Tag Archives: 2014

Sin City : A Dame to Kill For  (2014)    67/100

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Rating :   67/100                      Treasure Chest                   102 Min        18

Wow. I don’t believe I have ever seen a film where the lead actress’s breasts are essentially the main character and focus of the visual narrative, to the point where significant discussion and storyboarding must have taken place as to exactly how to shoot them in each scene, and just how much exposure to give them each time. The actress in question, and the appropriately titular dame to kill for, is Eva Green, who is running a fairly impressive bare breastage to big screen appearances ratio so far (see ‘The Dreamers’ 03 and ‘300 : Rise of an Empire‘ for two exemplary examples), possibly giving Penélope Cruz a run for her money, and my goodness you can see why, with a visage of sassy and tempting perfection that surely leaves all mortals of both sexes in silenced awe.

This is the long anticipated (too long really) sequel to 2005’s monster hit ‘Sin City’, based on Frank Miller’s graphic novels of the same name and both produced in strong collaboration with Miller himself – director Robert Rodriguez wanting to create as faithful a rendition as possible, to the point that only Miller is given any of the writing credits for either film and they shared the directing duties on both (they have a brief cameo scene together here too). Again, it’s a compendium of interlinking stories which take place chronologically both before and after events in the first film, with two of the sections written solely for the screen this time around (alas, these are the weaker chapters). Lots of familiar faces return – Mickey Rourke wonderfully portraying Marv again, for example, and Jessica Alba as high class striptease Nancy (who does an especially memorable routine, also one of the highlights of the film), although Clive Owen is replaced by Josh Brolin as Dwight, Jamie Chung takes over from Devon Aoki as Miho, and of course tragically both Birttany Murphy and Michael Clarke Duncan have passed away since the first film, with Dennis Haysbert taking over the latter’s role of Manute.

It’s not as accomplished as its predecessor, with a jittery start and less compelling stories, and although they have remained true to the green screen noir style of the first one and have certainly paralleled its violent and bloody body count, it is within the depiction of the lavish and diverse femmes fatales that the film is singularly successful. Initially Green’s womanly assets are nude but partially obscured, inducing The Red Dragon to muse ‘Oh come on, that’s crap’, you don’t have to wait too long until they are revealed in all their glory though, to the point where even I had to concede they probably dominate one scene too many. I’m not sure though, I think I’ll have to go and see it again. Too much is always better than too little anyway …. kinopoisk.ru

Deliver Us from Evil  (2014)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     118 Min        15

A modern horror film that has not only a story but … acting as well! No one could have been more surprised than The Red Dragon by this, indeed it’s quite an interesting plot despite being littered with various tropes of the genre – lots of sustained flash light scenes in dark places, exorcism and little girls with music boxes (I mean seriously, who in their right mind would buy a child one of those – here you go my dear, this will practically ensure you will one day be enslaved by a demon who will give you your first sexual experience, or at the very least you’ll have regular nightmares for the next ten years). Eric Bana plays an NYPD cop who, along with his partner Joel McHale, must investigate several mysterious and violent events in the city, all of which lead back to a tour of duty in the Middle East for three ex-military personnel, and their discovery of some ancient ruins ….

Part of the reason for the grounded structure of this is that it’s actually based on the 2001 novel ‘Beware the Night’ by none other than the officer Bana is playing, Ralph Sarchie, who gave up fighting a life of crime to fight against another type of evil, becoming a demonologist (not a dermatologist, as Wikipedia currently suggests) after tutelage and inspiration from father Mendoza, here played by Édgar Ramírez (who has played not only Simon Bolivar and Carlos the Jackal, but was of course the lucky duck who gets it on with Keira Knightley in ‘Domino’ 05). So all of the events in the film are purportedly real from that perspective, but director and scriptwriter Scott Derrickson does a very good job of creating tension and has the right tempo for the story, although it should have been trimmed by maybe fifteen to twenty minutes as the overall length and that of some of the scenes starts to undermine the otherwise taught atmosphere.

There are quite a few throwaway aspects to the narrative too, such as the police connecting events they don’t yet have the information on to be able to do and references to the music of The Doors which seem somewhat spurious. Possibly Derrickson is just a fan, and ultimately the good acting and story make it easy not to mind these faults, especially if you also happen to like The Doors. For some reason, when they are trying to force a demon in possession of a body to reveal its name I could have sworn it replied ‘Jimmy’ (imagine, ‘Hey you, Jimmy! Get oot ya fanny!!’) which would have been awesome, and there are more than a couple of moments when the film is knowingly poking fun at itself to slightly lighten the tone. Worth going to see if you are a fan of the genre.

