Lucy Review

 Lucy is about what would happen if you could access more than 10% of your brain. It starts with Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) in Taiwan. She’s forced by her boyfriend (apparently disguised as Bono) to deliver a briefcase to gangster Mr Jang (Min-sik Choi). It’s filled with drugs, she doesn’t know. When she meets Jang, he kidnaps her and puts the drugs, sealed, in her stomach; she has to smuggle them to America or he’ll kill her family.

This is cut with Morgan Freeman’s Professor Samuel Norman (which doesn’t sound like a real name), giving a lecture about his research into the human brain; how humans only use 10% and what would happen if we could access more. It’s also cut with footage of predators in nature, a cheetah chasing a gazelle, which is like, a metaphor, or something.

So the drugs get loose and enter her system, and as the drugs keep affecting her, she’s able to access more and more of her brain and you see captions of 20%, 40% and so on throughout the film as she becomes more powerful, firstly being really smart, then moving things with her mind and some whole new levels of ridiculousness later on. The premise bothers people; it’s a fallacy that people use only 10% of their brain, and the film goes on about it, firstly with the slightly cringey Morgan Freeman lecture, then constantly referencing the scientific; Lucy bangs on about 'quantum physics, applied mathematics, the infinite capacity of the cell's nucleus’. Being a Sci-fi film it’s okay to show the unbelievable, but to try and ground it in reality just by using sciencey words can be really grating. It’s the least of the film’s problems, though.

It all goes wrong when she assimilates the drugs, in a scene reminiscent of Inception, gravity seems to disappear (why?) and she’s writhing around on the ceiling and walls. Then she’s calm. For the entirety of the movie. Her newfound gift seems to come with a price as they so often do; she now has no personality. Dead eyed and monotonous, it’s like she’s trying to out-zen Neo, at one point even saying ‘I don’t feel pain, fear, desire’ which might be nice for her, but really, really dull to watch. It’s not ScarJo’s fault, and while it’s interesting to have a main character who isn’t burdened with human emotions, emotions are kind of necessary if you want an audience to engage with the main character.

  This emotionlessness also sucks the fun out of superpowers. The first thing Eddie Mora does with his new abilities in Limitless (which has a very similar concept) is sleep with his Landlord’s wife. He gets in fights, has affairs, makes millions on the stock market, and has fun before the dangerous realities of the drug become apparent. Because Lucy doesn’t care, she has no fun. But it’s not that kind of movie. She just wants to meet up with Morgan Freeman (not sure why).

If you did care about her however, she has a pretty easy ride anyway. At one point she’s speeding through Parisian traffic, but she can move cars out of the way with her mind. She’s pursued by Mr Jang throughout the film, but he has guns and she has god-like superpowers. There’s a bit in Nick Hornby’s book High Fidelity that sums it up perfectly. The characters are listing top five Gerry Anderson shows, and the protagonist says ‘I don’t believe you’ve got Captain Scarlett at number one, Dick. The guy was immortal! What’s fun about that?’.

There are a few things to enjoy, mostly Julian Rhind-Tutt’s performance as ‘The Limey’ (ugh). He explains the fates of those who were kidnapped, that they would be used as drug mules or they and their families would be murdered. Adding heaped teaspoons of English politeness to an intimidating monologue, he’s absolutely terrifying and the best part of the movie, but he’s only in it for about five minutes.

Lucy can’t quite make up its mind, with the direction and pacing of an action thriller without any of the thrills, it uses a lot of big words and explicitly talks about big ideas to try to sound clever, and it really feels like it’s trying, but it tries to have its cake and eat it with (boring) car chases and shoot outs. The ridiculousness of the whole thing does stop it from being boring though, and it’s unintentionally funny; my friend and I were laughing throughout, and at least it tries to do something different.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review

Based on a Marvel comic from the ‘60s and directed by James Gunn (who has a weird, almost B Movie background, writing credits including Slither, Scooby Doo and the Dawn of the Dead remake), Guardians of the Galaxy is the strangest, and by far the best Marvel film yet. Chris Pratt, known for playing the tubby, naïve and lovable Andy from Parks and Recreation plays Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, a roguish space thief who comes into the possession of a mysterious orb. He’s still naïve and lovable but now he’s absolutely ripped. With help from a team of space weirdoes, he must stop the evil Ronan (Lee Pace), who’s a bit like The Emperor from Star Wars from getting the orb, or shits gonna kick off.

