“47 METRES DOWN”

Yes, I am aware it was meant to be Valerian, but I was counting on the preview screenings to get their review out and my area didn’t get them which meant I am not able to get a review out on time, so I scrambled through the cinema listings and it was either this or Captain Underpants, since my other choice, The Wall also was barely playing in any cinemas in my area.

47 Metres Down is certainly an interesting project, I saw an advert for it and some trailers, but ultimately, it was something I wasn’t expecting to be that high up my list in terms of something I enjoy. But, I do quite like Shark movies, though none of them are really that good. Hell, the best one in recent memory has probably been The Showers, which came out last Summer and I didn’t really rate that one too much.

47 Metres Down is directed by Johannes Roberts, a British director who has directed a couple of films, but mostly films that I have not really enjoyed and I was unaware that he had directed this film until after I had seen it. His previous credits include the rather unfortunate web story 24 which was meant to be a vehicle for Noel Cowell and the phenomenally poor Hindu exorcism film, The Other Side of the Door, which tried to coast on the fact that it’s lead actor was Lorrie from the Walking Dead. That being said, however, 47 Metres Down had a really interesting concept that I wanted to see for myself, so, how does it turn out?

Let’s start with the plot. 47 Metres down is a very simple plot. It’s essentially what is called a survival thriller. Two sisters Lisa and Kate, played by Mandy Moor and Claire Holt are on holiday in Mexico following Lisa’s very bad break up with her long-term boyfriend. To get her out of a rut and convince her that she is not boring, Kate insists that they go together on a Shark cage trip, however, the winch fails, dropping them 47 metres into the ocean, with no way to pull them up and they are surrounded by several Great White sharks. Yes, it’s the claustrophobic inhospitable environment thriller that we have seen a lot of. This is definitely in the vein of movies like Gravity.

Ok, let’s start with the positives, because believe me there are some to be said about this film. On positive is that it actually does a decent job of trying to build an atmosphere and the sharks come off as a believable threat, for the most part and I will say, for the lack of budget that this film clearly had, they did a decent job of trying to cover it. Many low budget films try to overcompensate, but this film works within the constraints it has. Sadly, that’s really the last positive I can say about 47 Metres Down, this film is an absolute dog!

Let’s start with the characters. There are more characters featured in the film such as a couple of boyfriends that they pick up in Spain and the ship’s captain, Captain Taylor, who is played by Matthew Modine, don’t get too attached though, we barely spend any real time with them. Almost the entirety of the movie is spent with the sisters at the bottom of the ocean and they have no personality whatsoever! Many claustrophobic survival thrillers tend to use the event as a way of character building, I actually felt this film was going to go down that route, but it never really does. Despite having been put into several life-threatening situations, neither of their personalities develop at all. In fact, before writing this review I actually forgot that they were called Lisa and Kate when I checked the IMDB page, because they have such little personality that you only remember that one of them is brunette, that never wants to do anything and the other is a blonde who is an adventurous girl. That’s it. The situation never affects the development of the sister’s relationship, despite the fact the Kate has practically forced Lisa into this, so there could have been a potential resentment angle building there, nor do we see how it affects the perception of her relationship with her long-term boyfriend who is now leaving her. I am not saying the film had to have these, but doing so would have improved the film slightly. Sadly, it’s not just this factor. It’s also the dialogue.

The dialogue in this film is atrocious, I am not joking. This film has some appalling dialogue and set pieces. There is a character from the ship who dives down to give them a spare winch and you know he is only there to make sure the film has at least one person in the body count, so he only exists there to give the possibility that both sisters can make it out alive. Also, the sharks are massively inconsistent. For one thing, the sharks miss someone almost entirely. They go on one minute mentioning what killer machines they are but then the next minute, they made dumb ass decisions it feels more like luck to have the sisters get out of the situation rather than skill, something that was demonstrated better in the film, The Shallows, which also did the angle of the situation affecting its main character a lot better since, in that film, the situation was tied to the main character grieving for her recently deceased mother. The problem with the sharks though is that they are so inconsistent that a lot of it doesn’t make sense. For one thing, sharks need to move around a lot, these sharks stick around for quite a while. The film never really gives us a time scale for how long this is going on, but I imagine that it’s got to be at least an hour if not more and I know these things don’t stick around long. Lateral cage diving trips have to be quick and to the point because there is no guarantee you are going to keep the shark around when it is still investigating and realises there is no meal for it! There are also several moments where the characters are bleeding, but does this attract the sharks? No, of course not, they can only sell a drop of blood in the equivalent of an Olympic sized pool!!! Also, a lot of the characters will do a trick of keeping still to try and avoid being detected by the sharks, now that sounds interesting in theory, since Sharks other senses like sight, are dulled, however, it doesn’t change the fact that they can sense the natural electricity in living things, so yes, keeping still is not going to make a difference because you will light up like a Christmas tree. Now I can forgive the film somewhat for that call, because it doesn’t make direct reference to it, so it’s not as if it were breaking its own rules that it has established, it’s still stupid leaving it out, but that’s aside from the point. I can forgive however, that sharks can easily hear your heart beat especially if it is going fast in nervous situations, something that the film brings up early on, the reality is, in a stressful situation, they are going to find you. Also, sharks are not mindless eating machines, why are these things sticking around here, if they didn’t get a meal very quickly and this is more effort that it is worth, why didn’t they just swim away and get another one! At least The Shallows gave a decent excuse as to why the sharks stuck around, there was a dead whale carcass in the shallow water, which meant it had a constant food supply. It gets more stupid from there, but that’s aside from the point, the film has some other freaking weird moments.

The environment at least looks alien, but early portions seem very green scene heavy. It also feels very convenient, meaning that all the characters have pitch perfect microphones, which feels very convenient to keep the dialogue going, even though they have nothing that interesting to talk about and further implies its connection with Gravity.

I have already mentioned that I am not a fan of Johanne’s Roberts directing style and the major reason being that he has a problem that many directors have, but I noticed it quite a lot with him, he has very good ideas and he rests on that, he doesn’t realise that a good idea needs proper execution, this film is a good idea, but it is not well executed and that is something I can say about a lot of his films, since many people will do those ideas a lot better. The Other Side of the Door for example, a Hindu based exorcism, a great idea, except he filled it with every single horror cliché under the sun. This film has so many points that were sub-par, but they were somewhat forgivable because of some of its other good qualities like the atmosphere and the decently shot cinematography, which are both pretty good, but then it lost all of my goodwill with the climax of the film, which has one of the most phenomenally poorly written endings to a film I have seen all year. Without going into spoilers, let’s just say, this film had no idea how it wanted to end, so as a result, just threw every single idea at the wall and leaves us something which is incredibly unsatisfying and feels largely like it hasn’t been thought through and almost betrays the film to an extent. It’s an ending that is that bad!!

The acting is not great. No one is giving a very good performance in this film, though, I will admit that I think Mandy Monroe and Claire Holt are at least trying their best, I just think they suffer from poor writing and a lack of direction. I have already mentioned that there are very few people in the cast to talk about, so I will just skip ahead to the presentation.

I have already mentioned that some of the shots are very well done and they make a lot of the film considering the restraining budget. There is one thing however, the special effects in this film are crap!! Some of the effects in this film are laughably bad. There was one point, early on, when they first get in the cage, led to us seeing some CGI fish that were so appallingly bad I was amazed that these were used in a film that was played in cinemas. The sharks also don’t fare much better either, you never believe that these are actually there. They are not Shark Nado level bad, but these effects are still only one step above a sci-fi channel movie.

47 Metres Down takes an interesting concept but does very, very little with it. If the bland dialogue and bland characters don’t fail instantly for you the lack of depth, no pun intended, and the poor effects mean that any chance the film had, failed. It tries to build an atmosphere and can have one or two tense scenes and doesn’t rely solely on jump scares like many other horror films, but that is not enough to save the film. It is ultimately another film that will make us fear sharks a lot more than we really should, the reality is that in this situation the sharks likely would have cleared off after a while and they would have gone down and got them.

If this film and this concept has put you off doing a cage dive with sharks, speaking from the experience of someone who actually has done it, unlike this film, it is incredibly safe and it’s one hell of an experience that I would recommend. However, I wouldn’t recommend this film because it’s a pretty weak film

Cars 3: Now, I am going to cut these films into slices because I think the original Cars is not a very good film but it’s not awful, unlike its sequel Cars 2, which is an absolute dog! Cars 3 is pretty much on a level with its first film. It’s not very good when you stop and think about it and it’s incredibly predictable, but it serves a purpose and the kids will enjoy it. This is, once again, unlike many Pixar films however, there is just nothing there really for the adults and while I did appreciate a lot of the changes the film made, especially the severe reduction of Larry the Cable Guy, thank goodness. It’s not what I would call a good film, or even a good film for kids, there’s a lot better that you could be showing them right now, but if you liked the first Cars film and for some weird reason enjoyed the second, this one is going to give you more of what you got the first time around, but it is not giving you anything else. I didn’t really like the first Cars film, it’s just a bit of a “meh” film.

Well, that’s it for me this time round. I am away to a music festival now. So. next time I am going to be giving my thoughts on Valerian the City of a Thousand Planets and apologies for not doing it this time, it was due to circumstances out of my control.

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and I am going to go and watch Jaws now, so I can actually see a good Shark Movie. You do have to wonder, with the amount of re-boots and unnecessary sequels nowadays, why hasn’t Jaws been given the treatment.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“DUNKIRK”

Dunkirk is a film I’ve been really interested to see, ever since the trailer emerged around Christmas time last year.

It’s the latest film to be written and directed by Christopher Nolan, who I’ve talked about in the past. In case you don’t know him, he is the guy behind Inception and The Dark Knight trilogy. Though he takes the occasional step into producing roles as well, as in Man of Steel, though how much influence he had on the production varies depending on whose account you go by. He is a really big name, no questions asked. There are very few directors whose name you can put on the front of a film to sell it; the only few others I can think of off the top of my head are names like Steven Spielberg, and Hayao Miyazaki. Though recently, Edgar Wright’s name was also used to sell Baby Driver (which I spoke about in last week’s mini-review).

Now the film had a phenomenal advertising campaign, which showed characters’ reactions to various things, and then was suddenly cut out. This technique is ingenious, as it gets us pumped for what it ultimately going on, and it would leave us speculating what kind of movie Nolan had for us next. Though, that was somewhat quietly tempered when the second trailer came along, and we saw a little too much of the project, which did suggest we were going to get a good film, yet exactly as expected.

The difference I would say between this and some of Christopher Nolan’s other recent movies, is unlike many of them, including the previously reviewed Interstellar, he’s not been joined by his brother in the writing department (Jonathan Nolan).

But how did this film turn out?

This would normally be where I go through the plot, but Dunkirk is one where there isn’t really a centralised plot. It’s an ensemble piece with a series of different plots going on, including two soldiers trying to get on any of the boats going home, played by Fionn Whitehead and Damian Bonnard; a ship captain who’s been requested to travel to Dunkirk to rescue soldiers, who is played by Mark Rylance, accompanied by his son, played by Tom Glynn-Carney, and local boy George, played by Barry Keoghan; as well as the story of a fighter pilot trying to keep the German forces from interfering with the evacuation process, played by Tom Hardy.

Dunkirk is a very ambitious film at the end of the day, trying to balance all these plots, and it does so very well. The film never spends too much on one plot at expense of the others, however it suffers from a similar problem that a lot of ensemble films suffer from. There are a lot of characters all competing for screen time. Fortunately, unlike many ensemble films, none of the characters go to waste, and all seem like they have a part to play.

The only one who is kind of under-utilised and I would have liked to see more of was Commander Bolton, who was played by Kenneth Branagh. He’s not given as much to do, but Branagh does his best to give this performance his all, which added extra dimensions to the character.

Any one of these plot lines could have made for a great film on their own, but I actually think there’s a very good reason why Nolan made it to be this way. The film actually rather reminded me of Titanic, not in the sense of the story as such, more in how it’s structured and what the director’s intentions were. James Cameron’s intentions with Titanic were clearly to humanise an event that was in recent history, resulted in a lot of deaths, and had been largely forgotten in the romanticisation of the event. Dunkirk is Nolan trying to do the same thing.

He does a very good job of this as well; the environments feel very barren and otherworldly, particularly the beach scenes. We barely see civilisation, in fact there’s only a few scenes shot in actual Dunkirk city at the very beginning of the film, and a few more later on down the line. But most shots are either of wide barren expanses, or closed and confined environments, which is to the film’s advantage. But the real advantage comes from the fact that we hardly see any German forces.

Despite the fact they are not really shown on screen, save for a few planes and the occasional gunfire, we barely, if ever see any actual German soldiers, whereas their presence is felt constantly. This is highlighted very well early on with the dropping of propaganda leaflets showing a map of Dunkirk, on which is written ‘We have you surrounded.’. Through this, you always feel as though they could attack any minute and do devastating damage, and we see a few very good scenes to back that up.

The fact of the matter is I want to say that Dunkirk is a phenomenal film; it seems like everything is done right. However, I didn’t really feel engaged with this film.

Don’t get me wrong, everything is very well done and is technically well-written, but I never engaged with any of the characters. The biggest issue with this is definitely Tom Hardy’s fighter pilot, who really does not have enough character in this film to keep me interested, and all the characters just seem to be ‘there’. They’re good characters, and all very well-written, but because of the number of plots and sub-plots to juggle (I know, tonnes of sub-plots in a Christopher Nolan film, who’da thunk it?) they are almost all cast aside.

A lot of people go on about Nolan being a excellent director, but for all of his positives, he’s never been that great of a character writer. The exception to the rule being The Dark Knight, where he appeared to be on top form for that production.

It’s also profoundly long-winded in a lot of departments. Despite the actual film being rather short, only coming in at an hour and forty minutes, it does feel like a lot of films are drawn out. This is more just nitpickery, the only thing I would say is great films feel like they really draw you in, and keep you in suspense the whole length of the film, and make me forget that I am a critic.

This film on the other hand, constantly reminded me that I am a critic, and it more felt like I was meant to be admiring what a technical marvel is was rather than what an amazing character piece it was, and I don’t think it humanised me to the piece of history in the same way Cameron did with Titanic. Before anybody gets in my grill, I have plenty of negatives to give about Titanic, I just think it did a better job that Dunkirk in that department, but I will concede that it was a three hour film with plenty of time to build on tonnes of side characters that would be called back on later.

