JURASSIC WORLD

Jurassic Park is one of the first films I can remember seeing in the cinema and, as such, holds a special place in my movie memories. This was not an excitement that the sequels Lost world and Jurassic Park 3 ever came close to capturing. Lost World had its moments certainly but the ending, with the suburban T-rex, did a lot to ruin that. 3 came closer to capturing the feel of the original but still fell short. So I approached the fourth film in the series, after a long, long gap, with no small amount of trepidation. Early stories of dino-human hybrids and tame velociraptors did little to ease this apprehension. Thankfully there is no human–dinosaur hybrid (although I’m sure some embarrassing concept drawings will emerge at some point) and the tamed raptors are far from domestic pets (and actually come across as weirdly plausible in the universe of the film). Jurassic World is a film which lives and breathes on pure nostalgia; there are innumerable call backs to the original films from Tim’s night vision goggles to cues in the music score from both the first and second films. None of this is more evident than the film’s climax which still manages to be extremely entertaining despite the nagging suspicion that it was thought up by an excited five year old. A good dose of level-headed humour helps this - Chris Pratt’s Owen plays a big part in this with verbal sparring with Byrce Dallas Howard’s Claire (the two are complete opposites … and you know what that means.) Of course heroes are useless without a villain and this film’s villain, the Indominous Rex (or Frankensarus Rex as I like to think of him) a hybrid creation which, whenever it looks like the good guys have it cornered, keeps pulling new tricks out of its scaly sleeves. The design for the Indominus Rex is very good and makes it look, well not natural because it isn’t, but realistic in the world it inhabits. This could easily have gone wrong in development so let’s just be grateful we don’t have a fifty foot Godzilla sized implausibility. One slight gripe on the dino front is with Owen’s raptor pack, given they all have names (albeit military style code names) it would have been nice if they had a bit more individual characteristics -after all the dino’s are the real stars of the show surely . FINAL VERDICT 7/10 this is a very enjoyable film which makes the wait well worth it and lets us know that the franchise has survived

Read More

Unknown 04:58  No comment

SPY

The spy genre is one that is rife for, and has been, effective parodying, and for the first few minutes it looks likes Spy might be following this vein. Jude Law’s suave Agent Fine (yes that’s his name) bungles a mission due to a mistimed sneeze (brought on by a hay fever allergy) it looks promising. Sadly the film soon drops this promising line for more crude humour. Now that is not to say that Spy’s jokes all fall flat, it’s just that there are glimmers here and there of cleverer jokes that show the potential for better. The best of these is the clever riff on Jason Statham’s roles in the transporter and other action movies with the character of agent Ford, an inept blowhard who is constantly going on about his many varied, and highly improbably exploits, but who when his big moment comes gets his coat caught in a door. Another thing about Spy is the constant swearing, now I’m no prude but it gets rather wearying when every second word is a curse word. With comedies I tend to see this as a sign of insecurity -were not sure our jokes are funny enough so we’ll just chuck in lots of swearing. It’s not as if the film’s central heroine Susan Cooper (Melissa Mcarthy) is the really the kind of character that constant cussing suits. On the whole Spy is an enjoyable comedy that, although it misses some opportunities for greater satire, does accomplish its mission of entertaining its audience. FINAL VERDICT 6/10

Read More

Unknown 17:45  No comment

DANNY COLLINS

When we first see the titular Danny Collins he is crooning out sub-standard songs to an audience of crazed elderly women (there’s a Rod Stewart joke in here somewhere). A posthumous letter from John Lennon (in response to a an interview he gave as a young musician) prompts him to revaluate his life Danny Collins is a film that certainly benefits from star power, Al Pacino injects equal parts wiry humour and emotional vulnerability into the central character lending to the film’s emotional weights. Of course it would be wrong to give Pacino all the credit in the performance department, Bobby Cannavale gives an emotional performance as Danny’s illegitimate son Tom, resentful of the father who has just waltzed back into his life and yet concealing a pain of his own. Annette Benning has very good chemistry with Pacino as Mary, the hotel manager, who feels an emotional connection with him. These performances work in the film’s favour to paper over some of the more clichéd elements of the plot. The ‘dissatisfied musician off to find new inspiration’ isn’t exactly a new one, nor is the ‘family he has been neglecting’. Danny Collin’s uses its characters effectively to give a familiar story some much needed emotional weight and give the audience more from a story that, in less capable hands, could definitely have been less. It also helps that the film’s abrupt ending (something I’m not usually a fan of) picks just the right time for the curtain call. One aside I would like to note is the speculation as to what kind of film we would have gotten if Steve Carrell, who was originally cast as Tom, had given. Before seeing his performance in Foxcatcher (2014) I would have said that the film had a lucky escape, but now I am forced to wonder what the film would have been like with Carrell. FINAL VERDICT 6/10 it might not hit all the right notes but it still manages to make a song and dance of it.

Read More

Unknown 08:23  No comment

TOMORROWLAND A WORLD BEYOND

I have to confess that going into this one I was not particularly optimistic given that I was not a particular fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean series (I liked the first one well enough though the rest were mediocre) which was based on a theme park ride . The idea of a film based vaguely on one of the themed areas at Disneyland (the titular Tomorrowland) did not exactly fill me with confidence. I was therefore pleasantly surprised to find that this was not the all-out commercial that I feared it might be. Much of this is because the film keeps itself focused on its characters and their goals (at least for the first half, but we’ll get to that). We get to see the mystery unfold through the central character Casey (Britt Robertson) who once she finds out about Tomorrowland’s existence is determined to go there. It also helps that the script has a good vein of humour running through it, the most effective examples coming from the verbal sparring between Frank (George Clooney) and Athena (Raffey Cassidy). This stops the movie from taking itself too seriously and ensures that when it does try for some tugging on the heart strings it does not come across as too forced. The main problem with Tomorrland is that it seems to lose the thread of its story just as it’s getting towards the climax. The ending feels very rushed and the main antagonist’s motivation (Hugh Laurie) doesn’t really make a great deal of sense. This is a shame because there is one very emotional scene in this part of the film that works very well and had it been part of a better-rounded finale could have ended things on a real high note. FINAL VERDICT 5/10 there is a good deal to enjoy in this film but the ending does a great deal to halt the momentum it has built up

Read More

Unknown 08:17  No comment