Tag: 2019 Reviews

Review: Captain Marvel

It’s 2019. While absorbing that staggering fact bomb, it’s even more surprising that we’re still having firsts. After all, CAPTAIN MARVEL is the first solo female hero to headline a chapter of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s also the first time a woman has taken the director’s chair in the MCU, as the Mississippi Grind team of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck bring the most powerful woman in the galaxy to contemporary cinemas.

Or at least 1995, where Boden, Fleck, and co-writer Geneva Robertson-Dworet (Tomb Raider) lays our scene. “Vers” (Brie Larson) is a member of Starforce, an elite Kree military team led by Yon-Rogg (Jude Law). She has no memory of anything prior to her discovery 6 years earlier, save for the face of one woman (Annette Bening). After being captured by the shapeshifting Skrull Talos (Ben Mendelsohn), she finds herself in a madcap adventure on Earth alongside Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) to discover who she is.

CAPTAIN MARVEL is an ambitious film, wrapping up a story that has the scope of three Guardians of the Galaxy movies into a single outing. After a tonally ambiguous start, a marine assault set primarily in space, the film has a slightly awkward transition to Earth via a train chase that combines the fish-out-of-water antics of Thor with the Korean sequence in Black Panther. Yet by the time Larson steps off the train, the film has truly arrived.

Here Boden and Fleck really find their feet and, inspired by the Blockbuster Video that the titular hero crashes into, they have a ball mixing up the high-concept highlights of action films from the 1980s and 1990s. It’s a spy caper where the enemy could look like anyone. It’s a buddy comedy. It has aerial dogfights over canyons. There’s even a feline friend named Goose who may just go down as the most purrfect kitty in cinema history.

Larson is flawless in her MCU debut. From her first moments on screen, she brings a light-hearted authority to her character, a tone that sustains much of the story. We might turn up for the Marvel Studios logo (which has been lovingly filled with shots from the late, great Stan Lee), but we stay for the uncovering of Carol Danvers the hero. Meanwhile, Jackson gets to play his typically enigmatic Fury for hapless laughs, a cool break after 9 outings as the character. Mendelsohn is bloody brilliant as an unexpectedly laid-back Skrull.

Yet CAPTAIN MARVEL also takes a few narrative shortcuts along the way. Most backstory is given a perfunctory set of flashbacks. Some sequences feel like they are stock action moments strung together without any accompanying development. Case in point is Captain Marvel’s eventual costume choice, which feels more like a throwaway gag than a hero moment.

In every other way this is a tentpole film that paves the way for Avengers: Endgame while standing on its own two feet. Except for the unnervingly plastic-faced de-ageing on Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg), this is a special-effects space epic that makes good use of its Terran and orbital settings. Visually inspired by Roy Thomas and Gene Colan’s “Kree-Skrull War” storyline, and more recent entries like Kelly-Sue Deconnick and Dexter Soy’s amazing run, the last act of the film is a feast for the eyes teeming with Easter eggs from past and future films.

While this is the twenty-first film in the MCU, CAPTAIN MARVEL returns to the roots of hero-building that began with Iron Man in 2008. Like every fledgling hero, she has a few missteps along the way, but emerges out the other side as a fully-fledged Avenger ready to defend the planet. So, for everyone that tried to review bomb this film prior to its release, Carol answers them unblinkingly: “I have nothing to prove to you.”

2019 | US | DIR: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck | WRITERS:
Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck, and Geneva Robertson-Dworet | CAST: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Annette Bening, Clark Gregg, Jude Law | RUNNING TIME: 124 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Disney (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 7 March 2019 (AUS)

March 6, 2019
Review: Happy Death Day 2U

A sequel to Happy Death Day might be the one thing that makes sense in this crazy workaday world. The subversively clever 2017 film was the lovechild of Groundhog Day and Scream, cognisant of its own influences while sharply aware that younger audiences could care less about the 1990s. HAPPY DEATH DAY 2U is simply here to have fun. Party.

Picking up right after the events of the first film, we learn that ‘dickhead’ roommate Ryan (Phi Vu) is now caught in his own time loop and being hunted by a killer. Yet instead of simply repeating the formula with a different set of players, writer and director Christopher Landon (who directed Scott Lobdell’s script last time) subverts expectations by introducing quantum mechanics, multiverses, and other twisty stories within stories.

Any fear that an over-explanation of the time travel elements is swiftly forgotten with the reintroduction of Tree (Jessica Rothe) and her fledgling boyfriend Carter (Israel Broussard). Landon deftly steers the film from straight-up horror to sci-fi comedy caper as Tree once again gets caught in a familiar loop but with a very different series of encounters to the last lot of times that she went through.

The focus is less on the whodunnit than it is on boldly having fun with the multiversal direction Landon has steered the franchise into. Just like Tree’s investigative montage in the first film, she repeatedly dies (again) in increasingly bizarre ways so she can memorise a formula needed to get back to her normal life. Some of these deaths make no literal sense, but Tree skydiving without a parachute (and wearing a bikini) is part of the anarchic silliness Landon embraces.

