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: 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! 

Review: Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (3D)

Nearly ten years since our last visit to Basin City, but for all the fondness for brutality being shown in black and white, stylised shine, there isn't the same energy or business in the sequel.

Following the events that ended 2005's Sin City, A Dame to Kill For follows three of the original film's characters: Nancy, Dwight and Marv, as their paths cross and join through the never-ending and merciless night of Sin City.

It feels like this film is five or six years too late, but let me clear something up. Long before Cinema Cocoa I still rated movies annually and in 2005 Sin City topped the list! It was fresh, vile, exciting, Noir and packed with stories like a comic book version of Pulp Fiction. It is has some very unforgettable moments (most of which involved Elijah Wood)
But its 2014 sequel feels a little... empty, as if the original material didn't have much more to give? (I admit, I've never read the comics)
The film opens with everybody's favourite Marv, and certainly Mikey Rourke appears to be having the most fun in returning to this character of all of them! Bringing the same brutal physicality he did before, but lacking some of the personal vendetta from before; he simply comes to the aid of our two other "heroes", Dwight and finally Nancy.
While Rourke reprises his role, I was sad to see Clive Owen not returning as Dwight... I love continuity, and this sort of thing bothers me. Don't get me wrong, Josh Brolin does a great job! In fact he could be on par with Rourke here and stands out from the others, and considering his story involves the Dame in the title, Eva Green's Ava, you'd hope he would be!

But the sequel's stories fall short of the original's intensity, though ten years and such similarly styled missteps as The Spirit has made this series revival difficult, most of it focuses on Ava, a seductress and femme fatale of Basin City. If you are a fan of Eva Green('s body) you'll be happy here! The sequel banks singularly on sex appeal than the original's dark kaleidoscope of variety. What I take away from this film is Green's breasts, and men being thrown through a lot of windows!
I had trouble understanding this film's narrative alongside the 2005 film, especially around the character of Manute... The man with the gold eye. Yet in this sequel he gets his gold eye?? But this is a sequel... It is also sad (alongside Brolin's recast) that Devon Aoki did not return to play the mute assassin Miho.

The best elements here are involving Jessica Alba as Nancy, who's story follows off the back of the original film most clearly, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's newcomer Johnny has a great little story.

A Dame to Kill For didn't feel as memorable as the original, or as faceted, but the style and the characterisations are still as strong and it works well as a Sin City 1.5 rather than a full sequel. The 3D effects were decent too.
A little, a little disappointing, acting like an homage to an incredible film rather than outdoing it like a good sequel should.

Remake Rumble: Oldboy

Remake Rumble...? More like Remake Execution.

So, against my better judgment I've decided to do this particular Remake Rumble! I guess it wouldn't leave my mind until I had seen it through. Read, and feel the frustration!

Oldboy (2003)

The definition of a revenge tale, beautifully savage and cynically dark in humour, Oldboy is one of those films that gets better and better each time you watch.

A drunken, hopeless father is abducted on his daughter's birthday and imprisoned in a room for fifteen years. When he is mysteriously released, he swears vengeance on whoever took his life away.

It is hardest to write a review of a film you like so much. If you look at Cinema Cocoa's first post, you will find Oldboy makes the twentieth spot on my top fifty films, yet I don't remember how I came by this film originally. All I do remember is the impact it left on me as a piece of film making!

Directed by Chan-wook Park, Oldboy crams almost every facet of revenge into its two hour runtime and packages it with great cinematography and a wonderful score. With Min-sik Choi as the leading man providing a great range of acting talent, there's a fantastic sense of dedication and integrity to the film.
But praise doesn't stop there. The film is remarkably well paced for how many scenarios it plays out and how complex the screenplay becomes. Like peeling an onion, every scene and every set piece has a purpose to unlocking the mystery behind our hero's plight, the writing just dropping enough hints that... if you are clever enough and reading between the lines... audiences can start to puzzle it all together.
I've seen this film at least three times now and it is safe to say I appreciate more and more each time!

Why only three times? I've had the DVD in my collection for years! Well, Oldboy is not the easiest film to watch, it certainly might turn some people's stomachs and there is one scene involving a claw hammer that makes me squirm every time and just thinking about it makes my teeth hurt...
But while the film is intensely violent (the corridor fight scene has gone down in cinema history by now!) I forget the wicked, black sense of humour that runs all the way through also. This film has an awesome script and Min-sik Choi delivers his lines and reacts to his internal monologues with incredibly sick jest. I laugh with him, and as the film says: "Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone."

