Pacific Rim (2013)

2013-07-24

I hope whoever designed these suits took chafing into account.

Twitter Plot Summary: A rift has opened in the Pacific ocean, allowing giant creatures from another universe to attack Earth. Giant mechs stop them.

Genre: Action/Adventure/Fantasy/Sci-Fi

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Key Cast: Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Charlie Day, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman.

Five Point Summary:

1. GLaDOS! Kind of.
2. Oh look, another shot of a Jaeger being dropped into the water…
3. Ron Perlman!
4. Obligatory rousing speech #4.
5. Is there anything more satisfying than seeing a giant mech hit a giant creature with a boat?

It’s great when you see a film that knows its whole reason for existing is to provide big dumb fun. Pacific Rim is one such film, a terrifying indication of what would happen if you made Godzilla fight the Transformers. I say terrifying, more like “Hah! That’s never going to happen!” Guillermo del Toro, Mexican movie auteur and the biggest, beardiest man-child you will ever see, brings his excessively OTT imagination to this original(ish) story where big giant creatures go toe to toe with big giant robots. Of course, after it’s established that the world’s governments united to form the Jaeger programme, we join the story as those same governments decide to put more faith in a MASSIVE wall rather than the epic robots that have been protecting the globe from giant monsters, called Kaiju, who are attacking humanity at every opportunity via a strange rift that has opened up in the Pacific Ocean. There are just four Jaegers left, and with funds running low it’s looking grim for humanity. Those four Jaegers are unique enough in their designs to tell apart, although early on the action does suffer quite badly from not being able to tell which Jaeger is hitting which Kaiju.

There are plenty of humorous moments dotted throughout which are conveniently placed to break up the action and to prevent things from getting too mundane. Not that you could ever accuse Pacific Rim of being mundane. Well, except for the excessive number of times we see a Jaeger dropped into the Pacific. After it happens a few times it starts to feel gratuitous. As a narrative device I rather like the idea of needing two people to pilot the Jaegers. In reality it’s as daft as the rest of it (let alone the character names – Stacker Pentecost? Really?), but certainly as far as narrative goes the joining of two minds via “The Drift” has the potential to branch off in many directions.

Unusually, almost all of the key cast, of which there are about 8, get an equal amount of time in the spotlight. Yes, the lead is Charlie Hunnam, but he is just one cog in a story that is about humanity uniting against a common threat. They’re all also uniformly underdeveloped, but again as we’re here to see big robots hitting big creatures then it’s another area in which you can forgive it. We get the obligatory crazy scientist stereotypes as they try to figure out how to stop the attacks (is nobody else working on that problem other than these two guys?), yet they err just on the right side of irritating. One degree further up the scale and you’d want to smash their faces in.

That's never a good sign... — That’s never a good sign…

I take some comfort that, seeing as the vortex wormhole thing is situated in the Pacific and just about all of the damage occurs to those countries that sit around the Pacific Ocean, the UK was probably safe. Apocalypse be damned. Yes, I understand that economically speaking the incident would be crippling from an economic perspective, but I expect the UK to be in some form of 1984/V For Vendetta/Children of Men style state whereby the borders are closed and they’ve become self sufficient.

For someone with as vivid an imagination as del Toro, you’d expect the production design to be immaculate, and it is. There’s an incredible amount of detail to the world in which the film is set, and the night shots of Tokyo are gorgeous to look at. It’s worth seeing in IMAX if you get the chance, it’s the sort of big, epic film that benefits from the big screen.

Gripes – the main one I had was that they had to cram in a love story between Channing T…. sorry, Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi. Completely unnecessary and adds nothing. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Yes, by all means throw them together for narrative purposes, but you don’t have to build a romance out of it. You may have guessed by now, but I don’t like films where they crowbar in a romance story just because they feel it necessary. In some instances it works, but arbitrarily throwing characters together for the sake of appealing to a wider audience is not clever storytelling. There’s also the fact that most of the action takes place at night. Whilst the cities used look really nice lit up in the dark, it does make the Kaiju/Jaeger action a little harder to follow. Also, stay after the credits if you’re interested in 20 second clips. It’s a nice addition but I don’t think it’s worth sitting through the credits for.

Compared to his previous films which have had a lot more heart and soul to them, Pacific Rim is a bit of an oddity, however as a ridiculous big budget summer popcorn flick that is in essence a live action anime, then you won’t get much better.

Favourite scene: A giant mech hitting a giant creature with a boat. Never gets boring.

Quote: “Today, at the end of our hope, the end of our time, we have chosen to believe in each other. Today we face the monsters that are at our door. Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!”

Silly Moment: A Kaiju lifting a Jaeger up into the sky… and then the Jaeger pulls out a freakin’ SWORD.

Score: 4/5

The World’s End (2013)

Simon Prior

2013-07-23

So five men walk into a pub... — So five men walk into a pub…

Twitter Plot Summary: Pegg reunites with four friends from school to finally complete an epic pub crawl in their home town. Things get weird.

Genre: Action/Comedy/Sci-Fi

Director: Edgar Wright

Key Cast: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Rosamund Pike, Martin Freeman, Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine.

Five Point Summary:

1. Cameos! Cameos as far as the eye can see!
2. Jokes about characterless chain pubs. Hah.
3. What’s with the glowing eyes?
4. Getting more and more drunk yet trying to maintain your cover is amusing.
5. Okay, that’s just weird…

After the frankly excellent Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, hopes were high for the final film in the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy. I’ll clear this up immediately – out of the three films, this one is the weakest. There isn’t much in it, but I’ll explain in a little more detail throughout this review.

