Across 2 Bear (Spider)

Spider-Verse 2: Spider-Verser is excellent and you should go and see it as soon as possible. I only have two quibbles:

The first film was impressive in part because there was nothing like it. You can't say that about the sequel because, well, the first one exists.

Still no recognition for Nicholas Hammond and Shinji Tōdō. Although to be fair, there are hundreds of Spider-Men in the film so they could be in there somewhere.

Wakanda Again

You know that thing where the most interesting Marvel films were framed as other genres that just happened to be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Winter Soldier was a 1970s conspiracy/spy -- conspyracy? conspiraspy? -- film... but in the MCU. Homecoming was a John Hughes teen comedy... but in the MCU.

Well, Black Panther 2 is an Oscar-tickling drama of family, grief, and loss... but in the MCU. It's an astonishing feat of balanced storytelling, weighty but without ever getting heavy-handed, informed by the death of Chadwick Boseman, but not milking that unfortunate event. But it is also, somehow, a big Marvel blockbuster, although that side does feel almost like an afterthought at times, which to be fair is not a bad thing.

It looks -- mostly -- amazing, it sounds spectacular, and the performances throughout are brilliant. It's not perfect -- there are a couple of elements that feel a bit undercooked, and I would not be at all surprised to see an extended cut appear, perhaps for the home release -- but it is very, very good. If you've been feeling Marvel Fatigue, this may well cure you.

I give it four Sub-Mariners out of five.

Marvellous Movies

My friend Phill has, over the past few weeks, watched almost every Marvel film, and has now ranked them. I'm not going to go into the same detail as he has, but I thought it would be worth a few minutes listing mine too.

I have arranged them into four fuzzy tiers of relative enjoyment. I'm only including the MCU stuff and I'm not including the TV shows, for reasons of general sanity.

Not Great
Eternals, Iron Man 2, Spider-Man: Far From Home.

Not Bad at All
Both Ant-Mans, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Black Panther (I may have to re-evaluate this one), Black Widow, Doctor Strange, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 3, Thors 1, 2, and 4.

Not Quite the Best
Marvel Avengers Assemble, Avengers: Endgame, Avengers: Infinity War, all three of the Captains America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Guardians of the Galaxy vol 2, Iron Man, Shang Chi, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Not Likely to be Bettered
Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (I'm counting it, even if Marvel and Sony won't for whatever reason), Thor: Ragnarok.

Stranger Days

I loved Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness! But then I've been a Sam Raimi fan since I was about 10, and the film is more or less Evil Dead 4 with a Marvel budget.

I found the first film interesting -- not least how it rejects the traditional hero origin narrative -- but I'm not sure I liked it. I very much liked the sequel. It rattles along at a great pace and it's full of fun ideas and bold action and wonderful imagery, leaning away from the almost mathsy weird geometry of the first film and more into liquid dreams and nightmares and horror, which is not surprising given the director. Sam Raimi was an excellent choice.

(Although I would love to see what Guillermo Del Toro would do with Strange; I suspect it would be even better.)

The big fan-pleasing moment in the middle is perhaps the least interesting part, which is a surprise. Still good, but overshadowed by the rest of the film.

It's not perfect. There are some generic cgi bad guys in the finale that look like they've wandered in from a PS3 game. There's also no real character development; America Chavez is introduced but never becomes anything more than a plot device, which is a shame. Strange sort of learns a lesson over the course of the story, but it's handwaved and feels disconnected from the rest of the narrative, suggesting it's a remnant of an earlier draft.

I've seen some comments that the film ruins Wanda and negates WandaVision, and while I see where that criticism comes from, I disagree. I think it follows on from WandaVision without contradiction, but I do think the film wastes the character a little. WandaVision suggested an interesting, and probably extended, story arc for Wanda, one I'd have expected to see developed over multiple films and TV programmes, and while it is sort of addressed in the film, it's almost as a throwaway thing, and it does feel like potential squandered.

All that said, there's nothing to say that the suggested arc couldn't be explored in future, and even if we don't get the Wanda I wanted to see, Elizabeth Olsen does a fantastic job with the Wanda we do get. She's more or less a co-protagonist -- and a very interesting one, but I won't say more for spoiler reasons -- to the point that much as I love the title, Doctor Strange and the Scarlet Witch would perhaps be more apt.

