#29: STAR TREK III: REVENGE OF THE PITH

STARRING: Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiamrmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Christopher Lee, Phil Daniels, Kenny Baker and Frank Oz. Written and director George Lucas. Music by John Willimas. Produced by Rick McCallum. Budget $113 million. Running time 140 minutes long.

I remember that when this originally came out in 2005 the critical opinion of it was, 'Thank god it's not as shit as The Phantom Dennis, or Attack of the Clowns.' Well, 20 years has now passed since it was first released and since I last saw it on the big screen so an opportunity to rewatch this again on the big screen was an opportunity not to be missed.

The plot would take far too long to synopsis, but in a nutshell. This film chronicles the final birthing pains of an evil Empire that will rock a galaxy far, far away a long time ago.

Boy was there a lot to cram or shoehorn into this one. It's a film that doesn't have time for contemplation or pensive moments, not when you've got a whole galaxy-spanning order of Jedi to eradicate, an iconic villain to create, and several future plot points and holes to establish. Lucas races through incident and battle at breakneck speed, from one planet to another, one light-sabre battle to blaster attack at a time. And all the while you get the sense that Lucas stands behind the camera with his bull horn screaming, "Go faster! Quicker! Hurry up! We've got to get 305 set-ups done today!" And woe-betide anyone fluffing their lines!

Lucas who wrote and directed all of the prequels does so without any studio interference and as such he has free reign to do whatever he wants, and what he wants is to shot all the boring human interaction stuff as quickly as possible, so he can be left to noodle around with creature and space stuff design. Because anything other than flat-out special effects is deeply lifeless and dull.

And to speed up the film making process Lucas opts to shoot everything with three cameras, two for one-shots and a third for a two-shot pick up and then gets everything he needs in one take. To paraphrase Blain from Predator, "He ain't got time to reshoot." There's a scene in License to Kill where Bond (Timothy Dalton) interrogates Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) on a bed, it's directed by John Glenn and edited by John Groover, it's an incredible scene in terms of editing and camera cuts, try watching it and counting how many times the camera cuts and how many camera angles there are. Lucas is the antithesis of this approach and as a result, These films have a daytime TV soap quality about them. Everything is perfunctory at best.

However, all that said, this wasn't the horrible mess I remembered, and I found myself rather enjoying it, as long as I just allowed it all to wash over me. Definitely the best of the prequels. There's pathos here, but no joy, no fluffy critters for the kids either, but lots and lots of smashing space battles. That opening battle and the rock-ship crash landing are spectacular and well worth it on the big screen. However the endless light sabre battles are repetitious. Sadly, unlike the originals time has not been as kind to the SFX, which all look a tad fuzzy and clunky and was it really this dark? The performances save one are pretty good given the material they have to spout although Hayden Christensen really is the acting equivalent of a plank of wood mated with a boiled ham. 

The dialogue is laughable at times and the amount of exposition required of the cast to deliver borders on a hate crime. There are elements that are hilariously bad, Princess Amadala's death, Ben not finishing off Anakin as he lies there burning in the lava, and any time Hayden's on screen, but there's also genuine horror, the slaughter of the younglings and General Grievesses death by blaster at the hands of that cheating Jedi scum Kenobi, who has to cheat to win, no wonder the Empire won.

Oddly enough I'm pleased to read this did good business on its re-issue taking a respectable $18 million in its first weekend. It shows there is hope for Star Wars on the big screen, I just wish there was less of the TV shows to dilute to brand and make it less special. There used to be something genuinely exciting having to wait between films and the anticipation was intoxicating. 

8 out of 10 get this one does. 

#28: THE ACCOUNTANT 2

 

STARRING: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda and J.K. Simmons. Written by Bill Dubuque. Directed by Gavin O'Connor. Budget $80 million. Running time 132 minutes.

