rich_jacko (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rich_jacko) wrote2018-12-31 08:08 pm
rich_jacko) wrote2018-12-31 08:08 pm
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Filums round-up
Peterloo - Mike Leigh tells us the story of a little-known (Well, by me anyway) part of British history, the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, at which a peaceful pro-democracy rally at St Peter's Field in Manchester ended with (spoiler alert) a bloody cavalry charge and many civilians killed or injured. There's plenty of background to the campaign for political reform (some might say too much). We follow one family in particular, led by Maxine Peake's Nellie, to provide the human interest, but even with that we have 2 hours that are... well, all a bit dull really. Many characters are too caricatured to hold any interest (casting Tim McInnery as the Prince Regent was definitely a mistake) and you get a sense that the protesters are being manipulated by politicians on both sides rather than taking their own stand. The final scenes of the massacre itself are shocking and stay in the mind, but not enough to redeem the film.
They Shall Not Grow Old - "Filmed on location on the Western Front, 1914 to 1918," say the end credits. This is an astonishing labour of love from Peter Jackson, who has digitally smartened up and colourised documentary footage from WW1 and added foley so that it appears like it was shot yesterday. This is more than just a gimmick; it gives us an up close and personal view of life in the trenches like never before. All accompanied by voice-over footage taken from archive interviews with soldiers who were there. So many aspects strike home, like how incredibly young many of the troops were; the early sense of adventure giving way to brutal realities; the switch from the mundane to the terrifying when battle broke; and the camaraderie, even with captured enemy PoWs. It is by no means easy viewing, but there is a lot of humour and humanity on show too. You will never look at the War in quite the same way again afterwards. It should be compulsory viewing in schools. And for everyone else as well.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - This is film number 2 of 5, apparently, and it shows. While the first film was a refreshing look at the wizarding world through the lens of 1930s New York, unfortunately there's nothing refreshing about this over-burdened sequel. Oh, Newt (Eddie Redmayne) is still as endearing a reluctant hero as ever, but the storyline creaks horribly under its own weight. JK Rowling seems to have got carried away trying to reference every little bit of backstory in her expansive world, there are far too many characters with uncertain motivations, and the whole thing is clearly just an overly convoluted set-up for films 3-5. And despite the title, there's disappointingly little Grindelwald. It is spectacular, and there are a couple of intriguing developments towards the end, but I'd expected so much more.
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-it Ralph 2 - My new favourite Disney princess movie! And a rare sequel that's better than the first! It's certainly on a bigger scale, as arcade game characters Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) and Ralph (John C. Reilly) run riot over the whole of the World Wide Web. Cue endless website-related gags and cameos, including (of course) the other Disney princesses, who steal the show whenever they appear. It's not all cutesy though - Disney.com is now patrolled by Imperial Stormtroopers, and our heroes also land in a surprisingly gritty GTA-type game called Slaughter Race (with a hardcore boss character voiced by Wonder Woman herself, Gal Godot). The story is pretty flimsy, but there's enough gags aimed at all ages to keep it going strong. One scene in particular had me laughing along uncontrollably with the rest of the cinema audience for about two minutes solid - Let's just say that if this doesn't win the Oscar for Best Original Song, there is no justice in the world! ;o)
Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse - No, it's not an MCU film, but an animated multiverse mash-up of Spider-men, a Spider-boy, two Spider-girls and one Spider-pig from the creators of the Lego movies. Their style shows through in the madcap humour and ridiculously fast-paced action sequences. The universe-bending storyline is just as frenetic, but there's real heart to it too. Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales gets, you've guessed it, bitten by a radioactive spider and soon has to balance school life with stopping Kingpin and his doomsday device. But just as Miles takes up the Spider-mantle from one Peter Parker, another Spider-man appears. And then several more. Of all the various Spider-man films, this is the one that feels most like reading a Spider-man comic, deliberately so. Special mention for Aunt May (who nearly steals the show) and of course the legendary, late Stan Lee. Excelsior!
Mortal Engines - A post-apocalyptic, steampunk future where London rolls around on tank treads destroying other cities and dragging everyone into its control - What are you trying to say, Peter Jackson? ;o) Fugitive Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) and museum nerd Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) are our mismatched heroes, on the run from the maginificently-named Thaddeus Valentine (a scenery-chewing Hugo Weaving), who is up to something sinister in St Paul's Cathedral. Cliches abound. There's a sub-plot involving Hester's connection with an undead mercenary named Shrike (Stephen Lang), which seems to have stumbled in from a much better story. Mortal Engines is visually amazing, but when your heroes constantly run through fires, explosions and tons of tons of falling debris, with barely a scratch on them, you quickly become blasé about any sense of danger there might have been. It all turns into Star Wars in the last half hour, which is not necessarily a bad thing...
