THE AMERICAN

Directed by Anton Corbijn (who made the excellent Joy Division biopic Control) and starring George Clooney. The American is a very slow burn take on a conventional assassin-tries-to-leave-life-of-crime-behind movie.

It’s a slow, tense and arresting movie. After a stunning opening sequence, from which you feel like almost ANYTHING could happen, we follow Clooney’s ‘American’ into hiding in a small Italian town. The slowness of the film works very nicely from here on in, ratcheting up and grinding out the tension toward the movie’s inevitable finale.

In parts it is reminiscent of The Day of the Jackal, as Jack/Edward (Clooney) slowly constructs and tests the weapon he is building. His assassin’s life is one of meticulous solitude, and Corbijn makes the construction of this fearsome bespoke weapon look like beautiful craftsmanship in the hands of a master artisan.

Clooney’s character is a total blank. By the end of the movie we know virtually nothing more about him than we did at the start, other than a few (mostly implied) base facts. We learn early on that he is a solitary man, who will make the necessary hard decisions in order to keep things that way. However as he whiles away the days in the sleepy Italian town, his final job seeing him fashion a weapon in isolated seclusion, against his better judgement he finds himself with not only a friend, in the shape of the portly local priest; but also a super hot Italian sexpot girlfriend (Violante Placido) who lives her life with a typically Euro ‘clothes optional’ outlook.

Anton Corbijn has, unsurprisingly, a great eye for the visual. Whether the camera is lingering on Clooney’s impressive exercise regimen, peering through a car windshield at a motorway tunnel for a striking credit sequence, or taking in a bird’s eye view of the stunning Italian landscapes - like a feature film version of the ‘Earth From Above’ book –  the film is quite often fantastic to look at. If the story itself is perhaps a tad generic – hitman trying to leave ‘the life’ – then it is done with a panache that renders any genre staples as merely minor concerns.

Some berk in the cinema loudly denounced it as ‘shit’ the minute the credits rolled, but the more I think back on this movie, the more I like it. It’s almost like an art house action movie! For all of it’s slow pace, the attention never wanders, and at the end of it we are left with an enigmatic, stylish take on the hit man movie.

IMDB: The American

SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD

Let us be clear from the start. George A. Romero can rightfully lay claim to the status of ‘legendary’. His peerless, stunning, horror-classic triple whammy of Night Of The Living Dead, Dawn Of The Dead and Day Of The Dead have him rightfully revered across the globe. Those films are every bit as good as their reputation would have you believe and he should rake in the plaudits for the rest of his natural life and beyond.

Something, however, is rotten in Denmark.  Land Of The Dead was a towering disappointment. Diary Of The Dead was one of the most turgid pieces of crapulence I’ve ever had the misfortune to suffer through, and now here we have Survival Of The Dead, which I am sorry to say continues Mr Romero on his downward trajectory.

A gang of faux military survivors find themselves headed toward an island in order to take refuge from the zombie hordes. The island is essentially controlled by two feuding family men and the survivors find themselves caught up in the middle of it all.

At times Survival Of The Dead dared to suggest it might end up being halfway decent. Unfortunately it got quickly bogged down in a mess of appalling stereotypes, shit C.G.I., lame 'big noise scares' (come on George you're better than that), and a totally dumbfuck plot. The lowest ebb occurs when you think a main character has been killed, only to discover that they have, I shit you not, an identical twin!!!!

On the plus side it wasn't as bad as Diary of the Dead, but then neither are 99.9% of all the films ever made in the history of the Universe.

I really don’t know what to make of Mr George A. Romero these days. I had compared his recent career to George Lucas, and his own one man mission to destroy every bit of goodwill that people still harbour for him. But at least George Romero isn’t going back and tinkering with his own movies, or kicking a fond childhood memory square in the ballbag. So comparisons to the devil George Lucas are still a ways off. George Romero is still at least TRYING to recapture what made him great in the first place. And I appreciate that, I really do. At the risk of mixing my metaphors, if George Lucas is the Emperor, then George A. Romero is Darth Vader – I sense there is still good left in him.

Nevertheless Romero does seem to be following the ‘John Carpenter 2 Point Career Progression Plan’:

1) Make stunning, genre defining films of complete unparalleled awesomeness.
2) Suddenly and without warning, go completely shit.

It may be best for all concerned if Mr George A. Romero were to drift gracefully into retirement. He doesn’t have to get a ‘real job’. No one wants that. But based on his early works, here is a man who should never have to buy another drink or steak dinner for the rest of his life. Combine that with a couple of conventions a year and he’d be all set.

It must be noted that Survival Of The Dead is at least watchable, which is more than can be said for Diary Of The Dead, but when you compare it to Romero’s back catalogue it’s just not cutting the mustard.

