Tag: 2014

Heavenly Sword

  By

★★
“Not even deserving a console-ation prize.”

heavenlyswordI wasn’t aware this was based on a video-game, until I started watching it and saw a Sony Playstation credit. In fact, I wasn’t particularly aware that it was animated. Neither would necessarily have made much difference, I guess, but forewarned is forearmed. Maybe knowing the game would make this better? Or maybe not, since that wouldn’t address either of the two main problems here: a storyline crafted entirely from bad pulp fantasy, and animation that works very nicely for action scenes, but is useless at portraying any kind of emotion. To start with the former, there’s a drinking game to be played here: take a swig every time a clichéd story element shows up. On second thoughts, I like my readers unencumbered by alcohol poisoning.

There’s an all-powerful sword, which is guarded by a tribe. Evil king Bohan (Molina) wants the sword, because it, in the hands of the ‘Chosen One’, is prophesied to be the only thing that can destroy him. He attacks the tribe, scattering them to the winds: Noriko (Torv) is given the task of protecting the sword, and bringing it to her half-brother, Loki (Jane) who is the intended bearer. Except, of course, he isn’t where he’s supposed to be, having left his village to become – oh, the irony – a blacksmith in the massive fortress complex belonging to Bohan. So, Noriko, along with sister Kai (Ball), who refers to herself in an irritating third-person way like Gollum with cat-ears, have to head into the heart of enemy territory, with Bohan in hot lukewarm pursuit. However, the ‘Chosen One’ turns out not to be who we’ve been told at all.

This is my unsurprised face.

I don’t like the CGI style here: for too much of the time, this like watching a cut scene from a video game. There are occasional interludes of more-traditional animation and this works rather better: I’d prefer to have seen the whole thing done that way, to be honest. However, I will admit that, when in motion, the flaws are much less obvious, and the final battle, pitting Noriko against an army is impressive; it’s actually credible that she could kick their ass, more or less by herself. The ending does go in a different direction from what was expected, and has a certain poignancy, albeit spoiled by an unnecessary sequel-generating scene during the end titles. Torv and the other voice actors do what they can, but that isn’t much, given their characters’ faces express about as much emotion as an anaesthetized Shaolin monk. The late Roger Ebert once famously said that video games “can never be art.” While I disagree with him, for a number of reasons not relevant here, watching this, I can kinda see from where he was coming.

Dir: Gun Ho Jang
Star (voice): Anna Torv, Alfred Molina, Ashleigh Ball, Thomas Jane

Everly

  By

★★★½
“In which Salma Hayek suffers from an apartment complex.”

everly6Not sure how this managed to escape attention in our 2015 preview, because it’s hard to think of a film more directly positioned in our wheel-house. This unfolds entirely in a single building, close to real time, the vast majority of it (as with 2LDK) in one apartment, where Everly (Hayek) has just been outed as betraying her boss, a ferociously vicious Japanese mobster called Taiko (Watanabe). Desperately, she calls her mother (Cepeda), begging her to take Everly’s daughter out of town, but when that route is closed, they’re forced to hide out with Everly in the apartment. It’s not much safer, for Taiko has offered a bounty to anyone in the building willing to take down his turncoat – and also some increasingly-deranged professionals. Meanwhile, we also find out more about Everly’s history, which includes four years trapped in the apartment building as a sex slave for Taiko and his cronies.

Lynch has described this as Die Hard in a room, with Hayek instead of Bruce Willis. Despite sharing a similarly “ironic” Christmas setting, it isn’t: Lynch may wish it were, but the pacing is nowhere near perfect, the script isn’t as engaging, and whatever Watanabe’s qualities are, he’s no Alan Rickman. Not to say that it’s a bad film at all, especially considering this wasn’t originally supposed to star Hayek. Back in February 2012, Kate Hudson was announced as headlining the cast, before being replaced 15 months later by Salma Hayek. One can only wonder what difference that might have made, because her replacement certainly takes the role and owns it. [Side note: she’s only a couple of months younger than me. Damn…] It’s also gleefully and gloriously R-rated, not skimping on the bad language or hyperviolence, resulting in a comic-book feel which works nicely.

However, this leads to problems with the script, right from the opening sequence in which an apparently untrained Everly takes out, with unerring accuracy, an entire room of gangsters. Given her supposed prisoner-like status, it also proves remarkably easy for her mother and daughter to join her, basically swanning into the building on the pretext of visiting someone on another floor. And, to be honest, some of those who lay siege to our heroine aren’t as amusing as Lynch and scripter Yale Hannon seem to think, with the Sadist (Igawa) in particular overstaying his welcome. On the other hand, the lack of any romantic interest is refreshing: the only vaguely sympathetic male character is a Japanese man, and he spends his entire screen-time bleeding out on the sofa. It probably needs to be more unrelenting and with a better sense of escalation: as is, the film peaks in its opening 10 minutes, when it seems killers are popping out from everywhere. However, it’s been a while since we’ve seen Hayek in an action role: between this and Bandidas, she has done a good enough job, it’s something I wish we got to enjoy more often.

