Iron Man 2

Iron Man 2

The sequel to Marvel’s big-screen adaptation is pretty much what I expected in that it’s more of the same with more bangs and booms. The bloated cast which has been criticised elsewhere for spreading the drama too thinly isn’t actually that large, although the screen presence of so many bankable actors could dilute character development in many productions you have to account for this being Iron Man - there’s nothing lost here when compared to the original.

There are a fair few genuinely exciting action scenes - Scarlett Johansson’s Agent Romanoff fighting her way into Justin Hammer’s HQ (Stark’s arms dealing rival, played by Sam Rockwell), two Iron Men exchanging clanging blows with Stark and his friend James Rhodes in the opposing suits (with Don Cheadle now taking the place of Terrence Howard as Rhodes in an earlier case of alleged pay dispute that more recently has seen Ed Norton give up the role of Bruce Banner), and the pair later facing off against Mickey Rourke’s Whiplash and a small army of war droids all standing up well against anything in the original.

Aside from this you get Downey Jr. as charismatic as ever, Sam Jackson with a little more screen time as Nick Fury, Gwyneth Paltrow a little less annoying this time round as Pepper Potts, Rockwell strangely irritating as arch-cock Hammer and an unintentionally scary cameo by Gary Shandling as senator Stern, more swollen-faced than Rourke who has traded on his damaged looks for the last decade. Rourke pretty much reprises the Ram from Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, only this time with a dodgy Russian accent and a slightly camp line in evil genius tech.

The plot threads all tie up and generally it works, but as a proportion of the running time the action scenes are few and any jokes tend to raise smiles rather than chuckles. It’s worth a watch and by no means bad, but seems to be scared to try anything out of the ordinary and instead settles with above average, admittedly no sin in terms of comic book movies. Likeable rather than something to get excited over, the relatively low standard set by the first film in comparison to Spiderman, X-Men, Batman Begins etc. may help it as a franchise to progress at a more even pace, rather than fall at the second sequel. So long as they don’t try to cram even more faces in next time, that is.

A Fish Called Wanda

A Fish Called Wanda

When the UK cinema industry was in the doldrums (again) during the 1980s John Cleese came along with the critical and commercial hit comedy, A Fish Called Wanda, co-starring fellow Python Michael Palin, Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline. The film consistently enjoys repeat mentions as the years go by, cropping up in best comedies and best of British lists (how many more times will the famous pants-face scene be repeated?), and though I had enjoyed all the Python films and a few that the Pythons have gone on to feature in singly or in pairs (though Cleese has the tendency of accepting any offer going) I found Wanda lacking in yuckles.
It’s a knockabout comedy in the Ealing tradition, with an ensemble cast getting into skew-whiff situations as they double-cross each other in order to get hold of the diamonds they stole in a heist. Cleese plays a barrister defending one of the crims that got caught, and he is essentially the straight guy whose life gets turned upside down by the flamboyantly played characters that Palin, Curtis and Kline bring to life.
The stars all play well and keep you along with them as the film unfolds and the ridiculous incidents try to outdo each other, obviously having a hoot during shooting which is infectious, but despite enjoying it and generally having fun I just didn’t laugh out loud at all. An awful movie? No, but it’s hard not to feel disappointed when watching a comedy, particularly one hyped up as a jocular high-watermark for the last fourteen years.
Having already seen the ill-advised follow up, Fierce Creatures, I can at least console myself that I agree with the popular opinion of original being the best.

