Skyscraper (2018)

2019 #35
Rawson Marshall Thurber | 102 mins | download (HD+3D) | 2.40:1 | USA / English, Cantonese & Mandarin | 12 / PG-13

If you were to describe a movie as “Die Hard in a building, from the director of Dodgeball”, you’d expect some kind of spoof. Not unreasonably: “Die Hard in an X” is (or was) a fairly common movie pitch, but the original is set in a building, so clearly someone’s making a joke (it’s me! And also everyone else who used this line to describe Skyscraper); and Dodgeball is, well, a comedy. Combine the two and you’ve definitely got a parody movie… right? Turns out, no.

That said, Skyscraper certainly owes a debt to its genre predecessors. It stars Dwayne Johnson as a security consultant employed to okay the world’s new tallest building for its imminent opening. When a group of terrorists break in and set the building on fire, endangering not only the rich dude behind the building’s construction but also Johnson’s family, it’s up to our guy — who used to be in the military or SWAT or something, I forget — to save the day. Plenty of running and jumping ensues, as you well know if you’ve seen that poster that went viral as people tried to work out if the angles add up. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t.

That jumping scene does actually occur in the film, though. Does he make it? You guess. Does it make any more sense on screen? Eh, who knows? Frankly, who cares? Skyscraper is not a movie overly concerned with realism. Or originality. It’s not just the obvious stuff nabbed from Die Hard and/or The Towering Inferno (I’ve never seen the latter, but it’s been cited as an influence) — tropes and clichés abound. If you’re in a miserable mood, the endless parade of familiarity will likely frustrate any viewer. Conversely, if you’re in a forgiving frame of mind, it executes them at least as well as any other derivative action-adventure blockbuster.

The film doesn’t acknowledge or spoof these glaring rip-offs — as I said, it’s not actually a parody — but I think everyone involved was aware that it’s all a bit silly. Or maybe I’m being kind. Maybe I think the film is so obviously silly that I can’t believe they meant it to be read seriously. Either way, it’s at least as daft as you’d expect it to be, but that means it’s pretty fun if your expectations are right. It’s an undemanding 90-minutes-or-so of derring-do, where the scenarios are so extreme and OTT they can’t elicit much tension, but occasionally achieve a modicum of suspense nonetheless. And as so much of it is about doing things at great distances above the ground, it’s highly effective in 3D. One near-miss moment even made me gasp, so it was obviously doing something right with its sense of jeopardy.

Skyscraper is available on Sky Cinema from today.

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Ready Player One (2018)

2018 #183
Steven Spielberg | 140 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 2.40:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13

Steven Spielberg’s latest foray into the style of popular moviemaking he helped create in the ‘70s and ’80s — the summer tentpole action-adventure mega-blockbuster — is an adaptation of a novel so bedded in the popular movies of the ‘70s and ‘80s that the whole thing is a bit too meta: it’s a movie obsessed with the brilliance of ‘80s pop culture, made by one of the primary creators of that culture. At least Spielberg insisted that all references to his own work be cut, otherwise it could’ve become a mite self-congratulatory. Though it does mean that Spielberg becomes conspicuous by his absence in a Spielberg movie. Oh, it’s enough to make your head spin…

The plot, then: in the year 2045 the real world is a mess, so people spend most of their time in the virtual reality playground of the OASIS. When the game’s creator died, he left behind the first in a series of challenges, and whoever completes them will inherit the OASIS itself. (If you’re thinking, “isn’t that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but with video games?”, I guess we’ll chalk that up as just another reference. (If you’re thinking, “isn’t that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory but with video games?”, tsk, go read more Dahl.)) Unfortunately, no one’s even been able to crack the first clue… until someone does, of course, because this is an action-adventure blockbuster, not some existential mood piece on the futility of trying to please the dead… or, you know, something. Anyway, cue lots of whizzy CG antics, with CGI that’s actually allowed to look like CGI because it’s all set in a CG environment — I bet the animators were thrilled when that brief came along, because who doesn’t love their job being made easier?

Unfortunately, the same amount of effort seems to have gone into the screenplay. Some of this no doubt stems from the original work: the world of 2045 makes no plausible sense (check out the ghost of 82’s review for more on this theme), and there’s the least convincing romantic relationship outside of a George Lucas movie. Worst for me was something a screenplay can readily fix, the dialogue, but which here is frequently full of clunky, hand-holding exposition. This rears its head not just when establishing the film’s world and its rules, which would be bad enough, but also for relatively minor and easily-followed plot points throughout. It’s like the film has been written so even a goldfish could follow it — you don’t need to remember the start of a sentence because its end will explain the same thing again. Equally ill-considered is the movie’s apparently pro-gaming stance. Certainly, a lot of gamers seem to have embraced it as a film that understands their culture; and yet its final message is, “go spend more time in the real world, ya nerds!”