Dunkirk did have side characters, including a couple of ‘Oh it’s him from that!’ actors, such as one moment when several soldiers are pinned down under a moored Dutch ship while the Germans use it for target practice, I found myself internally saying ‘Oh, it’s Carl from Shameless!’. There are a few of these, though weirdly enough Harry Styles makes an appearance! There’s nothing really negative about his performance, but he’s just too recognisable to be included, and it really takes you out of the immersion. It’s David Beckham in King Arthur: Legend of the Sword all over again, except this time round it’s a lot better.

If there’s one thing I have to say about this film, it’s that the benefits far outweigh the negatives, it just wasn’t a film that you could come out of saying ‘I loved it, I really want to see it again’, and I think that’s down to the fact that I didn’t connect with the film in the way that Nolan wanted us to.

Maybe it’s my personal taste, but that’s kind of where I was left by it.

The acting actually is pretty damn good.

I’ve already mentioned that I really enjoyed Kenneth Branagh’s performance, but the two best performances I feel I should mention were Fionn Whitehead and Damian Bonnard, who definitely both could be up for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.

As for presentation, Dunkirk in many senses, is kind of a technical marvel. The location sets are brilliant; sets, brilliant. Everything looks amazingly dark and otherworldly. It suits the setting of the film perfectly, and is done perfectly to give it an authentic feel.

The costume department should also be praised, as there are some excellent costumes. But one of the real standouts of the technical department has to be Hans Zimmer for his fantastic score that is just perfect for the film, and I really hope at this point he gets nominated for an Oscar. It’s not the best score I’ve heard this year, or even the best soundtrack, but I loved it, and it’s probably one of the best parts about the film.

Dunkirk is a film I would describe as very well done and technically well-made, but it isn’t a slam dunk for me.

I think the problem is that they tried to juggle a bit too much at once, and while for the most part it succeeds, it doesn’t give a full engaging experience. It does do a decent job of bringing a human level to a part of history that in a couple of decades will be over a century ago, but I felt like this film needed a bit of a tighter focus.

It’s a pretty good film, all things considered, and I really can recommend it. I’m just not going nuts for it, and I’m not going to say that this is ’97% on Rotten Tomatoes’-worthy, though the technical department and behind-the-scenes staff really deserve props for the effort they made.

Mini Review – Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Side of Dimensions

Released in cinemas in February, reviewed after the Blu-Ray and DVD release.

You know what, I began with minimal expectations for this film, but it turned out to be much better than I expected. It does a pretty good job of carrying the look and feel of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! series, and despite taking place past the finale, which I felt was perfectly fine and led into various good sequels, it felt like it belonged. It was good and gave finality to that era of the series.

To go into part that only fans of the franchise would get, I feel the best component to the movie was Kaiba’s character development.

I’m not going to go out and say that this was a brilliant piece of work, but for Yu-Gi-Oh! it was the best of the bunch so far for anybody who likes the card game.

Oh, and unlike the other ones, we actually get proper duels this time, quite a few in fact, taking advantage of the two hour run-time.

If you want more detail into my thoughts, check out the upcoming mini Anime Amigos vlog on the 9th of August, where we will delve into spoiler territory.

Well, that’s it for me this week, and despite the fact I’m going away to Germany for my traditional early-August music festival, I did have time to make a review, so join me next time where I’ll be giving my thoughts on Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, based on a graphic novel, directed by Luc Besson.

All that being said, thank you for reading this review. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it, and man is it getting harder to do my Top 10 Films of the Year list with all the good films having being released so far!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES”

Okay, fair warning here; it’s literally impossible to talk about this movie without giving away the ending of its predecessor – so, apologies, but this review will contain spoilers for both Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Now, I’m not the biggest Planet of the Apes fan in the world. I enjoyed the original Charlton Heston movie every so often if it was playing at Christmas, or something like a lot of those types of movies end up doing, but it definitely has some interesting ideas. I have read a few related comics that have been half decent, including some very cool examples, where we had Predator versus Planet for the Apes, but I was never really captured by it. That was until the series was rebooted again in 2011 with Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

I went in with minimal expectations because I was not a fan of the Tim Burton remake, and the idea of doing a prequel story seemed unnecessary to me. However I couldn’t have been more wrong, and as a result, we’ve had two really fantastic films out of it.

I rewatched Rise and Dawn in preparation for reviewing this film, and my opinion hasn’t changed. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is still a fantastic film, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is possibly even better.

Rise’s only major weakness was that it was a bit too short, which meant we didn’t get enough of the actual ‘rising’ element. I know I normally complain that movies overrun their run time, but I actually think that Rise could have been a two hour film, as opposed to the hour and forty minutes that it was. War of the Planet of the Apes came out of the fact that Dawn ended on a note suggesting that the franchise would continue.

The film was directed by Matt Reeves, who also co-wrote alongside Mark Bomback, which had me a tad worried, considering Bomback’s previous screenplays include medium to okay films like Die Hard 4, The Wolverine, to absolutely atrocious movies like Insurgent and the Total Recall remake. He also was not involved in the writing of any of the previous films in the rebooted Planet of the Apes franchise.

Reeves may not have directed Rise, but he carried it over pretty well with Dawn, so I was expecting him to be able to recapture it with War.

I was especially hoping that he hadn’t lost his touch, as he has recently been announced to be directing the next Batman film, but I won’t get into a conversation about what a production mess that film is turning out to be, having it been announced this week that Ben Affleck’s original script for the movie has been completely thrown out, and they’re starting again from scratch with a possibly delayed release date. It should not be hard for DC to make a Batman film!

But we’re not here to discuss bats; we’re here to discuss apes.

So has this one managed to keep the franchise going strong, cap it off for the time being? Or is it a case of third time’s ‘not’ the charm?

Taking place five years after the events of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the last stretch of humanity is preparing to take on the apes, who are still being led by Caesar (Andy Serkis). Despite Caesar trying to avoid war with the humans as much as possible, having been forced into a difficult situation by Koba in Dawn, and being haunted by the decision to kill him, he tries his best to avoid conflict as much as possible, and to show that apes are not savages. That all goes to pot however, when the Colonel (Woody Harrelson) initiates a covert operation on their new home, killing several apes, including Caesar’s wife and son, leading Caesar to track the Colonel with a small group of his closest allies in hopes of finding revenge.

War of the Planet of the Apes actually feels rather like a much smaller film compared to the other films in the franchise: On paper, the plot feels simpler, the sets are a lot more enclosed and are not spread over so many locations, and this is the first film in the series not to feature any of San Francisco – in fact it’s not made clear what part of America the film takes place in, as far as I am aware. This however has still been a damn good movie. Despite the fact it feels as though the budget was reduced compared to the other two, they took advantage of everything they were given, and managed to do an excellent job.

I actually commented in the past that I thought these films felt more like zombie movies than they did Planet of the Apes, since they share a common theme of ‘the last of humanity’ and a society collapsed by a viral outbreak. The main difference is that though the apes are a product of this outbreak, they are not a necessary enemy, it’s just that the situation has resolved itself in such a way. This one takes very much after the extreme; it feels like a documentary of humanity’s last days, exacerbated even further by the fact that the ‘Simian Flu’ that broke out at the end of Rise, which caused a great many human deaths in the interim between Rise and Dawn, has now taken on new life, since it now exhibits an additional side effect of reducing human cognitive ability, reducing us to an animalistic existence.

I’m in two minds about this: On the one hand I actually like the fact that these films are further building up to the actual events of the original Planet of the Apes (1968) with the humans being unable to talk and being more animalistic, which is why Charlton Heston’s character was such an anomaly. It does add some additional dimensions to some of the human characters in War, particularly the Colonel, but in a way that I will not spoil for you (it’s not what you’re thinking from my description!).
On the other hand, it’s kind of weird that the flu now carries this side effect, and that it hasn’t been shown in any of the previous films. Now, viruses do mutate, and it could be that over the fifteen year course of its existence it has suddenly mutated this effect, but it is a bit unbelievable. However, for the sake of the narrative, I’m going to give it a slide.

Given that this is the greatest criticism, you realise just how well this film series is doing.

While this may start off as a classic revenge tale like Moby Dick, it evolves into something much more interesting, and far more enjoyable.

Despite the fact that the Colonel is a bit of a military dumbass cliché, he has believable motivations as to why he acts so irrationally. I think audiences may be a bit shocked by the internment camps for apes that humans have set up. These are some of the darkest points that the series has gone to so far.

The Colonel is not the only new character though; Nova (Amiah Miller) is introduced, a girl who cannot speak as a result of the Simian Flu, who Maurice brings along after her guardian is killed. She makes an interesting addition to the cast. She doesn’t really do much until the last portion, but her inclusion in the film is not to its detriment, if anything it’s actually a benefit.

But the real focus of the film, once again, is on Caesar, with very few humans (and no good ones) left, his character arc in War is given full focus, and damn is it good.

You feel his struggle, you feel his pain, you feel his sense of revenge, but at the same time he knows that giving in to his hate would mean he’d be exactly like Koba, and it would prove humanity’s perception of the apes to be true. It is frankly very captivating. And once again, it does a fantastic job of making Caesar the most ‘human’ of all the characters in the film. And it also helps that of the new characters introduced, though some stick out a bit, such as Steve Zahn’s Bad Ape, whose comedic side feels rather out of place in the movie, he is at least rather interesting. The cast however does feel like it fits the entire film, and this whole ‘war documentary’ idea suits them well. The apes feel like actual apes.

It’s very clear that the motion capture side of the cast really took the time and effort to not only learn the necessary sign language, but also to move and sound like the apes they’re depicting, although there’s a lot more speaking this time round, with Andy Serkis getting more lines in this film than in any other in the franchise.

I don’t really want to talk too much about the story, as it’s best to go in without too much knowledge; that’s actually one of the reasons I was quite glad the trailers held back a bit. It’s best to just go in and experience it.

I do think it’s best to watch the other two films shortly before seeing War as they transition into each other very well.

As for the cast, they perform very well, yet again.

Woody Harrelson gives probably his best performance since Hunger Games in this film. They managed to add a lot of dimension to a character that, in the hands of another actor, could have potentially collapsed in on itself.

Steve Zahn, who is a new addition to the cast, gives a decent performance when he’s not being overly comedic, which, as I’ve already mentioned, kind of sticks out.

Amiah Miller gives a brilliant performance considering that she delivers it all without talking, though she does have a brief moment where she uses sign language.

But the standout, once again, is Andy Serkis’ Caesar, which really should be up there with his other great motion caption performances, such a Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, and The Hobbit. This performance is actually so good that is somewhat undermines the rest of the cast who are actually giving great performances, in the same way that people didn’t comment on John Lythgoe’s excellent performance in the first Planet of the Apes film.

Now going through aesthetics, before anyone asks me, I did see the film in 3D. The 3D’s alright at times, but once again, some of those scenes are a bit too dark and don’t suit the 3D quite as well. That being said, it’s a lot better than many 3D films I’ve seen recently, and I would recommend seeng it in this format, if indeed you enjoy 3D movies.

If however you’re not that bothered, maybe stick to the 2D version.

What I’m eager to talk about is the motion capture. If you liked it in the first two films, you’ll like it again this time round.

I’m amazed how the technology seems to get better with every one of these films. The makeup in the Burton film may have been really good, but man, do they look like actual apes in this film – in this one you really feel more than ever that you can reach out and touch them. You don’t see them as computer effects anymore. There are none of the motion capture troubles like in the recent Beauty and the Beast (which I reviewed earlier this year, the less said about that crappy movie, the better).

As I said, the motion capture wouldn’t have been as good if the actors hadn’t been able to perform the ape-like actions to a tee, even with the apes become more human as the franchise progresses.

Visually, the sets are phenomenal. These are some brilliantly designed sets, and they use them very well. Because this film is set in a snowy environment, it feels like a cold movie, which really suits the atmosphere that the film goes for. Trust me, if you’ve not been convinced by the Planet of the Apes films, now is the time to get on the bandwagon; this is now a fantastic trilogy.

War of the Planet of the Apes is a brilliant film to cap off the trilogy and is one of the best films I’ve seen this year so far, with some brilliant performances, a well-written story, some brilliant motion capture performances, and a fantastic range of sets and effects.
A trilogy of films that sounds like a bad idea in theory has proven to be an outright success, and I think it will be one hell of a ride for people to rewatch these films as a trilogy when the inevitable three film box set is released.

If you liked the previous films then you’re gonna love this one.
If you didn’t like them, this probably won’t change your mind.
If you haven’t got onto them yet, I urge you to do so.

These are now my favourite Planet of the Apes films to date.

I’m undecided between War and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, but to be honest, I don’t want to decide because all three are fantastic films, and I don’t want to have to choose between them.

The series definitely feels like it’s running low on ideas, and it shows when the plot revolves around a long-lost twin brother, which is the lowest point of a continuous series outside of sending the cast into space. Here’s a tip for you, if a franchise resorts to outer space or estranged relatives, then it’s a clear indicator that they’ve lost originality, and it feels that way here. The jokes feel tired and stretched, but I’m glad the minions have had a reduction in screen time, since they can be a bit overbearing if made the focus for too long. They’re simply not given anything interesting to do, and I was kind of weirded out by the idea of minions going to prison, since it sends a rather strange message to kids about life in prison.

I’m not saying it’s a hard film, or even a bad film; it’s just an okay film, but I actually found myself rather bored with it, and frankly I don’t want to see a Despicable Me 4, or a sequel to the Minions film. I know they are a marketing giant, but they have to stop now before it gets worse. Though, considering how much the minions are selling big, I’m very doubtful that’s actually going to be the case.

Baby Driver is another film that could potentially be in my ten best of the year.

It has a phenomenal soundtrack that reminds me of Guardians of the Galaxy but it somehow manages to make the music itself a character.

It’s a very well done heist movie with a brilliant all-star cast, with action scenes timed wonderfully to music through sound effects, signs, kicks and jumps. One of the prime examples of this was in a chase scene involving the song Hocus Pocus by Focus, timed so that guns go off in time with the beat of the song.

