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Film Review : Prometheus

31 May

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He refused to show us an Alien in the sensational trailers (‘Aaaaah! Aaaaah!’), he wouldn’t even use the word ‘Alien’ in the title, but Ridley Scott gives us one almost immediately in Prometheus’ opening scene. Not the kind you’re expecting, mind. 


Breathtaking stereoscopic shots swoop across a gorgeous landscape. Black mountains wreathed in volcanic steam, glassy lakes and, at the top of a crashing waterfall, a tiny man. Only he’s not tiny. He’s not a man. Like an extra-terrestrial Greek titan, this tower of muscle flexes inside smooth pale skin. And then dies.


Creation and destruction are the twin-burners of Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof’s ambitious screenplay, which bricks up an epic new mythology around the tantalisingly unexplained image of the space jockey in Scott’s original 1979 space-horror. 



It’s 2093, three decades before Ellen Ripley’s first bug-hunt, and we’re aboard another starship funded by sinister mega-corporation Weyland Industries. Joining the 17-man crew are scientist couple Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green), who’ve discovered that etchings from every ancient civilisation on Earth have all left clues to the same faraway planet.

Their mission: to discover where we come from – and why.

Once they touch down, we’re on familiar ground: the crew begin exploring a giant hollow labyrinthine of tunnels and, uh-oh, something sticky leaking from countless cylinders stored deep within one of the chambers…

Game over, man, game over. But if we’re been here before, Prometheus inhabits the host mythology without becoming suffocated by it. Pulling its own twists on many of the queasier elements of the quadrilogy, it tightens its grip slowly, making us wait until what’s out there gets in here. 


Proving how wasted she was in Sherlock Holmes: Game Of Shadows, Rapace is a gentle, driven proto-Ripley who mirrors nicely with Charlize Theron’s glacial mission leader Meredith Vickers, strutting tightly in a witty silver-grey suit.

But it’s the brilliantly constructed character of Prometheus’ android – sorry, synthetic person – David (Michael Fassbender) that provides much of the movie’s dramatic frisson. We first discover him alone on the ship, spinning a basketball on his fingertip, bleaching his hair and – in the movie’s loveliest invention – studying Peter O’Toole’s performance in Lawrence Of Arabia. 


Owning every scene he steps into, Fassbender once again proves a truly magnetic screen presence, balancing Bishop’s even-mannered likeability with Ash’s unsettling lack of empathy.

Now if only they’d cast O’Toole himself as Peter Weyland instead of Guy Pearce, unrecognisable behind melty-faced prosthetics.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” quips David, in a wry moment that Prometheus could have used more of.

Truth be told, the rest of the cast – Idris Elba’s effortlessly sardonic captain aside – are bug food for the film’s skin-crawlingly effective antagonists. Ooze trickles, tentacles coil and gore splatters, not least in the movie’s standout scene, involving Noomi Rapace and some desperate surgery.


Back in the sci-fi genre for the first time since 1982’s Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott has always been more at home with Big Spectacle than Big Ideas. And sure enough, once people start dying, Prometheus’ ambitious thematic payload goes straight out of the airlock.

But Scott’s movie is flawlessly designed, with the beautiful 3D cinematography contrasting the clean white futurism of Prometheus’ interiors with the black corporeal surfaces of the alien catacombs.



It might not pack the unbearable menace or blazing horror of the saga’s first two movies, but it utterly eclipses the last two. It’s exciting, tense and fully impregnated for sequels…

Rating : 8/10

Source:Totalfilm
By: johnathoncrockers

Film Review : Iron Sky

14 May

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For the last few years there’s been something of a buzz building around the Finnish/German/Australian co-production, Iron Sky. Famously pitched to investors at Cannes in 2008 off the back of an impressive VFX demo reel, director Timo Vuorensola’s sci-fi comedy about Nazis on the Moon finally went into production in late 2010.

With the addition of cult movie icon Udo Kier to the cast and several strong early trailers, anticipation was high that the finished film just might deliver on its gloriously bonkers premise. Unfortunately, that doesn’t really happen and – despite its strong high concept – Iron Sky never seems entirely sure of what type of film it’s trying to be.

The plot (what there is of it) pivots around a manned US Moon landing in 2018 which is undertaken as an election stunt by the incumbent, ultra right-wing US President (Stephanie Paul). But when the two-man mission unwittingly disturbs the Nazis on the Moon, one of them is killed and the other taken hostage. This man is black male model, James Washington (Christopher Kirby), a token symbol of the President’s ‘racial enlightenment’ (yes, really).

Questioned and tortured by the ambitious Nazi Klaus Adler (Gotz Otto), Washington is turned over to the suitably mad scientist, Doktor Richter (Tilo Pruckner) where he is ‘aryanized’ in a bizarre albino-style experiment and his cell-phone confiscated for use in the Nazi’s re-invasion project.

