Category: review

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Movie Review: Quickie Edition VII

Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever – Antonio Banderas is Jeremiah Ecks, former FBI agent with a stupid name mourning for his lost wife, and Lucy Liu is Sever, disaffected ‘DIA’-trained assassin with an even stupider name. The first thing you need to know about this movie is that it is possibly one of the worst movies ever; secondly, that there was probably more money in the pyrotechnics budget than the scriptwriting, costume and casting budget combined, despite the apparent star power of the leads. Thirdly, it’s based on a video game.

And finally, the title? It lies: after about 20 minutes in, it’s not Ecks vs Sever so much as Ecks with Sever, not to mention the sexual tension between the leads is palpably higher than that between Ecks and his apparently long-lost wife, when he finally rediscovers her. Might have been of some merit if it had come out in 1994; as a 2002 release, watching in 2008, this fails utterly. ★☆

Persepolis: An animated story of an Irani girl, growing up through the Iranian Revolution and Iran-Iraq War, and the subsequent decades. Told entirely in French, this is oft-times amusing, but still largely poignant story, based on an autobiographical graphical novel by Marjane Satpari. The animation style is distinctive and simple to first appearances, but has a flexibility and depth that is used well. Not knowing French, nor the detailed history of Iran’s revolution, I can’t vouch much for the context,  but the story is a compelling one, if a little too heavy. Ends rather abruptly. ★★★☆

Iron Man: Another superhero to add to the growing panatheon of on-screen heroes? Hollywood producers have really begun to mine the comic book world for their ‘fresh’ ideas. In a way, the visual nature of comic books are probably most accesible to movies, the story-boarding and visualising already having been done for them.

That said, Iron Man isn’t half-bad, though the story is half-baked at best in this on-screen incarnation. While Downey Jr. makes a commendable performance, much of the rest of the cast is flat at best. It doesn’t help I suppose that Paltrow annoys me no end no matter what role she is in, and this doesn’t go any way to redeeming her. The action makes up for much, despite everything, and it does end up doing things slightly differently… for the most part.

The inevitable sequel(s) are foreshadowed, and for a pretty good clue to the tone of them, stick around through the credits. Minus points also for having ‘terrorists’ mixing Hindi (or simple Urdu) with Arabic. The hell kind of terrorists are they? ★★★☆

Lust, Caution (色、戒): This is one movie that is so close to perfection, and yet… A weaving story, paced carefully, though with few moments that miss the beat. The direction is studied, with attention to every detail, and the cinematography superb, rich colours where appropriate, washed out in the starker scenes. The cast is undoubtedly some of the most capable, speaking volumes with their eyes as often as with the dialogue. Knowing that lead actress Tang Wei is essentially a new starter, this her first major role, makes her achievement all the more so.

True, the sex scenes are a little full-on, the running time long, and the love story never quite, quite makes sense – unless you take the premise that femme fatales of spy-thriller must necessarily fall in love with those they attempt to decieve, if only to truly bring the tragic circle of the plot back on itself for a neat resolution. Don’t let that distract you too much, though, from pretty much everything else, which is stunning.

This is the kind of movies Wong Kar-Wai makes – a re-imagining of In the Mood for Love, if you will. I’ll freely admit, the only other Ang Lee movie I’ve seen properly is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the remaining efforts forever tainted by the awful Hulk. This is somewhat of a redemption.

One of Tony Leung’s lines in this movie is, “If you’re observant, nothing is trivial.” (or so my translation says) – something that could so easily apply to this film, ripe as it is for symbolism and depth beyond the shallow level of a first watch. Little wonder that this movie won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 2007. ★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

Charlie Wilson’s War: Amusingly told story of how Charlie Wilson, a smokin’, drinkin’, womanising politician from Texas got the Afghan war of the 80s off the ground. A bit too light-hearted given the relevance of the subject matter today, and unrepentent – the argument being that “it would have been alright if we allocated more money to follow through after the war had been won,” which looks a lot like retroactive re-writing of facts to my cynical nature. ★★☆

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Movie Review: The Dark Knight

Where to begin with Batman? The franchise has, after all, been going for nigh on 20 years now, and now we come to the 6th installment, The Dark Knight.

When you think about it, the number of Hollywood A-Listers who were in Batman and Robin, the entirely forgettable Batman movie of the mid-ninties, it is a bit of a shock that between them they managed to turn out the pile of crap that was. I mean, Clooney, Thurman, Schwarzenegger, Sliverstone, and sure, Macpherson even, and with Bruckheimer directing, you’d really hope you got something more for your money. Between that and Batman Forever (Kilmer, Kidman, Carey and Lee-Jones? No?), you’d have thought Tim Burton’s dark and brooding vision of Gotham was lost entirely in a chase for easy money that big names bring.

