Film review: Elysium

Elysium. Rated MA 15+ (strong bloody violence). 109 minutes. Written and directed by Neill Blomkamp.

Verdict: An uneven, but ultimately rewarding, post-apocalyptic, big screen adventure.

Hollywood’s obsession with a post-apocalyptic universe reaches a particular zenith with Blomkamp’s (District 9) aggressive and over-loaded take on our not-too-distant future. It is a grand and ambitious vision, beautifully realised by Production Designer Philip Ivey and cinematographer Trent Opaloch, both of whom collaborated with Blomkamp on District 9.

It is 2154, and the privileged live on Elysium – a state-of-the-art space station where cancer is cured by a full-body scanning machine in only minutes. Everyone else lives on an over-populated, impoverished Earth – dreaming of, one day, being able to afford a ticket to Elysium’s utopian world, where sprawling mansions are surrounded by picturesque gardens and unpolluted water.

Blomkamp’s cut ‘n’ thrust screenplay explores so many grand themes that it becomes difficult to keep up with them. And unlike almost every other movie reviewed this year, Elysium powers to a stark and incredibly moving conclusion that you expect it to dodge.

Matt Damon is great as parolee Max, whose desperation to get to Elysium ensures that the stakes at play are incredibly high. Damon is well supported by an excellent performance from Alice Braga (I Am Legend) as his childhood sweetheart, now doctor and single mum, Frey. As the leading resistance fighters, Wagner Moura’s resourceful Spider and Diego Luna’s loyal friend Julio both deliver spirited performances that beautifully account for the resistance movement’s resourcefulness and determination to eventually reach Elysium safely.

Jodie Foster, surprisingly, spends much of her time striding around Elysium and fighting with a peculiar accent (the accent wins), while Sharlto Copley’s (The A-Team, District 9) toxic, special agent Kruger is so unlikeable that it becomes increasingly difficult to care about what happens to him.

Even though Blomkamp sets Elysium in 2154, it might just as easily be taking place today. Corruption, greed, selfishness, poverty, pollution, over-population and ruthless exploitation are all themes we can immediately relate to. Precisely what we are prepared to sacrifice in order to change what we can for the better (and not just for ourselves), is the question.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Now You See Me

Now You See Me. Rated M (mature themes, coarse language and sexual references). 116 minutes. Directed by Louis Leterrier. Screenplay by Ed Solomon, Boaz Yakin and Edward Ricourt.

Verdict: This curiously unengaging heist tale fails to equal the sum of its parts.

Occasionally, a promotional trailer will flash across the screen that makes a film look intriguing. It won’t reveal much about the plot, but the flashy effects and instantly recognisable cast will ensure that the film’s impending release registers in our consciousness.

Such is the case with this Now You See Me – an over-produced story about four street magicians who are invited by a mysterious mentor to form a group known as The Four Horsemen, and use their combined creative powers to perform daring heists around the world.

Leterrier (Clash of the Titans) has assembled an outstanding cast, led by Jesse Eisenberg (The Social Network) as one of the four magicians, and Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers, Shutter Island) as an FBI agent tasked with breaking the cycle of increasingly ambitious robberies the group manage to pull off – right under everyone’s noses.

It is always a pleasure to have the opportunity to watch Morgan Freeman, and his performance as Thaddeus Bradley – a man who has dedicated his life to revealing the secrets behind magic acts – is a gem. Equally, Michael Caine devours his brief but critical turn as the wealthy philanthropist, who suddenly finds himself to be nothing more than a powerless pawn in The Four Horsemen’s grand plan.

The central relationship between Ruffalo’s Dylan and Mélanie Laurent’s Interpol agent Alma fails to ring true, and if there is a flaw in the otherwise interesting screenplay, it’s that the human relationships are left wanting in the presence of the glossy magic acts. We are left with the sense of not being particularly engaged in the lives of the main characters, but rather impressed by all the technological wizardy that make the unbelievably fantastic heists possible. With a generous injection of more heart and soul, this is a film that might have been a good deal more involving than it ends up being.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Conjuring

 

The Conjuring. Rated MA 15+ (strong horror themes and violence). 112 minutes. Directed by James Wan. Screenplay by Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes.

Verdict: A terrifically atmospheric spook fest that only stumbles at the finish line.

With his breakout film Saw (2004), made in collaboration with fellow Australian Leigh Whannell, Wan succeeded in stamping his torturous mark on the world of horror movies. The seemingly never-ending series of Saw films, which eventually concluded with the seventh instalment Saw 3D (2010), were smash hits at the box office – with Billy the sadistic puppet becoming one of the most instantly recognisable characters of the horror genre.

