Rev Stan's film blog

The questionable Haywire

If you asked me to explain the plot of Haywire I could tell you that it's about a woman who is a private security contractor working for a company that is employed by the US government but she's been double crossed and is being persued. More than that ie who is goodie, who is baddie, who is working for who and why she is betrayed etc. I couldn't tell you. 

Such plots can be fine if the action, thrills and spills are engaging enough that you are happy to enjoy the ride. Mission Impossible IV was like this. The problem with Haywire is that it didn't quite provide enough thrills and spills to make the journey go quickly. Yes there was a lot of fighting (which I find dull after a while even if it is a woman for a change kicking butt) and a bit of jumping around on rooves but little else. In fact it felt a little pedestrian and thriller by numbers.  

It's a shame because what I did really like about Haywire is the fact that it does have a female protagonist - Mallory, played by Gina Carano - who not only looks like she really could kick ass but also has a Hollywood defying feminine physique. No scrawny arms, tiny bum and stick thighs on our Gina and it was so refreshing to see. It made her character far more believable compared to say Angelina Jolie who in her last spy-thriller was so stick like you knew something would break if someone really hit her.  

Wanted to like it more, particularly with the likes of Michael Fassbender in the cast but instead it was just a bit 'meh'. I'm going to give it 54%. Over on IMDb it's got 66% with a Metacritic score of 67%. On Rotten Tomatoes it has 83% from critics and 43% of audience members gave it 3.5 stars or more.

 

The Mission Impossible IV review

Now I don't know if I've actually seen all the preceding Mission Impossible films and I'm not sure why I decided to go and see this today, but I'm glad I did because I really quite enjoyed it.

I don't think it matters there are gaps in your knowledge of the series, you just need to know that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is a US covert agent working for and organisation called the IMF, which isn't the International Monetary Fund apparently ;0). After that it's a buckle up and enjoy the ride film. 

This one is about a nasty man trying to start a nuclear war and Hunt and his team trying to stop him. More than that it's best not to think about too much as you will start to see the plot holes and this is definitely a film that is more about action and thrills. And the action and thrills are very well done. 

There are plenty of tense, nail-biting moments and, for someone like me who is terrified of heights, a sweaty palms, hyper-ventilating moments. (Cruise does a lot of the stunts including the tall building stuff which I think adds to the thrill).

The fights are highly dramatic and noisy, in a crunch and thud kind of way, which actually had me wincing and a few (intentional) laugh out loud moments, mainly courtesy of Simon Pegg as the techie guy in the field for the first time.

All of which means it had me hooked, in fact I haven't actually commented at the screen that much in a movie for a while* albeit mainly expletives around scenes of jumping off tall buildings.

It's a longish film at over two hours but only my bladder noticed but there are obvious in between-action interludes during which you can slip out for a comfort break and return without having missed anything vital or too exciting.

Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, to give it its official title (and punctuation), is a great popcorn movie and definitely worth popping out to see on a big screen over the festive season. It had me humming the theme tune all the way home and it's getting a Stan rating of 80%. On IMDb it's got 79% with a Metacritic score of 74%. On Rotten Tomatoes it's got 93% with 84% of audiences rating it three and a half stars or more.

*It's OK there was no one sitting anywhere near me that I could disturb.

 

Fifteen minute review: Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows

Loved the first Sherlock Holmes movie for its cheeky fun and stylish action. There were gadgets galore and plenty of suspense. And it was an engaging and fun story.

On the posters for Game of Shadows it claims to be more fun, bigger and better, or words along those lines but it isn't. 

Firstly the plot is a little meandering and I'm not sure I cared enough, partly because I don't think the relationship between Holmes and Watson, which is central, is sufficiently re-established.

Robert Downey Jnr is doing the cheeky Holmes with bells on but the chimes just don't ring as joyfully as the first film. I suppose it is the Captain Jack Sparrow-syndrome. More of the same starts to wear a little thin after a while.

That isn't to say Game of Shadows isn't enjoyable. It's great to see Stephen Fry as Mycroft (and there is a lot of him to see). Jared Harris is also superb as the calmly evil Moriaty (he makes Holmes look like a bit of a buffoon at times).

It is quite fun, there is some nice tying up of plot points at the end, there are gadgets and fights and and the slow-mo action sequences but because it's all been done before it doesn't quite have the same wow-factor as the first film. (And we've since been spoilt with the BBC's rather superb Sherlock TV series.)