Lucy  (2014)    73/100

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Rating :   73/100                                                                       89 Min        15

The latest movie written and directed by Luc Besson is a polished and accomplished action film with a number of surprisingly dynamic and inspiring visuals, although it does almost inevitably stumble on occasion with its over the top storyline. Scarlett Johansson plays the titular Lucy, initially a normal young woman living in Taipei until she’s inadvertently kidnapped one day and forced to smuggle a new synthetic party drug into Europe for the local mafia, only an enormous dose of it accidentally spills into her bloodstream allowing her brain to access more and more of its potential – facilitating her escape, revenge and subsequent attempts to thwart their plans for the other mules, all converging in a number of shootouts in Paris.

Her powers are extreme (they manifest much like they do for Bradley Cooper in ‘Limitless’ (11), but quickly escalate into being able to control and contort matter and thought), and initially this does jar a lot with the narrative, but Besson keeps things flowing apace and with enough skill and artistry that it soon becomes easy to look past its exponential structure. More than this, however, lots of shots of nature interspersed with the drama not entirely unlike a Terrence Malick film, and a fascinating if very tenuous grounding in science, running the gamut from a dolphin’s advanced sonar ability to the fact this ‘CPH4’ drug has had its name changed but is a chemical naturally produced by pregnant mothers, albeit in much reduced quantities – all ask questions about our own potential and its place within the fabric of nature generally, fascinating when we consider just how much energy can be released by but a few atoms undergoing nuclear reactions, and although its central premise that we only use ten percent of our brains has been largely debunked as urban legend, many of the other scientific titbits thrown in seem much more plausible and it is certainly very true to say science as yet does not truly understand all the workings of the human mind. It’s cut to a nice length and is directed in a suitably cinematic way resulting in an enjoyable and interesting sci-fi action flick, all with solid acting from the likes of Johansson, Morgan Freeman, Amr Waked and Choi Min-sik (the protagonist in ‘Oldboy’ 03).

Into the Storm  (2014)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                       89 Min        12A

Who doesn’t like a good disaster film? If for no other reason than one can sit and enjoy it thinking ‘thank fuck I am not there right now’, and indeed real life potential perils can often be more terrifying than anything within the domain of the horror genre. This follows a group of storm chasers (à la ‘Twister’ 96, in fact I’m pretty sure you can hear the voice of Bill Paxton as the weather man at one point) as they descend on the small town of Silverton Oklahoma, and although the weather is taken to extremes it is entirely justified by global conditions, like Katrina as they mention, regularly going to pot. Even in the UK we just had the remains of hurricane Bertha hit our shores for unseasonally windy and wet conditions, completely ruining The Red Dragon’s ultimate frisbee season, and in fact coming out of the cinema after this there were booming, ominous peals of thunder echoing overhead, which, naturally, is just what you want after seeing this. Indeed, Britain has one of the highest numbers of tornadoes in the world relative to its land area – though they’re mostly just totty little rubbish ones that don’t do anything, not withstanding the twister that obliterated parts of Birmingham last decade.

This is actually part of the handheld camera genre, for the most part, but they have made a really good job of it compared to many of their contemporaries, moving things along quickly and without irritating the audience with pointless explanations for cameras and poor viewing quality. The action flits between the professionals, some amateur YouTube daredevils, and a father with his two sons due to film the highschool graduation ceremony until one of them bunks off to help a local girl with her own project – and when you see the girl in question (Alycia Debnam Carey) you will understand why. Overall, the effects are dramatically immersive and the tension feels suitably real, there are no Oscar worthy moments but the ensemble cast (of whom probably Richard Armitage and Matt Walsh are the most recognisable faces) make it seem believable. It kind of feels like a ‘Twister’ reboot, but nonetheless it is good fun and with the technological advances since then it also stands as an improvement on some of those late nineties waymarks that the filmmakers were no doubt inspired by.

The Expendables 3  (2014)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                     126 Min        15

Whatever your reaction was to parts one and two of Stallone’s collaborative bullet fest that is the Expendables franchise (part four has been more or less confirmed), you can be pretty sure you will feel exactly the same about this one, largely because the formula has just been reapplied once again replete with the expected increase in the amount of famous names gracing the screen and the number of explosions and bodies they strew each scene with. It’s a series of films that never manages to be as good as it should be, with no real tension and a humour level that always falls short of where you wish it would get to.

