Reviews

I’m not an X-Men fan. I know, it’s strange, right? I mean, I’m a comic book fan in general. Iron Man’s a dude. I dig the Hulk. I love all things Batman (except when Joel Silver has messed with it). I geekgasmed all over my trousers in the lead up to THE DARK KNIGHT and actually watching it at an IMAX was like losing my virginity again. But the X-Men? Kinda leave me cold. Even though, on the face of it, it should be pretty awesome. Mutant humans with the ability to do just about anything you can imagine, fighting each other and various other bad things? Why the hell wouldn’t I like that? But I could never get into it. The original X-Men movie, back in 2000, left me feeling indifferent. It was OK, but nothing special. The second one was worse. The third one just plain awful. WOLVERINE: ORIGINS was quite fun, but then, a hard drinking, smoking, swearing brawler with friendly mutton-chops and blades in his hands was always going to be appealing to me.

And so, it was with a feeling of complete indifference that I flashed my Cineworld Unlimited card at a bored usher and got my ticket and a mixed slushie last week. I only went to see it because my buddy wanted to and, well, we’d missed the start of THE HANGOVER PART II.

So, into the darkened room early for a change. Managed to get prime seats. Mainly because the auditorium was pretty much empty. Something I didn’t think was the most fortuitous portent to the movie we were about to watch. On the plus side however, as we were watching a comic book movie, we got the comic book trailer reel… First was THE GREEN LANTERN, which excited me a little (mainly because I have a man crush on Ryan Reynolds). Then came CAPTAIN AMERICA, which excited me a little more (mainly because it looks FREAKIN’ AWESOME). Then we got RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, which intrigued me (mainly because James Franco was doing a ‘learned man’ accent). Presumably because Cineworld were already scraping the comic book movie barrel, they then repeated the APES trailer, which killed the mood and left me feeling indifferent again.

But I digress. I think you understand that I didn’t really give a crap one way or the other about the movie I was about to watch. The opening scenes however, are set in a WWII concentration camp and I found my interest piqued. At first, I couldn’t figure out whether it had been newly filmed or if they were recycling one of the flashbacks from one of the earlier movies. Then, Kevin Bacon. Suddenly, I was transfixed by the German pouring forth from his mouth which seemed authentic and I couldn’t quite work out if he was lip-synching or not. That’s somewhat besides the point though, as the scene itself was very tense and only marginally spoiled by the child actor when it was his turn to scream the longest NOOOOOOO!!! (sorry, NEEEEEEEEIN!!!) since Adolf Vader in Episode 3.

The film very quickly moved on in leaps and bounds, sucking me in and winning me over. Kevin Bacon seemed to enjoy hamming it up as the evil Sebastian Shaw. James McAvoy is an exceptionally talented chap and made for an excellent Charles Xavier – a cocky, beer-swilling, genius ladies man. Similarly, Michael Fassbender did a top notch job in playing Erik Lehnsherr, coming across as a Holocaust-surviving Bond, maybe even slightly cooler. Even Jason Flemyng was pretty good, although I don’t think he actually spoke at all, which might have helped his case.

I loved the whole origins story, seeing how Xavier and Lehnsherr were good friends despite their obvious differences and started the School for the Gifted together was pretty cool. The only little blight on the movie (after the whole NEEEEEEEIN!!! incident) was that when it came time for Fassbender to don Magneto’s helmet, the prop department had obviously measured his noggin wrong and it was clearly too tight. I say that because, every time he slapped it on his dome, his accent turned from gruff-hero-of-indeterminate-country-of-origin to… Well, to Oirish. The only reason I can think of is that the helmet was squeezing his bonce a bit too snugly. It didn’t happen when Kevin Bacon was wearing it.

Helmet business aside, on the whole, I left feeling like I’d just seen a true comic book movie. Full of fantastical, incredible things dancing around a plot that made sense and characters that I, on the whole, cared about at least a little. There was even a Wolverine cameo in it, which made me chuckle more than it should have. Far from being indifferent towards the X-Men now, I’m looking forward to seeing where the story goes next. I just hope Matthew Vaughn is directing again. He’s turned out an X-Men film that is much, much better than mediocre and they’d be idiots to give it to anyone else.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.  So if you think that the Fast & Furious franchise is the epitome of plot, I suggest you watch it before reading further.

After the relatively successful reboot in 2009 it was inevitable that Vin and the Gang were going to make yet another visit to our screens.  Finally, the wait is over, and, as well as being stuffed full of cars and girls bottoms, Fast & Furious 5 comes with added testosterone in the form of The Rock himself, Dwayne Johnson.  In fact, he’s solely responsible for adding a extra dollop of testosterone by sporting a tremendous goatee throughout.  I’m not sure what was going on when they cast Johnson and then requested that he shave his head.  They probably thought he’d look cool, and then when he came in for a reading opposite Vin realised they’d created almost a mirror image so had him grow a goatee.  Either that or they thought that as Vin was always one of the main attractions in the franchise (just look what happened when they let Paul Walker take over for 2 Fast 2 Furious), having Vin’s Twin would mean twice the box office.