Dir: Joe Lynch
Star: Salma Hayek, Hiroyuki Watanabe, Laura Cepeda, Togo Igawa

The Huntresses

  By

★★★
“Charlie’s Korean, Medieval Angels”

During the Joseon era in Korea, a trio of bounty hunters, Jin-Ok (Ha Ji-Won), Hong-Dan (Gang Ye-Won) and Ga-Bi (Son Ga-In), work with their agent, Moo-Myung (Ko Chang-Seok), capturing wanted bandits. But they get a different task, after a King’s envoy carrying an encoded message is the latest courier to go missing, and are charged with bringing him in. Needless to say, it’s not a simple task, and they find themselves facing a host of players opposed to the King receiving the message, which would threaten the fragile relationship with the Chinese emperor. But there’s also a personal angle, as Jin-Ok finds herself face-to-face with the man she remembers as having killed her father.

Huntresses-Poster-5Huntresses-Poster-1Huntresses-Poster-4

Early on, it becomes abundantly clear that this is not intended to be taken entirely seriously, probably from the time one of the heroines whips out her yo-yo, and takes out an entire platoon of enemies, Sukeban Deka style. Indeed, it’s probably the comedic elements that work best, such as the constable who follows him around, convinced his camo skills will stop him being seen – in a rarity for the humour often seen in Eastern films, it’s a joke which could have been used more, rather than being driven into the ground as normal. However, it feels that this lack of seriousness was taken by the makers as a reason to slap together the story, which lurches from set-piece to set-piece without any sense of logic or narrative flow – and don’t even get me started on the whole “dramatic amnesia” suffered by Jin-Ok.

It’s also fairly obvious the actresses aren’t doing very much of their own action, putting them behind Drew Barrymore et al, and in another galaxy, far, far away, from the participants in another cinematic cousin, The Heroic Trio. Ha probably comes off the best of the three, but there’s an awful lot of scenes which consist largely of close-ups of the actresses flailing wildly, intercut with wide shots from behind of someone competent. However, it still passes the time easily, particularly after all the parties involved end up in the port city of Byeokrando – or, at least, a convincing CGI imitation thereof. This allows plenty of scope for some impressive bits of combat, regardless of who’s actually doing them, as well as exploding pagodas, and other chunks of mass destruction. It also helps that the performances are solid from just about everyone concerned, which shores up the flimsy constructs of the storyline.  I’m informed that the Korean title translates as “Three Beautiful Musketeers of Joseon,” and that’s probably an accurate an overall summary as the preceding 400 words.

Dir: Park Je-Hyun
Star: Ha Ji-Won, Gang Ye-Won, Son Ga-In, Ko Chang-Seok

Miss Meadows

  By

★★★
“There are bad people in the world and they shouldn’t be around the good people, especially the little ones,”

miss meadowsA young woman is walking down the street. A truck pulls up alongside her, and the driver starts talking to her, at first nicely, but gradually more crudely. When she spurns his advances, he pulls a gun. However, the woman pulls her own weapon from her handbag and shoots him dead. Welcome to the world of Miss Meadows (Holmes), where bad behaviour is countered with lethal force. It’s an offshoot of the “urban vigilante” film, where someone goes off the rails in response to rudeness and the perceived failures of modern culture, rather than a direct threat. Falling Down was perhaps the first example, also seen in Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America. Both those were rather more acerbic than this, gynocentric entry, which perhaps has more in common with John Waters’ Serial Mom. At one point, a cop calls Miss Meadows a “Pulp Fiction Mary Poppins,” and that’s a fairly accurate high-concept here.

She’s a somewhat nomadic first-grade substitute teacher, with a past which clearly contained a defining trauma, who has long phone calls with her mother (Smart), and seeks to protect her local community from an influx of criminal elements. But when she meets and falls for a cop (Dale), who gradually realizes the woman he’s seeing may also be the killer his colleagues are hunting. And he’s not the only person who discovers the secret behind her facade. Meadows is an wonderful and engaging concoction, a throwback to an earlier era of politeness and courtesy, and its that contrast to her ruthless approach, tap-dancing her way to mass murder, that drives the film. It’s not entirely successful; the storyline, overall, relies too much on good fortune and convenience [every fast-food restaurant I’ve been in has surveillance cameras; the one here, not so much], and also tends to the obvious – a priest who molests children, there’s a shocker. It would make for a far ‘edgier’ film, if there was more grey involved in her targets, even at the risk of losing some of the audience. Killing paedophiles and murderers is an easy option, weakening the moral dilemma posed here.