It’s easy to compare it to Star Wars; there aren’t that many space operas. You’ve got a host of different aliens (most characters are made up with prosthetics, a few entirely CGI), space ships, evil guys with hoods and lasers going off everywhere. This is fine; Star Wars is great obviously, and the tone of GOTG is very different.

There are a lot of jokes, and Chris Pratt is absolutely hilarious. If you’ve seen Parks and Recreation it’s easy to imagine the whole film is going on inside Andy’s (Chris Pratt’s character) head, like he’s written a movie in which he plays a Han Solo type character but still having Andy’s boyish naivety. You also have a lot of comedy actors; Peter Serafinowicz and John C. Reilly play two army official types. I love Peter Serafinowicz and so everything he did I found funny, and having gotten used to seeing him almost exclusively in comedy I found myself giggling at everything he said even if it wasn’t a joke, as if he’s still in Spaced.

 The whole thing is grounded by a fantastic pop soundtrack, bringing familiarity to strange alien locations. Quill carries around a cassette player, and dances across the galaxy to his only tape: ‘awesome mix volume 1’. He sees this as part of his identity, his past on Earth, and serves to remind that he’s one of us. It also makes the film a delight to hear; one of the best parts of the film is the surprise when a great song starts playing. They’re almost all joyous, and all pre 1985. Blue Swede's ‘Hooked On A Feeling’, featuring prominently in the trailers perfectly captures the playfulness of the film.

The casting and the chemistry between the characters make the film. Peter Quill and Gamora (Star Trek’s Zoe Saldana) are constantly bickering, and have this will they-won’t they thing going on. He’s kind of goofy and cocky but she’s all business. Then you have the double act of Rocket (an unrecognisable Bradley Cooper doing a New York accent) who’s a smartass talking racoon weapons expert, and his mate Groot, a talking tree played by Vin Diesel (though he can only say ‘I am Groot’). Like Han and Chewie, Rocket translates for Groot. They also meet Drax (played by ex-wrestler Dave Bautista), a really muscly blue guy who wants to get revenge on Ronan, and takes everything literally like a hate-filled, body-building Vulcan. Chris Pratt is just perfect though; nobody could have played the role the same. He manages to pull off boyish goofiness while convincingly captaining a space ship or escaping from space prison. He makes you feel like you could do all of this, and his cited influences of Marty McFly and Han Solo perfectly sum him up.

Although part of the Disney Marvel universe it has none of the boredom that usually comes in the last third of a Marvel film, and the tone, partly due to the pre ‘80s soundtrack made it stand out. Sure there’s a big CGI ending but there’s enough interesting characters involved to keep you excited. While being hilarious it’s not all a big joke like the Pirates of The Carribean movies, and there’s a lot at stake. It manages to combine comedy, action and adventure in perfect proportions, all with plenty of retro heart.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review

The first How to Train your Dragon was fantastic, a pleasant surprise that charmed everyone and stood way above the rest of Dreamworks’ films; it was funny without lazily referencing pop culture, the soundtrack and gorgeous animation (especially in the flying scenes) were about as good as spectacle gets in films, and the plot was unabashedly heart-warming (without being mawkish) and perfectly constructed (the ending just gets me). It had the quality that Pixar is renowned for (without showing off), but was still appealing to kids.

So 5 years after uniting Vikings and dragons Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) discovers an island home to thousands of dragons, and must protect them and his home Berk from the scary Drogo, who is building a dragon army. He meets his long lost mother, played by Cate Blanchett doing a really strange accent (vaguely Celtic) who’s been looking after Dragon Island.

 It’s really more of the same; lots of flying around on dragons, laughs from the supporting characters’ squabbles (Jonah Hill’s Snotlout and Chirstopher Mintz-Plasse’s Fishlegs getting lots of the best lines), a lovely relationship between a boy and his cat-like dragon, and a huge war at the end with massive dragon dogfights. It does go slightly darker though, as do lots of sequels. Hiccup has to confront his past, deal with loss, and betrayal.  The bad guy Drago (Djimon Hounsou) is very scary, as are his dragons, and he wants to take over the world, so there’s more at stake this time.

