Cinema Review - Warrior

Director - Gavin O'Connor

Starring - Joel Edgerton, Tom Hardy, Nick Nolte

To make a sporting movie that would hold up without the sports might seem an unlikely feat, but O’Connor has managed just this. The writing and the solid performances deliver a tale of a struggling blue collar family. Wonderfully crafted so it is intrinsically relatable we have two brothers, the older a science teacher, Edgerton, who is threatened with losing his home. The younger brother, Hardy, returns home from Iraq, angry and full of emotions barely contained. O’Connor sets them at odds with their recovering alcoholic father who had torn the family apart.

The brothers take their own journey towards the ultimate goal of a winner takes all Mixed Martial Arts contest. In Edgerton you have the controlled, resilient underdog. In Hardy there is the raw emotional and brutality of the dark horse. O’Connor amazingly makes you route for both brother’s equally so by the finale you are genuinely invested in the outcome. O’Connor uses the support cast to give Edgerton’s story arc backbone, while using snippets of information to divulge insight into Hardy’s past as a soldier and his reasons for fighting. But it is to the credit of the actors that fully realised and three dimensional characters are delivered. With few words Hardy conveys everything you need to fill in the blanks of this tormented man, his war trauma, his guilt. For both leads the characters personalities come through in the styles of fighting and the unison works wonders. The men appear to fight their personal demons in the cage, adding a greater depth to their drive to fight on and overcome. Nolte too gives a solid and memorable performance as the father seeking forgiveness. O’Connor’s use of an audio-book of Moby Dick gives resonance to a much darker past that haunts Nolte and drives his history of violence and alcoholism.

The fighting is visceral and believable. The action is caught in motion, feeling like you are at once in with the fighters, watching from the crowd and seeing the crowd’s reactions. Cutaways on moments of impact to show the stunned expression prove equally hard hitting.  

O’Connor controls what could be cliché or over sentimentalised to deliver a solid film where the audience is invested in the outcome. Most refreshing of all it that for a sport movie it is not about the winning, but is more concerned with the deeper theme of family reconciliation.

Rating: 9/10

 Official Trailer: 

Cinema Review - Friends with Benefits

Director - Will Gluck

Starring - Justin Timberlake, Mila Kunis

The romcom genre is by nature a formulaic affair. Girl meets boy, chemistry, do they don’t they, yes they do. Friends with Benefits tries to play on the formula in a self aware style. The film and its characters both know the disappointments of chasing the fairytale of true love. The couple initiate a friendship that the co-stars Timberlake and Kunis do with humour and a good turn of chemistry. To avoid the hardships of chasing love the story has them turn against love, thus creating the premise of the anti-romcom. This is of course a red herring. The couple fall in love despite themselves and it is an enjoyable journey to follow them. 

The story exposes the characters flaws that inherently cause one person to connect deeper to another. The emotion that the couple attempt to remove from the relationship in favour of just sex, wins the day. Where the film does well is turning the conventions just a notch to show something reasonably fresh in a very clichéd genre. The film even mockingly plays on these clichés through a film within a film which Kunis as the diehard romcom fan finds herself aspiring to in her own lovelife.

Friends with Benefits paints an amusing yarn of finding love where the characters actively chose to deny it. Gluck keeps it raunchy (see poster for example of possibly most suggestive gesture to find itself on a London bus), self aware and when needed shows the baggage the characters carry without it being over sentimental. The message seems to be that love, if you can find it with the right person, is the ultimate friends with benefits. 