The Yakuza

The Yakuza

Made any later and Yakuza could have easily become straight-to-video fodder combining corn fed, muscle bound Americans with the exotic violence of the East - ninjas, samurais and kung fu masters. Instead as a 70s production The Yakuza enjoyed the period of American cinema after the war & western 50s and 60s and before the onslaught of the 80s blockbusters.
Starring Robert Mitchum in subdued mode, The Yakuza is a sombre picture all about age, consequences and the end of eras. In the same way as many westerns dealt with the end of the wild west and therefore of the cowboy, The Yakuza touches partly on the changes resulting from Japan’s part in the second World War. Mitchum plays an ex-army man Harry Kilmer who was stationed in Japan during the occupation; he saved the life of a Japanese woman and fell in love, but was asked to leave by her brother who returned, presumed dead, after the war and became a high-ranking yakuza. Decades later Harry is asked to return to the country to help out an old friend whose business dealings with the yakuza have turned sour and resulted in the kidnap of his daughter.
What follows is a tale swamped in regret and sorrow as Harry and his friends and acquaintances reflect on the past and on honour, duty and obligation, though the scenes of quiet contemplation are interspersed with bursts of violence in keeping with a thriller centered around criminal gangs.
The performances throughout are modestly impressive but the assured atmosphere that envelopes the whole production no doubt stems from the creative team of Paul Schrader and Robert Townsend writing and Sydney Pollack directing at the top of his game, the year before the excellent Three Days of the Condor, a team that would have had to work hard at the time in order to avoid producing a well crafted and mature thriller.
The Yakuza stands as testament to the sea change in American cinema between the decades and the almost mournful tone of the film retrospectively fits that short-lived era well.

Soul Survivors; [Rec]2

Soul Survivors

Casey Affleck (Sean), Wes Bentley (Matt), Eliza Dushku (Annabel) and Melissa Sagemiller (Cassie) are firm friends, and as Cassie is off to college they all decide to tag along for the journey. Cassie is now with Sean, but used to go out with Matt who still has a crush despite being with Annabel.
When they split from college on Cassie’s first night to go to a goth club, Cassie and Matt are caught in an elicit kiss and the quartet row in the car journey home, with a car crash before they make up resulting in Sean’s death.
Cassie is obviously upset and starts seeing things, people who seem to be following her and exam questions that directly relate to the events of the crash and the like. Luke Wilson crops up as the kindly priest Jude, but he can’t stop Cassie’s hallucinations worsening, to the point that she dreams of sleeping with Sean only to find herself waking up next to Matt.
When she sees and speaks to Sean himself she wonders whether she’s losing the plot - more people start acting strangely, Jude turns out to have died in 1981, a man in a mask and a long-haired type in denim from the goth club keep appearing and matt and Annabel become increasingly exasperated with her behaviour.

Spoiler - it was all a dream! She was dead all along! Except Sean was alive and manages to bring her back. Despite the solid cast (although Sagemiller seems to have been banished to TV purgatory) the film is pretty dire, lacking in any scares with cheesy music more suited to a fairytale than teen horror flick and saddled with a plot that is about as obvious as possible without actually telling you what’s going on, its saving grace is having Deftones play over the end credits.
It’s hard to understand how this was made in the first place as it would be quite a task to make anything of the source material, but this was released shortly after the first Final Destination and so supernatural teen fodder would have been in high demand.
Tellingly writer/director Stephen Carpenter hasn’t made anything since this crushingly dreary chiller.

[Rec]2

Following on immediately after the first film, this sequel to the scary Spanish zombie/infected genre entry inevitably loses some of the impact of the first due to the lack of surprise at the infected populating the apartments in the quarantined building. As with the original the action is all conveyed through first person camera viewpoints, in this case the helmet-mounted cams of a swat team and hand-held machine of a trio of teens replacing the TV journalist’s camera from Rec.
We follow the swat team as they escort a government representative as he searches for a cure, only for things to unsurprisingly go quickly and nastily wrong. The teens enter later. Attracted by the forbidden they enter the building through the sewers, meeting up with a fireman searching for his colleagues and the father who had left the building to fetch medicine for his daughter who was running a fever in the first film. The teens quickly regret their rashness as the inhabitants emerge and there follows lots of running, shouting and darkness illuminated only by night vision as the newcomers’ numbers dwindle and those of the infected increase.

Whilst the screaming and running possessed create lots of tension and jump-scares, Rec2 doesn’t move on enough from the original to stand out. Though the final scene’s set-up for a possible sequel could open up the story to potentially move forward, this sequel only offers more of the same, good as that is. A missed opportunity.