However, help is soon at hand for Washington in the form of Adler’s soon-to-be mate, Renate (Julia Dietze). Renate is an ‘expert’ on Earth culture and along with Washington and Adler is soon returned to our planet as part of the Fuhrer’s (Udo Kier) advance invasion party.

But life on Earth doesn’t go as expected, with both Renate and Adler becoming embroiled in the machinations of ruthless Presidential-aide, Vivian Wagner (Peta Sergeant). It’s Wagner’s plan to use the Nazis to reinvigorate the President’s stumbling reelection campaign, leaving poor Washington stumbling around New York as a bleached out hobo. Meanwhile, with Adler and Renate being lauded on Earth, back on the Moon the Fuhrer is preparing his invasion plans…

Not unsurprisingly, Iron Sky is at its strongest, funniest and most affecting when dealing with the moon-based Nazis and their ossified, out of touch culture. Impressively designed, handsomely costumed and incredibly well realised, the world of the Reich has an integrity, believability and – dare I say it – charm that you immediately buy into.

The German cast also provides uniformly the best performance in the film, with Dietze, Kier and Pruckner in particular pitching their performances just on the right side of camp. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the portion of the story set on Earth.

Unimaginatively shot, flatly designed and uninspiringly played, the film’s version of ‘America’, where the Sarah Palin-esque President is – you guessed it – a bigger Nazi than the Nazis, manages to be shrill, anachronistic and far less funny than it thinks.

Not helping matters on this score are the performances of Stephanie Paul and Peta Sergeant, which manage to suck any real comic potential out of their roles. By far the best and funniest of the English speaking cast is Christopher Kirby as the befuddled Washington, but his role loses direction once the film returns to Earth.

However, it’s in the final stretch that Iron Sky really stumbles, as it decides to drop the attempts at satire and instead tries to clonk us over the head with its ‘message’. Here’s a hint to the filmmakers: no one goes to see a film about Nazis from space looking for insight into the human condition. It’s such a spectacularly ham-fisted and on-the-nose move that it simply rams home just how far the film has drifted from the initial high-concept idea that so enthused everyone in the first place.

All that said, despite its missteps and tonal uncertainties, Iron Sky isn’t totally without merit. Despite its largely unsuccessful gag rate, one or two moments of the more gonzo/scatological comedy really do hit the mark, while the digital FX work throughout is of a very high standard.

But perhaps that shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, Iron Sky began life as an FX demo reel that piqued investors’ interest, secured funding and – miracle of miracles – ended up going into production.

For all its attempts at being something more, that’s probably how Iron Sky will end up being remembered.

Rating : 5/10

Source:denofgeek.com

Film Review : Lockout

21 Apr

Release Date: OUT NOW!
15 | 96 minutes
Distributor: Entertainment Film
Directors: Stephen St Leger, James Mather
Cast: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Joseph Gilgun, Vincent Regan, Peter Stormare, Lennie James

If only every B-movie masquerading as A-list Hollywood fodder had the confidence to be as unashamedly silly as Lockout. Mather and St Leger’s debut feature isn’t smart, it doesn’t have anything to say about the human condition and it never takes itself remotely seriously, but none of that matters with a film this much fun.

It’s 2079 and in a rain-soaked, Blade Runner-like cityscape former CIA agent Snow (Pearce) is caught up in a conspiracy and sentenced to 30 years in stasis aboard the maximum security space prison MS-One. Before Snow can be put under, however, the crims escape captivity, trapping the President’s daughter, Emilie Warnock (Grace), on board, leaving Snow with no option but to bust in and bring her out alive.

As even this brief synopsis makes clear, the fingerprints of Escape From New York are all over Lockout’s perfunctory narrative. There’s more successful inspiration taken from late-‘80s action behemoths such as Predator, with enough memorable one-liners to give Lockout the feeling of a film 25 years out of sync. The plot is riddled with infuriating contrivances, but the characters and surprisingly snappy dialogue make it a much more enjoyable experience than perhaps it deserves to be.

Snow is the kind of impossible human being that only exists on the big screen – an endearing arsehole that gets away with it through pure charisma and admirable fallibility. Pearce takes a punch with the best of ’em, and makes us wonder why it took him so long to take the B-movie plunge. His scenes with Grace are some of the film’s best, but it’s Joe Gilgun’s Scottish psycho Hydell who leaves the biggest impression. Completely off his rocker and spectacularly unpredictable, he may possess a dubious Scottish twang but everything else about Hydell is a compellingly watchable human multi-car pile-up.

Some iffy early effects work and a third act in too much of a hurry to wrap things up disappoint, but Mather and St Leger impress behind the camera and there’s a pleasing physicality to much of the action. Lockout won’t be bothering any top 10 lists come the end of the year, but as an accompaniment to a giant popcorn and enamel-wrecking soft drink, there are much worse films you could be doing time with.

Rating : 6/10

source:sfx.co.uk
by:jordan farley

Film Review : The Avengers

21 Apr

Well. Of all the things you can say about Avengers, it only takes one simple sentiment to do it justice: that was totally worth the wait.