Rated: 8/10

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Cinema Review - Apollo 18

Director - Gonzalo López-Gallego
Starring - Warren Christie, Lloyd Owen, Ryan Robbins

Framed as leaked “found footage” from the era of space exploration in the 1970s, Apollo 18 is an attempt to out conspiracy the already rife conspiracy theories concerning the lunar landings. The trouble with framing something as being documentary style footage is you have to get the science right and be free from any loopholes that might break the audience out of the illusion. Apollo 18 falls short on this count. López-Gallego manages to recreate to a certain extent the lunar missions. Portrayed through the various cameras feeding live footage back to Earth we have a Big Brother style look into the doomed from the start space mission. The two man crew of the lunar lander also film themselves on 16mm cameras. Herein lies some of the flaws in the director’s logic. We need to get into the character’s perspective to relate. This is solely done through these 16mm cameras. They film themselves on the moon’s surface as well as personal records in the module. The rest is all caught on remote cameras, the audience being allowed to see the threat before the crew do, privy to the danger the Department of Defence has exposed them to. The live footage makes sense to have been documented; however the 16mm film rolls do not make it out, they share the crews dire fate. How then are we seeing the actions of the crew amidst this found footage? It makes no sense pulling any reasonably astute watcher beyond the line of suspension of disbelief.

It seems clear López-Gallego wants us to care about the cast. We need to care for the consipiracy theory to resonate. The story very directly harks into the era of Watergate where the powers that be cannot be trusted. But his illusion of found footage does not stand up at all well. Does the story really fail on this account? No. It’s actually fairly entertaining as it goes. The tension builds; the threat is revealed and played out. However the conspiracy theme and the documentary framing lend the film no real benefit and do not pay off. While there is reems of data on the films website to build the conspiracy it is not present enough on screen to sideline the notion we are victim to a none to subtle slight of hand.

What the film did do with the early footage was remind me why, as a child, I was so fascinated with space. It shows with sufficient realism what the actual Apollo astronauts did and how we as a planet reached for the stars. This is not history as it tries to suggest, but it is a reminder, to me at least, of how sad it is that we no longer pursue such epic destinations as the moon or beyond.

Rated: 6/10

Official Trailer:

Video Games Review - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Deus Ex: HR is a stylish, sophisticated and intelligent game that encourages the player to refrain from the linear style of gameplay that typically dictates on rails mentality of most current FPS. Here the player can opt to charge in guns blazing or sneak around  while discovering alternative ways in. You can be lethal or not, hack or not. There is no right or wrong way to go about it and no punishment for choosing your way. In this sense Deus Ex: HR embraces its RPG roots. You are in control, the story unravelling around you.

XP is rewarded for being curious, success at hacking and of course taking out the enemy. XP buys you Augs that grant some very useful, some very cosmetic improvements to your arsenal. These include punching through walls to being able to fall without harm. Other improvements allow better analytical skills during social engagements. You cannot unlock all the Augs so choices become crucial as you advance. Unlock hacking early for example, and you can open every door, read the emails of every computer and delve into the the rich backstory. Alternatively you can augment your exploratory skills with strong arms to move heavy objects, or jumping to get over other obstacles. If that's not enough, smash through a wall to get to where you want to go.

Exploration is a joy as is the hacking mini game. Sneaking is rewarding and systematically taking down all the mobs in a room takes time, observation and a lot of reloads in order to get the ghost and silent operative XP rewards. The only real flaw is the boss battles. They feel tideous and removes you from the excelently realised near future sci-fi world that has been created and remains you with a thud you are playing a video game.

For fans of the original, this will be a most rewarding experience. This is a game that is lived as much as it is played. Wonderful story telling, great characters and a joy to play.

Rating: 10/10

Cinema Review - Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Director: Marcus Nispel

Starring: Jason Momoa, Ron Perlman, Rose McGowan

Conan the Barbarian is born in war, a product of blood and steel. Thus the film should be a visceral, violent portrayal of a warrior set against the fantasy backdrop of Robert E. Howard’s Hyboria. What emerges on screen is a set of one dimensional characters placed in a world that feels half heatedly brought to life.

