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review: Underworld: Awakening (2012)

Nicola-t — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 06:18:49 +0000

Kate Beckinsale is back in her PVC catsuit, corset and leather jacket for the fourth installment of the Underworld series, Underworld: Awakening.

Actually, I didn’t know she had gone, I checked out of this franchise after the first film. Not that I’d hated it or anything. As far as I recall. I think it was just that I saw it around the same time as that disaster of a film, Van Helsing, and so I ended up staying away from vampire films for a while.

All I remember of the first Underworld was that Kate Beckinsale looked damn fine in the outfit and I wished I looked that good in skin-tight pants. So, as far as I can tell, little has changed in the intervening 9 years. She’s pushing 40 and still looking well. But that’s not being fair to the film at all, it has a lot more to offer than Beckinsale… There’s Michael Ealy and Theo James for the ladies as well. Ah no, I jest, there is more than that, I swear.

This is the first of the series to be directed by Swedish duo, Måns Magnus Mårlind (what a name!) and Björn Stein. The only other English language film the pair have directed was Shelter, starring Julianne Moore. I haven’t seen it, but with a whopping 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m not exactly planning on picking it up.

With Shelter’s score in mind, I couldn’t help but wonder why Underworld: Awakening wasn’t screened for critics here. As we all know, this is rarely a good sign. Hence, I approached it with trepidation – and a 2 minute recap of the two films I’d missed from my cinema going partner. That trepidation was tempered by the fact that it’s an 18 cert film in Ireland and the UK. The Underworld franchise is hardly known for sex and nudity, so an 18 cert was bound to mean violence.

As it happened, I didn’t really need the recap. I remembered more of the first film than I thought and in any case there’s a short revisiting of the first three films at the start. With 3 years between films each time, I guess they’re used to having to bring the audience back up to speed quickly. The main thing you need to know is that in the last film, normal humans discovered the existence of the Lycans and Vampires. They were not happy about it.

So sets the stage for a “cleansing” of epic proportions.

I actually really enjoyed Underworld: Awakening. There’s always a lot to be said for having no expectations going into a film. I didn’t even know this film was out this week, that’s how in the dark I was. I wouldn’t go around saying it had the most amazing plot or performances… But, having already seen 4 out of the other 5 films out this week, I can say it’s probably the most entertaining of the week. Mind you, that’s still not saying much. I’ve only done the reviews of J. Edgar and Haywire so far, but you can take it from me that it’s a pretty poor week, Underworld 4 aside.

What’s most enjoyable about Underworld: Awakening is the action. With an 18 cert there’s no holding back. Selene kicks ass, and gets her ass kicked, from here to next Sunday with barely any let up. What let up there is is used to explain a perfectly serviceable plot. A rarity in a film like this these days. Recently action films seem to be struggling terribly hard with plots; unnecessary convolution is the order of the day. I can only assume they’re over-compensating out of a fear of being criticised for being too action oriented. I don’t know why they bother. People go to action films to see action. Right?

Anyway, with all the action on offer here, the target demographic should be satisfied. It’s worth mention as well that the 3D is pretty good. Ok, there are large parts of the film where you don’t need to wear your glasses, but it’s worth it for the parts where you do. Plus, it’s shot bright enough that you don’t have to worry about the type of murkiness that plagued The Darkest Hour. Of course… that’s not all that plagued The Darkest Hour, but that’s for a different review. You do still see that strange green hue you get with Real-D 3D glasses, but it actually suits the comic book stylings of the film so… it all works out really.

Some other reviews I’ve seen have criticised it as being a step away from the other 2 mythology-heavy sequels. Having never seen them, I have no idea if that’s true. Considering all 3 of the other Underworld films having come in for some fairly scathing reviews, I’m surprised they’ve decided to pick apart any changes.

As far as I’m concerned, if you’re looking for a glossy, 88 minute distraction with some good looking people being beaten every which way but loose… you could do much, much worse than Underworld: Awakening. This film is a bruised and bloodied hoot ‘n a half.

7/10

review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1

Nicola-t — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 00:28:04 +0000

My unplanned and unexpected fall into all things Twilight continues. Somehow I found myself at a midnight screening of the latest installment, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1. I still don’t know how it happened but it did.

Of course, as I had mentioned in the post with clips and trailers of Breaking Dawn, I was kind of looking forward to this film. Not looking forward like, I was planning to see it at the first possible screening though. More like, I thought I’d give it a look on DVD. Oh well, what’s done is done.

Needless to say, I hadn’t been expecting much. Even though I thought Eclipse was alright, I wasn’t expecting anything – New Moon was that bad. Seriously, nothing happened in that movie. Nothing at all. For shame.

