Blazin’ Review: Pandorum

Starring:Dennis Quaid, Ben Foster, Cam Gigandet, Antje Traue

Director:Christian Alvart

Writer:Travis Milloy

Cinematography:Wendigo Von Schultzendorff

Original Score:Michl Britsch

Running Time:108 Mins.

Capturing claustrophobia in a film is always a coup d’etat if your circling the horror pool, the last film to effectively do so was Neil Marshall with The Descentand here despite the shift in time and space (literally) director Alvart has managed to coax the same sense of ominous and intense threat that comes with such a claustrophobic premise. Of course it helps that your setting is the not too original expanse of a ”deserted” ship left floating in space.

Awoken from their extended hyper-sleep onboard this ship are Peyton (Quaid) and Bower (Foster), unaware of what has happened to the rest of the crew, and slowly coming to remember only snatches of why they are actually there in the first place (a side effect of hyper-sleep so we are informed)/ Peyton leads Bower through the bowel’s of the ship to the reactor core, where the power can be restored and some semblance made of what has taken place amidst their slumber. But this being a sci-fi horror film, all does not go to plan, neither on Bower’s trek nor in Peyton’s control room.

As you can sense, this is a tale fraught with the feeling of very much having been there and seen it all before, a smatter of Alien here and a vast chunk of Event Horizon there, in fact it is produced by the latter film’s director, the ubiquitous Paul W.S. Anderson, this “produced by” stamp stands for very little usually, to be totally honest, but sometimes that director’s stamp can be seen on the finished product, be it in story, sense or style.

Thankfully it is only evident in style here as the “look” is very Event Horizon-y and thankfully not so Resident Evil-y (the franchise Anderson is most famous for), but let us be thankful Alvart is much more adept at telling a story in an intense and unsettling manner, and at a great pace, that could quite easily have become a boring to-and-fro between the two main men, yet doesn’t. In fact the two strands are meticulously intertwined.

Sadly there is a but, and that comes in the form of the apparent need, as is commonplace in the space horror genre, to introduce an alien lifeform foe, here the villainous “aliens” have a strange look of Mad Max-ities spliced with Lord of the Rings-orcs about them, creepy when kept in the shadows and typically gruesome up close. But serving no real purpose other than to give the otherwise low-scale (in terms of action) mission a few sceces of bloody fighting, and worst of all the explanation for these creatures is wholly lost, rendering the plot line redundant.

Thankfully as the creature parts begin to bore midway, a new character is introduced in the form of Cam Gigandet (of Twilight fame) and Quaid gets to furrow his brow as only he can do so well, a cut price Harrison Ford if you like, this all leads to a great reveal that is quite shocking at the time, but has a whiff of Fight Club about it.

Aside from Quaid, Foster continues on his mission to play slightly freaky and intense characters, though this one is a little lower in the freak-spectrum than others he has portrayed lately, toned down a few notches he is a great intense performer and sells every second he appears in, this doesn’t help the support crew members he meets along the way however as their weak acting only proves beneficial upon wondering who will and wont survive!  

VERDICT

Seemingly the effects of Pandorumon the viewer are, a tense and claustrophobic tone, great pacing, convincing performances, but with a strong sense of having seen it all before…

 

Blazin’ Review: Surrogates

Starring:Bruce Willis, Radha Mitchell, Rosamund Pike, James Cromwell, Ving Rhames

Director:Jonathan Mostow

Writer(s):Michael Ferris, John D. Brancato

Cinematography: Oliver Wood

Original Score: Richard Marvin

Running Time:104 Mins.

Surrogateslooks, on the surface at least, so pedestrian that you can’t help but wonder why an actor of Willis’ calibre and star wattage was drawn to it, a run of the mill sci-fi actioner that not so much looks like we have seen it all before than the actual love child of Will Smith starrer I. Robot and the daddy of post-modern sci-fi, Blade Runner. So to say expectations were low is really quite an accurate description. Lest I was surprised once again and low expectations trumped as Surrogateswas actually quite a nice surprise, not entirely devoid of some ambiguity upon its close avoiding that all to commonplace “happy ending” (good sci-fi should ALWAYS leave you wandering!).

Willis is a police officer (natch) in the future, 14 years to be precise, and in this future the majority of the population have become essentially 24/7 couch potato’s, spending all of their active time in what is refered to as a stem chair, though I could have sworn it sounded like “stim” chair, from this chair they control their surrogate, a plastic “other” version of themselves, most choose versions that look like they do albeit with supposed improvements, i.e. Willis wears a dreadful wig and looks vastly younger, while Radha Mitchell’s character is bruised and battered in human form (seemingly for no discernable reason, as it is never explained) yet bottle blonde perfection in surrogate form.

