Dr Lenera
Posts: 3471
Joined: 19/10/2005
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Two long reviews posted from elsewhere, and three short ones just written, sadly the longer reviews are probably the films I liked least!
BATTLE:LOS ANGELES
The idea of an alien invasion is an absolutely terrifying prospect , but it's my feeling that it's never been done totally right on film [except for perhaps the first two versions of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, and they are almost separate as they feature an especially subtle form of invasion]. There's been some fine films, from both versions of The War Of The Worlds to Mars Attacks, and I'm especially fond of the original V and the Japanese Battle In Outer Space, but I don't think filmmakers have ever really exploited the fear, the terror, that would arise, and really use their imagination. Battle:Los Angeles certainly doesn't. The fact that it was originally called Battlefield Earth:Los Angeles ought to give you an idea that it's not very good, although I wouldn't say it's quite a turkey. Think of Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day, and you basically have it, with all the good and bad points that would come with such a combination.
After a quick Starship Troopers style opening in mid invasion, we flash back twenty four hours, and have to endure being introduced to our set of heroes. There's a virgin, a guy getting married, and Michelle Rodriguez doing her usual tough woman thingie, but all of this is pointless because most of this information is never referred to again. They would have been better off not bothering at all with this. There's a fairly good build up of panic, something Independence Day also did well, with a fantastic news report bit of people on a beach being zapped and just a brief glimpse of alien things appearing in the water. Then we get on our mission, and the rest of the movie is basically a series of skirmishes. Now these are vivid and often exciting, but are partially undone by the dreaded shakycam. I have moaned about it before, but hey, I'm going to moan about it again. Even though amazingly I don't like getting sore eyes and feeling sick whilst watching a film, and like to see what's going on in a film, I actually don't mind it in 'found footage' films like Cloverfield, even if quite often those films seem stupid to me. The people filming stuff seem to be having epileptic fits! I could just about put up with it in the Bourne films even ,but otherwise I find it incredibly annoying. In Battle:Los Angeles, even the dialogue scenes have the camera unable to stay still for a few seconds, and it really gives the impression of bad film making and even took me out of the film.
Nonetheless things are just about watchble until about two thirds in when the dialogue, which was poor to begin with, starts to partially turn into really cheesy patriotic speeches, usually when somebody is dying. Now, I enjoy a bit of cheese every now and again, and don't object to patriotism, but this movie becomes overloaded with it and goes beyond Independence Day. There's one hilarious bit though when Aaron Eckhart, who poor guy is given the lion's share of this stuff, goes on for five minutes psyching up his team and telling a young boy who's lost his dad that he is now a Marine, than says "but none of that's important right now”. Did writer Christopher Berkolini never see Airplane? Unless of course this was meant as a jokey reference but in that case it's really out of place. The script is full of holes and odd things, such as why do the aliens decide to land on water? As for the aliens, their ships are quite interesting looking but themselves just look like bad CG versions of the typical machine/humanoid thingie, and I think I noticed some machines from the Speilberg The War Of The Worlds in the distance! There are some shockingly poor CG helicopters and explosions too, though to compensate they are some great aerial shots of the war above the city [saying that though, you keep hearing about the airforce, but you never see them except a few helicopters!]. The use of sound is also good, with really effective employing of silence at times.
Eckhart actually does the best he can with his poorly written character, while everyone else fares okayish but not enough to rise above the general mediocirity. Jonathon Leiberman, whose Texas Chainsaw Massacre:The Beginning I really liked though few else did, is pretty good at pacing but doesn't seem to really have a grip on the film. The incredibly untalented Brian Tyler was responsible for the score, with its tedious droning where a loud synthesiser is played over a small orchestra [something which I never see the point of]. This composer seems to almost entirely copy other composers[ [i.e.Watchmen], and here just imitates Hans Zimmer. Overall Battle:Los Angeles is just about enjoyable if you switch your brain off, but it really does have a great many things wrong with it and for much of its duration all I could think of is "what a missed opportunity”.