And yet, I mostly enjoyed it. It may not hang together if you engage your brain, but as a bit of fluff it’s largely a fun virtual romp. There are more Easter eggs than a Cadbury’s warehouse in January, which are fun for geeks like me to spot, and those whooshy visuals are even more entertaining when viewed in 3D, which (as Blu-ray.com’s review put it) is “a compelling demonstration of why the format is worth keeping alive.”

But, even though I liked it overall, I can’t help feeling it was a bit of a waste of Spielberg’s time. It’s not that he’s done a bad job — he’s still a god amongst men when it comes to crafting a blockbuster movie — but I also think the end result lacks a certain something that his best work contains. I don’t really know why, but for some reason I feel like he should’ve spent the time it took to make this doing something else, and left this film to be helmed by someone… less important. I mean, there are a lot of other filmmakers who could’ve done a fine job with the material, and wouldn’t have felt the need to cut all the book’s references to Spielberg’s films either.

Ready Player One is available on Sky Cinema as of this weekend.

Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

2018 #247
Peyton Reed | 118 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 2.39:1 + 1.90:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13

After the huge (in every respect) Avengers: Infinity War, the comically-minded Ant-Man and the Wasp feels like a palate cleanser for the MCU; a bit of light entertainment to help smooth the long gap between the Avengers film’s devastating cliffhanger and 2019’s double whammy of Captain Marvel (trailer today!) and Avengers 4 (trailer Wednesday!) Some people didn’t take too kindly to the ‘abrupt’ tonal swing (they’re completely separate movies, so that’s a pretty daft complaint to have, frankly), but I thought this sequel was a ton of fun.

It actually takes place before Infinity War anyhow: Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), aka Ant-Man, is finally coming to the end of two years of house arrest, his punishment for being involved in the events of Civil War. He’s also been forbidden from contacting the inventor of the Ant-Man suit, Dr Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), or his daughter, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), who are wanted fugitives; but when Scott has a vision of Hank’s wife and Hope’s mother, Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer), from his trip to the Quantum Realm (see the first Ant-Man), he becomes involved in Hope and Hank’s attempt to travel their and rescue Janet. Along the way they also have to deal with black market dealer Sonny Burch (Walton Goggins), who wants to monetise the tech he’s been helping them build, and a mysterious masked figure known as Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who can phase through solid objects and is trying to steal said new tech.

Got all that? I haven’t even touched on some of the other subplots that get thrown in for good measure. For something that’s clearly been designed as a light romp, Ant-Man and the Wasp certainly has a lot of plot going on. That might be part of what keeps it romp-y, mind: with so much to get through, there’s always something happening, it’s always pushing forward. It arguably gets a bit bogged down having to line everything up in the middle, with some scenes that lean a little heavily on exposition, but it always finds time for a gag or two. Personally, I’ll let quite a lot slide if I’m having fun, and this keeps the fun quotient high throughout.

Entertainment is definitely the name of the game here, and to that end director Peyton Reed and the five credited screenwriters (including star Paul Rudd) set out to tickle various emotional responses. The most obvious one is, as mentioned, the funny — there are laugh-out-loud moments here, as well as a never-ending barrage of one-liners and comedic business. But it also takes time to be emotive and heartfelt. Scott’s relationship with his daughter (a charming and likeable performance by young Abby Ryder Fortson) is a major character point, and a key touchstone for a definite parent/child theme across the movie. What we might actually ‘learn’ about parent/child relationships from all this, I don’t know, but it feeds some surprisingly heartwarming material at times.

Thirdly, there are thrills in the shape of multiple fantastic action sequences. Hope dons the Wasp suit — all the powers of Ant-Man, plus wings and blasters — shrinking and growing at speed to kick plenty of ass, though Ghost’s ability to just phase through objects presents a unique challenge. There’s a heist sequence, too, recalling the overall theme of the first movie… though as it’s in a primary school and occurs while Scott’s suit is malfunctioning, it’s played more for laughs. Well, so’s almost everything in this movie, but it works. Best of them all is the extended car chase finale, with the good guys’ size-changing vehicles used for some highly inventive antics, plus all sorts of other goings-on in a race with multiple pursuers. I’ve seen some criticise this part for going on too long, but I thought it was just right, and is a strong contender to be remembered as an all-timer chase sequence.

Often when I watch stuff in 3D nowadays I don’t actually mention it in my reviews — I still enjoy the experience more often than not (some stuff underwhelms, naturally), but I know most people don’t have the option and, frankly, it’s rarely essential. Well, the 3D probably isn’t essential here either, but it is superb, really adding to the scale and impact of the big scenes — when things are switching sizes all over the place, that’s no bad thing. Plus it’s clearly effective in just regular moments, too: the film’s opening shot is just of a house, but the dimensionality is still palpable. Top work by whoever did the post-conversion.

