Olympus Has Fallen (2013) 70/100

Posted on April 17, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 120 Min

For what this is, it’s actually pretty good. ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ marks the first film since 9/11 to show a terrorist attack on the White House. With that premise, it doesn’t sound great, The Red Dragon does not recall many of the old ‘The President is in danger!’ films being particularly enthralling, however, it is delivered via a fairly no nonsense approach here, and the orchestration of the attack itself is reasonably believable given events in the real world a decade ago, although the same cannot truly be said of its execution. It does also suffer from an inevitable cheese factor, but it’s at least cut and fed to us in thin slices, not detracting from the film as much as some of its predecessors.

Gerard Butler plays the secret service agent who must don his John McClane cap (lots of strong parallels with the original ‘Die Hard’ (88), and one can’t help but feel this could have served as a much better version of the fifth instalment, ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’) in order to try and save the beleaguered President, played by Aaron Eckhart, whilst Morgan Freeman, who of course played the President in ‘Deep Impact’ (98), also appears as the member of the White House staff who must take on the reins of power in light of his commander in chief’s compromised position. Also with another good turn from Melissa Leo, who certainly gains the audience’s sympathy by essentially being used as a punchbag at one point. From director Antoine Fuqua, who helmed the much maligned but really not that bad ‘King Arthur’ in 2004 (with the enchanting Miss Knightley of course) as well as ‘Training Day’ (01) and ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ (09). Expect strong violence, explosions, bullets, and, well, death, throughout.

Scary Movie V (2013) 3/100

Posted on April 13, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 3/100 86 Min

Easily the worst of the Scary Movie films. It opens with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan in a bed together, which is surely the definition of a scary movie, but unlike it’s predecessors, Anna Faris turned down the opportunity to reprise her role as central character Cindy, and given the dark depths her career has often been plunged into, that really says something. Instead, the central plot follows the characters of Dan and Jody, pictured above and played by Simon Rex (who appeared in a couple of the others) and Ashley Tisdale respectively, as it proceeds to spoof some of the more famous horror and sci-fi film releases of the last couple of years. Using ‘Mama’ as the core concept, some of its other cinematic references are the Paranormal Activity franchise, especially numbers three and four, ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, ‘Evil Dead’, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’, ‘Black Swan’, and ‘Inception’. It’s mostly devoid of laughs, with a surprisingly long list of famous names like Usher and Snoop Dogg (in fact, in this sense it’s like an American version of ‘Keith Lemon – The Movie’), though it does feature an especially long outtakes section during the credits, which was actually more entertaining than the movie proper.

Oblivion (2013) 15/100

Posted on April 10, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 15/100 124 Min

This film suffers from, at least, three major problems: the trailer spoils the entire first half of it, giving away critical elements, the screenplay is full of holes and so cheesy there were audible gasps of exasperation and laughs of derision in the cinema, I felt like applauding the couple of people who left at one particularly bad moment, though it is at least matched by lacklustre acting overall, and thirdly it lifts a lot from multiple other sci-fi sources, combining to produce a pallid shell, from which any talent and creativity long since departed.

If I were to add a fourth thing, it would have to be Tom Cruise’s hair, which seems to have a life of its own, appearing down one moment, and then ridiculously erect the next – usually when he mounts his wee desert bike as if this suddenly activates ‘Mad Max Desert Bike Cruise’. Speaking of which, there’s no reason for the bike to even exist other than to have the hero ride off on one; the hero who decides finding something lost in the desert will be easier on bike rather than from the air, hmmm…

The Red Dragon actually rates Cruise generally, but there is only so much he can do when everything else around him is crumbling. Fans of the hugely popular Bethesda Game Studios roleplay game ‘Oblivion’ should be aware there is no connection to this film, instead here Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, hot on the heels of him playing ‘Jack Reacher’, who together with Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the last two humans assigned to the dying planet of Earth, who must protect, with the help of armed drones, huge automated machines which are to transport the planet’s water supply to humanity’s new home on Saturn’s moon, Titan. This has all come to pass after war with an alien race, a war which we won, but our own planet, and indeed our moon, was the price that had to be paid. Despite victory, remnants of the alien task force remain and attempt to interfere with the human plans…

