The Breakfast Club Chronicle

All genres must push the boundaries if they are to remain fresh and interesting whether they are Westerns, Space Operas or Crime movies. Most genres, like the Superhero movie, are content to play the safe ground and generally rework the basic origin story like Iron Man, Spider-Man or even more unusual variations like Thor or Captain America. But some explore the genre in different directions like how superheroes affect a person’s personality or how they influence the world around them. With the resurgence of the genre just over a decade ago some truly groundbreaking films have emerged such as Unbreakable, Watchmen, Kick Ass and Super which have sought to explore superheroics in a new light.

The latest film to achieve these great heights is Chronicle, from writer/director Josh Trank. it does this primarily by blending familiar genres in a fresh and interesting ways, so not only is it a super-hero origin film with a varied trio of high school kids gaining telekinetic powers exponentially, but it’s also a hand held, found footage style film which lends the drama an air of authenticity and immediacy to everything. It also feels right at home in the horror genre too as the story explores the corrupting influence of unbridled power on an unstable mind. Then add to that a huge dollop of teen growing pains and you’ve got a mixture that has plenty of potential.

The execution is also superb with a threesome of teenage lads come across as likable and human enough to separate themselves from slasher film fodder, it’s inventively directed and amazingly, economically written so that it gets right to the core of the film without the viewer feeling short changed. For a staggeringly low budget film the effects are very impressive, the Seattle setting refreshing and it’s all admirably character based.

Of course it’s never quite escapes it’s origins being reminiscent of the Star Wars sequels (specifically Anakin’s journey), Captain America (if we had followed the Red Skull’s journey) or closer still the 70’s classic The Medusa Touch which had uber-scary Richard Burton as a telekinetic menace. But by being handled with such care, energy and intelligence Chronicle transcends them all.

Wolfpuncher

Coming from the same director, star and studio as 2010's bland A-Team movie, my thoughts of a reteaming of Joe Carnahan, Liam Neeson and Twentieth Century Fox wasn't anything to get too excited about. However, Fox are on a roll after a critically strong show in 2012, Carnahan has regained the mojo he demonstrated in his gritty debut Narc and Neeson dials it up to 11 for their new film, The Grey, which may well rank among the very best come years end.

The Grey is basically a survival movie with the lucky half dozen oil workers who made it out of an aircraft crash in the barren Alaskan wilderness having to fight off the advances of a killer pack of native wolves. Like any survival story it's essentially a slasher film, with the characters getting killed off one by one as they attempt to fight off and evade the predators intent on tearing them limb from limb.
On this level it works very well indeed with the animals kept in the shadows with tight close ups, silhouettes, shadows and terrifying howls creating the tension rather than shoddy CGI creations this era has led us to expect. In fact the sound design is award winning standard capturing the soundscape of the harsh environment perfectly. In addition the gritty, rugged photography makes the film fantastically cinematic, much more so than it's inevitable small budget Vancouver shoot would normally show.

The cast are all strong, bickering amongst themselves in the best horror film tradtions to create even more suspense as starvation, injuries and severely low temperatures threaten to kill off the group as much as the hungry doggies. Neeson, not doing as much wolf punching as the trailer might suggest, is simply brilliant as the broken man who is best placed among the group to lead them to safety. This is the Neeson we want to see, not the vacant Muppet he was in The Phantom Menace.
Carnahan is also on top form delivering a movie that's very experimental with its sound design and editing to deliver something that's a touch more arty than initially anticipated.

But it's the strong spiritual subtext that runs through the story that really pushes this to the next level. The themes of how you deal with life and death recall The Shawshank Redemption, The Wrath Of Khan, Sucker Punch and Thelma & Louise and are present from the start right through to it's beautiful, idiot-bothering, ambiguous conclusion.

Atmospheric, tense and wonderfully haunting I can't wait to watch The Grey again.

It's Dumas, Idiot, Not Dumb-Ass!

The Three Musketeers author Alexandre Dumas would be rolling in his grave, not to mention the legion of purists Dumas fans, if he ever got to see hackmeister Paul WS Anderson's loose adaptation of his novel. It still retains the fun and the epic sweep of that adventure tale but it's now been instilled with unashamedly contemporary characterisations, bullshit slow motion action sequences and a jolly large dose of steampunk. Coming from the director of Resident Evil, Soldier and Death Race this turn to the dumb is not at all surprising although the end result is, if I'm honest, for despite it being filled with flaws from top to bottom, the 2011 version is very much a guilty pleasure movie.

