Star Trek Beyond, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The BFG and Now You See Me 2

It's kinda weird to see yourself in a plane movie

Star Trek Beyond

After a strong reboot, this is a bit of a misstep for the new Star Trek franchise. The Enterprise is taken down by a space scavenger and the divided crew must prove that unity is strength, not a weakness - though the antagonist always wins through numbers so doesn't oppose the idea very well. 

On a dusty world, the crew use salvaged scrap and enlist the help of a badass female alien to recover a McGuffin that threatens the entire Federation. 

The whole plot feels lazy and generic and it was far harder to care about the characters, good or bad, then in the previous films. This felt totally unimaginative and the plot would have made a poor entry as an episode in the original series. Disappointing. I'm glad I didn't watch it in the cinema.

Alice Through the Looking Glass

At the very least, a new Burton/Disney instalment of Alice in Wonderland is going to be a visual treat, of strange inventive creatures and distorted bodies. And so it is with this watchable but not very likeable sequel.

An adult Alice has improbably become a sea captain, but a spurned suitor is seeing to it that she becomes in every way an ordinary young woman.

Returning to Wonderland through the looking glass, she finds the Mad Hatter out of sorts. He found something to remind him of his family and has become obsessed with finding them. Only they died in a Jabberwocky attack years ago.

Alice resolves to go back in time, but as so often happens in this sort of time travel story, instead she discovers some deep dark secrets.

The film tries a little too hard to make coherent and consistent characters of Carroll's, and arguably this would have been a very dark story if there were no secrets to uncover. I think that normalising the cast and greatly reducing the random nonsense of the original detracts a lot from the charm. This feels more like an Oz film than an Alice one. 

But the climactic final action is a feast for the eyes and this is an inventive piece of fan fiction based on an original world, even if it doesn't match the original tone, and Sasha Baron-Cohen's Time is a fun mixture of slapstick and menace. 

But that sea captain idea? Nah. Just too unbelievable.

The BFG

This is one of those strange cases of a CGI-heavy movie that looks very strange and uncanny when clips are seen in isolation, but when watching the whole film, coheres nicely. In fact, this is rather a good adaptation of a beloved novel that suffered from not being the kind of story that lends itself well to movie trailers. The BFG's strange speech, Sophie's understated strong-heartedness, a story that revolvers largely around hiding and small but touching wonders...

Spielberg does suspense as well as he does wonder, which works here, but somehow the lack of real development for Sophie holds the movie back from really becoming affecting. She's brave and clever but doesn't really need to grow in a significant way during the course of the story. That would really help, I think.

Unsurprisingly, the whizz-bangs are minimised here, to the point they may as well not have been included. Even as a small child, I thought that part fell flat.

I thought this adaptation might have been poorly done but it's actually very respectful, even loving. That charm came across to me, but sadly I don't think it's going to resonate widely. For my personal enjoyment, though, my impressions were positive.

Now You See Me 2 

I can't be really objective about NYSM2, because I had a very small part in it. Over three very cold and rainy nights, I was an extra, showing up blink-and-you'll-miss-it crowd scene moments in both the Dave Franco and Lizzy Caplan sections in the climactic final act, despite them being set in totally different places. How's that for magic?

So it's slightly regretfully that I report that this is the usual case of a very poor Hollywood sequel. I really enjoyed the first movie, more even that average reviews may lead you to expect. I loved the origin story here of different styles of magicians brought together with a common goal, the twists were satisfying and the Robin Hood theme worked well. 

Here, sadly it's not so. There's a very strained explanation for the change in female actresses, then the Horsemen not only reveal themselves to the public again in underwhelming style in scenes set in New York but filmed in the ExCeL (would've been much more convenient for me to be an extra there!), the antagonists are foiled much too easily and then the final twists just don't feel like anything new or surprising. Plus the idea to give Woody Harrelson a goofy second role took things way too far into Austin Powers territory.

There are things to like here. Some of the magic works nicely and it's occasionally spectacular. But where the first film was a very pleasant surprise, the second is unfortunately just everything one would expect from a cash-in sequel.

Suicide Squad

I wasn't too bothered about seeing Suicide Squad in the cinema, but hoped it would be on the plane or something one day. Well, on the plane it was, and it was an ideal brainless action movie to see.

