Riddick (2013) 60/100

Posted on September 15, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 60/100 119 Min

Following in the footsteps of ‘Pitch Black’ (2000) and ‘The Chronicles of Riddick’ (04), this continues the exploits of Vin Diesel’s central character Richard B. Riddick and returns him to a setup similar to the first film (all three have the same writer/director David Twohy), after he is stranded on an alien world and forced to survive against its aggressive native lifeforms, whilst an international bounty is slapped on his head to boot – one that is larger if he is returned dead rather than alive.

Unfortunately, the trailer renders a great deal of the film somewhat pointless as in it we are shown events from the final quarter of the film, taking ‘the sting’ out of the rest of the movie. It’s a shame, as although there is nothing here that’s especially original or interesting, neither is there much wrong with the film particularly, it’s just a little humdrum that’s all. Diesel is good in the role once again, though some of the supporting cast seem a little inexperienced. Expect plenty of sci-fi bug squishing.

Elysium (2013) 16/100

Posted on August 31, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 16/100 109 Min

Horrible, horrible action film. The title relates to ‘a paradise’, traditionally the place in Greek Mythology that all heroes went to after death, here an Earth orbiting haven for the super rich, wherein everyone lives like kings with all manner of technology that can cure essentially all known disease and even rebuild flesh. It’s the year 2154, and whilst the human elite are drinking champagne and playing croquet in space, everyone still on the surface of Earth exists in extreme poverty, which is where we find our hero, Max (Matt Damon), who had always dreamed of going into utopian orbit himself, but usually finds himself on the wrong side of the law, and is currently desperately sucking up a menial labour intensive job.

It’s from director Neill Blomkamp, and follows on from his successful ‘District 9’ (09) and as there the special effects look tremendous, albeit a little similar to his previous film. The similarities don’t end there though, indeed one could almost extrapolate the basic story from one and insert it into the other with precious little difference between them, and just as ‘District 9’ started off with an interesting concept and then degenerated into a plodding excuse for pointless action, so too does history repeat itself, only with a far less convincing story and acting, as although Damon is fine in the role, the rest of the supporting cast far from have their finest moments.

Except for Sharlto Copley, who plays the central villain and hired goon of the military defence of Elysium and clearly had a lot of fun in the role, but his character is simply too grotesque. One scene sees him threaten a very young girl and her mother and it is not especially justified by the narrative, rather it’s an excuse to bring the childhood sweetheart of Max into the fray, which is not only horrifically lame but the scene is actually pretty disturbing to watch. Combine this with excessive violence, bloodshed, and the continued peril of the mother and daughter via a very basic, contrived, ‘been done a thousand times before’ storyline that is predictable, nonsensical, and features ‘Gladiator’ esque music with flashbacks of Max and the woman of his dreams as children (together with images of tattoos of their names ‘4 ever’), and it not only becomes direly cheesy, but you’re left thinking why? Why make this? The only point seems to be, once again, to blow things up, but it has been done in a depressingly tiresome, and at times disturbing, way.

Renaissance (2006) 61/100

Posted on August 19, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 61/100 105 Min

The most striking aspect of this animation is its austere use of black and white contrasts, which initially made it a little painful to watch (lights had to be turned off as a necessity) but come the end I was thoroughly enjoying its unique style. If you were to imagine a beautifully inked noir graphic novel suddenly come to life as a series of moving pictures before you, this is exactly what you would see. The title refers to the literal meaning of the French word, rebirth, and the story takes place in Paris in the year 2054, where we see a young woman being kidnapped and a hard boiled cop enjoined to track her down.

Daniel Craig voices the lead, and as always with animation there is the inherent distraction of time spent thinking ‘I know that voice! Who is it, hmm…’ and the satisfaction of finally getting there (or the irritation of not), to help everyone along, there is a connection linking the hero to the villain, and again from the villain to the guy in the middle. The plot revolves around the disappearance of the girl and the cosmetics company she works for, unfolding in very traditional film noir style. Enter the role of the disappeared’s sister, and the worst elements of the film are revealed, as suddenly both the dialogue and its delivery, along with the concepts, nose dive into a corny and ill developed pastiche of the genre.

It’s not gripping, but it does have a lot of credible artistry to it. Fans of different styles of animation (a combination of motion capture and 3D computer graphics were used here) will probably get more out of it than followers of film noir will, but it’s probably still worth a look in for both.