Ever since a small but perfectly-formed teaser at the end of Iron Man heralded the coming of the Avengers, it’s been tough to keep expectations reasonable. For every good Marvel film, there was a bad one. For every reason to get excited, there was a reason to be cautious. A complete disaster seemed unlikely, but anything less than genre-defining brilliance was going to be a let-down.

And to Whedon’s credit, he pulled it off. He didn’t just make the best superhero action film that has ever been made, he somehow did it while making a Joss Whedon film – smart, funny and dramatic, but with all the trappings of a sci-fi action movie presented fully intact. Imagine if Transformers 3 had a plot, a script, actors you liked and comprehensible special effects: that’s what Avengers feels like. It’s all so very… big.

Of course, with seven lead characters, a villain backed by an army and a supporting cast pulled from multiple sources, it could never be anything but. Perhaps the hardest challenge Avengers faced was in maintaining its sense of scale: giving the street-level skills of characters like Captain America, Black Widow and Hawkeye’s a place where they could shine even against the larger-than-life exploits of Iron Man, Thor and The Hulk. And yet, somehow, everyone gets their moment. Most get four or five.

To quote Den of Geek’s own Mike Leader, Avengers was far better than it needed to be. The action beats are there. The character beats are there. But there’s so much more than that too. Whedon knows what the audience expects of an action film in this genre, and he uses that knowledge to pull the rug from under us again and again – sometimes for a joke, sometimes as a plot twist, but also without it ever getting old. It even looks fantastic, proving Whedon as not just a distinguished writer, but a distinguished action director. There’s no question that from now on, he’s going to be Hollywood A-list.

And what of its stars? Each one, fantastic. We know by now that Samuel L Jackson is Nick Fury, and Robert Downey Jr is Tony Stark, so there are no problems there. Hemsworth (Thor), Hiddleston (Loki) and Evans (Captain America) reprise their roles seamlessly. Johansson may have felt like an intrusion on Iron Man 2, but here she finds deservedly equal footing as the Black Widow. Ruffalo is a very different Bruce Banner than his predecessors, and yet the character is so embedded in the public consciousness that the Hulk still becomes, if anything, the film’s breakout star.

And what of Jeremy Renner, the man who has to try and make having a bow and arrow look cool next to an indestructible shield, a hammer that can control storms, and a suit of armour that can break the sound barrier? It’s fair to say that he’s the hardest sell, and Whedon, clearly aware of this, finds him a position in the story that lets him show off his skills early and often. He may never be the most iconic hero, but Hawkeye does carry his weight without becoming the butt of any jokes. Of all the film’s likely difficulties, it’s this one which it’s most surprising to see overcome.

There are places where you can pick at the film’s seemingly-perfect veneer. Despite several thrilling set pieces, the middle act’s action sequence can’t help sagging a little as it tries to give the whole cast something to do. Some of the character arcs are weaker than others (but at least everyone has one.) And maybe, if you’re one of the three people on the planet who hasn’t seen at least some of the lead-ins, you’ll struggle to accept the more outlandish concepts. But in truth, it’s all as close to flawless as makes no difference. No one is going to leave thinking about what spoiled Avengers – you’ll all be leaving with grins.

Perhaps the secret to the film’s success is that Whedon doesn’t just re-use the characters, he gives them all a new story, and new triumphs to find. As the film’s final battle reaches its climax, he takes a second to show each struggling with the enormity of their task, and then finding the strength to continue. It’s a small moment, but a key one. It reminds us that even though they’re gods, and super-soldiers, and geniuses, they’re still people like us: flawed, uncertain, and afraid. It’s not their powers and abilities that make them heroes, but their ability to find new resolve even when they’ve given it all. That, right there, is the very essence of the Marvel Universe brought to life. That’s why we love it. It’s why you will too.

There’s a shot near the film’s climax which manages, in one awe-inspiring moment, to perfectly translate what it feel like to be a superhero fan, reading a superhero comic. To say any more would spoil the surprise, but when you get to it, you’ll know. Of all Avengers’ many triumphs, that’s the one that’ll stick for the fans: it’s a movie that finally matches the one you have in your head.

And yes, there is a post-credits scene. But that’s all we’re saying.

Rating : 10/10

source:denofgeek.com
by:james hunt

Film Review : John Carter

2 Mar

It’s taken the best part of eight decades, but finally, an adaptation of Edgar Rice Burrroughs’ A Princess Of Mars has arrived on the big screen. But given how much the source novel and its follow-ups have inspired other sci-fi fantasies over the years, from Star Wars to Avatar, how will director Andrew Stanton’s movie stand up?

From John Carter’s opening frame, it’s clear that Stanton’s brought all the passion he has for the source material to bear on this lavish adaptation. In a dizzying aerial battle, we’re introduced to a mythical version of Mars (here called Barsoom), a dying planet of warring factions and weird creatures, ornate aircraft with dragonfly wings, towering architecture and parched deserts.

