THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD 3D - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Day Seven

As we approach the centenary of the end of World War One, Peter Jackson has created a technically superb film and audio collage of mostly English troops serving in the trenches of France and Belgium. He was commissioned to do so by 14-18 NOW and used archive visuals from the Imperial War Museum and audio interviews with serving soldiers from the BBC.  One is impressed by his facility to simply edit down this wealth of material to create a coherent narrative that elegantly pairs visuals and audio - from declaration of war, to the rush to enlist, to basic training, arriving at the front, trench warfare, the big battle, recovering from injury, taking prisoners, and then the ceasefire. It ends with the melancholy of demobilisation, the lack of jobs and even interest in the war experience.  Added to this editing work, Jackson then brings his technical expertise to clean up the media, run it at modern video speed, and colourise it.  He introduces colour as the troops reach the front line and takes it away as they leave, giving us the impression that it's the front line that really matters and is unique to their experience. The effect of all this - but particularly the subtle animation and sound effects -are to take what can be dusty old photos and bring them to life - to make them more vivid and urgent.  I'll be honest and say that this was NOT however the deeply emotional experience that some had predicted for me. Maybe that's because I love history and have no problem being interested in old media.  But I was moved and rightly shocked by the coloured photos of men with gangrene/trench foot, or just a deceptively simple picture of yellow mustard gas rolling across a field. 

Perhaps one of the reasons that I felt distanced from the film is that the faces and voices of the men fighting the way were so consistently English and white.  We sometimes here the Canadians or the Germans refer to but we never hear from them. There's one photo early on showing West Indian and Indian troops arriving in France but no contribution from them either.  Maybe this is just a result of using a set of archives that are not diverse - if so I am dismayed that 14-18 NOW - or Jackson himself, didn't feel it was worth collaborating with other countries' archives to supplement them.  It's ironic that Jackson dedicates the film to his own grandfather and yet there are precious few colonial voices here.

Some might say I am being precious - but I am truly sick and tired of seeing World War One films that have such a narrow focus of concern and are so unrepresentative - and basically historically misleading. Britain at that time was a global empire and imperial troops showed up all over the place.  It's deeply disrespectful not to give them their voice too.

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD had its world premiere at London 2018. It has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated 15.

DOCTOR STRANGE

DOCTOR STRANGE is a patchwork quilt of a Marvel movie.  Pleasant enough to watch, but undeserving of a second view, in which almost every character, action sequence or funny line echoes another film, and the only originality comes not from the central character but from Tilda Swinton.  It's visually arresting but emotionally hollow mid-tier Marvel of a kind that - with a release calendar chock full of B-grade comic book characters -  I have become rather bored by. 

As with IRON MAN, Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a rich materialistic egotistical genius brought low by a severe accident, who supplements his physical healing process with "super powers".   As with SHERLOCK, Strange has a perfect memory and a fondness for being right.  As with StarChild, Strange has a fondness for cheesy seventies hits.  Strange was a successful but cocky surgeon who texts while driving and ends up in an horrific car crash that renders his hands unfit for surgery.  In desperation, he journeys to Nepal where he finds a mystical Jedi Master, sorry, Ancient One (Tilda Swinton), who puts him through a training regime straight out of EMPIRE STRIKES BACK.  I kid you not, there's even a "judge me by my size, do you" sequence. It turns out that, quelle surprise, Strange has a rare aptitude for astral projection and drawing energy from other dimensions of the multiverse to cast magic spells.  He even gets a cool gadget that allows his to reverse time.  (Do you think that will be significant?!) He also gets a HARRY POTTER style set of magical gadgets, including a sentient cloak that actually reminded me a bit of Terry Pratchett's luggage.  So armed, he goes off to fight the Ancient One's former pupil turned evil villain (Mads Mikkelsen) who wants to open Earth up to an eviller villain whose name sounds like Dormouse.  Oh yes, I forgot that Strange has an ex-girlfriend played by Rachel McAdams who's also a surgeon but she has nothing to do but simper.  He also has sidekicks at his zen school played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Benedict Wong who exist to show a moral centre and comic relief respectively. 

TERMINATOR GENISYS

TERMINATOR GENISYS is a straight forward film that makes no sense. In its first half hour we are in 2029 AD, in a post-apocalyptic world where a rebel leader called John Connor (Jason Clarke) leads surviving humanity in a fight against a sentient computer programme called Skynet.  The rebels destroy the computer but not before it sends back a Terminator robot to 1984 to kill John Connor's mother.  So he sends back his number two, Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney), to intercept the Terminator and save Sarah Connor (Emilia Clarke).  The surprise is that Sarah and an aged Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger) are already tooled-up and ready, both for the original Terminator (young CGI Arnie) and Reese.  In the second half hour of the film, Good Arnie, Sarah and Reese realise that they haven't prevented Judgement Day, the day when Skynet killed humanity, but merely postponed in to 2017.  The humans time travel forward to 2017 and are greeted by an even older Good Arnie and a suspicious  J K Simmons with a plan to blow up Skynet again before the release of its deadly Genisys programme.  The third half hour sees the biggest plot twist in the film which, once you see it, you'll know it was coming. And this sets us up for the inevitable action packed showdown at Skynet.

JURASSIC WORLD

I'm not entirely sure what the producer's saw in Colin Trevorrow's indie comedy SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED that made them think, "this director has what it takes to direct a big budget effects-heavy action film" but boy, he can! JURASSIC WORLD is the best film in the franchise since the original, and while not entirely without its problems, it's a handsome way to spend a couple of hours in the cinema. 