It's not as good as Thor 3 or the Guardians of the Galaxy films, but it's in the top tier of Marvel movies for me. I give it four Crimson Bands of Cyttorak out of five.

No Way, Jose

Spider-Man: No Way Home is great fun, surprisingly touching in places, and even a bit sad, but in a good way. It makes less and less sense the more you think about it, but gets by on momentum and a big heap of charm. It's probably the best of the MCU-Holland series, and overall is the fourth best Spider-Man film, but Into the Spider-Verse remains king of the arachnids.

Guarding the Galaxy Again

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is good. It's not so much a sequel but a companion piece so if you liked the first one you'll like this one, and if you thought the first one was lacking something then you may find it in this one.

Read on, safe from spoilers!

My only real criticism is that some of the character development is heavy handed. The intended theme seems to be that you don't always get on with those you love, and I could have got that on my own without it being stated in dialogue, let alone stated multiple times. There are a couple of occasions where characters drop everything to talk about their feelings and again while it's not bad as such, it is a bit clumsy.

(The film is quite sweary too, much more than I'd expect given its rating, and there are a couple of willy jokes. That's not a problem for me, but bear it in mind if you're going to take kids.)

Other than that, it's all gold. The central characters and their performances are as good as before, except this time Gamora gets something to do apart from looking pretty. Baby Groot is adorable, and Mantis even more so. Kurt Russell -- that's not a spoiler; he's in the very first shot -- is as wonderful as Kurt Russell always is, although I was disappointed that he didn't at any point wear an eye patch.

The plot isn't complex but there are enough moving parts to keep things interesting. There are multiple factions roaming about, getting in each other's way, and the main antagonist is compelling; they are not an outright villain, just someone who made the wrong choice in the past, and that gives them a bit of weight. It's one place where James Gunn doesn't stray into overwriting his characters' motivations; other writers -- (cough) George Lucas (cough) -- would have wrung every bit of melodrama out of the villain agonising over their choice, but Gunn just gets on with it, and it works well.

Just as the first film was, the second is funny, more overtly comedic than the rest of the Marvel oeuvre, and most of the jokes land. Drax and Mantis get most of the best lines, but there's also a nice extended routine about a character's name, and some good visual gags scattered through the film.

The film looks good, with bright, colourful, and varied visuals, maybe even more so than the first. Perhaps there are a few too many characters wearing some form of muted leather jacket but that aside it's never dull to look at. Music isn't used quite as well as in the first film, but there are a couple of superb sequences; the opening credits are joyous and if you don't break out into a big stupid grin during them, then you are dead inside. That bit is up there with The Lego Batman Movie and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in my book.

(I don't have a book.)

On the subject of credits, there are loads of mid-and-post-credits scenes in GotG2 so if you're into that sort of thing, stay right to the end. I'd say only one of them is "relevant" but they're all good fun.

I love the first GotG; it's a big, bold, colourful space adventure, a pitch perfect adaptation of a Saturday morning cartoon we never had. I didn't think they'd be able to capture that magic again so I was worried going into the cinema, but my worry was unfounded. The sometimes clumsy writing is a bit of a disappointment but otherwise Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is another triumph for Marvel.

If you do go and see it, please consider donating a little to help the creator of Rocket Raccoon pay for ongoing medical care.

Twice Avenged

The opening action sequence has some ropey, SyFy level, cgi. There are some clunky bits of plotting; Andy Serkis’ character sort of disappears, and a promising story thread about the Avengers being unpopular with the general population is brought up and then ignored. Most egregious of all is that there are a couple of big, central character developments that make sense but, if I’m being picky, haven’t been earned.

None of that matters because Avengers 2: Avenge Harder is a great film; better than the first one even, and I loved the first one.

Avengers: Age of Ultron opened about a week early in Britain for some reason so I've seen it twice before its US release and my secret masters at Psycho Drive In have sneaked my thoughts on the film out as an advance, spoiler-light, review. Read the rest of my nonsensical blathering here.