Thanks to the manipulation of the mischievous, evil Matai Shang (Mark Strong) two cities of rival Red Martians, Zodanga and Helium, are locked in perpetual war. The king of Helium, Tardos Mors (Ciarán Hinds) hopes that, by offering Sab Than (Dominic West) the hand of his daughter Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), his city will be spared from destruction from the devastating weapon that Shang has created.

If the brief bit of plot blurted out above sounds confusing, imagine how confusing it must be to John Carter (Taylor Kitsch). At the start of the film, he’s a war-weary, bearded confederate soldier who, for reasons I won’t relate here, finds himself transported to the planet Barsoom and into the middle of yet another civil war.

Initially encountering the Tharks, an aggressive, four-armed warrior tribe, Carter soon meets Dejah Thoris, fleeing from the prospect of an arranged marriage, and ends up fighting for the survival of Helium City as the forces of Matai Shang and Sab Than gather.

Complex though John Carter’s backstory is, with its numerous factions and difficult-to-remember names, the strength of the film’s lead characters is such that the precise details of the plot seldom matter too much. Kitsch makes for a perfect square-jawed matinee hero, and he’s supported by some engagingly-wrought supporting characters. There’s Tars Tarkas (played by Willem Dafoe, unrecognisable under a layer of motion-captured pixels) a stern yet faithful Thark warrior who soon becomes Carter’s close companion, and Woola, a six-legged dog who’s the sweetest fantasy creature I’ve seen in years. Lynn Collins is good value, too, as Dejah Thoris, and her commanding screen presence and sword-swinging abilities mean she’s seldom just a helpless love-interest.

Under the watchful eye of Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (Wall-E, Finding Nemo), John Carter is epic in scale, lavish in its detail, and surprisingly funny – Stanton displays a certain reverence to his source material, but remembers to have fun with it. There’s an innocent charm to John Carter that recalls old serials like Flash Gordon, or Ray Harryhausen’s Greek mythological epics like Jason And The Argonauts. This is an aspect frequently missing in modern cinema, where even traditional heroes have to possess some dark, brooding motivation for their actions.

John Carter uses cutting edge CG to make an unashamedly old-fashioned movie – it’s a fantasy in the mould of a Hollywood historical epic rather than broad sci-fi like Avatar, and it brings to the screen some of the most ornate costumes and baroque, bejewelled flying ships you’re likely to encounter in a cinema this year. There are wide rumours floating around La-La Land that John Carter could have cost as much as $300million to bring to the screen. If this is the case, at least it’s easy to spot where all the cash went – Barsoom is a rich, vividly-drawn world that is far more engaging than the rather desolate snippets is footage in trailers might suggest. It really does have to be seen in a cinema to be truly appreciated.

John Carter isn’t a perfect film, admittedly. Its 3D is unobtrusive rather than dazzling. The story overall meanders a little (a fault you could pick with the source novel), and some might find the opening sequence, which essentially starts in the middle of a battle between people you don’t yet know anything about, rather bewildering. Meanwhile, Dominic West is saddled with a bit of a flimsy role as the power-hungry Sab Than, and his character gets rather lost among all the grand spectacle. Mark Strong is much better – his charisma helps – but his motivations are often somewhat muddled.

What John Carter does have in its favour, however, is charm, and lots of it. Its fight scenes are well shot and at times extraordinary. Its effects are handsome and seamlessly integrated – the thought that the Tharks were mere digital creations didn’t even cross my mind until the final credits rolled, which is an achievement itself – and Andrew Stanton’s creativity, humour and expertise are apparent from beginning to end.

This is best summed up, I think, in a sequence where Carter has just arrived on Barsoom. Unaware of where he is, he makes repeated attempts to get up, only for the planet’s weird gravity to make him stagger about and fall flat on his face. Gradually, though, Carter learns not only to walk in this new environment, but also to bound huge distances in a simple leap. In one scene, Stanton leads the character – and the audience – from bewilderment to exhilaration.

Like Burrough’s source novel, John Carter is, for all its warring factions and odd-sounding names, a simple, exhilarating adventure about faith and loyalty. It’s also an excuse for some rollicking, rip-roaring action sequences and extraordinary special effects – and in this regard, John Carter succeeds admirably.

Rating : 8/10

source:denofgeek.com
by:Ryan Lambie

Film Review : Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance

17 Feb

This Review contains spoilers!

As much as it pains me to say it, 2011 was without doubt the worst year of Nicolas Cage’s career so far, with Season Of The Witch, Drive Angry, Justice and Trespass all falling short of average. Naturally, after last year’s drought, I was apprehensive about throwing all my hopes of into Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, this being the second chapter of a film most people didn’t care for, that has been retro-fitted with 3D, while carrying a 12A certificate, despite being directed by mega-violence merchants, Neveldine and Taylor.

