Die Hard 4.0

Totally formulaic high-tec action movie that relies on the dialog and Willis’ delivery to stand above the crowd which amazingly succeeds giving us a fantastic funny fast paced and memorable cinema experience.

300

This heavily stylised (visually and morally) interpretation of a real historical event (Battle of Thermopylae) packs a visual punch and gives a cracking cinema experience while dividing audiences with its light plot and sparse dialog.

full review …

Serenity

For fans of the TV series this movie provides a cathartic experience bound up in an exciting story with solid performances and emotional scenes but people who’ve not seen the TV series may find the lack of back-story troubling and wonder what the fuss is about.

Blade II

A confusing story, pointless complexity and a reliance on shocking gore rather than brooding menace ruins this sequel making the worst of the three Blade movies by a long distance.

I Am Legend

Short review of this one. I’d heard from a few people that the special effects let this film down, but really I didn’t find that. I feel the film was a let down, but it was the story and the structure which did that for me, there really was no obvious middle and the end appears to have been tacked on and very overly abrupt. The start is good, I really engaged quickly with Will’s character and I was really looking forward to the development of the ‘bad guy who’s getting more intelligent’.

Which is why it was such a let down for the movie to go from a thoughtful but action based story to an all-out zombie fest in the last 15 minutes.

Maybe the director needed another 30 minutes to extend the story and give us a better look at what was going on, maybe the screenplay was better before it made it to the cinema, either way I Am Legend was more disappointing than entertaining, by no means a bad movie, but no where near the quality it should have been.

Transformers

I never really got involved in the original Transformers, I was aware of it, but I was either too old or just not interested (it’s too long ago to really remember). Of course I knew about Optimus and the autobots and I knew the catch phrase (Transformers! Robots in disguise) but I never had any toys and I didn’t rush home from school to catch it on the TV. However, as should be obvious from the movies I tend to watch, I’m a sci-fi / action / fantasy movie addict, so it was inevitable that I’d get the new Transformers movie on DVD.

It’s ridiculous and yet it’s also great fun. Transformers isn’t really sure if it’s targetted at kids, teenagers or adults and that identity crisis leads to the film having a different feel at different times. Some scenes are gritty and adult and others are almost naive and rose tinted. Overall it doesn’t detract from the entertainment as long as you’re able to maintain the necessary suspension of disbelief.

If you can sustain that and you can ignore some of the more cringe-inspiring dialog, this is a good, solid adrenaline inducing action movie with some amazing scenes and some very gripping moments. The performances of the human actors are acceptable, it’s not exactly stretching, and the animated sequences are pretty breath taking. The pace is pretty good, keeping you interested and tied in throughout the story, and the story itself is engaging all the way to nearly the very end. Nearly the end because what little integrity the story has is pretty much lost when the military starts taking orders from a punk kid and we find out where computers came from.

Despite the 15 minutes of ‘WTF!’ inspired by those sections, this is a good movie, it deserved to do well, and it was exciting and engaging throughout.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

It’s 1981, the local Odean is showing Any Which Way You Can, Arthur, Chariots of Fire, Cannonball Run, Clash of the Titans, Excalibur, Flash Gordon and For Your Eyes Only. Ronald Regan becomes president of the United States of America. Bucks Fizz win the Eurovision Song Contest for Britain. STS-1 launches, the first Space Shuttle mission. The first recognised cases of AIDS are reported. Prince Charles marries Lady Diana. MTV is launched and you can buy an IBM PC for the first time, for $1,565 in America.

Oh, and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is on at the pictures.

That’s the context of the first movie. Three years later (1984) Temple of Doom is released. This is the same year the Apple Macintosh goes on sale, Michael Jackson burns his scalp, the 10th shuttle mission is launched, GCSE’s replace O levels in British schools. In the cinema, we’re watching Ghost Busters, Beverly Hill’s Cop and Footloose.

