Tag Archives: Action

The Hunger Games : Mockingjay Part One  (2014)    56/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   56/100                                                                     123 Min        12A

The ‘Part One’ in the title here is the main problem with the film – splitting Suzanne Collins’ final Hunger Games novel, Mockingjay, into two parts has just spread the story far too thin to work well, reducing this one to very humdrum melodrama with little of note going on, and although I don’t know the ending of the series it’s a safe bet what the conclusion is going to be, most probably also with the heroic sacrifice of one of the main characters to resolve a number of the somewhat tedious issues now in place. All of the previous characters, like Peeta, Gale and Finnick, are utterly reduced to brief moments of perfunctory dialogue and new characters, like Natalie Dormer’s Cressida, are very rudimentary plot devices – everything is all put on the shoulders of Jennifer Lawrence in the role of Katniss Everdeen as she is, once again, heralded as the reluctant champion of an entire nation.

This time the games have finished and the resistance have to fight a media war to win over hearts and minds – Katniss is to be their lightning rod, but the evil Capitol seek to undermine her image and crush the broiling rebellion set in motion by the events of ‘Catching Fire‘. There’s a lot of DRAMA without a great deal really happening and there is a curious mix of quite dark scenes of war with soap opera drudgery, and the final ‘twist’ is not only clichéd but laughably so, in fact the same thing was attempted in ‘Flash Gordon’ (80) but they realised it was rubbish so it didn’t last long. Hopefully the finale will have all the fireworks and soul that this one is missing, although interestingly political protests around the world, from Thailand and Hong Kong to the United States, have seen people adopt the three fingered salute used in the series, as well as graffiti slogans from the franchise, which is extremely impressive – are the filmmakers up to the task of delivering on the final instalment?

’71  (2014)    62/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   62/100                                                                       99 Min        15

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.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles  (2014)    70/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   70/100                                                                     101 Min        12A

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.

One of the reasons to watch the film …

 Megan Fox's Ass

The Maze Runner  (2014)    65/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   65/100                                                                     113 Min        15

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, … ).

Dracula Untold  (2014)    59/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   59/100                                                                       92 Min        15

This had loads of potential but alas it is disappointingly humdrum. Mooted as possibly rebooting Universal’s old Monsters franchise (a series of films featuring the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy and their pals, which ran from the silent era in the 1920’s through to 1960), it still might, but it’s not exactly Batman Begins (05). This takes the original etymology of Bram Stoker’s titular character from his infamous 1897 novel ‘Dracula’ and runs with it – Stoker named his character after the equally infamous Vlad the Impaler, a moniker he acquired after death, who was born Vlad III Prince of Wallachia or Vlad Draculea, meaning son of Dracul – a title given to his father when he joined the Order of the Dragon (a military order founded in the early fifteenth century to defend Christianity and which formed a crucial presence in Eastern Europe to countermand the invasions of the Ottoman Turks, although really I founded this order to use humans as my pawns) as in Romanian Dracul used to mean dragon (now it usually refers to the Devil). Here, Count Dracula (Luke Evans) actually is Vlad the Impaler and we are transported to fifteenth century Transylvania where his small kingdom operatives as a vassal state for the unruly Ottomans, and the uneasy peace between them is bought at an increasingly heavy price.

Quite a promising way to retell the story, but I did wonder to myself ‘how are they going to make this interesting and not just a rehash of the myth?’ – the reply to that is they put Charles Dance into a cave as a mysterious old and deadly vampire, and when Vlad gets desperate to help his family and his people he turns to this creature for power and agrees to a sinister pact: ungodly vampiric abilities to smite his foes with and he can return to normal as well, if he can resist drinking human blood for a few days that is. Then of course he quickly wants to eat everyone around him, and Sarah Gadon playing his buxomly corseted wife doesn’t help matters as she looks good enough for normal men to want to feast on never mind her preternaturally starving husband. Again, this was a nice direction to take, the overriding problem is the execution continues to deflate as the film goes on until it culminates in a tedious and, at moments, plain silly ending against the less than fearsome evil Ottoman ruler (Dominic Cooper), which ultimately ruins the intermittent moments of promise from before. Indeed, Gadon’s bosoms are undoubtedly the most memorable thing about the film, together with the farcical nature of what eventually happens to them.

