Now You See Me

Films revolving around magic and illusions are usually hit and miss. For every The Prestige there’s a Magicians. With Now You See Me being helmed by Louis Leterrier you’d assume this will be the cinematic equivalent of actually accidently sawing the woman in half, but Leterrier’s film is entertaining enough, though suspension of belief is a 100% requirement before, during and after watching. Four street magicians (Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco) are bought together by a mystery benefactor (in a scene reminiscent of something resembling a kiddies version of Saw) in order to become one of the top draws on the magic circuit. Things take a turn for the surreal however when a trick involving money being stolen from a Parisian bank turns out not to be a trick at all. FBI agent Mark Ruffalo is assigned the seemingly implausible case. Implausible being the operative word here as the script has many silly twists and turns and some scenes are outright ridiculous (a fight involving “magic”!). However, if you just go with it it’s a bit of fun that passes the time, aided by a script that moves things along and some throwaway laughs. This is arguably Leterrier’s best film (though the competition was hardly stiff), but he does little to suggest he’ll ever be an actor’s director as everyone just plays to type. With so many names in the cast (Morgan Freeman Michael Caine and Melanie Laurent are all also involved) it’s hardly a surprise that screen time for all is uneven and Fisher and Franco, despite being part of the main group, barely register. The big twist at the end is fair enough, but with a sequel already in the works, hopefully things will be a bit more coherently explained next time. Rating: 7/10.

After Earth

Ah, there hasn’t been an opportunity to bash M. Night Shyamalan for a few years so the old chap has been back to well of mediocrity and emerged with After Earth. Though star Will Smith is as much to blame for anyone for this mess, what with him having a hand in the script, production, direction and the casting. Ah yes, the casting. I’ll come on to that shortly. Set 1000 years hence, the storyline has a military father (Smith) and his son Cypher (Jaden Smith) crash land on the now abandoned Earth (so, being pedantic, not actually after Earth at all then), where Cypher has to battle through the hostile terrain in order to do something or other (I can’t remember anymore) in order to help save his injured and dying father. It sounds mildly entertaining, but the execution is dull and the script clichéd throughout. Many brickbats have come Smith’s way for casting his own son in what is basically the lead role, but the nepotism thing doesn’t bother me too much as it happens all the time (see Apatow / Mann, Burton / Bonham-Carter, Sheen / Estevez and so on). However, the difference between those examples and this, is that those people are talented. Jaden Smith can’t act to save his own life, let alone that of his father’s in a film. Stuck with a facial range of either “constipated” or “not constipated”, every time he appears on screen his performance is so wooden it’s like an impromptu carpentry lesson has broken out. Smith Snr and M. Night need to carry the can for this snooze fest, though you’d have to squint hard to discover that this is actually a Shyamalan production at all as Sony Pictures marketing campaign swept him under the carpet (for obvious reasons). So he’s not totally to blame here, but this does nothing to suggest Shyamalan will ever get back to the dizzy heights of his earlier work. Some impressive special effects in respect of the sharpness of the images aside, this is a vanity project that should never have made it beyond the pitching stage. Rating: 3/10.

The Purge

James DeMonaco has penned a few scripts over the last few years and he also picks up the screenplay credit here as well as picking up the megaphone for the first time. This isn’t a great debut, but I always give first timers the benefit of the doubt and DeMonaco delivers quite a lot from a small budget. The problem the film has is that from its nice central premise it doesn’t know where to go and ends up a mixture of genres with it eventually just tailing off into plain silliness. Set in 2022, the United States has become a nation with low crime rates due to the introduction of an annual purge during which all citizens have free reign to commit any crimes they want without reprisal. Ethan Hawke stars as a rich salesman who has made a living from selling home security systems who suddenly finds his own house under attack during the purge when (irony ahoy!) his own defence set up reveals itself to be not as solid as he thought. As a social allegory it’s as subtle as a knife in the ribs (plenty of that in this film by the way), but DeMonaco’s screenplay doesn’t even attempt to address this further and the film turns into a standard home invasion thriller. However there is a decent moral dilemma plot wise thrown into the mix at the halfway point, but the increasing levels of violence as the film goes on just highlights the well of ideas running dry. Rating: 5/10.     