The best thing about the movie was its soundtrack, full of classic rock tracks, front-loaded by The Animals and the Stones via the likes of Credence Clearwater Revival and Black Sabbath to end with Queen – but with plenty of much more recent tracks when they fit the mood. Otherwise, it was enjoyable in just about every way, but in no way outstanding.

The Suicide Squad is a simple idea - various DC bad guys forced together with a noble cause. Some are better-known than others and the likes of Captain Boomerang aren't exactly big draws. But Killer Croc provides the muscle, Harley the glamour and surprisingly enough, it's Will Smith's Headshot who is the everyman here, the emotional centre, not really being a bad guy despite being a career killer. A kind of Leon figure, if you like.

The problem here is the lack of a real sense of threat. Too much of the film is divided between the hope of the Joker - played superbly by Jared Leto - actually becoming a decent villain, the obvious subplot of the woman running the show being the worst monster and the main Enchantress plot which is just too overblown and lacking in interesting motives to work - not to mention performed with too much ham. Good characters, performances and on-screen chemistry unfortunately didn't hang together with a plot that made me really care, and that was the most important thing.

Horror movie mini reviews

Watched several horror films over the past couple of weeks.

First we watched Darkness Falls, about a vengeful spirit coming for kids who lose their last teeth, which was a total stinker. Bad acting, totally inconstant supernatural powers and character shields taken to the point of absurdity made it a very low-grade horror. 

Second was Lord of Tears, an attempt to find something very spooky, but despite the effective and using viral clips of the ‘Owl Man’ going after urban explorers that were released to promote the movie, it was a disappointment. Terrible acting, daft soliloquys and worst of all a ghost that seemed unable to do any actual harm to the protagonist beyond doing bad interpretive dance at him, it seemed a real waste. A simple plot like ‘The Owl Man is coming for you until you free a tormented spirit’ would have worked, but the Owl Man (and ghost) had to be palpable threats for this to be effective. Telegraphing all the twists with pseudo-creepy short clips near the beginning also removed most of the tension.

 Third, The Witch, a recent horror film meant to be very creepy, following a Puritan family as they encounter a witch after moving away from town. It was a simple film that was compelling and fun to watch, very tense with interesting characters, but sadly there was little I would call scary. Still looking for an actually frightening film to watch together!

The Gallows followed in our quest for scary horror. It was typical found-footage shenanigans and none of the victims were likable, but there were some decent atmospheric moments. The ending was so unnecessary, though.  

The Conjuring, was a tried-and-tested formula haunting story, perhaps unsurprisingly as it’s based on the real-life ‘demonologists’ Ed and Lorraine Warren, who inspired many a horror film, but was a satisfying story of creepy happenings and ghoulish images. Better than most of the other things we’ve watched, but still nothing I would call special.

The Haunting in Connecticut followed. Though the climactic part of the movie (where it becomes entirely the filmmakers’ fantasy) was pretty satisfying and visceral, and the idea of a horror movie where the visions are at least possibly just hallucinations caused by medical treatment is interesting, unfortunately most of the film dragged and just didn’t make for compelling viewing. 

Thi13een Ghosts was next, mostly to see the fun designs of the different ghosts, especially the Jackal and the Hammer. These fun flights of fancy were the best part of the film, but the rather cheesy moving house, deeply unlikeable characters and endless coincidences took the wind out of the movie’s sails. Fun to watch once for the visuals but not a favourite. Some actual scares would be nice, too…and the utter lack of reaction to seeing a man sliced in two was bizarre. 

Mama came after that, which was marketed as a Del Toro film but was actually only executive produced by him. Still, it had decent production values, excellent performances by child actresses, and a ghoulish phantasm that just stayed on the right side of looking ridiculous. It was nothing original or special, but it was certainly compelling, the performances were good (including Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from Game of Thrones and The Other Woman doing quite an amusing Spock’s-evil-twin turn with two roles), the production values were excellent and the ending was not predictable. It won’t endure as a classic horror story, but it was certainly one of the best of the crop we’ve watched lately. 

The Woman In Black 2 was mostly a little dull. I’d forgotten the plot of the original movie, which unlike the play had the element of the ghost being able to control children and force them to kill themselves. That happened here, too, with a stream of evacuees being offed in the creepy old house from the original, but one boy who for no good reason was favoured by both the woman in black and the main character, had to be saved at all costs. It rang pretty hollow overall, and relied way too much on meaningless jump scares in fantasy sequences, but the production was slick, the aesthetics pleasant and the acting not at all bad. 