First the bad news. The musketeers themselves are good, but not great. Ray Stevenson, Matthew MacFadyen and Luke Evans are all fine in their distinctly different roles, but they're too subdued...not quite embracing the daft spirit of the film. Logan Lerman is OK as D'Artagnan, but he's only about a 15% improvement over the shaggy haired Hayden Christensen model from Revenge Of The Sith. Oh, and it's got James Corden in it.
The other truly weak point is the mass of very obvious, poorly rendered CGI environments that clutter the movie. Like the main cast, they're fine and are never, ever offensively bad...but you can't help but think that another hour of render time might have made things a bit more convincing.

Everything else is fine. Milla Jovovich steals the show as a sultry assassin, Madds Mikkelsen is as suitably menacing as Gabriella Wilde is pretty, Christoph Waltz is far too good for this kind of thing and Orlando Bloom is clearly having a ball hamming it up as the Duke Of Buckingham. It's got scale and a big enough budget behind it to back it up, the story is well paced and structured and there are some memorable sequences along the way to hold the attention.

What makes this work is the tone. Unlike other Paul WS Anderson efforts that take themselves far too seriously, Musketeers knows it's absolute, 100%, pure, undiluted bullshit and it revels in the frothy, fun, unrealistic, over the top situations and occurrences. It may not what is considered a 'good' movie by any ones standards and I couldn't defend it with any great passion, but it is very entertaining and for that I salute it!

Jumping Hungry Rabbit Seeks Justice

Another month passes and another direct to video Nicholas Cage film has appeared for us to assess his downward career path. To be fair, he is at least working with a bunch of still relevant actors like Nicole Kidman, January Jones and Guy Pearce as well as strong directors like Joel Schulmacher and Roger Donaldson (even if their A-list careers have long disappeared). His latest is a high concept thriller called Seeking Justice (the original title Hungry Rabbit Jumps is much more appropriate to the story and much more memorable) and is a twist on the tired revenge thriller sub-genre.

This is solid stuff and would have been a respectably grossing theatrical hit in the early 90's when thriller like this (Indecent Proposal, Unlawful Entry, Pacific Heights) was king, but in the era of found footage horror and superhero flicks this just comes across as bland and unoriginal. But at least with Mr Donaldson at the wheel, this is at least well made stuff.

Wicker Tree (Ed Wood Wood Wood Not Included)

Not being a particularly great admirer of British films in the pre-Lock Stock era, it took me bloody ages to get round to watching The Wicker Man, but when I did I loved what I saw. Odd and disturbing with that classic, downbeat ending here was a film that was distinctly British that wasn't afraid to 'go weird'. Now, nearly 40 years after that film's release, director Robin Hardy returns to direct a straight-up sequel called The Wicker Tree.

Hardy maintains a 70's directing style which makes it feel right at home with the original and Wicker Tree still retains that oddness and dark humourous streak that defined the first film. It's got a strong premise too with a born again, virgin, Christian singing superstar being lured to the village of Tressock to convert it's residents. The great thing about this sequel is that we're in on the secret for the beginning and so (much like Rob Zombie's House Of 1000 Corpses) we're siding with the locals as opposed to the irritating Jesus freaks right from the start. Also, the film enters into an interesting exploration of faith, pitching one organised religion against another with not an atheist to be seen.

But the film has it's problems. Its horribly old fashioned view of a wee, quaint Scotland are frankly embarrassing and that's also reflected in its cliched portrayal of bible-belt southern USA township. And despite and attempt to mount tension by having the hapless heroine and her clueless boyfriend try to avoid their unhealthy fates, the film predictable stumbles at it's conclusion when the plot has run out of steam.

Well worth checking out and not nearly as bad as had been rumoured (or the ghastly Nic Cage remake from a few years back).

Johnny English Reburied

Oh, Rowan Atkinson, we love you but you don't half make some right shit. All we really want from you is a Blackadder movie, epic, crude and very, very mean spirited. But all we get from you are more Bean films and Johnny English movies...always years after the last film had come out and way beyond the point where anybody gives a shit about the character to warrant a sequel. But hey ho, Atkinson's Bond spoof persona is back in Johnny English Reborn, sequelising a weak spy parody that had way too few gags to seriously consider itself a "comedy".

This unwanted sequel has, what I'd like to call, The Red Dwarf Factor. Red Dwarf was (and still is actually) a UK produced, space-bound, science fiction sitcom..and pretty darned funny it was too. Unfortunately, it fell into the trap, especially in it's middle seasons, of taking itself too seriously as a sci-fi show, and letting the comedy elements take more of a backseat. That's what happens with Reborn as it so desperately wants to be a Bond movie, complete with chase sequence and fight scene every 5 minutes that the jokes begin to disappear from the narrative. It's well produced, has a great cast (Dominic West, Gillian Anderson, the English rose Rosamund Pike), Bondian locations and strong effects and score. But the comedy is too hit and miss. There's not enough gags to fill the running time and what there is has been mishandled by the director and editor.

Now then Rowan, about that Blackadder movie?

February Pick N Mix