In the course of telling their story, here is a not entirely inclusive list of the other films that are defiled in the process; ‘Wall-E’, ‘Star Trek: Generations’, ‘Terminator’, ‘Independence Day’, ‘The Matrix’, all to greater or lesser degrees, but their biggest art theft is also a massive spoiler, and so appears after the end of this review. Some of these similarities it could get away with easily, such as the drones with red ‘Terminator’ esque eyes and their screens that have ‘terminate’ on them, commonplace in sci-fi now really, but as they mount up it becomes more difficult. Cruise collects and cares for a small plant, the only thing alive he’s found in the dead lands he patrols – ‘Wall-E’. He has a hidden away, idealised cabin in a somehow fertile woods – ‘Generations’. I’ll stop there before I give too much away.

The film is written and directed by Joseph Kosinski (‘Tron Legacy’ 2010) who based this on his, unpublished (early warning sign right there), graphic novel, and he has claimed it pays homage to films from the 70’s, which may be true, but for the rest of it that fine line between homage and stealing is not tread carefully. Just as with his ‘Tron Legacy’, the visuals are the film’s only saving grace (many of the location shoots took place in Iceland), which paint a grand vista of cinematic grandeur, but are ultimately just the icing on a poorly baked cake.

SPOILER ALERT

Ok, this is basically the American version of Duncan Jones’s (son of David Bowie) ‘Moon’ (09), and, unfortunately, it’s cheesy and rubbish, whereas ‘Moon’ became a well deserved indie hit. Even though Kosinski’s graphic novel was begun in 2005, the similarities here are too great to ignore, and the screenplay underwent several rewrites over the years via several different people, had the graphic novel been published one could say for sure which came first. Strangely Jones is planning to write a graphic novel as a sequel to ‘Moon’ which he may then turn into a film – perhaps he nicked Kosinski’s idea? In any case ‘Moon’ was released first, and is ten times better, so it would have been wise to significantly alter the script to make sure no one could accuse it of plagiarism. Not the first time Cruise has been involved in an American remake – see his ‘Vanilla Sky’ as opposed to Alejandro Amenábar’s ‘Open Your Eyes’. If you are a big fan of sci-fi then please watch ‘Moon’ before you see this, as one will probably ruin the other for you and ‘Oblivion’ is bad in enough other ways to not really care about spoiling.

The Closed Circuit / Uklad Zamkniety (2013) 67/100

Posted on April 7, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 67/100 100 Min

The story behind this really makes it work. It’s a Polish language dramatisation about the true tale of three friends who set up a successful multi-million Euro company in Poland, but were then hounded by serious bribery and corruption charges. It begins painfully slowly, with many imperfections and an all too grey blueish texture that never leaves the film, a common complaint for the Polish film industry, and it would be tempting to label it a remnant of the soviet era if it were not also commonly found in the mainstream cinema of the west. Despite these faults (the grammar used in the English subtitles could also use a bit of work) the events are compelling and the performances for the most part are pretty good. In fact, in many ways the drama is underplayed – what unfolds deserved to be much more tense and harrowing for the viewer than it is.

It would be interesting to know just how close to the bone the film runs – the director Ryszard Bugajski struggled for many years to have his 1982 film ‘Interrogation’ about Stalinist repression released, and was finally able to do so with the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc, seeing it nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1990 and Krystyna Janda take home the best actress award. Given that level of commitment to voicing the truth, The Red Dragon is hopeful that Uklad Zamkniety sticks largely to the facts.

