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Gone Girl (2014)
Another classic Fincher movie
Gone Girl - Review (Spoilers)
Gone Girl is the latest directorial outing from David Fincher starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike in the leading roles, based on the Best Selling novel by Gillian Flynn who also penned the screenplay for the film.
Fincher, like all great directors there are a few things we can assume about any project he's attached to before seeing even a single shot. The tone, the look, the atmosphere of the film. Fincher is truly a master of the craft and Gone Girl is yet another great entry into his filmography.
Much like Fight Club and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before it, Gone Girl once again represents a perfect marriage of source material and Director. A common aspect that underpins all these movies is shared theme of social introspection, a study on the darker sides of the human psyche. Where Fight Club explored the futility a male machismo in modern society, Zodiac presented the dangers of our cultural obsession with the macabre, Gone Girl is very much a twisted view of contemporary relationships, the violent clash of male and female ego.
The plot of Gone Girl cannot be properly examined without going into spoilers which will be expressed from here on, you have been warned.
Gone Girl as is depicted in the trailers revolves around the disappearance of Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) and the following media circus that revolves around her husband Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck). Nick and Amy as displayed in various flashback have the perfect relationship. They are both intelligent, good looking, affable young people living in New York when they meet and we view their ongoing partnership in stages as it progresses via entries in Amy's diary.
They fall on hard times, Nick loses his job, Amy's parents have financial difficulties, Nicks mother gets cancer which leads to them moving back to Missouri, a point of contention for Amy. Nick is unwilling to work on their problems and Amy's attempts to fix their relationship are only attempts to fix Nick himself, she does not look inward for any hope of solving their ongoing issues.
One day Amy is gone and the resulting police investigation paints Nick in a very unfortunate light and we are lead to believe that he is the worst kind of man. He was having an affair with a younger woman, he paid little to no attention to his wife outside of sexual conquest, Nick got lazy and is punished by the media accordingly. Eventually it seems there can be no other explanation, Nick definitely killed his wife. Only he didn't.
Turns out Amy felt that as Nick was no longer pulling his weight in their relationship she would take matters into her own hands and frame her husband for her own murder and she took elaborate steps to ensure that Nick would be convicted. So we have an underachieving husband who does not appreciate his better half and a wife who takes extremely disproportionate action in response. You see where I'm going with this right?
Now although it would be fair to say that both parties are at fault here we do end up leaning toward Nick, unless you're the type of person who thinks being a bad husband should be a punishable offense with the possibility of the death penalty in which case you would be squarely on team Amy in this instance. Amy who as it turns out is blatantly a complete psychopath, played flawlessly by Rosamund Pike. Honestly I would put her performance right up there with fellow big screen psychopath Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins, Silence of the Lambs). Affleck also turns in a brilliant performance and carries the film on his absurdly broad shoulders (here's looking at you Bruce Wayne)
Believe it or not there are actually still a few twists and turns throughout the film but unlike most movie adaptations of book thrillers this is not a story built on twists it's built on characters and excellent work of Gillian Flynn shines through and goes to show the advantages of keeping the original writer on board for the film version. The story like all great books is built around a novel concept which places the characters into impossible situations and then seeing how those characters deal with them.
I loved this film, like all great Fincher movies it stays with you long after the end credits, not just a throwaway piece of entertainment but a truly thought provoking experience.
☆☆☆☆☆
RoboCop (2014)
Not just a bad reboot but a really bad movie in general
OK so I can see what they were trying to do with this movie and actually for the first half hour I was on board with it, I especially enjoyed the opening sequence in the middle east, introducing us to the new robots which looked great but after that the movie starts to fall apart real quick.
The satire in the movie is pretty unfocused and feels out of place most of the time, Samuel L Jackson does an OK job with what he's given to do although the look of his character is flipping ridiculous. And a lot of stuff in the flick just makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, for example Alex Murphy is supposed to be an undercover cop investigating illegal gun smuggling or some poop I have no idea, yet he chooses to have regular meetings with his police chief at the flipping police headquarters where everyone knows him and greets him by name! Hey Alex Murphy, if you're an undercover cop don't do this poop!! Meet a contact in a motel room or at a park bench you silly poop. I guess whoever wrote this flick just gave zero poops.