The World’s End (2013) 51/100

Posted on July 19, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 51/100 109 Min

This is a film that people will really want to like, forming as it does the final act in Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director/writer Edgar Wright’s Three Flavours Cornetto Trilogy (which riffs on Kieslowski’s Three Colours Blue trilogy and reputedly came about after a reporter pointed out the ice cream connection to Wright, whilst interviewing him to promote ‘Hot Fuzz’) that began with the seminal ‘Shaun of the Dead’ (strawberry) back in 2004, noticeably ran out of gas with 2007’s ‘Hot Fuzz’ (original), and here (mint chocolate chip) all but splutters to a grinding halt, offering but a few sparse gasps of comedy to last us through to the end. It’s a similar set up to before, with the protagonists in mortal peril from bad guys who are superior in numbers – in this case an army of robots that have overrun the small town of Newton Haven and threaten not only the heroes’ lives, but also to interrupt their pub crawl, supposed to end at The World’s End pub which the five friends failed to reach on a similar venture in their youth, two decades earlier.

The popularity of the cast, and that of ‘Shaun of the Dead’, will ensure a lot of grace for this outing, and overall it is easy enough to simply watch, but even the super keen midnight preview audience I was a part of only managed perhaps six or seven laughs throughout, and there’s a feeling of obviousness, a significant drag factor, and a contrived undertow that gives the sense that by trying to mirror the central aspects of their trilogy they have actually crossed the line into becoming a cliché of their own work. Plus they seem to be fighting against the squishiest mechanised monsters in cinema history, that appear to have been assembled out of nothing more than Styrofoam and Silly Putty. Some of the better gags come from their decision to carry on drinking despite the slight snag to their Dionysian plans, but it could really have been milked for a lot more than it is.

Pegg and Frost star, alongside Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan, Martin Freeman, Rosamund Pike and a host of familiar faces in support. Probably best enjoyed after a pub crawl of your own (if you can stay awake until the good bits that is).

Pacific Rim (2013) 55/100

Posted on July 12, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 55/100 132 Min

Despite the low rating, the action in this film is pretty darn good, it’s just that the story is both ridiculous and predictable, and the characters and acting largely follow suit. Set in the immediate future, humanity finds itself under constant threat of attack from alien invaders (the Kaiju), alas not from space above, but from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, wherein lies a previously dormant portal to another dimension. Every six months or so an aquatic behemoth comes through the portal and attacks, Godzilla style, a seemingly random coastal city. Our most obvious solution to this crises is to build enormous robotic warriors to fight the beasties with, each one controlled from within its head by two mentally linked humans whose consciences merge, which allows the story to digress down various emotional tangents.

There are multiple immediate problems with this of course, such as any real explanation as to why our current military capabilities aren’t enough to take down the enemy, or why since we know their point of origin it isn’t mined to high heaven. The robots themselves, or Jaegers as they call them (German for hunters), despite having huge plasma guns and an array of missile explosives, seemed to favour running up and smacking the aliens in the face as their weapon of choice, which naturally allows for the possibility for them to be, well, eaten. The chain of command in their outfit is at best flimsy, and at several times it’s easier to be against the protagonists than behind them.

An oddity that manages to be quite enjoyable and yet at the same time determinedly difficult to really like, it’s from director Guillermo del Toro and has very much the same feel and pace to it as his 2008 film ‘Hellboy II’. This, and del Toro’s continued determination to stick to real sets and props as much as possible, together with the visual effects, are the films strongest assets. It’s a real shame that, as is often the case, a money laden blockbuster is critically let down by basic conceptual errors and a hackneyed screenplay. If you like the look of the trailer, then this might still be worth a go on the big screen – watch out for the Optimus Prime lookalike truck that is no doubt deliberately crushed at one point, and there is a very brief post credits scene too.

Man of Steel (2013) 51/100

Posted on June 15, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 51/100 143 Min

This is a pretty major disappointment for what was hoped to be the reboot to the Superman franchise. Helmed by Zack Snyder, whose previous films are often much more notable for their special effects than their ability to engage the audience with the story or characters {‘Watchmen’ (09) and ‘Sucker Punch’ (11), for example}, his Superman suffers from this same central problem – it feels like we’re watching a series of storyboards put together without any thought whatsoever as to what goes between them, or even why some of them are there in the first place, other than as excuses for more explosions. This is a big surprise, given the screenplay is from David S. Goyer, based on a story from himself and Christopher Nolan, both hot off the success of their Dark Knight trilogy, though it is certainly fair to say plot holes abounded in the escapades of their Batman, but Nolan’s skill behind the camera made them much more palatable than Snyder is able to do here.