All Things to All Men (2013) 63/100

Posted on April 6, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating: 63/100 84 Min

A crime thriller set in London that is in many ways comprised of very basic ingredients, but all those ingredients are executed with enough panache to make it work . Features gangsters, thieves, corrupt police officers, drugs and diamonds all to the backdrop of a good scene-setting soundtrack, and a lot of nice scenic shots of the city. It’s one of those films where you don’t need to pay a great deal of attention to get the gist of what’s going on, but when you do stop to think about it some of the trusts put in certain characters may seem a little far fetched, though on the whole it is believable enough. There’s a distinct lack of the sort of endless gratuitous swearing which is normally ever present in British gangster films, courtesy of criminals with a bit more class led by Gabriel Byrne – looking a little like Christoph Waltz here for some reason. Also with, bizarrely, Julian Sands (‘A Room with a View’ 85), Toby Stephens, and a noteworthy turn from Rufus Sewell.

The drama, of course, surrounds a fairly extreme scenario, an insider heist worth millions of pounds, but it tries to briefly touch on real issues, suggesting some officers can only make arrests by themselves committing perjury, for example, though there is no discussion as to whether that is due to the system or individuals (there is a heavy suggestion of course given the nature of the film). Unfortunately, the important work the police in Britain do is all too often undermined by stories of corruption in the media, even on a large and endemic scale such as the recent Hillsborough probe that revealed endless false testimonies from officers and the botched Jimmy Savile investigations, where scores of witnesses were never taken seriously at the time.

They are not currently being helped, however, by the present Tory government who have decided to privatise parts of the force (as well as severely cutting it) together with welfare, two elements of society that should absolutely never ever be privatised. Despite being exposed in the media as being hopelessly unfit for purpose, the agencies used in the welfare scandal, many of which have already been kicked out of other countries such as Australia, are being paid public money to effectively force the poor to work as slaves in order to receive state benefits, the equivalent of two pounds something an hour, under threat of starvation and homelessness if they refuse, using companies that should be paying them at least minimum wage to do the same job. Interestingly, a few police officers in London are also facing corruption charges over lying about what a certain Tory minister may or may not have said to them after they told him to get off his bike and walk (click here for more details), though I think their hearts were in the right place in that instance….

These socio-political things find their way into cinema, often in understated terms. Even the recent release of ‘Identity Thief’ has Jason Bateman make the comment that the police in America don’t appear to be able to do anything unless they catch someone actually in the act of committing a crime due to the bureaucracy involved (interestingly, in that film they plan to secretly record conversations to use as evidence, a stalwart of crime films. There, the police are complicit, but in most law systems, including Scotland’s, evidence gained this way is unusable in court, and generally frowned upon unless obtained with a police warrant). For a few films based on true stories of corruption see ‘Midnight Express’, Sidney Lumet’s ‘Serpico’, and the recent Polish film ‘The Closed Circuit’ for a bit of a geographical spread.

‘All Things to All Men’, takes its title from the famous phrase in the New Testament of the Bible (First Corinthians – 9:22), and is written and directed by George Isaac – a double debut for him after previous roles as producer on Noel Clarke’s gritty ‘Kidulthood’ (06) and its sequel ‘Adulthood’ (08), and overall, here he has done a pretty decent job.

As an aside, the following is a very illustrative, and important, interview between the former head of A4E (one of the private welfare agencies), Emma Harrison, and Krishnan Guru-Murthy for Channel 4 News, some of the elements they touch upon are, I believe, simply the tip of the iceberg. Also, see the equally important clip afterward from the Guardian, who were approached by a DWP whistleblower…

Dark Skies (2013) 30/100

Posted on April 4, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 30/100 97 Min

The new horror film from the makers of ‘Insidious’ and ‘Sinister’ (Blumhouse Productions), and bearing similarities to their ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise which began before those two releases, sees many familiar motifs return and take on new cross-genre twists, actually leaving the film in danger of becoming a parody of itself. The culturally ubiquitous idea of ‘The Boogeyman’ is back, and right from the beginning we are informed this stalker of children’s nightmares will now appear in the guise of extraterrestrials. Some of the scares are decent enough, though most are exactly what we expect from previous material and the screenplay is dire to say the least, especially when it comes to the adults in the story. As per the norm the action concerns an average, struggling with bills, family of four that have mysteriously become the centre of attention of some otherworldly visitors.

