Winter review round-up
Sep 01
Spring has apparently sprung, despite the rain forecast for the weekend and the still pretty-cold nights. That can only mean one thing: it’s time to look back over the past 3 months and take stock of what movies we saw, and whether or not we liked them very much.
As usual, this season was a bit of a mixed bag. Being the American summer, a lot of big cash cow flicks were released — Sex And The City 2, The A-Team, Twilight, Predators, Inception, etc. — and only some of them were good. I like our summer better. We get stuff like Tron Legacy and Harry Potter, and we used to get The Lord Of The Rings.
Anyway, let’s get down to it!
“Quite apart from being one of the most offensive products ever manufactured, Sex And The City 2 is also outrageously surreal to watch. It is so surreal, in fact, that if asked “what was it about?” a mere ten minutes after watching it, you may find yourself hitting a mental blank (probably caused by the violent brain haemorrhage induced by how stupid the movie was). Did I already mention how forgettable it is?”
“How did so many ‘A-list’ comedians assemble in one place and not realise their jokes were falling completely flat on a deadweight script?”
“There’s no rhyme or reason to any single thing Aldous Snow does — and he does some bafflingly strange things towards the end of the film — and the sheer otherness of the central character damages Greek almost beyond repair.”
“A vast improvement over the last installment in the series, but that isn’t saying much.”
Pandorum (While the film didn’t actually see a cinematic release here, I finally got around to watching the Blu-Ray in July, so it counts. Barely)
“Right from the start of Pandorum, I felt a creeping sense of déjà vu. As the film progressed, the sense grew stronger, and stronger, until it became an overriding axiom of truth in my brain: Pandorum is exactly like a video game, but with all the gameplay removed.”
“What made the remake harder to endure was the fact that, for whatever reason, they’ve taken those same beats and stretched them out to a challenging 140 minutes. Almost 2-and-a-half hours is a damn long time to wait for something you know is coming.”
“It’s all here. Big guns, big fights, big arms, square jaws, car chases, explosions, sexy ladies in distress and, of course, witty one-liners. There’s even a bad guy ‘monologing’ at the end to complete the package. It’s all been done before and there’s nothing revolutionary for The Expendables to hang its hat on.”
“A dark streak permeates the plot, an aspect that probably would have helped the film if it had stronger characters, but in reality serves to alienate the audience from what little good Splice has to offer.”
“When there’s parachuting tanks, stereotypically jaded-but-still-in-love ex-girlfriends, and some jerkish CIA types involved, you know the bulk of the audience’s focus is going to be on the action rather than the characters. Here The A-Team is something of a mixed bag.”
“I can’t believe it’s the same kid from Kick-Ass. I’m glad I saw Kick-Ass before I saw Nowhere Boy, because I think that comparison helped underline how spectacularly perfect his performance is.”
“The performances are all — miraculously for this type of film – passable at least, and great at best. Adrien Brody stands out, of course, but Laurence Fishburne’s Apocalypse Now-informed performance as a bloke who’s been on the wrong planet for too long is refreshingly fun to watch.”
“I must admit that I was hoping to laugh out loud more. Heck, I think the audience I saw it with– a mix of mothers, fathers teenagers and early-twenties couples, wanted to laugh more, too– but we never did.”
“It’s clear that director James Mangold is fluent in the language of cinema. He conducts the ballet between screen and speakers, actors and audience with startling precision.”
“Every shot, every cut, every sound effect and musical cue is distinctly Nolan-ish: the sound design is sharp and punchy, the visuals are moody and gorgeous, the music is as subtle as a brick and twice as threatening, and the performances are exemplary across the board. In fact, the only real problem here is the script.”
“Pilgrim’s strongest selling card is its humour, which, thankfully, isn’t content with the kind of geek jokes that make people like me roll their eyes.”
Today marks ReelThinker’s nine month anniversary. Incidentally, this is approximately the period of time required to cook a functioning human being the old-fashioned way. Probably not relevant, but worth mentioning anyway. Thanks for reading, and here’s to another 9 months!
For previous review round-ups, go here:
THE A-TEAM review: it’s like I’m really in the 80s!