Even the director’s normal artistic and stylistic flair looks here to be very much aping the work of others – in particular J.J.Abrams’ success with the recent Star Trek films, including his trademark lens flares and the way the camera will hover above the action and then zoom in or out abruptly before a cut, particularly noticeable with ‘Man of Steel’s intro section where we see the birth of Superman, or Kal-El, on his home planet of Krypton. With ‘Star Trek – Into Darkness’ released just a few weeks ago, featuring the line ‘Looks like we have a superman onboard’ at one point, one wonders if this was an acknowledgment of the fact – perhaps the two directors are good friends? Although these same visuals are one of the film’s redeeming features, their unoriginality is a little disappointing from Snyder, indeed the story itself has shades of many recent blockbusters that have gone before it – the changes to the backstory of Clark Kent’s foster parents echoes Spiderman’s relationship with uncle Ben, the present threat of alien invasion mirrors the one that raked in millions at the box office for last year’s ‘Avengers Assemble’, and so on.

Storywise, the biggest let down is that precious little of it makes any sense at all. They try to explain Clark’s powers using physics, and the fact that our sun’s radiation and the gravity on Earth is different from those experienced on Krypton. Nonsense. He can FLY for goodness sake. At one point his foster father Jonathan, played by Kevin Costner {still reeling from ‘Waterworld’ almost twenty years ago now}, suggests he perhaps should have let a bunch of children die rather than risk revealing his identity. There just seems to be no real thought or intelligence in the script at all, to the point where come the end you’re thinking, ‘O, of course that character shows up here out of the blue miraculously in time for the kissy kissy drama shot’. Are Goyer and Nolan trying to sabotage a rival superhero outfit to their own?

The acting is generally fine, and leading man Henry Cavill does well and could easily reprise the role if they find a different team to work on it (I believe Snyder has been given the tentative go ahead for the next one – he may have to reboot his reboot), though to be fair he doesn’t really have to do a tremendous amount of acting. The fight sequences do start to make the film a bit more interesting, but it’s not long before they begin to drag, degenerating into the same super-powered stunt repeated again and again, ultimately leaving the movie bland, flat, silly, and completely devoid of any real character. Amy Adams, Diane Lane, Michael Shannon and Laurence Fishburne appear in support. {Look out for the name on some of the chemical trucks toward the end – also, perhaps the most promising aspect of the entire film is that this is planned as a prelude to a ‘Justice League’ team up of several of DC Comics’ super heroes (again, no doubt spurred on by the success of rivals Marvel, with their ‘Avenger’s Assemble’ box office smash). It will be very interesting indeed to see who makes it into the League (Batman is a DC character, in case you didn’t know, but usually only dabbled infrequently with the League)}

After Earth (2013) 20/100

Posted on June 8, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 20/100 100 Min

A ridiculous story matched by ridiculous acting. Planned as a trilogy that will now most certainly not be happening, this film never really gets past the main problem of knowing that Will Smith has cast his real life fourteen year old son to play the son of his central character onscreen and, although I do feel a degree of pity for Jaden Smith’s situation here, his son’s acting ability simply isn’t where it needs to be for a huge blockbuster like this. This issue is compounded by Will Smith himself actually having come up with the story (though not the screenplay), and it’s hopelessly contrived to allow the character his son plays to conquer his fears and in effect become a man. His heart was likely in the right place, and it has the feel of Mr Smith senior trying to pass the acting gauntlet onto Mr Smith junior, but it absolutely needed a better script.

Set in the future after we’ve destroyed our planet by abusing its resources, although this is actually nonsense as the two central characters end up on a crash landed ship (wherein the entirety of the ship’s crew have conveniently otherwise perished) that warps back to Earth (this is not a spoiler by the way), and it is displayed as abundantly full of vegetation and megafauna. There’s a volcano, if that is supposed to denote global warming, but we do actually have volcanoes at the moment Mr Smith (admittedly, it is set one thousand years after we left for pastures new, but hardly enough time for every species on Earth to more than double in size, especially in their supposedly resources limited environment).

Anyway, Will’s legs are also conveniently broken, or as his character puts it ‘Both my legs are broken. One of them really badly.’, hmm yes, which thus forces his young mini me to go on a trip through the perilous forest to find the tail of the crashed vessel with the emergency distress beacon. And therein an enormous problem with the story rears its ugly head – since there are only two of them it is abundantly obvious that young Mr Smith is in fact not going to be annihilated by the several things that he encounters which will, of course, try to annihilate him. Though he does pretty much ask for it by smacking a baboon in the face with a rock for no apparent reason. Fortunately, he is so super fit, despite Earth’s gravity being stronger than on his home planet, he is able to outrun an entire pack of angry baboons in their native forest. Did. Not. See. That. Coming. Sarcasm.

