#39 & 40: FURIOSA: A MAD MAX SAGA

STARRING: Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Burke, and Alyla Browne. Written by George Miller and Nico Lathouris, directed by George Miller. Cinematography by Simon Duggan, music by Tom Holkenborg. Budget $168 million. Running time 148 minutes.

The main thing wrong with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, indeed the only thing wrong with it, and it's a biggie, is that it came after Mad Max: Fury Road and because of that it's instantly compared to it, which is a shame because sadly it doesn't quite match its predecessor. And whereas the previous film, to which this is a prequel, is a worthy 10/10 without question, FAMMS is only a 9.

The fifth film in the saga, all written and directed by one man, George Miller, the series shows no sign of slowing, indeed if anything it seems to be getting more relentless, faster and definitely more textured. 

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga gives us the origin story of, hmmm, Furiosa played in the previous film, with perfection, by Charlize Theron, this time round it's Anya Taylor-Joy filling in the years from her abduction from the Green Place to the time she helped Immortan Joe's slave wives escape from the Citadel. And whereas the last film had a plot that ran from A to B and back to A in a line so perfectly straight it made the horizon look curved, this one is far more nuanced and layered, there's dialogue and arcs that span 15 years and the scope of it is used to flesh out the worlds of the Citadel, Bullet Farm and Gastown.

Starting off with the abduction of a young Furiosa and the failed rescue mission of her mother, the girl soon becomes the property of Chris Hemsworth's Dementus the warlord leader of the Biker Horde that's sweeping across the wasteland. Forced to watch her mother tortured to death Furiosa becomes mute and is ultimately traded to Immortan Joe as one of his brides, however she escapes and joins the ranks of the Warboys working her way up the ranks until she's piloting one of the huge war rigs, all the time she's plotting her dreadful revenge.

The film told in short stories segments feels in scope like The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. It's epic in a scale that's simply staggering and yet sadly can't match the utter uniqueness of Fury Road. We've seen it all already and despite a simply superb and extended chase and battle on the road that lasts for well over 20 minutes but feels like seconds, it just doesn't catch match the sheer uniquness of MMFR's incredible vehicular battles. 

Despite relying more on CGI than the previous outing, indeed some of the human animations are a little shonky this is regardless, an incredible film, made by a man with vision and a style all of his own. This is a film that deserves to be seen on the biggest screen possible, it's a film that demands respect and its a prequel that for once brings more to the character by revealing what they went through to become the character we know. This is though, a savage and brutal film with some truly vicious and nasty moments, life is short in the wasteland and death seems to be as painful and ugly as it is possible to be. The action is relentless and truly breath-taking and the vehicles quite, quite spectacular.

Miller has crafted a world that is true to its own mythology, a culture built on cars, rubber, tarmac and vehicular destruction, the language of cars and the love of chrome propel this film and rivals Star War's Jedi waffle in terms of daftness, and yet seems all to plausible.  

The cast is also superb and Hemsworth, unrecognisable under the makeup is amazing. Damn it, Jim, every one in it and involved with this film are amazing!

Once again I can't really fault this, apart from the sin of being a sequel, it was a deeply satisfying and fantastic visual spectacle that kept me on the edge of my seat and in rapt attention and once again I cannot wait to go and see it again. 

9/10  

#38. IF (only...)

             

Starring Cailey Fleming, Ryan Reynolds, John Krasinski, Fiona Shaw, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Louis Gosett Jr, Steve Carell, George Cloney, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, Emily Blunt, Bill Hader, Richard Jenkins, Keegan-Michael Key, Blake Lively, Sam Rockwell, Matthew Rhys, Maya Rudolph, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart. Written and directed by John Krasinski, music by Michael Giacchino. Budget $110 million. Running time 104 minutes.

In 1968 Lindsay Anderson wrote and directed an astonishing film called 'If....', starring Malcom McDowell, it was the first film of the Mick Travis Trilogy, which also included O Lucky Man and Britannia Hospital. If.... followed the fortunes of a young man, Mick Travis, in his penultimate year in a English private school as he rebels against the rules and morays of an archaic and out-moded social order of the school and leads a revolution against the establishment culminating in a mass shooting conducted from the roof of the school on Parents day. It's an astonishing film, which leaves you unsettled and mesmerised, mostly thanks to the superlative performance of Malcom McDowell. It's truly ahead of its time and was at the vanguard of a change in cinema. 

How times have changed.