The movie picks up as if the events of the second and third film hadn't happened.  We are twenty years on from the "teething problems" on Isla Nubar and arrogant money-hungry humans have learned nothing.  Jurassic World is now a successful theme park, but in order to keep the customers happy, park manager Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) has sanctioned the genetic modification of dinosaurs to create a new attraction - the Indominus Rex. Oh, and by the way, those insanely violent Velociraptors are still in the park because some idiot wants to use them for military purposes. Naturally, the Indominus escapes its enclosure and we soon learn that a) it's not socialised and b) it can plan complex strategic attacks.  All of which the wrangler Owen (Chris Pratt) had warned them of. And this being a Spielberg film, into the mix we throw two kids - brothers Zach and Gray (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) and a T-Rex.

Everything about the dinosaurs, action, soundtrack and sense of awe and wonder is perfect in this film. It's less scary than the original, which I rewatched recently, but it's going for a younger audience.  The problems start when we look at the characters and the relationship between Claire and Owen in particular.  Dear Hollywood, does every successful businesswoman need to be emotionally frigid?  Does every powerful really woman really just need a hunky old-fashioned man's man to sort her out?  And it's not like Chris Pratt has it any better as Owen - shorn of the humour that made GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY such a hit, he's essentially just an objectified beef-cake.  And where the two kids in the original movie had a really lovely mixture of vulnerability and moxie, here they're essentially just Macguffins for the adults to protect. 

Still, for all that, I do like this film. It has all the cynicism about human nature that infected Michael Crichton's book. And where that dark element was only channelled by Jeff Goldblum in the original film (I HATED the transformation of the park owner into a cuddly wide-eyed grandpa) at least in this version Irrfhan Khan has the evil charisma of a true DNA-meddling entrepreneur.

JURASSIC WORLD has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie went on global release the weekend of June 11th and finally rolls into Japan on August 5th.

AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Joss Whedon had an almost impossible task to pull of in his AVENGERS sequel.  He had to give enough time to the storylines and character arcs of all the major superheroes we've come to know and love in the increasingly complex Marvel Cinematic Universe.  He had to also make room for new additions - not one, but three bad guys, and a nebulous almost a-ethical good guy.  He had to create enough CGI heavy wow moments of action and stunts. But he also had to give the movie heart. And all this in just over two hours.

JUPITER ASCENDING

You can listen to  a podcast review of the film below or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes:



I can't work out whether JUPITER ASCENDING is a cunning satire on early twenty-first century capitalism and Hollywood's obsession with youth or just a steaming mess.  

The Wachowski Siblings have created a world in which in human beings are just a commodity, harvested by oligarchs to create a serum for eternal youth.  The market-leaders in this harvesting business are three siblings of the Abrasax family.  The elder is Balem played by Eddie Redmayne in a performance so camp it goes beyond parody and into plain bad.  His rivals are his sister Kalique (Tuppence Middleton) and playboy brother Titus (Douglas Booth).  Humans are playthings for these future gods, until they discover that Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis), an earthling cleaning lady, has the exact same DNA as their murdered mother.  Clearly all three siblings now have an incentive to find Jupiter, register her as their mother reincarnated, get her to claim title to the corporation they inherited, and run the world through her.  I say clearly because none of the above is clear or makes any sense.  And that's before I get to the space police staffed with cross-bred human-animal combos with angelic wings (Channing Tatum and Sean Bean).

Random DVD Round Up - POMPEII

In fairness, we don't look to Paul W S Anderson for films of complexity and artistic daring.  DEATH RACE and RESIDENT EVIL and MORTAL KOMBAT are movies designed for teenage boys that celebrate violence and musclebound men.  No cliche of dialogue is left unused in films of hollow CGI and scarce intelligence.   What's actually amazing is that actors of quality are still willing to star in them. His latest cinematic offering is a sword and sandal epic called POMPEII which borrows heavily from GLADIATOR but has none of its swagger and style.  In fact, its closer to SPARTACUS in terms of cheap CGI, cheesy dialogue and cardboard cut out heroes and villains - but without the soft porn.  GAME OF THRONES' Kit Harrington has packed on the muscle to play the hero - a Celtic gladiator called Milo.  Naturally, he strikes up an unlikely love affair with the aristocratic Cassia (Emily Browning), inspiring the anger of the evil Senator Corvinus (Kiefer Sutherland doing god knows what as an accent/speech impediment.) This leads to a TITANIC style showdown of unsurpassed stupidity and vacuity. I cared not a jot for any of the characters and simply grew more and more irate and how brazenly the cut and paste narrative had stolen plot devices and characters from better films. No matter how much you think you are in love with Jon Snow, you MUST avoid this film at all costs.  And to be frank, as much as I love Kit Harrington in GAME OF THRONES, he this film shows little evidence of any ability to carry of the leading role in a major film.

POMPEII is a POMPEII has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie was released in spring 2014 and is now available to rent and own.  It goes on release in Turkey on October 31st 2014.

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is a handsome, earnest if somewhat hamfisted sci-fi action movie that dazzles visually but grates emotionally.  

Five years after the events of the reboot, Caesar (Andy Serkis), the genetically modified intelligent ape has founded a colony and a family in the forests outside of San Francisco.  His original owner (James Franco) is presumed dead from the deadly Simian Virus that has reduced mankind to small isolated survivor groups of the genetically immune.  The structure of the story is symmetrical - the apes and humans have to fashion a new society and decide how to engage with their enemy. In both camps we have the peaceful diplomats - wise Caesar and scientist Malcolm (Jason Clarke).  And in both camps we have the battle-scarred and distrustful war-mongerers - Koba (Toby Kebbell) and Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).  