To be fair, the writers (Creighton Rothenberger, Katrin Benedikt and Stallone) have more or less done the right thing with the story. Terry Crews is brutally injured during an op gone wrong (presumably penance for appearing in ‘Blended‘) and the team suffers the double whammy of realising an old arch nemesis of Stallone’s is still alive – Mel Gibson (who is arguably the best in the film, relishing in the role of the villain much as he did in ‘Machete Kills‘). Thinking it’s time to protect his, only slightly, aged crew Stallone gives them the elbow and hires new blood in the guise of Kellan Lutz, Glen Powell, Victor Ortiz and female recruit Ronda Rousey – the mixed martial artist and Olympic medallist in her first film role. You can probably guess how the old hands take the news as everything builds to the inevitable finale at Gibson’s complex in, wait for it …. Assmenistan (the suffix ‘stan’, incidentally, means ‘land of’, so this literally means ‘land of the Assmen’).

The action manages to put even the scene in ‘Hot Shots! Part Duex’ (93) where there is a running tally of kills to shame, as enemy soldiers drop like flies every time one of the Expendables points any weapon in roughly their direction. Not content with this basic annihilation though, the various stars of the action genre’s yester year seem to have had a running competition on the go of ‘see who can deliver the most ridiculously self referential line in the weirdest way’ as we witness Schwarzenegger cry ‘CHOPPA!!!’ multiple times and watch Harrison Ford’s government agent Max Drummer say ‘don’t worry about Church, he’s out of the picture’ (Church was previously played by Bruce Willis, but he reputedly asked for a huge fee to come back, and so they just axed him instead. I think they should have at least offered him one dollar for his services first).

The references run the gamut from fun to cringe worthy – as do the one-liners in general. At the beginning the team are trying to break Wesley Snipes out of incarceration, and of course he did just recently get released from jail after a three year stint for tax evasion, so that was a nice touch. Ford saying from a helicopter as he drops a bomb on enemies below ‘Drummer is in the house’ not only must have had the people in the back of the chopper concerned about the sanity of the pilot, but he also delivers it in the sort of matter of fact way you’d say something like ‘there’s milk in the fridge’ – and that kind of sums up the mix that exists for all the cast at one point or another. There’s no Chuck Norris this time around with Antonio Banderas as the other note worthy addition to the crew, and despite some decent action scenes there is a definite lukewarm feel to everything, although given the premise perhaps more credit is due for at least treading water and not letting the series nosedive into complete farce. Here’s hoping the fourth one is more worthwhile.

Hector and the Search for Happiness  (2014)    43/100

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Rating :   43/100                                                                     120 Min        15

A crummy, sentimental, almost boorishly stilted ‘life affirming’ film centred on yet another bumbling and repressed central geek character from Simon Pegg and one which will deliver no surprises whatsoever in terms of its resolution, although having said that the ending was quite nice – indeed that, a wonderful albeit too brief cameo from Christopher Plummer, and Rosamund Pike slapping her ass on Skype are the only things that saved this from incineration.

This is basically Britain’s take on ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty‘, with Pegg living out the same daily routine with his smoking hot girlfriend (Pike) and going through the motions with the patients at his psychiatric clinic. Essentially having a boredom induced mid life crisis he decides to go travelling, partly due to a boyhood obsession with Tintin (ironic, as Pegg also starred in ‘Tintin : The Secret of the Unicorn‘ and it was also terrible). This obsession fits the story well as it uses many racial stereotypes that wouldn’t be out of place within the pages of the comic (Tintin was one of the most popular comics of the Twentieth century for those unfamiliar with the Belgian boy detective, but initially it contained various caricatures that would never make it into print today), most notably when he goes to ‘Africa’, not a country within the continent mind, just ‘Africa’. Reason being his destination is shown to be run by drug barons and random people with guns who seem to have been educated at Cambridge and speak the Queen’s despite none of their goons knowing a word in English.

Seems a bit strange, travelling to but a single destination in Africa and yet picking one that is completely unstable and commonly plays host to Western abductions. The fudge to facilitate this is Pegg’s old uni buddy who seems to have been there the whole time and naturally as a white Westerner is the only thing stopping all of ‘Africa’ dying from disease or gunfire as the lions prowl quite literally ten yards away from the outdoor operating table, then, in a two pronged attack, this friend painfully creeps his arm around his black bodyguard revealing that he is also the man’s gay lover and that he has stayed as it’s the only place where he feels accepted as himself, despite the fact that the West has very effective and largely victorious gay rights movements and he clearly felt the need to run away and hide as far away as possible from everyone he knew to live out his repressed colonial fantasy of bumming an armed black man and was at great pains to keep this relationship hidden from everyone in the region until they and Pegg were in the middle of nowhere by themselves – I mean, that is both a politically correct and incorrect sandwich gone completely berserk, I’m surprised he didn’t have an offshore dolphin retreat for feminists recovering from troll bashing that doubled as the continent’s first pro bono transgender surgery.

