Godzilla (2014)

I saw this late, having read and heard some reviews, including a pretty comprehensive one my Mark Kermode on his radio show with Simon Mayo. The interview they had with Director Gareth Edwards was insightful without giving away some crucial plot points. I’ll endeavour to do the same.

As is well-known, the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla film starring Matthew Broderick and “who the hell cares who else” failed to impress. I’m sure it took good money (though I suspect the production costs were huge) and popcorn-guzzling audiences probably enjoyed the destruction and special effects. This film has a few things in common (necessarily) with the ’98 incarnation – city destruction, a huge lizard, heroic protagonists – but treads a different path in explaining ‘Zilla’s origins.

The opening credits are fantastic. I liked Gareth Edwards’ first feature film, “Monsters” a lot because of its subtlety, the way it pulled you in to the story from the start and then the careful pacing. It has these things in common with Godzilla, to its benefit. We see footage of the 1950s Pacific nuclear tests but not as we’ve seen them before. Yes, the armada of decommissioned military boats are still there in the blast radius, with Officers looking on from a safe distance, but the unmistakeable silhouette of something living is there. These nuclear blasts may not have been tests after all.

Cut to 20-something years ago and Bryan Cranston (most recently hugely famous in Breaking Bad) is Joe Brody, working at a nuclear power plant in Japan. Bringing up his son Ford with his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche), tragedy strikes. Cut to the present day and Joe is trying to uncover the cause of the tragedy, convinced that the real cause is being covered up. Arrested, his son Ford (now grown up of course and played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who I didn’t realise until now also played Kick-Ass in Kick Ass) flies to see him and then we’re waist-deep in monster action.

Firstly the special effects: they’re standard-setting. The creatures we see never look like they weren’t there. The mix of physical effects and CGI is well done too, with moments like San Francisco bay filled with the US Navy’s fleet looking for all the world like they’d actually amassed a flotilla of killing machines for real. A special mention for the sound effects – Godzilla sounds awesome (the film and the creature). The sound is subtle when it builds atmosphere and brutal when the moment comes. There’s just one little thing that irks (well, irks me). When things crash towards you from the sky (missiles, mortars, planes, whatever), the sound they make should increase in pitch (as they get closer) as per the Doppler effect (things moving away decrease in pitch). In Godzilla they decrease in pitch - a familiar sound, like when a mortar is "Incoming!!". In nearly every film I’ve seen this error is made. It wouldn’t have bothered you until you read this though, huh?

The performances from the humans are spot on. Nobody is going to win a Best Actor award for this, but Cranston is suitably stressed, Ken Watanabe is as reliable as ever (look at his history on IMDB – his CV is astonishing). No one character aside from Ford Brody gets a huge amount of screen time. This is a film about giant creatures, environmental responsibilities and the human response to the threat of destruction.

At a whisker over two hours, Godzilla romps along with few sagging points. There’s a strange little sub-plot lasting minutes in the middle involving a Japanese kid separated from his parents that I think is supposed to serve as an example of a character’s humility and heroism. It stuck out as a bit unnecessary and clunky but hardly hurts the pace or plot.

A film about giant monsters trashing cities (Look! Vegas! Kaboom!) isn’t really the place to look for depth but Godzilla is invested at least with some purpose. His “reason for being” is suggested but not explained fully as a balancing force, here to maintain the natural order. Whether GZ is conscious of his (her?) role as Giant Lizard Mediator is unclear. It’s enough though to justify the giant creature’s role in this story. The family story involving the Brodys seems superfluous at times and moments where someone waits in a dangerous place waiting for their hero to rescue them, journeying from another dangerous place when they could just get the heck out of there reminded me of “The Day After Tomorrow” a little, but as with the stranded Japanese kid sub-plot, it’s just no a big enough deal to distract from a brilliant monster movie. I’ll be very interested to see how well it translates to the home cinema experience. I’ll be getting it on Blu-Ray nonetheless.

See the trailer here: 

 

Written by Steve Fair - 2014

The Lego Movie (2014)

This was always going to do well, wasn’t it? Lego are one of the most effective brand-marketers in the world, combining incredible tie-ins with popular culture, clever viral marketing a product that kids love. AsI was writing this, I was thinking “why isn’t there a Lego/Minecraft tie in, but a quick search revealed that there is, enabling kids to build in real life what they’re already building virtually and for just £35 of their parents’ money (assuming the haven’t spent it all on the kid’s app-addiction).