The driving scenes are well-choreographed, and there are some very likeable characters in it.

Baby Driver is incredibly well-written and directed. This is honestly one I would say you really need to check out. It’s a fantastic film, and like War for the Planet of the Apes, it is very likely to be in my ten best films of the year

If it is playing in a cinema in your area, for the love of God, check this film out.
I first saw this at the Flat Pack Film Festival in Birmingham last year, and let me tell you something, if this had come out last year like intended, it would have been not only in my top ten, by my top three films of last year. It’s another anime film that’s up there with When Marnie Was There, and Your Name, both of which I have previously reviewed.

The film is directed by Momoru Hosoda, who directed other classic films like The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars, and one of my all-time favourite films, Wolf Children. The Boy and the Beast may not live up to Wolf Children, but it’s a very strong contender, because it is another phenomenal movie. It deals with subjects like adoptive families, fathers and sons, nature vs nurture and the feeling of abandonment, and passing on one’s legacy.

Hosoda conveys this through the plot of a beast man taking a homeless boy into the world of the beasts, training him in martial arts to continue his legacy, becoming a truly heartfelt story.

Well, that’s that for another week!

Considering that in the space of a week, I’ve seen three films that could go in my top ten of the year, I’m in a good mood. I’m hoping I can keep it up for next week, when I’ll be giving my thoughts on Christopher Nolan’s retelling of one of the most famous battles of the Second World War, in his film Dunkirk. In addition I will also be giving a mini-review of Cars 3, because I hate myself, and this job forces me to see sequels to films that I don’t like.

With that being said, thank you for reading this review, and I hope you did so as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“SPIDERMAN HOMECOMING”

Now I may have mentioned in the past several times that I am much more a DC fan than a Marvel fan. This probably because I was brought up with DC franchises like, Superman, Batman and Justice League, but when I was younger, I really loved Spiderman. Spiderman has always been one of my favourite Superheroes, he had cool powers, an interesting back story and a really good rogues gallery.

Obviously Spiderman is proving popular since he has had five films up to this point, all made by Sony. While I really enjoyed both the Sam Raimi trilogy and The Amazing Spiderman films, I never thought any of them got it completely right. There was always one or two things to nit pick. In some senses The Amazing Spiderman kind of annoyed me because it meant Marvel wasn’t getting the character back for the MCU. Fortunately when The Amazing Spiderman 2 tanked and the writing team split, one of them going on to make The Mummy of all things, Sony knew they were in a pickle and decided to cut their losses and sell the character back to Marvel as we saw in his first introduction of Captain America Civil War, which you will recall, was one of the best films I saw last year, and to my mind possibly the best Marvel film to date. I really got a kick out of Tom Holland’s Spiderman, even though he was only briefly on the screen, which made me very excited for this film: Spiderman Homecoming. There was a brilliant cast list announced and of course the MCU sound like they are doing a good job. The directing job was given to John Watts, a rather inexperienced director whose only directed feature films prior to this, most notably, 2015’s Cop Car. He is certainly an interesting choice and the screenplay received a ton of re-writes, hence the fact that there are seven credited screenplay writers, so has that confusion affected the final product and how does Spiderman Homecoming stand up now that this is Spiderman’s third re-boot in the space of fifteen years.

Spiderman Homecoming takes place a few months after the events of Captain America Civil War, I am also assuming Dr Strange has happened in that time since most of the MCU films appear to be in chronological order at this point. After their mission in Berlin, Tony Stark, aka Ironman (played by Robert Downey Jr) takes Peter Parker aka Spiderman (played by Tom Holland) home, instructing him to keep a low profile, get used to his powers and eventually he will get him into the Avengers once he has received more experience. The problem is that Peter thinks he is due for bigger things especially considering when he was last in action he took down Giant Man and stole Captain America’s shield. His big break comes when he finds a group of smugglers selling weapons to criminals made from chitauri technology that had been salvaged after the invasion in the events of The Avengers film. They are led by Adrian Toombes aka the Vulture (played by Michael Keaton) who proves to be a powerful foe using the technology to its fullest advantage and get what he believes is owed to him that was taken away by the rich. Can Spiderman overcome the odds and take down the Vulture, despite the fact he is doing this against Tony Stark’s wishes.

Ok, so we are now well into phase three of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and while it does feel a little late to be bringing Spiderman into the mix, this film serves as a pretty good introduction for him. Anyone familiar with Spiderman topes will be aware of this, most of the tropes are still here and most of the supporting cast is here: Aunt May is back, this time played by Marisa Tomel and we also have his typical bullies, mainly Flash Thompson, this time played by Tony Revolori, who you may recognise from The Grand Budapest Hotel. It, however, gives us one thing that none of the other Spiderman films have really given us: Peter Parker in High School!!! Yes I know he was in high school in Amazing Spiderman and to a certain extent Spiderman too, but he was coming towards the end and Graduating. This one, we actually get to see him in his day to day life. In that sense, it kind of reflects to the Ultimate Spiderman series, which I really enjoyed. However, I think this film may be a mixed bag for many fans. The major reason being, I think people will be expecting something different this time around, though I think those expectations will actually hinder their experience because what we are getting is something that feels refreshing, or at least in my opinion is refreshing. One of my biggest problems with the Amazing Spiderman films is that they mimic the Sam Raimi film way too much, which meant the film would often struggle to have its own identity. It’s almost as if the writers and directors didn’t have enough confidence to try something different. This one certainly has a lot more confidence. This is a very different Spiderman story. We trade off a lot of exploration of the character, though not entirely and in return, we get a much more simplistic, but well told story in a way that hasn’t been done in a Spiderman film yet. It’s very simply, get to the bad guy doing a thing, Peter Parker wants to prove himself by stopping him, high jinx ensue.

The film really realises that Spiderman is now in the MCU and takes full advantage of it and in all honesty I think this is the first Spiderman to really get the character down almost perfectly. Tom Holland has brought everything that was with the character in civil war to this film, which means everything that was set up by the Russo brothers is now going to stick. The biggest problem we got with Toby Maguire was that he was a bit too geeky and not a wise cracking smart ass when he was in the suit. Whereas Andrew Garfield was the reverse. Tom Holland is the perfect middle ground and he not only looks the part, he seems to mould himself into the part almost perfectly. This is an excellent decision because this film also chooses to forgo the entire origin story. There is no mention of Uncle Ben and he is not seen on screen at all, we don’t even get a flashback to his death and the Spider bite is only mentioned in passing. But, frankly at this point we are so familiar with Spiderman that I don’t think it is necessary. So, the film gets down its main character almost perfectly in a way that I don’t think the other Spiderman films achieved. If people are expecting the big character study that the original Spiderman trilogy was and the two Amazing Spiderman films were, however, I think they might go in a bit disappointed, by this point that’s been done. We get enough of the main character and his struggles of being Spiderman and the need to prove himself without having to go through half of the same stuff that the other films did and it’s to the films benefit, this is a different kind of Spiderman that works, for the most part, and with an actor who can really pull it off. I don’t think we’ve seen the character closer to his comic counterpart in any other film.

The villains are actually a rather interesting bunch. I know the MCU doesn’t have villains that are as interesting as their heroes, but I must be honest, I think this film has kind of bucked the trend for the most part. I actually kind of liked the Vulture in this film. They messed around with the characters origin from the comics quite a bit but considering how much Marvel have been messing around with the character over the years, this character is well open to interpretation and to be honest, at least these changes are within the spirit of the character. There is an interesting motivation there. We get a flashback early on to him running a clean-up crew to deal with the alien technology after the invasion of New York in the Avengers, which he gets cut out of after Tony Stark brings in his own crew to deal with it and he then feels a sense of entitlement from what has been taken from him. Again a rather interesting motivation, ok, granted he is not quite on the same level as Wilson Fisk in Daredevil or Zebediah Kilgrave in Jessica Jones or even Cottonmouth in Luke Cage and he is certainly not nearly as entertaining as Loki, but I would definitely put him up there as one of the better MCU villains at this point. There is nothing too complex about his character but he serves the purpose and he does it pretty well and he has a rather honourable motivation and trust me, the change in the origin pays off big time later on in the film, though I don’t want to give away spoilers, but let’s just say it also leads to a trope of Spiderman films that I am amazed that people are not getting sick of by this point. I would also like to say, it’s a bit weird having Michael Keaton in the role considering he has played Batman in the past, but really, who is going to turn down a role in a Spiderman film.

The Vulture isn’t the only villain in the film, we also have the Shocker played by Bokeem Woodbine and while he is basically just the number two to the Vulture he at least gets some decent scenes and does a decent job. The supporting cast is also pretty good as well, including Zendaya playing Michelle who is a barrel of laughs, Tony Revolori makes an excellent Flash Thompson, though I don’t think they quite got down the fact that Flash Thompson is essentially a Spiderman fanboy. I actually felt that Tony Stark was really good in this film, they do a pretty good job of making him a good mentor figure and I do get a sense that he is holding back Peter Parker because he doesn’t want him to go down the same path that led them to the events of Civil War. As usual, we also have the love interest, who, this time is Liz ,played by Laura Harrier, who is a rather obscure reference unless you are rather familiar with the 90’s Spiderman cartoon, she serves her purpose, even if she is kind of lacking in the personality department, but she is certainly better than the cutout that was Mary Jane in the Sam Raimi films, no offence Kirsten Dunst, you tried your best, but that part was badly written!!

The standout of the cast though is Ned, played by Jacob Batalon, who may be a bit of a clone of Ganke from Ultimate Spiderman but I really enjoyed him and I think he makes an excellent friend to Peter especially after he finds out he is Spiderman and tries to get him more involved in his Superhero work, by the way, that is not a spoiler, that was in pretty much every trailer for this film. Honestly, everyone is written very well and the cast also give excellent performances, I haven’t even mentioned Jon Favereau doing a brilliant job as Happy Hogan, but again the stand out performance is Tom Holland as Peter Parker, who I stand by, is the best actor to play the role to date.

This film also has a brilliant aesthetic: the costume designs are fantastic, especially Spiderman’s costume and even the subtle detail to the Shocker’s hoodie that was a subtle hint to the costume design in the comics. I didn’t mind the Vulture’s costume re-design even if it takes a bit of a liberty with the comics design. Honestly there isn’t really much more to say, the Ironman suit looks the same as ever and they all blend pretty well into the action scenes, which I might add are also, for the most part pretty good, a couple of them are slight fails, but again, this is mainly because many of them were shot in very dark environments. Though I think most of the action scenes in Washington were done pretty dam well. My only complaint with the new Spiderman suit is that it does come with the artificial intelligence, which I felt is borrowing a little too much from Ironman, but it still had some good moments.

Now I only saw the film in 2D, so I can’t comment on the 3D presentation, but I would recommend seeing this film in 2D because there are some darker moments that will be hindered by the 3D glasses. There isn’t really much more to say, if I had to nit pick I would say there are a couple of tropes I wish they had cut, while I did think that one of those tropes is over used I do think it was used better here than it has been in a couple of the other films and I am glad they only try to expand on one villain rather than them both, which again was a mistake that Spiderman 3 and The Amazing Spiderman 2 made.

So that’s my very long thoughts on Spiderman Homecoming. I will be interested to hear what your thoughts are.

Come back next time were I will be giving my thoughts on the next instalment of the Planet of the Apes franchise “War for the Planet of the Apes” and I will also have a mini review of Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver and possibly a mini review of Despicable Me 3.

Thanks a lot for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it, and I haven’t got a good friendly neighbourhood Spiderman joke to end this review out with, so go and watch my vlog.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

Ren’s view of Spiderman Homecoming

A new approach to the classic superhero tale (sans origin story), Spider-Man: Homecoming features Tom Holland as high schooler and titular character, Spiderman.

Returning to the roots of the franchise, Homecoming gives us Peter Parker at the tender age of 15, a period in most people’s lives where change is to be expected, though typically they are more hormonal changes than superhuman. Nevertheless, puberty is an especially tumultuous time for any youth, and is often fraught with developmental obstacles, social struggles and fleeting romances.

Homecoming is a unique mix of Superhero and High School comedy, lending itself very effectively to both styles to create an accessible film for fans of Disney’s MCU and Sony’s previous iterations of the character. In contrast to earlier films however, Jon Watts chooses to touch only very lightly on Spiderman’s origins, altering the pace of the film to reflect this. His reasoning for this (I theorise) is that Spiderman (Toby McGuire), and The Amazing Spiderman (Andrew Garfield) both heavily rely on Uncle Ben as a device for Spiderman’s vigilante mindset; however Holland’s approach to the character acts out of a childlike moral compass, dictating right and wrong based on one’s actions and motivations.

Like many high school movies, Homecoming explores the theme of fitting in, and finding one’s place in the world. With encroaching exams, competitions, and the homecoming dance on the horizon, Parker struggles to balance his nightly vigilantism with normal life, leading to overlap in the form of his best friend and confidant Ned Leeds (Jacob Batalon) discovery of his secret identity. Despite all this, Parker maintains his hopes of one day joining the Avengers, seeking the approval of Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). Due to his often thoughtless approach however, Spiderman repeatedly finds himself clashing and losing to Vulture (Michael Keaton), causing Stark to lose faith in him. Parker’s own inadequacy is a flaw that is frequently presented in Marvel continuity, and is noted to be the biggest limiter on his powers, so the culmination of his losses to Vulture and Stark’s diminished opinion of him do not bear well.

Beyond this is spoiler territory, so I won’t delve into anything much deeper, save to say that as with many high school films, adversity is often dealt with through introspection and confidence, and the same holds true here.

Regarding action sequences. I’ll leave a disclaimer, I am quite critical when it comes to fight scenes set at night. Abundantly so, mainly because it’s very difficult to tell what goes on, especially when portraying high-octane melée between superheroes. I feel it has to fit the theme of the film. To use an example, John Wick – a remorseless assassin methodically dispatching an endless sea of lackeys as he ploughs through to reach his target, that justifies a dusk-lit action sequence. However, the gaudily dressed Spiderman locked in superhuman combat with an alien-tech bolstered super villain requires lighting and spectacle for it to remain visually impressive.

Regardless of this fact and visual issues aside, some of the superhero clashes we were given were nothing short of innovative. Boats bisected, jets crashed, monuments invaded. Marvelous.