A pleasant enough couple of hours but I didn't walk out with a grin on my face like I did with the first film. Its going to just scrape into four star category with 60% from me. 

On IMDb it's got 78% with a Metacritic score of 49% and on Rotten Tomatoes it has a critic score of 59% and 85% of visitors gave it three and a half stars or higher.

 

Matthew MacFadyen does swashbuckling: Three Musketeers

Popcorn movie time, a welcome  chance to disengage brain and just enjoy the ride. And the Three Musketeers fitted the bill perfectly. OK so all the money has been spent on the sets, costumes, action and effects rather than the script but it's an engaging spectacle and lots of fun.

Milla Jovovich plays an Irene Adler type character, a sassy lady who can handle herself and double crosses lover and Musketeer Athos (Matthew MacFadyen) on their last mission. The story then follows wannabe Musketeer D'Artangnan (Logan Lerman) who is precocious, hot-headed and extremely cocky but finds his heroes have thrown in the towel on saving the day and general swashbuckling activities.

With Richelieu (Christoph Waltz) conspiring to seize the French thrown from its young King (Freddie Fox) and D'Artangnan eager to impress the Queen's maid on whom he has a major crush, forces soon conspire to kick the Musketeers back into action.

Orlando Bloom plays a be-quiffed English aristocrat and bad-guy and is quite good, channelling Rik Mayall's Lord Flashheart of Blackadder fame. Lerman does a convincing job as the newest recruit, although his American accent seems out of place. When you are playing such a cocky character it would be easy (for me anyway) to be secretly wishing the baddies would take him out but he won me over.

Waltz is naturally superb as baddie Richelieu, as is Mad Mikklesen as the leader of his guard but MacFadyen was the draw for me. Love the MacF and it was nice beyond words to see him playing an action hero. OK so most of the action is reserved for Lerman but he does a good line in buckle-swashing when he gets the chance.

All round good entertainment and they've left it open for a sequel so if it takes anything at the box office I'm sure they will be making another.

I'm going to give it 70%. On IMDb it's got a critics rating of 59% with not Metacritic rating yet (it's released in the US this weekend) while on Rotten Tomatoes UK it doesn't have a critics consensus yet but has an audience rating of 59%. Will update when the scores come in.

 

 

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes - the iPod of CGi

Not been an ape film fan and have avoided most of the previous incarnations but the involvement of James Franco, who's been making some great films recently drew me to the cinema.

The story revolves around Franco's character Will who works for a drugs company and is experimenting on chimpanzee's in order to develop a drug for Alzheimer's which his father happens to be suffering from.

When the experiment goes wrong it is closed down and the chimps are destroyed apart from a baby which Will sneaks home and raises, continuing with his drug trial. The drugs allow the chimp, named Caesar, to develops beyond the normal capabilities of his species. All is going well until one day, the grown up Caesar attacks a neighbour who had been violently confronting Will's father.

Against Will's wishes he's sent to a penitentiary for naughty and unwanted apes which is where the trouble really begins.

And I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It's an intelligent enough story to engage, the principle characters are interesting and likeable and there are some fantastic cinematic moments. But it still has enough heart to give it depth. Harry Potter's Tom Felton channels Draco as a cruel keeper at monkey prison but it is the CGi apes which are the real stars. 

Just watching the Twilight saga's New Moon last night and the contrast between the wolves in that and the chimps in Planet of the Apes is like comparing a CD discman with an iPod.

In an interview Andy Serkis, who plays Caesar, said he approaches CGi characters in exactly the same way as he would a human character. He is also on set acting with those playing the humans (above) and it is this attention to detail which I think gives Caesar both character and realism.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is entertaining and ends satisfactorily but with just enough loose threads to lead into a sequel which I'll certainly be seeing, especially if Mr Serkis and Mr Franco reprise their roles.

I'm going to give it 78% while on IMDB it's got 80% from users and a Meta score of 68%. On Rotten Tomatoes the critics have given it 83% and users 89% so a winner all round really.

 

Captain America: Serve with grilled plastic cheese

I do like a comic book movie every now and again and I suppose I was drawn to Captain America: First Avenger having really enjoyed X-Men: First Class. That and it being a bit of mid-week escapism.

Like First Class, it's a 'how'd it all start' film set during the second world war and telling the tale of how puny, army-reject Steve Rogers becomes the beefcake, shield-wielding super hero Captain America. So the first half is his journey and the second half his first mission.