I thought I’d seen all the funny jokes and good bits in the impressive trailer, but this is a funny, cleverly scripted film. The plot is simple: President Business (played by a coasting but still good Will Ferrell) wants to destroy the universe because people keep building things that aren’t part of his grand plan (I liked the repeated use of the phrase “President Business’ plan” for some reason). He’ll do this using the fabled “Kragle”, which can only be stopped using the “Piece Of Resistance”, a mysterious red block. Whoever finds the Piece Of Resistance is “The Special” – akin to Neo in The Matrix – and is able to build anything from the endless supply of Lego blocks that make up the world. The problem is that the population lives in a blissfully unaware state, dutifully repeating their daily routine, like a smiley subservient army of idiots. The musical number “Everything Is Awesome”, which is used to great comic effect later in the film too, is performed en masse, neatly illustrating the mass-hypnosis seemingly affecting everyone. Change the colour palette and the song and you nearly get a cheery cartoon-1984.

If you hadn’t realised yet, everyone and everything mentioned, other than The Kragle and the Piece Of Resistance are made from Lego. We follow our hero Emmett Brickowoski (the voice of Chris Pratt – Andy from Parks and Recreation) and Wyldstyle (or Lucy as we learn she’s called, played by the audibly lovely Elizabeth Banks) after they discover the Piece Of Resistance (Emmett finds it a fraction before Wyldstyle) and begin their quest to stop President Business unleashing The Kragle. Along the way, they meet Vitruvius (played by Morgan Freeman, essentially playing God (as only he can)), Batman (Arrested Development’s Will Arnett), Metal Beard (the brilliant Nick Offerman, also of Parks and Recreation fame) and others. Their entourage of helpers also involves some Star Wars favourites voicing their actual characters (though it seems Harrison Ford was unavailable/too expensive). President Business is aided by Bad Cop (who is also Good Cop) voiced by Liam Neeson sounding as menacing as he did in “Taken”.

The story rocks along, with the different Lego worlds providing varying characters and challenges for our band of blocky heroes. The look of the movie is fantastic – you’d be unsurprised if it was in stop-motion animation, but it’s entirely CGI. Only the long-shots are clearly not stop-motion, when for some reason the frame rate is a lot smoother. I only noticed because I knew I’d be writing this and I was looking for things. The supporting cast are effective, which is a characteristic of the best Pixar hits (where would Toy Story be without Mr Potato Head and his friends, Finding Nemo without Nemo’s tank-mates or Cars without the other talkative autos? Something like Wall-E is a rare and wonderful exception) and the casting is spot on. It seems pointless to talk about the special effects in a CGI film rendering Lego into countless buildings, vehicles and creatures but I’ll give special mention to the liquids. The surface of the sea looks astonishing. I’d love to see if it was something that could be replicated using stop-motion and real Lego because it looks just right.

I enjoyed The Lego Movie but I doubt I’ll watch it again. There’s lots to see on screen and the Directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller (credits include the very funny “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) seem to have found space for dozens of little sight gags that would be uncovered with a second look. I just didn’t care enough about the plot to go back and view it for a second time. It somehow lacked the warmth of “Toy Story”, the beauty of “Wall-E”, the emotion of “Up” and the wonder of “Finding Nemo”. It’s a remarkable technical achievement (I think) and it has the important duality of things that’ll make both kids and adults laugh. But overall it’s just a little safe. It seems to try, quite successfully, to please everyone but I’m not convinced that it will truly delight anyone.

See the trailer here:

Steve Fair - 2014

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

If you’ve seen the trailer for Edge of Tomorrow, then you know the premise of this sci-fi blockbuster. The word “blockbuster” comes from a description of the biggest bombs used around the time of World War 2 – the ones that could destroy a city block. The Mimics (which is the name given to the barely-defined bad guys in the film) certainly fit that description, both in their destructive capabilities and the quality of the special effects bringing them to life. Major William Cage relives the same day, the same fight against the Mimics over and over, seemingly until they are defeated. 

The show opens with some footage explaining the arrival and progress of a marauding invading force called “Mimics”. It’s hinted that they’re from space (something that is repeated later on in the film) and they look like the sentinel robots that attack the ships in The Matrix. There are other bad guys too - all Mimics, but more senior ones.