As I mentioned before however, what I think action genres as a whole need to escape from is a reliance on low-lighting to dictate mood and motion during combat choreography. To use an in-universe example, and to play on the strengths of the superhero, the fight between Spiderman and Doctor Octopus in Spiderman 2. A multi-level fight on the side of a building, taking into account gravity, reactions, the need to protect the innocent, and the imminent risk of death by falling. All of these things combine to make a compelling, visually trackable and exciting clash between two well-known villains. A lack of discernible shapes and lighting causes confusion, and generally detracts from what ought to be a satisfying and climactic clash between protagonist and antagonist.

Spider-Man: Homecoming boasts a most impressive set of actors, appearing in main, supporting, cameo, and comedy roles (Stan Lee, we know you’re in there).

Doing a brief role-call: Tom Holland (Captain America: Civil War, The Impossible), Michael Keaton (The Birdman, Beetlejuice, Batman), Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Chef), Donald Glover/Childish Gambino (Community, The Martian), Hannibal Buress (The Eric Andre Show), Kenneth Choi (The Wolf of Wall Street), Tony Revolori (The Grand Budapest Hotel). Not to mention Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Evans rounding out the big hitters of the cast.

Notably, I praise Jacob Batalon in the role of Ned Leeds for an exceptionally amusing performance. Having only performed in one movie prior to this (North Woods, 2016), it’s difficult to gauge Batalon’s prior experience in larger roles, but his tone, timing and general inflection lend him well to a supporting role, and I look forward to seeing him in the modern-day retelling of the classic story The True Don Quixote, currently in post-production.

In addition, Zendaya (child of Disney) cements herself in the role of Michelle as a wryly comedic addition to the cast, less as an integral character but more as an absurdist caricature of high school outliers. She has some exceptionally funny parts, and boasts her talent as an up and coming actor, particularly noting her role in The Greatest Showman alongside actors Hugh Jackman, Rebecca Ferguson, and former-Disneyite, Zac Efron.

To conclude, Spider-Man: Homecoming, its stylistic choices, pace and story feel entirely different to the Spiderman films we’ve seen in the recent past – and rightly so. Sony and Disney compromising a middle ground on the label may be the best thing to happen to our favourite web-slinger over the course of his tumultuous movie history. Indeed it feels a lot more MCU, fitting with his recent appearance in Captain America: Civil War, and it is with tentative enthusiasm that I hope this trend continues with Homecoming’s unnamed sequel set for theatre release in 2019.

“IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD”

One of a trilogy of Anime films in recent memory that have come to cinema, soon to be a quad trilogy with the release of The Boy and the Beast today. It really feels as though Anime is being taken seriously since it is now coming to mainstream cinemas. I think it’s down to the success of Your Name, it proved that there is a large audience for it and of course more people are exposed to Anime now thanks to Crunchyroll and other streaming sites.

In this Corner of the World is an Anime that I am surprised hasn’t been made sooner. It’s mainly because, well, put it this way, when a Manga gets turned into an Anime it’s often not long till after the Manga has become successful, five years at a maximum. So why the hell would this take so long. The Manga, that was written by Fuyo Kono, came out in 2008 and this one didn’t hit Japanese cinemas until 2016, that’s a full eight years, though I think it’s mainly down to the fact that many studios around that time would probably not have had a Studio Ghibli sized budget to make top world class animation. Studio Mappa handed the writing and directing job to Sunao Katabuchi, who most famously wrote and directed Black Lagoon, which in my mind makes him a rather odd choice to do a World War 2 drama of all things and that’s not a knock against Black Lagoon.

Now I went into this film knowing virtually nothing about it, I had only seen one trailer when I went to see the previously reviewed A Silent Voice, but nevertheless I got my tickets and myself together with Renn Bromiley, and we went down to give our thoughts on the film, so we were going into this film as blind as possible. We hadn’t really researched the film, all we knew was that it was an Anime in a cinema and we wanted to see it.

The plot description of In This Corner of the World is going to be a rather short one since it’s very hard to talk about for the type of story that it wants to tell and it doesn’t entirely follow a basic three act structure, though that is still in place It’s the story of Suzu (played by Rena Nounen) showing her life between the mid 1930’s up until early 1946. It shows her as she leaves her family and her homeland after marrying at th age of nineteen and moving in with her husband and in-laws and her struggles to make a new life and a new family, as well as her experiences living and in certain senses surviving the 2nd World War during American air raids and trying to keep connected with her family back in Hiroshima. Just from that conversation alone, anyone with a basic knowledge of World War 2 can tell one of the subject matters that is going to be in this movie. The film is not at all subtle about it, it is sign posted in virtually every direction. However, how it is handled is another story, but I will be coming back to that later.

In This Corner of the World attempts to be a slice of life story of our main character and in a sense is a character study about somebody, who to all intents and purposes is very, very ordinary. Yes, Suzu is not exactly an extraordinary person, she is just a person, but she is a nice likeable person and in some sense kind of an interesting person to be around as a result, we see her life and her struggles, but what makes her as a character is the fact that she is trying to stay positive, no matter what. Even as Japan moves into it’s stages of rationing and building bomb shelters and of course the brilliant senses of her coming to terms with the various stages of her life. She never mopes in the corner or gives up, it’s just a case of, she just wants to get on with her day and be the best person that she can be and that’s what makes her an endearing character. In a film like this, you really need great characters that you want to be around and enjoy, because if not much is actually happening, you want to at least find something to be happy about, you at least want to be in the company of people. A good slice of life story is essentialy like being on holiday with a group of peoples. You are going to be doing it for quite a while, you are stuck with them so let’s hope that they are at least interesting and have some good stories to tell. A lot of Anime writers are good at this and In This Corner of the World succeeds. It’s something a lot of western writers and directors seem to be struggling with and especially Richard Linklater, who while I think has the capabilities of doing a good slice of life story hasn’t succeeded yet, with the rather overrated but very well made and interesting project Boyhood, and especially badly in the rather dull and kind of annoying Everybody Wants Some.

In This Corner of the World, however, has a brilliant cast of characters, we take a while to get to know them and initially we are darting around quite a few since the family dynamic changes rather drastically and the cast doesn’t really stay permanent until after Suzu’s wedding. This cast is the best part of the film. We get a lot of the same effect with these characters, even though we don’t dive into them as much as Suzu. The 2nd World War backdrop is kind of a good way to explore them since it’s what is arguably Japan’s darkest period and it only got worse as time went on with the American retaliation after Pearl Harbour. Funny enough, despite the fact that Hiroshima is mentioned in this film, there is no actual mention of Pearl Harbour, though I have found depictions of the 2nd World War done by the Japanese rather fascinating as it does kind of remind you, at the end of the day, that there were people on the ground and it wasn’t just soldiers being killed, it was just families, including women and children. Japan has a certain fascination with World War 2 and I think it’s down to the fact that not only was it their darkest period, it’s also the period where they lost so much and the fact that they then lost the War, meant that all that loss and all the sacrifices made, were pretty much meaningless, but at the same time, from a western perspective, in hindsight, maybe it’s a necessary loss because the situation would have certainly been worse had the Japanese succeeded. Films like this can really put us in a real catch 22 and In This Corner of the World succeeds, but it doesn’t try to be ultra-political. Japan has always had this pacifical nature to it, it doesn’t really want war, hence why it hasn’t taken part in many conflicts for several decades. The film doesn’t portray the military very well, something that is a common theme in Anime. It’s actually really dam good in that sense, it doesn’t have a message, it just has ga story. Many people listening to my description will probably think it sounds an awful lot like Studio Ghibli’s Grave of the Fireflies, a film directed by Iso Takahata. I really would not want to compare the film since I am actually one of the people who doesn’t like Grave of the Fireflies for rather the same reasons that Bennett the Sage doesn’t. Not to try and tread on a few toes since I know a lot of people who like those films, so I am just going to leave a link to his review of that at the bottom of this review. But, needless to say, he has what might be considered a controversial opinion of the film, which I share. Personally, I didn’t feel like this film was controversial I actually felt myself enjoying this film. You feel the characters emotions and it works incredibly well in that sense. It reminded me why I like slice of life stories that much, it’s nice to be in the company of people you enjoy.

If there is one thing I will say, however, the film runs quite a bit longer than I was expecting. It is running at the same pace as Studo Ghibli films, it comes in at 2hrs and 8mins and while I did think it used that time pretty well, may be a few scene could have been cut for time, there are certain scenes that don’t really go anywhere. That being said, however, that’s really the only minor nit pick I am going to have. I have another one, but I will talk about that in a bit. It’s a really wonderful slice of life story, with some excellent characters and some very well written dialogue. I will say, however, if you are not used to these type of stories, I wouldn’t recommend you go into this as your first one, I would say a couple of other movies prior to doing that. Off the top of my head I would recommend Whispers of the Heart in that sense, which had a very similar story structure, but a much more lighter theme.

As for the acting, it’s all pretty dam good. I saw the film in it’s original Japanese with sub title and I am very very doubtful the film with receive any form of dub. The cast, however, it really fantastic and all of them are worthy of praise, though I do think the stand out performance by far is Rena Nounen as Suzu, she delivers a fantastic performance.

As for the art style, the animation is fantastic in this film. Suzu is an aspiring painter and sketcher and the film reflects that rather well. It has some very interesting transitions to show air raids where using charcoal and paint as well as several other scenes that get similar treatment. This is some beautiful work. It reminds me very similarly to the art style of the Tales of Princess Kaguya, however, with that one where it was trying to depict a children’s fairy tale or a book, this one is more designed to depict something akin to an acrylic painting. For the most part, it really dam works. I did at a couple of times think that may be this style doesn’t really suit the rather adult story that the film is trying to tell, however, for the most part I think it actually succeeds and I am aware that they would have been bound to the art style of the Munga.

If there’s one thing I really liked about this film, it’s the well, it was just fun to watch. Fun is the wrong word, I would say it’s a real interesting experience. In this Corner of the World is a very well done character study and slice of life story, it just happens to b depicted in the backdrop of a rather difficult time for Japan. It is certainly interesting to see World War 2 from another perspective, I really enjoyed watching it because it feels like a film that has been made with a clear purpose and a clear story in mind. I enjoyed the characters, I enjoyed the setting and the animation and art style is absolutely gorgeous. It is definitely one to check out. However, despite my praise I would still say I preferred both Your name and A Silent Voice to this film and I would even recommend, if you have the choice to go and see The Boy and the Beast, which has come out today.

Well that’s me done for the week. Myself and Renn have had a good time watching this one, so we will be back next Friday, where we will be giving our thoughts on the latest entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spiderman The Homecoming.

Thanks a lot for reading my review, I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as we have enjoyed writing it and man was this what I needed after Transformers.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT”

Apologies if this is a short review, but I really don’t have much to say at all!!

Seriously, we are five movies in at this point, five movies in. I’ve explained why I don’t like the Transformers films, I have explained I don’t like Michael Bay as a director and how he is just completely destroying everything and I have nothing more to say. I HAVE NOTHING AT THIS POINT, I don’t even want to attempt to criticise this film because he is not attempting to make anything, it’s all just testosterone filled nothingness that’s been all of these films to date.

Transformers The Last Knight’s only real contribution is that it now adds King Arthur and Arthurian Legends into the Transformers Universe, but frankly it’s rather meaningless since it all comes down to, this is the plot device for this film, bad guys want it, good guys need to protect it. The only thing that is added is some sort of weird Dragon Transformer, which thanks to the terrible special effects and over reliance on CGI looks just as fake as everything else. Every single moment of this film is just loud, obnoxious and frankly rather dull. There’s nothing enjoyable about it. The jokes aren’t funny, the plot is all over the place and has everything explained to you every five minutes because it’s forgotten the first rule of cinema, which is, show, don’t tell. It’s just blindingly dull in every sense of the word.

The characters, there are no characters! This isn’t a fleshed out universe, they are only there to get to the action scenes, and here I was thinking the reason the Marvel movies are successful is because they actually give meaning to the action scenes by building up decent characters and while I am on it, once again, there is no room to breathe, it’s just one action scene to another.

The plot, which I have been rather ignoring is about Cybertrom coming to the planet and there is some Transformer god that corrupts Optimus Prime because they have got to rip off that idea from Fast and Furious 8, which was done much better there because at least they actually gave a decent reason for why Don was betraying the group and while it was stupid there, at least they attempted to do something with it. This film on the other hand, just has it sorted in five minutes! Hope you fan boys enjoyed your fight scene between Optimus Prime and Bumblebee, because that was the only thing that was accomplished.

There is one thing I will say in this films favour over Age over Extinction, this film at least felt like it accomplished something, and while I am at it, for some bizarre reason, the military are now anti-Transformers and go after the Auto Box as well, which makes no sense at all considering how many times he has died to save the plantet, but when was logic ever in these films, and then they do a deal with the Septicoms, makes total sense to me!!!!!

Not to mention Anthony Hopkins is giving one of the worst performances I have seen in his entire career. He thinks he is acting real cool, when actually he is just infuriating and annoying, like every other character in this film. What’s annoying as well is this film has the nerve to rip-off lines from much better films and TV shows. Ok, granted, the Wrath of Khan reference was at least meant for parody, even though it doesn’t work at all and butchers the line and the whole meaning behind it, and means that a character death has been played for laughs, thank you very much Michael Bay and then it has the nerve to rip-off a line from Sherlock and act like it’s their own original thing, and I don’t mean they do a slight line rather similar to it, it is word for word from Benedict Cumberbatch’s mouth, he’s not even in this movie!!! He’s not even a key reference!! What’s more, I don’t often say that this thing cuts off the stereotypes, but the British stereotypes in this film so appalling!! I mean it, they are just all over the place. Mark Wahlberg is somewhat memorable, but he is even memorable in terrible films but for the love of god man, don’t do any more of these!!

I HATE THESE MOVIES, I AM SICK OF THEM AND I MAY DECIDE TO NOT BE PROFESSIONAL AND NOT EVEN REVIEW ANY OF THE THREE FUTURE PLANNED FILMS.

Oh, and by the way, don’t see this film in 3D like I did. Most of the scenes are so in focus that it reeks of a rushed conversion job, I actually took off my glasses several times and the film was largely in focus. It reeks of Priest’s 2 ½D Con Job This movie sucks.