Another problem with the movie is the pacing. In one scene in particular I felt like I was legit losing my mind watching it. Murphy comes home to see his family after getting chewed out by the chief at work, this is the first time we see him having any interaction with his family which is vital for the rest of the movie, this is supposed to be where we see the emotional bond which will define our main character and it lasts for about 10 seconds. I'm not kidding here, you can see all of this pivotal scene in the trailer. Murphy says about 3 sentences to his wife, pretty much dismisses his own son and then proceeds to get real frisky with his wife, like out of nowhere. Now I'm not saying you need an excuse but in the scene it feels seriously weird, I'm like does she even know this dude, does he have the wrong house?! And it's not like the movie was moving along at a good old pace before this, they took a long time setting up a lot of pretty pointless exposition. This is real basic film making here that is just getting thrown right out the window.
Another central problem with the movie is the fact that it has like 5 bad guys, all of whom are not very clearly defined at all. So now you have no real reason to get behind RoboCop because he was pretty much a douche to begin with and no strong villain to motivate him either.
On the positive side the special effects and the design of the robots and the suit (silver suit anyway) is great. The action sequences are fine but not quite on par with a lot of other recent movies to be honest.
All in all this just feels like yet another review of yet another middling reboot. Uninspired, unnecessary and uneventful
Man of Steel (2013)
Ruined by TV spots
Too many TV spots, wayyy too many. After about the 7th TV spot I felt like I had pretty much seen the whole movie already and as it turns out, I had. All the best moments had been spoilt for me. But despite all that I really, really wanted to love this movie, when they first announced it would be Zack Snyder directing and Chris Nolan producing my head practically exploded with excitement. The dream team I thought to myself, Snyder's eye for epic, super powered action sequences and Nolan's dramatic, grounded story telling. How could this possibly fail? Well not that it failed exactly, but I certainly wasn't totally blown away in the fashion that I was sure I would be. Obviously my impression is massively tainted by the sky high level of anticipation I had for this film, but to be fair I was in the same state of mind when I saw The Dark Knight in the cinema and I walked away from that experience having had my high expectations absolutely blown through the roof, with Man of Steel however I left feeling just slightly meh
Now having said all that I will say that this is easily the best Superman movie to date, it totally blows the rest of them out of the water. The action scenes, as we've all seen from the trailers, are the truest depiction of Superman's true power and the other great strength of the movie is the relationship between Clark and Lois, which is absolutely nailed this time. But other than that I found it pretty hard to care about a lot of the other characters. I wasn't overly impressed with Zod as I thought I would be, a lot of the obvious dramatic moments fell flat for me and a lot of the movie really felt by the numbers and predictable.
They actually gave most of the best sequences to Faora and she displayed most of the best moments of Kryptonian abilities, shockingly I found myself more interested in watching her than I was in Superman. I was sure this was to set up Supes in the last act to start truly kicking some ass but no, the flip never happened. Obviously Superman wins but not in any spectacular fashion, he just sort of wins
.
In the final showdown Zod asks the appropriate question, if he was born and trained to be a warrior and on Earth he has all the same powers as Kal-El than what chance does he; a farm boy realistically have? And there is no answer for this question proposed. There real question then becomes why did they have that line in there when it's only purpose is to make the audience say to themselves, Yeah Zod really should have won.
That's just one of the little things that really irked me, and the point is if I'm taking the time to actually pick that apart and get annoyed by it then the movie's not doing something right. Man of Steel is movie with serious ups and downs and unfortunately did not live up to the hype that surrounded it and having now had some time to analyse it I really don't know if there's anything DC can do to bridge the ever expanding gap between themselves and Marvel. And unfortunately for all the fans out there dreaming of a Justice League movie to knock Avengers off the top spot, this really doesn't bode well for it. To be fair if Man of Steel had dropped before any of the Marvel stuff had been set in motion I probably would have looked far more favourably upon it, but it didn't. And the landscape for comic book movies has changed so much in the last few years it feels like DC will forever be lagging behind which is really unfortunate.
