Tag Archives: 2014

Bad Neighbours  (2014)    57/100

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Rating :   57/100                                                                       96 Min        15

American comedy focusing on two young parents, played by Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, dealing with the fallout from a fraternity house moving into the the neighbourhood right next door to their newly mortgaged home. Zac Efron, Dave Franco and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (of whom, not enough is made) are the more recognisable members of the outgoing party mad students, and things kick off after the police are called to deal with the noise, with no surprises as to who called them. War ensues.

Rogen and Byrne are pretty much the worst parents ever, having sex in front of their infant and leaving her unattended whilst they nip next door to indulge in whatever drugs are on the go, but ultimately the film just isn’t that funny. Many of the laughs seem to be improved, and on this occasion that hasn’t worked so well – the best gag was ruined by putting it in the trailer as per the usual marketing error, and the rest simply aren’t inventive or original enough to extract more than the occasional titter. A nice cast, but ultimately quite a missable film.

Pompeii  (2014)    31/100

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Rating :   31/100                                                                     105 Min        12A

This really couldn’t be any more derivative of ‘Gladiator’ (2000) if it tried – you can imagine the execs behind it .. ‘hmm polls show that audiences loved Gladiator, and that films with lots of explosions in them do pretty well, so what we’ll do is make another Gladiator and then half way through it we’ll blow the shit out of everything!!!’. Which is exactly what we see as Vesuvius, the volcano that buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii in 79AD, detonates like a well timed nuclear explosion for the second half of the film, showering the audience with meteors, tsunamis, earthquakes, surprisingly little lava, and dreadful escape sequences with that horrible trope of action and disaster films – characters fleeing with disaster literally just one step behind, something we have largely been mercifully spared from of late, possibly after it was taken to excess by M. Night Shyamalan with his central characters managing to outrun the wind itself in ‘The Happening’ (08).

Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, who actually has done some really good films (well, one anyway – ‘Event Horizon’ in 97), but also has a series portfolio of lead weight B movies, here he’s not only copied the plot from Gladiator, but also tried to mimic the way it was directed, alas he is no Ridley Scott and it really shows. We see the warrior forced into slavery and the life of a gladiator (played in a wondrously wooden way by Kit Harrington, who seems to think he’s in a Vidal Sassoon advert for the film’s duration, see the picture above), who vows vengeance against the Roman ruler (Keifer Sutherland, attempting a posh English accent for some reason) that he will defy in the arena, cue thumbs up or down moment, but not before he’s befriended the nearest large black man to do a lot of the fighting for him (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who is the only one that can hold his head up high with a strong performance here) and managed to turn what was supposed to be a massacre for the slaves into their victory (battle against the Celts here replacing Carthage, although interestingly Scotland remained one of the few places the Romans failed to conquer – eventually opting to build not just one, but two walls to actually try and keep us out from the rest of their domain, ha!) and also captivating the sexual desire of the same woman that the Roman patrician also has his eye on (not the Roman’s sister on this occasion and played by Emily Browning, she is also sporting an English accent, so maybe she began as his sister and then they changed it).

The effects are fine, but it fails in pretty much every other department. We even see our leading man make a getaway from Pompeii with girl in toe on his horse’s back behind him (he can talk to animals and befriend any horse as well incidentally, which is no doubt what attracts the virginal attention of his mistress, whose previous sexual encounters will all have been on horses) and they are clean off into the night, when our hero decides he doesn’t want her to be a fugitive and he had best give himself up and say he gave her no choice. Or they could’ve kept on going and lived happily ever after. In fact they perform this same routine of complete stupidity not just once, but twice. Sigh. Despite the carnage and annihilation suffered by all around the two lovers make sure to always have enough time to fix their hair and deal with all their side plot elements, but at least Vesuvius doesn’t disappoint on the destruction scale, indeed this particular eruption is historically estimated to have emitted an amount of thermal energy many thousands of times that produced at Hiroshima and also buried several other cities in the region under ash – with tens of thousands of fatalities incurred by the roiling clouds of hot gas and rock (pyroclastic density currents) that swept the area at enormous speeds, something the film does represent, at times, really well (I don’t believe there were any meteoric asteroids though, I was there you see, chortling away to myself).

Vesuvius is currently one of sixteen volcanos being closely monitored around the world which are all volatile and present a serious threat to large populations, Naples for example is only circa 10km from Vesuvius.

