A distinctly average natural disaster movie, mostly notable for its special effects. But then, what movie in this genre isn't?
Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is Ray, a rescue helicopter pilot about to experience the worst earthquake in history across the San Andreas fault. It is a race against time and endurance for him to rescue his family from constant chaos.
So I went to see San Andreas mostly because these movies require big screen viewing; they lose even more when watched on a television. Disaster movies are prone to cliche, so I wanted to give it a good shot.
But this is full of disaster cliche, and some pretty questionable moments between characters.
So we open with a rescue scenario that seems to suggest the problem would have been solved if all three helicopter operators were Dwayne Johnson; since he is best at doing everything and as soon as other trained men do tasks they fail miserably.
A following scene shows his bikini-clad daughter, but more importantly how Ray's marriage is ending; his wife is now going out with a slimy, shifty-eyed architect who considers his buildings more important than children.
You can probably guess everything that happens between these four characters.
The chaos that ensues follows Ray's family after they are divided over the region, and it is up to him to personally rescue them (and no one else) with Government funded equipment. Meanwhile Paul Giamatti is a seismologist who gives us a "very scientific" commentary of what is happening, it goes something like this: "This is a 6.5 on the scale!"; "This is a 9.6 on the scale!"; "Get under the table!" and gets regularly told by others to "Come and look at this!" These moments seem pointless.
But the action, which is why we are here, is excellent, and I am one of those people who really enjoys Dwayne Johnson's personas in movies. Even in terrible films he always seems like he is having a great time and is incredibly likable as an actor and as a human being! So I find it easy to sympathise with his character in this film.
Despite how contrived things can get.
Okay you might want and example? ***spoilers***:
Ray's wife is going out with an architect who cares more about his buildings than human beings and he is incredibly proud of them. They are both moving in together.
Ray's daughter spends time with him and learns about a new, "incredibly stable", building he has recently built.
Naturally she is forced to go to this building in the film's climax.
Ray and his wife are struggling to find her now, but they know she will be in one of many buildings... one of which is the architect's. The wife doesn't even bat an eye at it, she doesn't even consider it highly likely her daughter would A: know the building and/or B: remember her new boyfriend's raving about it being super stable and structurally sound?
All for a moment of tension that lasts about thirty seconds.
Regardless ***spoilers over*** It is a middle of the road disaster movie. It does nothing to reinvigorate the genre or do anything new, but it looks very impressive and Dwayne Johnson is on top form.
Jurassic World is a bombastic return of the franchise fourteen years after the previous sequel. It provides much, a lot more than expected, but can never match the original.
Set over twenty years since John Hammond's theme park extravaganza Jurassic Park was utterly destroyed when the reborn dinosaur exhibits broke loose, Jurassic World follows a new organisation looking to rekindle the park's magic. From what we can see, it has been a huge success; the Jurassic World theme park has been a hit for well over a decade and has grown with multiple exhibits.
But like with all corporations, they see the task of keeping audiences and investors excited an uphill battle, and they turn to genetic modification to breed a new dinosaur.
My feelings on Jurassic World have yo-yo'ed ever since the first trailer landed, at first I was excited: the tone was right, then I was increasingly worried; genetically modified dinosaurs, really? Among other things.
But in actuality, Jurassic World is perhaps one of the truest sequels to the original you could hope for. While 1997's The Lost World and (worst of all) Jurassic Park 3 had a tendency to repeat the key scenarios of the first film (a small group of people trapped on an island of dinosaurs) this new installment actually tries to expand the idea and give us new meat to chew on.
Sure, this is Jurassic Park, there are similarities all over the shop. We are going to have peace descend into utter chaos; foreshadowing and any sense of build up are blatantly obvious except to those rare few who haven't seen a Jurassic Park movie! There are plenty of moments that will have you scratch your head, or shake it, making this film not quite living up to its colossal predecessor. Avoidable moments too; our new Park's head operator Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is seen running away from a T-Rex in high heels. Silly, but completely avoidable as they do refer to it earlier; Chris Pratt's hunter/raptor trainer Owen scowls at her footwear. It isn't something I personally care about, but I know, I know people will complain about it.