4-2

The best thing about the first Thor film was the relationship between Thor and Loki. Everyone knows now how good Tom Hiddleston was as the trickster god but I think Chris Hemsworth's performance in the lead role was rather overlooked; Thor's love for his brother and anguish over his betrayal seemed genuine and that was what made the emotional core of the film work for me. The rest of the film, all the fighting and the swooshy cosmic stuff and the shiny Asgard gubbins was all good, but it played second fiddle to the central family dynamic and the strong performances that made the characters seem real, despite being spangly space gods.

Thor: The Dark World is even better than the first film because that core relationship between Thor and Loki is still there and is still as convincing as before, but all the other bits and pieces are much improved. For some reason -- probably the UK filming, if I'm honest, as it's been a long time since we were the first choice location for blockbuster movies -- I was concerned that this movie would seem cheap in comparison to Marvel Avengers Assemble An Unecessarily Long Title For No Explicable Reason or the first Thor but the new film looks spectacular. Everything looks bigger, better, more colourful and more, er, well it's difficult to explain. Thor 2: Thor Harder doesn't look like Jack Kirby's Thor or Walt Simonson's Thor, but it has that same sort of feel to it, of wild invention and big ideas thrown at the screen; it's the best bits of Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Hellboy 2 shoved in a blender and made into a delicious visual smoothie. Some boring old fuddie-duddies might quibble over the scifi dark elves and how they're not much like Simonson's but I rather liked them with their funky cloaked B-Wings, Krull-esque laser guns, and impassive porcelain masks.

The Jane Foster Gang is as fluffy and unimportant as it was the first time around but the light comedy moments the group of dysfunctional scientists provide are a good contrast to the more earnest Asgardian drama elsewhere; sometimes that contrast is a bit jarring but it's a film about a big space Viking hitting cyber-elves in the face with a magic hammer so I can forgive some inconsistency in tone and it's easier to forgive when the jokes are in fact funny. I was a bit disappointed that early hints of an impending confrontation between Jane and Sif fizzle away to nothing, and despite some initial promise, Christopher Eccleston is little more than a bloke in a rubber suit for most of the film; it's so disheartening to see him being mediocre in all these post-Doctor Who genre productions when he was so good as the Doctor.

Anyway, weak villain aside, Thor II: The Final Thursday is not only much better than I thought it would be, but is quite a bit better than the first film too. I wasn't grinning like an idiot or jumping in my chair like I was while watching Whatever The Avengers Film Is Called This Week but I was not only entertained but often impressed. I give the film four lightning-licked Mjolnirs out of five.

Beautiful Destruction

I have been excited about seeing Pacific Rim since it was first announced, and after what has seemed like an endless wait I saw it yesterday.

The short review is that I loved it and it lived up to almost all of my high and unreasonable expectations. It is probably going to bomb at the box office and that's an injustice so I recommend that you go and see it.

It's not a perfect film -- this is the longer review now, by the way -- but my quibbles were few. The lead actors are a bit flat; they often are in action films but in Pacific Rim it's exacerbated by a bunch of supporting actors who have far more charisma. It's no accident that they put Idris Elba in the trailers.

I was also a bit disappointed that the climax of the film is almost identical to that of one of the biggest titles of last year. Pacific Rim has been in production for so long that the similarity was perhaps unavoidable, and it's not a bad climax, but it is a bit of a shame as the comparisons probably won't be in the newer film's favour.

That's it for the things I didn't like, and one of them isn't really a problem with the film itself.

Pacific Rim's greatest strength -- and alas, I think the source of most of the complaints from other reviewers -- is that it is not pretentious. The trailers promised giant robots punching giant monsters and that's just what the film delivers. It would be easy to get this wrong -- the recent Transformers films are an excellent example -- but Guillermo Del Toro and his team work hard to make this the best robots-punching-monsters film they can.

The characters are simple, yes, but they are believable, as a result of good use of archetypes. The awkward English scientist, the brash Australian, and the dour Russians are all action movie clichés but that's all they need to be to make the story work. You could add a bunch of wrinkles to them but they'd be just as unnecessary as they would have been in Aliens and if you're going to argue that Aliens is a bad action film then you're some kind of dangerous lunatic.