O there’s an alien bad guy that may or may not have survived the crash too, see the above line, all that being said, some of the visuals and cinematography are quite good. Indeed, the production design on the spaceship is interesting, with an aesthetic that appears to be a hybrid of an old sailing ship and a beehive/organic structure on the interior, and a more Star Trek esque hull on the outside. With the start of the final credits and the revelation that the director is M. Night Shyamalan (his name was removed from trailers after they performed badly) there was a moment of, ‘O, of course, it all makes sense now’, as there was one part when our young hero looked as if he were going to try to outrun the weather as well as the baboons, and one couldn’t help but think of Shyamalan’s ‘The Happening’ (08) when Mark Wahlberg and co did actually try to outrun the wind and the airborne evil that came with it, and here we find similar veins of trashy nonsense throughout the story. There are a lot of good films out at the moment, don’t waste your time and money on this.

The Purge (2013) 60/100

Posted on June 2, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 60/100 85 Min

A film that ironically purges itself of any real satire or commentary, despite its promising setting. Opening in the near future in America, the country’s crime rate has dropped to almost zero due to an ongoing successful social experiment whereby, for one day of the year, any and all crime is legalised, with no emergency services available for the twelve hour period concerned, and no repercussions of any kind allowed to follow activities undertaken during the anarchic period. The exceptions to this rule are a weapons grade restriction, and immunity for political figures who have a ranking of ‘ten’ or above, for reasons of national security of course, not because they don’t want to be targets for rape, murder and mutilation. Also, restricting their own illegal activities to just one day in the year may have been a little far fetched even for the film.

It’s from Blumhouse productions, the studio behind the ‘Paranormal Activity’ franchise whose last output, ‘Dark Skies’, did leave Red Dragon wondering what direction they would take their work hence, in order that it survive the endless repetition of their trademark techniques. So, the beginning of this attempt certainly had a lot of promise, a sanctioned explosion and indulgence in anything the human psyche could conceive, one even publicly encouraged by society’s leaders and law makers, suggesting everyone revel in order to ‘purge’ themselves of natural primitive desires – especially intriguing with the billing of lead actors Ethan Hawke and Lena Headey, who is an actor that certainly doesn’t shy away from twisted character portrayals, as evinced by her work on ‘Game of Thrones’ and as lead villain Ma-Ma in last year’s ‘Dredd’ (which was really good incidentally, even though no one went to see it).

Unfortunately, what unfolds is yet another ‘family under peril in their own home’ scenario, exactly like all of Jason Blum’s previous films. It even still features more overuse of security cameras, with the young boy in the house operating a remote controlled one in several scenes, to very little effect in terms of the tension. Everything pans out very, very predictably as it devolves into a simple action movie with the family trying to survive. Some of the action is very pointedly set up at the beginning with one of the neighbours complaining that the new extension to Hawke and Headey’s house has effectively been paid for by the rest of the neighbourhood, them all having bought security systems from the family’s business, and that a lot of them are not happy about it. It’s completely ridiculous, as if they only sold security to that one street, or everyone else in their enormous houses are so poor they can’t afford to do the same thing, or that they were even forced to buy from them for that matter – it’s not like the basic principles of business have changed in this jointly dystopian and utopian future.

It is successful in creating a certain amount of dark atmosphere, and the initial story was a great place to start, but everything else is pretty disappointing, and it still features main characters doing ridiculous things sure to endanger everyone, in true horror film style. Michael Bay is also listed as one of the producers (he co-owns the production company Platinum Dunes which predominantly works on horror films), and it is difficult to say how much overall influence Blumhouse had over the final cut, but given the end product, and the fact they make a big deal of marketing ‘from the producers of Paranormal Activity’, it’s probably fair to assume they had the lion’s share of influence on the film. They certainly found a writer/director with a suitable name to tie in with their image – James DeMonaco, for whom this is his second time behind the camera, though he has notable previous writing credits with ‘The Negotiator’(98) and ‘Assault on Precinct 13’(05).

Star Trek – Into Darkness (2013) 79/100

Posted on May 17, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 79/100 132 Min

The follow up to J.J.Abrams’ bold forage into the Star Trek universe continues where the first film (‘Star Trek’ 09) left off, with the crew of the Enterprise a couple of years farther down their alternative timeline to the original series, and The Federation trying to come to terms with the rather brutal and abrupt events of the last film. It bears a lot in common with its successful predecessor, and it fulfils its mission statement perfectly: remaining true to the essence of Gene Roddenberry’s creation (replete with the music from the sixties playing at the end, mention of Tribbles, Mudd, and Christine Chapel – a.k.a. Nurse Chapel, one of the most commonly recurring secondary members of the original crew) whilst still standing on its own two feet as something creative in its own right and encapsulating the blockbuster outlook the new films have been conceived with.