Usually Affleck acts as if being an insanely wealthy Hollywood actor and director is extremely hard work and he's really above it all, he comes across as bored and weary, and you can almost hear him sigh as he sags his huge shoulders and shuffles off frame. Not so with Accountant 2, where he doesn't have to show any emotion at all, indeed I imagine that the director pleaded with him to act at just 40% and Ben enthusiastically stepped up to the plate and delivered. However, this isn't a bad thing here, in fact it's an absolute boon. 

Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is a high functioning autistic beloved by Hollywood, one who is super fantastic at one, or a, particular set of skills and slightly awkward in social situations in a way that is usually amusing for the audience. In Wolff's case he's a financial genius, a gifted forensic accountant who launders and manages money for various high level criminal organisations during the day and one of the world's greatest assassins at night. But he's not unique, cos his estranged brother, Braxton (Jon Bernthal) is also a fantastic world class assassin who has his own anti-social problems mainly his management of anger. 

Nine years ago we meet these adorable siblings for the first Accountant film, which was a far more sombre and serious affair that only came alive when the two Wolff brothers finally got together for a team-up and glorious shoot-out against a veritable army of nameless goons in the final act. 

This time round, the film makers, returning writer and director, realise that there's gold to be mined from their two male leads' chemistry and gets them together in the first ten minutes and boy does it pay off. The actual story doesn't really matter, it revolves around a Mexican child trafficking gang and another super-supreme assassin, this time a woman called Anaïs (Daniella Pineda) who's somehow connected to a mysterious family trafficked 10 years earlier. Cynthai Addai-Robinson and J.K. Simmons return to reprise their roles of Treasury agents Marybeth Median and Raymond King.

It's taken nearly 10 years for this belated sequel, which is a shame, cos based on this outing the bromance and chemistry between the two leads is almost intoxicating. Their bickering banter and brotherly petulance is very funny and makes this film a real delight, and while this isn't a full-blown comedy, its humour is a welcome addition and hints at a sustainable franchise. 

Entertaining, satisfying with good action sequences and meaty action sequences. I'm already looking forward to rewatching this again as a double bill. And the inevitable sequel which I guarantee won't be 10 years in the making.

8/10

#27: WARFARE

 

STARRING: D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter, Cosmo Jarvis, Kit Connor, Finn Bennett, Joseph Quinn, Charles Melton, Noah Centineo and Michael Gandolfini. Writtten and directed by Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland. Budget $20 million. Running time 95 minutes.

Based on testimonies of the actual platoon whose experiences this film is a truthful re-enactment of. The film follows what happens when U.S. Navy SEAL platoon Alpha One takes over an ordinary Iraq one story house in Ramadi prior to the Battle of Ramadi. The film takes place in real time to give it an massive dose of reality, as if experiencing what is about to unfurl in ghastly close-up gory detail isn't immersive enough. What follows is the platoon trapped and fending off repeated attacks as they desperately wait to be rescued, while the two families who live in the house have to shelter in a bedroom wondering if they'll live to see the morning, their plight isn't of any interest to the film makers, who are far more interested in our plucky bunch of heavily armoured warriors and their toys of warfare. 

Most of the war re-enactments I've ever seen usually consist of people dressed as either roundheads or cavaliers staging battles, skirmishes and sieges of the English Civil War, I hope this more modern updating doesn't become the norm, it'll make for some rather unsettling Bank Holiday weekends if we have to sit through IEDs, battlefield surgery and airstrikes. 

This isn't a fun watch, it's grim, ghastly and deeply immersive, you'll feel the shockwaves and find yourself tense and shell-shocked by the events. You'll watch a whole platoon of sweaty, gear-ladden troops besieged and shreded by mostly unseen enemy, who when they are revealed, look nothing more than a group of sheep herders holding AK47s. 

It's loud, brutal and exhausting. But it's not a film, there's no usual cinematic structure, no story arc, or secondary story, no emotional beats or witty dialouge. Just a barrage of gun-fire, explosions, mayhem and battle field gore all in real time. It's truly hammering. And even now two days later I don't know how I feel about it. I see no reason to watch it again.

