Tag Archives: 2013

Epic  (2013)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     102 Min        U

Initially, this shapes up to be a very clichéd and obvious animation with little to nothing of interest for adult viewers, and with far too many parallels with Disney’s ‘Tinkerbell and the Secret of the Wings’ for its own good. However, after the swishing and swooshings of its stereotypical young hero have faded, together with the setting up of the equally stereotypical motivations for the other characters, it actually becomes a lot of fun – and at least one adult felt the need to give it a quick, slightly self conscious, burst of applause at the end, which The Red Dragon endorsed in spirit if not quite in action.

The story revolves around the Leaf Men, tiny humanoids that move incredibly fast to the human eye (faeries for all intents and purposes) who are charged with safeguarding the natural environment of the forest against their enemies, the Boggans, who thrive on darkness and death, and who seek to prevent the Leaf Men from selecting their new queen who would use her powers against them for another generation. Enter cute redhead human Mary Katherine (voiced by Amanda Seyfried) whose mother has just passed away and is now forced to live with her estranged father in the forest, estranged due to his obsession with finding evidence of the Leaf Men’s existence. One quirk of fate later, and MK finds herself shrunk down to, ironically, not so epic proportions and entering the miniature world for herself, as the future of that world hangs in the balance.

It’s from Blue Sky Studios and based on the writing of Louisianian author William Joyce, a fairly prolific creative talent who’s previous adaptations for the big screen include Disney’s ‘Meet the Robinsons’ and Dreamwork’s ‘Rise of the Guardians’, and who won the Oscar for best animated short film, along with Brandon Oldenburg, in 2012 for ‘The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore’. The writing helps immeasurably, with a decent amount of comedy in there, and the animation for the most part appears lively and slick, which, together with the combined voice talents of the cast including Colin Farrell, relaxing into his natural Irish brogue, Christoph Waltz, as the bad guy, Josh Hutcherson, Chris O’Dowd, and big names from the world of music in the guise of Beyonce, Steven Tyler and, in his first big-screen role, Pitbull, ensures everything is brought to life successfully, creating an enjoyable film that should suit families and grown ups alike.

The Great Gatsby  (2013)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                     143 Min        12A

Baz Luhrmann’s take on the classic 1925 novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald begins as a hectic, malformed mishmash of what should be feature film editing, and eventually becomes something resembling a story. Just as many modern action films are shot with ultra fast cutting between different camera angles and shots, much like music videos, here Luhrmann applies the same technique, accentuated with glamour and flare, to drama, resulting in a nonsensical kaleidoscopic headache, and just as he applied modern music to Bohemian Paris in ‘Moulin Rouge!’, which worked well, here we find pop and r&b where we should be listening to the big bands of the Roaring Twenties in New York City. It jars badly. Not until the director actually decides to let his actors act after about forty five minutes does the film get in the slightest bit interesting, and although the set design up until then is indeed spectacular, quite why they opted to go for authenticity with the look of the era, but not the defining music or the dancing (a little does find its way in), is a complete mystery.

How true to the source material the story is The Red Dragon cannot say, but this is ultimately the same core idea from Luhrmann’s previous films rehashed, that of a sweeping love story, here a triangle between Leonardo DiCaprio (Jay Gatsby) and Joel Edgerton (Tom Buchanan) over the affections of Carey Mulligan (Daisy Buchanan). Both the male leads are strong and work well opposed to each other as they are, but Mulligan barely registers an emotional response throughout, perhaps playing her somewhat hopeless character a little too close to the bone. Within this context the themes of obsession and fidelity, pride, arrogance and romantic idealism are explored in a reasonably interesting manner, managing to re-engage most of the audience after the overly indulgent beginning, but it sadly remains too little, too late, especially with a running time of 142 minutes.

The story is being told to us via the disaffected writing of Nick Carraway, played by Tobey Maguire, which to an extent can justify artistic licence with the film’s presentation, but not taking it to the gaudy extremes that are thrust upon us from the word go. In the sense that this is a tale told by a reluctant, introvert character admiring, and bedazzled, by another male full of showmanship and mystery, and yet still fundamentally flawed, this is very reminiscent of another, later, American classic novel – ‘On The Road’, with Sal Paradise there writing about Dean Moriarty. Similarly, both recall the dichotomy of the wonderful novel ‘Steppenwolf’, from Hermann Hesse and published not long after ‘The Great Gatsby’, with the insinuation that each of the sets of characters represent two parts of one man, his essence divided. Click here for a review of the even less worthy film adaptation of ‘On The Road’ with Kristen Stewart.