IMDB: Survival Of The Dead

REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

To sum it up this film is one long, 2 hour-odd shouty argument, made to feel as if it lasts for about 15 billion years! Two married arseholes, hector back and forth at each other about their first world problems until you just can't take any more of it. It's full of 'emoting' and the sort of bellowed monologue that is like catnip to the serious actor. No doubt when the script came through both Winslet and DiCaprio probably thought it had 'Oscar' written through it like a stick of rock. Unfortunately the dialogue is the kind of preachy eulogising that nobody in reality actually ever speaks like, and whilst I concede the time period was far more rigid regarding the roles of men and women in society, with two central characters who care nothing for each other, it begs the question of why the fuck should the audience? Tedious.

IMDB: Revolutionary Road

SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD

Based on a comic book series which uncharacteristically, I have NOT read, Edgar Wright’s third movie is the simple story of the titular Mr Pilgrim – local indie band member, ringer-T wearing, fluffy hairdo’ed hipster – who must defeat the 7 Evil Exes of his current squeeze, Ramona Flowers, if he wants to continue to woo her.

Going into this movie, I was indeed wondering if Edgar Wright could work outside of his comfort zone of a Pegg/Frost comedy vehicle? And the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is HUGELY enjoyable. It rolls more like a video game than a comic book movie, with defeated villains that turn into coins, power up’s and end of level bosses. It’s wildly imaginative and wrings every ounce of inspiration into what essentially boils down to a series of fights between Michael Cera and his various nemeses.

Displaying the usual Edgar Wright jump cut flourishes, but acknowledging it as almost a trademark of his and mucking around with it somewhat (NOTE: rewatching HOT FUZZ recently, whilst a lot more enjoyable on second view, it is a bit too kinetic and OTT with it’s jump cut montages and so on, making it hard to watch in certain places. Still overall it benefits from a second view with lower expectations), the movie is a visual party with all sorts of smart, entertaining editing and graphic devices to help get us on board with Scott and his mission.

Even as an aloof, cheating, indie hipster, Michael Cera is still essentially playing Michael Cera / George-Michael Bluth / Paulie Bleeker with a slight edge to him. I can see this is beginning to wear quite thin with a lot of folk and I can certainly understand it, but in all honesty it still works for me. I like him.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, as Ramona Flowers, the object of Scott’s affections most certainly qualifies for the adjective ‘super hot’ and it’s good to see her in a decent role for once instead of being underused like in DIE HARD 4.0 and DEATH PROOF.

Jason Schwartzman, as the villan Gideon Graves, is spot on. Although he was undeniably great in RUSHMORE, Schwartzman bugs me. I find him to be kind of smarmy. He exhibits that kind of smug twattishness that he’s exuded in everything else ever since. But it’s perfect in this instance, for a playing a smug twat!!

One of the highlights for me was Brandon Routh as the vegan Evil Ex Todd Ingram. Bestowed with super telekinetic powers by virtue of his self righteous vegan-ness. The best line in the whole movie falls to him:
“You know how you only use 10% of your brain? That’s cause the other 90% is filled up with curds and whey”

Topping things off, there is an excellent small cameo from the totally underrated Thomas Jane (of The Mist, Punisher and Hung fame), as one of the vegan police officers!

Another of the many plus points about this film is that Scott Pilgrim’s band, Sex Bob-Omb are actually pretty good! But it should be pointed out at this juncture that any ‘try-hard’ band that goes out and ACTUALLY calls itself Sex Bob-Omb deserves to have their junk repeatedly slammed in successively heavy car doors, ‘fore it would be a vomitously disgusting name choice.

Still, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World is undoubtedly just one big entertaining riot of a movie. The best computer game movie, not based on a computer game. I did not expect to enjoy this half as much as I did and I honestly thought it was utterly fantastic. LOVED it. Go see.

IMDB: Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World

PREDATORS

It’s been 23 years since Arnie, Jesse Ventura and Carl Weathers et al went bush in the Central American jungle to do battle with a vicious hunter from another world, and 20 years since Danny Glover and Bill Paxton mixed it up with another Predator on the streets of LA. In the intervening years the Alien Vs Predator movies sullied the great names of two of the best sci fi monsters in history.  So a proper Predator sequel was long overdue in order to restore the family name as it were. The good news is that PREDATORS delivers. It serves up exactly what you want from a Predator movie. A gang of selected mercenaries, criminals and general badasses find themselves in an alien jungle on an alien world, pitted against an unholy triumvirate of salivating Predators out to hunt them for sport. Without deviating a great deal from the original plotline PREDATORS manages to be a lot of fun without being mindblowing. It’s respectful to the original in a way in which the idiotic ‘versus’ movies were most definitely not. It captures the feel of the original and stands tall as a nice continuation of the Predator lineage. Adrien Brody is convincing as a hardboiled mercenary, and the likes of Danny Trejo and Laurence Fishburne are always good value. It's not reinventing the wheel, but then what’s wrong with the wheel? No-one has had a problem with the wheel for thousands of years. PREDATORS serves up exactly what you expect from a Predator sequel and is no less enjoyable for it. It’s good, fun sci-fi action.