Whatever the reason, knowing I was about to watch The Rock chasing down Big Vin and probably having a few fisticuffs definitely increased my excitement level for the movie to just past “mild”.

I would like to point out that I am of the opinion that the F&F franchise is, while fun, crap.  The plot is generally thin, the acting generally wooden, and the dialogue generally awful.  However, there is something to be said for leaving your brain at the door and dribbling into a tub of popcorn for a couple of hours while you watch fast cars and furious men race around, blowing things up with aplomb.  Of course, it also helps that every time a scene calls for a crowd or they need to distract from the plot for a few minutes, they give Booty-R-Us a call and fill the set with half naked girls.  So, that being said, on with the movie.

The cinema was busy, which isn’t a huge surprise for a big franchise I suppose, but what I did find surprising was the number of ordinary people in there.  By that, I mean the audience seemed to mostly be middle-aged couples rather than the sea of hoodies I was expecting.  I still managed to sit in front of The Most Irritating People In The Cinema however.  This time it was a middle-aged Indian lady with her ancient mother who sat there and produced a multipack of Hula Hoops and proceeded to noisily open a packet every twenty minutes whilst merrily discussing the finer details of the plot in Hindu.  It’s the first time in a very long time I’ve been sufficiently needled to turn around and ask them to kindly SHHHH.

The basic plot of the movie is thus.  The brilliantly named Brian (maybe it’s a cool name in America?), played by Paul Walker, is on the lam with his missus Mia (Jordana Brewster) following the events of the reboot FAST & FURIOUS.  I can’t actually remember what happened in that other than ex-Fed Brian helped Mia’s criminal brother Dom (Vin) give the long arm of the law the slip.  And they raced CGI cars through CGI tunnels in a sequence that looked like it had been rendered on an Amstrad 128K+.  Anyway, Brian and Mia are skint and working their way through South America to meet up with Dom.  On the way, they arrive at Vince’s heavily armed shack in Rio de Janeiro.  As far as I can remember, Vince (Matt Schulze) hasn’t reared his head since the original movie, THE FAST & THE FURIOUS when he had arguments with, well with everyone.  So, Brian and Mia turn up at Vince’s, with nothing but the clothes on their back and a really cool classic Nissan Skyline that just happens to be worth about $80,000.  I guess looking fly is more important than eating, judging from how they wolf down the bowl of gruel Vince offers them.

Vince, ever the generous type, offers them a slice of the car thievery action he has lined up.  It involves a set-piece and the MacGuffin and is clearly a bad idea.  Just as they’re setting off to go and steal some impounded cars from a train, who should rock up but the large shoulders of Dom, who immediately decides he’s also in on the action.  The great train robbery doesn’t go so well, but we do discover that one of the cars has a disk containing the locations of a local drug kingpins’ cash stashes.  It just so happens to be the car that Mia drove home in and the entire reason for the robbery in the first place.  Silly Vince.  Obviously, the kingpin is mildly irritated that his disk has disappeared and sends men with guns to recover it.

Somewhere around this time, The Rock pitches up with a gang of badass government bounty hunters, all of whom are trained to peak performance and any of which could kill a person with nothing more than a sneer and a Twiglet.   They get off their plane and within about 5 minutes or so have launched their first attack on Vince’s place, leading to the first Vin/Rock showdown.  It’s intense.  Well, OK, it’s not, but it’s amazing how much sweat is leaking out of The Rock.  I’m not joking, it looks like he’s just stepped out of the shower.  OK, Rio de Janeiro is a hot and no doubt humid place, and The Rock is running around a lot, so I’d expect some sweat… But literally NOBODY else is sweating.  Not even Vin.  Well, maybe Vin a bit.  But compared to The Rock and his glistening goatee, Vin’s pits are merely slightly damp.  In fact, its so pronounced, I’ve taken the liberty of posting a screenshot:

Click for the full effect.  And bear in mind that that screen shot is taken from a scene where The Rock is STANDING STILL.  Not running around, just standing there, acting.  I wondered if Vin had hidden his towels for a lark, or whether The Rock just stole the entire production’s supply of fake sweat, but then I found this photo, taken at the Russian premiere:

It appears that The Rock naturally leaks so badly he has had to hire a man to follow him around mopping his head up with a towel.