Simon Pegg swaps roles with Nick Frost this time round, playing “The once and future king’ Gary King, a near-40 man child who, for reasons that will become clear, decided to recreate a pub crawl that he attempted with four school friends many years previously. When they return to their former home village of Newton Haven they realise that people are acting strangely and things aren’t quite normal. Pegg rarely dials his performance down and whilst he gets most of the funny lines the character doesn’t really do much. Nick Frost, by comparison, gets plenty to do as the “sensible” one, although I can’t help but feel he would have been better used as the comedy foil. Still, it’s nice to get a bit of variation in the characters these guys play, we’ve already seen them do the smart one/dumb one archetypes in Shaun and Fuzz so it’s good for them to mix it up now and again.

Other than Pegg and Frost, who’s relationship is the core focus, the remaining characters don’t really get much characterisation. Considine has a thing for Rosamund Pike’s Sam; Marsan is damaged after being bullied at school; Martin Freeman is an estate agent, gets to smile a lot and has a sister; and Rosamund Pike gets to play a woman. Seriously, she has almost nothing to do other than act as a point of conflict between Considine and Pegg. All of that doesn’t really matter too much though, we get just enough history for each of the characters in the opening act so they’re all reasonably well defined, if not fully rounded. This has always been a strength of Pegg and Wright’s scripts, so whilst the characters may not be as clearly defined as you might prefer, they give you just enough for the point to be irrelevant.

I'm sure there's an amusing caption that can be used here. — I’m sure there’s an amusing caption that can be used here.

The story is actually really good until we find out why everybody has the ability to shine lights out of their eyes and mouth. The interplay between all of the characters is nice and I’d happily sit and watch them sit around and talk about their lives for a whole movie. As it is, and this being a Simon Pegg/Edgar Wright collaboration, the plot takes a twist at the halfway point and those character interactions take place whilst they have to deal with a problem that none of them ever expected to encounter. When the action kicks in, Wright is typically efficient and you can always see what’s going on. His kinetic directorial style suits action sequences and you can see the lessons he has learned from making Scott Pilgrim a few years ago. There’s also plenty of cameos to keep fans of the first two films happy, and one bigger cameo that’s almost, but not quite, on par with Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz.

It’s a much more grown up film than the previous two, the focus on growing up and “joining the real world” is balanced with the theme of misspent youth (and even misspent adulthood) which is the reason why these five characters are reunited in the first place. Because of this more grown-up perspective it lacks some of the fun of their previous two efforts. It’s still very funny and moving in parts, but it’s lacking an edge that was present in the previous films. What’s important is that we’re back in the pub (or rather, twelve of them), it’s as quintessentially British as you can get and is another of the themes that link this to Shaun and Fuzz.

Compared to the trio’s earlier efforts The World’s End lacks a certain something that makes Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz stand out as they do. Certainly by the final third it does seem to lose its way a little. The story is still proficient and the direction is as solid as ever, but once we get to the 7th or 8th pub it got a little too frantic for my liking, less about the characters and more about squeezing 12 pubs into a 110 minute running time. Without dipping into spoiler territory I’d have liked something a little more substantial with regards to why the people in Newton Haven have changed, but other than few minor quibbles it’s a solid film that fans of Pegg, Wright and Frost’s previous work will enjoy.

Favourite scene: The bar room brawl where Simon Pegg tries to avoid having his pint spilled by the fracas.

Quote: “We’re going to see this through to the bitter end. Or… lager end.” (I did want to use the one about mead, but I forgot it as soon as I left the cinema and nobody else has put it on the interwebs yet!)

Silly Moment: Take your pick from any of the big pub brawls, they’re all a bit silly by design.

Score: 4/5

Commando (1985)

Simon Prior

2013-07-22

Twitter Plot Summary: Bennett, the world’s best villain, fights Arnie’s John Matrix. Lots of generic grunts die, stuff blows up.

Genre: Action/Thriller

Director: Mark Lester

Key Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dan Hedaya, Vernon Wells, Alyssa Milano, Rae Dawn Chong, David Patrick Kelly, Bill Duke, James Olson.

Five Point Summary:

1. Right? Wrong! 
2. Dead… you thought wrong! 
3. John! I’ll be ready John! 
4. Welcome back John, so glad you could make it. 
5. John I feel good!

My one recommendation when watching Commando is to go in with an open mind. That’s not because it’s high art or has a complex storyline – quite the opposite. Rather, if you go into it without any expectations you should thoroughly enjoy it. As big dumb action films go it’s probably one of the biggest and dumbest, but it’s so much fun you can forgive all of its obvious continuity errors, the equally obvious stunt doubles and the fact the story wafer thin. The film exists for you to just switch your brain off and revel in the silliness.

The story: John Matrix (Schwarzenegger) is a retired black ops commando who now wants to live the quiet life and look after his young daughter Jenny (Milano). It just so happens that somebody has been bumping off all of Matrix’s former team and he’s the next target, so General Kirby (Olson) drops by to warn of a possible attack and leaves two soldiers behind for security. Literally within seconds of Kirby leaving, Matrix’s home is attacked and his daughter kidnapped. Matrix is press-ganged by deposed General Arius into assassinating the current democratically elected president of fictional country Val Verde. But Arius is not acting completely alone – he is supported by Bennett, one of Matrix’s former team. The only backstory we get is that Bennett was thrown out of the unit for enjoying killing a little too much, and ever since he has sought revenge against Matrix. Simple.