In the screening I saw there were about ten kids in the cinema and twice as many adults (most of them accompanying children, a few on their own). Most of the laughs I heard came from the adults; the film didn’t reference things that would go over children’s heads like Shrek, but much of the humour comes from relationships and dialogue rather than slapstick and farts. One of the best scenes in the film shows Astrid (America Ferrera) mocking Hiccup. Weirdly, it all goes a bit Judd Apatow and you feel like it’s really mocking Jay Baruchel; she’s poking fun at how he talks and moves. It’s a lovely moment showing how close and comfortable the young couple are, but it does feel strange. Maybe I’ve just seen too many Judd Apatow films and find it hard to think about Jay Baruchel outside of the lovable stoner context. It gets away with it though; there's plenty of childish humour; I went with a nine year old though, who loved it.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 has most of what made the first film great, and to say it’s not as good as the first is doing it a disservice. It’s still gorgeous, funny and not afraid to make you feel things.

The Review of the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

It’s ten years after the events of the first film, and most of the world’s population have been wiped out by ‘simian flu’. The few survivors living in San Francisco (which now looks like Playstation 3’s The Last of Us; towns covered in greenery, walls overgrown with vines etc.) blame the apes for this apocalypse. The apes are living in the woods they took in the first film. Caesar, the main ape from Rise’ who lead the revolution against humanity (Andy Serkis) is the leader of their ape community and they are doing well. They have a school and can all speak ape sign language (and more and more verbal English as the film goes on). When an ape is shot by a human explorer, things start to spiral out of control, and war between man and ape looks increasingly likely.

Dawn of The Planet of The Apes (a friend of mine criticised the title; too much ‘of the’s) is somewhat humourless and bleak, though not without a few pleasures (Andy Serkis). The CGI of course is amazing, as is Serkis’s performance, but if you’ve seen the first film the awe of seeing realistic talking apes with lifelike expressions is old. The strength and weakness of this film is the focus on the apes rather than the humans. It’s Caesar’s movie, and you empathise with him much more than any human. I don’t know if it’s intentional but the human characters are very underdeveloped; there’s a guy who wants to give the apes a chance and talk to them (good guy, has son and hat), a jerk who just hates apes and wants them all dead (bad guy, has stubble and gun) and Gary Oldman (bad guy, has Gary Oldman glasses and beard, doesn’t hate apes that much but wants to protect his people). Nobody has any discernable traits; it’s like they spent so much time on everything else they forgot to give the characters character, and seem to have turned up from some B movie, which wouldn’t be a problem if the film didn’t take itself so seriously.

It’s a dark film, with almost no laughs. This would be fine if the film wasn’t about monkeys, the funniest animals on the planet. There is one scene in which an ape is trying to steal weapons, and so pretends to be a normal, comedy style monkey, to the amusement of the humans he’s fooling. This would have been great, possibly the best part of the movie if I hadn’t seen an advert showing pretty much the whole scene on telly. Like most trailers, it spoilt the best and funniest part of an otherwise humourless film.

At over two hours though, it was never boring. The film is unique in that it focuses on a different species while managing the delicate balance of not anthropomorphising the apes too much, while keeping them relatable. It’s not like an animated film where you have animals with human brains; the apes are very apey; they have their own culture distinct from humans. The whole theme of the film though, is basically apes and people are the same, and there’s a lot you could read into it if you could be bothered. The visuals are amazing; CGI is in fact so good most of the time you don’t notice, apart from a few lingering monkey eyes close ups which serve more to show off motion capture technology than to say anything about the characters.

Dawn is unique and you have to take your hat off somewhat for it daring to focus on apes rather than humans. You then have to put it on again somewhat for the film taking itself so fucking seriously, and end up with a hat that’s just kind of resting on top of your head, and you look like a dick.

The Wolverine Review

I reviewed X-Men; Days of Future Past last week so I thought I’d follow up with The Wolverine.

 The Wolverine is the 6^th X-Men movie, and Logan’s second stand-alone feature. Long before The Avengers, The X-Men movies has offered an ensemble team of superheroes to varying degrees of critical and commercial success, starting with Bryan Singers X-Men in 2000. You have Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Jean Grey, and Iceman to name a few, but really it’s all about Magneto, Professor X and Wolverine.

