Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – A disappointing start to the Justice League story.

 

**WARNING: MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

First of all, a disclaimer: I am not a comic-book fan. It’s not that I don’t like them, I just never owned any, and, ironically, the only comic I have ever read just happens to be the one in which Superman fights Doomsday. It belonged to a guy I knew, and when I saw it among his collection (wall mounted within a plastic sleeve) I insisted on reading it as I found the idea of Superman being killed in battle quite fascinating. He agreed, pulled out a pair of tweezers so I could turn the pages, and I read my first, and only, comic.

Little did I know I was spoiling a movie for myself that would be released nearly a quarter of a century later.

The reason I give the above disclaimer is so you understand that when I rate these super-hero movies, I am rating purely as a cinema-goer, with no care as to whether the Batman in this flick represents early Batman or late Batman, or argue about whether Wonder Woman’s outfit fits into the Silver age or the Golden age. I have little to no knowledge of these things, nor do I care.

So having said that, I confess that I wanted to really like Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. I didn’t want to be a hater. I have always found Ben Affleck mediocre, and I wanted him to be great. I really liked Henry Cavill in The Man From U.N.C.L.E (one of last year’s cinema highlights) and I wanted him to pull a memorable Superman out of the bag. I wanted to walk out of the theater having been blown away and sit in front of my computer unable to convey how awesomely great this movie was.

‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’, has its moments, but generally fails to thrill. Here Superman (Henry Cavill), Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) and Batman (Ben Affleck) prepare to face off against Doomsday.

But about an hour into this film I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do that. I was bored, and more than a little annoyed. I was thinking that Director Zack Snyder and his writing staff must have thought I was pretty dumb, because they kept on laying on, over and over again, how angry Bruce Wayne / Batman (Affleck) is at Clark Kent / Superman (Cavill) and how disapproving of Batman’s vigilantism Superman is. Yeah okay, they don’t like each other. Move along.

The first hour of the film, in fact, is really carried by the second-tier characters. Gal Gadot as Diana Prince / Wonder Woman is sexy, mysterious and downright intriguing. In the few scenes she shares with Affleck they have great chemistry together, and his curiosity toward her definitely drags us into wanting to know more. Amy Adams as Lois Lane pretty much drives the Superman side of the story forward while the man of steel himself sulks around in the background, and Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor is downright evil, at least for the first half of the film, and his character carries a malevolence truly worthy of a super-villain.

Gal Gadot’s introduction as ‘Wonder Woman’ is one of the highlights of ‘Dawn of Justice’.

Once we start to get to the point of the film, the battle between the two titular characters, however, things begin to change.

The Luthor character disintegrates into farce. In fact his manipulation of Batman and Superman to get them to fight is just downright silly. Given Superman’s extraordinary powers, there are countless ways this could have gone differently, without anyone getting hurt, but I guess he felt a ‘Bat-bruisin’ was the way to go.

With the excpetion of Luthor’s decline and the silliness of the plot that brought them to this point, the battle itself is actually pretty cool. Roughly half-way through the fight between the two heroes I realised that I really liked Ben Affleck’s Batman. This Batman, aging and filled with rage at the injustices he sees around him, is borderline psychotic and sees the demise of Superman as a lasting legacy that will justify the years of collaring the muck of Gotham. The Bat Vigilante is intelligent, skilled and feeling oh so vengeful that I truly believe he could scare young children watching this film. The Batfleck works, and is by some way the best thing about this movie.

Superman (Henrey Cavill) has possibly bitten off more than he can chew when he confronts Batman (Ben Affleck).

So after much boredom and annoyance, we have a thrilling fight to the near-death between the two most iconic super-heroes of any universe. At its conclusion, they kiss and make up, and then it’s off to fight Luthor’s creation, Doomsday.

