OUTLAW KING

David Mackenzie (HELL OR HIGH WATER) shifts gears to medieval Scotland for his Netflix film, OUTLAW KING. It stars Chris Pine with a dubious Scottish accent as Scottish clan leader and aspirant king, Robert Bruce.  As the movie opens his dad is bending the knee to evil imperialist King Edward I of England (Stephen Dillane, the first of many GoT alum) - this is not a film that traffics in nuance. We are asked to believe that a newly head of the family Robert can  anachronistically resist schtupping his new bride (feisty Florence Pugh) while also letting him get away with murdering his rival for the crown. This film REALLY wants us to like its protagonist! So Robert raises a rebel army and takes on the English, helped mightily by the fact that the legendary king dies leaving his moron son in charge.  The film therefore culminates in a very cool battle scene that more than compensates for its dodgy accents, two-dimensional characterisations, and stilted opening twenty minutes. In fact, it's so well done, and so similar in concept to a key moment at Waterloo, that I basically now want Mackenzie to direct a film about that. Rare praise indeed from the woman who runs the @relivewaterloo twitter account and pretty much worships the Sergei Bondarchuk version!

OUTLAW KING is rated R and has a running time of 121 minutes.  The film played both Toronto and London 2018 and was released on Netflix last week. 

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES is an emotionally affecting, visually impressive, intelligent conclusion to the new trilogy of films that began with RISE and more recently DAWN.  As the film opens we find our sensitive ape hero, Caesar (Andy Serkis) holed up in a forest, fighting off incursions from the Colonel's soldiers.  The apes position is unsustainable, so Caesar entrusts his best friend Maurice to lead the tribe to a promised land across the mountains (very deliberate biblical parallels here). Meanwhile Caesar and a handful of followers goes on a revenge mission.  Along the way he encounters a young mute girl, who we will learn will become the future Nova (for those familiar with the Charlton Heston movie) and a tragicomically traumatised monkey called Bad Ape (Steve Zahn).  The bulk of the movie is, then, set in the ape prison camp run by Woody Harrelson's Colonel. We see infiltration, capture, and escape plans hatched and dramatic action sequences.

The resulting film is brilliantly nuanced and resonant.  Caesar is our hero, but he's guilt-ridden for killing his militant ape enemy Koba in the previous film.  We also have to consider the conflict between the needs of his tribe for a leader and his need for personal vengeance.  The Colonel is similarly nuanced despite an exaggerated performance, deliberately echoing Brando as Colonel Kurtz.  As the movie progresses we learn that he too is under threat for taking harsh and perhaps justified decisions that parallel Caesar's decision to kill Koba. And, in observing the Colonel's fate, one can't help but suspect that maybe he was right. 

There are certain aspects of this film that I suspect everyone will like.  The cinematography is spectacular.  The mist rising from the forest - the green gun lights shining through a waterfall and into a darkened cave - apes on horses riding across a beach in the morning sunlight reflected in the ripples of sand. And it's hard not to get drawn into the trials of Caesar - a character we have come to know and love over three movies, and to be affected at the mutual admiration between Caesar and Maurice. 

As for the rest, it will very much depend on your tolerance for the broad strokes of "big" cinema.  I have also mentioned Woody Harrelson's literally cigar-chomping performance as the messianic cult leader Colonel. And little Nova is very much an angelic martyr to the genetic mutations that are now sweeping mankind after the Simian flu epidemic.  But it's Caesar where the metaphors work hardest and loudest.  He is cast as a kind of Christ, crucified on the prison frame, and then as a kind of Moses, leading his apes to the Promised Land. And then, along the way, we have echoes of prison films from KWAI to THE GREAT ESCAPE to UNBROKEN and Caesar as the beaten up hero of them all. I personally loved this recasting of the prison film genre with a sensitive and intelligent ape as the lead. But for some, this could become ham-fisted. 

WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 140 minutes.  The film is on global release. 

INSURGENT

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below:

INSURGENT is the second instalment of the Divergent series based on the popular young adult novels by Veronica Roth.  I didn't review the first film even though I did see it on DVD. The movie just struck me as so derivative and banal and mechanical that I just couldn't be bothered. There wasn't anything bad about it per se - it was slick and well-acted for the most part - but there wasn't anything to get me excited either.  Sadly, that characterisation applies to the sequel too. It's well-made, well-acted for the most part, and full of great CGI action set-pieces.  But it's so mechanical, so derivative and so predictable that I found myself watching it in a rather mechanical way - utterly detached from the emotional journey.

FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

The lead actors & director at the Berlin Film Festival.

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

So if you've read the middle-class middle-aged woman soft-porn fanfic that is FIFTY SHADES OF GREY your expectations for the movie are probably not high. Especially when you realise that the novelist, E L James, was very controlling (!) as to the adaptation, insisting on things like banal little email exchanges being kept verbatim.  And once you note that it has an R rating, which means that the studio has effectively cut the balls off the already fairly mild sex scenes, one wonders what's left to play for.

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).  

THE WOLVERINE

To listen to the podcast review of this film, listen here, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

Hugh Jackman's latest outing as THE WOLVERINE is a pleasant surprise - a summer superhero blockbuster that is brooding without being portentous;  has a killer action sequence without being one loud thing bashing into another; has a plot that's twisty but also makes sense; has female characters that can kick ass without getting their kit off; and has a sense of humour without being dominated by the persona of the star. As a result, it feels like a far more balanced and easily enjoyable watch than MAN OF STEEL, STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS or IRON MAN 3. 