Little wonder then that Batman Begins wasn’t attempted until many years later, and with a cast far shorter on the A-List side. But aren’t we all glad it was? Dignity was restored to the franchise, even if in a post-Incredibles “No Capes” world, the cape really had to be justified. Not only did writer-director Christopher Nolan show that you could avoid crass blockbusterism, but you didn’t necessarily need to set it in Burton’s alternate reality to make bad guys and good guys work. Batman Begins established that the characters behind the masks could be real, that Gotham really could be somewhere, a true alt-New York.

The Dark Knight continues in that vein. While the broad arc of the story remains true to the comic cannon, Heath Ledger’s Joker is far more grounded, far more visceral than Jack Nicholson’s first incarnation of the Joker. Burton’s vision was a comic book brought to life, and it’s part of what he does best. Here, we have an entirely different beast, one more accessible and requiring less suspension of disbelief, even if the exotic gadgets do step up a notch from the restraint shown in the previous movie.

Much has been said about Heath Ledger and his role as The Joker, and I’m sure much more will be said, amongst them the push for a posthumous Oscar. On the basis of his performance here, it’s hard to see who his competition will be. In The Dark Knight, the Joker is not merely a criminal with a quirk; he’s a full-blown psychopath. Ledger lives and breathes the role, and we are richer for it.

No superhero movie is complete without an arch-nemsis to get in the way, but this movie is so dominated by Ledger’s performance and the Joker’s characterisation that the focus of the movie is more properly said to be the Joker, rather than Batman. It is his actions which drive the plot throughout, and Batman is left playing catchup.

It is a treat to see a superhero movie that both takes itself seriously and pulls it off. Batman has always been the most accessible superhero – his special power is money, not some supernatural, inexplicable power for which we are given pithy explanations. Batman Begins made a serious effort to establish a plausible background for Batman’s abilities, and The Dark Knight takes it to the next logical step, showing Batman still has human frailties. Wayne tires during the day, sleeping in a meeting. After a fight, we see him stitching himself up – he isn’t invulnerable.

While this movie is far from perfect – inexplicable and needless plot points seem to abound, possibly suggesting an even longer movie left (thankfully) on the cutting floor – it definitely is one of the better ones released in the last few years, and strangely enough one where the sequel is more in-depth than the first. Between this and Hancock, I’ve had my hope in the superhero genre renewed.

Christian Bale isn’t my perfect idea of Bruce Wayne – something about him doesn’t live up to the rich-boy image, possibly enforced by another Nolan movie, The Prestige, but he is a capable actor who manages to live the role and make it rise above the standard man-in-leather-tights. Maggie Gyllenhal is a great replacement for Katie Holmes, but is under-used – possibly, again, left on the cutting room floor.

Aaron Eckhart and Gary Oldman round out a solid cast, showcasing some of the better character actors currently at work. Eckhart particularly seems to take his Thank You for Not Smoking role and inject it with a sense of gravitas, while Oldman has long been unrecognisable from one movie to the next.

Well worth watching – all the better if you can catch it on a giant screen, as its cinematography is masterful. ★★★★☆

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Movie Review: Quickie Edition VI

Get Smart: Bloody hilarious. Unless you came to see Get Smart the TV show replicated on the big screen, or were expecting something with a bit of substance, you won’t be particularly disappointed. Steve Carrell is no Don Adams, but his straight-man is nigh on perfect, and Anne Hathaway with her gorgeous eyes is … well, a different take on Agent 99, but sexy as hell in any case. Don’t watch any trailers though, as it’ll kill some of the better jokes. ★★★★

Street Kings: I will forgive a lot for a story that has the balls to kill off characters, especially likeable ones. Not one of Forest Whittaker’s best efforts, but Keanu and co do well. Good to see Hugh Laurie out and about playing someone other than House. ★★★

There Will Be Blood: Look, I’m sure the critics love this, and I’m sure all those film majors love this, and I’m sure Daniel Day Lewis does a sterling job. But I have struggled personally to make my way through this in one sitting, and as a result my impression ain’t so great. Some impressive camera work, but just so slow and attempts a lot of deep-and-meaningful. ★★

History of the World, Part 1: Mel Brooks is possibly the closest thing America had to Monty Python in the 70s, and he delivers a right old piss-take here. Best line, Josepheus to Oedipus: “Hey, motherfucker.” Unfortunately, a lot of the rest just falls flat. ★★

The Life of Brian: Speaking of Monty Python, this movie shows why the Pythons were miles ahead of Brooks. Deeply sarcastic humour that delivers line after line without fail, memorable ones you can recall for years. Let down somewhat by a bit of rambling in places, but none the less probably the best send-up of religion and religious coflict of all time. ★★★

Definitely, Maybe: More Rom than Com, a nice chick flick, but with little for the guys. Isla Fisher is surprisingly cute, Rachel Weisz is under-used and the other girl… um yeah. Ryan Reynolds does well, surprisingly. ★★★

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Movie Review: Hancock

Hancock: This isn’t going to get great reviews in the media, because (a) it mixes genres and (b) it’s got some moral ambiguity, which could be like, confusing and stuff? But don’t be fooled, because it’s… uh… really not that bad. Honest.