And the result of all these negatives? A bombastic, insane and fantastically manic piece of action cinema that finally uses the power of Nic Cage in all his glory.

Distilled action movies that deliver purely on a need to entertain, with over the top action and superbly shot action scenes, are surprisingly rare these days, especially those that clock in at just under 90 minutes and don’t star Jason Statham. Yet along comes Ghost Rider: SOV, charging forth with all the subtlety of a spanner to the back of the skull, tongue firmly in its cheek, imbibing from the spirit of the 80s with more authenticity than Drive.

Much like the other films that bear the mark of Neveldine and Taylor, Ghost Rider 2 absolutely won’t be for everyone, with their rollerblade camera shots, frenetic style and, at times, juvenile humour shining through, I think it’s safe to say that anyone who doesn’t have time for Crank, Gamer or flaming urination should probably steer clear. But then the introduction of the duo to Ghost Rider was never about making new friends, but rather breathing new life a franchise that many thought was dead in the water.

A recent re-watch of the first Ghost Rider film proved it to be better than I remembered, serving as a perfectly fine example of an enjoyable film that, much like Green Lantern, suffered from a slurry of unfair abuse that decried it as the worse thing ever – such is the beauty of the internet. Whenever such opinions become so widespread, I can only wonder how many people have watched the likes of Ice Spiders or Species 3 – now those films are genuinely terrible.

Regardless, any opinion on the first Rider shouldn’t influence your feelings towards Spirit Of Vengeance, as the two films are barely comparable. SOV starts as it means to end, with a flurry of over the top action, the appearance of some Geek favourites, including Idris Elba, before quickly moving on to a familiar plot – the devil wants a youthful body to transfer his soul into, and only one man can stop him.

For those worried that SOV was going to be another tired reboot of the origin story, the only fresh take on that material is quickly dealt with via an animated opening sequence, showing that the Devil Rourke is now played by the great Ciarán Hinds and that Johnny Blaze signed the contract via crushed broken glass – that’s about it. Neveldine and Taylor manage to inject a few of their trademark narrative devices to great effect, using a style that seems fresh and seamless rather than gimmicky and jarring, as can so often be the case.

Gone are the other safe conventions of the first film, as Spirit rattles through proceedings at breakneck speed, working in some genuinely exciting set pieces, mostly involving things being set on fire in a way that I didn’t expect to be quite so exhilarating, with a finale that reminded me of Mad Max 2 in the best way.

Slight concerns about the budget-friendly backdrops of Eastern Europe are waylaid by all the money being poured into some fantastic visual effects. The Rider himself now looks incredible, with a much more realistic (as realistic as a flaming skull can look) and threatening appearance, obliterating everyone in his path with total abandon.

This time around, Cage himself plays both Johnny Blaze and the Ghost Rider, an asset that adds an entirely new dimension to the physicality of the Rider. You can tell within seconds that it’s Cage beneath the flames as the Rider stops mid combat and starts to rhythmically sway in the wind, or intimidate a bad guy by repeatedly screaming in his face, adding some much-needed depth to a faceless creation. And speaking of Cage…

As if the work of Neveldine and Taylor wasn’t divisive enough, I can think of few actors capable of dividing opinion quite as strongly as Nicolas Cage. Even die-hard fans like myself have had their loyalty tested by his recent output, which threatened to bury the stellar work on show recently in Kick Ass and Bad Lieutenant, leaving everyone wondering when we’d see a return to form (especially after his financial woes were made quite public). Well, Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance is it.

Cage is at absolute full tilt throughout the film, combining the best of his laconic/demented personas to their full potential, delivering his most animated and joyous performance in years. About a third of the way through the film he interrogates some minion or other, in what has to be one of the greatest Cage moments to date, as Blaze gleefully explains how he’s having to fight the Rider from surfacing, while smoking and grimacing. Then witness a scene later involving a screaming Cage going bananas on a motorbike, or plucking at an imaginary bee, and know that the man is well and truly back to form.

Ciarán Hinds makes more a much more reprehensible Devil than Peter Fonda (who should only really be seen surfing alongside Snake Plissken), ably backed by Johnny Whitworth as his right hand man. As the woman in peril, Violante Placido does just fine, though her role is fairly unnecessary providing more of a narrative tool than an actual character. Idris Elba is great, as you would expect, though there was a discussion afterwards as to why he was attempting a French accent and whether it was the performance, or the echoey acoustics of the screening venue that affected the intelligibility of his dialogue.

This film also features gratuitous Christopher Lambert. I actually shrieked with joy.

It was screened in 3D, but seemed short on gimmicky effects, settling more for the deeper background picture effect, but leaving the image crystal clear and un-dimmed by the glasses thankfully.

As a point of interest, there were actually three writers from Den of Geek in attendance at the screening and we all had an absolute blast. I would normally justify my reasons for loving such an insane film in more detail, but across the board it was loved, and all of us, I confess, were a little shocked. We didn’t expect it to work.

Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance really won’t be for everyone, but for anyone looking for an alternative comic book movie, instilled with a manic energy and non-stop adrenaline fuelled action in which lots of things are set on fire, then you’re in for a treat.

Rating : 8/10

source:denofgeek.com
by:Duncan Bowles

Film Review – Underworld: Awakening

28 Jan

Release Date: 20 January 2012
18 | 88 minutes
Distributor: Entertainment
Directors: Måns Mårlind, Björn Stein
Cast: Kate Beckinsale, India Eisley, Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James, Charles Dance

It’s been six years since Kate Beckinsale donned Selene’s eye-catching black catsuit/corset combo, and though she doesn’t appear to have aged a day, the Underworld series is now looking very long in the fang.

This fourth chapter follows on directly from the second. Though technically a direct continuation of Underworld: Evolution’s narrative, Awakening feels more like a reboot, with the series’ rich mythology jettisoned in favour of a new status quo. Humanity has learnt of the existence of vampires and lycans and hunted them to near extinction. Selene is captured, but escapes 12 years later with the hybrid child she never knew she had in tow, a child which could change the outcome of the war forever…

Awakening could be praised for attempting something different, but given that humans take a back seat almost immediately after the opening mass-cleansing montage in favour of a tired super-Lycan conspiracy, the new world established in Awakening feels like a missed opportunity. Directors Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein up the gore quotient significantly, with Lycan noggins prised apart and throats ripped out at regular intervals, but the pair have little sense of pacing or an eye for dynamic action sequences, while the prevalence of CGI wolves betrays the series’ roots in much more satisfying practical effects.

It’s not awful, merely functional and lacking an identity now that the lore of previous entries has been abandoned. If you only see one sexy-black-catsuit-lady-killing-monsters-in-pointless-3D movie this year you might be better off waiting for Resident Evil: Retribution.

Rating : 4/10

source:sfx.co.uk
by:jordanfarley

Film Review : Chronicle

20 Jan

Think back to the worst examples of Hollywood filmmaking. What comes to mind? An absence of truly interesting ideas. Two-dimensional characters. A lack of any real sense of build-up, drama or suspense sacrificed at the altar of big explosions and expensive CG effects. A ridiculously bloated running time.

Remarkably, director Josh Trank’s debut feature, Chronicle, flings itself wholeheartedly into blockbuster territory, but doesn’t succumb to its worst excesses. Unlike so many mainstream action films, it works because it’s an intelligently written drama first, and an explosive spectacle second.

Chronicle’s events will immediately recall some epic moments from classic movies and comic books, but these resonate so perfectly because they’re all rooted in an intimate story about three high school friends.

The first of these friends is Andrew Detmer (Dane DeHaan), a teenager who one day decides to record his day-to-day life on a cheap video camera. And what a depressing day-to-day life it is. Andrew’s mother is terminally ill, while his ex-fireman father (Michael Kelly) is a violent alcoholic who can barely afford to pay for his wife’s medication.

A shy, awkward outsider, Andrew seeks refuge in his filmmaking, even if it does sometimes annoy his two closest friends – his philosophy-spouting cousin, Matt (Alex Russell) and charismatic, outgoing classmate Steve (Michael B Jordan). The trio grow closer still when an encounter with a strange, subterranean energy gives them remarkable powers of telekinesis.

As you might expect from a bunch of ordinary high school kids, the three friends initially use these powers to pull off a series of stunts and practical jokes – terrorising children with floating teddy bears in a toyshop, or flinging objects at one another with unerring accuracy. Gradually, their powers increase. “It’s like a muscle,” one of the friends suggests. “We’re working it out. Getting buff.”

Eventually, the boys’ powers become so extraordinarily strong that, in spite of Matt’s attempts to impose a few rules to prevent their being misused, things inevitably begin to go wrong. The results are explosive, dramatic, and truly affecting.

On a budget of around $15million, Trank has created a great-looking film. Forget any preconceptions you may have about Chronicle being just another found footage movie – a kind of Cloverfield with superpowers instead of a giant monster, perhaps. Its use of handheld cameras goes way beyond mere wobbling frames and dizzying point-of-view shots.

Trank comes up with all kinds of clever, imaginative ways of moving his camera around, and providing unique and surprising perspectives. He plays fast and loose with the subgenre, cutting from Andrew’s view to that of another character who’s filming events from somewhere else, or in some scenes, to black-and-white security cameras.

Far from being a gimmick, or an attempt to hop on a stylistic bandwagon, the idea of presenting the film through its characters’ lenses is an intrinsic part of Chronicle’s storytelling. There are moments in here that really wouldn’t have worked had they been shot in a traditional Hollywood fashion.

Running to around 90 minutes, Chronicle is an urgent, lean and sinewy piece of filmmaking, shot and edited with quiet confidence. It evolves as events unfold; the cheap, grainy camera that Andrew shoots with at its opening soon gives way to a more expensive one, and his powers of telekinesis add a still further twist to Chronicle’s aesthetic.