I don't want to end on such a down note, so I will say that there is the definite possibility for a successful Man of Steel sequel but I think there has to be a major change up, lose Zack Snyder.
World War Z (2013)
Not the book but still a great movie
When I first heard that WWZ was to get the big screen adaptation I as many people I assume felt a mixture of feelings, excitement and skepticism. Excitement because there are several cinematic moments in the film, The Battle of Yonkers for example and skepticism because the narrative layout of the film is extremely un-cinematic and does not lend itself to the traditional 3 Act structure of Hollywood movies. As the movie fell into such difficulties during shooting my skepticism only grew but then the first audience reactions hit on twitter and hope was restored. Yesterday we went ourselves and saw the movie in 3D, going in my expectations weren't through the roof they were somewhere in the middle. I knew from reading a few reactions not to expect the book and just to embrace the movie for what it is which I did and I actually really enjoyed it.
World War Z is worlds away from the book, which I think was inevitable but that doesn't stop it from being an excellent, fast paced, thrilling zombie movie. Brad Pitt nails it, predictably, in the lead role as Gerry Lane the retired U.N warzone investigator who is sent on a mission to find patient zero in an attempt to find a vaccine to the devastating zombie outbreak. To say there is nothing shared between the book and the movie but the title, as people on the internet have done, is actually unfair. There are glimmers here and there but it's fair to say that it's a very loose adaptation. The main similarity between the two is that they both use the zombie outbreak to examine the socio-political landscape on a global level: The North Korean 'solution', The Israeli Wall. Tied altogether with incredible big budget action sequences and special effects, there's a lot to enjoy in this movie.
If there is a complaint to be made it would be in the movies third act, which actually goes against the grain in terms of big budget Hollywood action movies. Instead of turning up the speakers to 11 and blasting the audience into submission with a balls out finale, WWZ dials it back and goes for a slower yet still nerve wracking sequence.
All in all I thoroughly enjoyed World War Z and would highly recommend it. Can't wait to watch it again on blu-ray and the inevitable sequel J
Oh and I was actually in Glasgow when they're were shooting the opening outbreak sequence, so yeah :P
Iron Man Three (2013)
Not perfect but risky and enjoyable throughout
Ever since the release of the first installment back in 2008 I've been a big fan of the series, I caught the first flick on the big screen 3 times and it's sequel twice, so my anticipation was high. I'd intentionally avoided most of the trailer, TV spots and early reviews as I tend to find too much exposure to pre-release hype diminishes the actual viewing experience, but I had a general idea of the direction. I'm also a big fan of director Shane Black and specifically Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, an action/comedy/buddy flick, set at Christmas featuring Robert Downey Jr, so I also had a general idea of what to expect in terms of artistic tone and I was not disappointed with what I saw.
Easily the best Iron Man movie so far, the movie finds itself in an unusual position, not only is it the direct sequel to Iron Man 2 it also follows the events of The Avengers which plays a big role in the character development of Tony, who finds himself suffering from severe panic attacks which is understandable for a guy who just flew a nuclear weapon in a giant worm hole in the sky above New York opened by an army of evil intergalactic space aliens. So how do you create an appropriate threat for the man of Iron now that he's fought Avengers level threats? The answer is to cripple Tony's confidence, take him back to basics, essentially fighting himself back out of the proverbial cave with a bunch of scraps.
What Shane Black has achieved is the funniest Iron Man movie that also features stunning action sequences, something that was somewhat lacking in the previous installments. As always the dialogue is witty and expertly delivered by Downey, but what really had me laughing out loud was a particularly inventive sequence featuring a not quite complete Iron Man suit.
The big third act finally has been pretty much spoiled by every single trailer they put out but it still manages to deliver in terms of sheer 'ZOMG' awesomeness.