What the film doesn’t swipe from its predecessors, it takes very obviously from other sci-fi sources; mention of the truth being out there and wanting to believe immediately bring the wonderful ‘X-Files’ to mind, the title is shared by another nineties sci-fi tv series about alien invasion, scenes are lifted directly from both Spielberg’s ‘E.T.’ and ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, and at one point we witness scores of birds flying kamikaze style into windows and walls, identical to scenes in ‘Red Lights’. The introduction of alien expert and victim Edwin Pollard, played by J.K.Simmons, brings a bit more interest to the piece, and also a little more sympathy for the family, but it’s nothing more than a brief glimmer of what could have been with the application of more invention and originality. If done in the right way, this could have spawned a franchise in its own right, ‘Dark Skies’ the tv series was good until it lost its way toward the end, and long before that there was ‘The Invaders’ (and the bit more camp ‘V’), a fantastic series that highlighted the potential for ‘they are amongst us’ stories to engross and fascinate skeptics and believers alike.

This is a dilution of the genuinely quite scary ‘Insidious’ (10), and then the nowhere near as good ‘Sinister’ (12). Look forward to the next logical step from Jason Blum and co where the aliens discard their used human experiments at Fukushima, wherein they become zombies that all look like the girl from ‘Ringu’ and can only be properly seen by the naked eye via surveillance cameras, forcing the army to get involved, who originally blame immigrant Korean workers until the evidence becomes overwhelming, although the Japanese emperor still refuses to acknowledge what’s going on, until his wife turns into a zombie and eats him.

The Host (2013) 59/100

Posted on April 4, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 59/100 125 Min

Based on ‘Twilight’ author Stephenie Meyer’s non twilight sci-fi novel, although one could possibly guess the connection by the premise and advertising poster shown above. Where ‘Twilight’ featured a horny and irresponsible young girl at the centre of a love triangle that managed to get most of the inhabitants of her town killed, here we have a teenage love quadrangle with one female INSIDE THE BODY of another. It takes Bella’s indecision over Jacob or Edward to a whole new level.

The premise is that Earth has largely been taken over by peace loving aliens who nevertheless use human bodies as hosts, dominating them completely. The main female character Melanie, played by Saoirse Ronan, is implanted but she is strong enough for her own identity to survive and communicate with her parasitic intruder. The alien shares the memories of Melanie and recalls a romantic affair with a young male in the human resistance. Driven mad with cock lust, the extraterrestrial agrees to help Melanie but, naturally, finds she gets hot flushes from someone else, cue lots of (self) bitch slapping all round.

Ronan does a really good job given her difficult task, and she really suits the bright blue contacts which denotes alien control. Similarly, William Hurt as the autocratic leader of the resistance cell is likeable, and if you get past the fact the film is trashy crap, it is not without a certain visual appeal. The brief appearance of Emily Browning towards the end suggests the possibility of a sequel, but this may be wishful thinking on the part of the producers (there are currently no other books, but since Meyer stated as far back as 2009 she sees the story as a trilogy, it seems very likely she decided to wait and see how this film performed. She could probably churn out the other two over breakfast anyway). The film is written and directed by Andrew Nicol which, following on from his atrocious ‘In Time’ (2011), quite possibly sounds the death knell on his career, and for acting support has Jake Abel (‘Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief’ 2010), Jeremy Irons’ son Max irons (‘Red Riding Hood’ 2011), and Diane Kruger as another alien hottie.