The film has been accused of being like viewing a video game. I would disagree. The nature of video games, particularly those of the fantasy and RPG genres, is immersion. There is no immersion here. We flit from place to place in a lame attempt to show the vastness of the world through a mediocre CGI backdrop of a castle or slave camp or pirate city. None are ever fully realised before Conan jaunts off somewhere else. The violence itself is the most disappointing. Nispel manages to create fight scenes that lack the kinetic quality of a dance. The camera is misplaced, the editing focusing on the wrong points. You never feel the hits, the power of the blows or Conan’s qualities as a warrior. It feels clumsy.

 There are more grunts and warcrys than lines of dialogue and those spoken feel like the actors are running them in rehearsal for the first time. There is no commitment to the lines so again the audience fails to immerse in their characters. McGowen in contrast overly plays the sorcerer.

Given this is a reboot, the film does not feel fresh, but instead feels dated. It’s almost as though Nispel wanted it to feel like the 1982 version, but taking only the worst qualities and none of the charm.  Conan reinforces the assertion of refraining from producing reboots where there is nothing original the writers or director bring to the table. Conan is a stale rehash that will offer no reward to its audience. 

Rating 4/10

Official Trailer

Cinema Review - Cowboys & Aliens

Director – John Favreau

Starring – Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde

Cowboys & Aliens is a mash-up of two B-Movie staples that takes the clichés of both and brings little of the fun the title might promise. The film reeks of being a cool idea a producer thought should make it onto the big screen. In fact this is just the case as the comic book creator put the comic together as a comic/film tie in. The sad truth though is that the film never really gets beyond the gimmick of the title. The aliens are so vague as characters, the film could be Cowboys & Vampires with little changed in the plot.

 The stellar cast of lead actors do their best with the roles, and Craig and Ford seem perfectly cast as the man without a name (well forget his name) and the rough ex-soldier turned rough rancher. Wilde seems destined to be the leading lady in many a film to come.  Also standing out is Adam Beach as Ford’s loyal native. There a moments where these actors do get a chance to develop their characters and Favreau plays his part here too. However these moments are few and far between and mark the moments of pause and consideration before the nonsensical alien gold looting, kidnapping and experimenting plotline takes hold.

Cowboys & Aliens should not work, yet Favreau in his blockbuster manner makes it appear as though is its fused seamlessly. The two genres do co-exist and to some degree the audience buy it. But never do you care, not for the characters, not for the outcome, especially not about the bug-eyed aliens who stand to threaten the unlikely posse of outlaws, cowboys and apaches to stand against them.

Rating 6/10

Official Trailer:

 

Cinema Review - Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Director – Rupert Wyatt
Starring – James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto

In a cinematic era dominated by reboots and mindless blockbuster franchises, Rise of the Planet of the Apes does indeed rise above the rest. This is in whole due to the startling performance by Serkis. The man behind Gollum and Jackson’s King Kong has created through motion capture and facial recognition technology an ape character that is nothing short of miraculous. Serkis gives us Caeser, who is every bit the primate but Serkis offers such subtle nuances and gestures that the character outperforms his human counterparts. This is truly deserving of an Oscar, should the Academy finally get its head around this hybrid style of acting. The technology is now so good you can allow yourself to forget you are watching a CGI character, but it is down to Serkis why you believe that character has life and sentience. You will want to rise up and follow him too. 

The story is told with equal subtlety. While it contains all number of clichés that will swell your heart and stir your compassion, newcomer Wyatt directs with a purpose. There is a sense that there has been great thought about how man can fall and apes rise in their place. The audience is left to fill in the story without having the plot points force fed. By the climatic end it is enough that there is escape for the audience to know the human oppressor has given way to the nobler and indeed humane race.

Rating - 9/10 

Offical Trailer:

Change of Face

As the writer of this blog I have chosen to specify my reviews to the genres that I most engage and connect with. Sci-Fi and Fantasy have been my escapism, my mentor and offered me many a companion along the way. So from hence forth this blog will be centred around reviewing all novels, films and games that delve into the world of science fiction and fantasy into the realm of the beyond.