Plane Films 2: Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation; Ted 2; American Sniper; Bridge of Spies; Kingsman

Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation

Though I watched the first Mission Impossible film and at least one other since, I can’t say the franchise inspires the same sort of excitement in me as…well, any other major franchise. And I didn’t even bother with the latest Bond.

Still, for plane fodder, Mission Impossible – Rogue Nation fit the bill nicely and was entertaining throughout. All I knew about it going in was that Tom Cruise had been made to look impressively youthful, Simon Pegg was now a major player and there was a bit with Tom Cruise holding onto the outside of an aircraft – which I’d seen in the poster in Shinjuku.

The film was a standard crime romp – our secret society comes up against another, more nefarious one and must work with a femme fatale to infiltrate various bases with ridiculous security set-ups until they uncover a plot that goes right to the top of the British Government.

One pleasant surprise was to see so much of the UK, made to look appropriately misty and intriguing, though having the ExCel Centre double as a train station was a little surreal. Otherwise the film was smoothly put-together and ticked all the usual boxes of fast action and near-misses and heroes that really should just get shot every few minutes and die. The extended road chase sequence was also very satisfying.

Ted 2

Ted surprised me by not being terrible, even though I’m no McFarlane fan. Ted 2 managed to do away with all the charm of the original and be the kind of awful film I expected the original to be. The pastiche of old Hollywood dance sequences was nice, and there were some funny moments when a fight breaks out in Comic-Con, but that was about it. The rest was strained running gags about porn, random pop culture references or the apparent conviction that people getting stoned is comedy gold in and of itself.

I liked Ted more than I expected to because it wasn’t like an extended episode of Family Guy. But Ted 2, sadly, was.

American Sniper

I remember complaints surfacing at the time when American Sniper came out – empty-headed patriotism, self-aggrandising tub-thumping from the American right, a film of pure propaganda. But I was curious, I enjoy Clint Eastwood’s direction and after all I like sniper films – it’s a little dated now but I’d say Enemy at the Gates is still amongst my top 5 war films.

American Sniper tells the story of Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in American military history, completing four tours in Iraq before ultimately being murdered on American soil. The film focuses not just on the action of his rivalry with an accomplished Syrian sniper and becoming a ‘legend’ in the forces, but on his trouble disassociating himself from the war when back home with his young family.

The performances here are very strong, especially Bradley Cooper’s, and the war is meticulously created. Yes, there is jingoism and patriotism here, and the Pledge of Allegiance in classrooms always does seem a bit of an odd ritual to an outsider, but the main point is that Kyle is a good man, very protective of his country and often found himself faced with difficult moral decisions. Worth a watch.

Bridge of Spies

I don’t remember this film coming out, and watched it mostly because I was curious as to what Spielberg had been up to since War Horse (and dropping out of directing American Sniper). This is a more small-scale and less schmaltzy war film from him, much more along the lines of Argo. During the Cold War, James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) first finds himself defending a Soviet spy in court, eventually leading to tense exchange negotiations in Berlin just as the Wall is first built – an intriguing setpiece but not nearly as universally recognised as the battlefields of the world wars.

The performances here were strong, the pacing boiled slowly in the right sort of way, the historicity of it was engaging and the sympathy with which each side was treated was refreshing. Not a great classic, but enjoyable.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

I didn’t see Kingsman in the cinemas because the trailers and previews seemed annoying – though with remarkable fight choreography. Seeing the film in full, the parts I expected not to like I actually did, particularly Colin Firth as a stiff well-bred British secret agent and a general tests-at-the-academy middle act. The fights were also spectacular and uncompromisingly gory, with one extended fight scene remarkable in the level of detail involved.

But the problem was that the film’s main character and main bad guy didn’t quite work. Samuel L Jackson playing about could have worked if the film wasn’t already having trouble establishing whether it was a comedy or not, but as it was it jarred. And then the main character just didn’t seem to be pitched quite right – the idea was to show the chav with the heart of gold, the cheeky chappy prevailing, but the film never quite managed to show that the council estate kid with the short temper and foul mouth was just as capable, intelligent and – crucially – likeable as the gentleman. And I feel like having a teenager coming of age in the story rather than a young adult would have remedied that.

Still, excellent action setpieces, some very nice locations and a higher budget than I expected made this one enjoyable. 

Plane films: Ant-Man, Pixels, Shingeki no Kyoujin and Fantastic Four

Plane films

Long-haul flights can never really be called pleasant, but my Hong Kong-London journey was about as painless as could be hoped for. Bringing on your favourite pillow in your hand luggage is definitely my top tip.

I got in enough sleep that I feel like jetlag isn’t going to be an issue, and as usual I watched a whole load of films to pass the time. None were exactly wonderful works of art, but all kept me entertained.