Brick Mansions  (2014)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                       90 Min        15

The last film starring Paul Walker to have been completed before he sadly passed away last year features him as an undercover cop buddying up with French legend David Belle, one of the founders of parkour (which gave rise to free running), as the local resident of Brick Mansions who has fallen foul of the drug running crime lord in charge of the downtrodden area of future Detroit, and who represents a way in for the law to diffuse a stolen nuclear bomb due to go off in a matter of hours. It’s a remake of the French film ‘District 13’ (04 – also starring David Belle) which helped bring parkour to international prominence in the first place, with now perhaps the most famous instance of it on film being the first chase sequence in ‘Casino Royale’ (06).

The story isn’t too bad, and the action has been well choreographed, but it’s just too silly to be believed and it manages to be very stale from start to finish. In Casino Royale it was used to good effect, but here it mainly seems to be for show – we see Belle’s character trying to make an escape early on, and his physical feats to do it are very impressive – quickly taking him far from his would be pursuers, and yet there they are again, no matter how many floors or buildings he leaps and bounds around/over, ubiquitous bad guys are waiting to start the chase all over again, which is just a bit daft. The acting is good overall, with support from RZA, Catalina Denis and Ayisha Issa, but despite a few moments of playfulness it’s no more interesting than watching other showpieces for the physical activity.

Interestingly, the big guy that can be seen behind the two leads in the picture above is Robert Maillet, who moved from WWF wrestling as Kurrgan (taking his name from the villain, The Kurgan, in 1986’s cult classic ‘Highlander’, a name itself derived from the theorised early Indo-European people) into film and who you might recognise as having played other fairly memorable ‘heavy roles’, chief among them his first big-screen appearance as the giant immortal Persian warrior in ‘300’ (06).

Plastic  (2014)    68/100

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Rating :   68/100                                                                     102 Min        15

A fairly low key British crime thriller featuring lots of up and coming talent, and it’s actually quite good if you can stomach the preponderance of Cockney accents that verge on the hammy. A group of fledgling credit card thieves get in over their head and are forced to recruit someone working on the inside for a large card company in order to score it big and loosen the noose that’s been placed around their necks. The group, pictured above, are played by (from left to right) Sebastian De Souza, Alfie Allen, Emma Rigby, Ed Speleers and Will Poulter. Rigby shows a lot of promise but, as you can get a hint of from the picture, sadly the film plays a little too much on her womanly assets. The entourage head to Miami to bait their primary target, and so we are treated to some nice weather which makes a change for the London gangster genre, and the story holds its own for the duration of the film, as the group must contend with issues of infighting, greed and trying to keep their strongest resource in the dark as to their real motives.

The Other Woman  (2014)    17/100

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Rating :   17/100                                                                     109 Min        12A

Nick Cassavetes (‘The Notebook’ 04) directs Cameron Diaz, Leslie Mann and Kate Upton in what is supposed to be a story of female friendship triumphing over all, in this case the man who had been cheating primarily on his wife, played by Mann, but also on his girlfriends played by the other two, ultimately though, it looks more like the director just pointed the camera at his actors and said ‘Ok, just make something up’. It’s completely terrible, without any moral fibre, decent laughs, believable characters or indeed stunts such as there are. At one point we see Diaz running barefoot along the beach trying to catch up with Upton, in order to rugby tackle her, but we can clearly see the sand is strewn with shells – lo and behold she stumbles and falls, but I would be very surprised if what we’re watching isn’t simply the performer cutting her feet open and they’ve used the take anyway. That’s the kind of level of thought and preparation applied throughout. Nicki Minaj makes a brief appearance in her first live action film role (it was only a matter of time really). Watch ‘The First Wives Club’ (96) instead, which essentially has the same premise but is also a really good film.

Transcendence  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     119 Min        12A

A lot better than I was expecting, in fact they’ve done quite a clever thing with the trailer as most of what we see in it appears onscreen near the beginning reducing the amount of spoilers left to come. Will (Johhny Depp) and Evelyn Caster (Rebecca Hall) are completely devoted to each other as husband and wife, but they both also happen to be brilliant scientists working together on artificial intelligence projects – projects that will bring them to the attention of terrorist group RIFT, who deem their work a threat to all of humanity and plot to put a permanent end to their efforts. After Will is mortally wounded, Evelyn desperately tries to save him by transferring his consciousness digitally onto computer data banks.

