Step Up 5 Million : All In (2014) 47/100

Posted on August 1, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 47/100 112 Min

Ok, so this is Step Up 5 (aka Step Up : All In) not five million, but really it’s so formulaic and derivative of its predecessors that they could rinse and repeat and get up to that number without any real effort. It has been billed as the film reuniting cast members from the other films, but what they really mean is that Moose (Adam Sevani) and Andie (Briana Evigan) are back in it – there is no Channing Tatum, for example, and although a few other semi familiar faces appear they, just as before, receive so little character development and so few lines that they might as well be new blood for all anyone is likely to care. The acting is terrible, and the screenwriting is offensive to writers everywhere, with possibly the worst element being lead male character Sean (Ryan Guzman), who does return from the previous film but who seems to have retained none of the life lessons he bored us with last time, managing to be both an indistinguishable carbon copy of all the leading male characters in the franchise as well as the least likeable of the lot.

The dancing, at least, is for the most part very good and has been well choreographed, but even the biggest fans of the series are going to struggle sitting through the garbage comprising eighty percent of the film to get to it. The story is the usual ‘some crew will try to bond in order to win a dance competition against the bad guys and the hot leads will fall for one another, even though one of these leads did the same thing a few films ago and that didn’t seem to work out too well for her and the other one would clearly rather make love to himself’ – eighty percent dancing with twenty percent story would have been far better. Evigan is by literal leaps and bounds the best thing about the film – and indeed it wasn’t until I sat and tried to remember the other four films that I realised her shaking her ass in ‘Step Up 2 : The Streets’ (08) is pretty much the only thing I remember about any of them. Bring on ‘Step Up 6 : All Out’, when Andie tires of male dancers breaking her heart and must now seduce the hottest girl in town through erotic, sweaty street dance – the girl is tempted, but what will her Republican Senator daddy who’s about to fund the state ballet have to say ..?? Only Moose knows …

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) 70/100

Posted on July 31, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 70/100 121 Min

An odd film, in that the entire first half is completely flat but the second is the polar opposite – ultimately transforming itself into a reasonably soulful and entertaining sci-fi adventure. Certainly, if you’re going to tell a tale of two halves then that is the right order to do it in. Guardians is the latest from Marvel Studios and the first outing on the big screen for some of their lesser known superheroes, namely ‘Star-Lord’ (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Drax (Dave Bautista) and Root (Vin Diesel), lesser known, perhaps, because their escapades are set in our current time frame but in another galaxy, allowing access to previous story threads in the Marvel film universe involving Thanos and Benicio Del Toro’s ‘The Collector’, both seen in post credit sequences at the end of ‘Avengers Assemble’ (12) and ‘Thor : The Dark World‘ respectively.

Star-Lord (Peter Quill is his somewhat less egotistical name) was abducted from Earth when he was a kid in the eighties, and he still religiously listens to the mixed tape he had with him at the time whilst conducting his present occupation of scavenging rare goods and then flogging them. One day, he is sent to collect an orb which will see a bounty put on his head and Gamora, daughter of Thanos, sent to retrieve the item from him by force, just as bounty hunters Rocket (a raccoon genetically modified to be really sarcastic) and Root (a tree) also come across their prey, all resulting in them being lumped together by the authorities in prison where they can begin to bond with one another and meet the final cog in their increasingly unlikely ass kicking outfit – Drax, who interprets everything literally and is built like the proverbial brick shit house.

This protracted and other worldly backstory is the film’s major setback, and a lot of it fails initially. It’s not really until they form a group and meet The Collector, also linking everything to what fans of the previous films will be familiar with, that it starts to cohere together and become more interesting. Thankfully, this still leaves a lot of time for things to pick up, as the action becomes more lively, the jokes funnier, and the characters more, ahem, root worthy, with a suitably dramatic finale and wonderfully villainous performances from Lee Pace and the demoniacally sultry Karen Gillan (who committed to having all of her hair shaved off for the role).