Plus, the 3D Blu-ray comes with the benefit of the film’s shifting IMAX ratio, where the frame expands upwards from 2.39:1 to 1.90:1 for certain scenes. This is commonplace for Marvel films nowadays, which means sometimes it seems to occur just for the sake of it, but Reed has put the effort in to make great use of the larger image. Okay, it’s no surprise that it’s used for the action scenes (including opening up for a whole half-hour-or-so at the film’s climax), but he’s mindful of the transitions between ratios and the effect that can have — at least twice the actual moment the film moves from one ratio to another is as effective as the bigger image itself. Some people hate shifting aspect ratios on Blu-rays, I know, but I love ’em, and this is a great example of why.

In the year of Black Panther and Infinity War, the relatively frothy Ant-Man and the Wasp was always destined to be “the other one”. But just because it’s not Big or Meaningful doesn’t mean it has no merit. Far from it. Whether you want to view it as a palate cleansing instalment of the MCU or as a standalone adventure, I think it’s pitched almost perfectly as a fun, entertaining ride of a movie.

The first Ant-Man is, to date, the only MCU film to make it onto one of my year-end best-of lists. The way things have gone in 2018, I won’t be surprised if this sequel is the fourth.

Ant-Man and the Wasp is out on DVD and Blu-ray (regular, 3D, and 4K UHD flavours) in the UK today.

The Knockout Monthly Update for November 2018

When Rocky snuck its way onto my “What Do You Mean You Haven’t Seen” list back in January, I didn’t have particularly high hopes — I’ve never liked boxing movies, and I was only going to watch it because I ‘should’. Well, in the eight months since I watched it I’ve gone on to watch all six sequels, ending this month when I gave Creed full marks precisely because of how much it was a Rocky movie. And that’s why this month is a knockout.

Also, because I watched a tonne of films.

#223 Their Finest (2016)
#224 Going for Golden Eye (2017)
#225 Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 3D (2018)
#226 The Other Side of the Wind (2018)
#227 Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero (1998)
#228 Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013)
#229 Have a Good Funeral, My Friend… Sartana Will Pay (1970), aka Buon funerale amigos!… paga Sartana
#230 Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
#231 Attack the Block (2011)
#232 Outlaw King (2018)
#233 Incredibles 2 3D (2018)
#233a Bao 3D (2018)
#234 They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)
#235 Paper Moon (1973)
#236 Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)
#237 The Greatest Showman (2017)
#238 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018)
#239 The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013), aka Kaguyahime no monogatari
#240 Redline (2009)
#241 Zatoichi’s Cane Sword (1967), aka Zatôichi tekka-tabi
#242 Creed (2015)
#243 Danger: Diabolik (1968), aka Diabolik
#244 Boy (2010)
#245 Dad’s Army (2016)
#246 Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018)
#247 Ant-Man and the Wasp 3D (2018)

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• With 25 new films watched, November is the fourth best month of 2018. That’s not particularly impressive — it’s only just inside the year’s top third — but on an all-time scale…
• That number makes November 2018 my joint fifth best month of all time (tied with August 2007), putting it in the top 5% of all months. Sounds a lot more impressive put like that, doesn’t it?
• It’s the best November ever by some margin (the previous was 2016’s 14), in the process dragging the month’s average from 8.8 to 10.3. That leaves just July with an average below 10.0 (but it’s on 9.9, so hopefully I’ll get it over the line next year).
• Also, as this is the first November with over 20 films, that leaves just December as the only month never to have reached the 20s. Will next month be the first? Only time will tell.
• This month’s Blindspot film: aliens invade a London council estate in Attack the Block. The aliens may be violent, feral monsters, but they didn’t count on chavs…

The 42nd Monthly Arbitrary Awards

Favourite Film of the Month
There were many films I really liked this month, including a couple that surprised me, and ending with two colourful superhero movies that I enjoyed as much or more than the genre’s more serious-minded efforts earlier in the year. But, as the introduction to this post probably made clear, the victor has to be Creed.

Least Favourite Film of the Month
Where Creed worked because it had respect for its legacy, this month’s loser is a film that puts on the surface sheen of caring about its forebear, but doesn’t demonstrate that reverence — because it’s pretty rubbish. The film in question is 2016’s Dad’s Army remake.

Most Listened-to Song from a Movie of the Month
I thought this was going to be Last Breath by Future from the Creed soundtrack, which makes nice use of the famous Rocky theme to give that inspirational anthem a modern spin. But iTunes informs me the actual winner is the number I highlighted in my Greatest Showman review, the almost-titular The Greatest Show. Well, I did bung it on loop while I was writing that review…

Most Surprising Male Nudity of the Month
Sure, everyone was talking about Chris Pine’s penis in Outlaw King, but did you know Teen Titans Go! To the Movies features baby Superman’s naked, wiggling arse? Okay, he’s just a cartoon, but still.