One of the better songs from the film …

Star Trek – Into Darkness  (2013)    79/100

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Rating :   79/100                                                                     132 Min        12A

The follow up to J.J.Abrams’ bold forage into the Star Trek universe continues where the first film (‘Star Trek’ 09) left off, with the crew of the Enterprise a couple of years farther down their alternative timeline to the original series, and The Federation trying to come to terms with the rather brutal and abrupt events of the last film. It bears a lot in common with its successful predecessor, and it fulfils its mission statement perfectly: remaining true to the essence of Gene Roddenberry’s creation (replete with the music from the sixties playing at the end, mention of Tribbles, Mudd, and Christine Chapel – a.k.a. Nurse Chapel, one of the most commonly recurring secondary members of the original crew) whilst still standing on its own two feet as something creative in its own right and encapsulating the blockbuster outlook the new films have been conceived with.

It’s immensely entertaining, looks fantastic, and is filled with the prerequisite spirit of camaraderie that all great adventure films have in common. Indeed, it is certainly one film to see on the big-screen, and the bigger the better (some scenes were shot on IMAX), and there are relatively few sci-fi films nowadays that display the ‘final frontier’ of space in such an awe inspiring cinematic way, in fact I’d like to see more time spent on this in the third instalment which must surely follow on from the immediate success of this one, and there are a lot of appreciable nice touches, like the flair added to the warp trail effect from the Enterprise. Michael Giacchino returns once more for the score, his music fitting perfectly into the list of memorable and atmospheric Star Trek themes, as does Leonard Nimoy for another brief cameo, his character surely busily preparing New Vulcan and her allies for the arrival of a certain none too friendly cybernetic race in circa one hundred years or so….

The story is captivating, but is also one given to debate afterwards as to whether or not several plot elements hold up under scrutiny. This is exactly the same as ‘Star Trek’ which seen bad guy Nero witness his home planet being destroyed and then going back in time, which would have allowed him to forewarn said planet and possibly prevent its annihilation, or at least evacuate everyone, but instead he decided to go on a mass genocidal killing spree with his advanced ship, for no logical purpose other than to create drama on a suitable scale. The story here riffs very heavily off several elements from its canon of Star Trek source material, and also fits in a sizeable nod to The Godfather part III in the process.

It would perhaps be wise to have Abram’s flair for action and entertainment combined with a bit more of the Star Trek ethos in the next one, but there is no doubt he has injected new life back into the wonderful characters that helped create one of the most enduring legacies in the history of the big and small screen, and the future for this incarnation is wide open, in fact it was a stroke of unfettering genius to break the timeline and take us back to where it all began. Performances are good all round, including from new cast members Alice Eve, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Weller (most famous previously for playing Robocop), Simon Pegg has also largely improved his Scottish accent. If you enjoy this, most certainly watch the second of the original series of films, which was arguably the best of the bunch.

21 & Over  (2013)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                       93 Min        15

From the writers of ‘The Hangover’ (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, this time directing too) and essentially with the same storyline but different characters, focusing on a trio of college students in order to apply their tried and tested routine on a younger market. The three friends are played by Miles Teller, Justin Chon and Skylar Astin and we follow their exploits as two of them determine to celebrate the third’s twenty first birthday with a raucous night on the lash, whilst promising to get him back home in time for a good night’s preparatory sleep, an important medical school interview looming the next morning.

The comedy is forced from the onset through necessity, and it’s entirely formulaic, which sometimes grates, but it does have its moments and it is given a dash of sincerity and respect by fully committed performances from the central cast. Fans of the Hangover series can expect to like this too.

I’m So Excited / Los Amantes Pasajeros  (2013)    39/100

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Rating :   39/100                                                                       90 Min        15

The latest Spanish film from Pedro Almodovar falls way short of the expectation mark in this camp comedy, set mainly in the cabin and business class section of a troubled aircraft flying in circles around Toledo in Spain, though it does still include the expected moments of creative perversion. The plane’s landing gear is stuck, courtesy of one distracted Antonio Banderas by his character’s wife Penelope Cruz whilst he was clearing the chocks off the runway (they are only in the film for the duration of this brief scene, the rest of the ensemble cast will probably not be familiar to most audiences outside of Spain).

Something will have undoubtedly been lost in the translation here, and comedy is probably the genre that suffers most from subtitles, but the laughs never really get better than a sub-standard sitcom, and most revolve around the homo, or bi, sexual encounters of the staff as they contemplate a possible incineration on landing, all largely done as fairly obvious farce.  It’s a far cry from the dizzy artistic heights of his last film, ‘The Skin I Live In’ back in 2011. For better comedy on a very similar theme, see tv series ‘The High Life’ starring Alan Cumming.