The film is chocker full of fab Brit actors, some in painfully small cameos (and they aren't all baddies either). Hayley Atwell is just gorgeous as the feisty, intelligent, love interest, there's a briefish appearance of the lovely Richard Armitage, Dominic Cooper does a great turn as the suave Howard Stark and the totally charming JJ Feild is sorely underused with only about three lines of dialogue.

French film double bill part 1: Point Blank

 This film packs an awful lot of action/thriller punch for it's 86 minute running time. OK so it stretches the suspension of disbelief quite a bit but it still has a pretty good grip.

Samuel (Gilles Lellouche) is a trainee nurse with a heavily pregnant wife who gets dragged into the criminal underworld. While on duty one night he sees a doctor he doesn't recognise with a patient. When confronted the doctor runs and he realises that the patient's ventilation tube has been cut.

He saves the patient and the incident is reported to the police and that is that. Or so he thinks only that evening, while at home with his wife, he is knocked unconscious and his wife is kidnapped. The 'ransom' is that he has three hours to get that same patient out of the hospital.

The difficult Hanna review and the marvellous Tom Hollander

Tricky one this hence why it's taken me a week to get around to writing it. Tricky because I'm not quite sure what to make of Joe Wright's new movie Hanna.

In an interview he said he wanted to create a film that wasn't easy to pigeon-hole into a particular genre. So maybe it's me reacting to the fact that I can't decide what type of film it is or maybe Joe Wright has got it wrong.

To rewind a little, the story is that Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) has been raised by her father Erik (Eric Bana) in isolation, in the frozen north of Finland, to be an assassin. The time comes when she must go and complete the job she has been trained for which is to kill CIA bigwig Marissa (Cate Blanchett). But there is more to Hanna's past and her mission than meets the eye.

You could describe it as a chase movie as Hanna is pursued across Europe, discovering the truth along the way.

First, the problems I have with it:

a) It is very violent and brutal for a film which is essentially about a teenage assassin and this isn't in the comic book vein like Kick Ass.

The short review for the longest film title: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 3D*

Wasn't going to go and see Pirates 4, they've gone downhill rapidly since the first. Then I was offered a free ticket to a private preview screening...

So what was it like? Well it is certainly more coherent than Pirates 3 but overall it is just mildly entertaining. The problem is that we've seen and heard it all before in the first three films: the fights, the escapes and the Jack Sparrow jokes, nothing is new.

OK so there are mermaids in this, which were very well done and probably the best bit and there is no wooden acting by Orlando Bloom but ultimately the story just feels pedestrian. It follows three different parties racing to find the fountain of youth - the Spanish, the British led by Barbosa (the ever wonderful Jeffrey Rush) and Black Beard who is forcing Cap'n Jack to navigate.

Ten minutes in I asked myself: "Would I care if the film projector broke now and I never got to see the rest of the film?" And the answer was "No". The story just feels like a loose structure on which to pin the aforementioned fights, escapes and Jack Sparrow jokes.

Love Johnny Depp but it's time for Cap'n Jack to hang up it hat. Please.

I'm giving it 38%, Rotten Tomatoes aggregated critics rating is 39% from 121 reviews with a surprisingly high user rating of 86% so perhaps it is one for the kids. Metacritic gives it a rating of 45% from 30 reviews but has yet to register a user rating.

Don't fooled into thinking that the film is as exciting as the trailers looks:

 

A popcorn movie I finally liked: Thor (and the gratuitous pic)

I warmed to Thor disproportionally to how much I warmed to 3D. In fact I didn't warm to 3D at all and continue to dislike it intensely but anyway that's another post, back to Thor.

It's all very predictable: Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is desperate to become King but his father doesn't think he's ready, that he's too hot-headed and arrogant, plunging in, hammer twirling, without thinking through the consequences fully.

Of course he learns the hard way having been stripped of his all powerful hammer and banished to earth for accidentally starting a war leaving his dodgy brother to step into his shoes.

Yes there is a lot of CGI and a lot of ridiculous fighting but there is also a nice-ish love story between Thor and a human girl he meets played by Natalie Portman. I also like the amusing mix of comic book fantasy and 'real world' as the two collide.

It is strict popcorn fun with the added bonus that Hemsworth actually made me say, almost out loud, 'Oo hello' when he took his top off.

I'm giving it 62%. On Rotten Tomatoes it gets 94% from the critics and 84% of visitors liked it. It hasn't been released in the US yet so no rating on Metacritic.