MALEFICENT 3D

I fell in love with MALEFICENT despite its obvious weaknesses. Maybe it's because I'm one of those kids who was terrified by the Disney villain but also kind of wanted to be her! She was wicked and sarcastic and marvelous in the way that made Alan Rickman a scene stealer in the Kevin Costner ROBIN HOOD - that supercilious British aristocratic charm that makes Americans fawn over Dame Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey. That, and I'm a sucker for a gothic fairy tale - and a subversive Angela Carter investigation of the sexual motives at their heart.

So in this movie, per Linda Woolverton's (BEAUTY AND THE BEAST) script, Maleficent was once a wonderfully romantic innocent child who happened to fall in love with an ambitious man who used her cruelly, physically and violently to gain the throne. Mutilated and bent on revenge she curses the new King Stefan's daughter Aurora and he descends into paranoia, sending his daughter off to a cottage in a forest guarded by three good fairies. But in another twist, they are self-absorbed and incompetent, and it's only Maleficent's at first-reluctant, and then eager, care that keeps the girl safe. In a wonderful irony, the girl herself is not insensible of this care, calling Maleficent her "fairy godmother", and as all of us who have seen FROZEN know, true love's kiss can be recast - this time as a maternal rather than sibling bond.

Am I spoiling the ending? No, I think it's telegraphed widely beforehand.  As soon as we see the perfectly cast, almost fey Elle Fanning as Aurora gushing over her fairy godmother, the brilliantly comedically uncomfortable Maleficent, we know where the story is heading.  And perhaps this is the place to point out how marvelous Angelina Jolie in the role. Of course, her looks are perfect for Maleficent, and enhanced further by super-sharp prosthetic cheekbones.  But it's her rarely scene comedic acting that seals the deal  - the bemusement and discomfort when the cute baby Aurora (played her real-life daughter) asks to be picked up, or the patronising amusement as she prevents the baby from wandering off a cliff.  The supporting cast is similarly well appointed. I loved Sam Riley as Maleficent's soft-hearted "evil henchman" Diaval - and I'm sort there's fanfic being written about the two of them as we speak.  But how lovely to see Juno Temple as one of the three good fairies too.

So kudos to all involved - for Linda Woolverton's well-thought out script, to Peter Stromberg for his direction which is 9/10th amazing production design, to the charismatic Jolie and the believable relationship with Fanning's Aurora. If there's any false note it's perhaps Sharlto Copley's almost method-insane Scottish King Stefan, curiously grim and out of step with the almost self-consciously arch delivery of Angelina Jolie. He seemed to be in quite another film.

MALEFICENT has a running time of 97 minutes and is rated PG. MALEFICENT went on global release on May 28th. It will open in Japan on July 5th and in Bangladesh on August 6th.

GODZILLA - 3D IMAX

An excruciating confession for a cinephile: I've never seen the iconic original Godzilla movie nor any of its sequels. I may have watched Roland Emmerich's Matthew Broderick-starring remake but I've blanked it out of my memory. So I come to this new GODZILLA with few expectations and little knowledge.  What did I get? A movie that impressed me with its moody visuals and overwhelming soundtrack & sound design - a movie dripping with first-rate character actors and earnest good intentions.  But, sad to report, it's also a movie that just left me cold  - that landed like the proverbial dead fish on the screen.  And when you start to really pick it apart, you realise that underneath all that gorgeous production design what you have is a pretty hackneyed and muddled script with cardboard cut-out characters and less courage than it might have done.

So here's the story.  An earthquake hits a Japanese nuclear plant (too soon?) and a young kid loses his scientist mother (Juliette Binoche - earnest cameo).  Fast forward twenty odd years and that kid's now an army bomb disposal expert (Aaron Johnson) sceptical of his father's belief that it wasn't an earthquake at all.  He follows his dad (Bryan Cranston with hair!) to the original site, witnesses the monster first hand, and returns to the USA via Hawaii in the wake of its attacks. Caught up in the military response he colludes in a plan to lure the monster with a nuke, off which it apparently feeds. But of course, it's not so simple. Because that monster is itself being hunted by another larger foe- Godzilla himself. 

I love the idea that Godzilla is not the key threat and the twist in the tail that only the Japanese scientist (Ken Watanabe) at first perceives.  I also like the way in which the screenwriters, Max Borenstein and David Callaham (THE EXPENDABLES) try to respect the original timeline of the Godzilla movies and create a kind of continuity.  But I hate pretty much everything else that has to do with story.  The way that each generation of men has to have a picture perfect family with a cute kid. How we know the good guys are good guys because they are good fathers. How the hero's wife (Elizabeth Olsen) has nothing to do but look concerned and cry.  How actors as good as Sally Hawkins get lost in the chaos.  If the movie had had any balls whatsoever, someone in that family nut wouldn't have made it.  There's just a complete lack of relief from good people looking earnest and trying their damnedest to help out. Even the bloody monster isn't exempt.

All of which is a crying shame because the young British director Gareth Edwards (MONSTERS)  has made a quite stunning leap from micro-budget creature-features into the big time with a confident and visually wondrous palette in GODZILLA. I guess it's just a shame that his movie didn't have some of the wit of PACIFIC RIM because it sure as hell has the 2-D characters.

GODZILLA has a running time of 124 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK.

GODZILLA is on release in the USA, Belgium, Switzerland, Egypt, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden,  the UAE, Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, the Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, the UK, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, South Korea, Kuwait, Lebanon, Montenegro, Macedonia, Mexico, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Portugal, Serbia, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Slovakia, Thailand, Ukraine, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Estonia, Spain, India, Indonesia, Iceland, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia, Panama, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Taiwan, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, South Africa, Afghanistan, Fiji, Liechtenstein, Bangladesh, Iran and Trinidad and Tobago. It opens on May 22nd in Cambodia and Pakistan;  and on June 13th in China and on July 25th in Japan.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER 3D brought to you by proud sponsor, Edward Snowden

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is an utterly satisfying comic-book summer blockbuster but I wonder how certain members of the audience will view its earnest liberal political agenda.  Which is to say that I agree with absolutely everything this movie says about the trade-off between freedom and security, but even I found the messaging rather heavy-handed. So much so that this movie could've been sponsored by Wikileaks or the Edward Snowden defence fund.  That said, it's the most politically engaged, elegantly written Marvel movie, so I'm really not complaining.