The real reason Chronicle functions so well, though, is because its protagonists are so believable. Their actions, whether good, mischievous or downright nasty, all make logical sense, because their personalities are so well established.

Max Landis’ script is full of energy and economy, and the teenage banter is perfectly observed. The performances, too, are uniformly excellent – Dane DeHaan is particularly compelling as the film’s troubled focus. And as Chronicle reaches its final act, the care with which Trank and Landis develop the characters’ friendship is such that we’re fully invested in what happens to them.

Chronicle’s storytelling brilliance is best summed up in one brief sequence. At a high school talent show, Andrew takes the stage and uses his powers to pull off a series of conjuring tricks, among them a walk along a tightrope. But rather than immediately leaping around and revelling in his remarkable abilities, Andrew at first teeters and totters around awkwardly, provoking titters of derision and amusement from the spectators.

Then, like a true showman, Andrew starts to work his magic, with each trick building on the last in scale. By the end of his performance, the audience are clapping and cheering with appreciation, and with that, one of the school’s outsiders becomes one of its biggest celebrities.

This is precisely what Chronicle does. Arriving at the start of a year positively heaving with expensive sequels and comic book movies laden with special effects, this relatively low-budget debut treads a line to a perfectly judged conclusion, and barely puts a foot wrong along the way.

For all the blockbusters due out over the spring and summer – many of which cost anywhere north of $100million – Chronicle is the movie they have to beat. It truly is that good.

Rating : 10/10

source:denofgeek.com
by:Ryan Lambie

Time Tunnel : A look back at Philip Kaufman’s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

9 Dec

Don Siegel’s Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was, without doubt, amongst the finest sci-fi movies of the 1950s, and high on the list of my favourite genre pictures of all time. Loosely based on a 1955 novel by Jack Finney, the 1956 Body Snatchers was the sublimely paranoid tale of a small-town doctor who finds himself in the middle of an invasion of the most insidious variety.

By the time Dr Miles (Kevin McCarthy) realises something’s wrong with his patients, most of them have already been absorbed and replaced by physically identical yet emotionally sterile pod people. The most mature and intelligently made of the 50s cycle of ‘reds under the bed’ movies, few films before or since have captured its overwhelming sense of tension and dread.

This isn’t to say, though, that Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is perfect. At the insistence of studio bosses, the film was topped and tailed with a pair of scenes that alter the pessimistic tone of the original script with one that offers a glimmer of hope. As originally shot, Body Snatchers would have ended with the remarkable, fourth-wall-breaking shot of Dr Miles screaming into the camera, “They’re here! You’re next!”

Ultimately, the gut-wrenching impact of that ending was softened with a conclusion which implied that humanity might be saved by the FBI at the last minute. Had Don Siegel shot the film a few decades later, it’s possible he may have been able to release a director’s cut on DVD.

In 1978, director Philip Kaufman brought his own version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers to the screen, and on the face of it, his movie’s a typical remake as we now understand the term. It scales up the canvas from a small middle-class community to a city, brings in a slightly starrier cast, ups the budget, includes references to the original (including an absolutely perfect cameo from Kevin McCarthy) and adds in lots more showy special effects.

Remarkably, though, the 70s Body Snatchers almost equals the brilliance of Siegel’s original – and this time, its downbeat conclusion isn’t sullied by a studio-enforced epilogue, as the residents of San Francisco come under silent attack from plant-like, other-worldly organisms.

Where the protagonists in Siegel’s movie were well-to-do and crisply dressed, the characters on the run from the listless pod-people in the 78 version are engagingly off-beat. Jeff Goldblum’s Jack, a mud bath owner and struggling writer, and Veronica Cartright’s plays his skittish wife Nancy. Donald Sutherland is Matthew, a somewhat pompous health inspector, and Brooke Adams is Elizabeth, his colleague. Best of all, there’s Leonard Nimoy as an inscrutable psychiatrist who insists on wearing a weird little leather glove.

As in the 1956 version, this huddle of characters gradually realises that their entire community is being transformed into inhuman copies, and they alternately bicker among themselves, hide, and then run in terror from a menace that appears to be engulfing the world.

Unlike the original, the film’s memorable for its use of outlandish special effects. We see ersatz humans hatch and grow from pods, and in one startling scene, Brooke Adams is menaced by a dog with the head of a man. I almost wonder whether a young Rob Bottin was in the cinema watching this, quietly taking down notes for later use in John Carpenter’s The Thing.

The 1978 Body Snatchers is most memorable, however, for the pod people’s habit of pointing and screaming at human escapees. It’s a trait that wasn’t exhibited by the eerily calm invaders of the 50s film, and its use here is absolutely terrifying. It’s said that Angela Cartwright didn’t know she was about to be confronted by a screaming pod-person in one key scene – it hadn’t been written into the script, so her anguished reaction was completely genuine.