It’s immensely entertaining, looks fantastic, and is filled with the prerequisite spirit of camaraderie that all great adventure films have in common. Indeed, it is certainly one film to see on the big-screen, and the bigger the better (some scenes were shot on IMAX), and there are relatively few sci-fi films nowadays that display the ‘final frontier’ of space in such an awe inspiring cinematic way, in fact I’d like to see more time spent on this in the third instalment which must surely follow on from the immediate success of this one, and there are a lot of appreciable nice touches, like the flair added to the warp trail effect from the Enterprise. Michael Giacchino returns once more for the score, his music fitting perfectly into the list of memorable and atmospheric Star Trek themes, as does Leonard Nimoy for another brief cameo, his character surely busily preparing New Vulcan and her allies for the arrival of a certain none too friendly cybernetic race in circa one hundred years or so….

The story is captivating, but is also one given to debate afterwards as to whether or not several plot elements hold up under scrutiny. This is exactly the same as ‘Star Trek’ which seen bad guy Nero witness his home planet being destroyed and then going back in time, which would have allowed him to forewarn said planet and possibly prevent its annihilation, or at least evacuate everyone, but instead he decided to go on a mass genocidal killing spree with his advanced ship, for no logical purpose other than to create drama on a suitable scale. The story here riffs very heavily off several elements from its canon of Star Trek source material, and also fits in a sizeable nod to The Godfather part III in the process.

It would perhaps be wise to have Abram’s flair for action and entertainment combined with a bit more of the Star Trek ethos in the next one, but there is no doubt he has injected new life back into the wonderful characters that helped create one of the most enduring legacies in the history of the big and small screen, and the future for this incarnation is wide open, in fact it was a stroke of unfettering genius to break the timeline and take us back to where it all began. Performances are good all round, including from new cast members Alice Eve, Benedict Cumberbatch and Peter Weller (most famous previously for playing Robocop), Simon Pegg has also largely improved his Scottish accent. If you enjoy this, most certainly watch the second of the original series of films, which was arguably the best of the bunch.

Iron Man 3 (2013) 75/100

Posted on April 29, 2013 by The Red Dragon

Rating : 75/100 130 Min

Despite ropey beginnings, this proves to be quite possibly the most enjoyable of the Iron Man series thus far. Written by Shane Black and Drew Pearce, and directed by Black in the stead of Jon Favreau who helmed the previous two, the third instalment finds our hero Tony Stark dealing with the psychological aftermath of the events of ‘Avengers Assemble’ (or ‘The Avengers’ for everyone outside of Britain) whilst once again donning his not so alter-ego of Iron Man to deal with the threat of a terrorist calling himself The Mandarin, played most wonderfully here by Sir Ben Kinglsey. The Mandarin was one of the most frequent villains to appear in the comics, and one of the advantages of writing about a universe which has just been visited by demigods and hordes of war waging aliens, is that the term ‘far fetched’ can no longer be applied.

The story is a lot of fun, and what makes it really work is the injection of comedy which fits both the personality of Stark and the actor portraying him, Robert Downey Jr. At one point he encounters a fan in the guise of a schoolboy, which normally means we are about to be bombarded by irritating cliché, but it actually turns out to be one of the best things about the film. Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow reprise their roles, and both Guy Pearce and the enchanting Rebecca Hall manifest themselves as talented scientists. Ironically Hall’s character has a rant about being called a mere botanist, but websites about the film also seem to enjoy referring to her in the same manner. There’s a nice improvised ‘Assassin’s Creed’ moment, and at the end there’s a series of slightly retro credits with stills from all three films, but no expected extra scene following. However, I do believe there is one if you stay for the entire credits after the retrospective. I shall just have to go and see it again…. (I can now confirm that this is indeed the case, it’s a lengthy wait though)

Apparently some scenes were shot in China purely for the Chinese version of the film, something which is becoming more popular with the Chinese market now being second only to the American one in terms of film revenue, and something which The Red Dragon doesn’t agree with since it’s done purely for commercial reasons, but probably the other footage will appear on the DVD release anyway.

Below is the London press release for the film with some of the cast and crew, seemingly a small cauldron of emotions, from nerves to repressed giggles….

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