Review: Spectre

After the colossal success of Skyfall director Sam Mendes and Daniel Craig return to bring Bond's origin story to completion. It... is a bumpy ride.

Bond is on the ropes once again at the MI6, M has him grounded after he causes chaos in Mexico City while hunting down a man the previous M had secretly instructed him to find. This leads Bond down a path to further discover his past, and a conspiracy that links all his previous missions. Meanwhile, MI6 faces a merger with MI5 to become a new intelligence agency without need of double-oh agents...

If Skyfall was The Dark Knight, Spectre is The Dark Knight Rises. With its previous instalment being such a huge success as well as being incredibly unique in the now twenty-four entries of the franchise, Spectre is completely up against it. Unfortunately what appears to be a more traditional Bond film from the outset, is exactly that.
Spectre (or correctly spelt: S.P.E.C.T.R.E) relies on a lot of mystery and a lot of setup in its task of tying up the underlying plot of the last three films. But avid fans have already called it out; much as with the "twist" of JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, Spectre's title isn't the only problem undermining the film's attempts at mystique. It feels like an conspicuous attempt to remake the series.

The film is surprisingly slow and sporadically paced (a bit like Sam Smith's whining, warbling theme The Writing's on the Wall, which has not improved with time) especially for a Bond film. We leap from location to location at the drop of an editor's hat. Most of the story is expositional and setup for a payoff most people already know is coming. The dissolving of MI6 is positively dull, Ralph Fiennes as M working with an unimaginative script, a battle of wits with Andrew Scott (Moriarty from BBC's Sherlock... totally not playing a villain...)
Action scenes are haphazard and quite baffling. Compared to Skyfall's train-top earthmover stunt, or the fight in Shanghai, Spectre has you more likely scratching your head asking Bond what exactly he hopes to achieve. A lot of stock is put into Dave Bautista (Guardians of the Galaxy) as Spectre's silent lead muscleman (who has apparently watched too much Game of Thrones) but apart from an excellent punch up in a train, his scenes feel more like the completion of a checklist than anything relevant.

It isn't all bad though. It earns respect for thematically tying the last decade worth of Bond films together, heck it even references the often reviled Quantum of Solace more than once! The film is in line with a more traditional Bond experience: a globe-trotting plot; a larger than life villain henchman who hounds Bond at every turn; a romantic train journey; isolated super villain hideouts; a comedic edge to proceedings. Indeed, if one thing saves the film it is actually the comedy. Bond and Q have a great chemistry still. Christoph Waltz as the villain of course is good, although he is playing the character he has always played.
If Daniel Craig's Bond films are the first films you are watching, this works as a decent segway into more from the franchise, even if it is a clear sign that the future will be either more derivative or remakes.

It has none of its predecessor's smarts or uniqueness, and while it is perhaps the most fun of Daniel Craig's films it is laboriously slow at getting to the point. Skyfall was a peak that Bond perhaps will never attain again, and bringing back a reluctant director and lead actor to capture that lightning once again was likely a mistake. While the predecessor was a celebration, this is more of an homage.

Lower your expectations and you will enjoy it for its action and its quick wit, its more classic Bond call backs and Daniel Craig still delivers Bond's more severe personality well. But I found it a slog to get through, with too much setup for a reveal that was completely expected.

Tribute Review: Horror of Dracula

Back in June this year cinema lost one of its most iconic actors, Sir Christopher Lee, so I opted to watch one of his most classic films; his first role as Dracula.

Based upon Bram Stoker's classic novel, this 1958 movie is produced by Hammer Studios and compared to the 1931 Bela Lugosi Dracula, this is a far bloodier and darker affair. When Jonathan Harker visits Castle Dracula he forces the inhuman count to flee to the city, bringing the threat to those he cared about.

When you have a novel so regularly recreated in film form it often becomes a matter of which version you saw first is the version you enjoy the most. Or you can compare them all even closer to the text to decide which is best, which can be unfair. 

The Horror of Dracula is only eighty minutes long, and at first I was very concerned they had twisted the novel's narrative too greatly; when Jonathan first arrives at Castle Dracula he already knows what The Count is, and what has to be done to defeat him. 
Certainly the film takes a few minutes to get going; we are waiting for Peter Cushing (Star Wars, for non-horror fans) as Van Helsing to arrive. Cushing is great as the knowledgeable vampire hunter. As someone who grew up with Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula, I never really accepted Anthony Hopkins as Helsing, here Cushing looks like the intelligent hunter that can match wits with the monster.