Word is that surrogacy has hugely decreased crime rates by 90% (so an excellent credit sequence informs us) with the ability to be murdered via surrogate impossible, until that is someone does die whilst “plugged in”. Willis investigates whilst dealing with the desire to spend time with his actual wife, rather than her surrogate, and properly grieve the loss of his dead son…there are corrupt companies (I, Robot), a human resistance (Children of Men) and questions of identity (Blade Runner)…and a bald Bruce Willis (urm…Die Hard 4.0…).

This mish-mash of ideas, whilst not inherently original, does add up to a pretty good sum of its parts, Willis invests himself well in the material and is given much more to do than run around killing people, in fact the film is being largely mis-sold as an action film, when there is nary little action within. A chase scene early on that sees the demise of Willis’ surrogate is good but not good enough to be sold as THE set piece in a supposed action film, however the 90% of the film that isn’t action is handled with panache by Mostow, who guided the under-rated Terminator 3in a passable direction, and manages to coax an emotional performance from the confused character of Willis, the support however doesn’t fare quite as well and Ving Rhames feels hugely miscast as the leader of the human resistance, The Prophet, Mitchell and Pike are adequate but given very little to work with leaving it to Willis to keep the thesping end of the action interesting.

As the intriguing premise raises questions about identity and delves much deeper into the psychology about the ideas of perfection and the uses of “avatars” which seem to be becoming more prevalent day by day in our society you will be left pondering such quandaries throughout, and some time after. Sadly though the film ends with a mixed and somewhat cliched finale, as predictable equilibrium is somewhat restored it is left slightly ambiguous as not to have too happy an ending but the lead up in the last 15 minutes is so “seen it all before” that much of the impact is sadly lost, kudos for not feel the need to have an all action blow everything up ending but it needed to move away from I, Robot comparisons and the use of James Cromwell only fuelled them further.

VERDICT

Surrogatesskates a thin line of cliche and thoughtful sci-fi, thankfully more cerebral than expected and with a great emotive performance from Willis who is here more acting than action-man, despite succumbing to seen-it-all-before on its tail end there is more than enough here to make Surrogates worth watching.

 

Patrick Wilson joins The A-Team

Somewhere, somehow, amidst all the hoopla surrounding the news that Sharlto Copley and Jessica Biel had joined the cast of Joe Carnahan’s The A-Team, as Howling Mad Murdoch and, erm, the army colonel chasing the lovable mercenaries, we missed the news that Patrick Wilson had also joined the cast. Sorry about that… so here goes:

Patrick Wilson has joined the cast of The A-Team. There you go. That feels better.

The Watchmen star will play a CIA operative in the movie, about four resourceful veteran soldiers who go on the run to clear their names after they’re accused of a crime they didn’t commit. Wilson’s presence and character’s occupation could mean that he is – dum de dummmmmm! – the movie’s bad guy, which would make a hell of a lot more sense than giving that role to the frankly far-too-young Biel.

Filming on the movie has already begun, with The A-Team’s van – looking almost identical to the one used in the ‘classic’ TV show – glimpsed and papped in and around Vancouver. No glimpses of The A Team – that’s Liam Neeson as Hannibal, Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson as B.A. Baracus, Bradley Cooper as Faceman and Copley – themselves yet, but those paps sure are resourceful. We can wait.

 

Monaghan makes Due Date Downey Jr.

Good news for fans of Shane Black’s wonderful comedic thriller, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – which, of course, should include all right-thinking people (and, frankly, if you’re not a fan, stop reading this, go watch the film, become a fan and then come back here). Robert Downey Jr. and Michelle Monaghan are set to reunite in the new Todd Phillips comedy, Due Date.

Monaghan, so brilliant in Kiss Kiss as Harmony, today signed on to the road movie, which stars Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis as a mismatched duo racing across America in a desperate attempt to make the birth of Downey’s child.

Monaghan will play the pregnant wife, which we hope doesn’t mean that she gets little screen-time with Downey, for the two have more chemistry than Boots.

Filming starts on Monday, with the film scheduled for release next November; after filming wraps, Phillips and Galifianakis will head straight over to The Hangover 2.

 

Blazin’ Review: Gamer

Starring: Gerard Butler, Michael C. Hall, Amber Valletta, Kyra Sedgwick, Chris ‘Ludacris’ Bridges

Director: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Writer(s): Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

Cinematography: Ekkehart Pollack

Original Score: Robb Williamson, Geoff Zanelli

Running Time: 95 Mins.

Okay, let’s just get this one straight, Gamer is not quite as batshit crazy as Crank 2: High Voltage, in fact it isn’t quite in the realms or Crank crazy, but it IS from the team up of Neveldine and Taylor, the seemingly schizophrenic directors/writers behind those two previously mentioned Statham starring cinematic headf**ks! I call them this with a certain degree of fondness, for as crazy as they may be, and they are certainly cinema at its maddest, they are at a point where you feel you should admire them for their sheer disregard for what is right and wrong in society.