One of the film’s strongest points is that it doesn’t waste any time mulling over the details and the far flung plot elements, it just gets on with it, which not only makes it more enjoyable but it also helps it seem more plausible. Hall is great as the doting and determined wife whose emotions blind her to the possibility that she has become a modern day Frankenstein, as Paul Bettany and Morgan Freeman provide the perfect foil of concern to her unshakeable devotion as they question whether or not the Will they knew could possibly have ‘transcended’ as completely as they hoped. As with all good sci-fi, even though this takes us in leaps and bounds forward, the beginnings of the basic story are now a matter of science fact, from work on nanobots to our ability to transfer the electrical signals of our brain digitally – see the end of the review for The Zero Theorem.

Well paced and directed by Wally Pfister in his directorial début (he is best known as Christopher Nolan’s long running cinematographer, who won the Oscar for his work on ‘Inception’ 2010), an interesting story from Jack Paglen (also his first screenplay) and brought to life by a wonderful group of actors, this is enjoyable sci-fi with plenty of hooks to follow up on in the real world (click here for a few examples).

The Raid 2  (2014)    47/100

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Rating :   47/100                                                                     150 Min        18

The sequel to Indonesia’s smash martial arts/action hit ‘The Raid’ back in 2011 returns Iko Uwais to once again fill the shoes of Jakarta’s hardest cop Rama, this time sending him undercover to deal with organised crime families that have eluded the long arm of the law for too long. Director and writer Gareth Evans has returned to deliver the second instalment, but things have gone very, very wrong this time around. Previously we were taken into the tense environment of a single tower block that the police were infiltrating and then had to fight for their lives to escape from – it was a pretty solid action film. Here, with the story expanded significantly it’s all over the place, with loose direction, editing and screenwriting meandering from the word go, degenerating into essentially a big-screen version of GTA but without the enjoyment of being in control. It even comes dangerously close to aping a scene from ‘The Godfather’ (72) and, by extension, one of the most famous scenes in all of film history.

This is all negative. However, it’s worst trait is the level of deplorable violence it smashes onto the screen constantly, which is not only unnecessary but goes much darker to the point of revelling in its own blood soaked gratuity. It’s pretty disgusting to watch, and often difficult to follow it’s so badly put together. Indeed, the main character at the beginning is dead against the killing of a bad guy who is tied up, wanting instead to bring him to face justice, but I’m pretty sure about twenty minutes later he can be seen bashing someone’s skull in with a rock for no good reason – I can’t be certain because it’s been filmed in such a scrappy way, all with relentless hues of grey used throughout the film which absolutely doesn’t help, in fact the one or two moments of real light and sunshine are a massive welcome relief from the enforced dreariness of the film.

It absolutely glorifies violence, but then it’s so horrific that it also manages to negate that effect at the same time. Some of the scenes are well choreographed and work as intended, and Tio Pakusodewo and Arifin Putra are good in their roles as one of the Kingpins and his son, but this is ultimately disastrously misjudged.

The Amazing Spider-Man 2  (2014)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                                                                     142 Min        12A

The second instalment in Sony’s Spider-man reboot, one of the most pointless restarts in the history of cinema after the hugely successful Sam Raimi Spider-man films which have hardly faded from the public consciousness at all. One possible reason for the decision may be the limited number of Marvel characters that Sony have the rights to, and if that’s so we can expect to see another reboot in four or five years time, but they most certainly based much of their premise with the first film on the success of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films. Here, once again, we see echoes of that trilogy, but with another action orientated and largely forgettable storyline (as I was watching this I was surprised how difficult it was to remember what happened in the previous one).

The bad guys are Electro and the Green Goblin, played by Jamie Foxx and Dane DeHaan respectively, with a little extra help from Paul Giamatti having a lot of fun as Rhino, and Emma Stone reprises her role as love interest Gwen Stacy, Spidey’s occasional bit of stuff when MJ wasn’t around. Helming the web slinging hero himself is, once again, Andrew Garfield who looks the part of the geek but who has all the charisma of a brick swinging its way through the streets wrapped in spandex, even his jokes leave you feeling embarrassed for the criminals that have to suffer them. Spider-man was my favourite comic growing up, but even though I read it as a child the Peter Parker it featured was in his twenties, more grown up and masculine (and he actually was funny) and it still worked, I really wish they’d ditch this coming of age hopeless geek routine that was already plotted across Spider-man 1-3 with Tobey Maguire, they should simply have carried on where they left off and made it ten times more interesting.