But I thoroughly enjoyed Holmes’s performance; I hadn’t seen her in anything since Thank You for Smoking, back in 2005, before she became most famous for being Mrs. Tom Cruise. She takes a character that possesses two distinct, largely-opposing aspects, and nails it: Miss Meadows is, at once, charming and, clearly, barking mad, with a grip on reality that, we discover, may be a great deal looser than it initially appears. Concentrating more on these psychological aspects – perhaps instead of the rather implausible romantic angle – might have boosted this film out of the “quirkily forgettable” niche into which it is instead dropped.

Dir: Karen Leigh Hopkins
Star: Katie Holmes, James Badge Dale, Callan Mulvey, Jean Smart

Maleficent

  By

★★★★
“Maleficent Bastard.”

kinopoisk.ruThis idea seems insane on the surface: take one of the classic villainesses of all-time, and tell the story from her point of view? How could that possibly work? But then, you think about it a bit, and the possibilities become apparent – not just in the fairytale arena, but in others as well. What about a Bond movie from the perspective of Goldfinger? A horror movie through Freddy Krueger’s eyes? One of the first things you realize, is that casting is particularly key: here, you need to have a lead who can take a character that has been universally loathed by generations, to the point where it’s in our cultural DNA, and turn it around, to become the sympathetic focus. The other essential aspect is the motivation: what happened to make them the way they are, and justify their subsequent “evil” actions? You have to bring the audience along on that character’s journey – and, bear in mind, this is a Disney film, so the scope for any kind of explicit content is close to nil. Yeah, we were right the first time, there’s no way this will ever succe…

What? Angelina Jolie as Maleficent? Suddenly, the idea doesn’t just make sense, it became more a case of, why did nobody think of this before? Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something’s going to happen. She doesn’t even necessarily have to do much: there’s a relatively early scene, where she’s walking across the countryside, and behind her, stone fences are being shredded, as if by an unseen tornado. That, combined with Jolie’s expression, playing out on a face whose cheekbones could cut glass,  completely sells the premise of what follows. Though we can’t shortchange Linda Woolverton’s screenplay which, as mentioned above, is a crucial component. The torment through which the heroine goes, is about as thinly disguised a date-rape metaphor as you’ll ever see in a Disney film, and works impeccably.

The set-up has two kingdoms, a human and a fairy one, living in… Well, I wouldn’t say peace, but cordial disdain is perhaps close to it. This lasts until the monarch of the former, King Henry, casts envious eyes over his neighbour, only for his invasion attempt to be humiliatingly destroyed by its queen, Maleficent (Jolie) and her fey army. He promises his daughter’s hand to anyone who kills the queen, and this opens the door for Stefan (Copley), who had been a friend of Maleficent’s growing up. Their friendship blossomed into more during their teenage years before they drifted apart. However, his ambition overwhelms his friendship; he drugs Maleficent, cuts her wings off using iron (poisonous to fairy folk), and uses this as proof to secure his position as heir. The queen throws up an enchanted forest between the two kingdoms, but doesn’t forget the wrong done to her, and when King Stefan has a baby daughter… Well, you know how Sleeping Beauty goes from there, I trust.

maleficentiExcept, there’s one very significant twist. Chris and I took a pie break an hour in, and she complained the film’s direction was “obvious.” Yes… and no. It was clearly pointing in the Prince Charming and happy ever after directions, but I’m delighted to report this is then subverted into something entirely different, and which packs a much greater emotional wallop. There was sniffling coming from beside me on the couch before the end, let’s just leave it at that. If there’s a Disney moral to be found in the (mostly awesome) ending, it’s perhaps not just the value of forgiveness over revenge, but that when someone offers you the former, it’s often wisest just to take it. Oh, and another important lesson: if you go plummeting off battlements with a creature that has wings and can fly, there’s really only going to be one loser in that scenario.

While Jolie and the story are uniformly excellent, that’s not to say the film is without problems. First-time director Stromberg is better known as an art director, and this is painfully apparent whenever the heroine isn’t on screen. The lengthy sequence where Princess Aurora (Fanning) is growing up in seclusion, tended to by a trio of fairy godmothers, Bibbety, Bobbity and Boo – okay, I made that last bit up – is, frankly, dull. Aurora herself is such a cloying goody two-shoes, she makes the original animated version of Maleficent seem like a paragon of subtlety and depth. and the fairoic trio are about the most grating efforts at comic relief I’ve seen since the last Adam Sandler movie. I was also not very impressed with some of the creations in fairyland. More than one of these second-rate CGI creations, look like they were designed to shift merchandise rather than serve any genuine purpose for a mature audience: think along the lines of Jar-Jar Binks with wings.