Pegg’s other destinations are Shanghai, where he gets it on with a prostitute who then claims he used her which I still don’t understand, a monastery in an undisclosed location, and …. Los Angeles, that top destination to visit when you are searching your soul for a higher meaning and keeping a journal, as he is, of what makes different people happy. Alas he doesn’t ask any gangbangers, but whilst in ‘Africa’ he does get kidnapped, which at least brought a level of consideration into things, but then he gets out of it via another hopeless fudge.

Although the ending was done quite well for what it is, the fact that the girlfriend he leaves in limbo whilst travelling is both a nice person and very beautiful means there was only ever going to be one outcome to his ill conceived meanderings and one inevitable conclusion to what it means to be happy – sex with Rosamund Pike, and a considerable amount of money that allows you to live in posh splendour in London meaning you never, ever have to think about the hellholes you foolishly decided to travel to and get kidnapped in and where you can quickly turn a blind eye to the problems in the rest of the world as your near death experience has finally convinced your lady to accompany you whilst you engage in your hobby of flying remote controlled planes. Watch ‘Mitty’ instead.

The Rover  (2014)    47/100

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Rating :   47/100                                                                     103 Min        15

Continuing Australian film’s long standing love affair with outlaws in the Bush, David Michôd’s latest directorial effort following 2010’s ‘Animal Kingdom’ lands us in a dystopian Outback ten years after the world has gone to hell (we never really learn the details as to how, why, or to what full extent) as we watch Guy Pearce stop at the surviving remnants of a bar for sustenance, his soul exhausted and heavy with despair, barely noticing the liquid he consumes as his car is nicked in the background, instigating his search for both it and the perpetrators for the rest of the film. The thieves are already making a getaway after a robbery gone awry, with the sibling, Robert Pattinson, of one of their number left inured behind, thus becoming the primary lead for Pearce to follow up on.

Ultimately this is simply a very ill conceived ‘buddy’ film, as the two leads begin to bond and look out for one another, despite it originally being a hostage situation, but as time goes on we realise that these characters are basically both scumbags with an approach to violence not justified by the setting – we learn, for example, that law enforcement still operates in the country generally and indeed in the remote settlements where the action takes place. The main point behind this post apocalyptic future is that it sets up Pearce’s character arc – when everything went south globally he committed a horrific crime and nobody chased after him for it. The idea is that his conscience has been tormented by this ever since (both the deed and the lack of ensuing consequences) to the point that now acts of brutality against anyone in his way are done almost without having to think twice about them, as if he were trying to fast-track his own way to hell for the punishment he craves, punishment necessary for the absolution that he hopes will somehow accompany it.

In this respect, the film does have some success and a few notable moments, largely due to another great turn from Pearce (he is consistently impressive, in fact he had back to back cameo appearances in two best picture winners at the Oscars a few years ago with ‘The Hurt Locker’ 09 and ‘The King’s Speech’ 10), but the difficultly lies with every other aspect of the film. I wouldn’t describe Robert Pattinson as a particularly natural actor, in fact I think his spattering of roles since Potter and Twilight have been justified not by his prior work but rather the media status that stalks him, and although it’s true that whilst watching this I did have a large internal debate as to whether or not I was being too harsh on him, I was similarly continually bombarded with the feeling that ‘something just isn’t right here’, eventually coming to the conclusion that his performance is … well, laughable actually, partly because I did laugh at it at the precise moment when the story called for a polar opposite response.

He sports what passes for a good American accent from somewhere in the South, and he is supposed to be not quite mentally handicapped but not too far off it either, but it just constantly feels like he’s trying way too hard, and why after presumably a number of years in Oz (I think he offers some explanation for their current appearance in Australia but he was mumbling so badly I couldn’t make head nor tail of it) is his accent still that strong? Not to mention the fact that his brother sounds nothing like him. Did he fail to pull off an Australian accent during the interview and this was his alternative? When one half falters the whole must suffer, especially when it’s both the character and the actor playing them – and things aren’t helped by the pace and music, which starts off by nicely setting up tension and anticipation but then just becomes monotonous and at times silly (a number of people walked out of the screening, possibly because of the gratuitous violence but likely because it is also peppered with tediousness).

I suspect writers Joel Edgerton and Michôd started with Pearce’s character and his issues as a core concept and then just contrived the rest around it, leaving a hollow feeling, as if some of the violence is in there for its own glory’s sake, and when you finally find out exactly why the protagonist is so ruthlessly hunting his stolen car, well, let’s just say it probably would have provoked more unintentional laughter from The Red Dragon if I hadn’t been beyond caring by that point.