The Doomsday battle is the true introduction of Wonder Woman, and she doesn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, however, after the raging battle between Batman and Superman, the battle between our three heroes (Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman) and Doomsday turns out to be a bit of a letdown. Watching Affleck and Cavill go toe-to-toe was one thing. Watching them fight a CGI’d Doomsday was, unfortunately, not in the same ball-park. The editing is confusing, the action a little rambled, and the outcome just a little too predictable.

Elsewhere, the introduction of a group of other ‘meta-humans’ (The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg) into the story-line was unnecessarily sloppy and did no justice (pardon the pun) to their characters. These characters could easily have been introduced in the next planned film, and would have saved this film from having to throw too many different ideas into the mix. I know there are people who will defend their introduction as being important to the ‘Justice League’ story going forward, but to me it simply diluted an already thin story-line and added running time to a movie that, if anything, needed to be shorter and tighter. Don’t mistake convoluted for depth. This is an incredibly simple story that takes two-and-a-half hours to tell, and all the hidden shout outs to the DC Universe and the introduction of future characters / story-lines doesn’t make it any more meaningful.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice doesn’t live up to the hype. It has its moments, and Affleck and Gadot are excellent, but it is far too drawn out. Its attempts at spoon-feeding us such a simple story makes for a boring hour or so before the action kicks in, and the pay-off at the end isn’t quite enough for us to forgive its failures.

Verdict: 6.5 / 10 – Thrilling for a short time, but for the most part laborious. A necessary evil for those interested in catching future ‘Justice League’ movies.

 

The Witch: Family ties unravel amidst rising paranoia

The Witch is a slow moving 1600’s period psychological horror film depicting the events that unfold after a Puritan family are banished from town and forced to fend for themselves living off their small farm surrounded by foreboding woodlands.

That’s the gist. My own thoughts were more along the lines of Hansel, Gretel, and Red Riding Hood encounter a nasty presence in the woods, and this film tells the story of the outcome of that encounter. That may sound smarmy and a little dismissive, but the fact is this film clearly takes its premise from a number of different folklore sources, and wraps them together in a non-to-subtle way.

The family’s woes begin when the youngest child, an infant, goes missing, and things descend from there as the family struggles to put food on the table, as well as dealing with rising paranoia amongst family members as to who is to blame for their present predicament.

As mentioned, the film moves among slowly, sometimes frustratingly so, but the key moments are well worth hanging in there for. This is a well crafted film – someone obviously cared very much about its final look and feel, and the actors do a wonderful job dealing with some difficult scenes as well as unfamiliar language. The young cast, in particular the two eldest children, are very well played.

Anya Taylor-Joy is wonderful as the eldest daughter Thomasin, accused by her younger siblings of being a witch after the second eldest child, Caleb, played by young actor Harvey Scrimshaw, falls foul of witchcraft whilst seeking food in the woods.The God-fearing father, William, played by Ralph Ineson, is, along with Thomasin, the central character in the film and father and daughter play off each other very well, especially towards the end of the film when the father’s inclination is to accept more the possibility of supernatural goings-on rather than his own children’s innocence.

Anna Taylor-Joy and Harvey Scrimshaw play sister and brother Thomasin and Caleb in ‘The Witch’

A special mention to Harvey Scrimshaw, who for the most part underplays the character of Caleb, but in a way that adds immensely to the overall tension of the film, and his chemistry with Taylor-Joy adds greatly to what are quite awkward scenes together (I say awkward due to the ever-so-subtle hints of potential incest between the two). He almost steals the movie away from the more adult actors here, but his character drifts away in the final third of the film (no spoilers here sorry).

I will admit to checking my watch a couple of times, it is a bit of a chore to sit through, but the ending is a very satisfying one, and once Black Phillip  (watch the movie to understand) kicks off, the story throws itself toward the finish line with a very memorable final act.

Not to everyone’s taste, The Witch is unnerving in its depiction of the mental disintegration of a family unit, and makes an interesting addition to traditional folklore tales.

Verdict: 6.5 / 10 – A well made movie, intimidating and tension-filled, but just a little slow and with dialogue that can, at times, frustrate.

