Directed by Michael Hoffman (‘Gambit‘, ‘The Last Station’ 09) and adapted from yet another self consciously trite novel by king of the gushy teen melodrama, novelist Nicholas Sparks. I am slightly alarmed to say I enjoyed parts of this – and it is entirely due to the strength of some of the as yet unfamiliar faces in the movie. Dawson (James Marsden) and Amanda (Michelle Monaghan) are two star-crossed lovers who are brought back into each other’s life when a mutual friend passes away, and we see them stare at each other not quite sure how to act (in every sense of the word) as the film continually flits back in time to show us how they fell in love and also how they came to be strangers.
Their younger selves are played by Luke Bracey and Liana Liberato, and in these parts the story is still formulaic piss but it does nevertheless work well with convincing performances and direction. Afterward, though, that predictability careers downhill with moments of ‘oh no, please tell me this isn’t going to happen. Sigh. It was inevitable for more than one reason I suppose.’ Sparks really is taking the mick here and he needs to hire someone that can extricate the enormous lumps of his own cheese from the plot as some of the rest has enough emotional empathy and resonance to be worthwhile. Fans of his probably won’t be too disappointed by this, unless by some miracle the novel is a serious piece of literature.
An endearingly sweet film that sees central character Megan (Keira Knightley) realise that a decade after the end of high school her life hasn’t really changed all that much compared to her peers and when her boyfriend, the same one from high school, proposes to her she panics and bunks off for a week to live with sixteen year old Annika (Chloë Grace Moretz), whom she befriended after being successfully entreated by the latter to purchase alcohol for her and her mates. Initially, it’s like a breath of fresh air compared to the stuffy seriousness of her more grown up friends but Annika’s father (Sam Rockwell) isn’t exactly impressed when he finds a strange woman sleeping over with his daughter, but since the woman in question is Keira Knightley he quickly decides to get over it and tries to bang her anyway, complicating matters further.
Megan is shown to be carefree but still grounded enough to like – in fact, she has a playfulness about her that is absolutely necessary for adult life and which her friends seem to have forgotten, and this in no small way comes from Knightley herself, shining through into her character quite naturally. Set in America, Megan sports an accent that is at times applied a little too thickly but when a bit more subdued is perfect, and the film is directed by Lynn Shelton who enjoyed success with another comic drama centred around three main characters in 2012’s ‘Your Sister’s Sister’. Some of the comedy here could have done with a few hammer blows to make it stand out a bit more, but it’s quite impressive for a debut screenplay, from writer Andrea Seigel, and the movie is amiable, fun and has a great starring turn from the leading lady herself. Look out for the bit where she flips a sign for her father’s company, all dressed in white – almost like the universal obverse of her Coco Mademoiselle adverts (the ones with the bike and the jumpsuit), and also where she convinces one of the young girls to step up to the plate and tell the boy she likes how she feels, a refreshing and sensible change from the norm.
Keira Knightley recently posed topless for Interview magazine (if you are ever thinking of doing it again Keira, I can offer you tea and biscuits …) to highlight the endemic and somewhat ridiculous use of the fake enhancement of women’s breasts in the media, as she herself has famously had this applied to her own image multiple times by the industry, on the likes of the advertising surrounding ‘King Arthur’ (04) for example, and indeed she wants the photoshoot to propagate for that reason. Ah, human female breasts, fascinating for all sorts of reasons – such as their unique existence within the animal kingdom, human females being the only primates that have protuberant breasts all year round and not just when they have milk in them, demonstrating their primary sexual role and the importance of sex for the human species – whether you argue for pleasure or pair bonding. Indeed, a strong theory is that when your ancestors first walked upright, the females had no breasts, as we would describe them now, and they simply evolved to mimic the buttocks as seen from behind – providing a sexual image from both directions.