One of the film’s biggest selling points is the technology behind it. As one would expect from Sony, the picture quality is great and in fact it might be one of those rare cases when it is slightly better to view it in 3D (this is conjecture rather than a comparative suggestion) with fairly inspiring visuals of Spider-man flitting and diving between buildings. The rest of the acting is fine, and the special effects are pretty good. Essentially it’s a polished superhero film that although lacking anything distinctive or special, it does do the basics well enough to be worthwhile, and although it is a little corny to say it, I think you do always get something out of almost any film in the genre. It also sets up the ‘Sinister Six’ – a collective of various supervillains which were great in the comics, something which has no doubt been inspired by the success of the Avengers film, much like the upcoming Batman/Superman/Wonder Woman flick from Zack Snyder. Interestingly, there is a post credits scene that is actually from the upcoming X-Men film – could a cross company collaboration be on the cards … ?

Calvary  (2014)    72/100

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Rating :   72/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Another film featuring Brendan Gleeson and a healthy dose of Irish black humour (see ‘In Bruges’ 08 and ‘The Guard’ 11 for good examples of more) and once again featuring topical satire at the expense of the Catholic church, here courtesy of Gleeson’s central character, father James Lavelle, who is told during the film’s introduction he will be killed in a week’s time by a victim of child abuse at the hands of a different Catholic priest in years gone by. The setting is a small Irish town in County Sligo (Easkey was the main filming location) so Lavelle knows who his would be assassin is, but we the viewers do not. This mixture of dark comedy, serious issues and not quite whodunit but who is going to do it, creates a unique film with another predictably great leading performance from Gleeson, but also very solid support from the likes of Dylan Moran, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly Isaach De Bankolé and David Wilmot. The title is taken from the name of the site just outside of Jerusalem where the Bible tells us Jesus was crucified, and it’s written and directed by John Michael McDonagh who’s last project was the aforementioned ‘The Guard’ – here he has maintained the same level of humour as before, but injected it with a memorably dark and astute portmanteau of the often scandalous situation the Catholic church finds itself in worldwide, combined with ever relevant questions, and tests, of faith.

Noah  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                     138 Min        12A

I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy this, after all who doesn’t know the story? There seemed little point in exploring the biblical/mythical flood, a story that is found in many ancient texts not just those of the old testament, and so it was a very pleasant surprise to find that the film was not only visually interesting, but quite entertaining to boot, which is absolutely the creative stamp of the director, Darren Aronofsky, who fought a long, hard, and ultimately successful battle against his producers to have his final edit of the movie be the one shown in cinemas.

Russell Crowe plays the titular Noah and he is on top form here, carrying the film in no small measure, whilst Jennifer Connelly plays his wife and Logan Lerman and Douglas Booth his two sons, with Emma Watson along for the ride as a random girl they pick up on their journey to meet Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), from whom they hope to gain wisdom and guidance after Noah has a vision presaging the great flood. There is allegory of our modern day world, as we see clear signs of metallurgy that would be more fitting in today’s time frame, and the film plays very heavily on all things done in the name of religion without thought to their simple and distinct morality, which I think was a perfectly legitimate path to go down, especially since it’s not like we’re dealing with matters of historical record here – interestingly, a long proposed geological theory explaining the myth is that the stories may have originated after the Bosphorus broke, flooding the Black Sea with the waters of the Mediterranean and submerging the civilisations there. This is also one of the prime candidates for the Atlantis myth, although there are many others, the ancient volcanic eruption on the island of Thera, as another example.

The somewhat ridiculous nature of the story in that one family are supposed to repopulate the Earth is played on too, with one of Noah’s sons complaining that he will have no female companion (the eldest having already claimed Watson who is barren anyway) and demanding that Noah go and get him one. If only Ray Winstone, who plays the villainous leader of the mob who want the Ark for themselves, had explained it to him in his distinctive Cockney accent : ‘You will have to fuck your fucking muva boy’.

Losing a little to melodrama, and lacking in the acting department with the fresher faced members of the cast, this is still worth going to see as an enjoyable spectacle with generous helpings of morality to chew over.