Well, it’s time to calm my nerves. Next time I will be giving my thoughts on In This Corner of the World, the latest Anime to receive a theatrical use in the UK.

“THE MUMMY”

Ok, Let’s talk about the Universal Monsters.

I really enjoy the Universal monster movies. From the 1930’s onwards, Universal made some really cool, fun films. Sure, they don’t tend to match their books, but then again they weren’t intended to, they took the bare minimum from them and made movies. But Universal likes to remind you constantly that they made these and they will never ever stop doing that, hence, why we seem to get year on year, re-boot after re-boot, after re-boot!!! The past few years have not been an exception. Universal have seen the success that Marvel has had with their Cinematic Universe and attempted to do their own take on this, deciding to combine all their monsters into one shared Universe, that they have nicknamed The Dark Universe. They have even made an entire production company to help produce the films. However, my problem with the Dark Universe is, where is it going?

The first movie was Dracula Untold, which was one of my earliest reviews for the website, but that was all the way back in late 2014, so if you thought that Batman v Superman was way too long after Man of Steel, that is nothing compared to how long we have been waiting for this Universe to get started. Dracula Untold, however, didn’t really allude to the idea of the various other monsters existing in the Universe, since it was essentially a prequel to Dracula. I must be honest, a re-watch of Dracula Untold has really soured my opinion of the film. This was worse than I remembered it being, and I thought it was a phenomenal mess, though I do think Luke Evans has the potential to make a really good Dracula in a more faithful adaptation of the book.

The Mummy was quickly announced to be the second in this series, it will be followed up by several other films, including next year’s Bride of Frankenstein. But that’s the thing about The Dark Universe, all of these films have been announced but only Bride of Frankenstein has a release date, which will be next year. We have no clue when we will be seeing the others. Also, what is the end game with this Dark Universe. The Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes each make sense, these are comic Universes where characters regularly cross over and have two major team-ups that can act as big events: The Avengers and The Justice League respectively. The Universal Monsters don’t really have that. Sure, there were the films, House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, that sort of crossed over the monsters, but even then, it wasn’t a true cross over and I’m not exactly sure why they would want to do that again considering those films were more cheesy than frightening! But, nevertheless, I decided to give my thoughts on The Mummy as a whole, that being said, I don’t have much experience with the Mummy films that Boris Karloff starred in, though I was a fan of the trilogy of films that Brendan Frasier was in that were directed by Stephen Summers. Despite the reduced quality of The Mummy Returns and the third mummy movie, though I will admit that The Scorpion King is one of my favourite guilty pleasures.

This mummy movie, has been directed by Alex Kurtzman, who will be producing The Bride of Frankenstein in 2019, although only holds one feature credit prior to this, which was 2012’s Pupils Like Us, he mostly works as a writer, having been one of the screenplay writers for Star Trek Into Darkness, though he had also written scripts for the phenomenally painful Transformers films, well at least the first two anyway. How does his term as a director stand however and does The Mummy give us faith in the Dark Universe?

The Mummy starts by giving us the back story of the daughter of the Pharaoh Ahmanet, (played by Sofia Boutella), who in her lust for power, made a deal with the God of Death Set and murdered her father and newborn brother and her punishment was mummified alive after failing to perform a ritual to bring Set into the mortal world. Several centuries later, two treasure hunters Nick Morton and Chris Vail, (played by Tom Cruise and Jake Johnson) on a trail of a map that they stole, discover her tomb in Iraq, though the map’s original owner Jenny, (played by Annabelle Wallis) comes to them with the intention of taking it back to her employer. However, after a plane crash, it soon becomes clear that Ahmanet has chosen Nick to be her new sacrifice to bring Set into the mortal world, but she is captured by a new organisation, led by Dr Henry Jekyll (played by Russell Crowe), however, this organisation may not necessarily be able to hold her though, as her powers grow and will she be able to perform the ritual to bring Set into the mortal world.

If there is a way to describe the Mummy, it is that it is very, very complicated and almost unnecessarily so. Don’t get me wrong, The Mummy, has an audience. My girlfriend, who I went to see this with enjoyed the movie, however, at best I could have said it was just ok at times. Its first biggest problem is that a large portion at the beginning of the film is really dull. It really wants to remind you about the Brendan Frasier mummy films, especially the early portions, but it’s not nearly as fun as that film. The first portion feels like you are playing the Stephen Sommers film, but with a dark, dull and moody filter, which fails to recognise what made that film so good. The Mummy was at least a fun movie, it’s very much the definition of what I think a good summer blockbuster is. It also screws up in a couple of places, for example, one comparison between this and the Stephen Sommers film is that both the main villains are mummified alive, but Stephen Sommers actually understood there was a process to mummification, this one just buries her alive, there is no real process to it, you didn’t just automatically mummify if you were born in Egypt. Granted, there are some decent scenes, and I will admit the stuff with the tomb is pretty good, but all things considered, at the end of the day, it’s still rather dull. This is because such a large portion of the early part of the film is devoted to exposition. There is so much exposition in this film and it causes a lot of moments to really drag. The editing doesn’t help, but we will get into that later.

Oh boy, there is a lot more to talk about with this film.

The Mummy is at its best when it is pretending to be a big fast action film, when it’s trying to be a slow burner and set up its Dark Universe, that’s when it feels like it is dragging the most. But, I am at least grateful that this film is giving us some idea of what the Dark Universe could potentially be and that’s what I appreciated most from the film. However, I don’t need that! I just need these films to be completely self-contained. I don’t need Dracula and Frankenstein to exist in the same continuity, I don’t think that’s what Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley were thinking when they were writing their respective books! However, the fact that there was some fun in this film and it didn’t completely emasculate its monster, meant I much preferred this to Dracula Untold and there are definitely some positives to say about that.

Right, when it comes to the positives about the cast, I am going to say it out there, the ones who impressed me the most were: Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella and Jake Johnson, who I all enjoyed. Annabelle Wallis, though she is trying her best, but the material she is given doesn’t do her any justice and I am just going to say it, as much as I like Tom Cruise for the most parts, (I personally have some misgiving about some aspects of his personal life, but I won’t let that affect my judgement) I can’t see him as a character. Any time he gives a performance, you just see Tom Cruise. I have the same effect with Jim Carey and Leonardo Dicaprio and if it wasn’t for Deadpool, even Ryan Reynolds will be starting to get to that point. But with Tom Cruise, it’s really noticeable. In fact he is playing a very similar character to his Mission Impossible character in this film, if that guy was trying to be Brendan Frasier in the Mummy. There’s not really that much else to talk about with the cast, I thought the rest of the cast were half-decent, all things considered.

Now we are going to talk about the effects. Jesus Christ, the effects in this film are all over the place. Some of them are pretty decent, others are phenomenally awful!! It also amazed me how much some of these effects were again trying to replicate the Stephen Sommers film, some of them looked note for note, especially the face appearing out of the dust thing. That’s basically replacing the face out of the sand in the Stephen Sommers film!! The biggest difference, however, is that that film at least had an excuse of the time it came out, this film has been made several years later! Do you want me to judge this film on its own merits or not!

I also want to say that there is no reason to see this film in 3D. I saw the 3D version and I frankly stopped noticing the effects so quickly. Plus, so many scenes are shot at night and in very dark environments, which hinder the 3D because of the darkening effect of the glasses. How many times do I and several other film critics have to say it! 3D is at its best when there are plenty of light, bright environments!!! I would have thought everyone would have got that since 2011’s Priest and it’a appaling 3D conversion.

The action scenes really vary. Some of them are shot pretty well, but some of them are edited appallingly. I am really wondering what the end game has in mind with some of these scenes, because some of them just seemed to stop. Granted a couple of them are quite good, especially the final fight scenes, however, not all of them are really of note.

The Mummy is an interesting experiment and is ok in a quite a few parts, especially the stuff with Dr Jekyll, however it doesn’t change the fact that it is a rather weak and confused film on a technical level. It desperately wants to get people interested in The Dark Universe, but I think it won’t do that good of a job. Though I certainly preferred this film much more to Dracula Untold because at least this film attempted to give me something interesting and didn’t demasculate its monster.

I think it’s worth at least one viewing, but I wouldn’t rush back to see this ever again, I just thought this film was ok at times, but a bit of a technical mess. I think Tom Cruise tries his best, but once again, I don’t see him as anything other than himself, I have really struggled to see this guy as a character. This films biggest problem is that it doesn’t separate itself enough, (with the exception of the parts that are meant to set up the idea of the shared Universe) from the film that was directed by Stephen Sommers and starred Brendan Frasier, which meant it was very hard to take as a film on its own merits. See it if you must, but I think there are better blockbusters coming out next month which will be worth saving your money for.

And here’s my colleague Ren’s review of it

The Mummy

If you haven’t heard of it already it should certainly be on your radar by now.


Universal Studios have launched their own movie franchise, titled ‘Dark Universe’, undoubtedly to rival the surge in popularity in recent years of the Marvel and DC cinematic universes.

The Dark Universe seeks to unite several of the most well-known horror icons into a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-esque series of films, the first of which being The Mummy.

The Mummy actually originated in the early 1930s – a pursuit of Universal Studios to embrace the rising popularity of ancient Egypt in pop culture at the time, 10 years after the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, and the alleged curse bound to his resting place…
The 1932 production gained instant recognition, and is justifiably regarded as one of the most recognisable horror films of the modern cinematic era.

Following on from the tale’s original iteration came two further franchises before the one we see in cinemas today, but I’m sad to say that this one falls woefully short of the 1999 – 2008 comedic action trilogy I’m sure we’re all familiar with.

The film follows the US forces’ resident treasure hunters Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and Sgt. Vail (Jake Johnson) as they plunge headlong into a rebel-held village in the Middle East. The escapade lands them in the deep end, as they are suppressed and forced to flee by enemy fire, prompting them to call in an air strike for support. Missiles bombard the village in a rather spectacular display of pyrotechnics, and as the resultant explosion hits, a rift in the desert opens up, and what seems to be an ancient Egyptian tomb is unearthed.

Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis) arrives on the scene as an archaeological consult to examine the tomb, prompting Morton and Vail to enter and explore its forgotten depths.

Shortly, the party encounters what seems to be a pool of mercury (believed by the Egyptians to act as a nullifier for evil forces), warded by a ring humanoid jackal statues (representative of the god Anubis, who guards the afterlife) facing inward to the pool. What the explorers soon find out, is that within the mercury is housed a warped sarcophagi, kept beneath the pool by a chain and pulley system. Immediately after, Morton suffers a strange vision: A woman in the desert beckoning him,

Informed by Colonel Greenway (Courtney B. Vance) that the forces holding the village need to withdraw due to an approaching sandstorm, Morton makes the snap decision to release the sarcophagi from the pool. As they do this, scorpions emerge from the shadows of the tomb and swarm the group, wounding Vail with their venom.
With Vail in tow, Morton and Halsey escape the tomb as the sarcophagi is secured with the intention of transporting it back to Cairo for research.

However, all does not go according to plan…
The venom brought on from Sgt. Vail’s wound causes him to expire, and soon after his corpse is reanimated, attacking and killing the Colonel. This forces Morton to put down his long-time friend. As he does this, a huge murder of crows flies headlong into the aircraft, causing it to crash over England. Morton manages to attach a parachute Halsey as the craft careens toward the ground, saving her, but ultimately resulting in his own death.

(Most of the events beyond this point are fairly spoilerific, so I’ll touch only on the details)

Morton awakes to the cold embrace of a body bag, managing to remove himself, he finds himself in a morgue. Halsey is present to identify the bodies, enters the morgue and finds Morton, who suffers further delirious visions in the form of his deceased friend, Vail.

Invited to a shadowy organisation, dealing with borderline mythological threats, Morton and Halsey meet Dr Jekyll (Russel Crowe), who informs the two that the Mummy inside the sarcophagus (Sofia Boutella) is an ancient princess, struck from historical records, who made a pact with the dark god Set in order to manifest him in human form. Thus, Morton, Halsey and the organisation must contain the threat of the Mummy, so as to prevent the incarnation of evil being brought to the world.

So, going into the cinema, I expected a jaunty, quirky adventure with as much character as the ’99 film, starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz – sadly, I was left disappointed.

Universal’s attempt to shoehorn Cruise into the stereotype of dashing rogue felt forced, a flaw that was highlighted in a modern setting. The trope has been done to death unfortunately, Harrison Ford probably portraying the most iconic characters in this role in Han Solo and Indiana Jones. While it was a good attempt to make Morton an engaging character, they tried to add depth through commentary and a love interest in the form of Halsey. This ultimately culminates in an unsatisfying conclusion at the end of the film, but one that nonetheless hints toward the future of the franchise.

The narrative structure the movie chose to embrace was fractured and hard to follow. As Morton struggles to free himself of the Mummy’s curse, he has visions of his dead friend Vail, who attempts to lure Morton into the grasp of the Mummy to complete the prophecy. What I think the writers were trying to achieve with this approach was a sense of duality: whether the thoughts in Morton’s head were actually his own, or if it was the curse gnawing at the back of his mind. In practice however, this attempt to control the narrative simply left me confused. Not confused in the sense I described before, but confused because it was well…confusing, and also made little sense.

One of the good things about the film were the special effects and action scenes. The Mummy was a physically repulsive creature in herself, and the undead legions she commanded were truly horrific. You will have seen in the trailer, but this film contains an underwater zombie chase scene (very enjoyable and serves well for pacing). In addition to this, there were some scenes in the film that I genuinely did not anticipate, and in terms of creativity, these areas would have been nice to see some expansion.

In particular, I’m referring to the prevalence of the organisation within the film. When Halsey and Morton are taken to the organisation HQ, we catch glimpses of classic horror tropes (a fanged human skull, a webbed hand, and several other references stuck in rather clever places) stored in laboratories and storage cases. The organisation sets itself up to be a unifying feature between the Dark Universe movies to come, and is without doubt the place to look to for information regarding future films in the franchise.

In terms of acting, Sofia Boutella’s portrayal of the Mummy was worthy of note. With her only well-known performances being in Kingsman: The Secret Service and Star Trek Beyond, she is a budding talent in terms of A-List productions. Her body acting in this role was, as we have seen in the past, excellent, suiting her movements well to those of an ancient Egyptian mummy (as best as one can).