As the movie opens we see the formerly cryogenically frozen super soldier Captain America unfrozen and working for SHIELD  As well as catching up on fifty years worth of pop culture, he's also struggling to reconcile his earnest no-nonsense good guy values with his current job enacting secret missions in a world without clear-cut enemies. His boss, Nick Fury, isn't helping by being all paranoid and on the verge of launching three super-fighters capable of taking out terrorist threats before they happen, with the co-operation of World Security Council chief Alexander Pierce.  But soon Fury is the subject of an assassination attempt, Captain America himself is under attack, and Hydra is rearing its many-heads once again.  His only allies are the newly contemplative Natasha Romanoff aka The Black Widow and the similarly earnest Sam Wilson aka The Falcon.

There's a lot to love here without the politics. The dialogue is smart, if not as constantly wise-cracking as an IRON MAN movie.  I love the genuine chemistry between Chris Evans' Steve Rogers and Scarlett Johansson's Natasha.  I love the elegant way in which the scriptwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) give us the prequel backstory by way of a museum exhibit.   The plot has a pleasing complexity without seeming wilfully obscure, and it allows minor characters a chance to shine - not least Sebastian Stan in what could've been a thankless cameo role as The Winter Soldier but drips with melancholy.  I even love the behind the scenes stuff - particularly the subtle ageing make-up on Hayley Atwell's Peggy Carter, the gorgeous hand to hand combat choreography, and the cinematography from Trent Opaloch (DISTRICT 9) that's less than the motion sickness of Bourne but still engrossing enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. So kudos to the unlikely directors, the Russo brothers, for pulling it all together.

But this movie ultimately stands or falls on how you feel about its politics because, believe you me, this kind of earnest engagement with a highly contemporary issue is bold and brave, not least because of its ramifications for SHIELD within the real-life complex commercial universe that Marvel has established.  I love that beyond all the fighting this is ultimately a thoughtful, provocative and bold film - one that, like Captain America himself, has the courage of its convictions and a kind of audacity that is rare in a summer blockbuster.  That audacity caps itself off in the anti-casting of arch-liberal Robert Redford as a hawk, and the wonderfully subversive final scene involving Jenny Agutter.  We've come a long way from THE RAILWAY CHILDREN!

CAPTAIN AMERICA was a great summer blockbuster.  Its sequel is something more than that.  A great entertaining movie but one that also has the courage to pose serious questions about our world and doesn't patronise the audience with easy answers.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLIDER has a running time of 136 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for infrequent moderate violence.

CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER is released this week in the USA, France, the UK, Belgium, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Argentina, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Spain. It is released on April 3rd in the UAE, Australia, Greece, Hong Kong, Macedonia, New Zealand, Russia and Thailand; on April 4th in Bulgaria, Canada, China, Estonia, India, Iceland, Lithuania, Mexico, Peru, Romania, the USA (wide release) and Vietnam; on April 9th in Serbia; on April 10th in Brazil, Hungary and Cambodia; on April 11th in Turkey; on April 19th in Japan.

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE 3D

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE is a highly enjoyable trashy ancient history action romp with a far better technical and historical pedigree than one might, at first, believe.  Rather than a straightforward sequel, the story of this film envelopes and gives context to the narrower, purer story of the original film. In that movie, we see King Leonidas of Sparta lead his personal bodyguard of 300 men to the hot gates, only to be betrayed by a hunchback to their deaths at the hands of the Persians. As this  movie opens we see Spartan Queen Gorga (Lena Headey) sailing with her men into battle, and recounting the back story of those events.  She takes us back to the Battle of Marathon when the Athenian general Themistocles (Sullivan Stapleton - ANIMAL KINGDOM) - killed Darius I, inspiring the anger of his son Xerxes that manifested itself in the current Persian wars.  Gorga tells us of how her husband was killed (the events of the first movie) and the bulk of the action sees the simultaneous sea battles with Themistocles pitted against Xerxes' navy - commanded by his female commander Artemesia (the always brilliantly bonkers Eva Green.)  There's a lot of awesome tactical stuff, some ludicrously gory battles, and a stupidly over the top sex scene between the two opposing commanders. (Because - well - just because).  And then finally we get the Battle of Salamis, where after the death of Leonidas, Sparta finally joins its ships to the Greek alliance.  (If you think that's a spoiler, it's bloody 2500 year old history!)

There's a lot to like here.  The battles and tactics are all mostly accurate and the aerial shots mean that even in the midst of all the OTT video-game style violence you still have a clear idea of what's going on.  The acting isn't bad - certainly not as bad as Gerard Butler's Scots inflected "THIS IS SPARTAAAA!" and the style is exactly the hyper-stylised Zack Snyder style of the original, albeit directed by Noam Munro (SMART PEOPLE).  I really loved the way the movie was written, with a lot of back story handled deftly and the nice enveloping of the original movie. All in all, it just felt like an awesome live action version of Total War.