Each of the characters are given a little more depth this time around as well. From the get-go, the one-joke Ryan is revealed to be a student of quantum physics and is surrounded by intelligent characters. The surprisingly emotional core comes from Tree’s chance to reconnect with her deceased mother (Miss Yager) and gives the lead’s choices a deeper sense of urgency.

With almost double the budget of the first film – from a mere US$4.8 million to a modest $9 million – Landon allows himself a few more special effects this time around. Most of these are on the device Ryan and his team are working on, but it also allows for a little bit more scope in the various death montages the series is rapidly becoming known for.

Which is where this sequel really succeeds: it expands the Happy Death Day world, giving it the potential to be another big franchise series for the Blumhouse gang. Make sure you sit through the credits for a little stinger that indicates where it will go next. It’s not strictly horror, comedy, or sci-fi, but it is straight-up fun.

2019 | US | DIR: Christopher Landon | WRITERS: Christopher Landon | CAST: Jessica Rothe, Israel Broussard, Phi Vu, Suraj Sharma, Sarah Yarkin, Ruby Modine | RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 14 February 2019 (AUS)

February 16, 2019
Review: Alita: Battle Angel

You couldn’t find two filmmakers who sit at polar opposites more than James Cameron and Robert Rodriguez. Cameron, one of the Master of Modern blockbuster filmmaking, goes for long stretches between films and has quietly built an empire. Rodriguez, on the other hand, still makes his movies with the same intensity of the indie filmmaker who crafted excitement on a shoestring budget. ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL represents the coming together of those minds and the results are a spectacular but uneven visual effects marvel.

Based on the manga Gunnm by Yukito Kishiro, we are introduced to the post-disaster world of 2563 as Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz) digs through the scrapheap. There he finds the mostly intact remains of a young cyborg girl that he soon dubs Alita (Rosa Salazhar). After she befriends the teenage Hugo (Keean Johnson), Alita begins to learn things about her past, Ido’s true calling, and the connection with enigmatic Vector (Mahershala Ali) and Chiren (Jennifer Connelly), Ido’s ex-wife.

ALITA is an ambitious film. When Rodriguez joined the production, he reportedly condensed Cameron’s 186-page shooting script and 600 pages of notes into something more manageable. Cameron and co-writer Laeta Kalogridis’ script definitely bites off a lot more than it can possibly chew through in the final 2-hour edit, pinging from moment to moment in an episodic and sometimes disjointed fashion.

It’s a good thing that those individual sequences are pure cinema, baiting the audience with the principal of escalation. A neighbourhood game of ‘Motorball’ – a hybrid of basketball and a roller derby – is a dynamic and fluid showcase for the titular character’s CG, one that pays off in the climactic final act. When the fighting starts, the CG-heavy violence employs every inch of the lessons Rodriguez learned on El Mariachi through to Sin City, rarely relying on the spectacle to replace thoughtful choreography.

It’s a hell of spectacle though. Given that Cameron’s Avatar popularised modern 3D, this is one of those rare instances where it adds layers to the world-building. Crowded city streets are layered with the same amount of detail Cameron put into the crockery choices on Titanic, and this extends to every scene in the film. Then there’s Alita herself, one of the most advance combinations of motion capture and CG the screen has ever seen, exaggerating her facial features just enough to avoid the uncanny valley. We’re a long way on from Jar Jar Binks (who turns 20 this year!)

So, it’s disappointing that the second and third acts of the film get a little muddled, trudging through these episodes rather than the possibilities of the handsome environment. What’s most disturbing is the way the narrative rapidly descends into a teenage robotic sex toy fantasy. Following her characterisation as someone who will “do whatever you want for you,” Alita’s body is literally replaced with something more adult and “more touch sensitive.” It gets a little icky when you consider that actor Johnson has been crafted as Rodriguez’s avatar, complete with bandana and leather jacket.

The rest of the cast don’t get nearly as much attention. Ido’s backstory is sputtered out when needed, while Connelly and Ali mostly get to stand around looking alternatively cool and annoyed. There’s some serious talent here, but the bulk of the heavy lifting is done by Salazar. It would have been nice, for example, to give the accomplished Idara Victor more than three or four perfunctory lines in the whole film.

If ALITA is a success, and the sequels roll out like so many Motorballs, then we make reflect on this film as an accomplished first act in a large story. After all, it has over 9 volumes of manga and other stories to pull on. The late reveal of the actor portraying the uber villain certainly indicates there’s bigger plans for this battle angel. Despite the weaknesses in story structure, this is a fun ride if you’re willing to switch your own brain circuits off for a few hours.

2019 | US| DIR: Robert Rodriguez | WRITERS: James Cameron, Laeta Kalogridis (based on the manga by Yukito Kishiro)| CAST: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson | RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: 20 Century Fox (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 14 February 2019 (AUS)

February 16, 2019
Review: The Kid Who Would Be King

The Arthurian legend just lends itself to remixing. Indeed, the modern version that forms the basis of our stories comes from Sir Thomas Malory’s romanticised Le Morte d’Arthur in the 15th century – some 500 years after the first datable mention of King Arthur. From musicals to motorbikes, there’s few cultural touchstones that haven’t been influenced by the once and future king.