Greenberg

Greenberg


Those familiar with Noah Baumbach’s critically acclaimed The Squid and The Whale (and Margot at the Wedding) will recognise the template repeated here of unlikeable, self-centred East coast academic types, steam-rolling through life with the unwavering self-absorption of the ignorant (whatever their whining insecurities may suggest). The difference is that unlike in The Squid…, where engagement derived from discovering how each character, parents and children, dealt with the central catalyst of a relationship in collapse, here we only have the selfish Roger Greenberg behaving badly to some degree to all and sundry. The other characters in the film highlight this as they are more rounded with qualities to balance against their flaws or negative features.

The problem with an unsympathetic lead who isn’t an antihero figure is that it’s hard to invest in them. We’re told early on that Greenberg has recently emerged from hospital after a breakdown but as the film progresses you get the sense that he’s always been this way.

Rather than revealing some of the worst in human nature as in early LaBute, Baumbach seems content to bring us the merely annoying, like Seinfeld with no jokes, a feeling further cemented thanks to Ben Stiller in the lead. The cast, including Stiller, all play well, but it seems odd to typecast Stiller in the angry man role he often plays. Usually this is tempered in a comedy setting (even Royal Tenenbaums had an undercurrent of ridicule beneath the misery of the protagonists, in Stiller’s case his shared uniform with his sons and Dalmatian mice pricking the seriousness of his character), but when you just get the fury with no lightness to soften the edges it’s a hard watch, fine if that’s the point (Stiller played similarly straight and angry in LaBute’s Your Friends and Neighbours) but Greenberg wants to be taken as a quirky indie romcom, more like Juno than In the Company of Men or the Shape of Things.
In presenting a character you’d make an effort to avoid in real life it’s a wonder what kind of audience this is aimed at, let alone how we are supposed to believe in the central romance. Many films give away the best jokes in the trailer, but Greenberg may be unique in having those jokes become no longer funny when seen in context.
Like the character himself, Greenberg isn’t awful but you probably have better ways of spending your time than with it.

Alien vs. Predator 2: Requiem

Alien vs. Predator 2: Requiem


AvP2 is the film that the first instalment in the franchise mash should have been realistically, if not ideally - flawed and predictable and ignorant in the possibilities of theme and character development found in some of the comics, but trashy fun nonetheless. Essentially, Predators crash-land and die on present day Earth, Aliens escape into a small, isolated town in the USA, more Predators come to clean up the mess.
The first film, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Arctic pyramid-set travesty, felt similar to his previous Resident Evil adaptation . There’s a tangible quality absent, an unerring feel of inauthenticity or plasticity, as if the whole thing is held together with CGI effects too shiny and uniform to give the production any weight.
AVP2 at least feels more ‘real’ with its effects work and it features so many franchise and general horror film clichés that it feels familiar and so grounded. From the conventions of small-town America - the local sheriff, diner waitress and local badboy/rich family’s daughter tension - to a Predator’s ungainly fingers flitting over its wrist console and the distressed elephant squeal of a dying Alien, the film crams in as many reference points as possible to keep the fanboys on board.
We have facehuggers (though the gestation period seems to be much shorter in the present day centuries before the first films were set), Alien secondary-jaw head chomping, a Predator swanning about being a bad ass warrior until finally taking off its mask near the end for a good mandible-roar and bit of fisticuffs, the Predator console-bomb going off, a brief swimming Alien shot referencing Alien: Resurrection, a National Guard commander hearing his whole squad being swiftly taken out from his command centre, shots of Aliens slowly moving their faces up against the heads of very distressed people, ignoring the fact that the background to this shot ripped from Alien3 is that Ripley was impregnated with a queen and so spared the usual quick dispatch.
This last example sums up the general tone of the film, intent on recycling any “Woah, cool!” moments whilst seemingly oblivious to the qualities that made these franchises memorable besides the effects work.

New inventions include the Predator’s pleasantly luminous disintegration liquid - a small measure and any pesky bodies that would be evidence of the accidental introduction of Aliens to the planet are swiftly dissolved. One other invention is another example of the affectionate yet blinkered view of the creators. Alien3 put forward the idea that an Alien would incorporate some of the characteristics of the host species, meaning that whilst similar to the Aliens of human origin from previous films, the dog Alien from the third movie was inclined to move on all fours with a slightly elongated trunk. AVP2 has taken this idea and come up with the Predalien, a result of a Predator being the host species. Rather than a variation on the original Giger Alien design this one is not only significantly larger (despite little variation regardless of the age/gender/size of a human host) but sports the mandibles and rubbery dreadlocks of the Predator. Yes, dreadlocks.
The unknown cast help to create a level of tension as you are kept guessing about who’s next on the menu - if a baby ward at a hospital is at risk then everything’s up for grabs, but on the other hand the lack of any real character development makes it hard to care who’s next.

