Friday 30 June 2017

Epic (2013)



Arthur and the Invisible films posited the existence of a civilisation of insect-sized humanoids, which is threatened by a wicked warlord and his oafish son.  Epic posits the existence of a civilisation of insect-sized humanoids, which is threatened by a wicked warlord and his oafish son.

Is there an echo in the room?  Well, there might well be.  Both films even share the casting choice of putting a pop diva in as the voice of tiny-humanoid royalty (Madonna as a princess in Arthur, Beyonce as a queen in Epic).

On the other hand, Epic is much the better movie, and not just because it avoids the somewhat skeevy "adult princess and 12 year old human boy" romance of the earlier film.  There is a romance subplot, but the characters involved are age appropriate, so yay for that.

The plot here is basically that Mary Katherine (or "MK" as she prefers to be known) is a teenage girl who goes to live with her kooky father after her mother passes away.  Said father is obsessed with the little people he believes live in the forest, and his obsession has cost him his wife, his job, and the respect of his daughter.

Of course, kooky guy is pretty much always right in movies like this, so there are indeed little people in the woods, and they are - as mentioned - threatened by an evil warlord.  MK stumbles into this conflict, and must help the "Leafmen" (and a couple of comic relief gastropods) protect their realm from evil.

This is a pretty fun film overall.  It's light stuff, but it has some fun action scenes and the meant to be funny moments generally hit the mark.  You could certainly do far worse if you're looking for kid-friendly entertainment to fill 90 minutes or so.

Tuesday 27 June 2017

Starhyke (2009)



In the 31st century, humanity has spread to the stars, waging a series of genocidal wars that have left dozens of alien races extinct.  Our latest victims/adversaries are the Reptids, who hatch a desperate, time-travel based plan to prevent their own annihilation.

Huamnity's star wars success, you see, is largely attributable to the fact that we've eliminated all emotions.  This has allowed us to wage century after century of implacable, merciless war.  Now I'm not sure I buy the idea that "let's commit genocide" is a rational, non-emotive thing to do, but let's assume for the sake of the show's premise that it is.  The Reptids plan to travel back in time to the 21st century and detonate a compassion bomb, preventing humanity from ever extinguishing its own emotions.

Frankly, a compassion bomb sounds like something the world could do with, right now, and it pretty clearly establishes the Reptids as the good guys in all this.  They could after all, have just gone back to the 21st century and blown us up.

The only thing that can thwart the Reptids plan is the dreadnaught Nemesis, which is fitted with an experimental timeslip device.  The dreadnaught and its crew thus make the jump back to our time - but as they do, they're hit with a smaller version of the compassion device.

And you know, there's a solid concept here: with good writing you could get considerable mileage - either dramatic or comedic - out of the Nemesis crew's efforts to pursue their mission while suffering unfamiliar emotions themselves.

Alas, the Starhyke writers are the kind who think that flatulence is the pinnacle of comedy.  So what we get here is characters with names like "Captain Blowhard", hoary old canards like "emotional women binge on chocolate!" and "the only emotion men feel is lust", and fart jokes.  So many fart jokes.

If you feel a need for SF comedy, just go re-watch the better parts of Red Dwarf again, instead.

Friday 23 June 2017

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)



If ever there was a movie that suffered from middle chapter-itis, this is it ... even though, since they made four films in the Hunger Games series, it's not strictly speaking the middle.  At least until the end of the picture.

Anyway, Catching Fire exists pretty much solely to set up Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2, and it more or less just retreads the plot of the original Hunger Games to do it.  The evil, corrupt oppressive Capitol is evil, corrupt and oppressive, and Katniss Everdeen has to go into a manufactured death match with 23 other people because of evil, corrupt and oppressive reasons.

Now, I knew that restraint wasn't going to be a feature of the Hunger Games series when the first book had all the dead competitors return as science fiction werewolves to make another stab at killing Katniss, but seriously, I'm pretty sure the only reason none of the bad guys in this movie have moustaches is because they twirled them so hard they fell off.

Okay yes, I guess Donald Sutherland technically has a moustache since he has a beard, but it's my review and I'll hyperbole how I want to.

In any case, there are colossally silly and arbitrary evil guy plans and even sillier good guy plans, and a lot of stylish action sequences, and Jennifer Lawrence frankly giving the material a lot more gravitas than it deserves with a strong performance.  We also get introduced to a bunch of new characters who I assume will continue to feature in the remaining two films.  I for one look forward to seeing more from the crazy lady with the axe.

But outside expanding the cast?  The entire 140-minute run time of this film could be pretty much encapsulated in the "Every Revolution" tagline on the DVD cover above.