Once I’d got over the shock of The Rock’s Natural Spring, I settled down to watch a lengthy set-up to the heist the gang were planning.  More or less two-thirds of the movie are spent detailing Dom and Brian’s meticulous plans for relieving the druglord of his hard earned millions.  We watch them call in their old crews (ie, a whole bunch of the major characters from the previous four movies), each of whom has a speciality that isn’t necessarily going to be helpful, they do practice runs in the underground fortress they’ve acquired to do their planning in, they scout the location of the money, they hone and finesse the plan until it’s foolproof.  But then, The Rock turns up and ruins their plan by arresting Dom, Brian and Mia, providing the perfect excuse for having a big bout of fisticuffs with Vin – unfortunately, it also served to highlight the difference in moisture content between bald heads.  Also, I forgot to mention, Mia is expecting Brian’s little joyrider.  It helped them all to bond earlier on.

You remember I mentioned The Rock’s team of double-hard soldiers?  The ones that have just stormed the underground fortress and arrested everyone?  Well, they’re now hard at work escorting Dom, Brian and Mia, in armoured tank things, directly to the plane waiting to fly them back to face their punishment in the good ole U S of A.  Unfortunately, the drug baron has other ideas and a bunch of his minions pop-up and start popping caps in people’s asses.  Despite The Rock’s soldiers being government trained for those kinds of missions where they can’t send anyone else, the minions have little trouble in mowing them all down with their AKs.  They even manage to wing The Rock.  That’s when Dom and Brian burst from the armoured tank thing, snatch up a gun each and PUT THOSE PUNKS DOWN.  That’s right, an ex-FBI officer and a car thief have little trouble mopping up the mess left when the spec-ops guys failed.  They rescue The Rock, bundle him in the back of the tank thing and race back to their underground lair.

There, The Rock decides that they’re OK after all and that he’ll let them do their last heist, maybe even lend a hand.  This decision is so far out of whack with what we’ve learnt of his character that you just kind of accept it in a daze.

Now, we get to see that plan they’ve just spent 75 minutes polishing put into action.  Except, now the drug dealer is pre-warned that they’re on their way and has tripled the protection around his precious loot.  Oh, and did I mention that he’s got it locked away in a vault inside the local police station?  So, how are they going to get in now?  Their plan, which involved disguises, stolen police cars, crucial timings to get past the security cameras, fake IDs, etc etc etc, is thrown out of the window and replaced with…. THE ROCK IN A TANK.

That’s right, 75 minutes of heist planning goes out of the window completely.  Instead, they put The Rock in a tank and he drives through the side of the building directly into the vault room.  I’m not making this up.

Obviously, with the entire Rio de Janeiro police force shooting at them, they don’t have long to break into the vault, so instead they decide to ignore Newton’s laws and hook a pair of police cars to the front of the huge, armoured vault which is PART OF the building and… drive away with it.  I promise, I’m not making this up.

There follows a chase throughout Rio, although as you’d imagine, it’s impossible to miss a pair of police cars with a huge, armoured vault following it down the road in a shower of sparks, so it’s a bit of a rubbish chase.  Even when the vault knocks down buildings, clearly severely injuring the innocent bystanders within.  Eventually, through using a technology that only people like President Obama have access to, they buy themselves a ’10-second window’ during which time the Rio police can’t see them.  That is a clue that they’re about to pull the old switcheroo, rendering the bit a few minutes later when the bad guy opens the vault for a big reveal completely pointless.  Anyway, the upshot is, they get away with stealing the money and probably killing a few innocent people in the process.  The Rock gives them a head start after shooting the kingpin in the face because he’s happy with his character’s 180-degree turn in values.

We end the movie with Dom, Brian, Mia and a female copper from Rio living the high-life on the beach somewhere.  Except, DUN-DUN-DUUUUUN!, that’s not the end, there’s an in-credit surprise scene!  Despite the plot being thinner than a piece of tracing paper, several people had been gasping throughout as if they were genuinely surprised at the ‘twists’ presented thus far (I guess throwing away 75 minutes of plot development is, technically, a twist), but during the surprise scene, they were blown away by the plot twist that neatly left the franchise open for yet another sequel.  I thought it was weak.

In fact, the only thing about that final scene that surprised me was the cameo from Eva Mendes, reprising her character from 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS.  The Rock is sitting at his desk, staring into space when Eva brings him a file.  “Is it Dom?” he asks.  When told it isn’t, he says he’s not interested.  Leaving me with the strong impression that The Rock had sat at his desk like a dormant Terminator for TWO YEARS waiting for someone to walk in and give him a file with Dom’s whereabouts so he could spring into action again.  Anyway, Eva perched her shapely bottom on the edge of his desk and requested that he open the file, which he did… Inside is a photo of…. DUN-DUN-DUUUUUUN! Michelle Rodriguez’s Letty, Dom’s ex-girlfriend he spent the entire fourth film avenging.  That’s right, she’s supposed to have died! “Do you believe in ghosts?” Eva purrs, as the audience took a sharp intake of breath.  Fade to black.