Bumblebee - I've avoided Michael Bay's supposed "Transformers" movies since the abymally bad Revenge of the Fallen, but this one didn't look half bad from the trailer. And... it's not. Away from the director's seat, Bay's worst excesses are under control, characters are at the forefront and what we essentially have is a rather sweet story of a teenage girl (Hailee Steinfeld) and her first car. Who just happens to be a giant alien robot. Stranded on Earth in the 1980s and unable to contact home, said alien learns about human culture while being kept hidden from the rest of the family and the interests of the military, who want him for their own ends. Yes, it's BumblebE-T: The Extra-Terrestrial Robot. Crossed with ideas taken from the very first Transformers comics from the early '80s. The lack of originality doesn't matter though; for fans, this is probably the closest to a proper live-action Transformers movie we are ever likely to get.
They Shall Not Grow Old - "Filmed on location on the Western Front, 1914 to 1918," say the end credits. This is an astonishing labour of love from Peter Jackson, who has digitally smartened up and colourised documentary footage from WW1 and added foley so that it appears like it was shot yesterday. This is more than just a gimmick; it gives us an up close and personal view of life in the trenches like never before. All accompanied by voice-over footage taken from archive interviews with soldiers who were there. So many aspects strike home, like how incredibly young many of the troops were; the early sense of adventure giving way to brutal realities; the switch from the mundane to the terrifying when battle broke; and the camaraderie, even with captured enemy PoWs. It is by no means easy viewing, but there is a lot of humour and humanity on show too. You will never look at the War in quite the same way again afterwards. It should be compulsory viewing in schools. And for everyone else as well.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - This is film number 2 of 5, apparently, and it shows. While the first film was a refreshing look at the wizarding world through the lens of 1930s New York, unfortunately there's nothing refreshing about this over-burdened sequel. Oh, Newt (Eddie Redmayne) is still as endearing a reluctant hero as ever, but the storyline creaks horribly under its own weight. JK Rowling seems to have got carried away trying to reference every little bit of backstory in her expansive world, there are far too many characters with uncertain motivations, and the whole thing is clearly just an overly convoluted set-up for films 3-5. And despite the title, there's disappointingly little Grindelwald. It is spectacular, and there are a couple of intriguing developments towards the end, but I'd expected so much more.
Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-it Ralph 2 - My new favourite Disney princess movie! And a rare sequel that's better than the first! It's certainly on a bigger scale, as arcade game characters Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) and Ralph (John C. Reilly) run riot over the whole of the World Wide Web. Cue endless website-related gags and cameos, including (of course) the other Disney princesses, who steal the show whenever they appear. It's not all cutesy though - Disney.com is now patrolled by Imperial Stormtroopers, and our heroes also land in a surprisingly gritty GTA-type game called Slaughter Race (with a hardcore boss character voiced by Wonder Woman herself, Gal Godot). The story is pretty flimsy, but there's enough gags aimed at all ages to keep it going strong. One scene in particular had me laughing along uncontrollably with the rest of the cinema audience for about two minutes solid - Let's just say that if this doesn't win the Oscar for Best Original Song, there is no justice in the world! ;o)
Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse - No, it's not an MCU film, but an animated multiverse mash-up of Spider-men, a Spider-boy, two Spider-girls and one Spider-pig from the creators of the Lego movies. Their style shows through in the madcap humour and ridiculously fast-paced action sequences. The universe-bending storyline is just as frenetic, but there's real heart to it too. Brooklyn teenager Miles Morales gets, you've guessed it, bitten by a radioactive spider and soon has to balance school life with stopping Kingpin and his doomsday device. But just as Miles takes up the Spider-mantle from one Peter Parker, another Spider-man appears. And then several more. Of all the various Spider-man films, this is the one that feels most like reading a Spider-man comic, deliberately so. Special mention for Aunt May (who nearly steals the show) and of course the legendary, late Stan Lee. Excelsior!
Mortal Engines - A post-apocalyptic, steampunk future where London rolls around on tank treads destroying other cities and dragging everyone into its control - What are you trying to say, Peter Jackson? ;o) Fugitive Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) and museum nerd Tom Natsworthy (Robert Sheehan) are our mismatched heroes, on the run from the maginificently-named Thaddeus Valentine (a scenery-chewing Hugo Weaving), who is up to something sinister in St Paul's Cathedral. Cliches abound. There's a sub-plot involving Hester's connection with an undead mercenary named Shrike (Stephen Lang), which seems to have stumbled in from a much better story. Mortal Engines is visually amazing, but when your heroes constantly run through fires, explosions and tons of tons of falling debris, with barely a scratch on them, you quickly become blasé about any sense of danger there might have been. It all turns into Star Wars in the last half hour, which is not necessarily a bad thing...
Bumblebee - I've avoided Michael Bay's supposed "Transformers" movies since the abymally bad Revenge of the Fallen, but this one didn't look half bad from the trailer. And... it's not. Away from the director's seat, Bay's worst excesses are under control, characters are at the forefront and what we essentially have is a rather sweet story of a teenage girl (Hailee Steinfeld) and her first car. Who just happens to be a giant alien robot. Stranded on Earth in the 1980s and unable to contact home, said alien learns about human culture while being kept hidden from the rest of the family and the interests of the military, who want him for their own ends. Yes, it's BumblebE-T: The Extra-Terrestrial Robot. Crossed with ideas taken from the very first Transformers comics from the early '80s. The lack of originality doesn't matter though; for fans, this is probably the closest to a proper live-action Transformers movie we are ever likely to get.