That said, a good action movie gets away with thin characterisation because the action sequences carry the film and that's true of Pacific Rim. Del Toro has always had a good eye for a combat sequence -- Blade II may have had its problems but the fights were spectacular -- and he brings that approach to the all important monster-punching bits, with excellent choreography and pacing; every fight has a twist or revelation that gives it a bit of a kick and transforms -- pun intended -- the battle. There were a handful of moments where I wanted to cheer at the audacity of what was happening on screen.

Also important is a sense of scale, something that both Cloverfield and the American Godzilla fumbled and Pacific Rim gets spot on. I have heard that the 3D version mucks this up, in effect growing the viewer to the size of the monsters and robots and robbing the film of some of its more striking visuals. I saw it in the more sensible format -- as Del Toro intended -- and it was gorgeous; the Hong Kong sequence is a particular highlight, all neon and lashing rain and titans battling in the middle of it all. There's an odd sort of elegance to the film, a sense of beautiful destruction.

The design work is excellent. The artists have taken a simple approach, resulting in clear, almost iconic shapes; each monster and robot has a clean and distinctive silhouette and I could draw a reasonable likeness of the larger members of the Pacific Rim cast from memory right now but I'd struggle to do the same with the spiky jumbles of the Transformers films, and those are characters I've been following for decades. I suppose one positive aspect of the film's potential failure is that the action figures will soon be heading for the clearance shelves and I can pick them all up for half price.

There have been some indifferent and even negative reviews of the film but I think those reviewers are perhaps looking for too much. Right from the start Pacific Rim set out what it was going to be about and more than lives up to that initial promise. It's a very honest film and I don't think it's been given enough credit for that honesty. Of course it's okay to want more from one's entertainment -- I have often been a critic of products that play it safe and in its own way the film does push boundaries, at least in the sense that no one in the West has made a film like it before -- but there's also something to be said for unpretentious quality and Pacific Rim has heaps of that. You might pooh-pooh the broad idea of a giant monster movie but you can't say that Pacific Rim isn't an excellent example of the genre.

Also, Kanye West liked it and if that's not a recommendation, I don't know what is.

(2022: Crikey, the Kanye West thing didn't age well, did it? I still like Pacific Rim, whatever the racist says.)

Quickie Film Reviews: Dragon Wars (2007)

Godzilla plus Dragonball Z plus Lord of the Rings plus the crappy Transformers, not as good as the first three but better than the latter.

Quickie Film Reviews: Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)

Someone should really stop Damon Lindelof from ruining promising films with his cack-handed scripts.

Wrecked Ambition

I saw Wreck-It Ralph last week. It has its strengths; the subplot involving the old-fashioned Fix-It Felix Jr. and the Gears of War-esque Sergeant Calhoun benefits from strong writing -- Calhoun's nigh-nonsensical nuggets of tough-guy wisdom are brilliant, reminiscent of The Tick in places -- and good performances from Jane Lynch and Jack McBrayer. It's so well done that it threatens on more than one occasion to overwhelm the main storyline, a bog-standard Disney bit of fluff about acceptance and being true to oneself.

The biggest problem with the film is its chronic lack of ambition in terms of visuals and design. The civilians -- non-player characters? -- of Ralph's world have the limited animation and movement of 8-bit sprites, as is appropriate, except they're not sprites. They're smooth, generic cgi, just like every other character in the film and every other character in every other post-Toy Story animated feature. It's a shame because the animators show -- with little touches like the way those NPCs move, or the pixellated blobs of cake icing splattered across the walls after one of Ralph's rampages -- that they've got some sense of how to make the visuals memorable, but they never quite get there. There's even a joke at one point -- in which Felix compliments Calhoun on her high-resolution curves -- that falls flat because Felix himself is rendered in high-resolution cgi. It's so disappointing.

I suppose it's easier, quicker and cheaper to produce animation in such a way, but when there's stuff like Paperman out there turning heads and winning awards based in no small part on its unique look, Wreck-It Ralph looks even more bland in comparison. As such, sticking the aforementioned short at the beginning of the film was probably not the cleverest thing Disney could have done.

Quickie Film Reviews: Ponyo (2008)

Splash meets The Fifth Element, with a little bit of Coccoon. Beautiful -- and defiantly non-3D non-CGI -- animation, and perhaps the most pleasant post-apocalyptic film I've ever seen.