How much longer can I gush about a film? Not much longer as I don't want to spoil it by telling you too much. The film has a surrealist edge, though like the violence it is somewhat restrained in preference of a calm, methodical dive into madness. At times Oldboy just seems like a casual stroll with morose, almost reluctant tones, and I think that's why I enjoy it so much; while the violence is visceral at its heights, it isn't a slasher movie... it is a thriller.

With a screenplay so layered and mysterious, with acting both subtle and outrageous, intense action and a script both comic and horrible, Oldboy offers everything and fails at none of them. By the end your mind will be bruised and sore from the ordeal, yet amazed at the masterful execution of it all!

Oldboy (2013)
 
Spike Lee directs a watery, shallow remake of the cult Korean film. Josh Brolin weeps, and Josh Brolin weeps alone.

A drunken father and failing husband finds himself imprisoned for twenty years in a mock-up hotel room. When he is released he aims to clear his name, reunite with his daughter and find whoever locked him away for so long.

Okay, so as you can tell already I love the original movie and a remake by its very existence will frustrate me. In fact I boycotted seeing this film originally, that's how low my expectations were! This Oldboy received such a critical hammering (no pun intended) that I was prepared to forget it even existed... but that would be ignorant of me...

Initially, I had some hope this film would be just "average" and not the train wreck I feared; Josh Brolin is probably the best American to fill the acting range and physical ability to fill Min-sik Choi's formidable shoes, and automatically I knew (mostly from having such an indepth understanding of the original) how this American version's twist ending would differ. It seemed vaguely promising.

But almost like a reversal of the original film, where it gets better and better, this film gets worse and worse... and worse.

None of the original's black humour is present, none of it, unless you count laughing at all the wrong parts to be edgy comedy. The editing is terrible, what was Spike Lee doing with this?? It has zero gravity or atmosphere, and feels more like running through a checklist of requirements such as the shoehorned nods to the original like... showing us an octopus! For no reason! The characters even act unnaturally in scenes just to have a shot framed like the original! Then... there's the hammer scene. Badly choreographed, badly structured... it pales in comparison.
Part of what made the original so interesting was how interwoven its screenplay became as you watched the puzzle unlock, but here, there's none of that, it just plods along like any other cliche hostage movie.

Oh, but we have Samuel L. Jackson, and he swears a lot! Is that... supposed to be the humour coming through? Having an actor playing the same role he plays in sodding everything he's ever done?

Then...
There's Sharlto Copley. The guy who used to be cool from District 9. Good... lord.
So, this film becomes something of a "who done it?" in the second act, Brolin's Joseph is trying to find who had imprisoned him. He gets a phone call from Copley's Adrian who is putting on the most generic, cringeworthy, stereotypical upper-class British accent you can fathom! Good god, Spike Lee, what... This is NOT acting, this is hamming it up! I swear, at the end of this film, he is walking around like Nosferatu!
And remember, we are in America. Are you telling me that when Joseph finds the antagonist went to the same school as him he didn't consider: "Hm, who at my school had a CARTOONISHLY BRITISH ACCENT LIKE THE ONE I JUST HEARD ON THE PHONE?"

Sorry, I will try to regain my composure.
Asides a cartoon villain, Nick Fury, bad film-making, and terrible homages to the original I tried to see this as a unique film. Many people say don't compare remakes to the original (despite how that is a completely ridiculous concept)
America's Oldboy could have been quite interesting had it distanced itself more from the original, what we get it something lost in translation, like an abridged version or worse: a parody. I think what damages it most is its finale, and its villain's motivations... or rather lack thereof.
Even the violence is toned down, I even saw a computer generated blood splatter. Seriously? Though the sexual content was higher than expected, given how America hates that sort of thing.

This film isn't just a direct insult to the original masterpiece, this is an insult to American movie making. If you are going to remake something, at least try and do a good job with it! Don't say something like: "Oh, well the Korean film was weird, so dumb Western audiences will take my shoddy, cliche script and bad directing as avant garde and self-aware that it is of Asian origin!"