4.5/10
THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU
The Adjustment Bureau has been advertised with the quote, obviously from somebody who hasn't actually seen the film, "Bourne meets Inception”, which sounds pretty good if you ask me. The trailer makes it out to be pretty exciting, with lots of shots of Matt Damon running and sinister people chasing him, perhaps more Bourne meets Dark City. Well, I think the filmmakers need to be prosecuted, because this movie is NOTHING like it has been advertised. Now having read a few reviews prior to seeing this including Empire magazine's own review, I kind of knew that it wasn't quite what it's promoted to be. However, I had no idea whatsoever that it would also be a piece of crap. I couldn't believe that this is based on a Philip K.Dick story, others of which have inspired great movies such as Blade Runner and Total Recall. This is a staggeringly idiotic, ineptly crafted and incredibly lazy film that some people seem to be praising because it's original. It's not. It's four basic ideas-we are not actually in control of our own destiny [a sci fi staple], the power of Free Will, the power of love overcoming escalating obstacles, and Doing The Right Thing, rammed together in such a clumsy cack handed way the film actually resembles several movies sewn together Frankenstein style.
I normally know I'm watching rubbish about twenty minutes into a film, but with this one I'd say it was even sooner than that. David meets Elise in the gent's loos, and after two minutes of chat they suddenly start snogging. Of course he now thinks he's met the love of his life, but he is being watched by the guys of the Adjustment Bureau. Right from the offset, we are shown them following hi m around in their 50s style suits, so there is so build up or tension. They constantly waffle to each other about how the David/Elise meeting is causing damage to time and space, and sometimes go through doors which can be anywhere and lead to other areas of the city. After what seems like an eternity of this tedium they start to put obstacles in David's way, and he evades them, but still there is NO TENSION. We start to alternate with the romance, and to be fair this comes across quite well, it has a naturalistic vibe, with almost a Before Sunrise kind of feel, but the trouble is it seems like it's from a totally different film. There is NO TENSION. Terence Stamp starts to appear to waffle on about "ripples”, in fact it must have been in his contract to say "ripples” in every other line he says. He has a habit of suddenly turning up in front of David, but still there's NO TENSION. Then David makes friends with one of the Bureau, who teaches him tricks that they can do, such as going in and out of magic doors really quickly. Of course he's now better than them, because, as one of them says "spontaneity isn't one of our strong points”, a good example of the atrocious dialogue in this movie.
We finally do get a chase [though there's still NO TENSION],which involves going in and out of magic doors really quickly, and it's hilarious, partly because all I could think of was Monster's Inc. Mind you, I often found myself thinking about other things than what was on screen, such as what shall I have for dinner tonight, or how maybe a better way of using the tenner I paid to watch this film would have been to give it to a passerby and ask him to stamp on my head. Then suddenly it's all over, with lots of "love conquers all " guff, but to be honest I've forgotten what was said, because it was venturing close to some of the unspeakably putrid, mouldy cheese of Scott Pilgrim Vs The World. Then again, George Nolfi's stupid script is dumb throughout, such as when Stamp recounts a potted history of the human race that ignores everything outside of Western Europe and America. It's a good example of the film's laziness. The fantasy elements seem ridiculous because of the cack handed way we are introduced to them-there's no attempt at surprise or escalation, and of course nothing makes much sense. Then again, the characters don't do much that makes sense either. There's a jaw-droppingly dumb bit where David, who abandoned Elise in a hospital bed three years before, turns up at Elise's wedding asking her to come with him ,and after about ten seconds she DOES!. Now all this may have been passable if the general tone of the film was tongue-in-cheek, but it's actually deadly serious throughout. It's also so incredibly lazy. Everything seems half hearted, half thought through. There seems to be no conviction, as if after a while people realised they were making a bad movie and almost gave up.
This filters down to Matt Damon's performance. Now I've always thought him a bland actor who occasionally somehow finds it within himself to do something really good, as in parts of Hereafter, and he was born to play Bourne, but here he really looks like he'd be somewhere else. To be honest though I can feel his pain, whilst watching this movie I often felt I wanted to be somewhere else, like on the toilet. One thing that does lift this movie is rising star Emily Blunt, she's really natural and I helps that to me she's also drop dead gorgeous! Out of everyone only Micheal Kelly and Terence Stamp seem to have any conviction. The score is the usual monotonous crap that you get in American films at the moment. I will say that the photography is fairly good and that when the film focuses on the love story, it is just quite good. The trouble is, it's surrounded by so much utter crap that I found the film a rather painful thing to sit through.