IMDB: Predators

NOTE: This review is shorter, and a departure from the usual style because I wrote it as a 250-300 word entry for a competition to win passes to the Melbourne International Film Festival. So instead of my usual long winded ramble, enjoy some brevity for a change!

KICK ASS

Kick Ass is the story of wannabe superhero Dave Lizewski, a comic book obsessed nerd, who when faced with the question of ‘why don’t people become Superheroes?’ cannot think of a single good enough reason not to nut up and give it a go himself. Not even a near death beating at the hands of some thugs and severe hospitalisation can stack up enough in the ‘negative column’, and so he dons a dark green wetsuit and claims the moniker ‘Kick Ass’.

After his second foray into the world of masked vigilantism, a bystander records his exploits, uploads it to the internet and before he knows it Kick Ass is a phenomenon. But fame also brings infamy, and the attentions of the local mafia boss Frank D’Amico, who doesn’t want costumed heroes horning in on his racket.  Added to this mix are a brutal daughter/father crime fighting team known as Hit Girl and Big Daddy, and a mysterious and equally popular masked hero by the name of Red Mist.

This is of course the movie the Daily Mail threw one of its trademark ‘ban this sick filth’ hissyfits about courtesy of a 10 year old girl getting shot, slicing up bad guys with a ninja sword, and uttering the word ‘cunt’. Watching director Matthew Vaughn sit incredulously on The One Show sofa while Adrian Chiles and that bland woman jabbered on about how it seemed like an amoral film despite only one of them having actually seen it (and admitting to finding it funny to boot), was yet another stunning indictment that the World is heading inescapably toward a reality previously only seen in Mike Judge’s IDIOCRACY.

Kick Ass is additionally, and far more interestingly, based on a toweringly superior comic book. Yes, the movie is fun. Great fun, in point of fact. You simply can’t go wrong with a 10 year old massacring bad guys to the tune of The Dickies ‘Banana Splits’, or Nicholas Cage battering the hell out of a massive cadre of mobsters in one single-take epic beatdown. However, the thing that was most disappointing about the Kick Ass movie is that when you read the comic you can see what it COULD have been. And whilst the movie is good, it could have been so much more! Despite all its coolness the movie struggles to climb out of generic superhero territory. All the brilliant aspects of the comic that took it away from standard origin fare, infusing a healthy dose of reality and elevating it above the obvious or the predictable seem to have been excised from the script.

I really try to roll spoiler free on this blog wherever possible, but there’s no way to make my point about the movie versus the comic here without giving the game away. So before you click the little box below, I urge you strongly to see the film and read the book. But if you’re not one for good advice, then fairly warned be thee, says I - there lie spoilers ahead:

Spoilers:

Kick Ass/Dave never kills anyone in the book. And it’s better this way. This is because Dave is a normal teenage comic nerd. He probably couldn’t kill anyone if he tried. Hit Girl can, and does, because she has been trained most her life to do it and it’s normal to her. There’s no rocket pack sequence. Dave doesn’t suddenly go badass and kill people left right and centre. He can’t do it. And he doesn’t. It’s out of character for him to do so.

The Big Daddy character is not an ex cop like in the film. In the comic this seemingly predictable genre cliché turns out to be a cover story for the fact he is a highly delusional, mentally disturbed comic nerd (like Dave but better prepared) who kidnapped his daughter under the misguided pretext of wanting to give her an exciting life!! Financing their crime fighting via the sale of ultra rare comics, they selected the mob boss at random. The ex-cop story was a front and entirely untrue.

In both book and movie Dave moons after Katie Deauxma, and as she mistakenly assumes he is gay finds himself haplessly playing along and perpetuating the lie that he is her gay best friend. The principal difference is that the movie opts for a schmaltzy, corny, and let’s face it highly unrealistic resolution which sees Katie fall for him after he confesses he has been lying to her. The book handles it far better, with a bitter dose of reality. Having laid his heart on the line to Katie and admitted he’s not really gay she rightly takes umbrage with the fact he has been lying to her for months and tells him to go fuck himself. The hero does not get the girl. The hero gets dumped, thumped and lonely.