Whilst certainly better than the first film this is faint praise indeed, and it’s a shame that more hasn’t been made of it considering the wealth of ideas that have been generated around these two xenomorphs in the last two or three decades.

A very, very average action/horror B-pic, remarkable only due to its nasties.

The Departed

The Departed

My second viewing of The Departed, on terrestrial TV one night, one of those situations where you don’t intend to watch a film but get sucked in, allowed me to gain some perspective away from the intimidating comparisons with the Infernal Affairs or indeed any notion of what a Scorsese picture would ideally be. Able to appreciate the film anew I dimly remember dismissing many of the central performances the first time round, aside from what is arguably Mark Whalberg’s finest hour.
This time I was able to see past the grown-baby constipation face of Scorsese’s new millennium muse, DiCaprio, and witness a performance as a man utterly terrified of the violence surrounding him and his vulnerability to this atmosphere as the rat that Jack Nicholson’s Boston-Irish gang is trying to ferret out.
Leo as Billy Costigan never gets a break, constantly fearful and twisted inside at the effort of maintaining his cover. Matt Damon’s Colin Sullivan in contrast is having a ball, strutting and joking and thoroughly enjoying his privileged position as the double agent on the other side of the fence, yet he nevertheless manages convey the character as a clueless idiot, out of his depth despite his bravado and usually expelling inappropriate remarks, only dimly aware of the status of the relationships in which he finds himself.
Nicholson’s performance as mob boss Frank Costello also benefits from a new take. What initially seemed like Jack coasting through his role by simply taking the OTT elements he’s been famous for since Witches of Eastwick and cranking them up to 11, it now feels like a study of a man so out of touch with reality that he has gone off the deep end and can no longer see the surface. Rarely sober at any given moment and wolfishly enjoying his status as alpha male - later in the film he tellingly states that he hasn’t been motivated by cash since he stole his first lunch money in grade school - he is all about the mayhem.
Unsurprisingly for Scorsese the cast is rounded out with starry support. Besides Whalberg we have Adam Baldwin in fine form (both exhibiting a fine line in workplace ribbing that echoes Mamet), Martin Sheen as Billy’s undercover handler and father figure/mentor, Vera Farmiga as the counsellor and love interest to both undercover rats and Ray Winstone as Frank’s right hand Mr. French, his gruff menace outweighing the dodgy accent, Boston by way of Bow.
There are many recurring tics, flourishes and motifs to be found from the rest of Scorsese’s work, not least in the East coast gangland setting but with pop music montages and the intense paranoia, but this is lesser Scorsese, more akin to Bringing Out the Dead than Casino or Goodfellas. Like that film, however, there’s still much to enjoy here.

The Eye

The Eye

Danny and Oxide Pang were known for their frenetic take on East Asian cinema with the release of Bangkok Dangerous, their first feature as co-directors and one of the many success stories which went on to ‘enjoy’ a Hollywood remake (which they also helmed). The Eye, their second film together, came in on the height of the wave of Eastern horror in the wake of the Ring, before the market became saturated with gore-fodder and spooky girl movies.
Whilst there is some personality in the cinematography, the screen often washed with a sickly green reminiscent of some of Christopher Doyle or Jeanne Pierre Jeunet’s work, the story treads old ground with its premise. Our heroine Mun is the beneficiary of a cornea transplant and thus able to see for the first time after a successful operation, but after a time it’s clear that she sees more than most.
She sees dead people.
Admittedly previous entries in transplant horror tend to focus on the new body parts being evil or corrupting the host (see The Hand, Rabid, Idle Hands) rather than a gateway to the undead, but The Eye is unsuccessful as a horror film. Choosing not to go down the road of gore the film is surprisingly light on genuine scares with only a midway lift scene causing the skin to crawl, whilst the bombastic Mothman Prophecies-style ending seems to belong to another film entirely.
Beyond a few visual flourishes (Mun’s new sight allows the Pangs to play with focus) there is little to recommend The Eye above dozens of other Eastern horror entries released in the last decade and a half. Its popularity likely down to its appearance early on in the wave, for once there is the possibility that the Hollywood remake may fare better than the original (unlike the reportedly dire Nicolas Cage version of Bangkok Dangerous).