 Wolverine one of the most compelling super heroes on screen; a soldier who forgot his identity, a man who is cursed with eternal life and a badass with an indestructible adamantium skeleton and twelve inch retractable claws. Like if Jason Bourne was a vampire and a victim of military experiments. Wolverine has seen so much; The American Civil War, World War One and Two, Nagasaki and Vietnam. Wolverine’s story trumps any other superhero. He’s not an orphan (Batman, Spiderman, Superman), and he doesn’t struggle to hide his identity from the world (Batman, Spiderman, Superman). His pain comes from his power; he is cursed with eternal life, which is so much more interesting than having no parents. Wolverine’s condition asks questions about the importance of death, how it gives meaning to life; the thing we fear most pushes us to live.

These themes are explored in The Wolverine, directed by James Mangold (Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma), theatrically released last year, and currently showing on Sky Movies. So at the start we see a younger Logan held captive at a POW camp in Nagasaki, just before the atomic bomb is dropped. He saves one of the guards, Ken Yamamura’s Yashida, who becomes indebted to him for the rest of his life. Fast forward to present day and Logan is now a hermit, living beardy on a mountain, alone.  He is found by Yukio (Rila Fukushima), a kick-ass mutant who sees people’s deaths, and an associate of the now dying Yashida. She tells him to return to Japan to honour his promise of seeing the dying Yashida before he dies. He reluctantly agrees, and on arrival in Tokyo becomes entangled in a web of conspiracy; facing The Yakuza, a venomous mutant scientist who tries to take away his power  and a giant adamantium samurai robot. All while falling in love with Yashida’s daughter Mariko, as he protects her from The Yakuza.

So Logan loses his power in this movie, becoming mortal, which is a great trick. With most protagonists despite being mortal you know they’ll be ok; James Bond for example is never going to die. However something outside of traditional Hollywood narrative ensures Wolverine’s survival; his healing powers stop him from dying. Take them away and suddenly anything could happen. Every bullet and blade is now dangerous, and there’s real fear when for the first time we see Logan limping from bullet wounds and bleeding for hours. His power also brings weird movie believability to the action. Most heroes simply don’t get shot or stabbed, and if they do it’s always in the shoulder or leg, maybe they’re unconscious for a bit but they’ll wake up just in time. Wolverine however, is always getting sliced open, and despite healing almost instantly, it’s more believable than when henchmen can’t shoot a target a few metres away, or when average Joe takes on massive scary monsters (e.g. Sam vs Shelob in Return of The King).

One let down is a fight scene atop a 300pmh bullet train. None of it looks real, and any tension is dissolved by the obvious green screen. Trains are great in films; they move really, really fast and have real potential for claustrophobia, but the CGI just doesn’t work; maybe it would’ve looked better twenty years ago with practical effects. The scene is completely unnecessary but too ugly to get away with it.

Despite its flaws, there’s a lot to enjoy with The Wolverine. Hugh Jackman is just the right amount of gruff, just on the edge or caricature. The film is lifted every time his sidekick Yukio is on screen; clad in platforms and stripy tights, wielding a samurai sword, her humour and charm lift her above nerd wank fodder. The action in this is better than most superhero films; Wolverine’s powers necessitate hand-to-hand combat, which is much more exciting than robots shooting lasers from huge distances (which is the biggest problem with X-Men; Days of Future Past). The locations are great, and although the cinematography is pretty standard blockbuster stuff, the Tokyo scenery and lighting give the look a cool blue finish, and pretty backgrounds.

Apart from some rubbish CGI The Wolverine is fun, although lacking a decent baddy. It’s pretty much what you’d expect if you’ve seen the trailers, but less dull than you might think.

X Men: Days of Future Past Review

The premise of X-Men: Days of Future Past is great (Wolverine goes back in time to the ‘70s). The film doesn’t really deliver though, underusing the best actors and characters, suffering from a lacklustre plot and no real villain.