The Equalizer  (2014)    74/100

Posted on by
1

Rating :   74/100                                                                     132 Min        15

The classic tale of super cool actor playing a lowly shop assistant in a department store and just minding his own business, but who has to deal with random scumbags and then turns out to be in possession of DEADLY COMBAT SKILLS and can’t help but, ahem, equalise things – done many times before but always satisfying and this has a nice balance to it alongside measurably slick execution. The actor in question here is Denzel Washington and this is the first big screen adaptation of the long running TV show of the same name, which aired from 85 to 89 and starred Edward Woodward. The premise really is very simple, with central character Robert McCall seemingly unable to sleep and going to a café late at night to read Moby Dick instead, a café where he meets lady of the night Alina/Teri (Chloë Grace Moretz) whom he befriends and must then naturally step in to defend. Washington invariably makes it easy for us to sympathise with and root for his characters and this is no exception, with some crisp direction from Antoine Fuqua (‘Training Day’ 01, ‘King Arthur’ 04 ‘Olympus Has Fallen‘) and good choices of music too (see below for one of the songs, see above and below for great moments of ‘you have just messed with the wrong person’). The question is – when are we going to see Denzel Washington team up with Liam Neeson to take on all the bad guys, everywhere, at the same time?

The Equalizer Coffee

Fury  (2014)    54/100

Posted on by
Reply

Rating :   54/100                                                                     134 Min        15

When a film purports itself to be ‘The most realistic war film ever’ it had better be able to put its money where its mouth is, and alas this could quite easily qualify as the one of the most UNREALISTIC war films of all time. Screenwriter and director David Ayer is one of the most childish writers working in Hollywood today, and his obsession with nonsensical violence evinced by his previous films ‘Sabotage‘ and ‘End of Watch‘ continues – in a normal film a character might open a box and find a new clue, or something that sparks an emotional trigger for them and a moment of reflection, in a David Ayer film that box is guaranteed to contain not only pictures of a family member skull fucking genetically modified babies but also pieces of remaining flesh tanned for personal use. He can get away with this to an extent with a war film and the associated potential for real and visceral horror, but when we see the inside of a tank at the beginning of the film and the remains of someone’s face on the metal, looking like a fried egg, we realise he just can’t help himself.

Not to say that’s necessarily unrealistic, rather unlikely granted, but it is the following which render the film silly – 1) The soldiers do not fire weapons, they fire lasers. I kid you not, green laser fire (red for the Allies) issues forth from the German troops looking for all the world like a scene from Star Wars (ironically, this is to show the use of tracer fire which helped gunners and infantry adjust their aim and was certainly used extensively by both sides in the war, it’s just been taken to a daft extreme here). 2) The tactics are at best dubious. We see three tanks versus one and the three of them just bunch together instead of trying to use both flanks. 3) Reason number 2 is taken to the point of lunacy as (this is a spoiler so you might want to jump to the next paragraph, but it was also used as the main selling point in the trailer if you’ve seen it – another thing they shouldn’t have done) we watch Brad Pitt opt for a stand-off between his immobilised single tank versus several hundred SS troops. During this event daytime becomes night in less than about forty seconds and Pitt and his four strong crew have ample time to leave and fight another day, or indeed come up with a better plan, but they all decide to stay largely because it is Brad Pitt saying they should and they are all afraid of him. It’s not heroic, or exciting – IT’S JUST FUCKING STUPID. I also have a large doubt over whether or not that tank has a 360 degree firing arc with its machine guns when the hatch is down, I rather suspect it doesn’t making the decision even worse.

The fictional story takes place in Germany toward the end of the Second World War with the very beleaguered and war weary crew of the tank ‘Fury’ receiving a new greenhorn gunner (Logan Lerman) who has never even been inside a tank before which enrages them all, and they proceed to slap him around the head at every opportunity. Lerman actually does the best out of everyone in this film for managing to react/act to the treatment he gets appropriately for his character – as a performer it can’t have been easy to temper his responses to the right level, and he consistently delivers on what is the core character arc of the story as he bonds with Pitt’s veteran whose soul has been ravaged by violence, death and stress to the dangerous brink of perhaps losing sight of himself completely. Pitt does a reasonable job of anchoring the piece but his performance is hampered by ridiculous hero worship from Ayer as well as having more than a few ropey lines of dialogue to try and do something meaningful with.

It is within the work of the wardrobe and art direction departments that a very high level of authenticity has been achieved – it looks fantastic (laser shows aside) and the tanks used were real ones from museums and collectors which are more or less the correct models for the time. The rest of the crew are played by Shia LaBeouf, Michael Peña and Jon Bernthal and they had to live in the tank for a week together before shooting began (LaBeouf reportedly refused to wash himself to help achieve a new level of ‘realism’. I’m surprised nobody fired real bullets at him too). Despite the egregious setbacks there is still a definite satisfaction to be gained from some of the action scenes, and here Ayer the director definitely outstrips Ayer the writer – it’s really the ludicrous and utterly forced central decision by the characters and the ensuing battle that destroys the credibility of the entire film.

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Lucy  (2014)    73/100

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.