Writer/director Joe Cornish, who served up the brilliant Attack the Block back in 2011, brings the myth the contemporary Britain with a primarily pre-teen set of characters. It’s the kind of high-concept adventure that dominated the box office in the 1980s: bullied kid Alex (Louis Ashbourne Serkis) suddenly has his life flipped and turned upsidedown when he pulls Excalibur from a concrete block at a building site.

Cornish’s script is a refreshing change of pace from overcomplicated exposition. Alex is the inheritor of the sword, he finds the sword without much preamble, he goes on a quest to stop the evil Morgan Le Fey (Rebecca Ferguson), who threatens to chew all of the Earth’s scenery apparently. Yet that same matter-of-factness keeps the film on rails, at at 120 minutes it’s a little sluggish in the middle.

In the wrong hands, the film would be interpreted as a return to British national values. After all, these kids answer the call by doing a spot of National Service, wot wot. Released in the midst of a failed vote on Brexit, Cornish is unapologetic in his politics but it’s an anti-Brexit message he’s delivering, preaching unity and and a call for fresh values at every turn.

Case in point is the ragtag group Alex surrounds himself with. Best friend Bedders (Dean Chaumoo), and bullies Lance (The Dark Tower‘s Tom Taylor) and Kaye (Rhianna Doris) must ultimately learn to put aside their differences if the country is to survive. It’s a wonderfully charming lesson for younger audiences, capably delivered by Merlin (played respectively by Angus Imrie and Patrick Stewart). Sir Pat’s wig work is exceptional by the way.

As the film eventually gets around to its schoolyard battlefield conclusion, in the form of the obligatory CG slugfest, Cornish again reminds us that “A land is only as good as it’s leaders.” It may not be subtle, but it’s a timely message for a younger generation, and one that has a bit of fun in the delivery.

2019 | UK| DIR: Joe Cornish | WRITERS: Joe Cornish| CAST: Louis Ashbourne Serkis, Tom Taylor, Rebecca Ferguson, Patrick Stewart | RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: 20 Century Fox (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 17 January 2019 (AUS)

January 17, 2019
Review: Storm Boy

Australians have spent well over half a century watching a boy develop a relationship with a pelican. Colin Thiele’s original children’s book has been adapted for the stage and screen several times since its debut in the 1960s, each reinterpreting the story for a new generation. For debut director Shawn Seet, updating a classic comes burdened with external expectations.

Theile’s relatively simple tale about a lonely boy and his pelican is significantly expanded by Justin Monjo’s script, turning it into something…odd. The primary addition is the overarching linking segment in which an ageing Mike Kingley (Geoffrey Rush) is guilted by his young granddaughter Madeline (Morgana Davies) into taking action against her father’s highly protested mining dealings.

When Monjo and Seet stick to the original narrative, the film is at its strongest. Framed as a morality tale the adult Mike tells Madeline, we see how the young ‘Storm Boy’ (Finn Little) grew up in a remote location raising three orphaned pelicans alongside his father (Jai Courtney) and Fingerbone Bill (Trevor Jamieson), an Aboriginal man with his own reasons for being in isolation. The core story remains unchanged, including the fateful dealings with the hunters on the shore.

Yet the new additions create something of a quandary: who is the audience here? A heavy-handed environmental message of the adult Mike coming to terms with his legacy clashes with the central story at best, and undercuts it completely at other times. Don’t you feel so much better about Storm Boy’s final touching scenes with the pelican once you are safe in the knowledge he grows up to be an embittered millionaire alcoholic? (The boy, not the pelican).

Cinematographer Bruce Young, fresh off the Netflix debut of Tidelands, breaks out of the small screen with some impressive photography of the South Australian coastline and its surrounds. His visuals are perhaps only hampered by some occasionally dodgy bits of CG pelicans and storms.

Finn Little (also of Tidelands fame) is a solid find and holds his own against Courtney and Jamieson. The awkward relationship between Rush and his on-screen granddaughter Davies doesn’t give either of them much to do except mope and pout respectively. The character of Fingerbone is only marginally more rounded than his 1976 counterpart.

If this had been just another straight remake of Thiele, Henri Safran’s 1976 film would render the whole thing null and void. Indeed, you could excise the entirety of the Rush segments – which is probably a good idea at the moment – and not suffer for it. Yet it’s a story worth telling because it does have a lot to say about the way humans treat our natural world, and serves as an antithesis to the pro-mining Red Dog: True Blue. It’s just a shame that the core of the story is lost in these larger pursuits.

2019 | Australia| DIR: Shawn Seet | WRITERS: Justin Monjo (based on the book by Colin Thiele)| CAST: Jai Courtney, Finn Little, Trevor Jamieson, Morgana Davies, Erik Thomson, Geoffrey Rush | RUNNING TIME: 109 minutes | DISTRIBUTOR: Sony Pictures Releasing (AUS) | RELEASE DATE: 17 January 2019 (AUS)

January 15, 2019