X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

I thought I remembered X-men Origins: Wolverine being far worse than it really is.  For example, I'd forgotten that Stryker (Danny Huston) puts together a team of mutants at the beginning of the film.  I'd forgotten that the intro credits are really cool showing the passage of time as the two brothers (Jackman and Schreiber) grow up and demonstrates their indestructibility.  I'd forgotten that Ryan Reynolds was in it and his sword wielding character is pretty cool.  I hadn't realised that Game of Thrones screenwriter David Benioff wrote the screenplay for it.  All I really remember are the badly rendered claws, the farcical action (including the most ridiculous casual walk away from a huge explosion), and a really shoehorned in ending so that it ties in with the first X-men film.  And that’s the problem with it; they’re the bits that everyone remembers.

So, like I say, not all that bad, Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston are all accomplished enough actors to prop the movie up, and the story is interesting enough; it just gets woefully let down by the ill judged central act.  But, well, you know, that’s just, like, er, my opinion, man.

Pacific Rim (2013)

Having already been a little disappointed with the only other blockbuster I’ll probably see this year despite having respectable names attached to it, I was wary about getting too excited about Guillermo del Toro’s latest offering.  The Hellboy films and Blade 2 both demonstrated that del Toro was able to create intelligent mainstream films with a mostly believable yet fantastical plot and at the same time fill them with plenty of inventive and (crucially) understandable action.  So it was my hope that Pacific Rim would up the ante in terms of spectacle yet still retain the attention to detail and storytelling that typifies some of del Toro’s previous work.

I wasn’t disappointed.  The design of the film was tremendous, the level of detail in the Jaegers (Hunters; huge robots) and Kaiju (huge monsters) is incredible.  There was also plenty of design to create the world inhabited by these two creations; downtown Hong Kong was as detailed and as full of character as the Troll Market in Hellboy 2 and I really loved the fact that there was a healthy black market in Kaiju body parts.  I was surprised that two guys had to physically be in the Jaegers to control them, I thought it would have been far more sensible to control them by remote.  On the plus side for the movie, there is far more danger and threat given that the drivers are literally in the heart of the action.  This gives the film a far more human element, especially as the two drivers have to mentality "drift" together (some sort of shared thought/memory thingy to be able to control both "hemispheres" of their Jaeger), an idea without which the film wouldn't have the same impact .

The cast were fine, and did well in bringing this human element to life, where otherwise we may not have cared.  Idris Elba was certainly the standout performance, perfectly cast as Stacker, the military general running the Jaeger project who provided an immovable point in whom everyone else could depend.  The "hero" duo of Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi were OK but were fairly prefabricated and copy/pasted from any other action/adventure film.  Of course del Toro favourite Ron Perlman is in the mix, but his is a rather light-hearted role as Kingpin of the black market.  Charlie Day and Burn Gorman are the fairly irritating and cringeworthy stereotypical science nerds, but at least they’re fairly integral to the plot.

As well as introducing a very human story to the film, del Toro managed to create a lot of spectacular fight scenes that was still perfectly understandable.  The movie steered well clear of any Michael Bay-ish tendencies for fast over-editing and generally “fucking the frame”, so that we haven’t a clue what’s going on.  Though the whole premise of the film is rather over the top, the action never is; for example, even when a Jaeger takes out 2 Kaiju in Hong Kong, relatively little of the city gets destroyed, which seems to be a prerequisite for action movies these days (Superman destroyed far more of Metropolis killing far more bystanders in Man of Steel).  Throughout the action the CG was generally flawless, these massive beasts given a real presence, and the wind and the rain really lashes off the robots.

All in all I really enjoyed Pacific Rim.  Sure there were daft bits (Ron Perlman’s cameo), clunky bits (Idris Elba saying he’d die if he stepped into another Jaeger - simply for the payoff in the next scene), and cheesy bits (Today we are cancelling the apocalypse!); but the smart story, characters to relate to and care about, some tremendous action set pieces as well as del Toro’s eye for detail all combine to make a worthwhile robot/creature feature.  But, well, you know, that’s just, like, er, my opinion, man.

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

Luc Besson's film about a woman who travels to Egypt to dig up a Mummy (a doctor) with the idea to bring it back to Paris for resurrection so it can cure her sister (who is currently in a vegetative state following a tragic tennis accident), is kooky in the way that only a French film can be; but perhaps not enough to be that memorable.  I never felt invested in the titular character Adèle or what happened to her sister, and when Adèle went flying through Paris on a Pterodactyl that had been brought to life, the film went from kooky to a bit silly.  There was some obligatory love interest and some "humour" involving a group of inept policemen, but none of the peripheral characters were engaging either.  There is the kernel of an interesting story, I just think it should have been developed a bit more, along with the characters.  In which case The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec could have been a more memorable film, as it is, I'm struggling to think of anything else to say as I can't remember much about it!  But, well, you know, that’s just, like, er, my opinion, man.

Dracula (1931)

I am Dracula. I bid you welcome.

Believe it or not, there was a time when cinema wasn’t replete with Vampire films.  Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, but in a time when movie studios didn't instantly jump on any novel idea, it wasn't until 1922 that the story was adapted for the silent film Nosferatu.  Then in 1931 director Tod Browning adapted the stage production featuring Belá Lugosi as Dracula and Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing for Universal's Dracula.  It sounds like it should be a classic. Unfortunately it’s far too clunky to be anywhere near it.

The opening couple of scenes are spooky enough, and I can live with the obvious matte painting (it is 1931 after all); however, any pretence of atmosphere goes out of the window as soon as the rubber bat makes an appearance “driving” the carriage!  I kid you not.  The bat makes many appearances, but that’s not all; there’s plastic spider of unknown scale, and some armadillos.  Yup, you heard me.  Honestly, I don’t know; perhaps they’re meant to be giant rats?  Or maybe Dracula has pet armadillos in his castle.