The Boy: A dysfunctional relationship between a doll and his nanny.

I have to confess to being pleasantly surprised by The Boy. The story of American nanny Greta (The Walking Dead‘s Lauren Cohan) landing a job babysitting a doll named Brahms in a huge, isolated manor house in the English countryside sounded more like a creepy Pinocchio than a genuine entry into the supernatural horror genre. But this story works, albeit in no way that’s going to have you hiding under the covers.

The movie is a bit of a slow burn. There are enough red herrings thrown about to leave the audience guessing as to the true nature of the strange occurrences going on in this isolated environment. Is the house haunted? Is the doll possessed? Is Greta the victim of gaslighting? Or is she genuinely going crazy? These questions are enough to keep us engaged while the story slowly unravels toward a conclusion that takes a bit of a dog-leg from supernatural thriller to Michael Myers-style stalk’n’slash.

This is a great role for Lauren Cohan. I admit to being a fan and this is the type of movie she can carry. Rupert Evans (Hellboy, The Man In The High castle) is hopelessly charming as Malcolm, the grocery man with a crush on the nanny, and Ben Robson (Vikings) is suitably intimidating as the ex-boyfriend Cole.

           Greta (Lauren Cohan) doesn’t know what to make of her young charge, Brahms, in The Boy.

Whilst limited by both story and setting, the direction of William Brent Bell (Stay Alive) shows a dedication to crafting the story and a keen eye for detail. While there is nothing here to terrify, he still manages to convey an air of eeriness and churn out a couple of jolts of tension.

Fans of the horror genre will enjoy this trek into mystery. Others may find it a bit tedious, but either way, it’s a solid effort and worth a look.

Verdict: 7 / 10 – Terrific entry into 2016’s Horror-movie pantheon and whets the appetite for later-in-the-year entries such as ‘The Conjuring’ and ‘Rings’.

The Divergent Series: Allegiant -The Hunger Maze of futility

So, wow, this was boring. Even the plot holes couldn’t muster a chuckle. This was just a draining two hours.

The Divergent Series: Allegiant is the third in this series about the divergent Tris (Shailene Woodley) rising above the chaos of a dystopian future in Chicago. The long title probably acts as a reminder that there were actually two prior films in the series – Divergent (2014) and Insurgent (2015), just in case you missed them. Certainly they are both far stronger films than this hopelessly weak third entry. Oh, and if you haven’t seen the first two in this trilogy (soon to be a quadrilogy – OMG!) then just forget it. You will have very little chance of trying to make sense of the story.

Jeff Daniels plays David and Naomi Watts plays Evelyn. I only mention this because I like both Jeff Daniels and Naomi Watts and I can’t believe they agreed to appear in this dross.

Theo James returns as Four, the eye candy for the young teen girls this franchise is fairly obviously aimed at, Lenny Kravitz’s daughter Zoe returns as Christina,and Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller return as a boring Caleb and constantly flip-flopping / no continuity Peter respectively.

Even an attractive cast featuring Theo james, Ansel Egort and Shailene Woodley can’t save ‘The Divergent Series: Allegiant

Bill Skarsgard (television’s Hemlock Grove) is actually quite a welcome addition to the cast as the strangely cold Matthew, but is sadly under-used, and Maggie Q (Nikita) returns as Tori and almost makes it beyond bit-part before going the way of so many Red-shirts before her.

The plot is as weak as anything I’ve seen before, the characters as ridiculous and nonsensical as you could imagine, and the action sequences could not be less exciting. In fact, at one stage, during a chase sequence using flying ships, I actually kept thinking that the sequence was not dissimilar to a Loony Tunes cartoon (‘cept I really like Bugs Bunny. I didn’t like Allegiant).

Watch the first two and leave it at that. It’s actually a relatively satisfying conclusion. Don’t waste your time with this one.

Verdict: 3.5 / 10 – a serious letdown in a modest franchise. A waste of time, money and talent.