So while not quite at Crank-Crazy level, Gamer treads much the same path, so we have a grunting anti-hero, this time in the much more talented from of Gerard Butler, and a plot that affords a huge amount time to blow things up, kill people and generally cause mayhem and then there is the largely pointless decision to show a total lack of respect towards women, expoitative nudity is fine by me but it needs to at least be in context or have a point, that displayed here has neither. Which is the main problem with Gamer as a whole, large segments seem to have little or no point, particularly those set in “Society”, a real life Sims in effect. It’s within the confines of this, tellingly, that most of the pointless nudity takes place.

Once again the directors inability to keep the camera still is a problem because when a potentially half-interesting action scene occurs it cuts and flashes so much that you can’t actually tell what is happening, let alone who is shooting who, it might be seen as a stylistic flourish for Neveldine and Taylor but for the viewer it is a dull and dizzying experience. With attempt’s to create a coherent plot towards the film’s end, and fundamentally one that actually is trying to make a serious point with regards to society, and the control of technology over it, you are likely to left feeling a bit confused because anything it is trying to say jars against what we have seen before. Meaning it all adds to the general mish-mash of a rather lost story.

If you want to make a point it needs to be carried through, because every time Gamer picks up one strand it seems to be dropped in favour of the next highly implausible one, cliches fly around as if the 80’s action boom never happened and Butler fails to engage despite being a better actor than the Stath he looks as lost as you will watching this.

On the plus side, and it is admittedly a very good plus side, is Michael C. Hall, seemingly the only person who knows where the film should be pitched throughout he remains the most entertaining and rounded character on display. In fact for his Sammy Davis Jr. dance sequence alone the film is worth the admission price! Having never seen Dexter or any other production with Hall in, I could safely say on the basis of this he has a bright carreer ahead.

Having a larger budget here than they did on past films allows for a strrier cast, so a number of character actors pop up, Kyra Sedgewick, Ludacris, Alison Lohman etc. most of them are needless and have a handful of scenes, and once again an attempt to introduce a Children of Men style uprising story is flagged up and shot down that again you will wonder why they appeared at all. Yes Gamer obviously wasn’t designed to be particularly original, but it should have at least had the conviction to keep to a straight story about revenge, instead it tries to be many things and essentially becomes none of them, that it has flopped in America dramatically gives you some indication that even the gore and naked women hungry public have seen it for how weak it is.

 VERDICT

The teaming of Neveldine/Taylor has once again provided us with a rather pointless lesson is MTV film making, but this time it is nothing but a bore that only has Michael C. Hall as a saving grace.

 

Blazin’ Review: Fish Tank

Starring: Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender, Kierston Wareing, Jason Maza

Director: Andrea Arnold

Writer: Andrea Arnold

Cinematography: Robbie Ryan

Original Score: N/A

Running Time: 124 Mins.

The British film industry could, in a rather crude way, be reduced down to two types of film, the gritty kitchen sink drama or the Richard Curtis style rom-com, neither I find particularly endearing though while Curtis’ output is in a lazy way very enjoyable Friday night/Sunday afternoon fodder, you seemingly need to be a critic or a film student to take anything other than depression from the former, Ken Loach and Mike Leigh are the big names in this field, and now I can safely say Andrea Arnold falls nicely into that bracket as well. Though for my money she has far more scope and ambition than either of those aforementioned grim directors.

Fish Tank, which is Arnold’s second feature, took away one of the top prizes this year at Cannes, something which  would seem to indicate the market the film will appeal to, in fact that very same market I talked of above, but in truth there is much much more here than the grim interiors of council estates and the goings on inside them, the Fish Tank of the title refers to the estate itself and the environment the lead character exists in, stuck looking out towards a much more appealing and largely better world she skirts around the fringes of in her ”Fish Tank” throughout the film, looking for escape but apparently unable to find one.

Her apparent saviour though seems to come two-fold, in the dancing she locks herself away to practice, with hopes of using it as her way out and the boyfriend of her mother who she can’t quite fathom. It is in the relationship between he (Fassbender, exceptional as ever) and her (Jarvis) that is at the heart of the narrative, though the usual stock characters are present and correct, bratty sister, slutty mother, pikey friends, ir is Fassbender and Jarvis who take their scenes and provide the dynamite of good acting. Jarvis is, quite shockingly, a newcomer (and was chosen by the director after seeing her argueing at a train station with her boyfriend). Yes she can argue with the best of them but it is in the quieter scenes she shares with Fassbender which are quite simply brilliant, acting of this calibre is not commonplace and certainly not from a newcomer.

As the film progresses the relationship between the central pair becomes more and more complex, raising many questions, does she see him as a father figure? Or does she have a crush on him? Is he as genuine as first appears and what are his intentions towards her? Are they father/daughter feelings, or as some instances would suggest, much more? This is not an easy subject to tackle, yet Arnold does so with great dignity, never putting us in aposition where we dislike or judge either person, and never making it seem as black and white as this type of film and situation can become.