Tuesday 20 June 2017

The Omega Factor (1979)



I read someone else's review of this series where they described it as "The X-Files, if it was made in 1970s Britain".  It's not a bad summation ... though not in my mind as positive a thing as that reviewer intended it to be.

Conspiracy TV - that is, shows which feature a shadowy, Illuminati-esque organisation as a largely unseen adversary - often face a fairly critical problem.  The need to keep the antagonist central to most episodes, without every allowing them to be materially defeated, often causes them to become so pervasive and powerful that the audience is left wondering how it is that they haven't already won.  When you combine this tendency with the fact that the bad guys here have access to mind control ... well, it's safe to say that The Omega Factor has this problem in spades.

Journalist Tom Crane specialises in articles regarding psychic phenomena and other wacky theories of the 1970s.  In the course of his latest round of research, he discovers that he himself has powerful, untapped psychic abilities.  This brings him to the attention of Department 7, a secret branch of the UK government that researches such matters.  And also to the attention of Edward Drexel, a malevolent psychic who - despite his power - Crane soon comes to believe is merely the pawn of a larger, sinister organisation known as "Omega".

So one catastrophic flaw that The Omega Factor suffers is the fact that Tom Crane is a terrible person.  He's hugely unlikable on any number of fronts.  His arrogant pigheadedness gets his wife killed in the first episode, and then by the third episode - barely weeks alter - he's actively pursuing a relationship with his dead spouse's best friend.  When the two of them do hook up (unlike Mulder and Scully, the sexual tension is not left to simmer), he treats her very poorly, both personally and (since they work together in Department 7) professionally.  The fact that in the context of the show, he always turns out to be right, does nothing to make him less irritating.  Quite the reverse, in fact.

Couple the jerk protagonist with the show's lack of closure - it was cancelled after one season - and tI can't see any good reason to spend time and money tracking this one down.

Friday 16 June 2017

Pride and Prejudice (2003)



The most iconic screen version of Jane Austen's novel is probably the excellent 1995 mini-series, though my personal favourite remains 2012's Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  Which you can watch here.  Seriously, it's almost certainly a better use of your time than anything else you have planned.

Made roughly at the midpoint between those two adaptations is this third version of the tale: a low budget independent production.  Here, Elizabeth Bennet is a college student and aspiring novelist, studying at an unnamed campus in Utah in the modern day, while her sisters are re-cast as her friends and roommates.  Her three potential suitors - the charming but feckless Wickham, overbearing and pompous Collins, and socially awkward Darcy - then revolve in and out of her life in more or less the patterns you might expect, if you're familiar with the basic structure of the novel, though as with any adaptation that changes its setting, some changes from the original are inevitable.

The changes made in this version are a mixed bag.  On the plus side, I think they've done quite a good job with the central Elizabeth/Darcy storyline: there's a nicely realised moment where you can see Darcy reassess Elizabeth after his unfavourable first opinion, for instance.  On the negative side ... first of all, the film tends heavily toward farce-based humour and it's fairly hit and miss in how well it comes off.  Secondly, some of the other character beats misfire.  The Wickham/Elizabeth flirtation never seems to be something she's all that interested in, for instance, and Charlotte Lucas's role is reduced to a single two minute scene that doesn't lead into anything or pay off on anything from before.  Frankly, she could - and probably should - have been completely excised.

At the end of the day, this is a harmless enough hour and a half, but there are some really great screen adaptations of this book, so why would you spend time with an inferior alternative?

Tuesday 13 June 2017

Supernatural, Season 5 (2009)



When Eric Kripke created Supernatural, he conceived of it as a discrete five year arc, culminating in the Winchester brothers taking on Lucifer himself.  I guess he figured once you've had your protagonists throw down with Satan, there's not much left for them to do.

Given that the show is now in its twelfth season, I guess he was wrong, but this season is still configured in such a way that - if you ignore the final few seconds, at least - the story can be considered "over".  Certainly Kripke himself was done with the show, moving on to new projects after this season and leaving the Winchesters in the hands of other show runners.

I also plan to leave Supernatural here, at least for the time being.  I've enjoyed the show, but there are a lot of other films and programs that I'd like to check out before committing to another seven (or eight or ten or however many there are in the end) seasons of Sam and Dean brooding at each other while battling ever more extreme mythological threats.

So as a conclusion to the show, how does season five work?  Well ... unevenly, frankly.  The pacing is rather wonky, with far too much stuff jammed into the final five episodes, including a couple of plot twists that frankly don't bear too much thinking about.  Jettisoning two or three of the weaker standalone episodes in the show would have helped a lot on the pacing.  A little more writerly self control would have helped with the latter.