10 Cloverfield Lane: Nothing you’d expect, but everything you’d hope for.

Sitting in the theater before the start of the movie, my wife turned to me and said ‘Have you ever seen so many people come out for a film they know nothing about?’ And that is the truth of 10 Cloverfield Lane, a not-quite sequel to 2008’s Cloverfield.

In short, 10 Cloverfield Lane is both one of the easiest and one of the most difficult movies I’ll probably ever review. Easy in that there’s not much to really say – not without giving away too much, anyway, and difficult for the same reason. You see, to tell you ANYTHING about Cloverfield Lane would be to spoil a richly intense, no-holds-barred cinema experience.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and Emmett (John Gallagher Jr) enjoy a moment of calm in ’10 Cloverfield Lane’

I really loved the first Cloverfield film. In both genres of monster movies and found-footage style films, it stands as an excellent example of both. Cloverfield Lane lives in the same world as the first Cloverfield, but to call it a true sequel would be less than honest and certainly do it an injustice. This sits both as a brilliant stand-alone film as well as an expansion on the story told in the original movie.

10 Cloverfield Lane tells the story of three people trapped in an underground bunker after a major catastrophe has rendered the surface uninhabitable. We don’t know what that catastrophe was (though we all saw the first film, right, so we can kinda guess), and our three characters are also equally in the dark as to conditions on the surface.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead (The Thing, Scott Pilgrim vs The World) plays Michelle, a wanna-be fashion designer running away from a failed relationship. After a car accident, Michelle wakes up in the underground bunker that acts as the setting for most of the film. In the bunker, Howard (sensationally played by John Goodman) aprises her of what little he knows of the situation above. John Gallagher Jr (The Newsroom television series) plays Emmett, the cushion of sanity that sits between a bewildered Michelle and a rather disturbed Howard.

         Mary Elizabeth Winston determined to discover the conditions on the surface despite John Goodman’s objections.

John Goodman is terrifying as the unhinged Howard, and every scene in which he is involved brings with it an intense discomfort. The lack of a musical score and claustrophobic setting add to the discomfort we as viewers experience on behalf of the characters on screen. As good as Cloverfield stands as a monster movie, Cloverfield Lane equals it as a psychological thriller.

 

That’s all I will say. Watch it as a sequel, enjoy it as a stand-alone. 10 Cloverfield  Lane needs to be high on your ‘must-see’ list.

Verdict: 8 / 10 – this will leave you stunned and thrilled. Don’t miss it.

The Other Side Of The Door: No Franchise Kick-Starter, but a welcome relief

After viewing the terrible, recently released The Forest, I will admit to some trepidation as I passive-aggressively convinced my darling, ever-forgiving wife to spend movie night watching yet another horror flick, The Other Side Of The Door. Thankfully, this venture into the horror genre turned out far better than the last.

There is nothing overtly terrifying about The Other Side Of The Door. It is a grim, atmospheric movie relying far more on building tension than any obvious scare tactics. There is perhaps one jump scene. The rest is a slow build toward the final act, which to its credit manages to tie in a neat little twist in its tail that I didn’t see coming, and helps to wrap up the movie in a nice little bow.

The Mumbai setting for the film works well, allowing for the clichéd mysticism we’d expect from a movie about a mother (Sarah Wayne Callies) visitng an ancient temple in order to speak with her dead son. The Indian house-keeper, Piki, is well played by Suchitra Pillai (she was in 24: India. Did we even know India HAD a 24?) and gives just enough of a somber air to help fuel the tension build. Even the family dog, Winston, manages to fill a familiar role as the pet that senses the danger before his human compatriots well enough to not be as groan-worthy as one might think.

It seems Sarah Wayne Callies can’t get enough of the walking dead. ‘The Other Side Of The Door’ pits her against the supernatural as she fights to save her family from her dead son.