It’s directed by James Gunn (see the wonderful ‘Super’ 2010), who also co-wrote the screenplay alongside Nicole Perlman and, all in all, it is a worthy addition to the Marvel canon, but for a while it looked like it was heading for disaster. As usual, there are two new post credit scenes, but unusually the last one has a reference that most of the audience didn’t appreciate – it relates to a certain old superhero film that was so badly received it ended the careers of many of the people involved with it, Tim Robbins being one of the few to rise from its ashes (The Red Dragon, incidentally, passed him on the street in Edinburgh a few months ago – he didn’t recognise me), although I kind of remember it as funny, maybe for the wrong reasons, but I would love it if Gunn were to integrate it into the sequel to this, which has already been greenlit by the studios with him to take on the reins once more …

The Purge : Anarchy (2014) 56/100

Posted on July 26, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 56/100 103 Min

The sequel to last year’s ‘The Purge‘ from Blumhouse productions (with James DeMonaco writing and directing again) who don’t waste any time in getting the next installment in their franchises out. It retains the good basic story from the first one – that at some point in the very near future the U.S. Government sanction one day of violence and wanton destruction when people can ‘purge’ themselves of their baser inclinations and not face any recriminations (until the next Purge possibly), thereby theoretically creating a society largely free of crime for the rest of the year. Here, the concept is advanced a little and more politics come into it, which was a good idea and works quite well, but its critical sin is that four of the five main characters are terribly written and just as terribly acted.

Frank Grillo (‘The Winter Soldier‘, ‘End of Watch‘) plays one man on a mysterious mission – driving around on purge night in a bullet proofed car with a small arsenal with him for company, but focused on his goal rather than engaging in the bedlam around him. The character is the strongest element of the movie. Unfortunately, he stops to help out some strangers and ends up with a small entourage of completely hopeless gibberlings that shackle him for most of the film. I mean, you really feel sorry for this guy, as the others waltz around in plain sight, scream and shriek at every possible opportunity, talk when they shouldn’t, tell him killing is wrong but ask him to kill everyone around them so they can survive, just generally break his balls and cover constantly. It picks up dramatically for the last twenty or thirty minutes, and if the rest had been like this then it would have been possibly better than the original, but as it is the very people we’re supposed to empathise with effectively destroy the entire core of the film.

Hercules (2014) 68/100

Posted on July 25, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 68/100 98 Min

Dwayne Johnson stars as the titular hero of Greek mythology (it should be entitled Heracles though, Hercules being the romanised version of the demigod) and he was pretty much the perfect choice for the role. He’s come a long way since the days of ‘The Scorpion King’ (02), delivering a slew of entertaining performances to become a dependable leading man and command one of the highest fees in Hollywood (Forbes currently places him in second place overall) and here his onscreen presence serves the character perfectly, as he stands on two tree trunk legs, each wider than the nearest warrior behind him, wielding his giant olive-wood club and adorned with the skin of the Nemean lion.

Rather than following in the footsteps of the likes of ‘Clash of the Titans’ (10) and ‘Immortals’ (11), this is more concerned with Hercules the man and how the myth is wrapped around him, and it is essentially a battle film with pretty decent set pieces and costumes – there’s nothing outstanding or brilliant about the movie but it is pretty good overall, notwithstanding the cheesy dialogue and historical inaccuracies (Athens is shown to have a king, for example, when at this time, circa 350 BC {which is actually way too late for Heracles’ era anyway}, her democracy was flourishing and kings had been done away with, and indeed they are using the misplaced king, Eurystheus, of variously Argos or Tiryns depending on which source you read) that we expect to find anyway. It’s based on a graphic novel and it has that kind of feel to it – similar as well to ‘King Arthur’ (04) in that we follow Hercules and his friends as they are hired to help defend the kingdom of Thrace from an usurper (Hercules is a mercenary, one tormented by a brutal personal event in his recent past), and we don’t get to know them in any great depth – but well enough to like them and care if they get cut to pieces or not.