The storyline, unlike Jurassic Park 3's miserable excuse of a storyline, is a decent play off the first film. Claire has two nephew's visiting the park on this doomed day, while Chris Pratt's Owen deals with a man named Hoskins (played by Netflix/Marvel Daredevil's Vincent D'Onofrio) who wants to militarize the supposedly "trained" velociraptors. Thematically World has a lot of kinship with the original; we see perhaps what Jeff Goldblum's Malcolm character feared the most; merchandise. This film's mere existence is a play on this!
The sets are all reminiscent of the first film, as is the sound design, Chris Pratt's character is convincing and carries the burden of the "training raptors" concept really well. The CGI is a bit too abundant and can be hit or miss, more animatronics would have been great, but you get used to it.
Perhaps the most endearing aspect is how fun it feels and how dark it can become. Dialogue is witty and very likable throughout, the two kids (while they could be described as one overly-mopey and one overly happy kid at first) they did actually grow on me. They had just enough character to make you like them.
The Park has changed, but the ideology and themes remain true. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it; it could have been much worse!
Additional Marshmallows: I just wish audiences wouldn't be so gullible as to think "Executive Producer: Steven Spielberg" means this is the same quality as Jurassic Park. Director Colin Trevorrow does a great job, but the little bits of Spielberg whimsy just aren't there.
"All the activity has led to this"? Well that's just unfortunate really.
Following the events of Paranormal Activity 2 and after Katie and young Hunter disappeared, we follow another family, their daughter Alex, her boyfriend and her younger brother Wyatt. You guessed it, paranormal activity starts happening around their house, around the same time a mysterious young boy and his mother move in across the street.
My biggest problem with this film, asides the total lack of scares, is that its the exact same plotting as the third film. We have the same set up; there's nothing wrong until a ceiling light wobbles, there's constant pranks by the characters, demons being obsessed with children's toys, replace two young girls with two young boys, and generally nothing happening for the first hour.
Yes, the fourth film takes an hour (fifty-three minutes exactly) before anything actually "paranormal" happens. Of a ninety-six minute run time.
Now we are set in "modern day", this house is festooned with laptops. It is established early on that these laptops record everything their web cameras film and they film all the time (no sleep mode for these computers) so they hide them about the house to film the activity. Funny how they never view the footage, like when Alex is levitated off the bed.
Personal gripe about horror films nowadays. Consider: when you are in pitch darkness and are carrying a laptop with you (just go with it) do you run through the dark with the screen illuminating your beautiful face? No. No one would do that! You would turn the screen around to light your surroundings, you see less with a big bright light in your face! It is the equivalent of pointing the flashlight into your face.
You will see that this film made me ask all the wrong questions under the conditions of a badly made movie. There are, for the first time in the series, inconsistencies with the recorded footage. A time stamp in the corner of the screen normally represents a recording, but PA4 decides to sometimes remove the stamp... for no reason. This and sudden jump cuts, not even blurring, static cuts, just an edit that saves a character the time of walking across a room.
The plot goes absolutely nowhere since Paranormal Activity 3 since it spends so much time retreading the same "scare" beats and setup. This series is now worse than the Saw films.
There's so little to actually say about this film, those it does make the third part appear good.
Additional Marshmallows: I didn't even talk about the Xbox Kinnect gimmick, which is conveniently the meeting spot for the ghosts.
The best scares were the movie's characters pulling pranks on one another.
With Paranormal Activity 2 following the events of the first film, it is only logical in the studio's mind to crank out a prequel for the third part. We see Katie from the first film as a child, and witness the start of her demonic experiences through the eyes of a skeptical mother and a camera wielding step-father.
Maybe I will reconsider it if I watch it again, but Paranormal Activity was excellent in my opinion, I even wrote a post about how I felt its fixed camera gimmick was clever in forcing the viewer to keep watching. Other critics disagreed, and what we have now is exactly what those critics said: protracted silent moments of waiting for household objects to move.
It took a miserable five minutes before I was demanding this guy put his camera down just once (what a gent: filming two women carry boxes into the basement instead of helping out) I was honestly surprised when he didn't rescue the camera during an "earthquake". Even during family trauma (potentially aggravated by having cameras everywhere) his response to being asked to put the camera down: "No, it's okay, I feel like I need to be useful".