Will Smith is John Hancock, a superhero who doesn’t know why he’s a superhero. He’s a drunk and generally in need of some anger and image management – after all, what kind of superhero is hated, told to go away? – until he meets Ray (Jason Bateman), PR whizz attempting to sell his world-changing ideas.

The thing that I enjoyed most about this movie is that they actually resisted giving away a gigantic chunk of it in the trailer. Watching most trailers, you can put two and two together and work out the plot, which it really does feel like for this movie too, at least up to the inflexion point. What you might perceive to be a stock-standard parabolic plot suddenly goes the wrong way, and the audience is left bruised by the story.

I’m not going to spoil the surprise at all, because it is one of the best features of this movie. Suffice to say though, it left people gasping – something I’ve not heard in a long time. From what I can tell of its development history, it’s been in production hell for nigh on 10 years before it actually got made, and was changed from something far less comedic, and for coming through as intact as it has I give full credit.

Will Smith does a superb job as Hancock during the early part of the movie, though the effort lapses a little towards the end. I’m yet to see Jason Bateman do wrong since Arrested Development, even in the low-ball The Kingdom, where his depiction of a kidnapped American soldier was the biggest redeeming factor for the whole movie. While there’s little hint of Michael Bluth (of AD) here, occasionally you’ll hear a line or two that resonates, and his every-man affability is awesome – you want to live down the street from this guy. And finally, Charlize (as Ray’s wife) is, as ever, gorgeous and very capable.

If there’s one (or two) criticisms to be had, it’s that it does make a couple of concessions to audience populism and raises the inevitable blockbuster sceptre of sequelism. Some rather minor plot threads are left open, though not in an obvious way, and while it would be nice to get closure on these, it’s more intriguing to leave them hanging than try to draw some disparate threads together.

There is a moment, very late in the movie, where the plot can diverge one of two ways: populist, a.k.a. blockbuster-ist – what keeps the punters happy – and artistic, or maybe post-modernist. One would have you walking out of the cinema, pleased enough, and the other would make you leave a lot more contemplative or even miffed at their audacity. See if you can spot the moment too.

A note for the Aussies: a “John Hancock” is apparently American slang for a signature, something I had to look up when I got home. Also, there’s a mini bonus clip about a minute into the credits, though only worth a short chuckle.

★★★☆

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Movie Review: Jumper

Jumper: David Rice (Hayden Christensen, sulky as ever) is your garden variety weedy highschooler when he suddenly discoveres he can “jump” – teleport to a place he’s seen before. Based on a novel, it’s a fast paced sci-fi thriller that won’t win any award for plot (case in point: David’s never encountered another jumper before, but soon after, refers to the “jump scar” – how? wha? when?).

The action is unrelenting, the movie never really taking a breath to let us absorb and believe the characters, but for all that, it’s not half bad, and saved by Griffin (Jamie Bell, formerly Billy Elliot), ironically enough a character introduced for the film. ★★☆

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Movie Review: The Forbidden Kingdom

The Forbidden Kingdom: So get this. You’ve got a kid from Boston magically transported to middle-ages alt-China. Kung fu and the whole deal. You’ve got Jackie Chan and Jet Li on board (for the first time in a Hollywood film), and you make this movie? Good lord, someone make sure this scriptwriter isn’t let near a movie studio again (though IMDB suggests he’s about to murder a classic). Stunning visuals and good fight coreography entirely let down by a plot that takes itself much, much too seriously and doesn’t bother to explain its oddities (like 14th Century Chinese emperors speaking English) along the way. ★★★

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Movie Review: 21

For me, it started with a glaring continuity error.

Let’s back up for a minute here. The most important thing a movie needs to do is keep your disbelief suspended. It’s what lets you watch James Bond movies and think of a car with missles under the engine as integral to the plot (Die Another Day is another matter). Three hours of The Lord of the rings would scarcely work if you couldn’t for that time believe the story.