Jumper

Jumper

Jumper practically begs to be damned with faint praise, a textbook example of “not as bad as I thought it would be”. Essentially it is an X-Men movie, albeit one that instead of featuring a multitude of mutant talents instead focuses on one, and one that would normally be a peripheral feature exhibited by one of the kids n the background of a filler scene.
Props to the film makers that banked on Hayden Christiansen post Star Wars. Would the negative fallout from those prequels turn audiences off or would the massive exposure help attract fans to his new film? It’s a precarious balance but whatever the case Hayden is fine in what is an undemanding teen blockbuster, his petulant pretty boy image fitting the role of the selfish main character who embraces new found teleportation powers to leave his small town life behind to live as an international playboy.
After a few set-up scenes we rejoin Hayden’s David Rice just as he finds out that there is a secret order of religious zealots (led by Sam Jackson after another visit to the blind barber) who hunt and kill all the teleporters they can find. Their supposed millennia-long vendetta is apparently fuelled only by the belief that only god should be able to be in two places at the once, and it’s this simplicity that’s emblematic of the film’s core problems. After years of sampling the best of what the world has to offer David is apparently unable to find love anywhere, instead fixated on his first crush back home. Jamie Bell’s fellow teleporter Griffin is cartoonish, all leather-jacketed sneer as the experienced jumper who helps David learn about the secret war and also rescue his love interest after a kidnapping.
The film is also blatantly intended as a franchise; the story is left with a multitude of loose strings, the conflict unresolved as a battle won whilst the war still rages, Jackson’s Roland defeated but not stopped despite his unwavering desire to murder jumpers, and intrigue involving David’s mother revealed at the close of the movie but unexplored.
Ultimately Jumper can only leave you unsatisfied regardless of how low you’ve set your expectations.

The Deaths of Ian Stone

The Deaths of Ian Stone

Mainstream films often go for the lowest common denominator in order to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not only recoup the investment but make a profit, or at least try and wrap up any difficult ideas in a safe bubble of celebrity. Whilst independent features often sidestep the need to please as many investors as budgets are much smaller, this reduction in expenditure can also make things a lot harder for the production as it takes a lot of skill to dress up nothing like a million dollars and for every low budget indie success story there are dozens of damp squibs going straight to video or failing to even secure release.
Unfortunately, in The Deaths of Ian Stone we have a case where the ambitions overreach the abilities of the production. The idea is interesting - a man finds himself dying and then returning. living a different life each time but with a few similarities, the same people returning with him but in different roles. He discovers the existence of inter-dimensional shadowy creatures, feeding on fear and resorting to murder to feed their addiction to the sweetest fear of all. The reason for his apparent reincarnation becomes clear as the film plays out, he used to be one of ‘them’ but rebelled for the love of a human.
The film plays out like a TV movie or an extended pilot for a show that never was. Despite the obviously British origin of the production and majority of the cast the photography has the hazy sheen of pre-digital American television whilst Ian Stone himself is played by Mike Vogel, an anonymous handsome jock type seemingly only in the film as a desperate attempt to extend the film’s appeal across the Atlantic. Whilst the effects are largely CGI they also seem to be bland, slightly ‘off the shelf’ creations rather than designs unique to the world of the film as the shadows share a glut of features from the ring wraiths of LOTR, giant insects of Mimic and arm/spear morphing from Terminator 2’s T-1000. Worse, when Ian discovers his true origins he becomes a half wraith/human hybrid, donning a generic Buffy-esque monster mask and Bon Jovi mullet in a spectacular example of design failure.
Aside from the lead the performances are okay and whilst the TV-feel doesn’t necessarily equate to bad quality, without a series run to flesh out characters or plot The Deaths of Ian Stone suffers from all the negatives of not being a show but doesn’t benefit from being a movie.