The Inbetweeners 2  (2014)    55/100

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Rating :   55/100                                                                       96 Min        15

The sequel to 2011’s ‘The Inbetweeners Movie’, itself based on the eponymous and successful TV show, showing the exploits of four English teenagers – predominantly as they busy themselves trying to get laid. Alas, the one or two episodes of the series that I’ve seen were both funnier than this, as was the first movie, with the film trying too hard and aiming to up the level of crassness in the hope that the comedy value will rise in direct proportion, and although you probably will laugh occasionally, it’s likely you’ll cringe twice as often as everything starts to feel more and more like creative desperation.

The acting from the central players is fine though, with the return of all four main characters: Will, Jay, Simon and Neil (Simon Bird, James Buckley, Joe Thomas and Blake Harrison respectively) and support from Emily Berrington and Tamla Kari, as the foursome travel Australia whilst on break from work and uni, their ensuing encounters playing heavily on the cliché of wanky travellers trying to find themselves but essentially just trying to get laid like they are, but with precious little made of the abundant natural landscapes around them, focusing more on dull, small scale sets and interactions.

One of the few moments worthy of note features a mirage of a lake whilst they are in the Outback, which is taken at face value by the recipient stating if he was imagining things he’d be seeing something amazing, like Optimus Prime banging Katy Perry. Ironically, this is exactly what that franchise needs. Imagine Prime, in his gravelly voice … ‘Autobots. Even though they still hunt us after we saved their world four times, we will not abandon Earth. Instead, we will now mate with the humans in order to preserve our species and theirs. I must lay with their female leader, Katy Perry, Bumblebee you will seduce their Decepticon puppet, Miley Cyrus, by letting her twerk over your gear stick. The fate of our world, and theirs, depends on it.’ Hasbro could develop a whole new line of toys …

The Nut Job  (2014)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                       85 Min        U

Not sure if ‘The Nut Job’ is really a suitable title for a kids film, but nonetheless it refers to the antics of various squirrels and woodland creatures living in a park in the middle of fictional Oakton City as they try to secure winter food for themselves by stealing nuts from a nearby shop, the owners of which are themselves using this as a cover whilst they try to dig a tunnel under the bank across the street. The animation is essentially quite good and the voice acting from the likes of Will Arnett, Brendan Fraser, Katherine Heigl and Liam Neeson is fine, with the film playing out rather like an extended version of an episode of ‘Tom and Jerry’ as the story is primarily delivered via an endless series of chase sequences. There is a slightly questionable good guy/bad guy set up as the hero, Surly (Arnett), is mainly concerned with gathering food for himself and ultimately he is vindicated in this (although he of course ends up helping everyone else and realising the errors of his selfish ways), as the powers that be, the evil Raccoon (Neeson) and his ‘angry bird’ clone henchman, turn out to be hoarding food to control the masses rather than to make sure they are all well fed. Should entertain children, but might struggle to ever become a family favourite.

Planes : Fire & Rescue  (2014)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                       83 Min        U

Following up on the financial, if not critical, success of Planes, the Disney machine have realised they have a new potential franchise on their hands and have put more effort into this one – resulting in a much better story than before, though it’s still released by DisneyToon Studios who are relatively new at producing theatrical films and not straight to DVD sequels. Again aimed at a young family audience, parents might nevertheless find it quite enjoyable, despite being lighter on the occasional subterfuge of adult comedy compared to most of Disney’s output. The graphics are top notch as one would expect, but probably its biggest boon is the introduction of some solid voice acting from the likes of Ed Harris and Wes Studi, and a screenplay that deviates, thankfully, from regurgitating another race related contrivance and instead sees primary hero Dusty Crophopper (Dane Cook) effectively disabled at the beginning, forcing him to consider a change of career.

The somewhat antiquated fire department at his local airport provides him with the inspiration he needs to come to terms with his injury (his gearbox can’t handle really high speeds and conks out) as the popular terminal faces being shut down unless they can upgrade it, and thus he enlists for fire and rescue training (crop dusters were actually some of the first planes modified and used for fire fighting in the 1950s) introducing a raft of new characters, predominantly more interesting ones than in the original, and a new primary location. It’s a polished and morally strong animation for kids, with occasional moments of unexpected class, like the rescue team talking about how thunder and lightning can start forest fires as they are summoned to put one out, and then AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ playing as we watch them do just that, slightly à la ‘Iron Man 2’ (10) – although Marvel are actually owned by Disney, and indeed what is alluded to right at the end of ‘Guardians of the Galaxy‘ also manages to sneak its way into a scene here ….