Additional Marshmallows: Why one full, happy, marshmallow-filled cup of cocoa? You ask? Josh Brolin... and the sliver of original thought that was buried under the nonsense of abusing someone else's original idea.

Trilogy Review: Men in Black

Men in Black

You know, when this came out in 1997 I loved it, yet shamefully I have not watched it for years; this film is great!

Based off a Marvel Comic (originally Malibu comics) Men in Black follows a New York cop who is enlisted into a secret organisation assembled to protect the public from alien invaders. Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) instructs the new Agent J (Will Smith) when a hostile bodysnatching Bug lands on Earth and threatens humanity’s existence!
The two actors are two of my favourites, and the film capitalised both of their talents while at the peaks of their careers; they have ridiculous amounts of on screen chemistry, almost every line is witty, memorable and very funny!

What’s also noteworthy is the creature design (it did win the Oscar award for best make-up) special effects (sure, they’ve dated, but this film looks pretty slick for 1997!) and even the score by Danny Elfman has its own personality without falling into “generic Elfman sound”.

I believe this film is embedded in my mind; even as I watch it I feel as though there is a laughter track after the jokes, as if I can remember the audience reactions. It is a unique and sometimes surprisingly adult science fiction comedy; there’s a lot of swear words here given its PG rating! But that makes me like it even more, it’s the last of an era in film were creators could be liberal and didn’t have to slap 12A on everything.

I love it, very, very close to Ghostbusters levels of awesome. It has great dialogue and humour that isn’t stupid, often intelligent, and is just an all around fun experience, recommended for all.

Additional Marshmallows: Did you know, Clint Eastwood was approached for the part of Agent K?

Men in Black 2

Five years later in 2002, the Men in Black return...  but they unfortunately leave behind the rich enjoyment in the previous century.
An experienced Agent J is now working alone; unable to find a new partner who can replace Agent K, but when an alien dominatrix arrives on Earth he needs the knowledge his old partner once had to stop her.
The film has a promising start. We see Agent J no longer a rookie yet angry from missing his old partner; many agents regard him with anxiety as he neuralizes most of his new partners. However, I’m sorry to say, the plot quickly becomes mindless when the liberated Agent K is awkwardly woven back into the story.

MiB1’s ending was bitter sweet, but gratifying. The sequel backtracks yet the script does not capitalise with these characters in the same way; the two agents spent most of their time arguing and complaining and the chemistry once shared feels lukewarm without the student/mentor relationship of the first film. Instead the jokes are dished out by the talking dog and the Worm aliens, who get repetitive quickly.

With a lacklustre villain, a throwaway romance, an illogical and seemingly transparent doomsday plot device, Men in Black 2 is sadly quite forgettable. Yes it has more aliens, and the occasional flare of class, but it stumbles around with too many toys to make it worthwhile.

Men in Black 3 (3D)

Ten years after a quite disastrous second act, the Men in Black return to the big screen with a time travel caper. On face value, it is even less promising, but in actuality... it’s an almost full recovery!

When an alien with a grudge against Agent K breaks from prison and alters time so he never existed, Agent J must go back to the 1960s and save his partner. He’ll need help though, and who better than the younger version of K himself?

I was very hesitant to see this, especially after reminding myself of MiB2, with time travel and Tommy Lee Jones only on screen for the beginning and end segments, but I was more than happy to see the film recovering the sense of humour in the first film, and actually having an understandable script! Plus, Josh Brolin plays the younger Tommy Lee Jones, and does a pretty fantastic job of it.

The creatures on show are as interesting as ever, the villain is much better than in MiB2. The 3D unsurprisingly isn’t necessary; there are one or two gimmick shots but nothing excessive. The plot, well when time travel is concerned there’s always problems. Agent K is erased from history, my first problem is... why is Agent J still with MiB if K wasn’t around to recruit him? There is a nice sting in the tail of this story though, which links with the original film... but again, time travel, paradoxes, aaaargh.

I was very pleased with the end result though. While it may have missed some beats that the original wouldn’t have, time travel is always hokey, and there’s little to no consistency with secondary characters throughout the films, it recovers the franchise nicely for one last hurrah.

We just don’t talk about the utterly... utterly horrendous song by Pitbull, right?