The concept of one’s own body compared to another’s is so often manipulated to a sickening degree in the modern Western world, and The Red Dragon’s own personal view has always been to regard it as impossible to criticise one’s looks without also disrespecting your ancestors, and in particular your family. To them you are the most beautiful thing in the entire cosmos and you only hurt them unimaginably by putting yourself down, but not only that if you take a common complaint such as the shape of one’s nose – this evolved in order to adapt itself to the air your ancestors had to breathe, as when it reaches your lungs the air must be within a certain range of temperature and humidity and the nose is nature’s filter, thus not only does its shape point directly to where your antecedents lived but it was also a great aid in their comfortable survival and indeed your very existence, thus you should be proud and grateful – not wanting to change it just to look like someone else. Plus, it really doesn’t matter what you look like so long as you take care of what you’ve got and enjoy it – I mean Keira is quite obviously the best among you but then she has to suffer lots of unwanted attention and screeds of text about her look and people analysing every inch of her body, and ultimately even if one person thinks you are a one out of ten, someone else will think you are a ten – just don’t waste any time or thought on the ones, and as for female’s breasts your femininity is the entirety of your body, mind and soul combined and each elemental part is what makes you unique and special – embrace what you look like, enjoy the truly remarkable creature that you are and for both sexes remember – a genuine smile is always attractive. See below for a mathematical analysis of romance and dating, from another rather appetising human morsel …
From Dallas based Reel FX Creative Studios whose last output was the dire ‘Free Birds‘, the creative team behind this, led by director and co-writer Jorge R. Gutierrez, were determined to match the adroitness of their concept art with the visual splendour of the final film, and I think they can congratulate themselves on a job well done as I don’t believe I have ever seen an animated movie quite so colourfully rich and involved as this one, easily the film’s best selling point. Voiced comfortably by a cast including Diego Luna, Zoe Saldana, Channing Tatum, Kate del Castillo, Ron Perlman and Ice Cube, this tells a story from the Book of Life, a book which contains all stories, of a love triangle involving two young male friends and the local beauty, also the general’s daughter, naturally, in the Mexican village of San Angel – a recipe for disaster that the spirit rulers of the Land of the Remembered and the Land of the Forgotten place bets upon, but over the years which one will win the hand of the fair lady, and what will the consequences be? It’s good fun, with its own take on lots of modern songs (at least two of which appear in The Red Dragon’s first playlist, so they obviously have good taste …) but unfortunately it tries to take the main characters on too many journeys and the central concept ends up meandering as a result, leading to a very average finale. Overall a warm and heartfelt endeavour though.
Based on the novel by Ron Rash, Susanne Bier (‘Love is All You Need‘) directs a tale of corruption, tragic love, and jealousy on a timber yard in the Smoky Mountains (though it was actually predominantly filmed in the Czech Republic) of North Carolina in the 1930’s. Bradley Cooper runs the yard, against the protestations of various environmentalists, and one day happens upon the inimitably beautiful Jennifer Lawrence, whom he decides should immediately become his bride. She lost her family under tragic circumstance so decides why not, but she soon proves a force to reckon with in the business world and it’s not long before various feathers are more than ruffled.
Initially there seems to be precious little point to the film as it dawdles along with nothing really happening – in fact, it’s only when Lawrence appears that the very force of her own personality as well as that of her character make it more interesting. The acting from her companions is equally strong, in particular perhaps Rhys Ifans (and not for the first time it took me a little while to be certain it was actually him – I managed to watch the whole of ‘Anonymous’ 11 without identifying him he was that good in it) and the human tragedy level continues to painfully rise amongst the austere, barren and rather isolated backdrop of the wintry logging site. The costumes and sets are up to scratch with the performances but sadly it is the basic story and its execution that undo all the other good work on display, turning the story into melodramatic mulch and effectively ruining the whole film. Marks the third release after ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘ and ‘American Hustle‘ to have Cooper and Lawrence working together, indeed it was reportedly the leading lady herself that sent Cooper the script for this, for which I am sure he is eternally grateful.
A film to help keep the horror genre alive and buck the modern trend of either rehashing old pained stories and techniques or using handheld cameras. Independent and original, from writer and director Jennifer Kent (this is inspired by her previous short film ‘Monster’ 05 that she created after an apprenticeship under Lars Von Trier, working on ‘Dogville’ in 03), the film revolves around single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her young boy Sam (Noah Wiseman), a ‘special’ kid whose unique take on social interaction and his obsession with weaponry forces the mother to take him out of school. Trying to send him off to sleep one night, Amelia takes a mysterious book that she has no memory of, ‘Mister Babadook’, down off the shelf and begins reading to Sam, only to quickly stop when she realises it describes the creepy creepy Babadook whom, once acknowledged in the reader’s mind, comes into existence to torment and pervert the family.
Allowing us to feel sympathetic toward both main characters, the film plays with the scenario that the Babadook may be real, but also that actually Amelia may just be going completely mental under the stress of dealing with Sam and indeed life in general, with more than a couple of golden comedic moments in this vein along the way. Curiously, the Babadook concept and book are very likeable, threatening too, but the illustrations have a certain darkly humorous charm to them. Indeed, the book used in the film is set to be published in print form next year due to popular demand – can there be a better present for someone you don’t like? Although really you should just stick it into their kid’s bookcase when they’re not looking ….