As to the actual history,  the basic outline of the story is true.  There really was a war that united the Greek city states against the Persian empire, and Themistocles really was the leading Athenian politician who commanded the navy, although that post technically went to a Spartan called Eurybides who doesn't appear in the movie.  The Spartans really didn't believe in democracy but united against a common enemy, although in fact they only supplied 16 ships against the Athenians' 180.  The battle tactics we see are mostly true - particularly the awesome battle where the Greeks lure the Persians into a narrow inlet where the size of their fleet works against them.  It is, sadly, unlikely that Queen Gorgo led the Spartans into battle, but Artemesia really was the leading Persian naval commander, and highly influential on Xerxes. She was a skilled tactician, foresaw that Xerxes should have invaded Greece by land rather than sea, but didn't die in battle. Nor was she a gang-raped slave. Rather she was Queen Regent of a Persian client state.

Which neatly brings us to the issue of alleged misogyny. On that subject it has to be admitted that we only have to wait a few minutes before we get a gratuitous boob shot, but set against that so much of 300 is about the objectification of male bodies - so much so that one might declare this a camp classic.  Admittedly, the decision to make Artemesia a sexual slave in order to motivate her vengeance is questionable, as is the fetishisation of her blood lust.  On the other hand, in the pivotal sex scene with Themistocles, when he attempts to take her from behind she turns the tables on him.  Still, I guess there is a problem with the fact that she ultimately dies (all strong women must be punished) - then again, Queen Gorga leads her troops into battle.  So, overall, 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE has far more slippery politics than one might expect, and it's also the case that we have a sword-swinging action movie where the two most recognizable stars - both of whom go into battle - are women!

In other words, this may well be the first movie franchise that has gone so far round the circle of misogyny that it's actually come back out as proto-feminist.  But maybe I'm just over thinking it!

300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE went on global release on the weekend of March 7th. It has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated R in the USA and 15 in the UK for strong bloody violence, strong sex and sexual violence.

47 RONIN

In eighteenth century Japan, a young half-Japanese half-English boy called Kai is taken in by Lord Asano. Suspected as an outsider, Kai grows up and falls in love with Asano's daughter Mika. The problem is that the evil Lord Kira also wants Mika, and uses a Witch to manipulate Asano into attacking him and therefore forfeiting his life.  Mika must now marry Kira, unless Lord Asano's now leaderless Samurai, joined by Kai, and armed with magical swords, defy their Shogun's orders and take revenge on Kira. 

With the exception of the character of Kai, and the supernatural aspects,  this is the traditional Japanese story of the 47 Ronin which has inspired many a film, book, opera, print and TV show. In this latest big budget Hollywood outing, it is made accessible for a Western audience with the inclusion of the outsider character, Kai.  Sadly, this late inclusion is obviously unnecessary.  The Kai character doesn't really add to the story - the on-screen love story doesn't convince - and the charismatic gravitational pull of the film always seems to be toward Oishi, the chief Ronin.  It is then, Hiroyuki Sanada's film and not Keanu Reeves'.  The emotional search for justice, the deep trauma, the nobility in going outside of the Samurai code and the horrible price paid - that is all the narrative arc of Oishi not Reeves, and maybe reflect not just his better lines, but also his greater acting ability.  I think there is something in the screenwriters actually acknowledging this in a key final scene where it is Oishi and not Kai who holds up a key totem.

I heard about 47 RONIN long before I saw it. It felt like The Hollywood Reporter had been running articles on it for literally years, calling it a troubled production in the same breath as JOHN CARTER and WORLD WAR Z.  The director, Carl Rinsch, had never directed a feature length film before, let alone one budgeted at $170m.  The movie was originally meant to come out in 2012 and then got bumped into 2013, and then it got moved back from Feb 13 to Christmas.  And it turned out Universal Pictures were writing down the losses over a year before it even hit movie screens.  Some blamed the director.  Carl Rinsch hadn't directed a feature film before and, among other things, the entire final battle sequence had to be reshot.

But I don't think the movie is an utter failure. In fact I rather enjoyed it.  You just have to cruise past the Keanu scenes and just watch it for Oishi/Sanada, the lavish costumes and beautiful sets.  I don't think the movie needed the supernatural element, but you can't help but find the Witch's transformations elegant.  And who cares if the final battle had to be reshot? It's amazing! All of which adds up to say that inside this over-long and over-altered film is a leaner more faithful Japanese film waiting to get out. Someone just needs to take to it with FinalCut Pro.

47 RONIN is on global release. It has a running time of 118 minutes and is rated PG-13.

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG - he's not even the centre of his own poster, goddamit!

So, I'm a great fan of Tolkien, going so far as to podcast in great detail on Lord of the Rings (links here) and despite the changes, I really loved Peter Jackson's movies.  By contrast, I found the first HOBBIT film dull and tonally uneven - never quite knowing whether it wanted to be the whimsical children's book or an altogether darker, more complex prequel to LOTR, using material from the Silmarillion and Appendices.  The result was a movie that alternated between troll-ish buffoonery and deep dark elvish foreboding, and never quite sat right with me. So I went into its sequel, the middle film of the trilogy, with low expectations.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself? And I'm sure there are lots of people who will watch these films without having read the book - and, indeed, if you didn't see the first HOBBIT film, Jackson has provided a handy little catch-up prologue at the start of this one.  

Bilbo Baggins is a small hobbit living in a high fantasy world of trolls, elves, dwarves and dragons.  He's taken along on an adventure by thirteen dwarves, led by the mighty Thorin Oakenshield, to find a dragon called Smaug and to trick him into giving up the Arkenstone - a jewel which will allow Thorin to reclaim the kingdom that Smaug pillaged.  When we meet the band of travellers in this instalment, they run into a giant wolf-warg called Beorn, as well as some giant spiders, before finding themselves imprisoned by the elf-king Thranduil, his son Legolas, and a comely female Elf called Tauriel. They escape though, and find themselves in a desolate Laketown, hiding with a smuggler called Bard, before entering the Lonely Mountain itself, to face off with the dragon, Smaug.  