As written by WD Richter (who would later direct The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai), the Body Snatchers script is absolutely faithful to the tone and pace of the 56 version, while subtly altering its themes. Mind control and conformity were subtexts in the original (though some critics appeared to be divided over whether Siegel’s message was anti-McCarthyist or anti-Communist), but the 1978 film’s metropolitan setting brings the subject of individuality to the fore.

It’s a Body Snatchers for the post-flower power age of feminism and pop psychology, and could be a read as a meditation on the loss of identity in the modern age. It’s the city relocation, and the aggressive, furtive otherness of the invaders, as opposed to the drone-like listlessness of the 50s pod people, that makes the 1978 Body Snatchers more than just another remake.

Kaufman’s Body Snatchers was shot at a time when distrust of the government was at its height, following the Watergate scandal and the terrible loss of life in Vietnam. These events ushered in a wave of movies filled with cynicism and resentment, including the conspiracy thrillers The Parallax View and Capricorn One. The 1978 Body Snatchers is perhaps the best film of its type to emerge from this era of fear and loathing.

Its few authority figures are strange and untrustworthy – Nimoy’s psychiatrist is little more than a post-modern snake oil salesman, who dashes off a self-help book once every six months, and, it later turns out, knows far more about the invasion than anyone realises. Meanwhile, characters talk darkly about not trusting cops. Conversations repeatedly contain the word ‘conspiracy’. Mysterious government representatives on telephones tell people not to create a panic, and most ominously, “Don’t mention to anyone about duplicate bodies.”

With the economy reeling from the financial devastation of 2008, ushering in a new age of resentment – whether it’s towards bankers, newspapers or politicians – it’s little surprise that Invasion Of The Body Snatchers still packs a dramatic punch. In many ways, in fact, its themes of distrust and conformity are probably more relevant than ever.

Our televisions are infested with programmes where both celebrities and members of the public alike sing, dance and eat live insects for audience approval. We have hundreds of friends on Twitter and Facebook, many of whom we’ll never meet – how many of those people do we truly know and trust?

That blood-curdling scream is extraordinarily apt. In an age when we spend more and more of our lives online, in a virtual world of likes and dislikes, friends and followers, there’s a quiet yet ever-present pressure to conform, network and strive for popularity. Society is now driven by opinion, and those opinions can change in the time it takes to click a mouse button.

How terrifying would it be, then, if that entire community were to turn and focus all its hatred on you? That’s the nightmare that Kaufman’s Body Snatchers confronts its audiences with in that single, inhuman scream. It’s simple, terrible, and needles us in a way that words never could. And that’s why this film remains so powerful, and so horrifying.

Source:denofgeek.com
by:Ryan Lambie

FILM REVIEW : The Awakening

12 Nov

Release Date: 11 November 2011
15 * 106 minutes
Distributor: STUDIOCANAL
Director: Nick Murphy
Cast: Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Joseph Mawle, Isaac Hemstead-Wright

“This is a time for ghosts,” reads the caption at the start of post-war chiller The Awakening. It’s 1921, and between them The Great War and a flu epidemic have wiped out over 1.5 million people in the preceding five or six years, leaving Britain grieving and superstitious. This enjoyable slow-build shiverer provides further evidence that today is a time for ghosts too, what with supernatural scarers Lake Mungo and Ti West’s forthcoming The Innkeepers breaking away from boring gore, and Paranormal Activity 3 usurping the Saw franchise’s coveted Halloween slot.

Featuring Rebecca Hall as a sceptic drafted in to investigate strange occurrences in a countryside school after one of the young pupils is found dead, The Awakening is a classy old-fashioned ghost tale in the tradition of The Turn Of The Screw. It’s an assured first feature from Primeval alumnus Nick Murphy, with a confident, austere palette of greens and greys lending a pervasive feeling of sadness to the escalating tension.

Hall is feisty and formidable (at least in the first half) as a woman on a mission to disprove the existence of ghosts, channelling the gumption and resourcefulness of a young Jessica Fletcher. Dominic West’s stiff-jawed war hero, running the school with stoic housekeeper Imelda Staunton, provides a foil and a love interest for the increasingly fraught Hall as the evidence of creepy goings on becomes more and more difficult to disprove… or so it would seem. Nothing is quite as it appears in The Awakening, with red herrings and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it clues coming thick and fast.

Watch clips from The Awakening here

While The Awakening isn’t wildly original, it is at least aware of the company it keeps, making direct reference to classics such as The Changeling. It’s a consistent and carefully constructed yarn that invites a second viewing. Sadly the final revelation is something of a stretch and relies heavily on clumsy exposition, while the scares, though effective in themselves, are repetitive and signposted.

Still, Murphy’s one to watch, and so is The Awakening, should you be looking for a change of pace and an entertaining spook-out.

Rating : 7/10

source:sfx.co.uk

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