Now 56 years later Hollywood have remade it as the John Krasinski written and directed fantasy comedy IF starring Ryan Reynolds, in this modern remake, Malcom McDowell's character Mick Travis has been replaced by a young girl called Bea who can see Imaginary Friends. Bea (Cailey Fleming) is twelve going on 25 who, following the death of her mother through cancer, and the hospitalisation of her father for serious heart surgery has been sent to live with her grandmother (Fiona Shaw). Every day, Bea wanders off with no adult supervision, regardless of the hour, to visit her father for 30 seconds, the local convenience store in the middle of the night, or Coney Island not returning until late at night and at no point does anyone object, especially her gran who seems more concerned that she's eating rather than the fact she's roaming the streets late at night. ANYWAY Bea is deeply troubled, faced with so much grief and emotional stress she's old before her time. However, help is at hand when she stumbles across an black and white bug-eyed Imaginary Friend called Blossom (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), a giant purple thing called Blue (Steve Carell) and a man called Cal (Ryan Reynolds) an angry frustrated ex-clown, who all live upstairs from Bea's nan, when it's convenient to the plot. Turns out Cal is running a foster agency for IFs (Imaginary Friends), who we learn lose their humans when the little brats hit puberty but he's lost his passion for it. Hardly surprising since he's had absolute zero success. Anyway, Bea offers to help and comes up with the incredible idea of re-uniting the orphaned IFs with their original human hosts. 

Along the way, heart strings are plucked harder than a Brazilian wax treatment and emotional lessons are learned that will mend all hearts and reveal a supposedly touching secret that you'll guess especially if you've seen M. Night Shamalama-Ding Dong's Sixth Sense. 

Basically imagine a live-action remake of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends but with all the magic and humour strip mined out of it and replaced with a button-pushing emotional lessons, homilies, and an over-wrought score and mawkish emotional beats. 

Plus all real-life logic and common sense is removed to help the plot drag it's huge purple arse across the finishing line. No one questions a 12 year-old on the streets late at night, as she wanders in and out of a hospital whenever she feels like it, and enters office blocks without ever being stopped. Plus she's prone to seemingly taking to herself in public. This is a massively twee film, that seems strangely devoid of IFs, surely there should be tens of millions rather than the rag-tag dozen or so we get. This is a film with kids in mind and the younger ones will probably enjoy it, but it's too sugary and cute for me. 

That said there's a nice bit at the end when the IFs reunite with their human hosts, now grown up and racked with misery and regret.

Gotta say, Hollywood sure are picking some unique films to remake and based on this, I gotta say I'm not looking forward to the up-coming remake of A Clockwork Orange.

6/10

#37: KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

 

STARRING: Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon and leading some gravity, William H. Macy. Written by Josh Friedman, directed by Wes Ball. Budget $165 million. Running time 145 minutes long.

And so begins the first film of the second trilogy of the reboot series of the 56 year-old Planet of the Apes franchise.

It's been seven years since the last one, War For the Planet of the Apes and 300 odd years have passed for ape-kind. Long gone the last remnants of intelligent humanity and the first talking ape, Caesar, who with his gang of semi-chatty intelligent apes took over the world. Now it's time for their descendants, lead by Chimpanzee Noa (Owen Teague) to pick up the metal fence poles of destiny and forge a new three-film arc on the mighty bones of their predecessors.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes marks the 10th film in a canon that started with the release of the 1968 Charlton Heston original. It starts quietly and takes time to get up and running as we follow three young apes, lead by Noa (Owen Teague) as they go Golden Eagle egg hunting, it turns out these apes are part of a clan that rear Eagles, just like great apes do in the wild. 

Anyway, it's not long before another band of apes, this time on horseback, attack Noa's peaceful, Eagle egg raising tribe, capturing everyone except for Noa and his dad, the tribe's leader, whom the bad apes kill. This in turns triggers Noa to set off on a quest to rescue his mum and the rest of the clan. Along the way he meets and teams up with mysterious human, Nova (Freya Allan) and a wise-old orangutan called Raka (Peter Macon). Anyway, it's not long before the bad apes catch up with them, it turns out they're after Nova, and they're all taken to the coastal kingdom of Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) a bonobo ape with dreams of breaking into an ancient human bunker built on the beach and unlocking the secrets within.

And that's as much of the plot as I'm going to reveal. 

This is a fantastically good looking film the CGI effects are superb and the realism is off the chart, so much so, that at times I had a hard time working out which of the chimps was which. The motion-capture acting is great, the soundtrack is terrific and I can't fault the action. So it's a shame I didn't like this film more, I think the trouble is that the plot is very clunky, it doesn't flow well, things just happen to propel the plot and are delivered in a very ham-fisted way, for example the attack on Noa's village that results in the death of the one person who will motivate our hero to go on his quest, or the first meeting of Noa and Raka, or our hero getting knocked out conveniently at several times during the plot, or the disappearance of all the tribe's young at key moments in the story. Or his dead father's eagle that at the beginning of the film hates Noa. Plus there's some telegraphing of plot points and beats that annoy, none more so than the building of a seawall around the entrance of the human bunker to keep the ocean at bay, what the actual what?