I loved the relationship between Tony and the little boy and was genuinely touched by the heart warming ending. I've seen a few reactions by people wondering how Tony will feature in future installments specifically Avengers 2 now that he has removed his chest piece and destroyed all his suits, I would point out that it the chest piece isn't required to use an Iron Man suit, War Machine uses one, Iron Monger used one in IM1, Whiplash used a suit in IM2, Pepper Potts uses the suit briefly, so Tony will still be able to use an Iron Man suit when required. As to the destruction of his entire arsenal, He's Tony Stark, come on, of course he's gonna make more suits. He even says right at the end of the film, I am Iron Man. And essentially I always will be no matter what happens to me. And in case you had any doubt at all, the movie even spells it out for you in the end credits, Tony Stark will return. Speaking of end credits the stinger, the amount of people who stayed glued to their seats in anticipation of the now famous Marvel stingers was really a testament to their appeal. I really enjoyed this one, the relationship between Tony and Bruce was something I really enjoyed in The Avengers and I'm really glad they've decided to build upon that.
Now just as few things I do have an issue with, The Ten Rings? As revealed in this movie The Madarin was nothing more than a tool used to manipulate the public, created by Aldrich Killan, that in itself I have no problem but it does raise one important question, what was going on in the first movie when the Ten Rings kidnapped Tony? Are we to now believe that Aldrich Killian was behind it all along? Or has Shane Black just created a pretty sizeable plot hole in the entire Iron Man series?
That being said I really dug the movie and I'm super excited for the future of the Marvel cinematic Universe.
The Thing (2011)
Why did this movie suck so much?
What a surprise someone complaining about a recent Hollywood prequel of a beloved franchise on the internet how original right? Listen I get it, I hate having to be that guy. I wish that I could be writing how much I loved this movie and how amazing it is, hell I would love to have found at least one thing positive to hold on to but that unfortunately would just be a lie.
I was massively optimistic going in and very skeptical of all the negative reviews that had been popping up prior to my viewing of the movie. They don't know what they're talking about, I told myself, they just love to hate on things because that's the 'cool' thing to do these days. After all how could they possibly mess this up? It's such a perfect concept and what's more, it's pretty simple. As the classic Spielberg quote goes any great film plot can be summed up in one sentence: Alien creature could be anyone (in snow). Not an overly convoluted structure but one that worked so well in John Carpenter's 1982 version, so well that it remains one of my favorite movies of all time.
I'm not complaining about how the prequel pooped all over the original, I'm just disappointed and somewhat baffled by just how they could have made such an awful failure of a movie with such a rich concept to work with? ? Surely there would be at least one good thing about this movie, right? RIGHT?? Even if this was just a standalone movie it would still suck, it just doesn't work. It's not scary, it's not suspenseful, it's not tense, it's not dark, it's not exciting, it's not really anything. Coming away from this movie the best way I could describe it was just hollow.
There's just nothing to it, it's an empty husk. It feels like exactly what it is a big pay check for everyone involved with no creative drive behind it whatsoever. I find it hard to believe that anyone involved with this movie cared at all about the original they didn't even care about just making a decent movie!! And if they did it certainly does not show one single bit. You can almost feel the apathy soaking through every aspect of the movie. From the blank expression on Mary Elizabeth Winstead's face to the pointlessness of every scene to the almost laughable lumbering joke a CGI monster.
I don't know if there was a definitive moment during the film in which my heart began to sink but when the Thing started chasing people down corridors it was the beginning of the end. The Thing does not chase people around. What should have been an intense psychological expression of human paranoia is now just a lazy, stupid creature feature and a bad one at that. It's Hollywood telling us in no uncertain terms, You are so stupid the only way you'll understand this is if we have a big stupid looking creature who's all 'Blarg I'm a scary monster coming to get you!!' lumbering awkwardly down a corridor and then have a pretty young girl running the opposite direction who's all like 'Eeeek help me'. And let me tell you nothing feels better in this world than being treated like a moron, right? You guys all love that feeling don't you, because there' s no way you would ever understand anything even slightly subtle, you're far too stupid for anything like that. Well thanks a lot Hollywood you condescending asshole.