The story starts where the last X-MEN movie ended: Logan/Wolverine is grieving for Jean Grey, and hiding from his superhero nature in the Yukon.  Still, he's too good a man to resist a damsel in distress, and when summoned to Tokyo to meet the dying man he once saved, he ends up becoming the protector of his beautiful grand-daughter Mariko.  She's being hunted by the Yakuza, intimidated by her father, and sleazed on by her politician fiancé.  And as the movie unfolds we discover why she's so valuable, and why Logan suddenly can't self-heal.  

This is perhaps the most interesting part of the story - and allows Jackman to play Logan in an emotional range that has hitherto been denied him.  I've always found Jackman the perfect embodiment of the character, and watching him perplexed by his mortality, but also drawn to it, is fascinating.  In fact, it struck me that his character in this film is not so different to Jean Valjean in LES MIS - a man with a big secret identity and a strange strength, who appears on screen bearded, desperate and struggling with whether he should embrace that identity, and how best to seek justice.  That said, Jean Valjean was not as cut as Logan!  Hugh Jackman has said that he finally had enough time to train for this role and to create the body that he felt the Wolverine should have, and boy does it show!

It's also worth mentioning the fact that the plot of this film, based on an initial script by Christopher McQuarrie (THE USUAL SUSPECTS) feels a lot more like a Bond movie than a conventional X-MEN film, perhaps because it focuses on one hero, the girl he's trying to save, and a classic evil supervillain in the form of Svetlana Khodchenkova's brilliantly camp Viper.  We even get the classic third act showdown in a super-lair.  The negative aspect of the Bond-like script is the childish simplicity of the two plot twists which any fool will guess about an hour before they are revealed. 

Behind the camera, James Mangold does a fantastic job as director - and given his CV of directing character-led dramas like WALK THE LINE, the action sequences are surprisingly good. The bullet train fight sequence is particularly impressive, but I also liked the imagery of Logan as a kind of Saint Sebastian in the third act, as well as the fact that Mangold makes sure that both female leads - even the simpering love interest - have some fighting chops and are never gratuitously shot in their bikinis (JJ Abrams, I'm looking at you!)  The  one negative thing is that the addition of 3D in post-production adds nothing to the movie, other than an extra few dollars to the ticket price. 

THE WOLVERINE is on global release. It is rated PG-13 in the USA and 12A in the UK. It has a running time of 125 minutes. 

DECEPTION - beware lawyers bearing weed

DECEPTION is a nicely shot and decently acted thriller that's ultimately skewered by a plot so transparent it could've come sponsored by Swarovski.

Ewan Macgregor stars as an introverted auditor who's offered a pass into a glamourous world of anonymous sex by a suave lawyer (Hugh Jackman). Turns out, Jackman's character is using the hot sex to blackmail the auditor into embezzling money from a client.

For the most part, this is a fairly ordinary but workable thriller but in the final half hour it truly jumps the shark. I can buy that the auditor has the smarts to put up a fight, but would he really have the Mission Impossible skills to get his hands on a fake US passport at 2 hours notice? The film-makers also commit the unforgiveable sin of wasting Charlotte Rampling.

Overall rating: Meh.

DECEPTION is on release in the US, UK and Australia. It opens in May in Belgium, and France; in Singapore and Finland in June; and in Germany in September.

DIE HARD 4.0 aka LIVE FREE OR DIE HARDER aka The Best Summer Blockbuster of 07!

YES YES YES!!! Finally, a summer blockbuster that does what it says on the tin, and then some. Action movie, buddy movie, witty one-liners and Bruce Willis as NYPD cop John McClane blowing shit up. This movie is a noble addition to the DIE HARD franchise. It doesn't feel tired or re-hashed. It never slides into pastiche or post-modern winking at the audience. It just does what it always did but bigger and better.

In this installment, John McClane (Willis) is sent to pick up a computer hacker called Matt (the amiable and comically gifted Justin Long) and deliver him to the Feds in Washington, headed up by the always brilliant Cliff Curtis. Matt, along with a bunch of other low-level nerds, have unwittingly helped a mean terrorist bring down all the computer networks in the US, causing mayhem. The terrorists want to kill the hacker, which results in some cool one-liners and some wicked stunts - the dogs bollocks of which is an awesome truck-blowing-helicopter-up scene in a tunnel.

Of course, the DIE HARD flicks have always outdone themselves with the baddies too, and in this installment we get Timothy Olyphant in an arguably career-making role as genius hacker Thomas Gabriel. He manages real menace as well as some cutting sarcasm. He has a Kung Fu side-kick played by Maggie Q and she inadvertantly provides Bruce Willis with some of his best comedy riffs. Lest you think McClane's treatment of the Kung Fu chick verges on the misogynistic, we have him rescuing his daughter Lucy, who has inherited her father's balls of steel. So the chicks are represented, so to say.

Is this movie absolutely 100% perfect? If I were being picky I'd say that Len Wiseman is not my idea of a good director of action scenes. And the Kevin Smith cameo is weak - or is it just my disappointment to see him selling out like this? And, while I am willing to suspend my disbelief so far, the whole jet fighter scene is plain ridiculous.

But this is all marginal quibbling around the central fact that DIE HARD 4.0 is THE summer blockbuster of 2007. Have no fear my friends, the PG-13 certified movie does not let us down. So head to your local multiplex in all confidence. This flick is Yippee-Kay-Yay-Tastic.

DIE HARD 4.0 aka LIVE FREE OR DIE HARDER is on release in Japan, the UK, the US, Finland, Kuwait, Bulgaria, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Latvia, Norway, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Greece, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Cyprus, India, Japan, Lithuania, Turkey, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Taiwan. It opens in Israel, Singapore, Thailand, Mexico and Poland this weekend and in South Korea on July 19th. It opens in Slovenia, Brazil, Australia, Bolivia, New Zealand and Argentina in August and in Spain in September and in Italy in October.