Quickie Film Reviews: Red Cliff (2008)

John Woo finally remembers how to make a decent film, in doing so upstaging Peter Jackson's The Two Towers and The Return of the King, but also remembering to include the requisite fight-while-holding-a-baby, Mexican standoff, and unnecessary flurry of white doves.

Death Note (2006)

Despite its popularity, I have never been tempted by the manga Death Note and its many spinoffs and adaptations; it seemed to be all goths and pretty boys, exactly the kind of manga I cannot get into. Lovefilm delivered the 2006 live action adaptation the other day, and I don't know how close it is to the source material, but it's really quite good.

Genius law student Light Yagami becomes disenchanted with the justice system when he discovers that many of the worst criminals get away with their crimes either through various technicalities, or a lack of confidence and courage from their accusers. It is then that he meets Ryuk, a god of death, who gives him the Death Note, a book with prophetic abilities; if a name is written in the book, then that person will die in whichever method is detailed by the writer, or a heart attack if left unspecified. Light sees this as an opportunity to restore justice to the world and sets about doing away with criminals. The police suspect that the deaths are no coincidence but can find no connection, so turn to another genius, L, so reclusive that he speaks to them through a laptop, his image hidden and his voice disguised. The bulk of the film details the battle between Light and L as they attempt to outmanoeuvre each other.

It's something of a cross between The Silence of the Lambs and that rash of US oddball-genius-solves-crimes shows, and on that level it's more than satisfying, with plenty of fun crunchy bits as we see the pair's plans to defeat each other play out step by step. That said, what impressed me most about the film, and where it has a surprising depth, is in the moral questions it asks.

It starts out as a bog-standard musing on vigilantism and the limits of the justice system, but as the story goes on, it gets more complicated as a result of how the characters develop. Light comes across as a cocky little git right from the start, although it's clear that he cares about people, and it's this combination that leads to his use of the Death Note; that would be enough characterisation for many scriptwriters, but they go further in this film -- I can't go into any details for fear of spoiling it -- and by the end, it asks the viewer some tough questions about their view of the protagonist.

This is all mirrored and somewhat inverted in secondary protagonist L; he's as clever as Light, but sees the investigation as a game to be won or a puzzle to be solved, and the larger question of right and wrong seems to be irrelevant to him. He also seems arrogant but it's less a sense of superiority and more like a detached distance, as he sees only patterns and numbers; he is quite happy to risk and even sacrifice people to draw out his quarry, again forcing the viewer to ask who they're rooting for in this tussle, and why.

For its part, Death Note doesn't provide answers. It presents two characters, each with merits and flaws and each tied into a number of difficult moral quandaries, and then rolls the credits. Like Princess Mononoke's intelligent examination of environmental issues, the film says that there are no easy answers, that life is too complicated, full of compromise and synthesis, and leaves the viewer to figure it all out. It's one of the most subtle, clever and philosophical films I've seen in a long time.

As such, one would think that Ryuk, larking about Light like a Sisters of Mercy version of Roger Rabbit, would spoil the whole thing, but the irony is that this black-clad god of death lends a light-hearted edge to the film. He hangs around as a buddy of sorts to Light, watching TV in his room and eating the family out of apples, and I have to admit that the character design is quite good. The cgi used to realise the character is a bit rough around the edges at times, but he's not in the film enough for it to be a major issue. His inclusion doesn't make the story any less grim or rob it of its depth, but it does rescue it from any possible danger of devolving into navel-gazing self-importance.

Death Note itself is only the first half of the story; a second film was released the same year, and that has now been pushed to the top of my rental list. We'll see how it compares.

Quickie Film Reviews: Night of the Comet (1984)

It's The Omega Man meets Clueless and it's very, very 80's. It's not as good as I remember it being when I was a child, but it's much better than it should be.

Quickie Film Reviews: Franklyn (2008)

Love Actually + The Matrix + steampunk = Why didn't more people see this film?

Quickie Film Reviews: The Black Swan (1942)

A bit slow to properly buckle the swash, but it has good performances, a great script, and a big fat Welshman who says "look you" a lot, none of which feature in the 2010 film of a similar name.

Quickie Film Reviews: Black Swan (2010)

Darren Aronofsky's Teen Wolf remake lacks the subtlety of the original.

Quickie Film Reviews: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)