Jun 11
The A-Team is a movie about blokes killing other blokes. It’s got explosions, macho posturing, silly antagonists and only one token female character. It’s based on the 80s TV show of the same name, and it mixes such established actors as Liam Neeson and, er, Jessica Biel, with relative newcomers like Sharlto Copley (District 9) and “Rampage” Jackson, a big, intimidating wrestler-type. It walks a narrow line between comedy and silliness, character and caricature, action and noise, and miraculously manages to pull off the tricky balance on every count — just.
The first act of The A-Team is easily the best. It’s jam-packed with genuine humour, solid character establishment, and some particularly stunty action. The A-Team wastes no time in drawing to your attention its focus on character: four short character-intro vignettes quickly and sharply define the characters, bring them together for the first time, and unleash them on some fun and unpredictable action set-pieces. After the bombastic opening, though, the film shifts gear, and this is where the cracks start to show.
Hannibal, Murdock, Face and BA (collectively the A-Team) walk a tricky line between Schwarzenegger-esque stunty physicality and Bourne-ish globetrotting espionage. Expanding the key roster of characters from one to four helps the film retain an interesting texture, but robs it of some heart: with so many characters going on so many short, shallow arcs, it’s hard to become really invested in any of them.
But then when there’s parachuting tanks, stereotypically jaded-but-still-in-love ex-girlfriends, and some jerkish CIA types involved, you know the bulk of the audience’s focus is going to be on the action rather than the characters. Here The A-Team is something of a mixed bag. Some action scenes are shot too tight, too dark, and cut too loose to make any coherent sense, while others are thrilling in their physicality and choreography; a more consistent and measured style would have gone a long way.
What doesn’t sit so well is Jessica Biel’s erstwhile antagonist character, apparently the only woman in the entire US Army. Her past, off-screen relationship with polyamourous Face feels more like a convenient last-minute-kiss set-up rather than an organic and realistic relationship — but then again, you’d probably assume that going into a movie like The A-Team.
Just like the 80s actioners of yore, The A-Team‘s villain is typically dull and somewhat predictable. There are some very minor spoilers involved here (as there are technically three bad-guys, and you don’t find out who they all are till about half-way through), so I’ll just say that the puppetmaster behind the A-Team’s predicament is performed with refreshing and amusing gusto, but essentially his character is just a tool, a barrier for the A-Team to violently throw themselves against, with barely a whiff of character to call his own.
I’d feel remiss if I didn’t point out how goddamn funny The A-Team is. I hadn’t expected to find myself laughing out loud, but I actually did it — several times, in fact, and found myself frequently missing lines because I was laughing over them. The last time that happened to me in a cinema was during Tropic Thunder. While the humour in The A-Team mostly fizzles out after the first turning point in the script, it still lends the movie a real sense of fun, and brings a sense of camaraderie to the characters.
The only big bugbear I have with the film is that it assumes I’m a moron. The “laying out the plan” scenes are intercut with the “executing the plan” scenes, which robs those scenes of some of their tension. The film also replays snippets of earlier scenes during pertinent “oh god I just realised this” moments. This is okay when the film calls back to its opening minutes, but at least one of these flashbacks flashed back to a scene not yet five minutes olds; I appreciate the reminder, I’m not that stupid.
Other than that, the film is consistently solid. The cinematography is oddly idiosyncratic for such a paint-by-numbers action flick, and though much of the film is graded an ugly shade of brown it still manages to squeeze in a varied and interesting palette. The music is perfectly serviceable, at once recalling and redifining the iconic “dun duh-dun duuuuun” of the original TV, and like so many Hollywood movies, it’s hard to fault it technically, either.
The acting is mixed, but skewing towards positive. Liam Neeson, Sharlto Copley and Bradley Cooper nail their respective characters; Jessica Biel manages not to embarrass herself in the only female character of note in the film; and only Quentin “Rampage” Jackson lets the team down, favouring line-readings over more in-the-moment performance, but, when you’re comparing the guy to Mr T, it’s hard to begrudge the mediocrity of his performance.
Having never really watched an episode of The A-Team, I didn’t really know what I was walking into when I sat down to watch this movie adaptation. Fortunately, the film managed to nail the crucial opening hook, and from that point on, I was sucked into it. I can forgive the script’s and actors’ shortcomings, and I can forgive some poorly-shot action scenes, because on balance the movie is just too much fun to deny.
To paraphrase Hannibal and erstwhile protege Face, I love it when a plan comes together; while The A-Team doesn’t quite nail all aspects of the blueprint, it gets enough of the plan right to feel like it’s “come together,” and what more can you ask of a formulaic 80s style actioner such as this?