There’s a host of good supporting actors – some of them regulars of the genre such as Rufus Sewell, John Hurt and Ian McShane, but also Peter Mullan, Aksel Hennie, Reece Ritchie, Joseph Fiennes and Ingrid Bolsø Berdal – playing the Amazonian Atalanta and looking very much like a young and super fit Nicole Kidman. It’s good fun with some nice locations and sets and it’s a lot better than the likes of the Conan reboot and the aforementioned ‘Immortals’ (truly, an episode of ‘Total Spies’ is more worthwhile than that film), and although it is lacking any kind of spark to really ignite it, enough has been done to merit a sequel and it probably won’t disappoint if you’re in the mood for a weekend action film.

Oddly, Johnson’s real life buddy Arnold Schwarzenegger had his first movie role playing the same part in ‘Hercules in New York’ back in 1969 (one of Schwarzenegger’s inspirations, Steve Reeves, also played the Grecian hero on two occasions). The two friends managed to share a brief onscreen moment together in ‘The Rundown‘ 03, which is also worth a watch incidentally.

Earth to Echo (2014) 57/100

Posted on July 25, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 57/100 91 Min

The handheld genre finds its way into the family film market here, with very similar results to previous experiments with it: contrivances to always have multiple cameras on the go (bizarrely including a hidden camera in one of the kid’s specs, which seems like a particularly nifty bit of kit for them to have access to) and fairly irritating central performances as they constantly try to sound excited, telling us we should be too. The plot has us following three young boys (played by Teo Halm, Reese Hartwig and X-Factor contestant Brian ‘Astro’ Bradley) around on their bikes as they trace a mysterious map that has appeared on their phones – a map which leads to the discovery of a small alien, Echo, that they will try to help collect the fragmented bits of his spacecraft so he (or she I suppose, its sexual organs are not noticeably examined) can go home before some evil ADULTS find it, play football with it and dismember it.

Echo has no real personality, it essentially looks really cute and can beep once for yes and twice for no, and that’s it, so the focus is on the adventure of the kids with at least an attempt to explore the strength of the bond between them, but mainly just watching them track down things and trying to avoid capture, with the very typical fantasy of the hot uptight girl from school (Ella Wahlestedt) somehow getting involved and coming along with them . For kids around the age of the main characters (fourteen?) it might be quite good, but for anyone else it’s a far cry from E.T. (82). One of them learns to drive a car in, literally, ten seconds. That’s the sort of level of production and believability you’re looking at here.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) 65/100

Posted on July 24, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 65/100 130 Min

The sequel to 2011’s very successful, and very good, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ continues with the story a decade further down the line, with Caesar and his motley bunch of intelligent apes living free in the wild whilst humanity attempts to deal with the deadly ‘Simian Flu’ virus unleashed at the end of the previous film. In a nutshell, this is nowhere near as good (although it is still a country mile better than Tim Burton’s take on the story back in 2001) but it does just about enough to pass mustard as the next chapter in the franchise.

This has a significantly increased action quotient compared to its predecessor, and in terms of the script it’s much more, ahem, primitive – at times it even feels like scenes must have been omitted that were necessary to explain certain things, and at various points the characters feel a little forced and silly. The plot centers on what’s left of the human populace in San Francisco trying to access a hydroelectric dam in the ape controlled forest in order to restore power, which proves to be a diplomatic nightmare for both sides, eventually setting precedent for relations between the two species in the future.

The human protagonists are played by Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Gary Oldman, with Andy Serkis returning to play Caesar and Toby Kebbell (who’s slated to play Doctor Doom in the Fantastic Four reboot, incidentally) giving a very good performance as the other main monkey, I mean ape, Koba. This has a similar feel to the original series of films which started with the magnificent ‘Planet of the Apes’ (68) and kind of then went steadily downhill with ‘Beneath the Planet of the Apes (70), ‘Escape from the Planet of the Apes’ (71), ‘Conquest of the Planet of the Apes’ (72), ‘Battle for the Planet of the Apes’ (73) and a couple of TV series before the eventual appearance of Burton’s aforementioned attempt which choked and died instantly. Interestingly, the original film is based on a novel by French author Pierre Boulle, who also penned ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’, which of course then inspired another of the most famous movies of all time. This particular outing in the Apes series is reasonably entertaining, but I think it’s best to go in with pretty low expectations …

Boyhood (2014) 63/100

Posted on July 23, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 63/100 166 Min

Writer and director Richard Linklater’s study of childhood that took twelve years to make – focusing on central character Mason growing from the age of five to eighteen and unusually actually waiting for Ellar Coltrane, who portrays him, to grow himself before filming the sequential scenes. This is what the film has garnered a lot of attention for, and it is interesting to watch all the actors age in time with the story – the other members of his immediate family are played by Lorelei Linklater (the director’s daughter) as his sister, Patricia Arquette as his mother and Ethan Hawke as his biological father.