There are no scares here. Everything is so framed and set up scene-by-scene that only a total idiot wouldn't see the supposed jumps coming, even the slower atmospheric moments are by the numbers: oh, block our vision will you? I guess someone will be behind him when we can see again? Yup, hi there. Oh, block our vision again? That shadowy someone is gone again? Yup.
Possibly one of the best sequences involves the Bloody Mary chant at a mirror. Wow, I know this is set in 1988 but that scare is really, really old.
By all appearances this film is trying to mimic the first (random sleep-walking time lapse footage) and it tries to pull off the same shock ending, but has to magic away four characters to do the whole "alone in a house" routine.
Generally speaking film franchises are supposed to get more extreme as they go (the Saw movies got increasingly gorier, for example) but here it feels like less happens, at least in terms of scares and in terms of explaining anything. "Discover how the activity began" boasts the tagline. Really? I certainly saw things occur, but I have no idea how any of it began.
The first film had me on the edge of my seat for the last twenty minutes, the second one wasn't as successful but felt like a decent sequel, this one just feels wasted; boring cliches replacing potential story building. But then that would be suggesting these writers could write a story.
So it turns out I had not seen the original Mad Max, nor had I seen the third installment of the trilogy (although with its current infamy it seems like I have) and with the incredible Mad Max: Fury Road out in theatres, I wanted to revisit them all.
Now for the purposes of validity, I wrote the reviews for Mad Max and Mad Max 2 before I saw 2015's Fury Road. Due to computer problems these reviews were heavily delayed in publication, which I apologise for. Just so you know that these are not written in hindsight of Fury Road, but chronologically.
Mad Max (1979)
A story of revenge, a near-future police officer goes after a bike gang responsible for the murder of his partner, his wife and son.
At least, that's what the IMDB synopsis says, it even goes so far as to say "post apocalyptic", I... wouldn't call this post-apocalyptic.
Mad Max is the first incarnation of director George Miller's classic character that would go on to see two sequels and a reboot. I am a fan of Mad Max 2: Road Warrior but believe it or not I had not seen this film until now.
Well, I sort of wish I hadn't.
The franchise of Mad Max to me is three things: crazy car chases, crazier characters and a lot of carnage. But the first film is virtually none of these things.
One may have to look at this film as an origin story for Max; he isn't a lone, mysterious warrior yet, he is a husband and a father, has a home and a job in a police force. He even goes on vacation. The film follows the youthful Mel Gibson as Max, and initially his partner for the most part as they hunt down The Toecutter's motorcycle gang who have been terrorising the roads.
The film does eventually get into the themes synonymous with the franchise, but it takes about an hour to get there, of a ninety minute film! The pacing is toe-curlingly slow and while I try to not beat on any film for being dated... this has dated. Not in a particularly "70s science fiction" manner as one might guess from the poster (in fact this film is barely science fiction at all) it has dated because it looks as apocalyptic as a 1970's episode of Top Gear.
The film making itself is surprisingly weak too. For a franchise best known for being eccentric none of the characters here are memorable or remotely interesting, scenes feel badly executed and apart from the eventual revenge story in the final act, there's nothing to give it direction.
It is apparent that George Miller loves his cars and his chases though. If one thing is done right here it is how the motorbikes and vehicles are shown and filmed, and the opening car chase (while a little boring in some instances) has a good old fashioned twisted metal feel to it.
I really don't have anything to say about it, this is not the Mad Max I was always aware of. No post apocalyptic psychos, no barren wastelands, no crazy vehicles and insane car chases; it feels more like a 70s cop drama with all the emotion and intrigue sucked out of it.
Maybe had the revenge plot started in the middle rather than the end, we could have had an exciting movie?
Additional Marshmallows: Admittedly one can only be so harsh on Mad Max: its budget was a measly $650,000, compared to Mad Max 2's $2,000,000 budget. Even director George Miller made money for the production by working as an emergency room doctor!
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
Now this is the Mad Max I know.