The Audience Award for Most-Viewed New Post of the Month
November 2018 was my second largest month ever for views and visitors, much of that powered by the continued popularity of my Bodyguard review (which has now entered my top ten of all time). As for new posts, regular readers may know that the winner of this award is often a review of a just-released film posted while that film is still brand spanking new. So when I posted my review of Bohemian Rhapsody a whole 18 days after its UK debut and 9 days after its US release, I didn’t expect much hit-wise. But, lo and behold, a mega-popular film is a mega-popular film, and Bo Rhap bested the likes of Outlaw King (a review I posted the day after it popped up on Netflix) and They Shall Not Grow Old (a review I posted the morning after it was on TV) to be November’s most-viewed new post.

Bao	Bohemian Rhapsody
Creed	Darkest Hour
The Greatest Showman	The Hunt
Incredibles 2	Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Outlaw King	Persepolis
RoboCop	Rocky Balboa
They Shall Not Grow Old	Zatoichi’s Pilgrimage

The Past Month on TV #40

This month, a few recent blockbusters I watched for the first time in 3D…

#42 Jurassic World 3D (2015)
#43 Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
#44 Thor: Ragnarok 3D (2017)
#45 Justice League 3D (2017)

People seem to have become increasingly sour towards Jurassic World in the years since it came out, but I still think it’s pretty great, a blockbuster ride with sufficient spectacle. In 3D, the extra dimension is superb, really adding to the film’s scale.

The same can be said of Thor: Ragnarok, which also benefited from a shifting IMAX aspect ratio. I enjoyed it even more on a second viewing — having been reminded of what a ‘normal’ Marvel movie is like tonally by Black Panther and Infinity War, Taika Waititi’s influence was much more pronounced.

Conversely, I was a bit more attuned to Justice League’s flaws this time around. Not that I was unaware of them before, and I still mostly enjoyed it, but it’s so clearly a compromised movie. Its 3D is fine, but rarely as spectacular as a film of this scope should be.

2018’s record-obliterating total.

Plus, could the combined final tallies of the main list and Rewatchathon result in— no, shh, it’s a secret…

Bao (2018)

2018 #233a
Domee Shi | 8 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 1.85:1 | USA / silent | PG / G

This short film from Pixar played before Incredibles 2 in cinemas, so naturally it accompanies it on Blu-ray too. In it, a Chinese-Canadian woman is steaming dumplings (the titular bao) when one comes to life and grows into a little dough boy, who she begins to raise as a son.

As with many of the best short films, Bao takes a simple theme (though to say what the real core of the short is would give away some of the ending) and executes it succinctly. As is often the case with Pixar’s work, it aims at packing an emotional wallop, using it’s fantastical story to elucidate a real-life situation. It also doesn’t stint visually, with an overall animation quality that wouldn’t be out of place in a feature.

Bao is perhaps most notable as the first Pixar short to be directed by a woman. It only took 35 years and 35 shorts to get there. Considering some of the recent stories about the company, and the reputation it was gaining as a “boy’s club”, I guess this couldn’t come at a better time, though perhaps it’s to their credit that they didn’t seem to harp on about this aspect (I stumbled across the fact on Wikipedia). Given the quality and clarity of work on display, perhaps writer-director Domee Shi will get to be Pixar’s first female feature director too.

Incredibles 2 (2018)

2018 #233
Brad Bird | 118 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 2.39:1 | USA / English | PG / PG

Brad Bird — the director behind The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and not letting them release the IMAX version of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on Blu-ray (I will never be over that) — returns to the movie that made his name with what must be Pixar’s most-requested (probably “only requested”, actually) sequel, Incredibles 2.

It’s been 14 years for us viewers since the last Parr family adventure, but in-universe it’s been no time at all — literally, as Incredibles 2 picks up by recapping the closing moments of The Incredibles, which saw the eponymous family of superheroes about to face off against villain The Underminer. That confrontation goes disastrously awry, landing the family in a whole heap of trouble; but it also attracts the attention of media mogul Winston Deavor (Bob Odenkirk), who believes superheroes should be made legal again. Recruiting parents Bob and Helen Parr — aka Mr Incredible (Craig T. Nelson) and Elastigirl (Holly Hunter) — and their friend Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) to his cause, the first step in Deavor’s public relations plan revolves around public crimefighting appearances by Elastigirl… alone. This leaves Bob holding the baby, literally, as he’s stuck at home with the kids while his wife gets to have all the fun.