The A-Team
DIE HARD franchise refuses to die easily
May 06
Die Hard is the perfect encapsulation of the 80s action movie: a wise-cracking macho American tough-guy squaring off against a slimy European smarty-pants, and dozens of his inept minions, in a confined space. It’s hard to imagine a time when movies like this didn’t exist — probably because I’m not old enough to remember.
Die Hard 4, or Live Free or Die Hard as it was amusingly dubbed by its makers, came out a few years ago, did some moderate business (almost $400 million), and now makes a living inhabiting the Action section of your local video store alongside its more respected forebears.
The reason Die Hard 4 didn’t catch on fire was that Bruce Willis appeared to be getting too old for this kind of shenanigans, and bringing in Justin Long and Timothy Olyphant didn’t really help to freshen or contemporise the outdated story-telling style in any meaningful way. Also Kevin Smith’s cameo was just plain silly.
Nevertheless, 20th Century Fox thinks you deserve another Die Hard film, and they’re even getting a bloke named Skip Woods to write the script for you, so you don’t have to. Who is this Skip Woods? you ask, and what has he done for me? Well, he wrote Hitman and X-Men: Origins: Wolverine: The Prequel To The Franchise: The Beginning: Part 1, both of which were, by any definition, godawful wastes of time, money and (possibly) talent. Oh, he also wrote the first draft of Swordfish, and is responsible for all the words in the upcoming A-Team script, too, if that changes your opinion at all.
No word yet on a release date or storyline, but expect the words “Yippe-ki-yay” and “Motherfucker” to appear at least once each, and probably in that order.
The 7 worst films based on TV shows
Jan 10
With the upcoming release of The A-Team and the recent arrival of its trailer online, I thought it might be timely to take a look back at films that were adapted from classic television programmes but didn’t do the original show justice.
Okay, one could easily argue that none of the films based on television shows do the original counterparts justice– but of all those films (and there are many!), I find these to be the worst offenders:
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#7 – The Flintsones (1994)
This makes so much sense, right? I mean, the cartoon was a huge 60s animated sitcom hit, and the 90′s were just starving for conceptual advances in the real of television on the cinema screen (wasn’t it??). The casting of John Goodman as Fred Flintstone was pretty clever, as was Rick Moranis as Barney Rubble. But the idea was never going to completely translate well. Even as a kid I found it boring. Still, they squeezed out a sequel in another attempt to strike gold. Calling it ’Viva Rock Vegas‘ was probably not the best idea, though.
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#6 – Wild, Wild West (1999)
Not even box-office-sure-thing Will Smith himself could save this monumental pile of rubbish co-starring Kevin Kline the gorgeous Salma Hayek. Okay I must admit that I didn’t even realise Wild, Wild West was a classic 60s television show when this film was released – which goes to show how remaking old TV shows can sneak up on a generation of filmmgoers who don’t know any different. In this case, they could have gone with a completely different title, plot and characters and probably come up with a better result. Writer/Director/Geek Kevin Smith talks about the producer of this movie (Jon Peters) when he almost wrote a Superman reboot screenplay back in the mid-90s. If you have the time, check it out on YouTube and you’ll come to realise how some movies are destined to bomb from the very early stages.
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#5 – Inspector Gadget (1999)
Poor Matthew Broderick. I probably would have signed on for the paycheck, too — but damn I bet he wishes he could wipe this one from his resume. I watched Inspector Gadget every damn day as a kid. Thankfully by the time they tried to shoot this one past me I knew better. I wasn’t interested in the slightest. At the time it was geared toward kids who had no idea who Inspector Gadget was. Those who watched him were into their twenties and a live-action kids flick adaptation just wouldn’t stick. Didn’t stop ‘em making an even worse sequel, though.
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#4 - Scooby Doo (2002)
I’ll admit to you straight away that I thoroughly enjoyed Sarah Michelle Gellar’s outfit in this lacklustre film. I had to screen it several times when I worked at a cinema and without a doubt she was the only worthwhiel thing projecting onto that screen. Not even Freddie Prinze Jr. or ‘that guy from Scream‘ Matthew Lillard could get through it unscathed. The kids absolutely loved this, though– and why wouldn’t they? The silly CGI animated dog, the campy comedy– it’s all there just for them. Just don’t tell any actual fans of the Scooby-Doo television cartoon that it exists and all will remain well. It profited enough for a horrendous sequel in 2004 and there’s talk of another possibly beginning production in 2010.