As it happens, Breaking Dawn is actually ok as well. Ok, not great. Or good. Just, ok. In all honesty, my biggest, biggest problem with the Twilight series is Kirsten Stewart. The girl can’t act. It’s a crying shame really because this, and Eclipse, would probably be good films if there was anything believable about Bella and Edward. Also – and it wouldn’t be an issue if the characters didn’t keep saying it – she’s just not that pretty. Every time they say it, which is more often than you’d think necessary, I wince. Really? I mean really?

The worst thing is that because she is so bad, it colours the entire series. I don’t understand what on earth Edward Cullen is meant to see in her. Except I suppose the point that he sees nothing in her, can’t tell what she’s thinking etc… Surely the possibility has occurred to him though that perhaps there’s nothing going on in there? Urgh.

And Jacob? What’s his excuse? I gather there might be something in the next film that explains that but I’ve still had to put up with 4 films of nonsense. And why is Edward so ok with her and Jacob? She even kissed him in the last film! That’s pretty much cheating in my book. He should’ve at least been a bit more pissed off. Is it supposed to be because he knows that Bella really and truly loves him? How can he tell? She doesn’t act like it.

But back to the film at hand. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1. Bit of mouthful. Apart from the massive problem of the relationship still being entirely unbelievable, it’s relatively reasonable. I would hesitate to say it is well paced – there’s a rather lengthy part of the film which, as far as I could tell, was only conceived so that Bella and Edward could kiss in front of varying colourful backdrops, but aside from that painful 20 minutes, it moves along quite well. Stuff happens, the plot moves forward, it’s a marked difference from the first two films. The action and CGI is even relatively decent, the wolves look good compared to how they did in the earlier films – oh, well… I just remembered the ridiculous talking wolves scenes, let’s forget that happened. *shiver*

One of the things I really liked about the film is that it’s quite funny in parts. Genuinely funny. I would have liked more of that. I think it also helped my enjoyment that Kristen Stewart didn’t do much for a lot of the film, what with being quite sick carrying her demon child. Jacob continues to be the star performer in the series. It helps that he has more to do than anyone else, but he does that angry broody thing well. I hope he gets a chance to be a real actor after this.

The fact is, it’s really not as bad as it’s being made out to be. There isn’t anything in it that’s offensively bad (aside from Stewart). The story is pretty interesting tbh. The stuttered attempts to make Twilight more mature are, for the most part, successful; the honey part of the ‘moon was dealt with particularly well. Other parts, were… perhaps alluded to more than dealt with…

I’m surprised there wasn’t more about… not having the child. You know, since they were all pretty sure it was a demon who was killing her from the inside out. The films’ seem to have quite a conservative agenda in the sense – no sex before marriage, it’s a baby not a fetus etc. I guess they didn’t want to dwell on that aspect, it is a young adult film after all. It could have made for interesting debate though. Oh well.

It’s hard in a way to point at the things I didn’t like about the film. I guess it’s just because the core of the story is so rotten to me, it makes it a bad apple. Everything that happens is… fine but… Yes, I think it’s just that… how do I describe it…? They’re very bitty films. The cast is so large and it’s so full of small roles that it feels like the film expects you to fill in the blanks in the characters – all the characters. Except that I don’t know any of the characters. Who are these people? What are their motivations? Why am I watching this film? It’s a very haphazard watch.

Except for the end. The end was pretty good, including the bit during the credits. It kinda looks like the next film might have some interesting stuff going on. In fact, during the end credits all I could think was, why couldn’t this be the starting point? You could have summed up these last 4 films in a long pre-credit sequence and done a few films on what happens next – that looks like a story worth watching.

6/10

For clips and trailers of The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – part 1 have a look over here.

review: Sucker Punch (2011)

Nicola-t — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:22:16 +0000

You remember when I said the trailer for Sucker Punch had everything but the kitchen sink in it? Yeah. Turns out the kitchen sink was sense.

This was not as phenomenal a mess as The Spirit but it did have a few extra touches of outlandishness that only Zack Snyder is brave enough to throw at us. I’ll talk about them later.