With The Conjuring, Wan and the Hayes brothers plough familiar horror movie territory – and the film’s overall effectiveness suffers as a result. By basing the film around Ed Warren (Patrick Wilson) and his wife Lorraine (Vera Farmiga), paranormal investigators who first found fame as a result of their investigation into the Lutz family home that would go on to become The Amityville Horror (1979), the film-makers ensure that comparisons come thick and fast.

What ensures that The Conjuring becomes something far more superior to the standard, haunted house shock/horror tale it constantly threatens to is Wan’s meticulous, beautifully-crafted direction, Julie Berghoff’s (Saw) superb production design, John Leonetti (The Woods) atmospheric cinematography, and the extraordinarily committed performances from a uniformly excellent cast.

Lili Taylor (Six Feet Under) is the stand-out as the wife and mother of five daughters struggling to hold it all together in the presence of evil forces determined to destroy her family, while the scene in which Joey King’s Christine thinks she sees a ghost behind her bedroom door, is as good as they come. If you are not hiding behind your hands during this scene, then you must be asleep.

The anxiety-inducing tension throughout three quarters of the film is unbearable, but as Berghoff’s brilliant house reveals its hideously terrifying depths, the script defaults to one derivative horror movie cliché – failing (unlike The Blair Witch Project or The Exorcist) to deliver the truly terrifying conclusion that was always well within its reach.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: The Wolverine

The Wolverine. Rated M (frequent action violence and coarse language). 126 minutes. Directed by James Mangold. Screenplay by Mark Bomback and Scott Frank.

Verdict: A peculiar romance/superhero hybrid that never quite reaches its potential.

Can too much of Hugh Jackman’s incarnation as The Wolverine be a bad thing? With Jackman bulked up and front and centre in almost every frame, The Wolverine suffers from a frustrating unevenness in tone and a screenplay that veers dangerously toward the repetitive, tried-and-trusted superhero formula. It’s a shame, because when the film is raging against its peculiar ordinariness (the sequences on the roof of a Bullet Train and Wolverine being relentlessly harpooned to standstill are stand-outs), it shows real promise.

It begins, too, with a great set-up as the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. Logan/Wolverine, who is imprisoned in a deep, brick-lined chamber, rescues a young Japanese soldier Yashida (Ken Yamamura) from the effects of the blast. Years later, Logan is summoned to the older Yashida’s (Haruhiko Yamanouchi) deathbed – ostensibly to be thanked for saving his life all those years ago. But as Yashida’s ulterior motive becomes clear, Logan must protect Mariko (Tao Okamoto), the heiress of the ageing Yashida’s technology company’s fortune in order to discover precisely what the ailing Yashida is really planning.

Mangold (3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line, Girl, Interrupted) is at his best in the well-considered, action set pieces, while Bomback (Total Recall, Unstoppable, Die Hard 4) and Frank’s (Marley & Me, Minority Report) screenplay lacks efficiency and only contains a couple of moments of genuine effectiveness. The problems stem from the key relationship between Logan and Mariko – on which film focuses almost entirely – and which is not interesting enough to sustain the film’s dramatic core. We too often find ourselves in a strange Marvel/Jason Bourne/Romantic Drama hybrid world, which is at complete odds with everything we are led to expect from the film’s opening sequences.

Rila Fukushima’s fabulous Yukio (an Anime-inspired character who insists on becoming Logan’s bodyguard), is the film’s saving grace (and the most accomplished performance), while Svetlana Khodchenkova’s toxic Viper simply doesn’t get enough screen time. Viper becomes a cardboard cut-out character, and with less of the Mariko/Logan romantic musings, she might have become a more interesting character – not to mention a fascinating foe for the ever-frowning, and mostly depressed (and depressing) Wolverine.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Monsters University

Monsters University. Rated G. 110 minutes. Directed by Dan Scanlon. Screenplay by Daniel Gerson, Robert L Baird and Dan Scanlon.

Verdict: A long, laughless Pixar misfire that plays it deadly straight.

Prequels, like sequels, can be difficult films to make work in their own right – and this prequel to 2001’s hugely successful Monsters, Inc. suffers from running overtime (with young ones obviously struggling to stay the distance), and its over-populated character list that results in bloat and clutter.

Monsters University tells the story of how one-eyed monster Michael Wazowski (voiced by Billy Crystal) met his pal, the big blue monster James P Sullivan (John Goodman), at, well, university. Under the watchful gaze of Dean Abigail Hardscrabble (Helen Mirren), Michael and James must overcome their natural inability to be truly scary in order to keep their place in the university’s prestigious ‘scare program’. Finding themselves relegated to a group of misfits – the university’s Oozma Kappa fraternity who operate from a quaint suburban house – the unlikely group of timid monsters must use all their resources to ensure they have a future as the truly scary monsters they dream of becoming.