It’s a fictionalised drama, and follows various sociological important events in Mason’s life, from the mundane (his sister tormenting him and then bursting into tears when their mother comes to investigate, for example, will be something a lot of people can relate to) to the dramatic for someone that age, his first break up and exposure to various amounts of peer pressure and so on. Alcohol and alcoholism play a strong role throughout, and the film very successfully shows the potentially devastating effects of both.

Other areas, however, don’t stand up so well – we learn that his father is massively against the war in Iraq and is a huge supporter of Barack Obama, but then years down the line he is taking his kids out to shoot guns in the countryside as a nice family thing to do. Now, given the film was edited together after Obama publicly asked the movie industry to take more responsibility over how it portrays the use of guns in the wake of various horrific massacres in the States, this scene not only doesn’t really make sense for the character but also seems in pretty bad taste, it’s not like Linklater is making a documentary on contemporary views toward guns in American culture, it’s all far too casual.

Similarly, once Mason makes it to college he is shown to immediately make some new friends and one of the females pops what appears to be some kind of sweet into his mouth, but then she says ‘I’ve timed them perfectly to kick in once we’re up there’, referring to the small mountains they are about to climb. He’s totally fine with this, not in the least concerned with ingesting a mysterious narcotic, and the ensuing scene plays out in an idyllic fashion where they all ‘bond’ and he gets to share a moment with a ridiculously hot girl, heavily suggesting he can now ‘find himself’ and his life will be all roses and violets as he’s made it to college and can have drugs for breakfast and encountered the people he was always ‘meant’ to meet. In reality, the situation could easily have been ‘four freshman students plunge to death in horror accident after tripping balls for hours and thinking rocky summit was bouncy castle’, and although I’m all for going into higher education and hopefully meeting like minded people that can be friends for life, the scene is just cheesily ill conceived.

The acting is consistently very good, and there is a lot in there of value concerning the difficulties one can encounter in life, not just boyhood, but overall there is a distinct depression to the film with fairly mixed messages, especially on the issue of drugs, and rather than feeling like a genuine encapsulation of contemporary living, it just feels like the personal stamp of the director and his own agenda. Maybe if filmmakers like Linklater weren’t so overly concerned with how ‘hip’ they think doing drugs is, then they wouldn’t have developed such a negative view of life in general, and then felt the need to bring that across in their work like some kind of secret truth that only their egos had the insight to unearth.

Transformers : Age of Extinction (2014) 56/100

Posted on July 20, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 56/100 165 Min

Aaargh, what a disappointment. Perhaps it was foolish to get my hopes up for the fourth instalment in the Transformers franchise (after ‘Transformers’ 07, ‘Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen’ 09 and Transformers : Dark of the Moon’ 11) but having grown up with them, and as a fan of the new series so far, it was kind of difficult not to. Essentially, all of the things that were wrong with the previous films have been taken to excess here, with worthy moments to counterbalance this few and far between.

The story takes place several years after the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons which annihilated parts of Chicago (which has, incidentally, recently won a competition to be the venue of a large new movie museum. I’m sure it’s because of Transformers), a direct result of which sees the US Administration trying to handle their own security affairs with the Autobots effectively made into outcasts, whilst a covert CIA military outfit is secretly hunting them down for their own nefarious purposes. Shia LaBeouf, his family and various girlfriends are nowhere to be found and the central human characters are this time fleshed out by Mark Wahlberg, playing a hard up mechanic tinkering with old junk in his idyllic garage that always has the sun setting or rising outside whenever he’s working in it (no surprises what he’ll come across one day), Nicola Peltz, his overly hot jail bait daughter, and Jack Reynor, her fake Irish boyfriend.