The film’s other great strength, and that which suggests Arnold is as good a director as she is a writer is in the depiction of the council estate against the backdrop of the beautiful countryside, and later in the film the depiction of suburbia as somewhere that Jarvis should never have ventured, only here does the film take a somewhat strange turn, piling on the dread as secrets are revealed and steps taken that scare and make you wonder what kind of depressing end we will end up at, thankfully we are provided with a glimmer of hope in a heart shaped balloon rising from the council estate. Somehting that seems to define not just the attempt at something upbeat amongst all the confusion and mess, but also the directors visual prowess.

VERDICT

Director Arnold has assembled something quite special in Fish Tank, proving she is as adept at writing as she is at directing bringing out a stunning performance from newcomer Jarvis. Not as depressing as you might expect but challenging viewing none the less without becoming full of pretense.

 

Toy Story 3 teaser poster…

Yes it isn’t going to blow the world away for originality or depth but this is a pretty cool if unrevealing poster…just savour the tagline and that big yellow 3 until we get something a little more…substantial!

 

Patrick Swayze 1952-2009

I’m sad to report that Patrick Swayze has died at the age of 57 from the pancreatic cancer he announced to the world two years ago.

After playing Danny in a Broadway run of Grease, Swayze first came to widespread notice in the early ’80s in the well regarded TV mini-series North and South, and as a member of the so-called Brat Pack, with roles in The Outsiders and Red Dawn. But it was Dirty Dancing in 1987 that made him a household name, allowing him to put his classical training as a dancer to good use as Jennifer Gray’s heartthrob dance instructor Johnny Castle. 

Roles of varying quality followed (best of which was the glorious tosh that is Road House) until the 1990 smash hit supernatural romance Ghost, where he played the deceased Sam Wheat to Demi Moore’s Molly Jensen and Whoopi Goldberg’s medium Oda Mae Brown. The following year he played the zen skydiving bank-robbing surfer Bodhi in Katherine Bigelow’s Point Break, and was awesome. No man in the world watched that film and wished they were Keanu.

The rest of the ’90s weren’t so kind to him (although he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his uncannily convincing role in To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar) as he battled alcoholism and broke both legs in a horse-riding accident. But he made a superb comeback in 2000 as the paedophile life guru Jim Cunningham in Donnie Darko, and enjoyed a successful West-End run in Guys and Dolls beginning in 2006.

He announced his illness to the world in the spring of 2008, and battled it determinedly, whilst always remaining up-front about its gravity. He is survived by his wife of 34 years Lisa Niemi, whom he met aged 18 when she was taking dance classes with his mother. The two never had children.

His Outsiders co-star Rob Lowe said last night that he’d “lost a brother”. Jennifer Grey said in a statement “Patrick was a rare and beautiful combination of raw masculinity and amazing grace. It was not surprising to me that the war he waged on his cancer was so courageous and dignified.”

 

Blazin’ Trailer: This Is It

Michael Jackson’s concert were stage shows that offered spectacular choreography on the kind of scale even Cecille B. DeMille would have dismissed as ‘outlandish’. The man may be gone but, thanks to new concert film This Is It, he’ll be back on screens for one final appearance.

Cut from footage shot during Jackson’s rehearsals for this year’s planned tour, This Is It gives one more chance to see the man-with-the-glove in action. Click here for a look at the official trailer, courtesy of BBC News.

This Is It is directed by Jackson’s long-time creative partner (and High School Musical director) Kenny Ortega, who describes the project as “a gift to Michael’s fans” and promises it’ll show Michael “as one of the greatest entertainers in the world.”

This Is It is released in the UK on October 28 for a limited, two-week run.

 

Blazin’ Trailer: A Christmas Carol

Officially it’s only a teaser trailer, but this clip hosted at Yahoo is the longest look we’ve had yet at Robert Zemeckis’ digital 3D animated A Christmas Carol, starring Jim Carrey as Ebeneezer Scrooge.

With a story as well known and frequently filmed as this, the pleasure is always going to be in the details, so it’s good to report that those details seem worth turning out for: this manages to look funny and exciting and beautiful, even if the trailer is a bit over-reliant on shots of Carrey’s Scrooge being flung around and going “Aaaaaaaaghhh!” a lot.

There are snippets of choice dialogue (I like “I’d rather not”), glimpses of all the ghosts, and a lot of brief but often stunning shots of the major locations. Scrooge occasionally looks like Albert Steptoe, but the final frames of him blowing a snowflake off his nose are gorgeous, even if he is damn ugly.

A Christmas Carol will premiere in London at the beginning of November, with all ticket proceeds for the event going to the Great Ormond Street Hospital.