So the future is really bleak. For some reason it’s cloudy and dark everywhere all the time, and robots are chasing the last surviving mutants across the globe. The old favourites are back, and it’s a real treat to see Iceman, Kitty, Magneto and Xavier for the first time in eight years. They’re barely escaping the scary robots who were invented by Peter Dinklage's Bolivar Trask in the 70s, and so send Wolverine back in his own consciousness (with his memories intact but into his younger body; unfortunately there aren’t two Wolverines knocking about) to stop a chain of events that causes the mutant apocalypse. Wolverine finds Xavier at his worst, without his powers and stumbling around drunk like Kurt Cobain or Jim Morrison, bearded and robed. There’s a neat bit later in the film in which the two Xaviers (Patrick Stewart and James MacAvoy) meet, but it’s one of too few ‘new meets old’ moments in the film. It’s disappointing how little this happens, and the huge potential for self-reflection, and seeing two actors play the same role in one shot would’ve been great, but it’s underused.

The first third of the film is fun, the future is depressing and scary, and it’s great seeing Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart back together.  Stewart still brings wisdom and authority to a ridiculous world, even managing to retain dignity in a leather suit and a flying wheelchair.  They’re not in it enough though; you would think they would use the two best actors in the movie a lot more. This is partly because they’re passing the franchise on to the First Class crew, so really it’s got to be about the young actors who can actually do all the action stuff, and there’s no Rogue, Cyclops or Jean Grey to run around either. It’s sad to see Stewart and McKellan go, but at least they can keep Hugh Jackman, and X-Men: Apocalypse will be set in the ‘80s, which should be cool.

The film’s biggest problem is its plot, which is kind of boring. There’s no space time continuum stuff, and they don’t really play with time travel at all. It doesn’t really feel like an action movie - there’s a lot of talking – but action set pieces are stuck in there anyway, and it’s all CGI nonsense. Big action scenes come down to lifting giant things like Superman, which is really, really boring to anyone who’s ever seen a movie before, and giant flying robots, which are unremarkable, and  have been done to death in the last ten years. The film also lacks real villain; Lawrence’s Mystique is fine, as is Dinklage’s Bolivar Trask, but there’s too much sympathy for both characters. The threat comes from the robots in the end, and they have no personality.

Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is the highlight of the movie, a slacker teen mutant who can move in bullet time. The section of the film in which he appears is the best; he’s funny, cocky and reminiscent of a young Johnny Depp. Again he’s not in it enough, and you’d think the X-Men could’ve used him in the last third of the film.

Despite a fantastic cast and some shining moments DOFP underuses its best bits, instead going for  all out CGI, or boring talking bits. 

Pompeii Review

Pompeii is an enjoyable and ridiculous ride, if you’re willing to accept the cheese and expect nothing new. Firstly it’s very camp. Keither Sutherland performs with the subtlety of a Disney villain, making Jafar look Tony Sporano. His English accent is straight out of The Hollywood guide to bad guy voices, and he wouldn’t sound out of place on The Death Star. The dialogue is clunky, almost cringe worthy at times, but the quality actors make the best out of what they’re given, like if Marco Pierre White had to make you an omelette out of dogshit and fag ends.

 Kit Harrington is still Jon Snow (he was cast because of his ‘Thrones performance) but without the northern accent. He plays Milo ‘The Celt’, a gladiator in Pompeii, the city resisting the Roman Empire, sitting at the bottom of Vesuvius. He witnessed his entire family’s massacre at a young age and so is surly and brooding for the first hour of the movie. The first hour in fact is pretty boring, and Jon Snow has little to do but scrap with his inmates in gladiator prison. He hardly talks or makes any impression until he starts gladiating and falls for Emily Browning’s Cassia, the daughter of the city’s ruler and object of evil Senator Corvus’s (Keither Sutherland) affections. It really kicks off around halfway though. The action scenes are great; loads of cool things happen that are best left unspoilt. Obviously you get people running from lava, but the gladiator aspect brings surprisingly impressive swordfights into the mix. Unfortunately the editing ruins it a little; the takes are often too short, so it’s hard to concentrate, and the 3D didn’t help (the 3D is pointless by the way; there’s not nearly enough lava or ash or rocks coming at you for a volcano movie), but the action set pieces are still gripping.

The film’s predictability is slightly more charming than problematic: you know each character’s fate within minutes of their introduction, but the film is playful enough to just about get away with it. The more mature aspects of the film (Milo’s family being killed) don’t exactly sit well with the 12A certificate, but the gore of an 18 wouldn’t have worked with the simple, family friendly love story at the heart of the film. It’s nowhere near perfect but if you just go with it and (particularly) if you’re a Kit Harrington fan, it’s really enjoyable.

 I’ll definitely watch it when it’s on at Christmas.