At its most basic, Incredibles 2 is a gender-reversed do-over of the first movie… to a fault, in fact. The closing moments of the first film suggest a “family of superheroes” future for the Parrs, with them battling crime together. The sequel immediately works to put everything back in its place: the kids aren’t allowed to use their powers (until they must for the climax, natch); one of the parents gets to go off and be a superhero, while the other has to stay at home. The difference is it’s the man staying at home, and where Helen was consummate at looking after the kids, Bob finds it a challenge — because Men, amirite?

Part of what made The Incredibles so successful as a movie was it mixed a plausible family dynamic in with the superhero capers, but here that home life aspect is what holds the film back, because Bob’s struggles with the kids are 66.6% cliché. His son struggles with homework, and Bob doesn’t know how to do it either! His daughter has boyfriend problems! The 33.3% that works comes courtesy of baby Jack-Jack, who is beginning to develop powers — plural. As the middle of the film drags on, becoming a bit “we get the point!” with Bob’s familial woes, the bright spot is continually Jack-Jack’s humorous madcap antics.

Mind you, the actual storyline in the superhero section isn’t much better. It revolves around the hunt for a mysterious villain, which naturally ends in a twist reveal… but as their true identity is pretty obvious as soon as they first appear earlier on, that reveal is a long time coming. Depending how critical you want to be, this part of the movie also has a lot of thematic points that seem to peter out or had nowhere to go in the first place. Is the film trying to say something about our addiction to screens and media? About the merits of vigilantism over bureaucracy? The dangers of being reliant on ‘higher powers’ to look after us? It touches on these things, and more, but they’re only given passing reference. Okay, yes, when you boil it down this is “just” a kids’ action-adventure movie and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much depth of thought… but Pixar are always hailed as being much more than that. Is it too much to expect that, if they’re going to introduce a topic or perspective, they’ll also at least close it out somehow?

Yet for all these story woes, Incredibles 2 does indeed work as a colourful action-adventure movie; gloriously so. The action sequences are absolutely thrilling, beautifully choreographed and constructed. They’re even better in 3D, too — Elastigirl’s stretchy powers seem to have been made for the format. And while the middle of the film may refuse to pay off the “family of superheroes” thing, the opening sequence and climax let them all in on the action, and it’s all the better for it.

What made The Incredibles one of Pixar’s best films, and one of the best films in the whole superhero genre, was the way it combined the action and adventure with family dynamics and concerns, seamlessly marrying the two. The sequel lacks the clarity and connectedness that first movie boasted, working very well as a fun superhero action movie but struggling as a family comedy-drama. It’s still an entertaining time (the sometimes-slow mid-section aside), but it’s not the genre and studio standout that the first film was.

Incredibles 2 was released on DVD and Blu-ray (2D & 3D, but no 4K) in the UK this week.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

2018 #225
J.A. Bayona | 128 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 2.39:1 | USA / English | 12 / PG-13

It’s three years after the events of Jurassic World and the dinosaurs who overran Isla Nublar have basically been left alone while the rest of the world goes about its business. But now there’s a problem: the island’s previously inactive volcano is about to erupt, wiping out the dinosaurs… again. Former director of the park Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) now works for a charity struggling to convince people to save the dinos, where she’s contacted by Mills (Rafe Spall), a representative of Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the one-time business partner of park founder Hammond who helped initiate the whole bringing-dinosaurs-back-from-the-dead palaver. They’re sending people to the island to rescue as many dinosaurs as they can, but they need Claire’s help. Naturally she agrees, and so along with ex-velociraptor-wrangler Owen (Chris Pratt) and a motley crew of supporting cast members, they head back to the island… but it soon turns out Mills & co may have a nasty ulterior motive for wanting to save the dinosaurs…

Although there are shades of the first Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World, in this setup, I think Fallen Kingdom does enough different that any similarities aren’t excessively problematic. Indeed, it’s got its own array of flaws for us to contend with first. It’s like someone assembled all the ingredients specified by a recipe, but instead of following the instructions they just bunged everything together haphazardly, and so the resulting dish seems like it should be right but is somehow just… wrong.

To be less metaphorical, I think Fallen Kingdom is built on decent ideas and concepts, and it’s executed with some stylish direction by franchise newcomer J.A. Bayona (including a couple of particularly good sequences, like a tense oner in a sinking gyrosphere), but it’s all let down by a terrible screenplay from Jurassic World co-writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. The story is poorly constructed — not in the sense that it’s unfollowable, but in that it’s wonkily put-together, frequently showcasing scenes that are nothing but exposition, with a pace and emphasis that feels unbalanced. Not unrelatedly, the quality of the dialogue is very weak, lacking in character or plausibility, or, failing the latter, memorableness. Sure, there’s the odd line the talented cast can make work (Howard gets a mini-monologue about the first time you saw a dinosaur that’s almost really good), but most of what comes out of their mouth is perfunctory. If they’d bothered to hire some solid writers, instead of just People Who Have Ideas, then maybe those ideas could’ve been turned into a cohesive whole that’d be a worthy sequel. Heck, even getting someone in to polish up this draft could’ve helped a lot. Instead, Fallen Kingdom is a bunch of decent concepts for plots, subplots, themes, and visuals, haphazardly bunged together with half-arsed execution.