Despite my feeling that some elements of the season were fumbled, though, there are definitely plenty of good moments here, so the show's worth checking out if you're into supernatural shenanigans, brooding bad boys, or both.



Friday 9 June 2017

Jules Verne's Mysterious Island (2012)



2012 saw the release of Journey 2: Mysterious Island on the big screen.  It was a pretty average film, frankly, but it was a big enough release that it was inevitable someone would trot out a cheapie adaptation of Jules Verne's novel in the hope of riding its coattails.

I actually came to the film via a different route, however: I'd recently purchased the 1961 and 2005 versions of the story and was actively searching for other interpretations.  When I discovered this one, with a leading role for Gina Holden, I had to pick it up.  Ms Holden makes a habit of turning up in TV shows that almost no-one but me likes (Blood Ties, Flash Gordon) and I thought I'd see if that translated to film.

It doesn't, for the record.  Ms Holden was also in Sand Sharks in 2012, and I would not be willing to put money on this film being better than that one.

We begin in March 1865, where several Union soldiers - and one Confederate - end up being blown out to sea in a hot air balloon.  A massive storm arises, and they end up crash-landing on a tropical island.  An island they soon discover is inhabited with dangerous beast-men.

Things escalate when a small plane also crashes on the island.  Aboard are two young women from 2012.  Their information that the Union ultimately wins the Civil War is naturally welcomed by most of the men.  Though frankly, in March 1865 the Confederacy's end was literally only weeks away, so it shouldn't be the surprise it's presented to be.

Also welcome is a stately home they find on the island, which offers some protection from the beast-men (who are the laughably least menacing menaces that ever didn't menace menacingly), and the occasional gifts they receive from a mysterious benefactor (spoiler for 150 year old book: it's Captain Nemo).

On the debit side?  The island has a volcano, and it will shortly kill them all if they don't find a way to escape from this time-lost land.

The cheapness of this film is apparent throughout the movie's run time, but I could forgive that if the script wasn't such a clumsy mess of ham-handed exposition, paper-thin characters, and revelations that don't actually matter.

Hopefully one or both of the other adaptations will be better - they'll both be reviewed here eventually, so we will find out!

Tuesday 6 June 2017

Robot Chicken Season 4 (2008)



One of the merits of Robot Chicken's rapid-fire format is that if you don't like a particular skit, you never need to wait more than two minutes for the next one.  And there's always the chance that the punchline will redeem the skit in any case.  In this season, for instance, there's a sketch that starts with nothing but 30 seconds of a guy pooping in the toilet, and then in the last 10 goes in such an unexpected tangent that you can almost forgive the excessively long scatological opening.

Poop and flatulence related humour is, it should be noted, sometimes regrettably large part Robot Chicken's material.  The show itself actually calls this out in a season finale musical number (to the tune of "It's A Wonderful World").  While such self-awareness is refreshing, it would perhaps be even better if they just didn't do so many of them, and instead had more of their other material.

Said other material generally consists of mocking celebrities, horribly corrupting your childhood memories (GI Joe, MASK and Strawberry Shortcake all come in for a hammering here), and incredibly nerdy gags.  Sometimes all at the same time.

Robot Chicken will not be to all tastes, but if you've ever wondered how Wrath of Khan would look as an opera, or what would happen if you mashed Yellow Submarine with Hunt for Red October, or how to turn Horton Hears A Who into a tale of drug addiction and oral sex ... well, this is the show for you.

Friday 2 June 2017

Gallowwalkers (2012)



It's almost impressive that they could make a movie about undead cowboys this boring.

Gallowwalkers features Wesley Snipes in the lead role, and production was heavily delayed by the star's tax trouble.  It ultimately spent three years in production, then another two sitting on a shelf somewhere until it finally found distribution.

Now with heritage like that it's probably not surprising that the film has flaws.  Some of these are pretty much inevitable in the circumstances: the large number of scenes where we can't actually see the face of Snipes' character, for instance, is understandable enough given that the man was often unavailable for shooting.  Even the clumsiness of the narrative - large exposition dumps, subsidiary characters that occupy a lot of screen time but don't seem to actually contribute to the plot at all, long diversions away from Snipes - might well be a result of frantic re-writes to account for the star's absence.

On the other hand, the poor execution of the action sequences and the complete lack of tension in the final denouement, are just bad film-making.  The flatness and lack of spark in the action is particularly irksome since you can see that they had some interesting ideas for stunts: things that should have been exciting and dramatic but simply aren't, because the cinematography and editing isn't up to standard.

About the only thing in the film that is up to standard, in fact, is the costume design.  There are some pretty cool-looking (if not necessarily very practical) outfits.  So good work, Pierre Vienings, and hang your head in shame, everyone else.