So it's a prequel, so you're already going in with a different perspective. You have your internal check list, the block of ice, the Axe in the wall etc. etc. And the filmmakers obviously knew this would be our mind-set as an audience, and then apparently went out of their way to antagonize us. Now I'm acting like a fan boy right? Hear me out, you've seen the original movie two Norwegian dudes chasing the creature in husky who quickly meet untimely ends at the American camp, and now we have a prequel. Finally a chance to explore these characters, find out what drove them to this end, who are they as people what horrors have they witnessed in the frozen wasteland. An amazing set up for a movie, so how does the prequel answer these questions? Well as it turns out, poorly is how. In an absolutely stunningly questionable decision they get all of 10 seconds in the end credits!! What were they thinking?? One of the guys isn't even in the movie until this point and isn't referenced to once!! He just shows up in the helicopter out of nowhere, he doesn't know what the Thing is, he's never witnessed the creature transform, he has no idea other than what Lars shouts at him in 5 seconds before they just jump into the helicopter and leave and THAT'S IT. They may as well have inserted another clip in the credits, just the smug face of Hollywood exec grinning as if to say, Yeah audience those are the guys from the original movie, I bet you love that don't you, you stupid audience. Well no Hollywood I didn't love it, it sucked.
They took a concept that could have been brilliant and just pooped all over it? Why? This is what I'm left asking, the film is just a series of god awful choices. It would have taken just one person who looked at the last page of that script to speak up and say 'Hey you guys all know this sucks right? Why are we making a prequel that shows such disdain for these characters?' This is why I stand by my previous statement that they are deliberately trying to antagonize us.
The Thing isn't just bad, it's belittling, it's insulting and it's baffling and I hate it.
Paul (2011)
Zombies, Cops and Aliens
Take your typical male movie fan, ask them to make a list of their favourite genres and it might read a lot like this: Zombies, Buddy cop and Sci-Fi. Strikingly similar to the current track record of the ultimate fanboy duo Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Exploding onto the big screen with Shaun of the Dead, an idea that was sparked during filming of the now legendary short lived TV series Spaced. Shaun made the duo household names and attracted attention from big time film makers notably Tarantino himself. However their next outing Hot Fuzz remained a wholly British affair, but now Pegg and Frost are going to the states with their latest film Paul. This is the first time that Pegg and Frost have written the script together however it is important to note that this is NOT the third instalment of the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy. Edgar Wright is not involved, directing duties have been handled by Superbad and Adventureland director Greg Mottola.
Just as Shaun was a love letter to Romero and Hot Fuzz openly praised popcorn cop flicks Paul makes no bones about its influences, references are littered throughout the script, a few of which only die-hard Spielberg fans will pick up on. Paul also features an all star Hollywood cast, including Jason Bateman as the ice cool man in black pursuing the lovable nerds as they hightail it across the states with a certain illegal alien. The eponymous character Paul is voiced by Seth Rogen, having a completely CGI character as your lead is a risky move but Paul totally works. It comes off perfectly, the special effects team knocked it out of the park and it's easy to forget that what you're looking at is just a bunch of pixels but the mix of brilliant animation and Rogen's hilarious performance really make a connection. Often Rogen is type cast as the stereotypical, laid back, wise cracking stoner and this is no different only now he's an alien.
The genre references and homage are a trademark of the Pegg and Frost films and they're once again present throughout Paul. They don't overdo it so as to alienate the more casual viewers but the work so well for the die-hard fans, like an in-side joke among friends the clever and subtle moments create a sensation not commonly found in other films. For a moment it presents a very clear connection with the audience, you sit there in your seat in the cinema and think 'They like that movie, I like that movie too!!' The cast now more 'Hollywood' than the previous films definitely add to the appeal however the driving force is definitely Paul, he steals the show and has lasting appeal .So much so that at the end of the movie all I could think was 'I pray to god they make a sequel to this'. Shaun and Fuzz whilst both brilliant in their own right, never captured me in the same way. I didn't want it to end.