Once Dracula leaves the castle, the film follows beats of the book closer than I expected. There are exceptions however, for example the character of Renfield is completely missing and none of that plot exists. The story follows specifically the seduction of Lucy, her late night visitations from the tall, shadowy creature and the duo of Helsing and Arthur (played by a youthful Michael Gough - Batman) trying to save her.
The film has great atmosphere and set work; Lucy's room is very exact to how I saw it in the book. Sir Christopher Lee has a great presence as Count Dracula, although I wish there was more of him; as the Count and as the monster he was very convincing! I can see why he came back to the character over half-a-dozen times.

But, the film does feel a bit clunky at times. Asides from the opening with Jonathan (can no one get this part right?) there's a laughable scene where the all knowledgeable Doctor Van Helsing is listening to a recording of himself explaining what vampires are and how they can be defeated. Yes, it is as ridiculously heavy-handed as exposition can get!

I enjoyed it, and I should look into the other Hammer Dracula films with Sir Christopher Lee. A very theatrical, short but gory interpretation of the novel.

Review: Sicario

From the creator of 2013's Prisoners, and getting ridiculously high critical acclaim, but Sicario is no Prisoners.

An FBI agent who stumbles upon the dealings of a drug cartel is roped into a special Government taskforce to aid in the neutralisation of the drug trade on the US and Mexican borders.

I don't get the massive critical success of Sicario. I really don't. While director Denis Villeneuve really has his stamp upon it stylistically; it has the same perpetually moody, grim and intense atmosphere, as a story and as a film it really doesn't do anything.
Emily Blunt leads the cast as Kate Macer, an FBI agent who we see in the film's opening stumble across a house where the walls are lined with corpses. This opening is, frankly, the best and most interesting part of this entire film. There's a real sense of dread, a sense of putridity and cruelty that is amplified by the film's score. The film grabs you instantly, but it slowly loosens its grip.

Kate Macer quickly becomes a non-character. She has vague motives at best to help this taskforce, and they (led by Josh Brolin) do not tell her anything; everything is deliberately kept secret from her. Why? That would be the film's anchor, the meat of the story is how this unit alienates and treats her like a ghost. It would be, had the film actually led to anything worthwhile.
On top of this, Emily Blunt can play a strong female protagonist, yet here her character is made to be virtually useless; she even nearly accidentally sleeps with a villain. The mystery of why she is even in this brutal, dangerous place becomes more of a nuisance than a compelling reason to watch.
The film's perspective moves gradually away from Macer completely, and towards Benicio Del Toro's character Alejandro, who is a quiet, seemingly unassuming man within the taskforce who when asked refuses to say who he works for. There's an uncomfortably long stint where we are following a woman we know nothing about, following a man she knows nothing about, for reasons we don't know. And like I said, the film ends with very little pay off for all this mystery.

The film's opening is fantastic. It really, really is. The score, Blunt and Del Toro are also all incredible with the roles they play in the film. The music is unsettling and make the omnipresence of threat from all directions palpable; the film's sense of dread is incredible and does test your wits and drains your resolve.

But it drags itself down with a over reliance on mystery and it loses the audience. Fans of Prisoners might be expecting a twist or two that never come, or audiences are put out by characters we don't especially care about.

I criminally underrated Prisoners, and I would rather watch that again than Sicario.

Review: Crimson Peak

My favourite director Guillermo Del Toro returns to give his horror stylised spin on a gothic romance.
Edith, a naïve American girl who dreams of becoming a writer, is swept away from her father’s protective surroundings when a stranger from Britain arrives with a business proposition. But Edith has been receiving warnings, warnings from her dead mother…
I can be very, very biased towards Del Toro’s work (how can you go wrong with a back catalogue including such films as Cronos, Devil’s Backbone, Blade 2, Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 1 and 2 and Pacific Rim?) and Crimson Peak certainly delivers a lot of his visual flair and style. The titular mountainside mansion is a gorgeously detailed and designed set, a treat of gothic shapes and colours, the fact that it is slowly collapsing is the least of someone’s concerns living there. Our characters’ costumes are beautiful too, making our actors Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowska disappear into this period drama.
The film even has subtle themes, not dissimilar to Pan’s Labyrinth, including Wasikowska’s character of Edith being the only one who can see the ghouls and ghosts that also live in our world. This is a regular character trope of Del Toro’s work, as well as the contrast between real and fantastical worlds and which one may be more horrific. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
But, the film didn’t exactly grab me. I chalk this down to a somewhat excessively drawn out setup, exploring Edith’s safe environment within her father’s business world in America and her growing affections for Hiddleston’s Thomas. While the film opens with a peek at the horrors we will see, there is a significant drought of horrors and the mansion is a long way away from appearing. It feels like you are waiting, and I didn’t appreciate how little of the film was actually in the house.
I think I was hoping for something more like The Woman in Black; a lot of establishment of the house to give you a sense of the space and the build of tension.
Del Toro also goes for practical effects for his monsters, at least as often as he can, and while these are ghosts and therefore incorporeal, I was quite disappointed in the overuse of CGI creations. I liked their designs, but I didn’t believe they were there… I wasn't especially scared of them, and the scares are generally quite predictable.