Dead Man Down  (2013)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                     118 Min        15

There is a lot of promise shown throughout this film, almost like a shadow haunting it as it fights to try and conform to humdrum banality, a fight that it disappointingly wins. Colin Farrell is a member of Terrence Howard’s gang of miscreants, but someone is out to sever the leader’s head, someone who keeps sending clues to his identity, mysterious notes, and a trail of criminal corpses. Enter the girl, not quite next door, but across the chasm between their high rise buildings, played by Noomi Rapace, who has evidently been checking out Farrell through the window in unguarded moments and eventually plucks up the courage to introduce herself, but she has a story of her own too.

The central focus of this film is revenge, and it almost deals with it in a serious manner, but it winds unerringly down into pointless cliché. Rapace gives a strongly believable performance – we are told her character has had part of her face rebuilt after a car crash, and there is certainly a very visible scar, only it’s really not that extreme for the sort of surgery she’s describing, she still looks good really, and one can’t help but feel that it could possibly be concealed with make-up if she so chose. A more original, tougher treatment with the same cast could have been something more worthwhile watching.

All Stars  (2013)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     106 Min        U

Great wee film for kids, essentially with exactly the same premise from the ‘Step Up’ and ‘Streetdance’ films lifted and placed into a British high school. The most important thing about the film is that it successfully encourages kids to dance, so much so that most of the younger audience in the cinema were in fact doing just that whilst it was playing. The focus is on choreographed street dance, or break dancing if you prefer, with brief excerpts from ballroom and tap too.

The group consist of a number of stereotypes, the posh kids, the tough as nails female, the chubby male, but ones which work pretty well together, with everyone learning the value of being in a group working towards something, as they come together to compete in a local championship that may perhaps just save their youth centre from demolition in the process, and the chubby kid learns to swap his burgers for salad too, although since he’s suddenly upped his calorie needs this may be wishful thinking on his part.

All of the young budding actors could easily see themselves in film again with some pretty talented dancing in there, and Fleur Houdijk in particular demonstrates a precocious onscreen presence. One of the main story arcs deserves to be criticised though, with the parents of one of the kids demanding he give up dancing so he can study – surely it ought to be quite possible to do both?

Iron Man 3  (2013)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     130 Min        12A

Despite ropey beginnings, this proves to be quite possibly the most enjoyable of the Iron Man series thus far. Written by Shane Black and Drew Pearce, and directed by Black in the stead of Jon Favreau who helmed the previous two, the third instalment finds our hero Tony Stark dealing with the psychological aftermath of the events of ‘Avengers Assemble’ (or ‘The Avengers’ for everyone outside of Britain) whilst once again donning his not so alter-ego of Iron Man to deal with the threat of a terrorist calling himself The Mandarin, played most wonderfully here by Sir Ben Kinglsey. The Mandarin was one of the most frequent villains to appear in the comics, and one of the advantages of writing about a universe which has just been visited by demigods and hordes of war waging aliens, is that the term ‘far fetched’ can no longer be applied.

The story is a lot of fun, and what makes it really work is the injection of comedy which fits both the personality of Stark and the actor portraying him, Robert Downey Jr. At one point he encounters a fan in the guise of a schoolboy, which normally means we are about to be bombarded by irritating cliché, but it actually turns out to be one of the best things about the film. Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow reprise their roles, and both Guy Pearce and the enchanting Rebecca Hall manifest themselves as talented scientists. Ironically Hall’s character has a rant about being called a mere botanist, but websites about the film also seem to enjoy referring to her in the same manner. There’s a nice improvised ‘Assassin’s Creed’ moment, and at the end there’s a series of slightly retro credits with stills from all three films, but no expected extra scene following. However, I do believe there is one if you stay for the entire credits after the retrospective. I shall just have to go and see it again…. (I can now confirm that this is indeed the case, it’s a lengthy wait though)

Apparently some scenes were shot in China purely for the Chinese version of the film, something which is becoming more popular with the Chinese market now being second only to the American one in terms of film revenue, and something which The Red Dragon doesn’t agree with since it’s done purely for commercial reasons, but probably the other footage will appear on the DVD release anyway.

Below is the London press release for the film with some of the cast and crew, seemingly a small cauldron of emotions, from nerves to repressed giggles….