And then in 1989 the third Indy movie airs, The Last Crusade, alongside Batman, Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Lethal Weapon 2. Also in that year George H. W. Bush succeeds Ronald Reagan, the first GPS satellites are placed in orbit, in Alaska’s Prince William Sound the Exxon Valdez spills 240,000 barrels (11 million gallons) of oil after running aground. Seinfield airs for the first time. East Germany opens its borders, and the destruction of the Berlin wall begins.

That’s the world when the first three movies were released. A time many of us were in our late teens or early twenties. My generation. Those of us who knew who to call when we saw a ghost, knew never to mix gremlins with water, and knew without a doubt that aliens would want to phone home and lay their symbiotic spawn inside our chests at the same time.

A lot, and I mean, a lot has changed since those times. The 90’s came and went, and we’re at the neck end of finishing the first decade in the 2000’s. The world became smaller, and more cynical, and the technology of our dreams turned out to be the agonising painful support problems of our daily lives. We discovered we were really wrecking the planet like a bunch of petulant kids, and that maybe it was time to grow up and take notice.

Expectations changed, reality became so unreal that our heroes had to become doubly so to seem fantastic. The Lord of the Rings and the Matrix changed the expectations of movie fans all over the world. And we began to re-invent.

In 2005 we re-invented Batman. In 2006 we re-invented Superman.

And then there was a rumour, a fourth Indiana Jones movie, with Harrison Ford no less. Would we be seeing a re-invented Indiana Jones?

I’ll be honest, I was excited. I had memories of loving the original three films, although I’d not seen them in the cinema. I’d watched them over and over whenever I could, I loved them, they were a part of my life and my youth. I was nervous, I felt the Star Wars films had been handled badly even if they were mostly enjoyable. But we’d seen it was possible to get away with it, Batman Begins I loved and Die Hard 4 was a credit to the franchise.

So we went tonight, I took my hat but didn’t have the courage to wear it. I want to write a positive review, I want you to go and see this film, and I want you to enjoy it, as I just did, but you have to keep in mind the context. Spielberg has given us a sequel to the Last Crusade in all ways. The same style, the same dialog, the same approach. He hasn’t tried to re-invent the characters, he’s dealt with them honestly, presenting them as older but the same people. He hasn’t tried to give the story a modern context, or a modern ethic, he’s kept it tied to the 50’s and kept it in sync with the previous three.

It’s brave I think, he said he was writing this for the fans, and he has. Because compared to the three previous movies, it’s excellent, superb, entertaining. Compared to action movies of today, it’s lacking and misses the mark.

Which is a real shame, because it deserves to be enjoyed more than I fear it’s going to be. It’s fast paced, it’s got Indy’s dialog, it’s got action, it’s got good guys and bad guys and incredible artifacts of power and mystery. It’s the fourth Indiana Jones movie at its core and it should be loved and enjoyed for it. But it’s gentle and soft. There is no Die Hard 4 here, no Batman Returns, no serious danger or deadly menace. There is no adrenaline fueled fear for our hero, no doubt he will win through, just curiosity about how and about why.

So here’s some detail, too many characters I fear. We could lose three or four and the story wouldn’t suffer and the film would be tighter, leaner and better paced. We’d have more room for Indy and Mutt (Shia LaBeouf) to play off each other’s dialog, and more room for pace and movement. Instead it feels clumsy and crowded, with both Ray Winston’s character and Karen Allen’s reprised Marion taking up space on screen and giving little in return. Cate Blanchett’s bad girl isn’t convincing or terrifying at all, and I’m not sure the movie would have been much different without her. Her role appears to be a confusing combination of Arch Villainess and Deadly Black Widow but her interaction with Jones is cold and uninteresting.

The story is the most complex of the four movies, and overly so in my view, it could have done again with being tightened up and thinned down and the film would be no worse for it. It’s also the most far-fetched of the four, if that’s possible, and while I won’t spoil it for you I think it makes an attempt to tie the previous mysteries together which isn’t necessary.

With all that said, it’s worth seeing on the big screen, the action is full of action and the presence of Indiana Jones is undeniably engaging. It certainly didn’t feel like it ran for two hours, it never lost me, I was never bored, and I was always interested in where it was going next.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a sequel to movies written in a different age, for a different audience, and I fear modern audiences will be left wondering what the fuss was about. It is a good movie, you should go and see it, but it’s not great, and it’s certainly not going to be the greatest movie this year. Spielberg hasn’t let down the original fans, but neither has he delivered something younger and newer audiences will be clamouring to see.