The trouble is that whereas in the first three films the story of the apes and in particular Caesar was the focus, in this Nova becomes the main protagonist and her story just isn't as interesting. Similarly, Proximus Caesar is only there to give the film its villain, in previous films the villain, be it Gary Oldman's Dreyfus or Woody Harrelson's Colonel McCullough, brought real depth and drama to their roles, in this Proximus is just a crazy, rather stupid thug with a megalomanic complex. The ending of this sets up the obvious next story, but this is no cliffhanger moment and rather than elicit excitement there's just a sense of oh.

Everything just happens to propel the plot and there are some irritating plot holes, or plot contrivances that niggle. The first three films of this 'reboot era', Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and War for the Planet of the Apes were exceptionally good films and raised the bar substantially, so this one has a lot to prove and perhaps that's the problem. Moving the story on 300 years is a good idea but there are ideas and elements I wish had been more explored, certainly in the trailer there's a sense of the Apes discovering mankind's history which is mostly brushed over in this. Sure there are some deeply touching moments, the telescope for one, the finding of the books in the library, but I wanted more of that sort of thing and perhaps less of an antagonist you knew would be dead by the end. 

All that said, it's great to see another more adult science fiction film, like Dune, something that's not filled with superheroes, robots, or spaceships, something with more depth and scope and this is not a terrible film by any stretch, it's just not as good as I wanted it be. That said it was still an enjoyable experience.

7/10

#36: STAR SNORES EPISODE 1: THE PHANTOM DENNIS

 STARRING: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd, Ian McDiarmid, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Pernila August and Frank Oz. Written and directed by George Lucas. Budget $115 million. Running time 134 minutes. Originally released in 1999.

I last saw this dreadful film back in 1999 on the day it opened. Now, 25 years later, I went back to watch it again, because my daughter who was born two months after it originally opened wanted to see it on the big screen, so off we went. 

Oh god, I'd forgotten just how unbelievably bad this sorry sac of shit truly was. Badly dated by some dreadful CGI (the droid army is awful), some very poor make-up effects, and some staggering racist vocal performances. I'd have to say that overall this film is a sorry, stinking pile of crap, not helped by a hackneyed script, wooden performances, bland cinematography and some very dreary direction from Lucas himself. 

The plot, bogged down in tedious discussions about Trade Federations and embargoes over the peace-loving white people of Naboo sees two genuinely inept Jedi masters sent to broker a deal between Naboo and a bunch of ugly Asian-themed aliens who are holding a beautiful white princess hostage on her peace loving planet. The Jedis get attacked, escape to the planet and basically run into plot point after plot point, and Jar Jar Binks in one of the most ludicrous moments I've ever seen in a movie, Liam Neeson's Jedi Master Qu-Gon literally runs into him while running away from an invading army. Rather than killing him on the spot, the two team up and the floppy eared twat, Jar Jar not Liam, spends the rest of the film being the most hateful thing George Lucas ever created. From then on it's a slow-motion car crash, till the boring ending brings this tedious mess to a full stop. While Qui-Gonk is dicking about with Jar Jar. The Jedi-twins land on Tatoonie with Queen Padmé Amidala, Natalie Portman in toe, and team up with cute precocious moppet Anakin Skywalker, Jake Lloyd, for a podrace before heading back to Nabpoo for the final fight with Daft Mao and a big battle between the droid army and a race of incredibly stupid underwater people whom it appears the rest of Naboo weren't aware of. Little Anakin steals a space ship with R2D2 and literally murders thousands of people in outer-space before the whole sorry shit-show winds down with an excruciating parade down the main street of Nabpoo where badly rendered CGI creatures and characters bob up and down while the music drones on and on and on and on. Finally, just before the will to live leaves your body, the screen irises to black and you get return to your lives knowing you never have to see it again, ever. Hopefully.

I remember distinctly that this was deeply vilified by everyone who saw it originally and was used as a benchmark to compare the next two films in this turgid series, Attack of the Clowns and Revenge of the Pissed, with everyone saying, well at least it wasn't as bad as the Phantom Dennis. Which, in hindsight, was a genius move by old Lucas.   