As is typical for most of the films in this genre, there is almost zero characterisation. We know Matrix was a commando and he’ll do anything to protect his daughter. Beyond that, nothing. Where’s Jenny’s mother? It’s a question that doesn’t need an answer, let’s face it. For all we know he adopted Jenny after a commando raid where her real parents were killed. Who knows? Bennett, also, is a sadistic killer who wants revenge. Nothing more needed. His grunts – Sully, Henriques and Cooke – are just there to act as obstacles for Matrix and to pad the film’s running time out. And also build up to the big fight at the end, of course.

Of the remaining key cast, it’s perhaps Rae Dawn Chong’s Cindy that gets the most to do, although that’s not really saying much. Thankfully she isn’t used as an obligatory love interest – Matrix has no time for base human emotions like that – instead after she’s indecently propositioned by Sully (he really needs to go on a “how to meet and talk to women” course) she is dragged along on the adventure, unwillingly at first, and helps Matrix rescue Jenny. For the most part she’s the exposition character, asking what’s going on, where they’re going and helping Matrix piece together the clues as to where Jenny is being held (“Look, here’s a photo of an amphibian airplane”- Well done Cindy!). General Arius has very little to do. He has a bit of exposition with Bennett explaining his reasons for staging a coup in Val Verde, but he’s generally an impotent character. Even his fight with Matrix is poor. With his apparent lack of knowledge regarding tactics and the use of weaponry, is it any wonder he was deposed in Val Verde? That just leaves Jenny, who is the MacGuffin that pushes the story on. Well, from Matrix’s side of things anyway, all Bennett and Arius do is sit around and wait for Matrix to turn up. She does nothing really except take after her father and badmouth the villains.

If you’re anything like me you’ll find various elements of the film rather hilarious – the opening credits are a montage of Matrix spending time with his daughter, the music is happy and carefree. Then, for no apparent reason, the music takes a sinister turn just as Matrix and Jenny are feeding a deer. That deer is obviously evil. The soundtrack itself is quite an odd one – there’s an abundant use of kettle drum which I don’t recall ever hearing in another film. Please let me know if you’re aware of any. There’s also a small role for Bill Paxton as a flustered radar operator, just before he started getting the bigger roles when Aliens rolled up the following year. Other hilarious moments worth looking out for is Arnold watching the door close on the plane, almost as if he’s hoping his intense stare will make it explode, or at the very least stop closing. He also wears an incredibly loud beeping watch – it’s only loud in close-up, but if you seriously owned a watch with that loud a beep it would be a permanent distraction. Also keep an eye on Arius’ soldiers – there’s an alarming amount of facial hair on show, and most of it appears to be stuck on haphazardly. Almost as if this army of over a hundred men was in reality only about 10 guys…

So THAT'S why the film's called Commando! — So THAT’S why the film’s called Commando!

This was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first film where he had top billing, so in essence this is where his action movie legend began. The script is rife with Bond-esque one liners and dry retorts, which Arnold deadpans perfectly. Everything he did after this seems to follow a similar template, give or take, but this is pure Arnold. But whilst Arnold is top billing, most of the kudos goes to Vernon Wells. Bennett is the best villain in cinema history, no question. He’s not really menacing (although Vernon Wells does try), instead he comes across as a kind of overweight, Kiwi Freddie Mercury, whispering his way through half his dialogue and shrieking like a banshee when he’s in the midst of a fist fight with Matrix. His outfit says it all – leather trousers, fingerless gloves, a chain-mail vest and dog tags literally on a dog collar. He’s also nigh-on invincible, electrocution does nothing except supercharge him. By comparison, the previous 80-85 minutes of the movie are just filler for the final battle between Matrix and Bennett. I think it’s supposed to be a tense fight that could go either way, but it’s just funny. Really, really funny.

If you’re of a certain mind then there will be no convincing you of the merits of this film. You will look at the blatantly obvious stunt doubles, the ridiculously high body count, the awful continuity, that we see one explosion from fifty angles. You will scoff and you will complain, and that’s fine. But you’re missing out big time. It’a s shame that the proposed Commando 2 didn’t amount to anything, as a continuation of the increasingly silly adventures of John Matrix would have been amazing.

Favourite scene: Matrix and Cooke slugging it out in a motel room. Those guys eat too much red meat.

Quote: “Remember Sully when I promised to kill you last?” “That’s right Matrix, you did!” “I lied.”

Silly Moment: The climactic fight between Bennett and Matrix. Effeminate grunts and silly violence aplenty.

Score: 5/5

Avalanche Express (1979)

Simon Prior

2013-07-21

"Yup. It's a train." — “Yup. It’s a train.”

Twitter Plot Summary: Robert Mitchum wants to defect to the West, but his badly dubbed voice (and a train) get in the way. Lee Marvin co-stars.

Genre: Action/Thriller

Director: Mark Robson

Key Cast: Lee Marvin, Robert Mitchum, Linda Evans, Maximilian Schell.

Five Point Summary:

1. Sorry, but those Russian’s mouths aren’t moving in sync with the dialogue.
2. What sort of name is Colonel Wargrave anyway?
3. He’s smoking on a train! Outrage!
4. Oh noes! AVALANCHE!  SO it’s not just a clever title.
5. Hah! She actually blew up!