As movies go, this one has its fare share of CGI heavy adventure sequences - some of which will surely delight children.  But I found it hard to care about any of the characters. If the hero is Bilbo, as the title suggests, why does he sort of disappear from view for the middle section of the film? (I mean, he doesn't even get centre stage in his own poster!) Are we meant to care about Thorin - he's heroic but also arrogant and cold.  And what are we meant to make of Tauriel, a newly invented character meant to redress Tolkien's lack of women?  Well, maybe I'd be able to take this more seriously if the writers had made her a genuinely independent kick-ass warrior, rather than foisting her into the middle of an awkward love triangle between Legolas and Kili, a dwarf! And are the actors meant to be playing it straight - angst-ridden men on the verge of war (Thorin, Bard) - or camping it up (Thranduil, the Master of Laketown)? Lee Pace's Thranduil is camper than Alan Cumming as Emcee.  And if the pacing is less stretched than the first film, there are still twenty minute sections of this one that left me bored.

That said, when this second movie works, it really works!  I loved everything to do with Martin Freeman's Hobbit and Benedict Cumberbatch's Smaug, even if Smaug does commit that fatal Bond villain error of not killing his enemy immediately. I loved Evangeline Lilly's Tauriel when she was arguing with Lee Pace's Thranduil about taking a less insular stance toward the evil in the forest.  And I loved the idea of building out Bard's character so that we actually care about him when we get to the fateful events of the next instalment.

Still, I can't help but think that this flick would've been better of as two films at most, or at best, as a miniseries.  Or perhaps it's a question of expectations? Instead of calling these films "The Hobbit" maybe Jackson should've called them genuine prequels to Lord of the Rings. That way, he wouldn't have been hamstrung by the more childish elements - tricking trolls and escaping in wine barrels - and could've steeped himself in the rise of Sauron to his heart's delight? 

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG has a running time of 161 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK for moderate violence and threat. 

THE HOBBIT: THE DESOLATION OF SMAUG is on release pretty much everywhere except Vietnam, where it opens on January 3rd; China, where it opens on February 8th; and Japan, where it opens on February 28th.

FROZEN - Disney Passes Bechdel

FROZEN is as delightful as it is intelligent - the best Disney film since BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and the only Disney film that passes the Bechdel test. Finally we get a film about Princesses where being a Princess isn't really the key point - a film about women who learn to be confident in themselves and protect each other - a movie that thoroughly de-constructs the Disney mythos.

Of course, I didn't know all that when I walked into the cinema, depressed by the cricket and searching for some light entertainment. In fact, I pretty much hated this movie for the first twenty minutes of its runtime.  It seemed to conform to every Disney stereotype about beautiful but isolated orphaned princesses, defined entirely by their relationships with their absent fathers and handsome lovers.  The kingdom of Arendelle seemed like a place created by the Disney of the 1940s and 1950s - it felt like SHREK had never happened.  

Or so I thought.  That was before FROZEN broke every cliché it had so skillfully set up - to create a movie that's better than a lampoon, because it actually has positive values that it espouses. 

So here's the deal. Princess Elsa is the snow queen of fairytale legend.  When she was a little girl her powers almost killed her little sister Anna, so her parents locked her up until she could control her powers.  Her life is one of suppression and repression until her coronation day when a furious argument with her un-comprehending sister sparks an angry icestorm of epic proportions. Elsa flees to the mountains, content to finally express her powers without fear, but wilfully optimistic Anna pursues her, sure that sisterly love can conquer all, and lift the icestorm that has frozen the kingdom. What follows is a struggle but not a classic Disney fight with an external evil.  Elsa needs to decide whether she wants to be a classic villain or whether she really does care.  While Anna needs to decide who she loves more - her sister, her fiance - the handsome Prince Hans, or the charming peasant Kristoff who has helped her up the mountain.

What follows is a movie of unsurpassed delight. Anna's aw-shucks goofy loveliness is grating right up until we realise what this movie is trying to say, at which point Kristen Bell's portrayal becomes utterly endearing.  Elsa is truly the most complex Disney character yet seen (not a high benchmark, I grant you) and her song "Let it go" is an empowering anthem with relevance beyond fairytale kingdoms. Idina Menzel gives a voice performance of nuance and strength and deserves an Oscar for Best Song.  Josh Gad (JOBS) is utterly adorable as the huggable snowman Olaf - the most charming animated sidekick since Donkey.  As for the men, well what a surprise to see that it's the male characters who are the least developed - and there's a cognitive dissonance when you realise that Prince Hans, whose face is clearly modelled on Paul Rudd, is in fact voiced by Santino Fontana, and that Kristoff, clearly modelled on Owen Wilson, is voiced by  Jonathan Groff. That's not to say that the actors do a bad job - it's just that the voice/face dissonance is so extreme that it was a bit distracting.

Still for all that, FROZEN had be captivated. The medieval folk architecture was beautiful - the stunning ice palace a marvel - the animation of racing through snow exhilerating.  Even better, the humour wasn't grounded in cheap pop-culture references (SHREK, I'm looking at you) but in real characters - those characters had emotional growth and development - and the surprises were genuinely shocking. I even loved the elegance with which small events and scenes were handled. The way in which it is delicately suggested that the King and Queen have died - when a black veil is hung over a portrait - is a great example here.

So kudos to all involved, but particularly to Jennifer Lee, who co-directed and wrote the movie.  She's the woman who wrote WRECK-IT RALPH - one of the best films of 2013 and is clearly a star to watch.  Particular mention also to Robert Lopez (co-creator of THE BOOK OF MORMON) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez who wrote the original songs for the film.  They're all strong, but "Fixer Upper" and "Let It Go" are instant classics.  I predict many, many awards, and rightfully so, this season. 