I really don't like railing against a Del Toro creation, but I felt there was a lot of room for improvement with Crimson Peak, including the scare factor. Certainly there is awesome cinematography, awesome colours, set and costume design, really gory moments that shock after the long stretches of period drama.
If you enjoy gothic romances and ghost stories, you should definitely check out Crimson Peak. My review only sounds negative because I have such high hopes for Del Toro films!

Additional Marshmallows: No matter how in love you are with someone, surely when they take you to their place and the roof has caved in to snow and the walls are literally bleeding, naturally, you really should reconsider your options immediately.

Review: The Martian (2D)

Director Ripley Scott delivers stunning visuals to accompany this space survivalist flick.

Matt Damon plays Mark Watney, an astronaut botanist who takes part in a space mission to the planet Mars, but when their mission is cut drastically short due to a storm, the team lose him and presume him dead. With the crew returning back to Earth, Mark wakes alone on the red planet with what little supplies the team had left in their hurried exodus. Now survival is his number one priority, with the dizzying prospect of years of waiting for Earth to send help.

The film opens with a bang (after a moody title sequence very reminiscent of Scott’s Alien classic) with our Mars team settled on the planet only to be ripped away from it in their escape from the storm, all within ten minutes maximum. This opening is far too rushed; we have a half dozen characters and virtually no chemistry or personality to accompany the dangers they are faced. None until the meat of the story commences: Damon’s Mark Watney wakes up and makes the NASA base his home.
Luckily for us, Matt Damon delivers an intensely likable performance that balances the long scenes of dialogue-free survivalist drama as he builds a crop from scratch and retro-fits various space mission tech together to communicate with Earth. His wit and personal thoughts are translated through video logs he records during his long stay on the planet. This to and fro, from survivalist kit-bashing and video logs, is much of the film’s setup.

Things get more intense as NASA (alive and progressive in this film’s future) become aware of Watney’s presence on the planet (via satellite images) and struggle with the logistics of mounting a rescue. What proceeds is something akin to mashing Castaway, Apollo 13 and Gravity together, with the ever increasingly vulnerability of our hero, the unorthodox methods NASA use to help him survive with little to no supplies, and a dizzying rescue plan. You can see that Damon has physically trained himself for the role and the challenge of making the premise believable.It is a very beautifully shot film, reminding me of Interstellar but with a more grounded, more human experience at its core. It is often jargon heavy, much like Interstellar and Apollo 13, preferring to suggest realism rather than comfortable layman’s terms which tends to wash over you as something you should just accept and move on with.

On top of this are the occasional indulgence in deux ex machina devices that feel far too convenient in what is an otherwise “realistic” experience. As realistic as a man stuck on Mars can be anyway.
With the aforementioned hurried opening, I'd say secondary characters aren't quite given enough screentime, the film heavily weighted to Damon's character. I never got to know these people and so didn't especially worry about them when things got dire. Also, Sean Bean was in this? I didn't understand his character either, apart from being "the sympathetic voice" I had no idea who or what he was.

At its worse it has some conveniences (probably due to compressing Andy Weir's book to film length) and a lot of characters are left at the wayside, but at its best it has a charm and an excellent visual flare that cannot be ignored. I enjoyed it.

Review: Legend

This black comedy thriller follows the exploits of the Kray Twins, notorious London gangsters during the 1960s. It feels quite long, but Tom Hardy has a dynamite performance as both twins.

Ronald and Reginald Kray are living the comfortable life as gangsters on London’s east side, they are seemingly impervious to the police while running clubs and battling with rival gangs. But when Reginald Kray meets a young girl, his relationship with his psychotic brother Ronald becomes incredibly tense, risking to break their lives, and everything they’ve built, apart forever.