Reuniting Robert Mitchum with a train-related thriller probably seemed like a good idea in 1978. Coming 16 years after his rather impressive performance in From Russia With Love, Avalanche Express is Mitchum’s last film. He plays Marenkov, a senior official in Russia who makes a decision to defect to the West. You wouldn’t assume on viewing the film that Mitchum was on his last legs – physically he looks as fit as a fiddle, but apparently on set his voice was so weak that only 6 words of Mitchum’s own dialogue was used. Once you notice that almost all of Robert Mitchum’s dialogue is dubbed, you can’t un-notice it. After a while it bewitches you. Or is that just me?

The first half an hour involves lots of people standing around talking. One guy tries to kill Marenkov and, despite hearing the gun fire, there’s no muzzle flash. Score one against the film. Things get moving (arf arf) when they board the train and set off on their journey. There’s more talking, a bit of a gun fight, and yet more talking. And more guns. And more talking. Then we reach the end and everything goes mega epic. Almost as if most of the budget was dedicated towards it… There are explosions and big guns. And I mean BIG guns. It is a very short sequence though, before long we’re back to people sitting around talking. This is what counts for a thriller in 1979 then, it seems.
Maximilian Schell looks like the one person in the cast who’s having a ball – everybody else plays it so straight they’re almost beset with rigor mortis. If I didn’t know better, I would say it’s one of those horrible TV movies where they have no plot and the script is a Hollywood reject. Rather unfortunately, this one has budget. A budget and a now-cliche soundtrack. You know all those thrillers that have dramatic string accompaniments when something dramatic is going down? Those films that have incredibly schmaltzy music whenever the lead actor and his lady get together? Yeah, it’s one of those.

"Buckle up, we're going to spend 75% of the film in here." — “Buckle up, we’re going to spend 75% of the film in here.”

There’s a good use of different locations and settings throughout the film, mixing up snowy, mountainous
When action thrillers are good, they’re very good. When they’re bad, they’re a bit like this. It’s not particularly badly directed, if anything director Mark Robson’s work adds a certain familiarity to proceedings. If you watch Avalanche Express then, stylistically at least, you’ve seen every thriller ever made. Well, every thriller made in the 70s. Robson was also responsible for the train-based Von Ryan’s Express, so he had substantial experience with train-related action at this point.

It’s hard to define what’s specifically bad about it. Perhaps the “too-straight” performances? Maybe the script isn’t up to scratch? More money would have helped, perhaps? Whatever the reason, rather than being an explosive romp it’s about as laborious as the never-ending footage of planes flying during the end credits. Occasionally nice to look at, but really what’s the point?

Favourite scene: The climactic battle and the big guns come out. Literally. BOOM!

Quote: “He’s a monster. With feelings.” “That makes him human.”

Silly Moment: The blase attitude everybody has whilst the first gun fight is going on in the mountains – almost as if they know they’re not going to get shot.

Score: 2/5

Ponyo (2008)

Simon Prior

2013-07-20

Twitter Plot Summary: A fish wants to be a girl, so she runs away from her home in the sea and… well, becomes a girl. Lots of weird stuff goes down.

Genre: Animation/Adventure/Family/Fantasy

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Key Cast: Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Liam Neeson, Noah Lindsey Cyrus, Tina Fey, Frankie Jonas.

Five Point Summary:

1. This opening sequence appears to be your brain on drugs.
2. Sosuke’s mum does a 75% goose step every time she walks.
3. Ponyo’s half human/half chicken thing appearance is really weird.
4. So the sea has flooded the whole place apart from Sosuke’s house. Did anybody die?
5. Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills… mad hair being one of them.

Five minutes in and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. The opening is a psychedelic underwater sequence featuring a girly man (who we soon discover is Liam Neeson) and a fish with the head of a ginger girl. I fully understand that much of Japanese cinema is absolutely bonkers, but this really was odd. After the ginger girl fish reaches land she gets stuck in a glass bottle and is rescued by a young boy, Sosuke. The boy is then unknowingly chased by the sea, which for some reason is alive, and then chased by Liam Neeson who is trying to retrieve his daughter, the aforementioned ginger girl fish, the titular Ponyo.

On rescuing Ponyo, Susuke cuts his finger which Ponyo heals with a lick. By tasting blood she gains the ability to become human. Obviously. What then unfolds is a journey of true love (ahh bless) as Ponyo and Sosuke try and evade her father. Of course, the bigger problem is that Ponyo imbued her father’s magical potions (in an array of various bright colours, no less), and as a result of this super-powerful magic mojo causes a global imbalance which starts pulling the Moon closer to the Earth. Yep, still sounding weird. It’s another eco message movie – we’re destroying the planet (dumping stuff in the oceans and so on), and we should learn from this. But the people who need to learn this message probably won’t watch this film. So it goes.

Liam Neeson’s first line is “Have you found my daughter?!” That went down particularly well in this post-Taken world we live in. Neeson, it turns out, is also the father of hundreds of tiny fish, all of whom look like Ponyo. The logistics of this amuse me no end (think about it). In spite of this inherent silliness, Neeson is by far the best voice actor in the film, and potentially the best Western voice actor I’ve heard in any of the English dubs of the Studio Ghibli catalogue. Most voice actors, when dubbing Japanese films, have a stilted delivery that has the potential to become rather annoying. Liam Neeson doesn’t fall into this trap. He really embodies his character and Ponyo (the film, not the character) is all the better for it. I can’t put my finger on it, but he doesn’t seem as conscious of the fact he’s voicing an animated character as most do. Simon likes this.