3/10
RANGO
Many animated films these days try to equally appeal to kids and adults alike, Rango comes with the impression that it's more for adults than for kids, which makes the kiddie orientated trailers very misleading. Well, this adult certainly didn't find it much more adult than normal –sure, The obligatory film references cast their net wider than usual, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas to Chinatown, there's a bit of pretentious existentialism stuff [the sort of thing that was done better in Antz and many other animated films] and there's some mild swearing, but the humour is no more sophisticated than normal [thespians sounds like lesbians-wow, how clever!] and is mostly the usual slapstick. More importantly, it's just not that entertaining. For about twenty minutes, things are really fun and funny, but as soon as our chameleon hero arrives at the town in the film it all goes downhill. Gags are constantly thrown at you but rarely seem to work, and the film is mostly content to parody the same old Western cliches that a hundred previous films have done and better. The design is very impressive and the idea of mostly ugly animals is interesting [though has obviously helped to turn off many kids], while there's a great atmospheric scene around three quarters of the way through involving Tommy Oliphaunt doing a great Clint Eastwood impression. The Star Wars like climax is very good too. Mostly though, despite the obvious hard work put into it,Rango falls a little flat, even for someone like me who is very partial to animated movies, and seems to me to be only patchily enjoyable for kids and for adults.
5.5/10
UNKNOWN
Although there most certainly is action, and Liam Neeson is another tough guy tearing around Berlin, this isn't, despite what you may have heard, much like Taken. A slightly more sober and comple affair, it's sort of a cross between Frantic and The Bourne Identity, or maybe Total Recall and Flightplan, and I'm told it's also very similar to a short lived TV series called Nowhere Man. Despite being virtually made from various bits of other movie, it is a really good thriller for about the first three quarters. The premise is initially intriguing, one really is kept guessing, there's a fair bit of suspense and director Jaume Collet-Serra does a good job in balancing the plot and action. Unfortunately, it wraps up a little weakly, and has rather too many plot holes, though it never gets bad and remains quite exciting. There's one of the best car chases in ages, with two cars driving in reverse at one point, although as usual with such scenes these days, it's cut to within an inch of its life. The best scene though is a dialogue scene between two supporting characters played by Frank Langella and an excellent Bruno Ganz, which is extremely well written and also very tense-it's almost on a different level from the rest of the movie. Though those who snobbily look down on this type of movie obviously don't agree, I really like the fact that Neeson has virtually reinvented himself as a near-60 action hero, and I don't care what anyone says he seems pretty tough to me. Diane Kruger is a solid female lead though her character is a bit unbelievable. Overall a solid piece of entertainment that probably weakens after one has see it but is certainly engrossing while it's on. Which European city is Liam going to rampage around next? Rome? London?
7/10
DRIVE ANGRY
Films which try hard to be old-style exploitation films don't often work, and Drive Angry is a case in point, though I will say that it's a million times better than the atrocious Death Proof. At least this movie is pretty entertaining if you switch your brain off, chugging along at a reasonable pace giving you plenty of bloody action along the way, all in a tongue in cheek way which means that it's sometimes funny but suffers, as do many movies like this which try to imitate 70s Drive In movies, from a lack of conviction. There's not much that's original either, with the most over the top scene, Nicolas Cage shooting down bad guys while having sex, pilfered from Shoot Em Up, though to be fair Clive Owen didn't have a bottle of Jack Daniels in one hand in his scene! The several fight scenes are pretty lame and the climax very disappointing, but the vehicle action, at least, seems to be mostly real. There's an over abundance of CG elsewhere though, and most of it is not very good. Even lamer is the 3D. Though supposedly shot in the format, there's hardly any depth of field at all, and far too few things are thrown at the audience! Cage is clearly having fun, but as many people have said William Fichter stands out and is really funny with his deadpan delivery. I actually did enjoy Drive Angry while it lasted but I think the fact that it's a major studio production has actually back fired- it needed to be cheap, down and dirty, but instead it's just far too slick and seems like it's holding back.
5/10
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check out more of my reviews on http://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/
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RE: Films of 2011 List - 
for the 61st Berlin Film Festival, and as well as having a good time saw a few very intertesting new films. But first the domstic stuff. 
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