You might be assuming now that like many other critics, I hated Sucker Punch. I didn’t hate Sucker Punch. I actually thought it was a bit of a laugh. I think that’s partly because I had the good fortune of seeing the Rotten Tomatoes score before hand. I had my suspicions about the trailer and they were fairly confirmed by the flood of reviews that came out after the press screenings around the world. Let’s be clear, I thought it was a great trailer and I was looking forward to it… but at the same time I thought it was promising a lot. I just didn’t really quite believe that he could pull off everything in the trailer and still manage to run a consistent and engaging narrative. And he didn’t. So… not entirely a surprise…

First up, let’s talk about how it looks. It looks great. I think it’ll probably look better on BD/DVD – I think there may have been something wrong with the projector/print at the viewing I saw it at – but the effects still looked class. Also I thought the action sequences were good! I know some people have said they were a bit samey and a bit too computer gameish. I didn’t think so. Well, I don’t play computer games so it’s no odds to me if it was – I thought they looked cool and I also thought the girls were convincingly ass-kicking when required. Which was very little for some of them but no worries.

There wasn’t really much else to the film. It was so all over the place that you couldn’t care about following what was going on. Not that it was difficult but you had to wonder if there was meant to be some regard for anything more than the action scenes. There was some half assed attempt to string it all together with some voice over but I stopped paying attention to that after a while because it sounded like gibberish. I’d appreciate a transcript of it if anyone has it though. I wouldn’t mind reading through and trying to work out if the VO was actually trying to make a point. You’d never know, maybe it was as important as it was trying to sound… I kinda liked the idea of the VO being psychobabble, the film was about a mental institution so it was appropriate. In fact…

… There’s part of me that wants to believe that Sucker Punch was all a big subversive comment on institutionalisation or something*, I really really almost do. In fact I think I do, since I didn’t hate it… but there’s another part of me that thinks “Nah, that’s unlikely”. I don’t listen to that part though. I’ve only let it come out to give balance to this paragraph.

Unfortunately, even if you believe the subversive commentary thing, it’s still not brilliant. It may be fun but it manages to throw in some real clunkers of ideas. I mean that fifth thing that they mention in the trailer… Really? What? And please, please, Mr. Snyder, spare us from your musical counterpoint. Seriously man. It was jarring enough in Watchmen but your choices here were embarrassing. They were great songs, but honestly, you cannot play Where is My Mind when someone is being taken into an asylum. You just can’t do it, it’s ridiculous. If it was a once off I could almost accept it but then you hit us with Army of Me… I say Oi! Snyder! No!

I haven’t really said much about what was good about it. Basically. Like I said, I thought it was fun. Aside from the action sequences; I liked that guy that Scott Glenn was playing. He had some great lines, I loved that quote “If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything”, it was used so randomly, hilarious – where does it come from anyway? And the non action sequences were fine too, they swept the plot along fast enough.

The only thing that really annoyed me about it, bit of a spoiler here, is that [I still can't believe he never showed us Emily Browning dancing at all but oh well, I won't get too caught up about it. It was annoying though. Come on.]. (highlight between the square brackets to read text)

Anyway, I’m gonna leave it there for now. If you want to give out to me for liking it, fire away. As always, I welcome the chance to talk about the film in the comments section.

6/10

* = maybe if I’d paid attention to the VO I would know what that something was.

review: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)

Nicola-t — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:22:58 +0000

I can’t say I was overly excited about a film based on a video game. Uwe Boll has made me wary… If you haven’t had the delight of watching a Uwe Boll video game adaptation I’d recommend Alone in the Dark… it truly is awful. Seriously. It’s terrible.

So, I wasn’t sure if I was up for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It has one of those colon separated names… and it stars Gemma Arterton. I don’t like her very much… I don’t know why, she just annoys me when she’s on the screen. Well, to be fair (to me) she was crap in Clash of the Titans, The Boat That Rocked and particularly in Quantum of Solace… that’s probably why I don’t like her.

On the other hand I’d seen the shots from the set, I loved the computer game back in 1989 and I really liked Jerry Bruckheimer’s other big budget films, the Pirates of the Caribbean series so POP:TSoT had a few big things going for it too…

Also I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a ticket to a Walt Disney Ireland preview. That always helps.

Happily, I was not disappointed. First things first though… I really didn’t think the film would bear any resemblance to the games. After all, they’re platformers. How would they turn a platformer into a movie? As a result I had accepted that it was probably going to be Prince of Persia in name only. I was wrong, they did manage to keep the essence of the game… through the magic of parkour. It was pretty cool to see and fans of the game will appreciate it.

Was it a good film though? Personally I thought Prince of Persia was great craic. It was nice to see an action film with a bit more story than usual. I did think it got a little bit long in the middle – it’s just under two hours long – but it’s difficult to see where they could have cut it from. There’s quite a lot going on, which is good, so I guess they could have just shortened some of the scenes. I think it would be fair to say that it’s very similar to the Pirates films in that sense; it’s not just a whole heap of running, fighting and explosions, there’s actually a story and there are real characters in it. Mind you, they’re pretty stereotyped characters, so it’s not as though they had too big a job to do on characterisation.