Worst. Twist. Ever.

For all that though, it was enough fun that I enjoyed watching it.  I just wish other people would see it as the popcorn fluff it is and not think of it as anything, you know, actually good.  In fact, a girl I work with asked if I’d seen it.  I got as far “Yes, it’s sh…” when she broke in with “Isn’t it amazing?”.  What?  Seriously?  “Yes, the end was brilliant and the bit in the credits blew me away…”

I didn’t realise it, but apparently I work with the lowest common denominator.

[Movie 316 / Day 335]

After the success of GREMLINS, it was decided that a sequel would make plenty of money and so in due course, one got the green light. Rumour has it that director Joe Dante said he’d only do it if he could do whatever he wanted.

What he wanted, apparently, was to take the original formula of horror-comedy, remove much of the horror and pump it full of slapstick and farce. As such, the movie is a poor relation to the original. Where GREMLINS felt fresh, this feels hackneyed. It starts off strongly, with Billy now working for a massive company in their skyscraper headquarters. Via a series of coincidences, he ends up with Gizmo hidden in his desk drawer. Unfortunately, a janitor comes along to fix a drinking water fountain just as Gizmo decides to pop his head out and have a look around. You can probably see where this is going.

Eventually, we have a whole skyscraper full of the evil Gremlins, some of whom are mutated thanks to Christopher Lee and his freaky science lab – one is half spider, one can talk, one is made of electricity, etc. Also in the skyscraper are a whole bunch of TV studios which give rise to lots of comedic situations for the Gremlins to pop up in, including a fair few in-jokes.

Overall though, it just doesn’t work as well as the original thanks to the totally different feel of the movie. It’s amusing in places, but it too frequently borders on the ridiculous for my taste.

Rating:  

[ IMDB rating: 6.0 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 106 mins | Buy it! ]

[Movie 315 / Day 335]

The latest live action made-for-TV movie of the popular kids show, ALIEN SWARM is based on the Alien Force version of the cartoon where Ben and Gwen have grown into their teens and have teamed up with Kevin E. Levin (who, as my sketchy knowledge of the show tells me, was a baddie in the earlier cartoons).

Anyway, the three kids now roll around in Kevin’s cool green car and put the smackdown on various aliens, trespassing on Earth. They investigate a group of shady teenagers who are trying to flog some black-market alien technology. Before our intrepid heroes can do anything about it though, a shady character in a trench-coat and hat takes control of the technology for sale – it turns out to be nano-bot things that fly around and infest people, taking over their minds and assimilating them into a hive mentality. With help from one of Ben’s childhood friends, an ex-Plumbers daughter called Elena, the friends have to solve the mystery of the flying nano-bots before the entire world is assimilated. I should probably explain here that members of the underground organisation dedicated to fighting alien threat are called Plumbers and Elena’s father was a scientist working for them – not that he’s handy at unblocking drains.

The plot is ludicrously simple and blindingly obvious (the twist is apparent within about 15 minutes of the opening credits) – I know the movie is based on an animated series and aimed at kids, but that’s is no excuse. The cartoon generally has better, more involving plots than this. The characters somehow come across as flat and boring in the movie, too – I guess because the writers felt that the backstory would already be very familiar to their audience. Fair enough, but I’d rather have seen more character development than there is. It seems the writers felt that in order to connect to any teenagers watching the movie, the best course of action would be to have all of the teenagers in the movie whine more.

On the plus side, the production values of this movie have been ramped up exponentially compared to the awful earlier live action flick, BEN 10: RACE AGAINST TIME. Yes, the style has changed from bright and colourful to dark and moody – but that’s just following the natural progression of the animated series. What really helps ALIEN SWARM to stand out in comparison to it’s predecessor is the huge ramp up in the quality of the CGI (Ben’s aliens look far less cartoon-like in this, for instance) and the step up in the quality of both acting and the general writing (the dialogue is much, much improved). For the most part, this actually looks like a movie rather than a feature-length episode.

So, it got some things right, it got some things wrong – if only the writers had been allowed to create a story to rival some of those seen in the animated series, this could have been an above average tie-in. As it is, it sits below par. Having said all of that, my 6-year old son, who is a huge Ben 10 fan, absolutely loved it (helped in no small part by having a real Kevin’s Cruiser to gawp at). I guess that says something, considering he’s well below the age I imagine ALIEN SWARM to be aimed at.

Rating:  

[ IMDB rating: 4.8 / 10 | IMDB link | Running time: 90 mins | Buy it! ]