The Great Gatsby

I’ve never quite got Baz Luhrmann and this awful adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel hardly helps matters. If there’s a worse directed opening of a film this year I’ll eat a pair of 3D glasses. In fact for the opening 20 minutes read the entire film. Where to begin? The overload of special effects making the film resemble an imaginary world? (if you claim Luhrmann did that on purpose pass me another pair of those 3D specs). Tobey Maguire’s goofy performance? Carey Mulligan’s blandness? (seriously, how does she keep winning all these parts?). Actually let’s stop listing things and get to the root of the problem, mainly that Luhrmann appears to have not understood Fitzgerald’s source material in the slightest. How else to explain his decision to modernise everything from the fashions to the dire soundtrack. Forget the Roaring Twenties setting when there’s merchandising coin to be made, huh? The only plus points are Leonardo DiCaprio as the mysterious Gatsby (though his catchphrase of “Old Sport” will leave you gritting your teeth by the time you hear it for the fiftieth time) and Joel Edgerton gives good edginess and is virtually the only decent example of a character who has some development in the film. Basically Luhrmann couldn’t have been a worse choice to develop a novel that is short in length and delicate in its prose. Lehmann delivers 2 hours 20 minutes of bright images and not much else. Finally, perhaps someone should have pointed out that for one of the quintessential novels about New York and its suburbs, it was probably a good idea not to shoot it in bloody Sydney. Rating: 3/10.

Fast & Furious 6

The most shocking thing about Fast & Furious 5 was that it was a half decent film. This meant a green light for another instalment and (arguably for the first time ever) some anticipation about the next F & F release. Actually, with the way things work now, even if it had been utter rubbish we would still have had Fast & Furious 6 regardless. How else to explain the arrival of F & F 5 in the first place, following the abysmal 2009 entry? Anyway, before this digression becomes too complicated, what isn’t difficult to work out is that director Justin Lin has mainly stuck with what made the last film such a success, i.e. a predictable plot that lets you not think too heavily with some absurd action sequences thrown in every now and then. Where this does differ slightly is that the producers have decided that the film series needs to move away from the underground car racing scene into a more character driven (sorry) action / thriller hybrid. It doesn’t fully work and some of the special effects in the few car chases that do occur stick out like a sore thumb with Lin’s over generous cutting of said scenes hardly helping matters. However, it’s hard to be too mean about the ludicrously silly final chase scene involving a large aircraft, which, according to some bod on the internet, would have needed a 26 mile runway in order to accommodate such a scene in real life. Yup, it’s that kind of film. Cast wise its pretty much as you were and the series continues its unbroken run of success in that not one of them can deliver a comic line. On the newbie front Luke Evans is pure mahogany as the villain of the piece, but things are saved on that front by a final scene cameo which is hilariously intriguing as to who is picking up the bad guy handle for the next film. All in all a disengage brain bit of fun. It’s just a shame this is a backwards step from last time out. Rating: 6/10.

Star Trek Into Darkness

Not to sound mean, but J.J. Abrams is probably best described as a steady-hand. He can be trusted with multi-million dollar movies of which he’ll give audiences a decent night out and the studios a nice return on their investment. However, he’s yet to give us something that is a standalone classic of a genre, though he’s still got a long way to go career wise. Therefore, it’s as you were with Star Trek Into Darkness. Solid stuff, but no more. The Apocalypse Now sounding plot has Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Zachary Quinto) sent to a planet to terminate with extreme prejudice (OK, capture) rouge star fleet Commander John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch). You don’t need to be a genius to work out who Harrison really is. On that note the references to The Wrath Of Khan aren’t subtle, but they’re smartly handled and Cumberbatch’s icy performance is the continued making of this fine young actor. Of the other main leads Pine and Quinto are already impressively settled into their characters and the development of the bromance between Kirk and Spock brings some nice moments. What with so many crew members it’s inevitable that some of the rest of the cast fall by the wayside and Simon Pegg’s Scotty still isn’t really very funny. Alice Eve also pops up, though it appears only to be in order to give teenage boys a thrill in a cack-handed scene where she appears in her smalls (a moment for which the producers have since apologised for its lack of relevance). Despite the lengthy running time this doesn’t actually begin to flounder until the very end where a standard chase scene (marred by poor special effects) is the disappointing culmination of a film that has been tight up until that point. Still, things bode well for future instalments. Rating: 7/10.

Iron Man 3

It’s Iron Man 3 time. Or is it Iron Man 2? If you can spot the differences let me know as most of the action scenes here seem carbon copies of the last instalment. No point going over plot details here, though Marvel time wise this is the follow up to The Avengers. It’s a step back in quality from that film though and much like Tony Stark’s suit crashes and burns. The over-rated Shane Black is on mega-phone duties this time, though he seems more concerned with filling the script with his alleged zingers. At least some of them hit home, which at least makes up for his lack of effort when it comes to getting performances from the cast with Ben Kingsley’s turn best described as WTF? Shame Jon Favreau didn’t have more of a hand in the production of this as surely he wouldn’t have allowed the introduction of a child sidekick – the cinematic sign that all ideas have been exhausted. Still, considering this is now the fifth highest grossing film of all time (albeit not adjusted for inflation), we’ll be back scraping the bottom of the concept barrel for the inevitable next chapter. There’s yet another post-credits scene, apparently. Yawn. Rating: 4/10.