Tom Cruise, plays Cage, who has avoided military duty by producing morale-boosting propaganda clips encouraging people to join the fight against the Mimics. This is Tom Cruise in “default mode”, which in this case is no bad thing. I enjoyed his performance in “Minority Report” hugely and this is similarly enjoyable. Cage is a coward and when General Brigham (a brilliant Brendan Gleeson) asks him to go to the front line to shoot a film that will glorify Brigham’s strategies (but  probably see Cage killed), Cage ducks, dives and finally refuses to go. He’s arrested and sent to Heathrow, now an operating base for a huge deployment of soldiers wearing massive MechWarrior-style exo-skeletal fighting machines. Some great script-writing is evident – plenty of little waypoints we’ll become familiar with in the first reel of the film are interspersed with well-balanced plot-devices setting up subsequent events. 

As the trailer makes clear, Cruise’s character starts the day again, “Groundhog Day” style each time he dies. His role, for reasons which are made clear enough, is to get better and better at fighting the Mimics to help the Allied forces (yep, there are plenty of WWII parallels here, including a map with arrows that suggest a tipped hat to “Dad’s Army”). Along the way, he meets Rita Vrataski (played by a steely Emily Blunt) and teams up with her – harder than it sounds when he has to introduce himself to her (and everyone else) every time he dies.

The set-pieces that play out Cage’s daily rebirth are well-handled and I didn’t tire of the restarts at all. It could have been an arduous film if we’d seen too much, over and over. Or it could have been just confusing if we hadn’t seen enough. 

The entire supporting cast are great – everyone seems to ham it up a little, not least Bill Paxton as Sergeant Farrell. The mild overacting could be a curse, but it helps drive some minor characters forward in the face of spectacular special effects, A-list colleagues and a plot that calls on them to very deliberately repeat certain things in subtly different ways. 

Cage and Vrataski are helped in their quest to win the war by Dr Carter, played by Noah Taylor who is nearly great in the role. I don’t know if he was a good-but-not-great choice for the role or whether he was regrettably underused but there’s something excruciatingly minor missing from the Dr Carter character. Or maybe I was just expecting too much. Carter helps explain that there’s a central brain controlling the Mimics and it is this brain that must be destroyed. Of course Cage has to convince Carter of his “rebooting” each time. Trust me, it never gets tangled and you won’t get bored of it.

The resolution of the film is strange. Obviously I won’t give anything away, but I was surprised.

I watched this in 2D – it’s available in 3D too. I imagine some of the special effects would have looked cool in 3D, but since seeing “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” by Werner Herzog in 3D, I can’t imagine anything getting close. I enjoyed Edge of Tomorrow thoroughly in 2D.

See the trailer here:

Steve Fair - 2014

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Studio Ghibli is to Japan what Pixar is to the UK and the USA. In fact it’s bigger than that. In my opinion it’s better too. While I love the lush, textured look of the best CGI films (I’m not denying for a moment that Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, Up, Wall-E and a load of others aren’t amazing), seeing hand-drawn animation with beautiful, oil-painting backgrounds moving with gorgeous fluidity and grace is a pleasure. Whether watching Studio Ghibli’s films “dubbed” or “subbed” (most of the DVDs offer you dubbed versions, often with well-known “Western” actors, or subtitled (which is preferable if you value the original emotion and intonation of the words)), I’d be surprised if you don’t find yourself wondering just how many hours went into the production of these moving works of art. If the look wasn’t enough, the stories are always excellent, shying away from the usual nooks that cartoons inhabit. 

The “Spielberg” of Ghibli is Hayao Miyazaki who has recently retired, leaving his swansong, “The Wind Rises” largely ignored in the cinemas. Smart parents will let their kids enjoy Miyazaki’s films and decide for themselves whether Buzz Lightyear outranks Totoro (My Neighbour Totoro). Many Ghibli films deal with subjects that US studios avoid, such as death (Graveyard of the Fireflies). Some barely have a story – My Neighbour Totoro has no “bad guy”, no real jeopardy and no great moral. Yet kids and adults LOVE it. Try it for yourself. Bet you like it.

Princess Mononoke has a few threads to its story. Our “hero”, Ashitaka is cursed by a rampaging Boar-God (stick with me – the Japanese “gods” stuff provides for epic imagery, even to a noisy atheist like me) and ostracised by his community, left to search for a cure for his apparently incurable curse. Cutting off his top-knot, Ashitaka sets off alone. Soon, he finds himself embroiled in a battle between a human settlement who are using the forest’s resources to power their iron mining industry and the creatures of the forest, led by San, a warrior girl.