Unfortunately, I don’t think many aspects of the writing allowed the actors to embrace their full repertoire. Russell Crowe, for example. An excellent actor left festering in the wake of poor writing and singular character motivations; a sacrifice in the name of laying the plot for future films.

So all in all, The Mummy was a pretty shoddy way to kickstart Universal’s latest venture – I sincerely hope that the coming additions to the franchise will show greater mettle (The Bride of Frankenstein is looking at Angelina Jolie to portray the titular character, and The Invisible Man is also set to star Johnny Depp, with such great actors they certainly have potential!), because in all honesty, The Mummy possessed no charm, did not engage the viewer, and was fragmented and difficult to follow.


I would not recommend paying to see this film.

Well that’s a negative review after two very positive reviews, so you are probably hoping I am going to get something positive for next week, WELL, TOO BAD FOR THAT, because next time we are doing Transformers the Last Knight and believe me, the trailers make it look like this one is going to be painful.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“TEEN TITANS:
THE JUDAS CONTRACT”

By the way, before I go any further, SPOILER WARNING for the ending of Justice League versus Teen Titans, which I reviewed last year, though I will not give any spoilers away for this film.

Now anyone who read my review of Justice League versus Teen Titans saw that I felt it was going in the right direction, despite its flaws I actually would have liked to seen another outing for this incarnation of the Teen Titans.

Well my wish was granted when it was announced there was a collection of the next DC Animated films, and the Teen Titans would indeed be getting their own film and it would be based on one of the most iconic DC Teen Titan storylines: The Judas Contracted. Granted, this isn’t the first time The Judas Contract has been portrayed in animated form, the Teen Titans cartoon from the mid 2000’s took an attempt at it, though given the age market and the fact that it was on Cartoon Network, and despite the fact that they stuck relatively close to the storyline, they couldn’t go all out with it. The DC animated movies are certainly aimed at a different market so this suggest they could potentially get away with an even more faithful adaptation to the comic. Hopefully with the success of DC’s rebirth line, meant that this show would not reflect The New 52. That being said, however, the Titans themselves were certainly built up in that standard in their last movie. The entire cast returns this time round but they would also be joined by Nightwing and Terra, who was the character introduced in the post credit scene of Justice League versus Teen Titans, which would suggest the Judas Contract was potentially on the cards considering that she is a big part of that storyline.

When all is said, and done, however, how did DC’s second go at bringing The Judas Contract come about. I feel kind of weird recapping a plot that people likely: know already, considering how popular the comic and animated series were, but I will give a recap, just to make sure everyone is on the same page.

The Teen Titans, Nightwing, Starfire, Robin, Blue Beetle, Raven, Beast Boy and newcomer Terra (played by Sean Maher, Kari Wahlgren, Stuart Allan, Jake T. Austin, Taissa Farmiga, Brandon Soo Hoo and Christina Ricci respectively) are working several missions to take down the Hive a mercenary organisation aiding a cult led by Brother Blood (played by Gregg Henry). However, the Hive keeps getting away with most information and very little evidence linking back to Brother Blood. This is thanks to the fact that they have made a contract to deal with the Titans, with Deathstroke (played by Miguel Ferrer), who has an ace up his sleeve in the team and the Titans could be destroyed from within.

Despite the fact that The Judas Contract does take a few liberties with its comic storyline, it’s actually rather loyal to its original comic counterpart, uncomfortably so in a couple of ways, however, The Judas Contract is a phenomenally good DC animated film. The biggest liberty that the film takes is in the cast since it has to reflect the cast of the last Teen Titans movie, as this is a direct sequel. Granted, we now have two new cast members to that list, Nightwing and Terra, but their presence doesn’t take away, it more adds. Everything seems to have done a good job. All the characters feel like themselves and it feels like a classic Teen Titan storyline. The Titans more than any other superhero team I have ever seen always feel like they have a more family dynamic. That’s what gives it its uniqueness and that is what this one has a feeling of. They get down very well that this is a group of misfits that are simply looking for a place to belong. The film does fail in a couple of regards, the major one being that many of the character’s arcs feel like they don’t really matter in the long run. The most obvious one is Blue Beetle. Now I love the character, Jamie Rayass’s original series from the mid 2000’s is one of my all-time favourite comic series, but they added several elements of that series to the film and it doesn’t really go anywhere. Then we get introduced to his girlfriend Traci 13, played by Masasa Moyo, but she doesn’t really play much of a part in it. I will admit there is a decent character arc for Jamie, since he is feeling disconnect from his family who aware of his identity and he is trying to connect more with his heritage and his humanity. But while this bit is very well done and actually kind of deserves its own movie, it doesn’t really matter much by the end. It’s a minor nit-pick since I did enjoy everything about it, it just didn’t feel like it belonged in the movie for the most part. However, I would definitely welcome an animated Blue Beetle film. Oh, yes, in case you are wondering, Blue Beetle was one of those series that actually realised a Superhero revealing his identity to their loved ones actually made them safer rather than in more danger. Chris, the secret identity trophy is getting old, Superhero’s should only keep their identity secret from the public, it’s that simple. The other negative, I would say is there is a prologue to show Starfire’s introduction, which also doesn’t go anywhere except to explain how she joined the Titans and this features cameos from several other past Titan members including Kid Flash and Bumble Bee and Speedy, but again, this doesn’t really go anywhere, nor does it feels like it pays much of a part by the end.

The Judas Contract’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, though I think some newcomers might have a bit of trouble if they have been more exposed to other DC related material, for example, unless they have seen the Teen Titans animated series, I think they might be wondering why Dick Grayson is suddenly dating Starfire, considering a lot of other material has him dating Barbara Gordon, though in a more recent example, it might be that people are wondering why Brother Blood looks nothing like any incarnation we have seen of him before. He doesn’t look anything like the animated series version and he certainly doesn’t look like the version from Season 2 of Arrow. He at least gets a menacing redesign, and I actually don’t mind his redesign, however, it may get a bit of a double take for a lot of people, and while I am at it he also doesn’t look much like his comic counterpart. That being said Brother Blood and The Hive are excellent villains but the standout villain is definitely Deathstroke, who once again is given chance to shine in a lead villain role. His plan is brilliant, works out pretty well and he is given the perfect chance to show how much of a bad ass villain he is. He is honestly part of the reason that makes the film. Terra’s characterisation is also brilliant, they cut out the whole arc of her in the animated series having trouble controlling her powers, however, they do give her a vulnerability which allows us to sympathise with her. The big difference between her from the animated series is that she is close to her comic counterpart, in more ways than one if you catch my drift from reading the comics! The most important one though, without giving away any spoilers is that in the animated series she was a bit of a hothead, whereas in this series, she almost has a bit of a violent streak and a very troubled back story, both of which are handled brilliantly well.

Terra may be the best character, however the villains, well the villains are pretty dam good. I actually like Deathstroke in this film for the most part. The problem is his motivation, the reason he enacted the original Judas Contract with the Hive in the comics was that he blamed the Titans for the death of his son, Jericho Cane who was sort of a member at the time of his death. With the movie, it’s more a culmination of vengeance for Damian Wain over the events of Son of Batman and just pure money. It definitely takes away a bit from the character and considering what a mainstay villain Deathstroke was, that’s saying a lot. Brother Blood and the Hive however, are pretty dam good as villains, they were the right level of creepiness although, as I mentioned, I think people might be taken aback a bit about the redesign since he doesn’t look much like either the animated series, the comics, or his appearance in Season 2 of Arrow. But these are minor nit-picks. In reality, I really enjoyed this movie as a whole. It feels like a proper Titans storyline. Everything comes into place and it tells a pretty good story, admittedly I did feel like some of the character arcs were rather unnecessary, especially the extra stuff with Blue Beetle, which feels tacked on for fans of his original series and doesn’t really go anywhere. But for the most part I thought it was pretty dam good.

As for the cast, well they are all pretty dam good too. I have already commented that Brendon Soo Hoo does a good job as Beast Boy. I really liked Stuart Allan as Robin, who I think is perfectly cast in the role. Most of my comments about these actors in the previous film I stand by. Miguel Ferrer is pretty dam good as Deathstroke, but I think the standout performance is Christina Ricci as Terra, though I do think people might be a bit taken aback by Kevin Smith’s cameo in the film.

What about the animation? Well, I kind of already commented on my thoughts about the animation because all these films have the same sort of animation, there’s nothing really to add. I think it’s perfectly competent, but as a result means a lot of these films lack a sense of identity, though it does allow us to believe in this shared Universe concept as well.

The music, not very memorable, but then again, we were hardly going to get something like Teen Titan’s Go.

The fight scenes? Dam, the fight scenes are done brilliantly in this film. This film knows how to get the most out of the characters in these fight scenes and they look fantastic.

I’m really just stalling for time, in all honesty, Teen Titans The Judas Contract is freeking fantastic. It’s one of the best DC animated films in years and I felt it was worth the wait and the effort. Some parts of it don’t entirely work, but for the most part, this is the standard I wanted DC animated films to go back to and it’s been a real highlight of the year for me. Special props definitely go to the brilliant performances of Miguel Ferrer and Christina Ricci and I like the fact that although it’s PG13 they managed to get away with a lot more than I expected and it seems at times to get away with more than The Killing Joke did, which had an R rating, though this will lead to few scenes that are a bit uncomfortable. That being said, however, I really think this is one worth checking out, especially for fans of Teen Titans.

Well there’s my thoughts on Teen Titans: The Judas Contract. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the film, if you have one. Remember we still accept user content if you want a go at this yourself.

“WONDER WOMAN”

Wonder Woman is definitely one of the most recognised Superheroes in the world. Part of the DC Trinity, along with Superman and Batman and was even last years, bone idley made a National ambassador for feminism for the United Nations, which granted if she had been put alongside some real people, would not necessarily have been a bad thing, however, it didn’t quite work out that way. Despite the fact that she has been around since the Second World War, until this year, there had been no big screening adaptations of Wonder Woman. That is insane, we are not talking about one of the obscure characters like Blue Beetle or Dr Strange, we’re talking about Wonder Woman! I suppose there is always that association with the Linda Carter TV show, but at the same time I feel DC should have done something. DC really has to remember that they have other Superheroes to work with besides Superman, Batman and Green Lantern. The film comes out also at a very interesting time, with the New 52 line being dropped and DC’s re-birth line beginning, Wonder Woman is coming out of a period where the comic and her origins went through some drastic changes that did not leave most fans happy. You can thank writer Brian Azzarello for that one, who I talked about briefly in my review of Batman the Killing Joke

Now, Wonder Woman was always on the cards, there was no way we were going to get towards the Justice League Movie without all the Trinity being introduced. Personally, I think that all members of the league should be introduced in their own films before that, but frankly what are you going to do. You have got to catch up with Marvel. When we finally got to see her in Batman V Superman, I thought it was actually pretty good, despite the fact that I thought Gal Gadot was a poor choice. The film has gone through two directors, finally settling on Patty Jenkins to finish the project. She has directed a lot of TV shows, but has only directed one film prior to this, 2003 Monster. But that’s not to say she isn’t entirely capable, after all Ridley Scott worked on Alien after working on adverts. Whilst Zack Snyder and Jason Fuchs have worked on the story, Allan Heinberg also worked on the story and he developed the final screenplay, so I suspect most of the writing is down to him.

Now personally, I was kind of looking forward to Wonder Woman, but I also had my doubts. Because the DC Cinematic Universe hasn’t been that good, despite the fact that I gave it semi-positive reviews to Batman V Superman and Suicide Squad, second viewings of both have really turned my opinion against them and I don’t think there has been a very good Superhero movie in the DC Cinematic Universe yet. Suicide Squad has probably come the closest, but even then, if you really look at it, it’s a massive convoluted mess. I am amazed that I failed to comment in my review, if this is a team meant to take down Superman, what the hell is Harley Quinn doing in there. So I am hoping this will do the job. Mind you, also, in preparation for this review I watched the animated Wonder Woman film from 2009 that DC themselves put out and my opinion of that has definitely not changed. I still think it’s fantastic, you have got Keri Russel as Wonder Woman, Nathan Fillion as Steve Trevor and Alfred Molina playing a brilliant Ares, it’s seriously worth your time and a great introduction to Wonder Woman. Has does this live action film hold up though and is has it been worth the decades to get a Wonder Woman movie?

Wonder Woman is the story of Diana of Themaskira (played by Gal Gadot). She has been training on the Island of Themaskira with her fellow Amazons, who have the express purpose to guard the world from the evil of Ares, the god of war. However, one day a fighter pilot named Steve Trevor (played by Chris Pine) makes his way to the Island, crashes in the ocean surrounding the Island and is followed by the German army. He explains the situation regarding World War 1 and that the world is in danger from new weapons that he has discovered, developed by General Ludendorff (played by Danny Huston) and Dr Maru aka Dr Poison (played by Elena Anaya). Spurned on by the belief that Ares has finally broken free and is controlling the situation, she believes the only way to help is to join Steve Trevor, make her way to the war and slay Ares.

Wonder Woman essentially becomes an origin story for the character, which feels fairly essential considering that Wonder Woman has yet to have a big screen adaptation prior to this film, so people are not as familiar with her origin story as say Spiderman, Superman and Batman. Despite the fact that there are a few tweaks to the origin story it’s mostly intact from her original comic appearance. Though, the animated film stuck to the comic a lot closer, both versions are actually rather successful at doing this. We’re introduced to the iconic weapons like the Lasso of Truth, her shield and sword aka the God Killer. We are introduced to the Island of Themaskira which is handled pretty well and we are given a taste of the Amazons being a warrior like race. It actually gets this down at a pretty brisk pace, which as a result means, the origin story is out pretty quick at a pretty good pace and we can get on with the story rather quickly, and man, is it a good one. Yes I can’t believe I am saying it either considering the track record of the DC Extended Universe, but Wonder Woman is an absolutely fantastic film.