In terms of particularly egregious examples, the standout for me is the subplot with Lockwood’s granddaughter, Maisie. No spoilers, but her storyline is no more than a (too clearly telegraphed) twist and a thematic resolution, which is in need of an actual story to give it meaning and work it up to being an actual theme of the movie in the way they clearly want it to be. What could be a meaningful finale for her character is rendered moot by the fact it has no genuine build-up, not to mention they had to throw another lead character’s moral development under a bus in order to get there (for a more spoilersome discussion of this point, check out Andrew Ellard’s Tweetnotes).

It’s not just subplots that falter: the inciting incident (volcano is going to wipe out dinos; do we have a responsibility to save what we created, or is this nature course-correcting?) is a very rich premise with potential for debate; but other than stating those two positions, the film does nothing with it. It’s just there, an excuse to go back to the island and get the dinosaurs out, ready for the next part of the plot. This is probably why many viewers seem to find the first half perfunctory, but the second half — where the film takes a sharp turn into a Gothic-ish ‘haunted’ house movie — to be something fresh. Like so many of the film’s other ideas, I think it’s a good concept bungled in execution. It coasts by on imagery alone, Bayona achieving the look he’s after, but without Connolly and Trevorrow backing it up by making the situation work as a story, or for the characters. One example from this section: the scene of Maisie hiding in bed as the the dinosaur inches closer, which was featured so widely in the trailers. It’s a great visual, combining childhood fears and notions of protection (“if I’m under the covers nothing can get me”) with genuine threat and terror… but the film has to jump through hoops to make it happen — it’s only there because someone had an idea for the visual and they shoehorned it in, not because it makes any sense in context.

On a similar level is Jeff Goldblum’s cameo as fan-favourite character Dr Ian Malcolm. He’s ostensibly contributing to that save-or-not debate I mentioned, but as that goes nowhere his appearance is equally pointless; no more than fan service — it feels like a tease; an excuse to put him in the trailer. A short featurette included on the Blu-ray gives some indication of what the filmmakers were actually trying for here (some of Malcolm’s dialogue is lifted from the writing of Michael Crichton, the goal being to link back to the franchise’s originator and reiterate his “science gone wrong” theme), but it doesn’t come off. Worst of all, I didn’t feel like Goldblum was actually playing Malcolm — it’s the same actor, obviously, but not the same character. Was he phoning it in? He was only on set for one day, after all. Or maybe it was just terribly written. I mean, on the evidence of the rest of the film…

Fallen Kingdom is not the outright disaster some have painted it as, but it could’ve been much better. There are so many things it almost gets right — for another example, it’s very much planned as Part 2 of a trilogy, but it feels like real effort has been made to make it a film that works on its own; that isn’t merely a two-hour exercise in getting us from where Part 1 ends to how they want Part 3 to begin. That’s admirable (not everyone seems to bother), but undermined by how much the film feels in need of major structural work at a screenplay level. Ultimately, I think your tolerance for “good ideas but poor execution” will dictate exactly how you feel about the finished movie.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is released on DVD and Blu-ray (regular, 3D, and 4K UHD flavours) in the UK today.

Gods of Egypt (2016)

2018 #198
Alex Proyas | 127 mins | download (HD+3D) | 2.40:1 | USA & Australia / English | 12 / PG-13

If you remember Gods of Egypt, it’s likely because it was excoriated on its release back in 2016.* Many were predisposed to hate it before it even came out thanks to its whitewashed cast: as the title might indicate, it’s set in Ancient Egypt and many of the characters are Egyptian gods, but most of the lead cast are white; and of those that aren’t, none are Egyptian. Even if that didn’t bother you, it was slated for its poor dialogue, flat performances, bland direction, reliance on green screen, and cheap-looking CGI. Oh dear. But every film is for someone and there’s someone for every film, and it turns out I’m one of the few (the very, very few) who actually rather enjoyed Gods of Egypt.

Based more on legend than any relation to history whatsoever (in one rather stunning sequence, we see that the world is, in fact, flat), it’s set in a time when super-powered gods walked the Earth among humans. Well, less “among”, more “ruling over”. A squabble between the gods sees nasty-piece-of-work Set (Gerard Butler) steal both the throne and eyes of heir-apparent Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), before going on to steal the abilities of other gods to make himself more powerful. Human thief Bek (Brenton Thwaites — between this and Pirates 5, dude must’ve thought he was gonna be a star… ’til they came out) doesn’t care for the gods, but he wants to free the love of his life (Courtney Eaton and her cleavage — I don’t want to be lecherous, but seriously, her costumes are all boobs, boobs, boobs), and the only way to do it involves stealing back one of Horus’ eyes and using it to persuade the god to take on Set.