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#3 – Bewitched (2005)
I can just imagine the call to Nicole Kidman: “Can you wriggle your nose? Did you watched Bewitched? Great, you’re in!”. Producers were likely hoping this would be a ‘hit’ on Will Ferrell’s very hit and miss history of films. Unfortunately not even the premise that they weren’t actually remaking it — more telling a story about Bewitched – couldn’t save it from being just plain wrong and unfortunately predictable. Audiences and critics gave it a hiding.
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#2 – Dukes of Hazzard (2006)
There was only one good reason to watch the Dukes of Hazzard film adaptation but not even that (or those) made it worthwhile. Everything about this sorry attempt at a refreshing take on a classic TV show was damn excruciating. Let’s just leave it at that, can we?
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#1 – Lost In Space (1998)
Take a reasonably well-know television star and cast him in a film that is an adaptation of an older television show from the 60s. “Danger!, Danger!” Poor Matty LeBlanc probably thought this would help seriously launch (pardon the pun) his film career. He had a pretty solid six more years full-time playing Joey on Friends after this film. Then his own spinoff sitcom Joey. He did make appearances in both Charlie’s Angels film adaptations, though. I guess the guy was always destined for TV. Probably a lesson for everyone in that. The Lost In Space film took what the original TV show did and completely flipped it, removing the campy sets and cheap costumes and ramping things up big-budget-style with kickass CGI effects and an (attempt at) a dark, gritty plot. It probably sounded good on paper, but unfortunately the outcome was abysmal. Considering the fact that this might have worked as a science-fiction film unto itself yet attempted to ride on the name of Lost In Space without any real foundation, this was an embarrassing misfire.
A-TEAM trailer is cookie-cutter perfect
Jan 10
Don’t you just wish you could be a fly on the wall in the boardroom meetings that take place where it is decided to take an old TV show concept, assume the name is still recognisable enough to market against, buy the rights and shoot a glossy ‘remake’? It’s completely understandable why these things go ahead. As a business decision they seem to make sense– and money. But it will never cease to baffle me. I guess the aim is no longer to produce something that has the potential to be an original classic. It just needs to be a sure thing.
The latest offering in these corner of cinema is 20th Century Fox’s The A-Team which is due to hit cinemas 10 June 2010. And baby, it’s a sure thing — the trailer is cookie-cutter perfect. Everything from cheesy one-liners to high-octane set-piece action. One thing is an absolute guarantee: the campy quality of the original TV series is nowhere to be seen– unless maybe you want to consider Liam Neeson’s performance of Col. John “Hannibal” Smith as campy– we’ll have to wait for the entire film to absolutely know for sure). The trailer oozes explosions and abs and is sure to at least make a profit.
It’s a shame Mr T isn’t returning to reprise his career-making role as Sgt. B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus — Lord knows he could still pull it off (if those kickass SNICKERS advertisements are anything to go by). For this film instalment Quinton “Rampage” Jackson gets the honours. Also on hand is the always effective eye candy: Jessica Biel as Lt. Carissa Sosa for the boys and and Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck for the girls.
I’m personally still undecided. I’m not excited about it, I know that much. I never saw the TV show when I was younger (I’m not that old) so I have no desire or connection with it whatsoever. I guess that’d be the case for the majority of the audience this trailer is trying to cater to. While I wasn’t a regular viewer of the TV series, I am aware of the TV theme and it would have been nice to see it part of this trailer. Hopefully it crops up in the film.
Does the trailer look like fun? Yeah, I guess. It was easy to sit through and could have been a lot worse. Am I going to rush out to catch it? No. I’ll see it when there’s nothing else on. Maybe.
Complete cast:
- Liam Neeson as Col. John “Hannibal” Smith
- Bradley Cooper as Lt. Templeton “Faceman” Peck
- Quinton “Rampage” Jackson as Sgt. B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus
- Sharlto Copley as Capt. H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock
- Jessica Biel as Lt. Carissa Sosa[7]
- Patrick Wilson as Lynch[8]
- Omari Hardwick as Chop Shop J
- Maury Sterling as Gammons
- C. Ernst Harth as Gilbert
- Brian Bloom as Pike
- Gerald McRaney as General Morrison
OPINIONS COUNT