I think Belá Lugosi is trying to be enigmatic, but most of the time he’s daft.  He manages to be creepy weird when he is bending over someone to bite them (no teeth or blood though), and he does something sinister with his hands (think Saruman’s claw hand as he tries to use the palantir), but when he speaks with his stilted Hungarian accent he doesn’t sound enigmatic at all.  He’s more Manuel from Fawlty Towers: “I speak Eeenglish, I learn it from a book” than iconic vampire!

Most of the acting is high school amateur dramatics, and some of the direction is too.  Edward Van Sloan as Van Helsing is probably the best thing, and he certainly rescues most scenes he’s in from tedium.  That’s not much of a compliment though, as everyone else is so bad; the worst thing is the Cockney Music Hall orderly at the mental asylum saying “Your maaad aint cha!”; it’s a wonder he doesn’t slap his thighs at the same time.  Probably the best part of the film were the sets, in particular inside castle Dracula and a magnificent staircase in Carfax Abbey.

I started watching with high hopes, sure I was about to see a masterful understated and sinister performance from Belá Lugosi.  I was sorely disappointed, and I look forward to seeing the 1958 Christopher Lee version.  But, well, you know, that’s just, like, er, my opinion, man.

Man of Steel (2013)

After the disappointment of Sucker Punch with its wayward non-existent story, my hopes were high that Man of Steel would combine the visual flair of Zack Snyder with the superior writing of David S. Goyer and Chris Nolan.  Where Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was very much in the style of the original movies and would comfortably slide right in among them, Man of Steel is very much a re-interpretation of the mythology.  As was expected from a film written by Goyer and Nolan, Man of Steel is far more “grounded” and “down to earth” than other Superman films, and whether you like it or not it is certainly spectacular.

However, it is this “grittiness” that throws up some of my dislikes.  I thought there was too much shaky cam, particularly noticeable at the beginning.  I think this was to introduce a documentary feel to proceedings, but it gave me a headache; especially when Jonathan was talking to Clark on the back of a pickup telling him that he shouldn’t save drowning kids from buses - the camera was all over the place for no reason.  I also felt that it was over-edited, particularly during fights, presumably for dramatic impact; but it just ended up looking a bit Michael Bay ish!

Speaking of directors, Man of Steel doesn’t look like a Zack Snyder film.  There were none of the trademark quick-slow-quick sections; there were a lot of fast zooms with the camera taking a second to focus.  This gave the movie far more of a Joss Whedon feel than anything else.

I really enjoyed the first half of the film; the events on Krypton, the non-linearity of the story with flashbacks to Clark’s childhood, as well as seeing him drift through life as he tries to find himself.  Though this wasn’t usual for a Superman film, it worked for me and seeing Clark struggle with who he was was OK by me.  I liked the update to the destruction of Krypton, the relationship between Jor El and Zod, and by extension the natural feeling that Zod really should be the antagonist in a Superman genesis film.  However, when Zod and his cronies arrive on Earth (my heart yearns for Terence Stamp) the film seems to concern itself with huge explosions and destroying as many buildings as possible.  While this is initially quite fun as Smallville is wrecked (and the sequence is really spectacular), it soon gets boring.

Boring when Metropolis is also wrecked, and pointless when there is some attempt at creating a sense of peril as Laurence Fishburne’s Perry White and two co-workers are in “danger” of being killed in the ruins of a building.  We've hardly seen White, and I’ve no idea who the other two are, so I really didn't care what happened to them.

Boring or not, these sequences didn’t disrupt the flow of the film.  What did pull me out of the movie was some of the sloppy writing that is not expected from Goyer and Nolan.  I’m sure there were some questions raised in the Krypton intro, but I actually really enjoyed that sequence, so I didn’t notice too much.  However, Jonathan Kent’s death was rubbish, it was quite possibly one of the worst things they could have come up with.  There’s nothing like scarring someone for life by making them watch your father die when it was completely preventable!  I also thought it daft that it took Kal-El 30 years to discover all his powers on Earth, but Zod seemed to manage it in a few days. I mean, HOW long did it take Clark to learn to fly in Smallville?  But Zod seemed to figure it out quite quickly.

Finally Kal-El kills Zod (not a spoiler, we all know it happens), and suddenly he is anguished that he had to kill what could be the last living Kryptonian other than himself (think The Doctor having to destroy The Master).  Except that there wasn't any build up to this at all; previous to this they were throwing each other through buildings, presumably killing lots of innocent people (way to go Superman).  I certainly didn’t notice this many plot holes, but the story wasn’t as great as I was expecting.

Henry Cavill is a good enough Superman, and Russell Crowe is a good Jor-El; certainly Snyder got more value out of him than Richard Donner got out of Marlon Brando.  Amy Adams might be a good Lois Lane, but in all honesty her character isn’t really important.  No really.  If you cut Lois out of the film, I don’t think anything would missing from the plot; which is just silly.  Lois is integral to a Superman story, whether you're in 1978, 2006 or the Smallville series; so to make her as pointless as Perry White or the other two suckers trapped beneath falling buildings is nonsense.

Despite all this negativity, I did enjoy the film, just that thinking about it afterwards you start to realise that it wasn’t everything you hoped it would be.  One thing that was done really well was Hans Zimmer's excellent score.  It was obviously a concious effort to avoid any of the typical Superman themes, and I thought that was refreshing and worked really well.  Certainly a very spectacular and cinematic film (even in the glorious 2 dimensions in which I saw it), I feel I may not have enjoyed it quite so much had I seen it at home without the big screen experience.  But, well, you know, that’s just, like, er, my opinion, man.