Let me start, you don’t need to be a fan of the comics to understand Wonder Woman as they get down her character perfectly, which will be an extra bonus for comic fans. You also don’t need to have seen any of the prior DCEU movies, Man of Steel, Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad since the entirety of this film takes place prior to the events of those films. The film owes a lot to a number of other sources, most notably Captain America the First Avenger, which frankly is a great film and the biggest change is where Captain America takes place in World War 2 this one takes place in World War 1, again slight change from the comic origin story, considering her creation came around the time of the second World War, so as a result she was created to be World War 2 propaganda. Wonder Woman, however, is really handled well. The writers of this film clearly understand what makes Wonder Woman tick and they get it down perfectly. Her credent dose is three things, truth, honour, compassion, they get all three parts of her character down perfectly. They also get her nature to the world of man down, how she interacts with the rest of the world, how she interacts with other people. It’s all done brilliantly and this movie should now be the shining example of how to do a female led Superhero film. What’s more the DCU gives us a decent villain. With the previous films we had Michael Shannon’s overacting Zod, Jessy Eissenberg’s horrendous Lex Luther and whatever the hell was going on in Suicide Squad, but Danny Huston does an excellent job as Ludedorff. He is a stubborn general who can’t accept that the war is coming to an end and his side is losing and wow do they handle his character well. I know Danny Huston is well known for playing villains at this point, but he does a brilliant job with this character. I would even say that Dr Poison is a pretty good one as well and considering I am a DC fan boy, she is such an obscure villain that even I didn’t know she was a thing. I am going to have to check out more of her comics to see if they got her right. Steve Trevor is also great, they get down a lot of his charcter down pretty well and while I think Nathan Fillion, in the animated film nailed more of his charming side, I think Chris Pine does a pretty good job playing other aspects of him, though I did think at times he came off a bit neurotic in the role in a way that Steve Trevor often didn’t do. That being said, however, the other thing to talk about is Ares. Now Ares is brought up early on in the film and the film leads us believe there is a linear path as to how we are going to get to him, however, how we get to him and the pay off for this is very well done and throws out a very interesting message about the human nature and the nature of war. Trust me, without going into spoilers, it’s really well handled. I am glad that Ares turns up in the first Wonder Woman movie considering he is one of the most famous Wonder Woman villains.

If there is one issue I have with Wonder Woman, it’s I think that side character can be slightly under-developed. That’s not to say I didn’t think any of them were good, and I actually appreciated that, despite the fact they are a group of mercenaries that Steve Trevor hires, they all represent the nationalities that they are meant to represent. For example, Ewan Bremner from Trainspotting plays the Scottish sniper Charlie, Said Taghamoui plays Sameer in brilliant fashion and Eugene Brave Rock, plays the Chief, which admittedly is a slightly racist name for a native American character, but I let it pass because he gets a good line in about that in the film. Honestly, Wonder Woman is a dam interesting plot, all thing considered. I haven’t even gone into half the details about the film, because I think most of the best parts have not been ruined by the trailer. Though, granted, most of the best action scenes have been ruined by the trailer, but let’s just say, this is an excellent Wonder Woman story.

As for the actors, wow, Gal Gadot, my hats off to you, she plays the part perfectly. My doubt and cynicism over her casting has been completely removed because I actually felt she was fantastic in this role. She really delivers a definitive Wonder Woman performance and I think she deserves to be up there with Keri Russel and Susan Eisenberg for playing this character. Chris Pine I have already mentioned gets most of Steve Trevor down pretty well. I liked Ewan Bremner and Eugene Brave Rock’s performance as well as Said Taghmaoui. Danny Huston is pretty dam good and I thought David Thewlis was very good as Sir Patrick. Connie Nielsen does a very good job of playing Hippolyta, you may remember her placing Lucillia in Gladiator. Danny Huston once again makes an excellent villain and I appreciated the small role of Robin Wright as Antiope and I really liked Lucy Davis as Etta Candy and Elena Anaya as Dr Maru. By the way, if you don’t know who Lucy Davis is, she played Diane in Shaun of the Dead and Dawn Tinsley in The Office. My only real complaint with the casting is that despite the fact they got most of the other actors to nationality pretty well, there wasn’t any Greek actresses in any of the Amazonian roles, which seems rather bizarre considering that the whole thing is based around Greek Myth and Legend, whatever, it works well enough. The cast was pretty dam good.

The cinematography is pretty dam good too. I saw the film in 2D, but I would imagine the 3D is alright, although a few scenes look like they are way too shot in the dark for a 3D setting. I keep telling people this, 3D is at its best when there is plenty of light because of the darkening effect the 3D glasses have. The action scenes are almost all shot brilliantly. There are a few stinkers in the bunch but they don’t drag down the entire film and I didn’t mind the slow-down that much this time since it didn’t seem like a cheap gimmick. In all honesty, it’s pretty dam well choreographed and you can tell a lot of training went into making these moves work. The location shots are also fantastically done. Themaskira looks like it should do, despite the fact that it is actually shot in Italy rather than Greece, though I think they got down the Island’s aesthetic pretty well. I think they did very good at creating a World War 1 period piece with the costume designs and the look of the sets. Speaking of costumes, I think this new design of Wonder Woman’s is very good, it’s a nice blend of a new and more unique design for this film, without taking away what made the old costume design as good as it did and allows her to form her usual moves with the lasso, sword and her bracelets that bounce bullets.

Is Wonder Woman a good film? No, Wonder Woman is a great film. DC finally has a film that can rival Marvel on this scale, which is all I have ever wanted because I think it’s better when they are both making great films in order to provide the best amount of competition. Wonder Woman is a well written, well shot, well acted film and gives something that both new audiences and comic fans alike will enjoy. It will be interesting to see how this will play out with the DC Cinematic Universe going forward, but I think it’s actually a good step in the right direction. I really recommend seeing this one it’s a fantastic film. Gal Gadot does an excellent job in the lead role and the cast as a whole is a pretty dam good one. If it is playing in your area, check it out, it is one you shouldn’t miss.

Further more here’s my friend Ren’s review of Wonder Woman to emphasise the point

Wonder Woman was a thoroughly enjoyable addition to the DC franchise. A much stronger film in terms of its characters, messages and pacing than Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, Wonder Woman delivered wonderfully with its inclusive cast, delving into issues such as race and mental health. While some may feel this caters to the so-called SJW (Social Justice Warrior) masses, in my opinion, it is one of the first mainstream films to tackle controversial issues in a way that leaves you satisfied at the end of the film.

The plot centres around Diana (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) – the youngest of the Amazonians, a race of warrior women created by the Greek pantheon to lead the human race to greater understanding. However, in the times following their creation, the god of War, Ares, corrupted the human race, forcing the Amazonians to retreat to an island hidden from the outside world.
This era of peace is abruptly ended, as a British spy (Chris Pine) working in the midst of the German forces crash lands on the island, the Germans in hot pursuit. Diana comes to the pilot’s aid, and helps him in fending off the German soldiers, at the cost of several Amazonian lives. This causes a realisation in Diana – in order for the Amazonians to fulfil their purpose in the world, she must travel with the pilot and lend her aid in ending the First World War.

Now, I was really hoping that this film would be enjoyable, especially after the last two failed to live up to expectations. While I did enjoy Wonder Woman greatly, there are a few points I must make a note of, mainly centred around the beginning of the film.

Setting the film up felt a tad ham-handed; we follow Diana as she darts through the streets, away from the ancient Greek equivalent of her nanny (in typical show of childish rebellion), eventually reaching the training grounds where she sees the Amazonian warriors in combat, and her aunt (Robin Wright), Antiope, training them. We see conflict between Diana’s mother, the queen of the Amazonians, Hippolyta (Connie Nielsen) and Antiope over whether Diana should be trained as a warrior for fear of the return of Ares. Cue the time skip montage, and we see Diana as an adult, easily outclassing the Amazonian warriors seen earlier.

There are better ways to show progression and development in a character, particularly in terms of their motivation, but Wonder Woman did a poor job showing this. By the end of about 20 minutes worth of film, all we know of Diana is that she’s a hopeful girl, a fine warrior, but lacking a lot of depth. There is very little reason for her to want to travel outside of her island besides a motivation that has been touched upon lightly earlier in the film. In my opinion, this delivery was slightly shoddy, however it did nicely pad out the introduction with well-choreographed action and a lot of feminine power.

As I mentioned earlier, Wonder Woman addressed multiple issues that modern blockbuster films seem to have a poor grasp on.

• Number 1: Badass feminine characters. Given the Amazonian population is all female, and their history and culture is built on foundations of strength and martial prowess, it is actually gratifying to see them portrayed in such a positive light. There is not one scene implying that their sex makes them weaker, in fact, throughout the film we are constantly reminded that they are superior to regular humans. Now, contextually, in the time of the First World War, (using the UK as an example, due to a portion of the film taking place in London), women had not yet secured the vote, nor were they allowed to fight due to their perceived weakness and frailty. To have such a parallel to this stereotype provokes mixed reactions from characters in different settings. Generals and high-ranking officials in the British army react to her objections over their cowardice in a predictable manner, believing she speaks out of term due to her gender. However, later in the film, frontline in the trenches, Wonder Woman leads the charge over No-Man’s-Land, helping the allied forces recapture a town under the control of the Germans. Following this, she is hailed as a hero and a saviour, clearly challenging society’s dated ideas on female weakness. Interestingly, (having seen the film once) Diana is not once referred to as Wonder Woman at any point in the film. While this is usually a gimmick used in super hero films, I feel like its lack actually served to bolster the strong female imagery without blatantly labelling her gender (ignoring the title of the film, obviously).

• Number 2: While the bulk of Wonder Woman takes places over the First World War, showcases gruesome injuries and sobering violence, one of the issues it takes time to explore is mental health and trauma. It does this in the form of the character, Charlie, the Scotsman Sniper (played by Ewan Bremner). At times through the film, Charlie showcases his alcoholic and unstable tendencies: suffering from bad dreams, seeing images of his departed friends, and being unable to function due to stress. This is a side to war films that can often be left out in favour of more physical violence and shock horror, however Wonder Woman did a very good job of covering it, particularly due to the broadening knowledge we have regarding stress and emotional disorders. However, for me, Charlie was not just a character written to be a mule for the issue of mental health. Outside of this, Charlie is shown singing and playing the piano beautifully following the retaking of the town. This facet of his character is not something I expected, and it shows very well that individuals cannot be defined by mental illness, or indeed their pasts.

• Number 3: Race. The cast of Wonder Woman is incredibly diverse – the Amazonians shown by typical Greco-period standards, actors of Mediterranean and African descent make up the bulk of the population. Many people of colour are shown in London in army uniforms, including members of multiple faiths and descents. In fact, a supporting character, perhaps a little controversially named ‘The Chief’ (Eugene Brave Rock), touches on the discrimination that Native Americans faced from British Colonists in the early days of United States’ history. Due to Wonder Woman’s naïveté surrounding world issues (including those of race), Diana comes to understand that war and conflict exist in very real ways outside of actual violent warfare. With such a diverse cast, Wonder Woman was never going to fall short on this issue, but I think the manner by which these issues are discussed is exceptional, and is certainly a testament to the creativity of the writers.

Now, action scenes. Given Wonder Woman’s position as a Warner Brother film, headlining the Justice League lineup, we knew from the start that we would receive a hefty helping of epic CGI, but, in my opinion, what we got exceeded expectations.

There is a certain joy that comes with watching the powerful superhero smash stuff to smithereens, and more so when the Big Bad Villain is able to take a punch and continue a gritty melee, but in terms of spectacle, we’re given a gluttonous portion. Explosions; rubble; gunfights; impacting bullets; the whole lot! There are a couple of issues surrounding Physics (Gal Gadot seems to have a tendency to explode when colliding mid-air with large buildings, as you will see if you decide to watch the film), but nevertheless, what we get is thoroughly enjoyable, and is pretty damn cool.

Some rather notable performances were delivered on the part of Robin Wright as Antiope, the House of Cards star, Danny Huston, who seems unable to escape the villain stereotype, and Ewan Bremner (who I’ve only seen in Trainspotting and Snatch, but this has me looking into more).
 Robin Wright’s aloof yet nurturing air as Diana’s aunt/mentor serves well to oppose the more restrictive and protective nature of Diana’s mother. Her combat scenes do well to impress, and I’m a little upset she didn’t get more screen time, especially with her impressive background in films like Forrest Gump and The Princess Bride.

Danny Huston consistently performs well in antagonistic roles, securing him a bit of a reputation for it in my mind. Throughout the film, he is brooding, typically evil, though at times he comes off as cartoonish – I’d put that down to the writing as opposed to his acting in the role.

I’ve already said all that I have to say about Ewan Bremner’s character Charlie, but yes. Impeccably written, likeable, funny, and honest.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say on Wonder Woman. I’m wholeheartedly recommending this film to people due to its tackling of multiple difficult issues. As I touched on earlier, it’s one of the first blockbusters to pull off the dynamic female lead (far surpassing the recent Ghost in the Shell movie starring Scarlett Johansson, who typically struggles to make an impact in those types of role). Without doubt, this is the best DC film that has been put out since the release of Man of Steel.


I hope you all enjoyed reading.

Well that’s me done for this week. However, despite the fact that I planned to review The Mummy, it is becoming more difficult considering how much work is being done on the Liverpool line, which is making it harder for me to get in there and with Manchester, there is a transition going on between the cinema’s, so that’s out as well. So next week I am going to be giving my thoughts on the next DC director DVD film, Teen Titans the Judas Contract.

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it and YES WE HAVE FINALLY GOT A GOOD DCU MOVIE!!!

Calvin – Nerd Consultant

“PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN:
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES”

Ok before we go any further I already explained last week but I refuse to call this film by its international title (Salazar’s revenge). I love the first pirates of the Caribbean movie it’s one of my favourite movies. I’ve always said it’s the perfect example of how you do a fun summer blockbuster, it’s well written, has great action sequences. It also gave the world Captain Jack Sparrow one of the most recognised and loved characters that earned Johnny Depp a Best Actor Oscar nomination. What more can I say I love that movie, the sequels on the other hand are not so great in my opinion, the second movie Dead mans chest is ok for the most part including a fantastic 3 way sword fight but suffers from having way too much of a complicated plot and pushed Jack Sparrow way too close to the forefront, the 3rd movie At Worlds End makes the mistake of adding even more plot on top of what we already had (emphasised by the DVD having a FAQ booklet so you know it’s way too confusing) and gives a truly boring movie coming in at nearly 3 hours as a result of the fact that it started shooting without a completed script, and the 4th movie may have made minor improvements but it’s also seriously forgettable. I think the biggest problems with these films tend to be that the writers think that they’re making an epic when Pirates of the Caribbean is just meant to be a simple adventure film. I was hoping the 5th movie would break this curse despite the trailer not filling me with confidence but let’s see how it turned out.