I didn’t even find Gemma Arterton that annoying. Ok, she was a bit annoying and the chemistry with Gyllenhaal could have been a little better, but it could have been a helluva lot worse too so, small mercies…

Ah, maybe I’m not being fair, there is chemistry there – definitely more than there was with Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans anyway. I think perhaps this brings us to the crux of Prince of Persia though…

… Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic in it. And I’m not just saying that because he buffed up for it. I ain’t into them muscular types anyway… He’s just really good in it. He was funny, believable in the action shots* and he was convincing in the character as well. I wasn’t expecting that – I wouldn’t have pegged him as a action star – but maybe that’s why he’s so good in it. He’s actually an actor, not just a body who can recite lines.

So anyway, I probably don’t need to say much more than that. I thought this was a really good film. I mean it’s not… taxing on the brain in any way. It’s not without its mis-steps either, like I said, it’s a little long and yeah, it’s pretty clichéd. Time travel can be a difficult and confusing subject for some but they took the option to steer clear of anything too messy and that’s probably to their advantage – it’s a subject that can sometimes (not always) alienate wider audiences. At the end of the day it’s a big budget, big action popcorn flick. Don’t expect anything more than that. Don’t short change it too much either though, this could have gone horribly wrong and it didn’t.

I hope it does get a few sequels. Totally deserves them. I just hope they can keep the story up. And keep Jake Gyllenhaal too, he definitely get the chance to do a few “less serious” roles.

Oh I forgot to mention one thing… just so you aren’t surprised. They all have British accents. I’m not sure why but they do, even Gyllenhaal… and might I mention, he’s good at that too.

7.5/10

* obviously there were stuntmen but looking at the shots he was in

review: Alice in Wonderland (3D) (2010)

Nicola-t — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:55:50 +0000

As I mentioned in my “releasing this week” article on Friday, I was really looking forward to seeing this film. Again I’ve been taught that I’m better off keeping my expectations low.

It’s not that Alice in Wonderland is a bad film. Hehe, that’s probably my favourite phrase, I don’t like saying films are bad… but… Alice just wasn’t as brilliant as I wanted it to be. Then again I don’t know what I expected. I mean it looked good… and the story definitely seemed to follow the Alice canon… it just wasn’t as magical as I thought it would be. It wasn’t as fairytale or as wonder-filled as I thought it would be.

I think we could (and should) have spent more time with the Wonderland characters. There was all this stuff at the beginning that I just didn’t care about. I know you need a certain amount of exposition but it didn’t even really seem to tell us where she was coming from and seemed to go on for ages and then when we got to Wonderland we got introduced to a whole load of other characters but we never spent a lot of time with any of them.

In particular I was disappointed by the lack of Mad Hatter or even the White Rabbit, at least there was a bit of the Red Queen… Mostly the film seems to sweep through the supporting characters without giving them much of a chance to leave an impression. I didn’t hate the Alice character but she wasn’t half as much fun as the others so I would have liked more time with them.

Visually, it was beautiful but it wasn’t incredible. I’m starting to wonder if Avatar has spoiled things a bit. Certainly I didn’t feel like the 3D in this was up to much. It was more than you’d see in say, the Toy Story 3D adaptations, but it still wasn’t great. Also the Avatar world was beautiful but also so it was so immersive; in a way that Wonderland here is not…

…But I could be giving Avatar too much credit here as well. It’s entirely possible that Tim Burton just didn’t do that good a job with this. Actually I’m more inclined to believe that… he failed to make me care that much and it wasn’t weird enough to blow me away.

I will say this and I’m not sure if it’s really in its favour – I do think it’s suitable for children. It’s not dark like Burton’s other films. Maybe not for very young children, like those under 6, but certainly for other kids I would think it should be fine. There’s nothing in it that’s worse than what’s in the books, so if you’re fine with your kids hearing those kinds of stories then this will be grand.

I just don’t really know what to think of Tim Burton any more. I think he needs to stay with the fantastical type of stuff but leave the kids stuff behind. An adult version of Alice in Wonderland would have been a better choice for Burton and, I think, for the rest of his cast. I like to think it would have been a lot more engaging and we wouldn’t have gotten all tied up with PG storytelling we didn’t really need.

So, I’m not going to say don’t see it. I know there’s plenty people out there who’ll love it, and certainly bring your kids along. Don’t expect some twisted dark version of Alice, this isn’t what the film is.

6.5/10

review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

Nicola-t — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:55:00 +0000

It’s been said before but I’ll say it again, Harry Potter is a phenomenon, both literary and cinematic. In terms of Irish box office, all of the films so far have been in the top 5 of their year… and this is a country where The Hangover is currently #1 for the year.