Finally, we saw The Quiet Ones, another revived Hammer film, this time about a professor doing experiments on a girl who can manifest psychic abilities. It’s purportedly based on true events, but it has extremely little to do with its source material. The set-up is nothing original – a cameraman joins the research team to document events and ends up in too deep – and there are uncomfortable echoes of Blithe Spirit. It also needed to pack much more into its run-time than it did. Still, some decent jumps and interesting characters elevate this a little above average.

Deadpool

I’ve missed a lot of Superhero films lately, from Civil War to X-Men: Apocalypse, though I fully intend to see them all at some point – very possibly on a plane. However, I got to go and see Deadpool in a nice comfy cinema, which was welcome!

On the other hand, I can’t say I loved the film. Deadpool has never been much of a favourite of mine, and he works best showing up for a very short time before going away again. I dislike fourth wall-breaking humour and Wade just isn’t all that interesting as a character.

But the movie was entertaining. It’s a very simple genesis story, showing how Deadpool came to be Deadpool and then going on a quest for revenge – with help from two very entertaining X-Men, Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead who, yes, was chosen purely for her name. Big satisfying setpieces end the beginning and end of the movie, and there’s a very ordinary sort of background story told in flashback.

The film was perfectly decent, but I must say I expected much more. I thought we’d be seeing a whole lot more action, more humour and more fights. The flashback parts just took way more time than they needed to and didn’t establish enough to make us really care for Deadpool. There were some funny one-liners, mostly about other X-Men or referring back to Ryan Reynolds’ other less successful forays into superhero roles, but so much of it was just trying to be funny by swearing or being vaguely sexual. It was very schoolboyish.

Overall, the big problem was doing too little for a full movie. Not enough happens. Reynolds’ Deadpool was done well, more likeable and watchable than he could so easily have been, but he just didn’t get to do enough.

It seems there was some censorship on the Japanese version, but given the amount of stuff that was uncensored I don’t think it can have been anything big. The only thing I didn’t like was the reference to Basil Fawlty being deemed incomprehensible to Japanese people so being rendered in the Japanese subs as ‘Mr. Bean’! Now that I can’t forgive!

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. 

Chappie

I enjoyed District 9, but poor word-of-mouth put me off going to see Chappie at the cinemas when it came out earlier this year. From what I gathered, while District 9 did strange and original things, Chappie rested on its laurels and dished up a very predictable rehash of old ideas from films like Short Circuit, A.I. Artificial Intelligence and the more recent Robot & Frank. I also felt like the casting of Die Antwoord was something of a cash-grab and it made me cringe a little. I never really liked their weird-violent pseudo-gangsta schtick, though I like ‘Cookie Thumper!’

But I still wanted to see the film, so last night we watched it. And though it was far from perfect and the critical reception it received was deserved, it was enjoyable and as a matter of fact, Die Antwoord were about the only actors who managed to pull off their cartoonish roles, being authentically cartoony.

The main problem here seems to be that half the cast is taking everything very seriously while the other half think they’re in a very campy sci-fi flick. Die Antwoord and those around them in the ‘gritty’ scenes, including the guy from District 9 as the likeable and childlike Chappie, really are struggling for authenticity within a daft and childish plot. The bigger-name stars, especially Hugh Jackman and Sigourney Weaver, are given paper-thin characters with horrible lines, and cannot elevate them into something even vaguely believable. Dev Patel teeters between the two worlds and ultimately isn’t convincing, and the montage of him coming up with ideas to finish his sentient AI program is awful.

When the film fully embraces the daft concept and goes for entertainment value or sentimentality, it works nicely: Chappie convinced that the people driving expensive cars have all stolen them from Ninja, or Chappie excitedly reading his children’s book to a loving Yolandi. When it’s a sinister weapons developer letting anarchy descend on an entire city just so he can show what his stupid mecha ‘Moose’ can do, it just falls flat, and some of the awkwardness with Deon going back to see Chappie even though he thinks Ninja is genuinely going to kill him is extremely clumsy.

I hoped Chappie would be in some way challenging or highly idiosyncratic, but it fell short of that. However, taken as something simple and fun, it’s an enjoyable feel-good film. Also, while the open ending probably rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, I actually very much enjoyed the silliness there. I wanted to see what would happen if Chappie copied his consciousness to all the drones, though. Because if he discovered the secret of digitising consciousness, which was one of the sillier ideas to be central to the film, why not make numerous copies?