There are only two good things in the whole film. The first is the Ben Hur inspired pod-race, and the second is Jar Jar Binks, no only fooling, it's Darth Maul (Ray Park). And that's only because compared to what's on either side of them these two things are at least exciting. That said, the Pod-race feels rather cringey at times and marred by added wacky comedy japes and moments. 

Oh god! I've just been triggered, all the crap in this film is washing over me again like a Nam flashback!

Here are a couple of plot holes that really cook my biscuits! There were more, many more but there's only so many hours in one day.

1. Are we expected to believe that Darth Vader, as a kid, built C3P0 from scratch? For a start he's a kid, like less than 10, also he's a slave so he has no money or resources, if he's so adept at making sodding robots why the hell is that big-nosed winged idiot of a master not utilising him in a more profitable manner? Incidentally, looking at the incomplete C3P0 droid it looks as if little Annie signed up for one of those weekly part-works magazines called 'Build Your Own Droid'. 

2. If little Anakin did built that stinking robot all by himself, then why the hell doesn't he mention it all those years later during any of the times they bump into each other.

I could go on, but I can't be arsed. This was shit when it was first released and it's remained massively shit since. Nothing to recommend it. 

Lucas made Star Wars with love and a vision, slowly over time it became a money making machine and ended up homogenised and devoid of an ounce of creative originality. There's no charm in this, no wonder, no sense of excitement, it's just a series of events strung together, long gone the thrill of the RKO serials that so inspired the young Lucas and absolutely nothing to make us gasp in delight.

It's probably not fair to compare this to Star Wars, the 22 year worth of canon doesn't help. Whereas the first one had freshness and excitement, this feels tired and a tad stale and whereas the first film sort of made it up as it went along, this one is forced to shoehorn a huge amount of backstory as it gives us a backstory to one of the greatest movie villains of all times, Darth Vader, although I've never understood why Lucas felt we needed to know his origin. Knowing he was once a cute, blond-haired muppet who loved his mum and built droids in his spare time only to later develope an oedipus complex for a much older woman doesn't enhance his character, if anything knowing he was a whiney know-it-all just makes him seem rather pathetic. Same goes for Obi Wan, as a wise old master Jedi he's fascinating, knowing he was a rather inept Jedi apprentice prone to emotional outbursts just weakens his character.

My advice stick to the original three movies and avoid EVERY thing else that's been made since, especially the endless TV shows, which have only distilled the franchise to the turgid sludge of tedium it is now. 

V. Poor. 3/10

#35: THE FALL GUY

 

STARRING: Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, Teresa Palmer, Stephanie Hsu and Winston Duke. Written by Drew Pearce. Directed by David Leitch. Budget $150 million. Running time 126 minutes.

The plot sees Colt returning to the role of stuntman after suffering a near-fatal injury on another film when doubling for arrogant action film star, Tom Ryder, Aaron Taylor-Johnson. It turns out he's gone missing from the set of his latest action film, Metalstorm which is being directed by Colt's ex-girlfriend Jody Moreno. Colt is sent out to find him on the orders of the film's producer, Hannah Waddingham's Gail Myer, who warns Colt that Ryder has fallen in with some rather unsavoury drug people. 

What follows is a series of outlandish stunts and action beats sandwiched between over-the-top violence and death-defying stunts until the insane final act showdown, where all is resolved and we're treated to a cameo, which judging from audience I saw this with went right over their heads.

For the first 30 odd minutes this is an absolute delight, Ryan Gosling's natural charm is infectious and the chemistry between him and Emily Blunt is almost intoxicating. The humour is relaxed and not forced and the whole thing is carried effortlessly by Gosling. Sadly though, the film suddenly becomes a slam-blam action romp after Colt Seavers, our hero is drugged in a nightclub and it all starts to feel a little forced. When the over complicated plot kicks in and the coincidences and plot contrivances start mounting you find yourself missing the incredibly sweet romance between Colt and Emily Blunt's character, director Jody Moreno. Plus there's a whole sequence in the trailer, that of Gosling's Colt Seavers riding a scooter that isn't in the film and that niggles me greatly. There's also a savageness to the violent action, of the bad guys that feels misplaced and far too brutal. Luckily Colt never kills anyone, but violence feels way off balance. Hannah Waddingham is great as the uber-frenetic producer, but as the plot reveals its secrets the whole film becomes a ridiculous farce that builds to an utterly stupid third act film within a film that derails the whole movie.

It's fun and frantic but the plot overwhelms everything. Hollywood did this far better with the superb and long forgotten 1978 Burt Reynolds film, Hooper directed by Hal Needham, which celebrated the role of the stuntman in a far more fun way.

Anyway, this was okay, if a little long. 

7/10