I think I watched a different film to all the critics.
I missed the original Pacific Rim in the cinema. I did buy the Blu-Ray when it came out - thought it was okay, but it wasn't quite the amazing film that I had been hearing about. I think the lack of a huge screen probably didn't do me any favours.
So when I saw Uprising, I picked a cinema with a large screen and then sat at the front so that I had to look up to see the top of the screen. I don't know if that made it a better experience, but it certainly didn't seem to hurt.
To some regard, the story reminded me a little of Independence Day Resurgence - it shared elements around the world having rebuilt itself, the social scars left by the war, the military screw-up leading the fight. Like ID4 2 (or whatever it was abbreviated to), there's enough of a hint of the post-post-apocalypse world to make it appear intriguing, but soon enough we're back with the military and the glimpses of the larger society are just glimpses.
Much of the movie actually appears to be something of an assembly from other similar films (there are bits of Transformers DNA in there too), but overall there was nothing that screamed "I don't work" at me.
The characters could have been more original, the story could have been told better (although it does take some interesting turns), and some of the fight scenes could have been more coherently staged (I had to work at figuring out who was in which Jaeger (Giant Robot Suit) for a start), but it was entertaining, it held my interest and I didn't feel the need to close my eyes and take a nap - so all of those are good things.
Overall not as good as the original (how many sequels are?), but as a piece of big, dumb fun entertainment, it works well enough.
Monday 26 March 2018
Isle of Dogs (2018)
Two important points to note:
1. This is not about the similarly titled area of London
2. It is not a kid's film
Isle of Dogs is the second animated feature (the first being The Fantastic Mr Fox) to come from writer-director Wes Anderson. Set in Japan in the near future, it's a fable about persecuted minorities told in the form of the tale of a dog-hating mayor who uses the excuse of snout fever to banish all dogs to a refuse island.
One of the few stories I've read about this accused Anderson of cultural appropriation - a label that seems to be applied with expanding frequency. The writer took affront (although perhaps that's putting it a bit took strongly) about Anderson's western-lensed view of the Japanese.
Except it's not really a Western view as much as it's a Wes Anderson view. For anyone who's seen another Wes Anderson movie, this is yet another Wes Anderson movie. The comedy is as dry as the Sahara and equally ridiculous. The subject matter is treated both with ridicule and love, which is a constant throughout Anderson's films. Yes, it's a western view, but it reads as a love letter to Japan rather than a misappropriation of western culture.
Beyond that point, it's a beautifully quirky piece with some heartfelt voice performances - particularly from Bryan Cranston's Chief. I preferred it over The Fantastic Mr Fox, as I didn't have the memory source material playing with my expectations.
1. This is not about the similarly titled area of London
2. It is not a kid's film
Isle of Dogs is the second animated feature (the first being The Fantastic Mr Fox) to come from writer-director Wes Anderson. Set in Japan in the near future, it's a fable about persecuted minorities told in the form of the tale of a dog-hating mayor who uses the excuse of snout fever to banish all dogs to a refuse island.
One of the few stories I've read about this accused Anderson of cultural appropriation - a label that seems to be applied with expanding frequency. The writer took affront (although perhaps that's putting it a bit took strongly) about Anderson's western-lensed view of the Japanese.
Except it's not really a Western view as much as it's a Wes Anderson view. For anyone who's seen another Wes Anderson movie, this is yet another Wes Anderson movie. The comedy is as dry as the Sahara and equally ridiculous. The subject matter is treated both with ridicule and love, which is a constant throughout Anderson's films. Yes, it's a western view, but it reads as a love letter to Japan rather than a misappropriation of western culture.
Beyond that point, it's a beautifully quirky piece with some heartfelt voice performances - particularly from Bryan Cranston's Chief. I preferred it over The Fantastic Mr Fox, as I didn't have the memory source material playing with my expectations.
Monday 19 March 2018
Tomb Raider (2018)
I've been an on-and-off fan of the Tomb Raider franchise since playing the first game on the Playstation back in the late '90s. High adventure, exotic locations, lost civilisations and a heroine who was part Indiana Jones, part James Bond and part Lady Penelope managed to fill a void that had been not been properly filled since the release of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989.
I lost touch with the franchise after the third game, although I was eager to see Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. An enthusiasm that latest until about twenty minutes into the film. What seemed to me to be a formula that a filmmaker could hardly go wrong with turned out to be a formula that a filmmaker could easily go wrong with. Badly cut together with a film score written in two weeks (for which the composer apologised), and a story that is ultimately forgettable (seriously, I can't remember anything at all except a vague recollection of some nonsense about time travel, a clock and huskies).
I do have something of a soft spot for the sequel, The Cradle of Life, which I felt managed to at least attempt to reproduce the sense of adventure that the Tomb Raiders films should have - and it had an Alan Silvestri score which is usually a Very Good Thing. But it's ending was a bit pants, and everyone else seemed to hate it, so that was that for Angelina's Tomb Raider.
Fast forward ten years and Tomb Raider is being rebooted for the (then) current generation of games consoles with greatly improved graphics and a stripped-down origin story for Lara Croft. It also happened to be written by Rhianna Pratchett, a writer I was familiar with in part because of her parentage but perhaps moreso because she had written Overlord, a video game that works as an anti-Lord of the Rings comedy.
The game ranks among my favourites in terms of both fun gameplay and - in what is becoming more expected from video games - a decent story. Narratively it blows both of the Tomb Raider films out of the water.
The recently released Tomb Raider film owes much to that game. The stripped-back Lara Croft, the main location, the mythology, some of the stunts, and even the colour pallet are all rooted in the game. It's definitely its own beast though, diverging considerably from the story told in the game, but there's no doubting its influence.
That's all evident in the trailer, so it was with this expectation that I went to see the film.
