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Olympus Has Fallen  (2013)    70/100

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Rating :   70/100                                                                     120 Min        15

For what this is, it’s actually pretty good. ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ marks the first film since 9/11 to show a terrorist attack on the White House. With that premise, it doesn’t sound great, The Red Dragon does not recall many of the old ‘The President is in danger!’ films being particularly enthralling, however, it is delivered via a fairly no nonsense approach here, and the orchestration of the attack itself is reasonably believable given events in the real world a decade ago, although the same cannot truly be said of its execution. It does also suffer from an inevitable cheese factor, but it’s at least cut and fed to us in thin slices, not detracting from the film as much as some of its predecessors.

Gerard Butler plays the secret service agent who must don his John McClane cap (lots of strong parallels with the original ‘Die Hard’ (88), and one can’t help but feel this could have served as a much better version of the fifth instalment, ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’) in order to try and save the beleaguered President, played by Aaron Eckhart, whilst Morgan Freeman, who of course played the President in ‘Deep Impact’ (98), also appears as the member of the White House staff who must take on the reins of power in light of his commander in chief’s compromised position. Also with another good turn from Melissa Leo, who certainly gains the audience’s sympathy by essentially being used as a punchbag at one point. From director Antoine Fuqua, who helmed the much maligned but really not that bad ‘King Arthur’ in 2004 (with the enchanting Miss Knightley of course) as well as ‘Training Day’ (01) and ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ (09). Expect strong violence, explosions, bullets, and, well, death, throughout.

Oblivion  (2013)    15/100

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Rating :   15/100                                                                     124 Min        12A

This film suffers from, at least, three major problems: the trailer spoils the entire first half of it, giving away critical elements, the screenplay is full of holes and so cheesy there were audible gasps of exasperation and laughs of derision in the cinema, I felt like applauding the couple of people who left at one particularly bad moment, though it is at least matched by lacklustre acting overall, and thirdly it lifts a lot from multiple other sci-fi sources, combining to produce a pallid shell, from which any talent and creativity long since departed.

If I were to add a fourth thing, it would have to be Tom Cruise’s hair, which seems to have a life of its own, appearing down one moment, and then ridiculously erect the next – usually when he mounts his wee desert bike as if this suddenly activates ‘Mad Max Desert Bike Cruise’. Speaking of which, there’s no reason for the bike to even exist other than to have the hero ride off on one; the hero who decides finding something lost in the desert will be easier on bike rather than from the air, hmmm…

The Red Dragon actually rates Cruise generally, but there is only so much he can do when everything else around him is crumbling. Fans of the hugely popular Bethesda Game Studios roleplay game ‘Oblivion’ should be aware there is no connection to this film, instead here Tom Cruise plays Jack Harper, hot on the heels of him playing ‘Jack Reacher’, who together with Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are the last two humans assigned to the dying planet of Earth, who must protect, with the help of armed drones, huge automated machines which are to transport the planet’s water supply to humanity’s new home on Saturn’s moon, Titan. This has all come to pass after war with an alien race, a war which we won, but our own planet, and indeed our moon, was the price that had to be paid. Despite victory, remnants of the alien task force remain and attempt to interfere with the human plans…

In the course of telling their story, here is a not entirely inclusive list of the other films that are defiled in the process; ‘Wall-E’, ‘Star Trek: Generations’, ‘Terminator’, ‘Independence Day’, ‘The Matrix’, all to greater or lesser degrees, but their biggest art theft is also a massive spoiler, and so appears after the end of this review. Some of these similarities it could get away with easily, such as the drones with red ‘Terminator’ esque eyes and their screens that have ‘terminate’ on them, commonplace in sci-fi now really, but as they mount up it becomes more difficult. Cruise collects and cares for a small plant, the only thing alive he’s found in the dead lands he patrols – ‘Wall-E’. He has a hidden away, idealised cabin in a somehow fertile woods – ‘Generations’. I’ll stop there before I give too much away.

The film is written and directed by Joseph Kosinski (‘Tron Legacy’ 2010) who based this on his, unpublished (early warning sign right there), graphic novel, and he has claimed it pays homage to films from the 70’s, which may be true, but for the rest of it that fine line between homage and stealing is not tread carefully. Just as with his ‘Tron Legacy’, the visuals are the film’s only saving grace (many of the location shoots took place in Iceland), which paint a grand vista of cinematic grandeur, but are ultimately just the icing on a poorly baked cake.

SPOILER ALERT

Ok, this is basically the American version of Duncan Jones’s (son of David Bowie) ‘Moon’ (09), and, unfortunately, it’s cheesy and rubbish, whereas ‘Moon’ became a well deserved indie hit. Even though Kosinski’s graphic novel was begun in 2005, the similarities here are too great to ignore, and the screenplay underwent several rewrites over the years via several different people, had the graphic novel been published one could say for sure which came first. Strangely Jones is planning to write a graphic novel as a sequel to ‘Moon’ which he may then turn into a film – perhaps he nicked Kosinski’s idea? In any case ‘Moon’ was released first, and is ten times better, so it would have been wise to significantly alter the script to make sure no one could accuse it of plagiarism. Not the first time Cruise has been involved in an American remake – see his ‘Vanilla Sky’ as opposed to Alejandro Amenábar’s ‘Open Your Eyes’. If you are a big fan of sci-fi then please watch ‘Moon’ before you see this, as one will probably ruin the other for you and ‘Oblivion’ is bad in enough other ways to not really care about spoiling.