The Krays were notorious in their day so watching Legend can feel difficult; it does its best to glamourise their lifestyle and make the audience feel sympathy for them as characters. Reginald Kray is portrayed as a decent man in an indecent world, while his brother (though truly psychotic) is described by Reginald at one point as  having “a heart of gold”. It is a black comedy at its heart, its dialogue is harsh and aggressive with English gangland humour mixing with bursts of bloody aggression.

I just described to you Reginald and Ronald as two different people. Which they are. Only in Legend the twins are both played by Tom Hardy. This is surely the meat of the experience; whether you approve of the subject matter or not, Hardy is exceptional here as both twins through clever use of camerawork, body-doubles, split-screen and surely some CG work. It isn’t what I would call a gimmick either; Hardy really does become both characters superbly well, similar and yet extremely different with Ronald’s dour, dead-eyed simplicity and occasional spouting of prose, to Reginald’s well-rounded gangster and part-time romantic. Both are very complex characters, and Hardy delivers both and interacts with himself so well that you believe there are two of him!

The heart of the film, outside of its darkness, is Reginald’s lover Frances (played by Emily Browning) who delivers occasional narration and is the audience surrogate as an innocent quickly trapped in this world. But she does bring out the best, and worst, in the Krays, especially with Ron and as a result she is in the centre of a lot of the film's best scenes.
The film's secondary characters are also very well defined, making the 1960's British gangland feel all the more richer.

I will say against the film is that it feels slightly too long. Finishing at 130 minutes, it could have been just two hours or even less; the film takes its time getting to the point, padding the runtime with a lot of familiar scenes that borderline repetition. Even with Hardy's double performance carrying through these scenes, it ultimately feels drawn out. It is also something of a classic story: a man battling between his loyalty to a girl or his brother.

I would definitely recommend it for Tom Hardy's performances alone, this is some exceptional work from him and elevates it far above what would have been a well styled but average film. 

    

Review: Everest (3D)

Following true events of two teams of mountaineers making the climb up to the peak only for events to go terribly wrong, Everest is a great visual and emotional spectacle.

Since the first few teams conquered the life-or-death climb to the peak of Everest, modern climbers have established tours to train up adventurous spirits so they too can experience the thrill. But when several teams are jockeying for the safest time to climb, the time between fierce storms striking the mountain narrows too far, and the teams risk getting caught in the maelstrom.

First of all it has to be said that this film, directed by Baltasar Kormakur (director of such action thrillers as 2 Guns and Contraband) has a powerful cast at its behest: Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Jake Gyllenhaal, Kiera Knightley and Emily Watson, even the secondary characters deliver excellent work throughout.
And for Everest's advantage, the first half of the film is dedicated to establishing as many of these people's character as possible, their lives and their reasons for going on the adventure. Jason Clarke is centre stage as Rob; the expedition leader for his company "Adventure Consultants", Jake Gyllenhaal is a competitive team leader, and Josh Brolin is a man determined to climb the mountain. There are many characters in need of backstory, some with more to lose than others.
Yes, while this is a true story of course (and criticising it feels undesirable) there are the typical foreshadowing points as: He has a baby on the way and he's excited to come home or; he's tried many times to climb the mountain and has everything to prove. But while cynics will see this as a disadvantage, I felt the film was honest enough to be still thrilling. Perhaps even more backstory for other characters would have blurred the foreshadowing even further.

Visually Everest is stunning. I watched it on a regular 3D cinema screen but I can imagine an IMAX 3D showing would have been extraordinary. There are several shots early on that deliberately show off the dizzying heights involved with the characters' journey; watching people walk over extraordinarily high bridges, or traversing rickety makeshift walkways over icy chasms. These moments alone are worthy of admission. The sense of cold and horrendous freezing temperatures become unbearable towards the end, some moments feeling morbidly graphic and brutally real. 

There isn't much else to say about Everest. It is a straight-forward experience: men climb icy mountain and struggle to find their way down again. But I often say less is more, and the film enjoys setting up its characters, at least the ones that are deemed important enough (Sam Worthington's character Guy arrives too little too late) the rest of them do tend to blur into one another when the storm hits and identifying them becomes a struggle.

It is a visual spectacle with a decent human story behind it. I enjoyed it on the big screen (and in 3D!), though I'm unsure if I need to watch it again.

    
Additional Marshmallows: I was entertained to discover that Josh Brolin's character Beck's wife Peach was played by Robin Wright. I recognised her, but I didn't realise I recognised her from the 1987 classic The Princess Bride!