I'll start with the conclusion: I liked it. I liked it enough that I saw it twice in the same weekend. It's a huge improvement on Lara's previous cinematic outings.
That's not to say it's a great film. For me it's a solid B. It's fun, exciting in parts, there's an absolutely fantastic central performance from Alicia Vikander who seems custom-built for the part. It's pacey with very little chance of causing the audience to nod off. Even the slower sections (i.e. when Lara's not running from something, shooting something, or falling off something) still manage to engage and maintain interest.
It also manages to capture the essence of the game. The action in some cases could have been lifted straight from it - but not in the sense that you're watching a character being manipulated through a series of actions by someone with a game controller - Vikander's performance raises it above that.
The film is let down in a couple of areas though. Firstly, the story takes too long to get going. We spend too much time cycling around London in the opening reel - something where the film could have learned from the narrative of the game, which instead drops us in media res in the middle of a shipwreck.
The other letdown is that it isn't quite big enough. The final act manages to hit a lot of the right spots for puzzling solving under pressure in a deathtrap tomb, but the climactic action feels more like an opening level of a game rather than the full fireworks finale. It felt as if budget constraints had limited the extent of the storytelling.
Ultimately, it's a film that made me want a sequel - hopefully Lara can progress way beyond level two.
I lost touch with the franchise after the third game, although I was eager to see Angelina Jolie's Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. An enthusiasm that latest until about twenty minutes into the film. What seemed to me to be a formula that a filmmaker could hardly go wrong with turned out to be a formula that a filmmaker could easily go wrong with. Badly cut together with a film score written in two weeks (for which the composer apologised), and a story that is ultimately forgettable (seriously, I can't remember anything at all except a vague recollection of some nonsense about time travel, a clock and huskies).
I do have something of a soft spot for the sequel, The Cradle of Life, which I felt managed to at least attempt to reproduce the sense of adventure that the Tomb Raiders films should have - and it had an Alan Silvestri score which is usually a Very Good Thing. But it's ending was a bit pants, and everyone else seemed to hate it, so that was that for Angelina's Tomb Raider.
Fast forward ten years and Tomb Raider is being rebooted for the (then) current generation of games consoles with greatly improved graphics and a stripped-down origin story for Lara Croft. It also happened to be written by Rhianna Pratchett, a writer I was familiar with in part because of her parentage but perhaps moreso because she had written Overlord, a video game that works as an anti-Lord of the Rings comedy.
The game ranks among my favourites in terms of both fun gameplay and - in what is becoming more expected from video games - a decent story. Narratively it blows both of the Tomb Raider films out of the water.
The recently released Tomb Raider film owes much to that game. The stripped-back Lara Croft, the main location, the mythology, some of the stunts, and even the colour pallet are all rooted in the game. It's definitely its own beast though, diverging considerably from the story told in the game, but there's no doubting its influence.
That's all evident in the trailer, so it was with this expectation that I went to see the film.
I'll start with the conclusion: I liked it. I liked it enough that I saw it twice in the same weekend. It's a huge improvement on Lara's previous cinematic outings.
That's not to say it's a great film. For me it's a solid B. It's fun, exciting in parts, there's an absolutely fantastic central performance from Alicia Vikander who seems custom-built for the part. It's pacey with very little chance of causing the audience to nod off. Even the slower sections (i.e. when Lara's not running from something, shooting something, or falling off something) still manage to engage and maintain interest.
It also manages to capture the essence of the game. The action in some cases could have been lifted straight from it - but not in the sense that you're watching a character being manipulated through a series of actions by someone with a game controller - Vikander's performance raises it above that.
The film is let down in a couple of areas though. Firstly, the story takes too long to get going. We spend too much time cycling around London in the opening reel - something where the film could have learned from the narrative of the game, which instead drops us in media res in the middle of a shipwreck.
The other letdown is that it isn't quite big enough. The final act manages to hit a lot of the right spots for puzzling solving under pressure in a deathtrap tomb, but the climactic action feels more like an opening level of a game rather than the full fireworks finale. It felt as if budget constraints had limited the extent of the storytelling.
Ultimately, it's a film that made me want a sequel - hopefully Lara can progress way beyond level two.
Monday 5 March 2018
Red Sparrow (2018)
I've read a number of articles comparing Red Sparrow with Atomic Blonde. Both are violent spy thrillers with a female protagonist.
It's a lazy comparison.
Atomic Blonde for all its insistence on visceral violence that leaves its scars is a comic book movie. Its "realistic" portrayal of people getting hurt means having the actors wince a lot, but ultimately being as indestructible as in any James Bond film.
Red Sparrow is not a comic book film. It's still an unrealistic twisty-turny thriller, but for sheer gut impact it's a far superior piece of work.
I don't know if I liked the film, but I did admire the craft that went into it. In terms of knowing where the plot was going, it kept me guessing between the possibilities that Jennifer Lawrence's character was a double agent or a triple agent. It delivered a character who when presented with two options would keep picking a third one, and as a result managed to keep surprising me throughout. And it delivered one of the most painful looking moments in recent cinema history - I think I audibly gasped at this moment.
There's also the debate over whether the film is sexually exploitative or sexually liberating. After all the lead character is taught to use sex as a weapon, there's a "voluntary" rape scene (it's a little more complicated than calling it one or the other - both people are in the wrong - the man far more so), but these are not treated as being good - so are they exploitative and likely to set back the feminist cause, or are they deliberately provocative and worth discussing? Or will not enough people see the film to actually care?
Ultimately, I think it's a film that will alienate too much of its potential audience to be a huge success.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Hong Kong Railway Museum
For a little bit of context, I've been fascinated by trains for most of my life. I can't make any claim to being a true fanatic - my...