I won’t give away any more of the plot, other than to say you’ll see powerful gods, vengeful creatures, determined men and women of Tatara (the Iron Town) and skilled warriors weave a story that’ll engage from the start until the final seconds.

At times you’ll forget what artistry went into Princess Mononoke, such is the ease of absorption into the narrative. Then you’ll notice the sheer detail level drawn, frame-by-frame and for a moment it’s easy to understand why a 2D cartoon can pull you into a magical world so naturally. Hayao Miyazaki, the director, draws tens of thousands of the frames himself, working alongside the Studio Ghibli team whose work has influenced many many movie-makers

On the dubbed version you’ll be hard-pushed to recognise the voices of Billy Crudup, Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes, Jada Pinkett Smith, Gillian Anderson and others, but they’re there. Imagine a film with such an astronomical cast of stars being as under-known as this if it were a Disney cartoon.

See the trailer here:

By Steve Fair - 2014

Patton (1970)

George C Scott famously refused to attend the Academy Awards, saying that every great dramatic performance was unique and couldn’t be compared to another. To quote him later though, he went for the less measured, “The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don’t want any part of it”. His portrayal of General George S. Patton in this remarkable film is indeed hard to compare to other performances. The film’s seven Academy Awards tell us however that when a comparison was attempted, it was favourable. Very favourable.

Since Patton’s 1970 release, the opening monologue delivered in front of the stars and stripes, has been a defining moment in military film-making. More impactful than any amount of not being able to “handle the truth”, Scott delivers rhetoric designed to motivate his troops. He motivates us too, to discover who – what -  he is and how his plans and intentions will play out. Is he a madman? Or a single-minded military genius? Patton takes us through the career of George S. Patton, focusing on World War 2 and his campaigns that took on Rommel, the German army and sometimes his own superiors.

It’s said that half of the film’s budget was spent on buying former Spanish military vehicles. If that’s true, it shows. Real explosions, crashes and bombing raids seem to be in endless supply, adding a layer of grit and realism that CGI just can’t achieve yet. Watch as Patton directs two vehicular units through a muddy bottleneck – these are actual tanks and trucks struggling through thick mud. Look closely and you’ll see a soldier standing on the side of a vehicle narrowly avoid being crushed by a swinging tank turret. He breathes in and dodges it by centimetres. 

Patton is a perfectly-paced film. It never bores, but manages to impart detail levels that mean you feel involved and informed. There’s one transition that seemed odd, as Patton decides to go to Sicily. The sets involved are very similar and my wife and I turned to each other, saying ”Oh! He’s in Sicily now!”. A second viewing would remove this confusion but notably, it’s the only moment when I didn’t feel powerfully aware of the geography.

The film is based on the memoirs of General Omar N Bradley, who served alongside  General Patton. Bradley is superbly depicted by Karl Malden. In the film, they’re depicted as friends, though in reality the two didn’t get along. We are left to trust the representation of each of them as realistic and their dynamic is a believable one that regularly helps to drive the plot forward.

I’m no buff on the finer technical aspects of movie-making, but I can recognise great photography when it is as obvious as in Patton. Avoiding the usual military clichés, the visuals are stunningly shot. My LED TV made some of the blood look a little too red (I have my settings on the recommendations found on AV Forum to closely match the colour mix from the majority of movies), but it’s not something you’ll be distracted by. The battlefield shots are grand, yet compact (my mental image of huge battlefields is almost always too vast and the intimacy of infantry-based warfare was often played out in relatively small valleys, fields or of course, beaches), the action sequences suggest real jeopardy and the dialogue-heavy sections are involving and clear. 

The final third of the film slows a little as Patton’s fate unfolds before him but never bores, never becomes a slog. I often say that the greatest mob movie is “A Bronx Tale”, which contains far fewer mob scenes than “Goodfellas” or “The Godfather”, but which leaves the viewer more aware of the mob’s impact on the world around it. Patton isn’t anything like “The Dirty Dozen”, “Saving Private Ryan” or “Platoon” in that it is about one man’s effect on a war, and the war’s effect on him. To that end, it’s almost redundant to compare it (and the performances within) to anything you might imagine to be similar. Perhaps George was right.

See the trailer:

  

By Steve Fair, 2014