As an exercise in film making it's a masterclass, Alex Garland is proving to be a truly unique and impressive film maker, but for me this has no emotional core, and because it's so real there's no sense of it being a story in the true sense of the word, it's a clever warts-an'-all re-enactment which seems obsessed in making sure that the exact number of pebbles on the road are correct. It's hard to work out who's who and ultimately the relief you finally feel when the last bullet is fired is the true highlight of the film, because you never need to watch it again.

That all said this is a technical tour-de-force and the realism borders on perfection. But I don't want that from my cinema I want escapism and larger-than-life experiences.  

7/10

#26: SINNERS

 

Starring: Michael B. Jordan, Hailee Steinfeld, Miles Caton, Jack O'COnnell, Wunmi Mosaku, Jayme Lawson, Omar Miller, Buddy Guy, Delroy Lindo and Li Jun LI. Written and directed by Ryan Coogler. Budget $100 million. Running time 138 minutes.

It's 1932 and identical twins Elijah and Elias, Smoke & Stack (Michael B. Jordan) return to Mississippi after 10 years working for Al Capone. Armed with a truck load of stolen booze and weapons the brothers buy up an old saw mile from a Klansman before recruiting friends young and old to run the Juke joint, including Sammie 'Preacher Boy' Moore (Miles Caton) - a young and up-and-coming guitarist, Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) - childhood friend of the brothers and ex-lover of Stack, Annie (Wunmi Mosaku) - the mother of Smoke's dead daughter, and Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) - an alcoholic blues legend drinking himself to death between sets. Together this disparate group friends and family convert the old saw mill and get ready for their opening night. However when sinister Irish folk singer Remmick (Jack O'Connell) and his two companions turn up late in the night and ask to be let in, the night quickly escalates into a genuinely unsettling supernatural slaughter-house as the white interlopers reveal themselves to be vampires. 

From the look and feel, to the superb music from Ludwig Göransson, the excellent acting and direction, Sinners is an absolute delight from beginning to end. It's reminiscent of the equally superior 1987 movie, Near Dark and both succeed in making their vampire protagonists deeply unsettling and disgusting. 

This is a deeply satisfying, energetic and gorgeous looking film and I goddam loved it! Definitely the best horror film I've seen in an absolute age!

One word of warning, you HAVE to stay to the end, don't get up and go as soon as the credits start or you'll miss something very important, and no, it's not a hateful dose of sequel-bating but rather a very satisfying coda to what has gone before.

9/10 

#25: ONE TO ONE: JOHN & YOKO

 

Starring: John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Produced by Peter Worsley, Kevin MacDonald and Alice Webb. Edited by Sam Rice-Edwards. Directed by Kevnin MacDonald and Sam Rice-Edwards. Running time 100 minutes.

Creating an exact replica of John and Yoko's Greenwich Village apartment as a framing device, right down to over-flowing ashtrays, album sleeves strewn across the floor and half drunk wine glasses, the film follows the first 18 months of John and Yoko's life after they left England for good to settle in the US from 1971-1973.  Using footage from the Free the People and One to One benefit concerts, taped phone calls, vintage news coverage, adverts and recorded interviews from the era, while at the same time documenting Nixon's successful re-election campaign and the growing anti Vietnam War movement and the birth of civil disobedience. 

Watching the two of them together and listening to them talking, or being interviewed is a unique experience, you get to hear a side of him, in particular, which is real, you glean an insight into their relationship and then you get to watch him perform and it's almost profound.I truly adored the Get Back documentary, I've always been drawn to witnessing the creative process in action and although you don't get to see that here with Lennon, you do get to see him perform and it's nothing short of mesmerising. 

This film offers a deeply fascinating glimpse into a bygone era and even if you're not a fan of Lennon or the Beatles it's nevertheless an incredible slice of social history from over 50 years ago and on that basis alone is well worth the admission price. You'll marvel at how much our world has changed, and tragically the miserable parallels with the present and the rise of a fanatical celebrity worshiping Right. The 70s seems so innocent, so naive, it never ceases to amaze me how much the world has changed in a fantastically short period of time. 