The dynamic between the humans really couldn’t be more contrived and it’s hard to imagine it won’t grate on all but the youngest of audiences, but the film really starts to fall apart when Optimus Prime learns something which sends him into A COMPLETE FROTHING RAGE and he winds up to go on the warpath, which certainly had me thinking ‘AWESOME!’ but then they deflate this build up far, far too quickly, and right before the audience knows they would have discovered something critical. From then on, it just becomes an endless series of pointless explosions with terrible dialogue before the Dinobots are eventually introduced and Prime rides one like a donkey, but really they do so little they could have been any bit of new, slightly more powerful tech for all the difference it would have made.

The film has the feeling of director Michael Bay having been too influenced by his critics. Gone, for example, are the overt shots of his lead actress poised on a bike for no reason as if willing all spectators to jointly penetrate her in her every orifice, instead we have brief takes of flesh here and there, one second shots from between the daughter’s legs …

… for example, but Bay has to either go for it or not bother – half measures don’t come off well at all, and the whole film feels like he’s almost making the movie he wants to, but with too many concessions. There are still, however, some really nice moments – such as one character memorably getting their brutal just deserts, scientists playing with a My Little Pony and a few decent set pieces. Unfortunately, however, below standard special effects here and there and more silly moments (the creation of the chemical element ‘Transformium’, for example, is unlikely to give chemists much inspiration for future nomenclature) continue to ruin the whole, and its length leaves it as one extended headache more than anything else. The early teenage bracket are probably the most likely to get something out of it. Also starring Sophia Myles, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, T.J. Miller and Bingbing Li.

Tammy (2014) 20/100

Posted on July 20, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 20/100 96 Min

Written by Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, and directed by Falcone in his debut behind the camera, this features McCarthy as central character Tammy, whose life goes into meltdown and inspires her to go on a road trip with her alcoholic grandmother, played by Susan Sarandon. I think McCarthy is a great actor, but her balls out improvised approach to comedy is wayward from the start here, as she tries to set up the whole initial premise almost in one breath – we watch as Tammy quickly loses her job, her marriage and her head in the space of a couple of hours, setting her up as the traditional comedy screwup that we will nevertheless feel sorry for and root for. Unfortunately, it all has a nervous, awkward and amateurish quality to it, and it never really manages to be funny, with obvious and inevitable jibes at the protagonist’s expense, brief treatment of alcoholism, and a traditional, predictable and largely pointless outcome.

Walking on Sunshine (2014) 53/100

Posted on June 30, 2014 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 53/100 97 Min

A musical which features various hits from the eighties, most of which are tortuously murdered by the young relatively unknown cast whose musical and acting abilities run the gamut. Oddly, said cast includes Leona Lewis in her film debut – and as the ace up the production’s sleeve not nearly enough of her is made, especially as she’s the strongest singer by quite a margin. It’s very obviously taking the majority of the leaves out of Mamma Mia’s (08) book, set as it is in an idyllic seaside location in Italy with three female friends as central characters (pictured above and played by, from left to right, Hannah Arterton {sister of Gemma Arterton}, Annabel Scholey and Katy Brand) and the context of one of their weddings as excuse for them all to be there. Scholey is the one to be wed after a five week whirlwind romance, although it turns out her husband to be (played by Giulio Berruti) used to be the lover of her sister (Arterton) who elects to keep this secret and hide the fact she is still in love with him, meanwhile Scholey’s ex (Greg Wise) is determined to win her back, but what could the outcome of all this possibly be …. ?

Most of the first two thirds is abysmal – indeed the opening rendition of Madonna’s ‘Holiday’ is probably the movie’s lowest point, but eventually it does get a little better, with maybe two or three scenes working as intended. One features Arterton singing live in a church and she does a great job – which makes you wonder why they didn’t do more of the same thing, à la ‘Les Mis‘, instead of dubbing the rest of it. Some of the other songs used include ‘Eternal Flame’, ‘Faith’, ‘The Power of Love’ (Huey Lewis and the News), ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ and of course ‘Walking on Sunshine’.

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