Finding himself alone and the world turning into a desert wasteland, Max encounters a settlement under attack from a horde of bandits. Enlisted to help, Max has to defend one of the last supplies of oil from the marauders.
There really isn't a great deal to say about Mad Max 2, compared to the original film this is your quintessential action movie. While it does open with establishing what happened to Max and his family, this is a very different experience.
Unlike the original that exists in an unspecified time and place, The Road Warrior is definitely set in the far future when humanity have mostly become raging lunatics living in a wasteland and living off tinned dog food.
Mel Gibson returns as the quiet hero Max, who is now tormented after the ending of the previous film; he wants nothing more than to be left in peace and to have gas for his car. The survivors he encounters are peaceable and while they see him as one of the savages from the roads, they also know he could help them escape the bandits.
The bandits are insane. Raping and pillaging their way across the deserts, strapping their victims to the fronts of their cars, wearing bondage gear in the desert (these actors must be uncomfortable...!) and led by the hockey-mask wearing individual called The Humungus.
There's a lot more style here than with the first film, certainly style over substance; the film is only ninety minutes long and has a host of characters, from Max to the Feral Kid, from the Gyro Captain to the crazed Zetta. There's little to no characterisation outside of their actions.
But the action is incredible. Director George Miller clearly got a much better budget here and could actually go to town with the vehicle design and the carnage of the crashes. The Road Warrior inspired so many action movies in the 80s and 90s, especially the near carbon copy called Waterworld.
Unlike the first film, The Road Warrior has dated acceptably, mostly due to the film's devastated setting. I would recommend anyone who hasn't seen this to watch it at least once; this looks like the main inspiration for Miller's 2015 reboot.
It is a mad world, just go with it.
Mad Max 3: Beyond Thunderdome (1985)
This is like the Batman Forever of the Mad Max trilogy. It has some good parts, but the tone is all wrong.
Coming straight off the back of Mad Max 2 (aka The Road Warrior) we find our silent protagonist Max alone in the desert wilderness. When his camels get stolen he finds his way to Bartertown, a town run by a woman named Aunty Entity and a duo called Master Blaster who are warring for control.
Thunderdome is one of those films that makes it hard to pin the plot down in a simple synopsis; the plot doesn't know what it is doing. It is less than two hours but feels like an eternity as we see Max stumble from one random encounter into quite a different one without any rhyme or reason or design. This film is mad, but not in a good way.
Things don't start off well as we are introduced with a song by singer and lead actress Tina Turner, which instantly breaks the tone of previous Mad Max films. You know this isn't going to go well.
But there is some promise; Bartertown makes for some nice world building that keeps with the tone of the superior second movie. There are a lot of strange characters, but none of them are especially memorable asides Master Blaster; a hulking muscle man in a fully enclosed helmet called Blaster, with a midget on his shoulders named Master. And Tina Turner as Aunty Entity. Surprisingly, Turner isn't in the film a great deal, appearing only at the start and at the end.
Even the titular Thunderdome does not feature particularly strongly. It isn't especially enthralling.
What does feature prominently? Small children. The film takes a massive tonal shift. When we haven't had any vehicles or chases or even carnage (like the first two films) we get... the Lost Boys from Hook. They are alone in the desert, wild children but not like Road Warrior's Wild Child these children are innocent and full of wonder, believing Max to be a messiah.
What hurts this film the most is (not Tina Turner, though she is random) its two separate storylines that have no relation at all. First we have a town that is powered by an underground methane farm, then we have kids wanting to fly in a crashed airplane. Max's apparent lack of empathy towards all of these characters is the only thing I could relate to.
The ending attempts The Road Warrior's chase sequence again, but replaces bloody carnage with... hitting people in the face with frying pans like a Looney Toons cartoon. There is little to no violence or gore here; it is massively toned down.
I don't know what is worse; the first film's lack of budget or this film's lack of cohesion and tone.