Oz The Great and Powerful  (2013)    37/100

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Rating :   37/100                                                                     130 Min        PG

Oh my goodness, this is just awful. It’s the prequel to ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (1939) which, since that was based on the first of L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’, means this is an ‘imagined’ story, in the likeness of the rest. It relies heavily on special effects and a far too overindulgent, and at times outright garish, technicolouresque palette. There is a story but it’s so overtly banal, and the central performance from James Franco as Oz so completely lacklustre, involving naught but him grinning like a Cheshire Cat and delivering his lines with such drab drollery he comes across as being half stoned most of the time (although sadly his father passed away during production, so it isn’t really surprising this is not his finest moment), that replacing a lot of the characters and dreary dialogue with more effects might have actually been an improvement. Though, those same effects that the film relies on so much look absolutely terrible in places, with it painfully obvious the main characters are standing in front of a green screen. It really isn’t good enough, although The Red Dragon viewed the film in 2D, and can only hope it looks more convincing on a 3D projection.

The whole is not helped by the score from Danny Elfman which drones on uninterrupted for pretty much the entire film and must be some of the least original or enterprising work he’s ever done. The look and feel of the film, together with his music, initially evoke bad memories of Tim Burton’s ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ and, to a slightly lesser degree, his ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The whole of the intro appears in black and white, mirroring the beginning of the 1939 film, with a 4:3 aspect ratio, before expanding into full colour and 16:9 widescreen upon arrival in Oz, but it takes a painfully long time to do so. The supporting characters do little but grate, with the exception of a small china doll in the likeness of a girl whose animation and empathetic appearance are one of the film’s few saving graces. In fact all of the female actors, Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, Michelle Williams, and Joey King as the China Girl, unanimously bring some life and interest to the film, but are not in of themselves enough to make it worthwhile. Some of the real sets that were built to mix in with the computer graphics, also bring something of value to the piece.

The Oz stories were aimed at children of course, and the film might be better enjoyed by younger audiences. Not too young though, as some of the evil characters, such as the flying, screeching baboons, may terrify rather than entertain. Director Sam Raimi fits in a lot of his trademark ‘several things fly into shot at the same time in a loud and abrupt manner’ which, combined with the baboons, may also not be ideal for wee ones. The script sneaks in a bit of a nod to ‘Back to the Future’ and the music makes an acoustic acknowledgement of the fact, see if you spot it should you decide to brave the mire of cerebral boredom that this film will present you with.

The following interview with Mila Kunis is more entertaining than the actual movie.

On the Road  (2012)    17/100

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Rating :   17/100                                                                     124 Min        15

I’m not sure, but maybe, just maybe, this is one of the worst films ever made. Walter Salles’ interpretation of Jack Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’ is much more like a porno with various scenes of drug taking thrown in than anything close to good storytelling. It begins by trying to be way, way too cool, with both Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund’s accents (who play Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty respectively, and along with Kristen Stewart form the story’s main menage a trois) being heavily affected and theatrical, as if they’ve been instructed to make love to themselves while they talk, and several examples of shaky cam overuse. The characters all seem to be lacking any of the innate backstage fear of humanity, they all love one another immediately and with large degrees of pretentious self gratuity.

The story meanders aimlessly, as do the characters – screwing one another vicariously and partaking in all sorts of drug aided threesome activities. To the point where there is no real story, where the audience may find themselves so disaffected by the silhouettes of characters as to lose any real interest in what happens to them, and perhaps wonder why anyone would want anything to do with them in the first place. Then, it simply becomes a parade of pointlessness interspersed with erotica in order to keep the audience’s attention, which is the lowest form of filmmaking. It was the wrong director for this film. The Brazilian director’s most famous film prior to this was ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’ (04), telling the story of a young Che Guevara as he travelled around South America on a beat up old motorcycle with his friend, trying to eventually reach a leper colony to gain medical experience. Here, he is interpreting the most defining work of the ‘beat generation’ of the post war period, a work that is autobiographical (Sal Paradise is Jack Kerouac) and focused on one man and his friend’s search for meaning and definition, travelling across America and flying in the face of conventional culture as they did so. As a culture of fear spread across America in the wake of the cold war, this search for freedom and identity versus traditional American family values resonated and the work became a landmark identifier for a generation, eventually transmogrifying into the anti-military counter culture of the hippie revolution in the 1960s.

One can imagine Walter Salles growing up as a student, a ubiquitous poster of Che Guevara on his wall, experimenting with pot and romanticising about the 50s. However, he has pretty much nothing in common with the characters he loves so much. He comes from money, lots of money, in fact his father was the head of one of the most powerful banks in the whole of South America. He has stated he spent five years researching this film. He really has to elaborate on that. It sounds like nonsense, but he did actually travel the same route as Paradise does in the novel, and made a documentary about it along the way. However, Kerouac and his pals were completely flat out broke, living on the edge, clueless about how their lives would find meaning and value, and indeed how they would even like them to turn out. Salles had no financial worries, had a very clear idea of what he was trying to achieve, and was already a success in his field. His trip becomes then a nice holiday, a completely, fundamentally different experience from Kerouac and co. This difference transfers directly into the film and its contrast with the novel.

They also cast the wrong men for the lead roles. Kristen Stewart fits her role perfectly (no comment on why that might be) and the film is successful in delivering a sense of sexual frisson throughout, together with scenes that the film will be remembered for, and that are guaranteed to induce some involuntary displays of discomfort/awkwardness in cinema audiences. Do not go and see this with family. Though, if you’re female, watching it with two males for company might be interesting…

It’s also painfully long, 124 mins, but it feels more like four hours.


Quotes

‘Can I watch you guys screw?’   Kristen Stewart/MaryLou