For It's A Jolly Good Fellowship (And So Say All Of Us)

When it comes to the Lord Of The Rings films there is absolutely no argument as to their extraordinarily high quality. Each movie of the trilogy is working at such an amazing standard, on every single level possible including the cast, effects team, direction, set designers, composer, editors, costume designers, stunt team and the writers that to debate it would be pointless. Film making at this level for this epic type of story is unsurpassed. Period.

Then there's the debate about whether it's fair to pick out one of the three movies as the 'best' since it's all one big story anyway, and which were all filmed at the same time. That is a more valid debate to have. However, each film was designed to be shown on it's own, with it's own beginning, middle and an end, and all this a year apart from it's nearest installment, when they were released a decade ago. And so, yes, I think each film can be judged on it's own merits just in the way i can single out a sole episode of a serialised TV show like 24 or Galactica as being particularly special.

For me, the Rings movie which works best is the first, Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring, which is down to a three main reasons:-

1/ A sense of awe. Fellowship is a beautiful exercise in world building, not only from a script standpoint but from a visual perspective too. Starting with the complex prologue detailing the fall of Sauron and the journey of The One Ring into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, to the explanation of Hobbits, the ethereal nature of elves, several chilling sequences with the demonic Ring Wraiths, The grander of The Mines Of Moria, the unstoppable Uruk-hai, and so on and so on and so on. Fellowship is so stuffed full of memorable scenes, both big and small, intimate and epic, that I could go on for years. Except to say the first moment I saw the Balrog appear my brain melted, my eyes imploded and my body evacuated itself violently from all orifices. Now THAT is a movie moment to savour. The world on show in Fellowship seems much more immersed in mystery and magic and myth than either The Two Towers or Return of the King, which seemed more grounded (overall). The greater opportunities to escape the real world are more prevalent in the first movie.


2/ Best structured story. Even though it's the first part of a trilogy, Fellowship feels like it has a proper beginning (Hobbiton and the start of the quest), a middle (Rivendell to Moria to Mirkwood) and an end. Like Star Wars is to The Empire Strike Back, Fellowship has the benefit over The Two Towers of having the band of heroes together for much of the movie before scattering them to the corners of the (Middle) Earth. And it also stands the strongest, away from the rest of the trilogy as a movie in its own right. As with most mythic quests, it's a coming of age tale, in this case divided into three parts in which Frodo, our mythic hero must make a choice. Each time that choice is to whether to carry the ring to its destination. The first time, Gandalf asks him to take it to Rivendell and Frodo reluctantly agrees. The second time, again with some reluctance, he volunteers before the Concil of Elrond to carry the One Ring to Mount Doom. It's only when he's stood alone on the riverside at the film's climax he decides to carry the burden alone, now knowing the full cost of his actions and knowing himself at this stage to know it's the right thing to do, despite knowing the consequences. It's a powerful moment, as Frodo closes his hand around the ring signaling his decision, and one in which the movie has been slowly building towards for three hours, but it rounds the movie off perfectly.

3/ The three b's. Another factor that distinguishes Fellowship over the other movies is the casting of Bean, Blanchett and as Bilbo, Ian Holm. One cannot imagine anyone else stepping into their roles which are handled all multi-layer and complex. Bean especially is at a career best, both heroic yet tragically tempted by the power the ring offers.

An undeniable classic then. But if Two Towers or Return Of The King is more your cup of tea you'll get no argument from me as the entire trilogy is virtually unmatched in quality.

Furious Five Get Fast In Rio

I'm tempted to say about this fifth entry in The Fast And The Furious franchise that if you've seen one, you've seen them all. After all, it's got the same life sapping performance from Paul Walker, the same ill-advised use of CGI and the same rambling plotting that made the other films so average. But Fast Five is a little different. It's got scale and it's got silliness. Tons of silliness.

First off the dialogue, as scripted by Fast Three & Four's Chris Morgan and Gary Scott-Thompson, is the dumbest, cringe inducing, most cliche ridden of the franchise to date. You can smell that shit coming from a mile away (and the films take themselves a touch too seriously to pull that kind of bullshit off well). With a bigger team dynamic to work with this time, the screen writers largely let the opportunity go to waste. You end up wishing for the alchemist hand of Joss Whedon to magically turn the leaden words into gold. It's also got a wee bit too much of the soap-opera family dramatics that over-whelmed the Lethal Weapon franchise in its later installments.