A one hundred and twenty minute adrenaline shot; absolute carnage in the desert and all shot with awesome grungy, violent and most importantly, physical, action.Immortan Joe, a tyrant of a blasted and wasted desert after Earth suffers a nuclear apocalypse, controls all supply of water for his downtrodden citizens. He also holds sway over his Five Wives, imprisoned in his citadel. But when one of his subordinates attempts to rescue these women, he is led on a gasoline fueled chase across the open desert, while amongst all of this, a traumatised loner named Max gets pulled into the fray.Back in 1983, Australian director George Miller redefined the action genre with his sequel “The Road Warrior” to the 1979 Mad Max, a film with so much vehicular chaos and destruction it was praised for its physical stunt work and world building. Now in 2015 we get Miller returning for a reboot/re-envisioning of the same story.But fear not, this is Miller's baby, and it is in good hands. Fury Road is exactly the film it should be. Like 2012's Dredd, it is a one trick pony but the ace up its sleeve is undeniably astounding. Capturing the pre-computer generated age of the 80s and 90s, the film is a visceral and eye-popping spectacle of carnage of the highest caliber, made even more so by the current over-saturation of action films.Tom Hardy takes on the titular role as Max, a man haunted by the death of his family (shown exclusively through jarring, nightmarish flashbacks) beside him is Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, the warrior woman with a bionic arm who defies a tyrant to free his slave wives. Immortan Joe is played by Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played the part of the villain Toecutter in Miller's 1979 Mad Max. All of the acting, asides perhaps the anger-fueled Immortan, is downplayed but not forgotten here. The film shows rather than tells with Hardy barely speaking at all outside of an opening narration, Theron's Furiosa very well steals the show as the character with the most to lose. A worthy note should be given to Nicolas Hoult (X-Men Days of Future Past) who disappears into the role of one of Immortan Joe's pasty pale War Boys.People argue that there's a lack of “characterisation” here, when in fact there is plenty to progress the story and make you understand their motives. What this film lacks is unnecessary quips, one-liners and exposition dumps, all which can bog a film down.But the action takes centre stage here, and the budget delivered towards the vehicle, costume and character design and construction. Near everything is practical effects, you cannot watch it and not appreciate how everything looks, my eyes were on stalks just taking everything in.I actually can't think of anything “wrong” with it. It is a grisly film, a visceral film with such an astounding visual style that has been long forgotten about.There's a truck in this film covered in massive drums, amps, and on top a blindfolded dude suspended in bungee chords with a double-necked guitar that shoots flames! How... how can you NOT like that??
Additional Marshmallows: Nicolas Hoult, who plays the war boy Nux, apparently knitted Christmas presents for cast and crew during filming. Even while in full costume!
A horror I was always keen to visit with producer Guillermo Del Toro's name attached, but feedback had been shaky at best. Personally, the film wasn't terrible, in fact it had a lot of atmosphere to give.
Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (of Game of Thrones fame) leads the film as Lucas, the brother of a father who disappeared mysteriously and how he has to care for his two nieces who had also disappeared only to be found alone in a woodland cabin. The two very young girls are traumatised from their experience, believing in a spiritual guardian they call Mama...
The film is a very simple premise, one of has been done before, but similar to Del Toro's other production project The Orphanage, Mama has a lot of presence and atmosphere as well as some nice character development. I think my only grievance with the movie (asides some mildly frustrating horror tropes and cinematography cliches) would be some dodgy CG imagery for the entity Mama. Mama's design is very intense and subtle, her hair moving as if underwater, but it feels as though the technology wasn't there to fully render her – her hair being a prime example.
The film is very murky but has excellent use of shadows and camera angles. Much of the film revolves around the two young girls, Victoria and Lily, and fortunately they are mostly competent actresses! Victoria is the older of the two and has more to do than the traumatised Lily. While Nikolaj Coster-Waldau does well, his character's girlfriend Annabelle (Jessica Chastain) steals the parent role midway through. Annabelle is part of a rock band (the film acknowledging how these two are not the sort to care for the two girls) Annabelle being the definition of unfit. The film does well to inspire confidence in her as it progresses.
Some criticise the ending of this film, but without spoiling anything I felt it was effective in an unconventional sense; it was going one direction but quickly pulls the rug from under your feet.
I enjoyed it, though it has already dated with visual effects which is very disappointing as it makes Mama less threatening. The film has plenty of horror tropes that it stumbles over and works tiredly with, but that isn't surprising for many horror films.