He's their father. Go figure. — He’s their father. Go figure.

Miyazaki chose to animate the film like a moving pastel painting, and rather typically for a Studio Ghibli production, looks fantastic. It suits the gentle yet esoteric tone of the story. It also allows plenty of scope for Miyazaki to really let his imagination fly. There’s even a few sections that Ang Lee appears to have half-inched for Life of Pi, the luminous whale in particular. I remain a steadfast fan of hand-drawn animation, and in this day and age I appreciate it more when a director doesn’t follow the crowd and do everything on a computer. The charm of animating something “old school” is lost. Not that I don’t like computer generated animation, far from it, but hand-drawn is always where the best stuff will be. Also, seeing as animation allows you to do literally anything, when Miyazaki makes a film it is completely unfettered. There are no budget concerns and the only limit is his imagination. Much like Metal Gear Solid numero uno Hideo Kojima, having the freedom to tell the story you want to tell is never a bad thing. Subsequently, creators of this ilk hold the envious ability to delight and amaze audiences of all ages. That’s a rare talent, whether you’re a fan of Japanese animation or not.

So is Ponyo any good? I’d have thought it would be clear already, but I am still yet to see a bad Studio Ghibli movie. It’s delightfully nutty yet equally as charming, and yet another winner in the Studio Ghibli stable.

Favourite scene: Sosuke and his mum driving back to their house as the waves give chase.

Quote: “So Ponyo, what’s your Dad like?” “He hates humans! He keeps me in a bubble, so I swam away from home!”

Silly Moment: A baby oozing fluid from every orifice, then being Tangoed by Ponyo. Amusing yet peculiar.

Score: 4.5/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bskgNOXbdiE

The Desert Fox (1951)

Simon Prior

2013-07-19

"I am James Mason." — “I am James Mason.”

Twitter Plot Summary: A biopic of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. Respected military leader, half-hearted Nazi.

Genre: Action/Biography/Drama/History/War

Director: Henry Hathaway

Key Cast: James Mason, Jessica Tandy, Leo G Carroll, Eduard Franz.

Five Point Summary:

1. Rommel 1-0 Commandos 
2. North Africa, this should be fu… oh, we’re moving on already?
 3. “I am James Mason.” 
4. von Stauffenberg looks like a walking corpse.  
5. It’s like a 1944 version of “take the red pill or the blue pill”.

Any film portraying Erwin Rommel, particularly one so close to the end of WW2, is risky business. It stands to reason that the film was made was following post-war revelations that revealed Rommel to be complicit in the plot to assassinate Hitler. If he wanted to kill the toothbrush-mustachioed nutter, who are we to complain? In fact Rommel was generally regarded as being quite humane with his treatment of prisoners. The opening of the film sees a prisoner (Desmond Young, playing himself) being poorly treated by a German soldier, who is reprimanded by Rommel. This acts as a framing device for the film as Young, post-war, sets out to discover who the true Rommel actually was. Young actually wrote the book “The Desert Fox” on which the film was based, a common theme amongst many war films of the period.

Portrayed by James Mason (who reprised the role in 1953’s The Desert Rats), Rommel is actually shown in quite a positive light. You wouldn’t expect Herman Goering to get similar treatment, but then Goering was a nasty piece of work. By comparison Rommel was a decent chap. The title of the film is Rommel’s nickname, who was in essence the face of the German army in the North African campaign. It was his decision to follow a tactical retreat rather than face excessive losses that earned Rommel the ire of Adolf Hitler.

You're looking a tad ill there, Mr von Stauffenberg. — You’re looking a tad ill there, Mr von Stauffenberg.

The film covers Rommel’s war years, from North Africa to Rommel’s later post in Normandy. Throughout it’s clear that Rommel is loyal to Germany – not necessarily to Hitler and his cause, but to his country. This goes a long way to explain his hesitation in conspiring against Hitler. Rather disappointingly Rommel’s exploits in North Africa are given short shrift, which is strange given that this is where most of his fame lies. Instead we’re pushed swiftly forward to Rommel’s Normandy posting and his defence of the Atlantic Wall.

The 50s and 60s were, unsurprisingly, rife with war films. Many were adequate, some were awful. The Desert Fox benefits from excellent casting, an engaging story and a sympathetic portrayal of “the bad guys”, at least from the perspective of those who were not complicit in gassing people or the decision to annex most of the free world. In this respect at least the film does its job. It’s not an apologist account of what took place during the war, more a case of clearly setting out that not everybody in Germany was a “bad egg”.

There isn’t enough of Rommel’s military expertise on show, in fact there is very little action of any description, the script instead limiting the tale to a more personal affair. We do get a fair overview of Rommel’s tactical abilities from the dialogue, however a couple of scenes detailing his strategies and forward thinking in action, and certainly more about his North African victories, would have created a more rounded film. After the opening sequence where a group of commandos fail to assassinate Rommel, the action stakes are dialed down to almost negligible proportions. It’s also worth emphasising that it took the inevitability of Germany’s defeat to become apparent before the upper ranks of the German forces began plotting against Hitler – not so much heroic as seeing which way the wind is blowing and trying to limit the damage.

Coming so soon after the war’s end, it’s easy to see this as yet another piece of propaganda to throw in Germany’s face. It’s effectively saying “Hey look! This is something else Hitler lied to you about!” More focus on Rommel’s achievements rather than watching him mope about Germany’s war policies would have made for an excellent movie, rather than merely “good.” And let’s face it, nobody wants to see “Emo” Rommel. Now there’s a scary thought.