A special mention here to young actress Sofia Rosinsky in the role of Lucy, a far more complex role than might otherwise be given to a child actor. She pulls off both scared victim and chillingly sociopathic protagonist very well, and leaves Jeremy Sisto playing the father, Michael, as really the only weak link in an otherwise solid effort.

Michael (Jeremy Sisto) and Lucy (Sofia Rosinsky) in danger in ‘The Other Side Of The Door’.

The Other Side Of The Door is not going to make anybody’s Top Ten list (well, maybe Top Ten horror films released in March 2016), and we’ll be expecting far more from genre entries as 2016 roles on, but it won’t let you down, will give you some chills, and tells a fairly entertaining story.

Verdict: 6.5 / 10 – no blood and guts, but a nice venture back into the world of suspense and tension.

London Has Fallen: Suspension of Disbelief a little tougher second time around

Like most action films, Olympus Has Fallen (2013) required quite the willingness to suspend disbelief in order to be appropriately enjoyed. It’s opening foray – the take down of the White House, the capture of POTUS and annihilation of all bar one member of his secret service team, was awesomely portrayed and dealt blow after blow as the situation for the ‘good guys’ became seemingly more and more hopeless. From there it became a poor man’s Die Hard, though not too poor, as Gerard Butler (who plays super secret service agent Mike Banning) roamed the halls of the White House taking down evil Korean henchmen and saving the day (whoops, a spoiler!) using his formidable weapons and tactics training and unrivaled knowledge of the White House.

The sequel (boy, wrong time, wrong place), London Has Fallen, again sees Irish-heritaged Scottish-born Canadian-raised all-American action hero Butler once again attempting to protect President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) from the evils of terrorism, this time in the unlikely form of Middle-Eastern / Central Asian Muslim cliches (gasp!), lead by arms dealer Aamir Barkawi (Alon Aboutboul), who have taken over the streets of London in a manner that basically makes the London police and intelligence service look like something out of the cast of a Benny Hill special.

Gerard Butler returns as super Secret Service Agent Mike Banning in ‘London Has Fallen’

The writers attempt some brief explanation. This has been a carefully orchestrated plan years in the making, with an opportunity presented that gave the terrorists a good 48 hours to implement, to get their people into position (like, to infiltrate the Palace Guard at Buckingham Palace, you know those guys that require years and years of training and vetting, and don’t move when you tickle their noses with a feather), to get vast quantities of explosives not only into the city, but also into highly secure iconic buildings such as Westminster Abbey, and to have a few good men left over to patrol city rooftops armed with Stinger Missiles just in case Marine 1 ever gets off the ground.

To aid them, and to make the whole thing a tad more believable, they are aided by the traditional ‘mole’ within MI6, an intelligence agent so diabolically clever that he is uncovered due to the fact that he orchestrated the whole thing using his own access codes whilst standing in front of a security camera (and even then, it basically takes the entire might of London Police and MI6 the entire movie to figure out the mole’s identity).

So second time around, our ability to just switch off and enjoy the action as presented to us is just a little  more challenged. This alone makes London a significantly less enjoyable experience than its predecessor.

The initial attack on London is, obviously, quite predictable, but also just a little boring and unimaginative. And, really, all to easy. From here, Banning, Asher and Secret Service Director Lynne Jacobs (Angela Bassett) escape to Marine 1, and, seemingly, safety. It is from here that the movie actually begins to pick up. The chopper scene is quite thrilling, and once our heroes are back on the ground in London there is plenty to keep the audience entertained. If you can resist the urge to scream at Banning all the different ways you can think of that would be better to protect the President than his driving into a terrorist army camped outside the US Embassy (any other building in all of London would have been safer than the US Embassy at this time) then it becomes quite an enjoyable ride.

Gerard Butler (L) and Aaron Eckhart as President Asher (R) reprise their roles for ‘London has Fallen

Thankfully, toward the back-end of the film, Banning joins forces with a British Special Forces Team, which provides a rare glimpse into some actual intelligent film-making as the Special Forces team attack the terrorists base of operations in an extended sequence that is quite brilliantly crafted (the camera-work and editing here is actually so good this sequence almost feels like it belongs to a different movie), and the Special Forces ‘assist’ makes Banning’s saving of the day a little more palatable.