So it’s an inauspicious start when there’s a simple and glaring continuity error. Not very long into the film, we see Kevin Spacey’s too-clever-by-half MIT lecturer deal out the first round of a Blackjack game. Cards are dealt face up to the the four players, and that’s part of the key to 21‘s premise, that you can beat the system by counting which cards have been dealt and so concluding which cards are left.

The camera then switches to a shot of our nominal protagonist, Ben (Jim Sturgess). He’s making excuses for not joining the team. You know it’s a weak excuse because the premise of the movie, what you’ve seen in the trailer, is that he’s going to go to Vegas-Baby-Vegas. The shot switches back to Spacey, and bam – continuity. There are now 6 cards on the table, face down.

If you’re not looking for it, you might not see it (though after reading this, you certainly will be). I wanted to see the cards out of curiosity at the hands dealt, expecting the first lesson in card counting to come then. But the sudden jolt of continuity threw me back into the fact that I’m in a theatre, and the elementary rules you expect to be followed have just been thrown out. It’s the same as why programmers can’t stand to watch movies about “hackers” – knowing what you know, the pretensions to reality are implausible.

And here, it’s something as simple as cards being upside down. It throws you off the dialogue, and makes you walk back through the plot you’ve seen already, thinking about whether you’ve missed any other goofs.

The second most important thing for a movie is to not be entirely predictable, and on that count, 21 fails utterly, and miserably. Continue reading “Movie Review: 21“

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Movie Review: The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner: poignant tale of two Afghani kids, one Pashtun, one Hazara. Growing up in Afghanistan before the Russians invade, and then torn apart by the invasion. Based off the book of the same name by Khaled Hosseini, though I’ve yet to read it. Reasonably hard hitting story that manages to have a few light-hearted moments in it, with some excellent acting. ★★★★

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Wheeeee!

The Wii? Totally, totally worth it.

I will say this straight up: if it’s top-of-the-line graphics and abilities you want, the Wii doesn’t cut the mustard. Its sole non-game feature that makes pretentions at being something more than a simple console is the internet access, and even that’s flaky and needlessly slow – for one, where did Nintendo manage to find a 802.11b only chip in 2008? Everything else is focused on the game, and in some ways, that’s what you want from a console, despite everything the Playstations and Xboxen are being sold for.

Negative points out of the way, the good: the Wii is possibly the most fun you’ve had with a console since you  blew the dust out of a Super Mario Bros. cart and carefully loaded it into the NES. There’s any number of factors contributing, but chief among them is most certainly the Wiimote and the software developers’ execution of it. It’s one thing to push buttons at the right time to get things to happen on screen – it’s quite another to throw your whole body into that forehand smash, or tire yourself out completely from three bouts of virtual boxing.

The Wiimote and Nintendo’s first-party games have paved the way for a different type of game on the Wii, one which must be easy to pick up and explainable in a few short pictures or instructions. Party games previously would require a (mental) remapping of buttons essentally every time you switch a minigame, but with the Wiimote’s ability to imitate or at least provide a good proxy for physical actions, it becomes something far more intuitive and easy to pick up.

Wii Sports and Wii Play, bundled with the console and extra controller respectively, are almost tech-demos from Nintendo to show what the system is capable of, but end up being immense fun and the easiest to pick up and play any time. Rayman Raving Rabbids is minigames packaged up in a semi-structured format, and while creative and enjoyable, is so out there that it’s a little worrying. Mario Party 8 is sort of Monopoly with minigames, and while it can be fun with a bunch of friends, it amounts to little when you have less than 4 to play, and its play mechanics are unbalanced, IMO. Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz on the other hand has a massive collection of minigames that are pretty easy to pick up and fun to play even on your own, along with the main single player Monkey Ball format.

Finally Mario Kart Wii. One thing you know is that Nintendo haven’t mucked with the formula here – this is the same game you played on the N64, or the SNES, with some bumps to the graphics and a few more weapons and tracks. One formula I wish they’d mucked with though is the “balance” given to the pickups makes it a very… socialist game, shall we say. Weighted randomness might make it occasionally punishing to be behind, but there’s definitely some fun in that – as opposed to knowing what to expect and having to work to maintain the lead while getting constantly bombarded in seemingly arbitrary ways (blue shells being the bane of the leader’s existance). The Battle Mode is also sorely lacking, the forced AI players determining the game far more than any human factor. Racing however stays fun and simple, though I recommend using the Wiimote-nunchuck combination rather than the wheel, for precision alone if nothing else.

Back-asswards though this review may have been, the Wii is immense fun. I have yet to pick up more lengthy and challenging games, admittedly, but the fun of the console seems to really lie in the creativity of minigames and the intuitive control mechanism that makes it instantly likeable by many. If you haven’t played it yet, you’re really missing out on what gaming should be – pure and simple fun.