If your average human were to pick up the main character Mia in this film (played by Annabelle Wallis {no joke}) they may be forgiven for thinking ‘whoa, she is absolutely gorgeous it must be my lucky day! But wait, what am I missing? It can’t be this easy, I must be missing something here. Oh, that’s it, she collects creepy fucking dolls. Great. Next thing I know she’ll be sleeping with one of them between us and calling it mommy. Time to leave a note on a pillow I think …’. The husband here, unfathomably, actually encourages her obsession and even sources one of the super scary porcelain little misses as a present. What. An. Idiot. He really was asking for trouble there – of course the doll he so dotingly gives her is ‘Annabelle’, soon to be possessed by demonic spirits after the local version of the Manson family invade the couple’s neighbourhood and cause all manner of gory mayhem, leaving the young Mia with numerous psychological and emotional scars as well as an anthropomorphic satanic doll.
Speaking of which, did anyone ever read the comic ‘The Doll’? Now that was scary. This is distinctly less so, in fact there is very, very little in terms of the doll actually being personified, it’s mainly just lots of bad things happening around it – the worry may have been crossing into farce if the thing starting running around the place smirking and sticking crucifixes between its legs. As par for horror films many of the secondary characters are hopeless but there are a few well executed and tense scenes in here and Wallis is fine as the damsel in distress – a major pitfall though is the disturbing level of violence at times employed, as if writer Gary Dauberman had thought to himself ‘OK, what’s one of the most sickening things you can imagine happening …’, but really this kind of writing is rudimentary and it’s not something anyone really wants to witness for a good reason. At least the film doesn’t continually go there, à la the likes of ‘Hostel’ (05) and its brethren.
The story is also one of the canon belonging to the two paranormal investigators featured in ‘The Conjuring‘ – alas marketing ‘Annabelle’ with this connection was a bit of false advertising as the pair don’t really feature in the film itself.
Adapted from the 1972 children’s book of the same name by Judith Viorst, part one of a three part series, this effectively shoots itself in the head right at the very beginning by showing us what is due to happen to the Cooper family, consisting of mum, dad, eleven year old Alexander, his older siblings Anthony and Emily, and his baby brother Trevor, as they experience the titular very bad day. All instigated, it seems, by Alex, who felt everyone around him had the Midas touch whilst he was the perpetual victim of misfortune, thus inducing him to make a wish that the rest of his family should experience what he is used to for a change, a wish that he quickly comes to regret as a series of reasonably catastrophic, though family friendly, events befall each of them, including even the baby. Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner are the famous faces that play the parents and the delivery and essential story is all fine, it’s just that since we are going one or two days back in time within the narrative there seems precious little point to setting up each of the unfortunate events when we’ve already seen what their outcome is going to be. It was a really daft way to open the film, and though it is still a reasonable family movie extolling the virtue of sticking together no matter what, it could easily have been much better.
An odd film in that it’s set during the height of the Troubles in Belfast in Northern Ireland, but it’s actually a completely fictional story. I’m not sure how wise it is to take artistic license with something so important and divisive in not too distant Northern Irish history. On the one hand it demonstrates the kind of scenarios and conflicts that would have been experienced at the time, and with a bit of distance so they don’t have to worry about historical accuracy with the characters and so on – on the other it could be seen as not treating events seriously enough, using it as an excuse to create a tense drama that, in the absence of a properly delivered political backdrop, could have been set in any conflict. Director Yann Demange and writer Gregory Burke have more or less walked their fine line successfully here, showing a sense of the conflict’s reality and the brutal horror of the violence but together with a framework for its existence, and without simply getting lost in their own dramatic attempt to keep the audience engaged.
Jack O’Connell plays the protagonist Gary – a British soldier deployed in Belfast for the first time, who ends up isolated from the rest of his unit and on the run as all hell breaks loose in the city around him and he desperately tries to reach the relative safety of his barracks. It’s well shot, there’s some real tension in there, and O’Connell passes mustard in the role although really he’s not asked to do much except run around looking scared and he has yet to impress in any role that doesn’t involve him portraying a violent psychopath, the next few leading roles he has lined up should put his acting chops to the test. The film’s major problem lies in its believability, as the story becomes increasingly difficult to buy into – in particular the moment when one of the characters, who has himself and his daughter to protect, thinks to himself ‘hmm something is happening here which we absolutely must keep a complete secret from everyone, I mean like everyone, even the people I trust most in the world, and then in a matter of hours it’ll all be over anyway. “OK love, I’m just popping out to tell the local head of the IRA about our situation. Yeah, it seems like the logical thing to do. Bye!”’ It’s pretty much downhill from there.