The plot of pirates 5 Is that Will and Elizebeth’s son Henry (played by Brenton Thwaites) is determined to break his father’s curse from the flying Dutchman by finding the staff of Poseidon that is said to be able to break any curse of the sea. After a botched bank robbery he joins Jack Sparrow (played by Johhny Depp) and his crew followed by an astronomer Carina (played by Kaya Scodelario). But there’s another problem former pirate hunter Captain Salazar (played by Javier Bardem) has returned from the dead and vowed revenge on Jack for defeating him and cursing him.

Ok let’s get a few thing off the bat I got really ill after watching this movie and even now writing it I’m not fully recovered so please bear with me if this review is shorter than usual.

Let me start by saying that I think that my girlfriend (who is refusing to watch the Netflix Death Note movie) loved this film and I respect her opinion however I don’t fully agree with her. The biggest problem with this film is that it borrows way too much from the previous movies particularly the first one. It really likes to pull on nostalgia for the series which considering how far the sequels got away from the original seems like a good idea in theory but because you can tie almost every moment in this movie back to one of the previous movies it means that this movie really doesn’t have an identity of its own. For example there’s scene where the undead guys run across the ocean which feels like a complete copy of the undead pirates walk along the ocean bed in the first film. Even the new characters feel like copies of previous ones, Henry and Carina are very much the replacements for Will and Elizabeth but their personalities are so bland that they can’t leave an impact like those characters did. Henry trying to free his father’s curse is incredibly similar to the 2nd and 3rd films plot with Will however it doesn’t have the same impact and there’s an attempt to give Carina a personality with a plot twist later on in the film but it fails completely. In fact, that plot twist was one of the real turning points in the movie for me cause it was at that moment I realised how much it resembled a fan fiction though for avoiding spoilers I won’t go into details about it. The only thing I can really think of that feels very original is the opening sequence involving the bank robbery even though it feels like it comes from the land of F.U. physics.

The film also falls into the trap of overdoing it with Jack Sparrow. the thing that made him great in the first film was the fact that he was somewhat restrained and they showed that despite acting like an idiot he was a bit of an idiot savant but still planned his strategy in advance. Much like the sequels you really have to wonder how he managed to survive this long. Jack Sparrow in this film once again feels like he’s trying too hard however he obviously still gets a funny line in every so often

The villain is another weak point he’s not a complete Barbossa clone but I would be lying if I said I didn’t make the comparison though at this point I don’t think there’s been a main villain in the franchise that hasn’t been an Undead character. He has a decent backstory and feels like enough of a threat but he’s just not quiet interesting enough to leave an impact

Now while those are my complaints here’s my positives the film has one thing I felt the other sequels didn’t have, I ultimately found it entertaining. Yeah this one to me has been the best sequel through the virtue of having a bit of fun and just doing a simple treasure hunt story and having a few funny gags that made me laugh. It’s one of those films where you know there’s a lot wrong with it but you still somehow get some enjoyment out of it.

Which brings me to the cast. Once again Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush are the best parts of the film giving fantastic performances, Javier Bardem once again proves why he makes a great villain actor and I enjoyed a lot of the performances of the returning cast members from previous films. Brenton Thwaites is really bland though his character isn’t that well written so it’s not entirely his fault so I wouldn’t hold that against him too much. Kaya Scodelario I actually mistook for Kristen Stewart, not only do they look alike they but she even performs her role like Kristen Stewart and if you’ve heard my opinion of her acting you’ll know I won’t be that impressesed with that. the only other major cast thing to talk about is the baffling Paul McCartney cameo as Jacks Uncle, presumably because Keith Richards wasn’t available to play Jack’s father again. The cameo itself has its moments but like much of this film it feels like it’s trying too hard.

As for the effects they’re actually pretty good for the most part and with a couple of exceptions the action scenes are well shot. The editing is decently done and I love the music scores of all these films including the returning main theme which is my favourite movie theme ever, challenged only by Jurassic Park.

The one thing I will say is see it in 2-D. While I haven’t seen the 3-d version some of the scenes are in such dark environments I bet it would be impossible to see anything because of the darkening effect the glasses have.

Well I’m sorry this review was not up to my usual standard but thanks for your patience with me.

With all that being said thanks for reading this review I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing it and it ain’t easy writing a review ill

“KING ARTHUR LEGEND OF THE SWORD”

This was a major Blockbuster that got announced, but it wasn’t really on my radar. I only found much out about it after I asked a lot of my friends what films they were most excited about seeing this year and a lot of them pointed to this new King Arthur film. I am not much of a fan of Arthurian myth and legend, but that’s not to say I don’t like it, I just haven’t indulged myself in large amounts of it. But I am up to the idea of it being re-imagined again for a new audience and it was being directed by Guy Ritchie. Now, I like a lot of Guy Ritchie’s films, and he has done some decent work in the past, I was especially surprised how much I enjoyed his two Sherlock Holmes films and I am excited about his next project, which will be a live adaptation of Disney’s Aladdin. It’s just, for all the good he has done, he has never done any films that have been amazing, and I was really hoping that this could be the one that breaks the mould. So, how does King Arthur Legend of the Sword pan out now I have seen it.

King Arthur’s plot is, well, rather more interesting in a word, than I would have first thought. After the ruler Uther (played by Eric Bana), is overthrown by his brother Vortigern (played by Jude Law), descension reigns in the kingdom as people wait for the true rightful heir to claim his place on the throne. The claim comes in the adopted son of a prostitute Arthur (played by Charlie Hunnam) who, with some persuasion, rallies his force together to take back the kingdom with the help of his legendary sword Excalibur.

If you are coming into this expecting a classis Arthurian story in the vein of the recent Sherlock Holmes films, you are sadly mistaken. There are several references to Arthurian myth and legend, but they are very minor token references. If anything, the film borrows from an endless number of sources, including Assassins Creed, Robin Hood and most notably Game of Thrones especially towards the beginning and end. It frankly doesn’t feel like much is actually going on. The plot synopsis doesn’t aid and highlight what an awful screenplay this film has. Guy Ritchie may have had help, but he is also a screenplay writer, so this is very clearly his baby. Especially considering the other two script writers, Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram have written good films in the past. It also, frankly feels like not much is happening, because everything moves at an extraordinarily fast pace, this film never gives a moments rest for the audience, it’s constantly on and its constantly fast paced. It feels like Guy Ritchie has discovered Red Bull whilst writing the script, that the only explanation I can find for why the story never seems to care about why anything is happening or who it is happening too, it never builds up character, in fact there’s very little character development. Anytime it decides to stop or do anything, it’s a very generic movie that left me lacking in the caring department. The film also takes great notes to refer to Charlie Hunnam’s character as Arthur, because frankly, he is so bland and unremarkable, he could be any hero, which is why they constantly refer to him as Arthur.

Also, if you were expecting the whole ‘knights of the round table’ thing, or much from the Arthur legend, you are going to be short changed, since Arthur is basically organising a generic resistance (can you say Star Wars much) throughout the entirety of the film. While it does build to the whole idea of the knights of the round table as well as other parts of the Arthurian legend in a sequel, I don’t think this film will do well enough to warrant one, which will leave the audience wanting. This is especially helped by the fact that Merlin doesn’t make an appearance in the entire film, though is referenced. Merlin is bought up as being part of the Mages, who are said to be a group of people who have fallen foul of the kingdom and been outlawed, but the plot line of this goes absolutely nowhere since only one mage appears in the film, who is played by Astrid Berges-Frisbey and her character is so unremarkable, they didn’t even bother to give her a name. Imdb and the credits just refer to her as The Mage, it only gets worse from there. There are so many sub plots that go absolutely nowhere. There are several plot creatures and magic that are bought up early on in the film that don’t get much of an explanation. Plus, despite the fact that Camelot is referenced it’s barely used in the entire film.

That’s frankly putting it mildly though, I had no idea what was happening throughout this entire film. The plot is so speedy you are never allowed to catch your breath. It frankly feels like the film darts back and forth between scenes and plot points in a desperate attempt to get a laugh out of its audience that comes off as “pandering”. It’s the equivalent of shaking keys in front of a baby, it’s nothing but movement and noise with no substance whatsoever! I don’t know where to even go with this film, I want to avoid spoilers, but let’s just say, this whole Hamlet thing with Arthur ruling the kingdom, feels boring, bland and feels like it doesn’t have much of a satisfying conclusion. The worlds “self-fulfilling prophecy” seem to smack across this guy’s face throughout the film, which will make more sense to anyone who has seen the movie. Not to mention that Vortigan is such a weak villain. The only portion of the film that teased magic users with massive war elephants the size of castles that had to be taken down Shadow of the Collosus style, what does he do, he has a slightly temporary demonic form that look like a cross between Shao Kahn from Mortal Kombat and Killian Murphy’s interpretation of the Scarecrow (trust me it’s not as awesome as it sounds). It’s one of the most un-original villain designs I have ever seen. In fact, that’s another point, the film is so un-original on several levels. Not only does it borrow sources, it doesn’t understand what made those elements and those sources work so well. What’s more, I felt bored watching this film, put it this way, I have seen a lot of films that were atrocious this year, but this was the most boring one of them. The film never gave me a reason to care about anything that was happening. Mainly because the characters are such “nothings”, there is nothing to them whatsoever. Every plot point feels like it is too rushed and not well thought out and not well executed.

As for the actors, Charlie Hunnam has clearly been cast in this film due to his success in the TV series Vikings, however, I don’t think this film will be a prime example of, if he ever gets a movie career off the ground, because this role is not him at his best. Mind you his part is badly written, so it’s probably not entirely his fault. Astrid Berges-Frisbey doesn’t have gain much to do in this film and whenever she does, she seems like she is half-hearted as well. Jude Law looks bored half the time he is on film, having to do the minimal amount of acting possible and I am sorry, I like Jude Law, I think he is a decent actor, but he is not great at playing villains, occasionally he can get it right, but the problem with Jude Law is that he is too much of a nice guy, he can’t really leave that at the door. Djimon Hounsou, I feel so sorry for you! Why in the name of all that is holy can you not pick any good movie roles in the last few years, with the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy. You are a great actor!! I have loved you in some of your films, but it seems like you are picking the worst scripts I have seen in recent memory. I feel so sorry for him between this and the previously reviewed Seventh Son. In an interview, he said he took this role because he wanted to start playing good guys so his son could root for him, but he needs to pick his roles better! The best performance is the film is from Eric Bana, which is shame because he is not in the film all that much, but Eric Bana is the one who feels he is trying the hardest. Other than that, there’s a lot of decent roles for good character actors like, Aiden Gillen, Freddie Fox, Craig McGinlay and Tom Wu, but they because their parts are so thinly written, they kind of get lost in the background. I am not too impressed with this cast and to be honest it doesn’t feel like they are giving their ‘A’ material, but then again, as I mentioned their parts are badly written so it’s not entirely their fault.

As for the presentation. I am going to come out and say it “this film has been made for the 3D market”. If you are going to see the film I would recommend you see it in that format since my 2D screening was marred by a lot of effects aimed at that market that were clearly not well executed because the 3D effect is entirely absent from the film. Now we have got that out of the way, holy crap, this film has terrible special effects. I am not even kidding, this is some of the worst effects I have seen in a major motion picture in a long time. The effects are frankly laughable at times, some of the worst CGI backgrounds and the little practical effects they had were barely used, and they weren’t that great. I would like to remind you that this film had a $175,000,000 budget and I have no idea what they spent that on. Some of the earlier effects are quite good, but it’s all downhill after the first action scene. Not to mention the other factor in the matter, the editing. Now the cinematography is alright for the most part, but dear god, whoever did the editing in this film, you need to go to Axia because you clearly need a diagnosis of ADHD. This film’s editing gives Assassins Creed a run for its money in how appalling it is. The whole thing looks and feels like it is edited to be like a music video. I actually counted during one sequence, where Arthur went to a dark world or something (it’s never properly explained and went pretty much nowhere and just sped the plot along), but during that scene, it was so horribly edited to keep the sequence going, I actually counted how many shots lasted five seconds before they were cut and I couldn’t get a single one. The editor very clearly thinks very little of his audience to do this.

If King Arthur Legend of the Sword has one bonus to it, it’s the fact that it has a decent soundtrack. Some of the songs that have been written for it are pretty good and the whole things score is pretty good. I will give it credit, where credit is due I actually did like the film’s score for this movie, but that is not going to save it for me. King Arthur Legend of the Sword has been one of the dullest and dumbest films I have seen all year so far and as we are approaching the half way point of the year, that is saying a lot. The script is horrendous, not being able to focus on any plot points and give a decent character development and plot progression. It is edited appallingly, the acting is sub-par and the action scenes all range from ok to atrocious. The film frankly feels like a cash grab to market on the popularity of Game of Thrones and while audiences will initially buy into it, they won’t stick around for it. This is not a film that I suspect will get a cult following in years time. I feel sorry for the clearly over talented cast that deserve better than to be in this movie. I didn’t even mention David Beckham’s horrendous cameo that feels like a “do me a favour” type thing. This film was atrocious and I couldn’t wait to get out of the cinema because I found it incredibly jarring and boring and I wasn’t even laughing at some of the humour they attempted to do with it. I was close to hating this film and I may even decide after I have let it settle down that I actually do hate it. Skip this film and it’s laughable special effects.

Well no more mini reviews this week and there won’t be any next week either due to my obligations. However, do come back next week, when I will be doing a full review in the next sequel to one of my all-time favourite films, it’s Pirates of the Carribean, Dead Men Tell no Tales.

Thanks a lot for reading my review. I hope you have enjoyed reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it, and yes, I know it’s called Salazar Revenge in the UK, but I refuse to call it by that title because it’s a lot stupider and simplistic in the American title and the American title is frankly better and fits what I gathered about the plot better.

Calvin – Nerd Consultant