Of note, Saoirse Ronan is also rumoured to have been cast as Mary Queen of Scots in an upcoming biopic…

G.I. Joe : Retaliation (2013) 25/100

Posted on April 3, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 25/100 110 Min

So tedious I wanted to cry. I think I even caught Bruce Willis grimacing at the hammy acting at one point. This is the sequel to 2009’s disaster that was the original ‘G.I.Joe : The Rise of Cobra’, and wisely Sienna Miller has decided not to return for the sequel – or did her character die in the first one? I really can’t remember, I don’t think it was important either way. The story feels so devoid of attention that it would be more at home as an eight page comic sold with one of the action figures that the wannabe film franchise is based on, and the director, Jon M. Chu (‘Step Up’ & ‘Step Up 3D’), thinks sticking a camera in front of actors and shaking it frantically adds to the visual experience – and that cutting to a fourth rate title sequence by interrupting the phrase “Mother-” in their aimed at younger kids film is perfectly ok.

One can easily imagine the writers researching the film by shooting at defenceless woodland creatures with bazookas. It even manages to put a narrative event which can normally save a dire film from the trash can into a blink and you’ll miss it non-event, not to mention (spoiler alert, but it is in the trailer + you shouldn’t see this film anyway) having the whole of London nuked, and then never mentioning the event again. It was as if it didn’t happen…

Hasbro make the toys, and also run the Transformers line, and here they have used some of the same sound effects from Michael Bay’s films, and seem to have even remixed some of the same music and made the main bad guy sound eerily reminiscent of Megatron. I sincerely hope this doesn’t mean they are planning to do a joint ‘Avengers Assemble’ style team-up. Presumably the Autobots will not be visiting the irradiated dead zone of the United Kingdom if they do.

To be fair, there is a reasonably good action sequence that takes place on a cliff face, with decent vertical shots that actually show where 3D can be effective, and the story does get slightly more interesting toward the end, with Jonathan Pryce gleefully playing with the nuclear launch buttons. Also with Channing Tatum, Dwayne ‘not The Rock anymore but still is’ Johnson, more swipes at politically sensitive Pakistan and North Korea (see ‘Red Dawn‘) and with Willis playing the eponymous G.I. Joe himself.

Trance (2013) 70/100

Posted on April 3, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 101 Min

The first film from director Danny Boyle since his success with the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games, although principal photography actually wrapped before the games took place. It’s a somewhat low key affair compared to the grandeur and spectacle of the ceremony – a taught psychological mystery revolving around James McAvoy trying to remember where he hid an extremely valuable piece of art, having received an unplanned blow to the head whilst stealing it. Something his partners in crime, Vincent Cassel amongst them (and if you’ve seen him as the titular criminal in ‘Mesrine: Killer Instinct’, this is certainly cause for concern), are none too happy about, thus they enlist the services of hypnotherapist Elizabeth, played by Rosario Dawson.

Boyle uses a lot of his trademark stylistics to just pull this film off, including apt use of techno music from Underworld’s Rick Smith (a long time collaborator of Boyle’s), off level camera angles, and a warm and somewhat unique orange hue to the cinematography, with some modern day industry standard blues thrown in there too. This artificial edginess, together with good acting, does keep it interesting, and there are enough clues along the way as to what’s going on to hold interest without completely spoiling the ending. The film also highlights a peculiarity in British and American cinema. The performance from Dawson is very committed, featuring as it does a moment of brazen full frontal nudity, which is immediately followed by a nude McAvoy sitting on a bed awaiting the libidinous attentions of Dawson’s character, and yet he has his hand covering his manhood. By comparison it seems a little ridiculous, not to mention somewhat unfair on Dawson, and, perhaps, female viewers. Surely one either has to show a similar state of vulnerability, or simply cut to the sex scene or afterwards?