Filth

Not one to take your mother to this with its violence, swearing, sex, pornography and masturbation all enveloped within an overall package of depression and mental illness. Of course, it’s entertaining as hell. Jon S. Baird’s adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s novel stars James McAvoy as Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, a copper on the mean streets of Scotland who attempts to gain a promotion to Detective Inspector whilst committing more crimes than the average crim themselves. McAvoy is superb as the increasingly out of control Robertson and Baird’s direction moves things along at a nippy pace. The script has a number of laugh out loud moments (including the best one-liner on sexuality equality in the work place you’ll hear this year) and an intriguing twist towards the end. On the downside the use of some shock imagery to portray Robertson’s descent into near madness is a bit trite and Jim Broadbent as Robertson’s (admittedly funny) imaginary doctor is a cipher as you can get. Due to its content this might struggle to find a broad audience, but if you want an evening free of political correctness then seek this out. Hello, John Sessions! Rating: 8/10.

Mud

One of the biggest surprises in the land of film over the past few years was Matthew McConaughey’s superb performance in The Lincoln Lawyer. His subsequent roles have suggested he’s left behind the genre of lame rom-com’s for good, but is he now again just playing the same part over and over? For Killer Joe, Magic Mike and The Paperboy, you can now also add his character of Mud in Jeff Nichol’s eponymously named film, i.e. the Southern Boy, charming, lackadaisical, but with something mean hidden beneath the surface. Nichol’s film is a coming of age drama which uses the standard template of some kids discovering a person hiding away from society and becoming entangled in a moral maze of should they / shouldn’t they help whilst the locals look on disapprovingly. This isn’t a bad film at all and the youngsters of the cast are refreshingly not annoying. Ironically it’s the main thread of the film that is its weakest point as we don’t really care that much about Mud and McConaughey does little to peak our interest. Blame can be laid at Nichol’s door on that front and question marks remain as to why he stuck with such a clumsy script in which virtually all the reveals are sign posted a mile off. On the plus side the visuals are great and Nichol’s intention to capture the green intensity of young love in one of the sub-plots is painfully captured. For an impressive character study you’re better off with Nichol’s Take Shelter, mind. Rating: 7/10.

The Moo Man

Andy Heathcote’s doc-moo-mentary (© The OC Film Sting) follows farmer Steve Hook and his production of raw, unpasteurised organic milk from his dairy farm in Sussex. From the title though you can guess that this is more about the Friesian’s that produce said product and if you’re an animal lover you’ll find this predictably moving. Shot over four years we follow Hook’s relationship with his herd and the film captures a way of life and living that is fast disappearing in England. Despite the tough undercurrent there is plenty here to warm the heart, including stubborn cow Ira refusing to do what she’s told half the time and Stephen Daltry’s silly score is a nice touch. Overall though Heathcote seems uncertain as to what the tone should be and in some scenes it slips into unintentional black comedy territory (especially in a scene where Hook is talking about one of his favourites….whilst handing over chopped up pieces of said animal to a customer). All in all though it’s fantastic to see a film such as this get into the cinemas (the head honcho at Sundance picked it as his festival favourite). A wider analysis of the milk producing sector would have helped, but for a small budget film such as this it covers a range of emotions and ideas that films with one hundred times the resources don’t even get near. Rating: 7/10.

Olympus Has Fallen / White House Down

Despite me seeing these films many months apart I’m so behind with my reviews it made sense to wait until seeing the latter film (White House Down) before posting a few words as both productions are cut from virtually the same cloth. In this case that bit of garment being a blood stained Old Glory as each film depicts a terrorist attack on the White House. Frankly there isn’t much to call between the two and it probably comes down to whether you want to watch a film directed by Antoine Fuqua (starring Butler, Eckhart and Freeman) or one directed by Roland Emmerich (starring Tatum and Fox). Both films suffer from a huge (though understandable) reliance on GI imagery and the inevitable lashings of patriotic gruyère. Plot wise Olympus has a somewhat ludicrous guerrilla style assault whilst Down goes mainly for the classic insider job. Overall Down probably just shades it due to it occasionally hinting that all of this mayhem shouldn’t be taken too seriously (Olympus is a lot darker and more violent), though it appears respected performers Maggie Gyllenhall, Richard Jenkins and James Woods are taking it all at face value. Viewing pleasure of either demands takeaway and beers on a Friday night, otherwise steer well clear. Olympus Rating: 5/10, Down Rating: 6/10.