There is no doubting the effectiveness of the splendid animation on show here, but there is little of the sheer creative adventurousness we have come to love, admire, and expect from Pixar (Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, WALL-E). Gerson, Baird and Scanlon’s screenplay is a limp, cheerless affair that gives the impression of being stuck in an endless loop of deadly earnestness that appears to be have been so keen to secure a G rating that its neglected to include anything of genuine interest.

The one sequence that comes close to inspirational, is when Michael and James inadvertently find themselves trapped in the human world – where in order to return to the monster’s realm, they must scare a group of policeman half to death. As beautifully done as it is (with a fine line about learning to accept our strengths and our weaknesses equally), it also achieves nothing more than to pad out a film that could have done with a major injection of laughs and some form of interesting conflict.

As it stands, Monsters University is a harmless and humourless affair that will keep the kids interested for at least half of its running time. Good luck with the other half.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: This is the End

This is The End. Rated MA15+ (strong crude humour, coarse language, sexual references, comedic violence, nudity and drug use). 107 minutes. Written and directed by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

Verdict: One for the boys.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Seth Rogen (The Green Hornet, Pineapple Express, Superbad, Da Ali G Show) and his gang of (mostly) B-Grade Hollywood celebrities have a field day sending themselves, their employers and the doomsday genre up mercilessly with this rough and ready outing into vanity film-making. How they get away with it (and what their managers might think) is anyone’s guess – especially in the case of James Franco, who risks never being taken seriously in a movie again.

When Rogen’s friend Jay Baruchel (How to Train Your Dragon, She's Out of My League, Million Dollar Baby) comes to stay for a weekend in LA, the best buddies end up at a wild party at James Franco’s (Oz the Great and Powerful, 127 Hours) house where the guests include Emma Watson (Harry Potter’s Hermione Granger), Jonah Hill (Moneyball, Get Him to The Greek) and Rihanna. But when Judgement Day arrives, the fun and games are seriously turned upside down.

On one level, This is The End is a massive ego-trip made by a bunch of actors that many audience members will struggle to recognise – and if you haven’t seen their similarly styled breakout project Pineapple Express, a good percentage of the film will sail right over your head. But it’s precisely the extent of their collective conceit that also provides the film with its peculiar attractiveness. If you can get past the almost prehistoric premise that these actors are playing themselves, it ends up being a snide, funny, crass, breath of fresh air with genuine laughs, a couple of jump-out-of-your-seat frights, and some fabulously over-the-top visual effects.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim. Rated M (science fiction violence). 131 minutes. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Screenplay by Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro.

Verdict: The most perfect invading alien monster flick in recent memory.

Lovers of the good old invading alien monsters movie will have the time of their lives with del Toro’s spectacular, no holds barred adventure – possibly the most perfect example of its kind in recent memory. Waiting for the film to trip over itself (it’s a massively ambitious undertaking), becomes a futile exercise as the early action set pieces (which also feed in the crucial back-story) scorch across the screen in marvellously accomplished style.

As gigantic Kaijus (the Japanese word for monsters) rise from the depths of the Pacific Ocean to conquer the world, humans have developed massive fighting machines called Jaegers (German for hunter) to wage war against the invading beasts. Piloted by two humans whose brains are linked to ensure they are not overwhelmed by the ferocity of the Kaijus, the Jaegers are ultimately found to be a futile defence. But when two young pilots Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) take control of the decommissioned Jaeger ‘Gipsy Danger’ – each with a score to settle – the Jaegers find themselves back at the frontline in a race against time to close the deep-sea portal once and for all.

Del Toro (Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy) and his frequent collaborator, Cinematographer Guillermo Navarro, expertly account for the film’s technological and visual challenges – helped enormously by the stunning work of Production Designers Andrew Neskoromny (Apollo 18, AVPR: Aliens vs Predator – Requiem, Dawn of the Dead) and Carol Spier (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).

Del Toro and Beacham’s (Clash of the Titans) screenplay, while heavy on the patriotic and nationalistic imperatives that are standard fare in Hollywood blockbusters, also manages to inflate the stakes at play from the very beginning and keep them high all the way through – ensuring that our interest and involvement in the story never wanes.

The cast, led by the charismatic Hunnam and the feisty Kikuchi, play the material for all it’s worth – even if they are ultimately swamped by the film’s brilliant alien monster versus man-made robot visual and technological brilliance.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.