These are issues which would probably sink many a lesser movie, but Jolie and the story are strong enough to keep you engrossed, through to a spectacular, dragon-infused finale which the last part of The Hobbit will have to go some to beat. It’s easy to understand why this is, at time of writing, the third-biggest worldwide film of 2014. Depending on how Mockingjay Part 1 goes, it could remain the biggest action-heroine movie of the year, which would be an amazing feat, given muted prerelease expectations of around $150m domestic (it took 60% more). Regardless, Maleficent certainly cements Jolie’s role as the reigning queen of our genre, from Tomb Raider through Mr + Mrs Smith to Salt and on to this. If the reports of her retirement from acting, to concentrate on directing and writing instead, prove to be true, Jennifer Lawrence, Eva Green or anyone else will find it very difficult to fill the abandoned pair of glass slippers.

Whoops, wrong fairy-tale. :)

Dir: Robert Stromberg
Star: Angelina Jolie, Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley

"Virtually from the first photos of Jolie in her uber-goth get-up, it was clearly perfect casting: Jolie was Maleficent and Maleficent could have been no-one else. That extends through the finished product: whenever Jolie is on screen, the film ramps up at least another gear, if not two, because you know something's going to happen."
maleficentr
maleficentq
maleficentp
maleficento
maleficentn
maleficentl
maleficentk
maleficentj
maleficenti
maleficenth
maleficentg
maleficentf
maleficente
maleficentd
maleficentc
maleficentb
maleficenta

Kite (live action)

  By

★★
“A two-dimensional adaptation of two-dimensional animation”

kite_ver3_xlgLoosely based on the notorious anime, this relocates things to South Africa, after a financial crash has turned everything into a giant slum, and human trafficking gangs operate with impunity. Sawa (Eisley) is on a mission, searching for the Emir, the leaders of one such network, whom she blames for the death of both her mother and policeman father. She’s helped, as she works her way up the chain of command, by her father’s colleague, Karl Aker (Jackson). He provides her with some literally whizz-bang equipment, in the form of bullets that explode a few seconds after they’ve embedded themselves in you, and also keeps her dosed with “Amp”, a drug that lets her forget all her killing, but at the cost, eventually, of also making her forget the parents for whom she is seeking revenge.  Throwing another spanner in the works is Oburi (McAuliffe), a young man Sawa encounters, who seems to want to help her, yet also knows more about her parents’ deaths than he initially lets on.

One wonders if this might have been better served under original director, David R. Ellis, who died in South Africa during pre-production – this would have re-united him with Jackson, since Ellis also directed Snakes on a Plane. Certainly, Jackson seems to be phoning his performance in – though better that, I suppose, than the yelling which characterizes many of his recent roles, and it’s still above the 100% forgettable McAuliffe. Ziman’s pedigree is… Well, almost non-existent, with Gangster’s Paradise: Jerusalema his sole directing credit in the dozen years before Kite. This feels largely like someone tried to make a Hit-Girl movie, but based on third-hand descriptions of the character. Though Christopher Tookey, the now-unemployed (hoorah!) critic who whined about Kick-Ass fetishizing paedophilia, would have had his head explode during the scene where Eisley (19 during filming, but playing way younger) grinds in her underwear on top of a middle-aged man. Watching it uncomfortably, I kept expecting Chris Hansen to come out of my kitchen and say, “Why don’t you have a seat over here?”

There are some moments of visual style, with good use of aerial cameras, and the action is decent to solid, being well-constructed and executed. If you’ve seen the clips we have previously posted, then you’ll understand why they chose to feature them, because it’s the stuff between the action which is the problem here. You’re always skating on thin ice when you’re using amnesia as a key plot point in your movie, especially when it’s the particularly cinematic form seen in this case, where memory inevitably returns at the most dramatically convenient moments. It has to be that way, because if Sawa remembered at any other time, the entire story would collapse in on itself, long before you reach the “surprise” revelation, which will still come as a shock to absolutely no-one. Eisley, whom you may recognize from Underworld: Awakening, does okay, but compared to, say, Chloe Moretz, makes almost no impression at all. Much the same is true of the film as a whole.

Dir: Ralph Ziman
Star: India Eisley, Samuel L. Jackson, Callan McAuliffe, Carl Beukes

KITE-6