To a degree it almost feels like the filmmakers completely missed the point as to what made the comic great.  There was nothing they omitted from the book that could not have worked on the screen, and so therefore I can’t really think of any reason for them to have made those choices other than incomprehension of the source material. And knowing what they had to work with in terms of the book, I felt there was quite a large bit of room for improvement.

Nevertheless, and don’t get me wrong, this film is a lot of fun. Enjoyable, and one of the better movies of 2010 so far. Nicholas Cage, Mark Strong and Chloe Moretz are all riotously good. So in conclusion, it’s funny, violent and entertaining, which are the majority of your bases covered. Despite its flaws Kick Ass still comes recommended and is definitely worth a watch.

IMDB: Kick Ass

IRON MAN 2

It’s fair comment, to say that I was a HUGE fan of the first IRON MAN, is quite the understatement. I utterly LOVED that movie. As a background I like comics, I used to read Marvel as a young lad, I have enjoyed mostly all of the recent spate of comic book movies (EVEN Daredevil and Ghostrider!), and it was totally and completely ‘my cup of tea’. As far as the Marvel adaptations go, in fact as far as the Superhero comic book movies go, the first IRON MAN was the STAR WARS of the genre. The cream of the crop, the bees knees, the icing on the cake. I loved it, you dig?

So on then to IRON MAN 2 which is basically more of the same, and in my book that is a very very very good thing. Now you can wax lyrical about important films, and moving films, and socio political films and as well you should. Cinema should be about that. It should be challenging and should ask questions of you and treat you with intelligence. There are of course other times when cinema should be FUN. And IRON MAN and IRON MAN 2 are just a pure masterclass in enjoyable cinema. It does exactly what you want from an IRON MAN film. It’s no good coming away from this movie and criticising its politics or for being too gung-ho, as I saw one ridiculous local paper do, because you’re missing the point entirely.  It’s about a superhero in a metal suit. It delivers in spades what summer blockbuster after summer blockbuster just cannot seem to manage. It’s cool and it’s fun and it rules. Hard.

The story picks up immediately after the end of the first movie and concerns a three pronged attack on Tony Stark/Iron Man.  Firstly the military trying to commandeer his Iron Man technology, secondly the ruthless Ivan Vanko seeking vengeance on the Stark family, and thirdly the fact that the Arc Reactor that keeps Tony Stark alive and powers the Iron Man suit is very slowly poisoning him.

Tony Stark is as narcissistic as ever. Still a rich dick, but this time motivated by trying to help humanity as a whole. He will still bask in the glory of enforcing World peace though, and is enjoying his IRON MAN fame as if he were a rock star.  There are hints of his recklessness, and nods perhaps toward the famous alcoholism of the comic. But for the time being this Tony Stark is still just about in control.

I had never really been that fond of Robert Downey Jr in the past. Stemming mainly from his performance in the abjectly wretched NATURAL BORN KILLERS.  But with IRON MAN he is a revelation. He IS Tony Stark, and once again he is fantastic in this second film. Likewise Scarlett Johansson’s ubiquity has often left me cold. Whilst I liked her in Ghost World, Lost In Translation and Vicky Christina Barcelona, it often feels like you can’t open a magazine or turn on the telly or even pass a bus shelter without her blank expression vacating out at you from an advertisement for perfume or one of the billion films she’s made – she must work 365 days a year!! That said, I thought she was good in IRON MAN 2, and her fighting was especially convincing.

Don Cheadle was great as Rhodey/Warmachine. Barring his useless English accent in Oceans 11, he is never anything less than excellent and should frankly have been the first choice from the get go. Gwyneth Paltrow was also excellent again as Pepper Potts, and John Favreau gives himself more screen time this time around and it was more enjoyable for it.

For the villans, Mickey Rourke was good, but upstaged by Sam Rockwell who at times could have walked off with the movie. If Rockwell has ever been in a bad film then I’m yet to see it. His addition to the IRON MAN cast was a triumph. If you like nothing else in this film you have got to love his weapons speech – “if this thing was any smarter it would write a book... and then it would read it to you”. Brilliant.

If there is a minor gripe, it’s that both films have essentially relied on a villain in a similarly powered super suit to fight Iron Man at the end. I think a third instalment would benefit from some variety there. But it really is a small gripe. IRON MAN 2 is as thoroughly enjoyable as the first one, and as far as cool, enjoyable, downright entertaining cinema goes, the IRON MAN movies are peerless.

IMDB: IRON MAN 2

Also, check out these incredible posters for IRON MAN 2. The first of which is by the super awesome Tyler Stout (and I wish I had been able to get this before it sold out at light speed) and the second is by the equally awesome Mike Saputo (which I did manage to get my grubby mitts on!)