FROZEN is on release pretty much everywhere except South Korea, Estonia and Turkey, where it opens on January 17th; Sweden, where it opens on January 31st; and Japan, where it opens on March 14th.

FROZEN has a running time of 102 minutes and is rated PG for mild threat. 

PACIFIC RIM

You can listen to the podcast review of PACIFIC RIM directly here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.  For a more. extended discussion of the movie with two guys who actually know something about mecha anime head to the Vassals of Kingsgrave

Sea monsters versus robots? No thanks. A cross-dimensional portal has opened up in the pacific allowing big fact Kaiju beasties to plunder San Francisco and Tokyo, and humans have created big dual-piloted mega-machines called Jaegers to fight them? Puh-lease!  At least, until I heard this flick was being directed by Guillermo del Toro - of PAN'S LABYRINTH and HELLBOY fame.  That guy has such an intelligent, humorous, inventive take on fantasy that I couldn't help but be intrigued.  And he has driven this movie to a higher level. The CGI rendering of the massive cylon-style robots is amazing, and leagues beyond anything in TRANSFORMERS, and the action sequences played mostly at night and in driving rain are stunning....until they become boring.  

Where we see del Toro really at his finest is in his inventive rendering of black market Hong Kong - full of all the awe and wonder of the Hellboy hidden market, and presided over by a majestic Ron Perlmen as black marketeer, Mr Chau. Here we get a taste of geek fanboy Toro, as embodied by Charlie Day as the "kaiju groupie" researcher tasked with getting a monster brain. He's the kind of guy who says he can't tell you the secret because it's classified and the proceeds to tell you anyways, because it's so unbelievably cool! Sadly, it's all too brief. 

In fact, it's sad to say that the comic relief side-kick characters are far more interesting than the rather bland, buff protagonists.  Our hero Raleigh is played by Charlie Hunnam as a caring pretty boy with a dodgy American accent.  He's almost as unremarkable as Robert Kazinsky as his douchey pretty boy antagonist with a dodgy Australian accent. When the Jaeger pilots get into a punch up over a girl it's like you've transgressed to 1980s teen action flicks like KARATE KID and TOP GUN and not in a good way.  To be fair, the female lead, a girl called Mako played by Rinki Kikuchi (BABEL), is more interesting insofar as del Toro doesn't ask her to get her kit off and she can clearly handle herself.  That doesn't stop all the male characters infantilising her though, although at least Stacker Pentecost (the majestic Idris Elba) has the excuse that it's part of their character arc.

All of which speaks to the touchy feel hippie politics at the heart of this movie.  When the alien beasties attack, mankind defeats them by coming together and working together and helping each other through our angst. Awww!  Still, it makes a really nice change from all that dark, angsty Christopher Nolan emo stuff that weighed down MAN OF STEEL it's probably plunged to the bottom of PACIFIC RIM along with del Toro's sense of credible dialogue.  Really the only reason to see this film is Idris Elba who is so stupendously badass that he actually lives up to his ridiculous character name.  If the aliens ever come, I'm going to call Idris to lead a rag-tag band of rebels against it.  If they even tug on his jacket, he's going to nail them to the wall. 

PACIFIC RIM is on global release. It has a running time of 131 minutes and is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK.

DIAL M FOR MURDER 3D

You can listen to the podcast review of this movie directly below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

In 1954 Alfred Hitchcock released his seminal murder-mystery, DIAL M FOR MURDER. The problem is that most people saw it in 2D, rather than in the 3D in which Hitch shot the film.  The reason?  1953 was the real wave of early 3D, with movies like House of Wax being released. But by 1954 audiences had become tired of crappy looking cardboard glasses and incorrectly aligned projectors, not to mention the new fad that was Cinemascope.  So the 3D neg stood unloved until Warner Brothers decided to faithfully restore it, cleaning up each frame and then rescanning in 4K for our new 3D viewing pleasure.  And boy, what a treat it is!  I can honestly say that watching this movie in 3D has added to my appreciation of Hitch's technique, as well as immersing me more deeply into the claustrophobic flat in which the murder takes place.

For the story is elegantly compact:  a jealous, greedy husband (Ray Milland) blackmails a former university acquaintance (Anthony Dawson) into killing his unfaithful wife (Grace Kelly).  No matter that her lover, a crime writer (Robert Cummings) warns the husband that murder plots never go to plan.  For the husband, Tony Wendice, is that most remarkable of villains - the slippery, intelligent, charming, think-on-your-feet kind of murderer. The murder takes place at the half-way point of the film and thereafter the joy of this film is following each twist and turn of the intricate Agatha Christie type plot as we try to figure out, not so much whodunnit, as how or indeed if it will be detected.  Even though I'd seen the movie before, I was still sitting on the edge of my seat.

This was in no small part to the 3D, which helps us feel tangibly part of the cramped apartment in which nearly all of the action takes place - peering round lampshades and learning the intricacies of latchkeys.  The only negative thing I can say - which is hardly a fault of the film-makers - is that while the movie ages well in general, the language and some of the social mores are anachronistic, and this can and does take us out of the film at crucial moments - counter-acting the good work that the 3D is doing.  Still, this is a small problem and doesn't take away from the great achievement in restoring this film and the visual treat it confers. 

DIAL  M FOR MURDER was originally released in 1954 but the 3D print has not been fully restored and the film will be re-released in the UK on July 26th, opening at the Barbican, BFI Southbank and Curzon Mayfair among other venues.  The movie has a running time of 105 minutes and is rated PG for one scene of moderate violence. 