I actually don’t know if I’ve seen all the films but I do know that I read 5.5 of the books. I only got about half way through this particular book. I had enjoyed them but after the behemoth that was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix I just couldn’t face another one. I really just thought that HPATOOTP was crying out for a good editor and I couldn’t read another one thinking the same thing. That said, I did know what happens in the end of Half-Blood Prince, a wikipedia vandal spoiled that one for me!

Personally, while I do think it’s a brillant story, I haven’t been that pushed on going to the films. They have been so close to the books that you don’t really need to see them, they are pretty much exactly as you imagine them so what’s the point. I’ll probably go along and see the next two though, just because I never got around to reading the last book. So it was with a certain lack of anticipation that I went along to the Savoy to see it at the Irish première…

… and about 3 hours later (there was a delay) I walked out thinking ok, that was how I imagined it. Which is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it but it seem a bit like… ok.

I really did enjoy it though, I thought it looked brillant and I really like how it was that bit darker. It was well balanced but if I had to criticise I’d say that it almost swept over things too quick… I’m not sure how, since it was 2 and a half hours long… but it did.

My word of warning would be that it is not a stand alone film. Harry Potter is absolutely a series and if you haven’t read the books or seen all the other films, then there really is no point in going. It will not make sense. I think that’s fair enough but I do wonder now if film really was the way to go… given how rushed some part of this one felt, and how they are splitting the last book into two films, perhaps they should have just made it a TV series spanning a few seasons?

Anyway I don’t have that much to say by way of critque to be honest! It was exactly what it said on the tin, the actors were the same as they’ve always been (ok, not amazing), as were the effects (excellent), and the score (suitably dramatic) so as it was a good story well told, I gave it an 8/10 on twitter. On further reflection I’m going to downgrade that to a 7.5, I’m taking that half a point off as it felt a bit like a placeholder film really…

7.5/10

review: The Spirit (2008)

Nicola-t — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:20:00 +0000

I’d never really heard of The Spirit (the film or the comics) until I started seeing the tv ads about a week before it came out… I like the visual style and I’m interested in films of comic book stories but mostly what swung it was that it had Samuel L. Jackson in it. I’ll watch anything with Samuel L. Jackson in it. So I booked the tickets.

I decided to go look it up a little before I saw it… it’s very unusual for me to hear nothing about a film before it comes out particularly one that’s an adaptation. I never read reviews before seeing a film but I’ll cast my eye over IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes to get some idea of what I’m in for. The early signs weren’t good (5.4 on IMDb and 15% on RT) but nothing will stop me seeing a film if I want to see it… I like to make up my own mind.

To be perfectly honest the critics aren’t really wrong… there are lots of things to dislike about The Spirit. I mean seriously, it is terrible… in a way. The dialogue is awful and I don’t where they found Gabriel Macht but they should put him back.

It’s actually hard to describe what’s bad about it because what’s bad is what makes it great. My criticism of it is that some of the dialogue is repetitive, that always annoys me, and it stutters to start. It’s completely outlandish but it takes a while to get to that point. It’s as though Frank Miller started off thinking he’d make serious film noir then realised that there was no hope of that so chose to go careening off the rails.

Sure, it’s annoying but I can’t agree with what Rotten Tomatoes surmised from the critics – that it doesn’t make sense and the characters are unmemorable. It has a very simple plot and the characters are all great fun. Ok, they’re not characters in the sense they have no particular substance, they’re more like interesting props. And they’re all just so odd, it’s great. Samuel L. Jackson is brilliant and for once I didn’t find Scarlett Johansson annoying at all. To be honest herself and Eva Mendes weren’t in it enough I would have liked to laugh at them a little longer. The one character we could have done without was Lorelei Rox (played by Jaime King) I don’t know what was going on there. I can only assume it something from the comics that they felt they had to put in…

I can only thank Frank Miller for going off the rails on this, it is a fun film. It is however, doomed to be a cult classic, if even. There just aren’t that many people out there are who are going to stick with all the madness and there are even less out there who’ll appreciate it. Personally I’ve never seen so many people leave a theatre (that said, I rarely notice people leaving the cinema – I usually watch the film) and it’s a pity because the film does deserve to be seen. At the very least it looks class.

Anyway I, for one, am glad I saw it.

8/10.

PS – I just had a look at the Roger Ebert review of this and he gave it one star. Which is fair enough, his accusations aren’t unfounded, but… he’s got the plot wrong. I don’t know how someone can get the plot wrong – it’s really very simple, you’d have to stop watching the film to get confused… so I gotta say, a little down in my estimation there…