Good escapist fun spliced with sex appeal and a good heart. The marketing for this was a little deceptive in that it suggested Michael Bay was reuniting with his muse Megan Fox for what would be a ‘Transformers’ (07) style movie centering around 80’s cartoon heroes Raphael, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello, a.k.a..the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles filmed on the big-screen before in the early nineties and briefly in animated form in 2007’s ‘TMNT’. Bay did finance the film but it’s actually Jonathan Liebesman (‘Wrath of the Titans’ 12, ‘Battle Los Angeles’ 11) that directs it, although he does so in such a way that really we do get a Transformers esque movie to such an extent that if you liked that film you will probably enjoy this too, replete as it is with over the top CGI action sequences and the blatant sexploitation of Ms Fox (as ballsy reporter April O’Neil) and I have to say it’s a pretty winning formula, in fact if you were looking for clips of the best examples of the human female derrière on film then you would absolutely be wanting to sample a couple of choice moments from this film.
The story, including an apt nod to their comic book ancestry, delivers the origin of the Turtles for the universe – sole survivors of a fire in a genetics research facility who are trained underground by their master Splinter to become crime fighting powerhouses, and who are then pitted against their arch nemesis Shredder (Tohoru Masamune). Most of the action is over the top but remains entertaining on some level, perhaps bar one ridiculous downhill scene that goes on forever, and most of the characters are fine, with the exception of Will Arnett’s slightly cringe worthy foil/love interest for Fox, but it would have been great to have seen more real ninja/ninjutsu training go on – the sort where you feel you’ve actually learned something and maybe even a bit of athletics rudimentary enough to practice at home, like somersaulting whilst throwing shurikens for example. Alan Ritchson, Johnny Knoxville, Noel Fisher and Jeremy Howard provide the voices of the Turtles and this certainly ticks all the right boxes for the younger demographic it’s primarily aimed at, and I’ve no problem admitting I managed to get a couple of hours of light and frothy entertainment out of it as well.
Ah mazes! Who doesn’t like a good Labyrinth to get stuck into every now and then – speaking of which, why aren’t there more of them around? The Red Dragon has planned for the future his wedding celebration wherein the unsuspecting and specially chosen guests will find themselves propelled from their seats into a maze from which there is no escape unless they can solve the various riddles and defeat the multitudinous oozing monsters they will encounter, whilst I and my pristine yet equally black hearted bride will watch from a hilltop and record events for posterity. Something which isn’t all that different from the premise of this film, which sees a host of youngsters shoved into the heart of an enormous maze over the period of some years, each with no memory of their lives before this ingress and equally with no apparent way to get out. Their section is fairly large with fertile land to farm, but it is surrounded by enormous walls and outwith the sanctuary they find themselves in the maze harbours dangers which routinely claim the lives of the brave and intrepid amongst them who attempt to find an exit.
It’s based on the 2009 young adult novel by James Dashner, and there is an interesting difference between this and the likes of ‘The Hunger Games’ and ‘Divergent‘ in that with those two franchises, at least early on, the larger universe is glossed over – The Hunger Games the novel is very weak on explaining in a believable way how North America is now reduced to thirteen disparate districts controlled by a remote hub, for example, and so the film more or less just dispenses with addressing the issue, much as how in Divergent we know nothing about what lies beyond the city borders and yet it seems all but impossible that the residents wouldn’t know themselves. Here there is an attempt to explain the scenario within a larger context, and it’s this revelation that undermines much of the rest of the film as it just seems daft to say the least.
Nor does it seem likely that one of the sprightly young things couldn’t find a way to climb the maze walls, especially since some of them are draped in foliage, and to make matters worse the moment when the hero (played by Dylan O’Brien) really establishes himself is just really flimsy – in terms of the story it works, the sequence of action shots showing it doesn’t though. Despite these faults it’s still reasonably entertaining and has some good visual work to enjoy, as well as some ‘Lord of the Flies’ moments that you’ll never see coming (sarcasm). With Will Poulter and Kaya Scoledario in support along with Particia Clarkson in an identical role to Kate Winslet in Divergent and Meryl Streep in ‘The Giver‘. Look out for legendary effects creator Stan Winston’s name etched into one of the walls too (noted for his work on the Terminator, Jurassic Park and Predator franchises as well as ‘The Thing’ 82, ‘Aliens’ 86, … ).