Morgan Freeman reprises his role as Vice President Trumball, adding his own touch of gravitas to an otherwise silly outing, and voicing his own commentary as the story moves forward – just in case we missed anything during the latest explosion.

Suspend disbelief and enjoy, or tear it apart the way a grizzly bear would a goldfish. This is not a bad action flick, but neither is it a good one. Awkwardly placed somewhere between mildly enjoyable and forgettable, London Has Fallen is what you do when you want a night at the movies but have seen Deadpool twice already.

Verdict: 6 / 10 – Chunky Butler actually looks less fit than the President he is protecting, and did anybody bother to check on the well-being of that chopper pilot?

The Forest: Don’t Step Off The Path

‘Don’t step off the path’ says a mysterious Japanese lady to Sara Price (Natalie Dormer).

Damn I wish we’d listened. We (myself and the wife) were having a lovely night out – dinner and a plan to go see Triple 9. Somewhere between cocktails and a tostada stack at TGI Fridays we decided instead to check out The Forest. It was a later showing. Less time pressure. We ‘stepped off’ our pre-determined path. And the terrible price to be paid – I had to spend the rest of the night listening to why we should know better than to go see stupid horror films (which sucks, because I really do like horror films).

So how was it? You know those ‘horror’ movies where nothing happens but the director still thinks he/she can come up with some cheap jump scares just to keep the audience engaged. Yeah, it was a bit like that, except it fell down so many times that by the time something scary might have happened (ie by the time they enter ‘the forest’) we’d kind of lost faith in the whole movie. There was the weird guy who jumps up to a window and says boo! A couple of dream sequences that were very workable for the trailer, and of course a dark corridor with a flickering light, at the end of which an eerie shape / figure that we can’t quite make out. Not to spoil it for you, but it was nothing – actually it’s a great opportunity for a bathroom break if you’re looking for one.

I wrote in another recent blog ‘Rings v The Conjuring 2’ that horror fans had been pretty well starved of quality outings lately, and that there was little to look forward to moving forward. If this is the standard that future horror film-makers are aiming for then the genre is pretty well dead, at least for a time.

The maddening thing is that this had potential. It’s a good story – the story of a woman searching for her twin sister in Japan’s Aokigahara Forest (the suicide forest) and dealing with the restless spirits that reside within. It’s not got the worst cast either. Natalie Dormer has done some stuff for Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games and was also Irene Adler in Elementary. Here she plays both Sara and Jess Price (the twin sisters). Taylor Kinney (playing Sara’s saviour / nemesis Aiden) has been busy on Chicago Fire and manages to straddle the ‘is he good or is he evil’ line pretty well.

Sara (Natalie Dormer) is terrorized by restless spirits whilst she searches for her sister in ‘The Forest’

I guess the problem here is that it’s just so lazily, and predictably, done. It tries to be a psychological kind of horror, but fails. It tries for some jump scares (let’s having rotting corpses following her around – please, we watch The Walking Dead every week), it attempts some eeriness (oh no! A Japanese schoolgirl with a cryptic message is wandering around the forest alone at night. Whatever shall we do?). Oh yeah, that reminds me. There’s also an abandoned cabin (my mind briefly wandered to the Japanese schoolgirls in Cabin In The Woods). There is nothing new here, and the characters and settings are just so clichéd that you could be watching any one of a number of other movies. It’s slick, glossy, with a  cool poster and a neat trailer. It’s a con job.

This is a film made by someone that thinks horror is easy. That scaring an audience is the same as engaging with an audience. That having some ‘cool’ effects will help cover over the absence of any common sense or meaningful character development.

This film was a major disappointment.

Help us James Wan Kenobi – you’re our only hope!

Verdict: 4 / 10 – the film looks good, but there’s absolutely nothing else to it.