Tag Archives: Movies

Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day  (2014)    61/100

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Rating :   61/100                                                                       81 Min        PG

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.

’71  (2014)    62/100

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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

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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

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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

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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.

Gone Girl  (2014)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     149 Min        18

David Fincher teams up with screenwriter and author Gillian Flynn as she adapts her own smash hit novel of 2012 for the big-screen, with Ben Affleck in the main role of a husband who’s wife has disappeared, the titular gone girl, but we don’t know if she has been abducted, murdered by intruders, or if her husband cut her into bits with a potato peeler for turning off his Playstation and then fed her to the squirrels in the back garden. We do know there was a violent scene with some blood for the detectives to find in the couple’s home …

As we might expect from Fincher, this is a long and drawn out mystery which serves it well – and it is equally well suited to Affleck’s acting style as you genuinely can’t tell if he’s lying or not (make of that what you will) as we are pulled this way and that along with the other spectators in the escalating media frenzy surrounding the case. It holds attention from start to finish and develops at a rewarding pace, but Fincher has missed a bit of a golden opportunity – he is so used to the sort of narrative maze that he has been crafting in films for years that he over indulges in it to an extent, so when some very, very interesting human relations are brought to the fore they aren’t given the time and treatment they are deserving of. Shame it didn’t dare to tread a lot more heavily on the dark earth it treads, but well crafted and executed all the same.

Dolphin Tale 2  (2014)    60/100

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Rating :   60/100                                                                     107 Min        U

The sequel to 2011’s original and once again set in Florida’s Clearwater Marine Aquarium – the real world rescue centre where director Charles Martin Smith continues the story of Winter, the bottlenose dolphin rescued in the first film and given a prosthetic tail after losing her own in a crab trap. Like its predecessor this is a dramatisation of real events and features a return of all of the main cast members as well as Winter herself – this time with a number of new dolphins that will drive the story forward as Winter’s condition sadly deteriorates after the loss at the beginning of the film of the elderly dolphin Panama, who seems to have been her sole aquatic friend. The narrative follows Winter’s state closely and pairs it with the effect on the park and primarily on the two youngsters working there who have bonded the most closely with her (played by Cozi Zuehlsdorff and Nathan Gamble), and who face choices about their own future and the associated new responsibilities that come with them.

It’s a good companion piece to the original and both the story and the acting are engaging enough to merit the currently mooted possibility of a third outing for cast and crew – all except for one moment, when the camera shifts to Winter’s vantage point and when she eyes Dr Clay (Harry Connick Jr.), who is in charge of the centre, the dolphin literally flips out, falsely suggesting some untoward connection between Clay and Winter’s depression. You keep waiting for some horrible revelation that’s probably going to result in police custody and therapy sessions for the kids – I guess it is supposed to intimate blame via proxy for the death of Panama, but it’s very misleading and it’s never really brought up again after the incident.

Life After Beth  (2014)    54/100

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Rating :   54/100                                                                       89 Min        15

Really disappointing. Trying to be the world’s third major zombie romcom after ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (04) and ‘Warm Bodies‘ and failing quite miserably to generate anything more than brief titters occasionally and far more enduring ennui. It really is a case of ‘the concept is the gag and that’s about it’ as Zach (Dane DeHaan) watches his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza) turn slowly into a zombie but he still loves her hopelessly despite the fact that relations become increasingly difficult. That core premise never really takes off – it’s neither well written nor executed and so the film is largely a waste of time. It has some success with the parental situation generated by John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon as Beth’s father and mother, and some play as to how far reaching the zombification effects will be, and indeed what their origin is in the first place, but all of this just peters out into uninteresting nonsense – and if you’ve seen the trailer the conclusion is more or less spoiled anyway.

The Equalizer  (2014)    74/100

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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

Maps to the Stars  (2014)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                     111 Min        18

Legendary director David Cronenberg’s latest follows multiple strands in a somewhat mysterious narrative, but this is at its heart a very traditional horror film – one with its targets very deliberately aimed at that sort of delivery despite suggesting a more high brow affair, and there’s even a knowing indirect mention of critics being able to ‘get it’ when talking about something else during the film. The title is reference to the actual physical maps tourists can get their eager little hands on in L.A. if they want to take a wander around the streets looking at all the houses of the rich and famous, and indeed it also references the stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (a fictitious member of which is featured above). This leads to fairly obvious satire about the lives of the celebrity elite, Julianne Moore’s neurotic and self obsessed desperate actress Havana Segrand, John Cusack and Olivia William’s life of keeping up appearances at the Weiss household despite the best efforts of their spoiled son, and all of this is fine just nothing we haven’t seen many times before, indeed Cronenberg’s last film ‘Cosmopolis’ (12) had many a similar vein running through it.

It’s the underlying cheekily dark tone permeating the film that gives it a breathing life. That, and the performances from all the cast but in particular Moore who is completely fantastic in her role of the despotic narcissus clawing at the walls of her own vanity for success, both desirous of everything her ego feels is due her but also just as eager to be devoured by the masses, a sort of ultimate metaphor for consumerism. Mia Wasikowska is the centre point for the entire story as her character, Agatha, appears in the midst of Hollywood high society and begins to affect them all, the burn marks on her face and body an almost magnetic and catalytic black mirror instilling chaos around her. Also with Robert Pattinson and Sarah Gadon in support, a creepily indulgent film that sits proudly, if perhaps not terribly prominently, within the canon of its director.