Favourite scene: von Stauffenberg placing the suitcase under the table at Hitler’s briefing, then making a swift exit.

Quote: “It’s too late for me. I’m seventy now – too old to fight, too old to challenge authority, however evil… but not too old, however, to wish you and your friends the best of luck in their extremely interesting enterprise.”

Silly Moment: Giving Rommel the option of whether to take a suicide pill, or go to trial and risk his family’s safety. The way it’s presented in the film is silly.

Score: 3/5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eul-IqxNww4

Meet Dave (2008)

Simon Prior

2013-07-18

Over there, that looks like comedy! After it!

Twitter Plot Summary: Eddie Murphy plays the ship, and the tiny captain of the ship, that looks like Eddie Murphy.

Genre: Adventure/Comedy/Family/Romance/Sci-Fi

Director: Brian Robbins

Key Cast: Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Scott Caan, Ed Helms, Kevin Hart.

Five Point Summary:

1. Everything’s got a strange yellow/orange glow. It’s disconcerting. 
2. Eddie Murphy is playing the captain AND a ship? My brain hurts. 
3. That chap was in Buffy for a bit. He’s not been up to much… 
4. Police station goes boom.
 5. I am Dave Ming Chang!

It’s a commonly known fact that, animated appearances aside, Eddie Murphy has not been funny since the early 1990s. A common problem for many prominent 80s comedians is that they get older and without any good reason limit their output solely to family friendly nonsense. Well, to say “without any good reason” is perhaps a misnomer – as people get older their rebellious streaks tend to fade and they’re more inclined to play an instrument or make films their kids can watch. In any case, it is with some trepidation that one should approach any live action film starring Eddie Murphy since Beverly Hills Cop 3. Maybe with the exception of Bowfinger.

Surprisingly, it’s not as bad as first impressions would suggest. The sci-fi concept at work is of an alien vessel that crash-lands on Earth whilst on a mission to save their planet. The twist is that the ship looks like Eddie Murphy, and within that ship are a crew of tiny people, the captain of which is also Eddie Murphy. If you’ve ever read The Beano and the Numskulls comic strip, or even that episode of Dr Who featuring the tiny Teselecta crew (in the Matt Smith episode Let’s Kill Hitler) then you have a good idea what’s going on. What follows is the classic trope of the alien misunderstanding all of Earth’s customs and having to learn how to fit in. This voyage of discovery is juxtaposed with the story of the obligatory child outsider, who is bullied at school and has a single mother. Can you see where this is going yet? Well don’t, because it doesn’t. Whilst Dave Ming Chang, the name selected by the ship’s crew as “the most common name on Earth” is sidetracked a little by Elizabeth Banks’ Gina Morrison, the police (and one would assume, the armed forces) are on Dave’s trail believing him to either be an alien invader or just some nut who decided to bury his face in the dirt. Meanwhile the Captain holds firm that interacting with the humans, and in particular Banks and her son (who found the MacGuffin in the first place) will ultimately lead them back to the MacGuffin that will save their planet and let them get home.

You can call me Worf. I mean... Johnny Dazzle. — You can call me Worf. I mean… Johnny Dazzle.

Of course it would be too easy to just have them sidetracked by Elizabeth Banks. And thus, the role of No 2 was born. Not only is it a poo-related pun (which is probably deliberate), but his position is to be the dissenting voice aboard the good ship Dave. The whole point of the metal ball MacGuffin is to steal all of the salt from Earth’s oceans, and he’s determined to follow the mission through to its bitter end. Meanwhile the rest of the crew are starting to undergo changes in behaviour as a result of spending time on Earth. Most notably is No 4, the gruff Worf-esque security type who morphs into a camp fashionista called Johnny Dazzle.

Unlike some other supposedly family-friendly films (we’re looking at you, Black Knight), Meet Dave never tries to be anything more than perfect family fodder – no hints at bad language or suggestive situations, no ridiculous overacting (although many of the cast, Ed Helms in particular, dial it up to 9 rather than 11), and production values are generally crisp. Some terrible green screen work aside, it never looks massively cheap.

Reading back on the history of the film, it appears that the script had input from a number of different sources, which often acts to the detriment of the final film. Certainly, it’s noted that the original idea was for the film to appeal to a broader audience but this was subsequently targeted at the family market. Generally speaking, the more people who work on a script, the worse it is when it finally gets made. Throw in improvisation on set and you’ll end up with a film that doesn’t represent the writer’s original idea. This is nothing new, but Meet Dave could have turned out much, much worse than this.

So the jury’s in and, whilst certainly not a patch on his earlier more anarchic work, Eddie Murphy is likeable and the story is adequate. Younger audiences will get the most out of it, other than a few amusing lines dotted throughout, there’s little appeal for anybody else.

Favourite scene: Dave has just won a hot dog eating contest and has to evacuate his bowel.

Quote: “Time for me to exit into the night!”

Silly Moment: The CGI monstrosity that is the Captain and No 3 trying to get back into the ship after being expelled by No 2.

Score: 2.5/5

The Iron Giant (1999)

Simon Prior

2013-07-17

They didn't want to tell her that the spaghetti was overcooked. — They didn’t want to tell her that the spaghetti was overcooked.

Twitter Plot Summary: A lonely boy makes friends with an alien giant robot and must protect him from the government.