And that’s the part of the plot that’s kinda reasonable. No, really: it gets a whole lot madder as it goes on. In fact, everything about it is so consistently batshit crazy — the concepts, the plot, the visuals — that it wins you over with its utter barminess. Or maybe it won’t win you over. Maybe you’ll think all those things make it utterly awful. As I said at the start, you certainly wouldn’t be alone. But the “you couldn’t make it up (except someone did)” mentalness of it will win over a certain kind of viewer. A viewer like me.

I’m not really going to deny any of those criticisms I cited in the opening paragraph, because it is kind of a terrible film… but if you embrace it, it’s also campy fun. It’s a film where the men are burly, the women are breasty, and the CGI is blurry, but there’s a certain irreverence that stops it from being stodgy, and a light-hearted tone to the dialogue that occasionally hits home. For all the whizzy video game-ish visuals, it’s an old-fashioned adventure quest at heart, capable of pulling off the occasional thrilling sequence or amusing verbal exchange.

All of that said, one does have to wonder how director Alex Proyas ended up here. If you don’t recognise the name, he was once known for visionary noir-ish filmmaking in the likes of The Crow and Dark City. At some point he wound up sidelined into less invigorating fare, like Will Smith vehicle I, Robot and Nic Cage vehicle Knowing, but while neither were groundbreaking they had a certain something (and, personally, I quite liked them both). Here, though, the direction is so… uninspired. Anyone competent could’ve made it. And people say filmmaking is collaborative and directors don’t deserve all the credit, but bear this in mind: Gods of Egypt and critically-beloved Oscar winner Mad Max: Fury Road share 295 cast & crew members.

I don’t know who deserves credit for the film’s 3D, but it’s consistently excellent and occasionally spectacular. That’s the benefit of almost all the film being created in a computer, I guess. But still, the colourful visuals and wide-open locales really help with the effect — what looked gaudy and ludicrous in 2D trailers… still pretty much is, let’s be honest. But it’s less bad when it’s doing so much to help create an epic-scaled dimensionality.

I know I should hate this silly, cheap-looking, over-CGI’d, whitewashed hot mess… but I actually thought it was a lot of daft, campy fun. There are plenty of very good movies that I’ll likely never get round to watching again — probably some great ones, even — but I’d wager Gods of Egypt is going to end up in my Blu-ray collection someday. In 3D, of course.

The UK network premiere of Gods of Egypt is on Channel 4 tonight at 9pm.

* I was going to say “summer 2016”, but that wouldn’t be entirely correct: weirdly, although it was a February/March release in much of the world, it somehow got given summer status in the UK and Ireland (and, er, Spain…?) ^

The LEGO Ninjago Movie (2017)

2018 #167
Charlie Bean, Paul Fisher & Bob Logan | 101 mins | Blu-ray (3D) | 2.40:1 | USA & Denmark / English | U / PG

After the somewhat surprising success of The LEGO Movie, both critically (96% on Rotten Tomatoes) and commercially ($469.2 million worldwide), Warner Bros and LEGO realised they were on to a good thing and so did what any movie studio does in such circumstances: plowed ahead not only with a sequel (out next February), but also spin-offs. The first one, The LEGO Batman Movie, continued the trend (90% Tomatometer; $312 million gross); the next one — this one — …didn’t. With a rotten 55% on the Tomatometer and a worldwide box office take of just $123.1 million (less than either previous film’s domestic gross alone), what went wrong? Did they flood the market with LEGO movies too quickly? Was Ninjago just not as attractive or familiar a brand as Batman or LEGO generally? Or is it just not a very good movie? Well, I’ll come to that.

The film sets its scene in Ninjago City, which is constantly terrorised by villain Garmadon (Justin Theroux) and his armies. Fortunately for the good folk of Ninjago, they have a team of mech-driving colour-coded super-ninjas to protect them. In real life, those ninjas are just high school kids, and not particular popular ones — especially Lloyd (Dave Franco), aka the Green Ninja, who everyone knows is Garmadon’s son. When Lloyd’s daddy issues lead him to slip up, the ninjas have to save the city — and, in the process, Lloyd and Garmadon have to sort out their differences.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie is quite clear that the focus of its story is the relationship between Lloyd and Garmadon, but it’s perhaps a little too focused on that. There are a bunch of other characters thrown into the mix — Lloyd’s five teammates; their master, Wu (Jackie Chan); Lloyd’s mother (Olivia Munn) — but the film doesn’t afford the screen time to do any of them justice. In fact, the film probably would’ve been a lot better if it had cut back on the number of beats in the Lloyd/Garmadon story and devoted a bit more time to giving everyone a little subplot. If it kept busy doing that it might’ve picked up the pace a bit as well, because although Ninjago is more or less the same length as the two previous LEGO movies, it feels much longer.