Then there's the ensemble cast, this time assembled like a greatest hits compilation from the other franchise entries. Walker is still a charisma vacuum, Vin Diesel is pitch perfect as ever, Tyrese Gibson and Ludacris get to do the comic relief jive banter (which works well in the group dynamic), Sun Kang (from Tokyo Drift) is a distraction as he died in third film, Jordana Brewster does her best Ali MacGraw impression and Gal Gadot and Elsa Patasky are both brain dead, wooden actresses AND jaw droppingly stunning eye candy. And the less said about the team of tree trunk law enforcers the better, which slows the pace considerably.

The biggest surprise is Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson as the cop sent to take our heroes down. Now I love The Rock. It says a lot about his measure as a movie star and thespian when he's the very best thing in the turd-fest Be Cool. But he's taken on a role far beyond his ability in Fast Five. Physically he's perfect, perfectly embodying the unstoppable force of nature who inevitably must go mano-et-mano with Vin and his team. But acting wise, he's incapable of turning the shitty dialogue into something convincing. The role he's been lumbered with is basically that of Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, and if Jones were cast I'm sure he'd be able to pull off the same kind of Oscar winning thesping he did in 1993. But Dwayne stumbles. Plus, the film follows the first film's basic plotting of relentless cop eventually teaming up with the 'anti-heroes'...except this time the cops motivations are so weak and so sudden it's utterly laughable. Again, in a more knowingly bullshit movie like Under Siege 2 or Passenger 57, this would work every time, but Fast Five still fancies itself as a proper thriller.

But, it is still good fun. Great locations, great stunts (the reliance on CGI is minimalised since the last movie), and the scale of the action is ramped up considerably...especially in an unbelievable, OTT chase sequence at the finale. The move away from street racing is a smart move and the swing towards heist movies (it's pretty much that contemporary Italian Job sequel they were always talking about) makes it far more accessible for haters of boy racers.

If you don't like the franchise then this won't change your mind, Fast Five is once again a solid entry in the series, and once again demonstrates it's a series with great, yet unrealised, potential.

There Goes The Neighbourhood

The synopsis for horror movie The Hamiltons on IMDB is as follows:-
"Four young adult siblings try to fend for themselves after the mysterious death of their parents. But they harbor some dark secrets which include abducting and killing strangers, and feeding them to a mysterious 'thing' living in their cellar."

My review of The Hamiltons is as follows:-

Boring. As. Shit.

Here endeth the review.

Shut Up Crime!

It really pisses me off when a movie with great potential, backed by a substantial budget, is squandered by everybody involved from the star to the director to the screen writer. Yes X-Men Origins Wolverine, I'm talking to you. But fortunately there are those passionate, microscopic indie movies where every single contributor has given it their all. One such movie is James Gunn's Super.

Gunn has already produced the fantastic, but little seen, Slither which took the whole Invasion Of The Body Snatchers sci-fi genre and gave it a refreshing kick in the ball. With Super he turns his attention to comic books and super heroes by examining what it would be like if someone actually became a costumed vigilante. While this might have already been done with Kick Ass, Super takes the concept even closer to reality while being prepared to step even further over the line that Matthew Vaughan's classic did.

Super is fucked up. It's violent. Profane. The humour is very black indeed and the style ranges from the almost documentary like to the surreal, the camp and the silly. For a film working on such a micro-budget it's got a great cast from Rainn Wilson as the nerd hero, The Crimson Bolt, and the virtually unhinged Ellen Page as his sidekick Boltie. Add to that Kevin Bacon (clearly relishing the chance to ham it up) as the villain and Liv Tyler as the girl the spurs the hero into action. The icing on the cake is in the form of Gunn regulars Michael Rooker (sadly underused) and Nathan Fillion as the inspirational Holy Avenger. Everybody's firing on all cylinders with their comedic instincts primed to maximum.