Genre: Animation/Action/Adventure/Comedy/Crime/Family/Sci-Fi

Director: Brad Bird

Key Cast: Eli Marienthal, Harry Connick Jr, Jennifer Aniston, Vin Diesel.

Five Point Summary:

1. “Hogarth! HOGARTH!” 
2. Oh that Iron Giant! He’s so loveable! 
3. Cannonball!
 4. The government always fears what it doesn’t understand. 
5. Mutually assured destruction. Kind of.

1957 is a great year in which to set a story. It’s an era of classic and sometimes terrible science fiction (as seen when Hogarth is watching a bad B-movie in the first five minutes) and of science fact as the space race and, by extension, the Cold War, starts to heat up. It’s also worth taking into consideration that the world was living in fear of nuclear armageddon. Into this volatile mix comes the Iron Giant, who’s a literal giant made of iron. It’s not just a clever name. Based on the Ted Hughes novel The Iron Man (no, not that one), the action is moved from the quaint English countryside to Maine, USA. Purists may balk at the transition, but it fits with the aforementioned science fiction/science fact crossover.

Hogarth is a classic child of the era. He’s mischievous but not to the point of inherently bad behaviour. He’s also terribly inquisitive, which true to form is what gets him into trouble in the first place. The giant crashes to Earth from space as we see the Sputnik satellite orbiting the planet. We then meet Hogarth, who wants a pet but isn’t allowed one because his mother thinks they create mess. He then encounters the Iron Giant and a modified “one man and his dog” type story is set in motion. The Iron Giant needs to be taught how things work on Earth, and thankfully Hogarth is the one to do this.

The animation is a delight, mixing traditional animation with computer generated characters. It’s clear that the Iron Giant is the CG creation, but it fits in rather nicely with the traditional stuff. More importantly, the Iron Giant is brimming with personality despite only having a limited vocabulary. The same can be said for the film as a whole, it’s charming and entertaining and doesn’t play like your average animated feature. The obvious budgetary issues aside, this could have easily been a live action feature, although much of the charm would likely be lost.

The moral of the story appears to be that violence is inherent in mankind, yet there is goodness in some of us, goodness which Hogarth tries to instil in Mr Iron Giant. Of course, once the government and the army gets involved – and their reaction is, of course, “KILL IT!” – it’s not such an easy choice. And that’s what it comes down to – choice. It’s in all of us to decide how we lead our lives, and the Iron Giant is a perfect allegory for this choice. The Iron Giant should rightfully be considered as evidence of what Western cinema is capable of, animated or otherwise, and should be placed alongside the best of Miyazaki’s work with Studio Ghibli. If you ever needed proof that animation could be considered on the same level as its live action counterparts, make sure you watch The Iron Giant – it’s not just for the kids you know.

Favourite scene: The Iron Giant jumping in the lake and displacing most of its contents.

Quote: “The biggest thing in this town is probably the homecoming queen.”

Silly Moment: Kent Mansley ordering the launch of a nuclear bomb, then suggesting they “Duck and Cover” when it hits. You moron.

Score: 4.5/5

Loving Memory (1971)

Simon Prior

2013-07-16

Twitter Plot Summary: A young man on a bike is accidentally killed by a car. The couple in said car take his body home. She sits there talking to him. Very odd.

Genre: Drama

Director: Tony Scott

Key Cast: David Pugh, Roy Evans, Rosamund Greenwood

Five Point Summary:

1. Bam! He dead! 
2. They’re a very odd couple. 
3. She’s talking to a corpse. That’s not right. 
4. You know what, he looks nothing like the dead brother. Just saying. 
5. It’s not a traditional burial, but it will do.

Before he became known for his vacuous, kinetic, swirly camera action films, Tony Scott started his movie making career with this relatively low-key affair. Shot in stark black and white, it’s about an older couple who accidentally run over and kill a cyclist on a country lane. Rather than report the matter to the police, they take the body home with them and the woman sets about dressing up the body so it resembles her long-dead brother. As she spends the movie chatting away to the recently deceased boy/man, the older man works the mine and gathers wood for what we later find out to be a coffin.

Dialogue is kept to a minimum and the story is subsequently told more in images and very deliberate sounds. There’s the constant tick-tick of an old clock in the room where the body is left, occasionally punctuated by the buzzing of a fly. Or flies, I’m sure after a few days the body would be a little ripe. David Pugh has the easiest (or should that be the hardest?) role by playing a corpse for the film’s running time. He’s embodied with the personality of the dead brother, but being dead himself he’s not in any position to respond to the woman’s never-ending stream of melancholy exposition.

Symbolism, or just a nice shot of a horse in a field?

It’s nice to see where a director started, and if you were to compare this to his later work you would barely recognise it as a Tony Scott movie. The constantly moving camera for which he is famously known is non-existent, replaced with either static shots or slow zooms in or out and gentle crossfades. It’s a really curio of a film, a three-header where only one character has any dialogue, one works a mine and builds a coffin, and one is dead. The living pair are half a step away from being being a Yorkshire version of Leatherface or one of those crazy families in the Wrong Turn mould. She’s clearly got unresolved issues – who else would spend twenty years mourning a dead brother then dress up the corpse of a man you’ve accidentally killed as that same brother? Apart from Miss Haversham of course, she’s the right kind of crazy for a stunt like that. The young man does become a character in his own right, albeit a silent one. She gives him a personality but we never get to see what he’s actually like.