Die Hard 4.0

Bucking the trend of trilogies in 2007 we get the 4th Die Hard movie. The anticipation, the worry. The fear! Bruce Willis over50 years old, could he really pull off another John McClane? I was definately nervous going to see this, more nervous than the third Bourne movie. This one had a real chance of being embarassing.

A friend had said it was good – which alleviate the concern a little, but still, there was much trepadation in the air.

The movie starts off by covering the years between #3 and #4 in 20 seconds, introducing us to McClane’s teenage daughter and setting his location and status. I found it useful, it dispensed with the background quickly and made sure that all we had to worry about was the story going forward. McClane is still a cop, still sarcastic and still getting shot at for no good reason. In 4.0 John is sent to pickup a minor league hacker, who has become embroiled in a Fire Sale (everything must go!) hack accidentally, and neither John nor the hacker are aware of how far the Fire Sale perpetrators are prepared to go.

The action kicks in immediately and the chase begins, because this Die Hard movie is basically one huge chase movie. The bad guys are constantly on the move, John McClane is constantly under attack through a number of mechanisms and the action follows them from location to location. The humour of Die Hard is present and as deeply ingrained in John’s character as ever. John’s sidekick is a worrying addition but it turns out ok despite my fears. The bad guy is suitably cool and yet deeply frustrated by John’s existance. The special effects are superb and the encounters are typically over-the-top; McClane survives an attack by a figher jet while driving a truck for example.

The plot is nothing amazing, but it’s twisty enough to be interesting, the final endgame is revealed pretty early on but then that’s not why anyone is watching (right? you weren’t hoping for an indepth and intricate thriller whodunnit)? The movie really just focusses on the core of Die Hard, John McClane fighting increasingly absurd attempts to kill him while getting ever closer to stopping the bad guy.

Without too much of a spoiler, the introduction of his daughter at the start was foreshadowing, and if you have to save a family member well the stakes are just that much higher …

It’s not as good as the original, but it is better than #2 and #3 and it is nearly as good as the original.

The Bourne Ultimatum

It’s the year of the trilogy and the Bourne Ultimatum was no exception. I saw the first movie (Bourne Identity) on DVD a while back and enjoyed it, but it was only on seeing it a second time that I really decided I liked it. The second movie (Bourne Supremacy) I saw on TV and enjoyed it, although it’s obviously not as fresh as the first. I had mixed feelings about a third, I wanted it to be brilliant, I feared it would be substandard. I was worried that they would be dragging the story thin, the freshness of the first movie comes partly from the lack of identity of Jason, but he gets closer to knowing who he is, and in the second closer again. Would there be enough left to provide a background? Would it just be a rehash of the first story?

And it was ‘good’, not superb, not as good as the first one, but it was entertaining. I still love the solid confidence of the main character and how well he’s portrayed by Matt Damon. It’s that confidence which brings the character to life, the absolute solid knowledge of what to do next, given any situation, and how to deal with it. It doesn’t matter if he’s right wrong or out-smarted, but his every action is steeped in raw confidence. His movements, running and decisions all come from that rigid absolute knowledge that he has to do exactly what he’s doing. It’s intoxicating.

The story is good, we get to meet a couple of familiar characters and a bunch of new ones, we get some new locations including London, and we get to see a yet-deeper conspiracy within the CIA, convoluting the entire story and situation even further than the second movie. The supporting cast is ok, some of the roles are a bit tired and some of the presentations are pretty much stock-out-of-the-bag, but it holds the story together and gives Bourne a platform on which to perform.

It turns out there is enough story left to delve into and we finally learn how Jason Bourne was created and who created him. We return to his birth, and finally learn what he was prepared to sacrifice for his country.

An excellent action movie, a good spy action movie, and a fitting if slightly-pale follow-up to the first two. A must see for the fans, a should see for people who like this kind of movie.