Gunn's superb script is laugh out loud funny, shocking, touching and sad, going from grounded, reality based drama, to off-the-wall, to warm and uplifting without ever feeling tonally off. The soundtrack is well chosen, up there with a Tarantino flick with how effectively the tunes support the story while Brian Tyler's score is surprisingly strong considering the A-list composer is working for peanuts.

Super might be raw, edgy and lacking in that Hollywood sheen, but it's got more inventiveness, heart and balls than most movies you'll see this year. Simply super.

The Extraordinary French Fancy

Luc Besson, acclaimed French director of Taxi, The Fifth Element and, er, Arthur & The Minimoys, said he was going to give up directing after 10 movies. And he did, for a bit. But thankfully he made a return with the bizarre and wonderful The Extraordinary Adventures Of Adele Blanc-Sec.

It's based on the comic book by Jacques Tardi and follows the exploits of infamous reporter and adventurer Adele, taking place 100 years ago in Egypt and Paris. It kind of reminds me of Stephen Sommers Mummy movies...but if that franchise had got it right in terms of judging the correct amount of silliness, the right amount of strangeness and the appropriate amount of character stuff. The story might be totally weird mixing Egyptian mummys, pterodactyls, mad scientists, big game hunters, prison break outs, resurrections and death from tennis...but it does so with wit, sophistication, a handsomely realised period world and an offbeat cast.

It's brilliantly held together by Louise Bourgoin as the title character. Not only is she utterly beautiful, but she has a flippant, tomboy-ish, contemporary attitude that clashes with her refined, classy attired exterior. It's a kind of female version of the roguish charm that made the Indy movies so watchable...except embodied in a feisty and curvaceous adventuress. Nice.

Of course it's Besson, so the farcical aspects won't be to every bodies liking and there may not be enough action for the MTV crowd. But it's got enough dry humour, cliffhanger escapes and radical banter (the Mummy conversations remind me of episodes of Angel) to make this a must watch movie. I just hope they make the sequel hinted at in the closing moments.

The Rite Stuff

It's true of any film you watch, but when viewing a new film narrative the audience tries to deduce what's going to happen. One of the ways we do this is by comparing the story to that of similar films. The down side of this is if the plot is too familiar, and there's not enough originality (or boobs, explosions, or violent deaths) to distract us, the the film can get a bit tame and predictable.

Anthony Hopkin's latest, The Rite, is a bit like that. Watching the exorcist movie, with it's central story of a man coping with his faith, I was constantly reminded of parallels between it and superior movies like the classic The Exorcist and last year's The Last Exorcism. That's not to say The Rite is a poor movie as it's directed with maturity and class by Mikael Hafstrom and features a great performance (both subtle and naturalistic and powerful and creepy) by Mr Hopkins which highlights what a master craftsman the guy is.

But it's also a film with a bland leading man (sorry Colin O'Donaghue), a lack of atmosphere and scares and an absence of originality. So it's a bit like a high class hooker then. But a hooker never the less.

Oh Boy! Quantum Leaping To The Source

Duncan Jones debut movie, Moon, turned out to be something special. The question was, could he maintain that level of quality working with someone elses script, on a bigger budget, in the Hollywood studio system. Judging by Source Code, I'd say that he definitely can. In many ways Jones is proving to be a man with a consistent vision as Source Code, like Moon, is about a man struggling with his own identity and place in the world, has a high concept, hard science-fiction premise and has a structure which gradually delivers revelation after revelation.

The three leads, a paternal Vera Farmiga, a vibrant Michelle Monaghan and the driven everyman Jake Gyllenhaal all do great work. Gyllenhaal himself prove he can carry a movie and confirms he's a solid actor although I'm still not convinced he's true movie star material (way better than Worthington or Tatum anyway). Visually the film's a little flat (although Tony Scott flash isn't required for this) and the effects, minimal though they may be, are a little shoddy).

At the end of the day this is an expanded Outer Limits episode which riffs off Quantum Leap (so much so there's a neat cameo to acknowledge it) and Groundhog Day that puts character development front and centre. And into it's terrorist thriller plot are all sorts of intellectual musings on the nature of reality, morality and the tension between free will verses destiny. It's exciting, it's engaging and it's a pleasure to see adult, science fiction thrillers back in movie theatres.