More interestingly is Roy Evans as the man. What’s his story? Why does he do what he does? Why doesn’t he ever speak? Many questions are raised and we only scratch the surface of his persona from the woman’s expositional dialogue. All of that is from her perspective as well, so much like the corpse of the young man our entire perspective of the older man is twisted by her thoughts and opinions. Without a voice himself it’s difficult to ascertain his motives.

There seems to be a theme about isolation prevalent in the story – the young man dies in a country lane; the older couple live on an isolated farm in the middle of nowhere – to the psychological aspects of loss, grieving and the inevitability of death. And after all that has preceded it, the film ends with the rag style jazz piece Button Up Your Overcoat. This is at odds with the rest of the film and sums it all up perfectly. Most odd, yet strangely appropriate.

Favourite scene: The fateful car crash. For a zero budget thing it looks rather good.

Silly Moment: The woman spends an entire movie talking to a corpse, does that count?

Score: 3.5/5

Monsters University (2013)

Simon Prior

2013-07-15

Lovely people but... a bit odd. — Lovely people but… a bit odd.

Twitter Plot Summary: We go back and see Sully and Mike in their university days as they learn to become Scarers.

Genre: Animation/Adventure/Comedy/Family/Fantasy

Director: Dan Scanlon

Key Cast: Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirran, Sean Hayes, Dave Foley, Alfred Molina, Nathan Fillion.

Five Point Summary:

1. Young Mike deserves his own film. 
2. Dean Hardscrabble is scary.  
3. Yep, called it – that’s Helen Mirren and Nathan Fillion. 
4. Big scares are all about psychology.
 5. Finally – there’s John Ratzenberger.

It’s been 12 years since Monsters Inc, so the question is- how do you make a sequel to Monsters Inc? Well the answer is: you don’t. No, instead you make a prequel and go back to see Mike and Sully beginning university life. There was a lot of potential for this to be yawnsome – the college/university genre tropes are tired and played out – thankfully it’s rather good. I mean, it’s a Pixar film isn’t it? After a brief introduction to a young Mike being shown around Monsters Inc on a school trip (and deciding that he wants to be a Scarer when he grows up), the opening credits whizz by and tell us that Mike studies hard and gets into Monsters University to major in Scaring. It’s here that we’re introduced to Sully, a cocky jock caricature who’s father was one of the all time great Scarers. Sully and Mike have completely opposite approaches to scaring and soon take an instant dislike to each other, but circumstances push them together and they have to find a way of working as a team in order to stay at the university.

For anybody who has no clue how the American university system works, you may find yourselves lost amongst the many references to their schooling system. This does have the unfortunate effect of alienating some of the audience as there isn’t time to explain any of this in the story. Suffice to say, many students decide to join a fraternity – essentially a group of like-minded and/or similarly skilled individuals – which then compete in various challenges with other fraternities. This forms the core of Monsters University. The Scare Games prove to be the main bulk of the film, as the fraternity of the appropriately monster-esque Oozma Kappa are joined by Mike and Sully. Despite being a group of socially inadequate misifts, they have to work through a series of challenges and use their individual skills to their advantage.

The good thing is the prequel card isn’t overplayed. Sully and Mike are designed to look a bit younger of course, and it’s all clearly building up to the events of the first film, which is fine. The origins of Randy/Randall are nicely done, slowly turning from a nice guy into the villain we know from Monsters Inc. John Goodman and Billy Crystal inhabit their roles as if they’ve never been away, and their on-screen relationship is always great fun to see, but the real stars are the assorted misfits of Oozma Kappa. Terri and Terry Perry, a two-headed monster where one is a dancer and the other one isn’t (most awkward); Art, essentially a furry pair of arms/legs with a face, is a New Age Philosophy student; Don, a mature student with tentacles and a rockin’ bat-shaped moustache; and Squishy, a five eyed jelly thing who discovers that he is able to sneak up on others without being heard. Within this motley crew Art gets all of the best one-liners – any chance he can get a spin-off, Pixar?

There are a couple of nice nods to other films – one shot is take directly from Gladiator (think the first time Russell Crowe enters the Arena), and another that lifts almost gleefully that opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy is chased by a tribe of natives. Little things like this are always nice to spot and add to the film if you’re a self-confessed film nut, but don’t detract from the experience if you’ve never seen the source material.
Thematically it’s appropriate to its audience in that, whatever plans you may have when you’re younger, it may not always turn out exactly as you’d expected. Whilst that might seem a little depressing, don’t take it that way. The message is that yes, things don’t always go to plan, but you will find something you enjoy and excel at even if it’s not exactly what you thought. Things have a habit of working themselves out and you often find yourself where you need to be one way or the other. That’s life, kids.

Unlike the majestic Toy Story trilogy, Monsters University doesn’t quite reach the heights of its predecessor, but then it’s such a high benchmark that anything else pales in comparison. It is as enjoyable as you would expect from a Pixar film and hits all the right story notes, but we’ve been spoiled by both the original film and the fact the Toy Story sequels were pitch perfect. Thankfully it’s more Toy Story than Cars, take comfort in that.

Favourite scene: The Library challenge. Everybody has something important to do and marks a turning point in the narrative.

Quote: “Let’s see that slobber! Drool is a tool! Use it!”

Silly Moment: The initiation of Mike and Sully into Oozma Kappa is interrupted by Squishy’s mother entering the room and doing the washing. Silly in a good way.

Score: 4/5

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