All that said, there is also a terrible sense of foreboding in this movie. You the viewer, know what is to befall Lennon just seven years on from the events of the film and I found myself just wishing I could some how let him know, so engaging and personal was the film and just how engaging it was. 

This was a deeply satisfying an enjoyable cinematic experience. On a musical front we are most certainly being spoiled by films this year. My top three films of the year so far are all musical documentaries or bio pics. Roll on Pink Floyd at Pompei.

9/10

#24: THE AMATEUR

STARRING: Rami Malek, Rachel Brosnahan, Caitriona Balfe, Michael Stuhlbarg, Laurence Fishburne, Holt McCallany, Jon Bernthal and Joseph Millson. Screenplay by Ken Nolan and Gary Spinelli. Directed by James Hawes. Budget $60 million. Running time 123 minutes.

When Charlie Heller (Rami Malek), a meek, mild, uber-nerd CIA cryptologist and computer nerd, is told his wife has been killed by terrorists whilst on a business trip to London, England he does what any grieving widower would do. He black mails his corrupt CIA line manager, Danny Sapani (Caleb Horowitz) into sending him into the field to hunt down and kill the four men who killed his wife. 

After a brief training session with CIA master assassin Laurence Fishburne's Robert 'Hendo' Henderson, Charlie lopes off to Europe to track down the men and kill them. Although, because Charlie is an absolute wimp and can't shoot or punch anybody he makes IEDs from everyday items and uses them to work his way up the food chain to the man ultimately responsible for pulling the trigger.

A very languidly paced thriller with not that much action. There's fun to be had watching a limp lettuce like Malek in an action role relying on his wits to exact a worthy revenge on the callous terrorist for hire who killed his wife rather than his fists and guns. The cast is strong too,  Laurence Fishburne sadly underused is nevertheless good value, as is Holt McCallany revelling in his role as shady CIA operative who's been ordering off the book hits. 

This is The Bourne Identity Lite, with parkour replaced with a gentle strolls, hi-oxtane car chases swapped out mobility scooter drag races, savage hand-to-hand MMA slapdowns, switched for a hand-flapping slap attacks, and John Wick style gun battles replaced with some IEDs and severe tutting. While it's on it's somewhat satisfying, but doesn't burn enough to truly shine. 2017's American Assassin did this far better and if you want a superior, non-violent spy drama I'd wholeheartedly recommend Black Bag over this. 

That said, there's worst ways to spend 2 hours of your life. 

7/10

#23: MEINCRAP

STARRING: Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen. Screenplay by Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widner, Gavin James, Chris Galletta. From a story by Allison Schroeder, Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer. Based on the video game. Directed by Jared Hess. Budget $150 million. Running time 101 minutes.

This took the combined talents of six writers to write. Think about it, that means that six different writers, who'd all gone to Uni to study creative writing and the such sat in room together and that this was the best they could come up with. I imagine that each took a turn standing on the writer room's big table, legs apart squatting down and then, with veins popping on their foreheads, squeezing out their genius onto a big pile of scattered paper. Then, the next writer waddled up, trousers bunched around their ankles before adding their nugget of creative output and mixing it all together until they'd all added their portion of wonderment and the pile of paper was saturated. Then one of them proudly gathered up all the paper and shambled from the room, with the huge brown stained, sagging damp sheets of paper smeared in shit up and waved it in the face of the eight producers and grunted that they was done their best. The producers carried the stinking piece of shit dripping paper to the director and flung it at him. "Make this, but make it good." they ordered before sliding off to congratulate themselves at how brilliant they were. While the writers went back to their colouring-in books.

And then the director, who had once made a film that both surprised and delighted and was made for 375% less budget watched the last ounce of his own shame wither away and made this foul stinking mess. 