#1: Ant-Man

My first choice, and one that I was specifically looking for. When it was on in the cinemas, I didn’t go to see it and part of the reason I wasn’t desperate to go was that I was actively thinking ‘I bet it will be on the plane when I head home for Christmas’. And so it was – and while overall I quite liked the film, it isn’t one I was sad to have missed on the big screen.

I had high hopes for Ant-Man, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of unexpected pleasure that Guardians of the Galaxy managed to be. Paul Rudd wasn’t very engaging as Scott Lang, and though Michael Douglas was probably the most fun part of the whole film, he didn’t exactly get to do very much.

Some good humour (though a few too many comic relief minorities), the expected superb special effects and neat tie-ins with the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe made this worth seeing, if by no means essential viewing.

#2: Pixels

The best thing about Pixels was probably the models promoting the film that were placed around Shinjuku. But I expected the film to be terrible, so when it was indeed terrible I was not disappointed.

The humour is extremely lazy, the premise is no less atrocious than it seems on the surface, the characters are extremely unlikeable and the effects, while very well-done, struggle with being intentionally artificial with the result that a lot of money was no doubt spent on making something look mediocre.

But hey, if anyone watched this film expecting it to be anything other than brainless dreck, they need to pay attention.

#3: Minions

(See full review on my animation blog)

#4: Shingeki no Kyoujin

What worked:

-          The visuals, all colour graded to muted greys and browns for a pleasantly bleak world. The sets and CG backgrounds were very nice-looking, the costumes were excellent and the Titans themselves were just the right sort of creepy.

-          For the most part, the editing and direction, though some parts seemed vulgar, like having to be shown one boy Armin spoke about in an flashback when everyone will have remembered him.

-          The action sequences, which were well-choreographed, visceral and energetic.

-          Hans (Hange) in her goggles. She was perfect, both on her own strength and as a reflection of the anime version.

What didn’t work:

-          The casting. I don’t think everyone should have been Teutonic – such a huge part of casting movies revolves around getting more of the target demographic to attend. These names bring more of the Japanese domestic audience. On the other hand, Eren was extremely forgettable, the supporting cast often hard to tell apart (and not just because they were Japanese) and the ham they got to play Shikishima, a role replacing Levi, was utterly horrible with his posing and overacting. 

-          Mikasa. To make the plot more succinct they made major changes to Mikasa’s story. Unfortunately, this removes her interesting character growth in her own right, keeps her offscreen for a large chunk of the film, and makes her ability to kick some butt something derived from the strength of the men around her rather than innate.

-          The pacing. Way too long is spent on reiterating the very basic character traits of the supporting cast, without actually fleshing them out into decent characters. Then the plot meanders and ends with nothing resolved at all.

-          Baby titan. Too silly.

#5: Shingeki no Kyoujin: The End of the World

I didn’t even realise a second Shingeki film had already come out. Nevertheless, there it was, available for viewing, so I watched it too. It was similarly turgid, overacted and unsatisfying as the first film, and featured a horrible attempt by two extreme over-actors to out-overact one another with the two principal antagonists of the piece.

The motivations here were often utterly stupid (nobody stops to say, ‘Shouldn’t you just do your dastardly plan with the walls as they are?’) and sometimes the characters are, too. For example, Eren is about to be eaten, the Titan holding him by his cloak while he vainly waves his blade at it. And it never occurs to him to just cut off his cloak.

The plot here moved on further than the anime has covered, so I don’t know how much of this is spoiler material and how much just invention for the adaptation. Not knowing is good, because I’ll have to wait and see how close it is to the source (I suspect it doesn’t match at all).

This film gave a lot more closure than the first did, though of course not everything is yet resolved. I can’t say I care to go and find out what becomes of live-action Eren and pals, but if it’s on the plane again another time, I might watch. 

#6: Fantastic Four

Well-known to have been a huge flop, FF continue to be Marvel’s hardest property to successfully adapt, the problem being that their origin story and their powers are kinda goofy, and the team works much, much better when they’re already established as prominent heroes with wild accomplishments that much of the Marvel Universe looks up to as trailblazers. Trying to make the team young and relatable just isn’t effective.

I had high hopes when I saw that Doctor Doom would be the villain of this piece, but while he’s quite fearsome here, ultimately the plot robs him of impact. Too much time is spent setting up Reed’s character without ever making him actually interesting, and then there’s just no time to really establish Doom as a decent threat. Ultimately he has no real gravitas and though the stakes are high, they never actually seem particularly high in the film. The finale is rushed and fails to engage, and so much has been expended on Reed that the rest of the team – even Ben Grimm – just aren’t very interesting at all.