WORLD WAR Z

So here's a quick ten minute audio review of Brad Pitt's passion project, WORLD WAR Z, based on one my favourite novels of the past decade.  I went into this flick worried about the "troubled" nature of this project - budget over-runs, re-writes - and director Marc Forster's poor track record with big budget action flicks (QUANTUM OF SOLACE, m'lud).  To be sure, the tonal shift is obvious where Damon Lindelof takes over the writing, and this is a very different beast to the novel.  But overall, I really enjoyed it - in fact, it's arguably the best of the summer blockbusters to date. Tune in for more....

WORLD WAR Z has been rated PG-13 in the USA and has a running time of 116 minutes.

WORLD WAR Z is on release in the USA, Egypt, Hong Kong, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, Bosnia, Croatia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the UAE, Bulgaria, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Lithuania, Mexico, Romania, Turkey, the UK and Vietnam. It opens on June 27th in Argentina, Austria, Cambodia, Chile, the Czech Republic, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Peru, Russia, Switzerland, the Ukraine, Brazil, Colombia, Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Panama. It opens on July 3rd in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Poland; on July 11th in Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden; on July 19th in Finland; on August 2nd in Spain; on August 10th in Japan and on August 16th in Venezuela.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS

For the first time in the history of this blog, my review of STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS take the form of a spoiler filled podcast hosted by Vikram of the Vassals of Kingsgrave podcast. Listen to us have a semi-serious discussion of the merits of the film before comprehensively trawling over the plot holes and hair product lapses in a movie that entertained us, but also set back the cause of feminism thirty years. Share and enjoy!

Download the MP3 here.

Stream from GrooveShark here.

Or download from the mirror here.

The Vassals of Kingsgrave can also be subscribed to on iTunes.

THE GREAT GATSBY (2013)

Here's my one minute take on Baz Luhrman's GATSBY: it's something of an achievement to direct a movie that has such reverence to the source text, and yet misses the point so completely.

And of course, reverence for the text is perfectly correct. F Scott Fitzgerald's slim novel depicting the glitz and the loneliness of Jazz Age America is arguably the greatest American novel of all time, and certainly one of the greatest novels of all time period. It has an elegance and a depth that belies its brevity. The supreme tragedy of Gatsby is that he is a man who is desperately trying to be something that he can never authentically be - a man of inherited wealth - in order to win the love of the blue-blooded débutante Daisy.  But what we know, what Nick knows, is that Gatsby isn't really in love with Daisy.  She's just a cipher for his delusion that he can replay his youth - a youth blighted by his poverty and then parlayed into organised crime.  There's a sense - a much-needed and necessary sense - that while Gatsby knows that his lifestyle, his name, his means of earning  - are a lie - that he simultaneously totally believes the fiction. He is his own great work of art. 

Baz Luhrman's reverence for the text is literally writ large on the screen.  We see key phrases shown as written on the screen; the dialogue is almost entirely lifted directly from the novel; even key visual moments are taken from the book - such as the white drapes fluttering as Nick, our clear-eyed narrator,  first meets Daisy.  Luhrman even opens the movie out, giving it a framing device, wherein an older, jaded, alcoholic Nick (Tobey Maguire) is "automatic writing" his experiences with Gatsby and Daisy - and that written therapy will eventually become the novel, "The Great Gatsby".  And more fundamentally, with the exception of this framing device, the plot unfolds in the film exactly as it does in the novel.  Our young narrator Nick hires a humble cottage next to the extravagant mansion of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio).  Gatsby's famous for throwing marvellous parties that he doesn't attend.  And we discover that he's throwing them as bait to lure Nick's now married cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) - his first love - and the woman he hopes to begin again with.  Meanwhile, Daisy's husband Tom (Joel Edgerton) is having an affair with a brassy, blowsy mechanic's wife (Isla Fisher) - an affair that casually exploits and manipulates the emotions of the mechanic, but also belies Tom's proprietorial feeling toward Daisy, and his innate distrust of Gatsby.  

And within that reverential depiction of the novel, there are certain scenes that work brilliantly well.  In particular, Luhrman and Dicaprio totally get that the first scene where Gatsby meets Daisy is funny - it's painfully, embarrassingly, gauche and physically funny in a way that Robert Redford and other Gatsby avatars have never been.  I also think that the visual depiction of the Valley Of Ashes was truly inspired and brought them to dingy, desperate life in a way that I didn't really get from the novel.  And in terms of performances, I think Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher are superb and vital in smaller roles;  I was shocked by how effective the casting of Amitabh Bachchan as Meyer Wolfsheim was; Tobey Maguire is perfectly cast as the wide-eyed and yet not naive narrator; Carey Mulligan is suitably insipid although, if I were harsh, I would say that she doesn't quite get the quite whispering voice.  But this is really Leonardo Dicaprio's movie and the tragedy of this film is that in a quieter movie, his performance would be garnering Oscar buzz. As it is, you can't hear him above the sound of the Jay-Z.

So here's the problem with Gatsby. As much as Luhrman loves the text, he loves high-camp even more. Which  means that every scene gets Luhrmanned.  It moves, faster, brighter, louder, crazier than anything you've ever seen before. I lost count of the amount of times I was trying to look through things, or hear dialogue beneath music, to get at the performances.  It was like trying to watch a fundamentally great movie in a theatre filled with partying teenagers.  I guess the shock is that one might have thought that Luhrman's all-out glitz style might have worked in depicting the jazz age, but it just never seemed to coalesce. The sum of the parts drowned out the whole. 

THE GREAT GATSBY is rated PG-13 in the USA. It has a running time of 142 minutes.

THE GREAT GATSBY is on global release.