take on Mr Fox would have been.  If you need someone to nail that kind of bad guy he’s still got it.  Michael Gambon was another exceptionally fine choice for Bean and while I had to check on IMDB Brian Cox was another fine piece of casting.

The animation style reminded me of Jill Bennetts illustrations in the book and was very well done.  Unfortunately it wasn’t quite up to the standards of say an Aardman Animation but was by no means sloppy.  Somehow Aardman’s work looks more cinematic and less like some of the eastern European animations of the 1970′s.  However maybe that was the look they were trying for in which case they nailed it.  Anyone with the resources or time to do stop animation deserves a great deal of respect.

Ignoring my gripes about the way the original material was expanded I’d say it was a very enjoyable 87 minutes.

I saw it on the first showing of the day in a screen which I thought I had to myself till someone else left from the very back at the end.  Odeon really need to get on top of their cleaning because if the cinema is dirty for the first show of the day what hope is there for the later shows?