With this in mind it occurred to The Red Dragon just how rare it is to see male genitalia on film outside of the arthouse realm, notwithstanding Michael Fassbender who breaks the rules by being so well endowed it is actually visible from behind in ‘Shame’. Indeed, the only incidences which come to mind at present are the very memorable scene with Harvey Keitel in the original ‘Bad Lieutenant’ and Sacha Baron Cohen in ‘Bruno’, although in that instance it was more like a covert penile assault on the audience. If female actors are going to have to do so many sex scenes, with arguably most offering nothing to the story other than visual appeal, who also have more bits per capita to want to keep private anyway, then surely more men should ‘man up’ and put it out there for public consumption too? I’m sure all the poor women who have had their private photos hacked into and then blasted over the internet, or have had a zillion cameras pointed at their legs as they get out of cars all literally hoping for the money shot, would appreciate a little more solidarity and support from their industry. Although, it would mean potentially featuring in a dire song from Seth MacFarlane at the Oscars. Ironically, both Fassbender and Scarlett Johansson (recent victim of phone hacking) were actually considered for roles in this film, with the former being offered and accepting one, but having to pull out due to scheduling conflicts.

The Croods (2013) 53/100

Posted on March 31, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 53/100 98 Min

The latest from Dreamworks Animation, and if we look at the original concept art from director Chris Sanders below..

… then compare that to the finished article at the head of this page, we see a certain resonance with the title. The story follows the desperate adventure of a family of prehistoric human/squirrel hybrids as they attempt to avoid plummeting into the fiery chasms of molten lava that dog their travels, the result of cataclysmic tectonic activity. Not to worry though, there’s plenty of time to fall in love and invent fire, shoes, and the umbrella along the way, courtesy of the wiry but bright male orphan Guy (Ryan Reynolds) and his affections for the physically stronger, and very much in vogue (and slightly aping ‘Brave’), female cave dweller Eep (Emma Stone), much to the chagrin of her equally meaty father (Nicolas Cage).

It’s a very standard Dreamworks movie, with little of interest for adult viewers but enough constant action and fanciful colours to keep younger audiences entertained. There is a chase sequence for a precious edible egg near the beginning, for example, that seems to last for an eternity as it’s passed from family member to family member via a series of increasingly unlikely measures in order to avoid capture from its mother, whom The Red Dragon’s sympathies were mostly with, and come the end of it one’s attention will almost certainly have wandered naturally away from the film. This pattern is oft repeated, although it gets slightly better as it goes on, and despite the modern day cliché of the romance involved, there is a nice touch when Guy refers to the apple of his eye as being “heavy”, at which she seems genuinely complimented and offers a beaming “Thank you” in return – good to see a children’s animation endorsing a slightly different feminine physique from the status quo of wafer thin princesses.

As with other Dreamworks productions, all the animation was done via computer, and some of the details on the main characters seem a little basic and lacking in finesse. The film also highlights, not for the first time, despite their Shreks and Madagascars, a difference in class level for the company against its much more diverse rivals, Disney, Disney Pixar and Studio Ghibli, not least of all by virtue of the fact director Sanders was the co-director and co-writer of Disney’s ‘Lilo and Stitch’, which The Red Dragon considers one of Disney’s most original and best, and he actually left the company to film this for Dreamworks, although he completed the successful ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ for them first, and he has Kirk De Micco helping, or diluting, his efforts with both direction and the screenplay here on ‘The Croods’. To keep up with its competition Dreamworks really has to make more of an effort to engage the whole family, rather than just its smallest constituent parts, although they have made an interesting strategic move into the Chinese market, with ‘Oriental Dreamworks’ under construction in Shanghai, and their first feature film, ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’, expected to be released in 2016 coinciding with the completion of their ‘Dream Center’ in the city, which will feature a host of shops, theatres, the world’s biggest IMAX screen, and is aimed to rival the likes of Broadway and London’s West End.

Not short on corporate ambition then, though the ‘Dream Center’ will be going head to head with a new Disneyland opening in Shanghai that same year…

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