What follows is a 101 minute long bowel movement, a film devoid of anything of merit, worth, or humanity. It's a film whose plot frame works for any Hollywood blockbuster made in the last 40 years, a generic quest-based film that features a group of people, a portal to another dimension and a journey to recover an artifect of power before our band of plucky heroes unite, fall out, re-unite and finally win the day. It's the purest and biggest nugget of cinematic pyrite I've ever seen. Its lustre shines and gleams with pure delight, it promises worlds of wonderment but at the end of the day, you'll leave bored, pummelled, deafened and wearied by a non-stop avalanche of the cinematic excess.

The plot. Jason Momoa, an orphan boy genius, his big sister and her real estate agent travel through a magical portal to the world of Minecraft and meet Jack Black. He proceeds to scream at them for the next 90 odd minutes. They are given their quest, they meet a villain whom they end up killing and overcome some tedious, loud, garish mini quests some of which feature elements from the Minecraft game. They come home and everything is lovely. The film ends with Jack Black scream singing a duet with Jason Momoa. 

I can't be arsed to discuss this any further. 

It's an absolute piece of shit, it's not funny. It's not good. Jack Black is awful, so is Momoa.

It's hideous, it's bland, it's boring. A 7 year old boy with his dad in the toilets afterwards said, and I quote, "That wasn't very good, daddy." He was spot on, although I'd have phrased it somewhat differently.

I'd have said that it was a hideous, ghastly, dreadful, wretched, obscenely bloated mass of multi-coloured garbage spewed across a massive screen with nothing to redeem it and nothing worse seeing. But then I was a precocious 7-year old.

A big bloated bag of shit. 

Also there's a post credit sting. Don't bother, it's also shit. 

2/10

         

 

#22: DEATH OF A UNICORN

STARRING: Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Tea Leoni and Richard E. Grant, Jessica Hynes, Anthony Carridgan, Sunita Mani and Steve park. Written and directed by Alex Scharfman. Budget $15 million. Running time 107 minutes.

Another horror release from distribution company A24, made for a fraction of the price of Gladiator 2 or, Crapton American't: Bland New World. In fact, you could make 16.6 of these types of horror film for the cost of the last/next MCU offering. 

While driving to a weekend retreat with the Leopold family, the founders of the charity he works for, newly widowed Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his emo daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) hit a unicorn leaving Elliot to 'humanely' kill it with a wrench before taking its body to the Odell compound where it comes back to life and has to be shot and killed (again) by Shaw, the Leopold's personal assistant.

There at the compound we meet the uber rich Leopold family, patriarch, Odell (Richard E. Grant) who is dying of cancer, his wife, Belinda (Tea Leoni) a vapid, over privileged and neurotic trophy wife, their ultra-spoilt, wastrel and indulged son, Shepard (Will Poulter), family butler Griff (Anthony Carrigan), the forementioned Shaw (Jessica Hynes) and a retinue of scientists lead Dr. Bhatia (Sunita Mani) and Dr. Song (Steve Park). Oh, and an army of unnamed cannon folder for what is about to occur.

It doesn't take long for the Leopold's to realise that Unicorn has astonishing healing powers and Odell is cured, and Shepard is snorting ground up Unicorn horn powder, while Belinda is dreaming of curing the super-rich of terminal illnesses for a fee of course. And through it all, Elliot keeps hoping it'll all turn out alright for him and his daughter.

HOWEVER, the Unicorn's parents are pretty peeved with the treatment dealt out to their 'dead' fowl and come looking for retribution. From there on it's gravy train time in the gore department and a game of 'last man' standing. 

This is an amusing film, with a good cast, all hamming it up royally, with some nice social commentary, although not enough, some good kills and a light-hearted, tongue in cheek horror romp vibe. 

This is okay, not brilliant and entertaining but sadly not clever enough, you wish it'd gone all in on the gore and social commentry, but the film lands a thumbs up for the excellent casting of Grant and Leoni, while Rudd and Ortega just phone it in with ease and charm a plenty.

7/10