The Look of Love  (2013)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     101 Min        18

A biographical portrait of Paul Raymond, one time richest man in Britain and head of soft pornography giant ‘Men Only’ magazine, along with many infamous Soho establishments, convincingly played here by Steve Coogan. The film really focuses on his relationship with his daughter, played by Imogen Poots, but it tries to squeeze in all of the other women in his life as well; his wife, long term girlfriends, threesomes, and general one night stands. A lot of these elements take up the first half of the movie, and are given too brief a treatment to be effective, and indeed the cutting and editing is far too rapid here generally. This may be to do with the content, as we see an endless stream of bare breasted girls parade up and down the stages of his London attractions, at once containing enough nudity to offend and off-put some viewers, and yet cut far too sharply to be used for any effect other than to show Raymond was constantly around attractive young women.

It’s like the film is playing it safe, commenting on the infamously conservative British relationship with sex and pornography in general (see this article, for talk of the current government banning all porn in the UK) and talking of its evolution in history, and yet also suffering from that same slightly repressive culture – accentuated with sex scenes that are shot in a traditionally prudish way, especially with regards to male nudity onscreen. There’s really nothing here to offend or, ‘ahem’, titillate your average audience member. There is a lot of cocaine use throughout though, especially with Poots’ character, in fact we are to believe she essentially takes the stuff with her Cornflakes for several years, and yet she continues to still look pretty good, which is perhaps a bit of a visual oversight.

Despite its flaws and a dull first half, ultimately the slow burn effect begins to work, and together with the music and feel of the era it evokes, it does build to a reasonably memorable emotional end. Admittedly, having a slight crush on Imogen Poots probably helps (also, see her surprisingly accomplished Scottish accent in ‘Centurion’). It’s directed by the man who effectively brought Coogan to an international audience with ‘24 Hour Party People’, Michael Winterbottom, and marks the latest of a long running collaboration between the two, after further films like ‘The Trip’ and ‘A Cock and Bull Story’.  Also with good turns from Anna Friel, Chris Addison (‘The Thick of it’) and Tamsin Egerton (‘St. Trinians’, ‘4..3..2..1’) and features a brief but pretty good Marlon Brando impression from Coogan too (he began his career onscreen as an impressionist for ‘Spitting Image’ in the eighties).

Speaking of which, here are some equally good impersonations from another famously famous thesp.

Evil Dead  (2013)    17/100

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Rating :   17/100                                                                       91 Min        18

This remake of Sam Raimi’s classic 1981 film of the same name manages to exist as boring, grotesque and irritating in pretty much equal measure, and has kept the basic idea of its progenitor but excoriated all of the darkly comedic aspects, quirks and playful horror that made the original such a cult favourite, a film that became so revered there is even a musical based on it (see below for a short excerpt). Oddly, production credits here find Raimi alongside Bruce Campbell and Robert G. Tapert, all of whom worked on the original trilogy (‘Evil Dead II’ arrived in 1987, and then ‘Army of Darkness’ followed in 92) and it seems the idea for this film is for it to act as both a reboot and a continuation of the original three, with an ‘Army of Darkness 2’ to follow, then a sequel to this one, and finally a third film to tie together the two separate story arcs. An interesting plan, but with the final product here, one could be forgiven for starting to think Raimi has lost his touch, especially on the back of his previous film ‘Oz The Great and Powerful’, as although he is not on directing duties (that dubious honour belonging to Uruguayan Fede Alvarez, handpicked by Raimi) this is ultimately badly shot, conceptualised, written, cast and staged.

It also suffers from the very, very familiar set up that takes place – a bunch of teens go to a cabin in the woods, seemingly fully intent on tempting the dark arts and getting themselves mutilated in a series of ever more bloody ways. Ironically, the success of the original has helped saturate the horror spectrum with this same concept, so much so, of course, it was satirised in the grand homage that was 2011’s ‘The Cabin in the Woods’. Here, the stage is set by the main character Mia, played by Jane Levy, wanting to kick her drug habit and thus isolating herself in her family retreat with some trusted friends and her brother, but this entire plot element is left dangling limply by the narrative and gets in the way of things more than anything else. Pretty soon they happen upon a cursed ancient tome, and one of them very cleverly works out what the words they should never ever utter are, and unleashes some kind of evil demon, one that ends up having no more scripted structure than a serious of exploding blood bags. It’s simply revolting, and fits right into the stratum of modern horror films that want to cerebrally butcher the audience as much as possible rather than thrill, scare, reward, or entertain them.

Unless you really want to see young girls wearing bright yellow contacts, cutting their tongues in half and flaring their nostrils so wide the camera could practically fit up them, then give this one a very wide berth.