Partly this is because it just doesn’t feel as inspired as the other movies — it lacks the spark of ingenuity that ignited their characters, humour, and stories. At times it feels entirely half-hearted. For example, Lloyd’s big mistake makes his teammates all hate him, but they immediately go on a journey with him anyway; Master Wu says the length of that journey will give them time to come back round to Lloyd, but the film never bothers to suggest that’s happening — as soon as they need to all get along again, they do. Clearly this was meant to have some emotional effect on Lloyd (even the handful of people who used to like him don’t anymore), but that’s never really given the emphasis to be felt either — so what was the point of them falling out with him in the first place?

That said, it does muster suitable amusement in places, though not as regularly as the other two films. And if you’re a fan of Eastern genre movies — kung fu, giant monsters/mechs, samurai, etc — the whole shape and style of the film is a broad reference to that kind of cinema, which is fun for those in the know. Unfortunately, it comes up somewhat short in the action stakes — the mech sequences seem to be inspired by the Michael Bay school of throw tonnes of visual information at the screen and whizz through it at lightning speed, making some of it hard to distinguish, even with the separation benefits of 3D.

Despite all these negatives, I didn’t actively dislike The LEGO Ninjago Movie. It’s good in places, most of it ticking along at a level of passable entertainment — but it ticks along for too long, it’s not funny enough, and it can’t bring it all together in the way the other two films did. It suffers most of all from those comparisons, because it’s simply not a patch on the other two LEGO movies.

The LEGO Ninjago Movie is available on Sky Cinema from today.

The Great Wall (2016)

2017 #158
Zhang Yimou | 103 mins | download (HD+3D) | 2.39:1 | USA, China, Hong Kong, Australia & Canada / English, Mandarin & Spanish | 12 / PG-13

This movie was on a hiding to nothing from the moment people got wind of the fact it was a China-set action movie starring white American Matt Damon. Increased representation is all well and good, but you still need a big-name star in order to get funding for your movie if it’s a $150 million production aimed at a global audience, and the stars who can sell movies that big around the world are almost exclusively white. It’ll be a positive thing when that changes, but it’s the way it is right now. Should we write off entire movies just because they have to think about budget more than political correctness?

There are pros and cons within the film itself. Damon plays a mercenary who stumbles upon China’s national secret: that the Great Wall was built to keep out monstrous beasts, and when they attack it has to be defended. An outsider character works as a good way into this story, though of course there are “white saviour” issues with it being someone who looks like Matt Damon. If you want to object to the movie entirely for those reasons, that’s your prerogative. There were other criticisms of it as a piece of entertainment, but I hold even less stock in those, because I thought it was highly entertaining.

The best bit is the first 25 minutes. This opening salvo is phenomenal: a huge, well-made battle sequence with tonnes of cool moments. It’s so epic, it feels like the climax. That leaves you wondering where the film possibly has left to go for the next hour-and-change — can it possibly have something up its sleeve to top that? Unsurprisingly, it heads away from huge battles and into skirmish territory. Fortunately, inventive ideas keep these sequences from feeling like lesser fodder than the epic opening act. In the end, it never does top the opener, but hey-ho.

As for the plot, well, it is what it is. There are some obvious holes and contrivances (most obviously: why do they hold back some weapons and tactics to only use in later battles?), but nothing I found too bothering for the type of entertainment the film seeks to provide. Character work is also about what you’d expect from an action-adventure blockbuster, though Damon and Pedro Pascal have a buddy relationship that’s a lot of fun. Despite the presence in key roles of Damon, Pascal, and Willem Dafoe, most of the cast are actually Asian, with the standout being Jing Tian as a strong female co-lead.

As you might expect from the director of Hero, the film is a visual feast. There’s vibrant design work, emphasised by cinematography from DPs Stuart Dryburgh and Zhao Xiaoding that makes things like the colour-coded soldiers really pop. And the 3D is spectacular. Although it’s a post-conversion, the film definitely seems to have been shot with it in mind. The massive scale of the wall allows for both deep scenery shots and extreme height, especially when we follow the class of warriors who dive off the wall to fight while abseiling down it. Then there are the arrows, throwing axes, leaping monsters, exploding monsters… Of course the rest of the film has visual depth too — facial details in close-ups, the scale of a large banquet hall, and so on — but the action scenes are a riot.

That’s why I enjoyed The Great Wall, despite its daft plot. The action is a lot of fun, and the whole thing looks spectacular in 3D. From an action-adventure blockbuster, that’ll do me nicely.