Movie Review: Suspiria.

Suspiria is a difficult movie to critique. 

Among the desaturated streets of post war Berlin, a young woman arrives at her trusted psychologists office, raving of a witches coven, dark forces and of being watched. At the same time, a lost American finds her way into the halls of the highly exclusive Markos school of Dance. 

The elderly psychologist seeks answers in the delusions of his patient, and the young dancer seeks her place in a world she has always felt astray in. Nothing will ever be the same for either of them. 

Suspiria takes its time period and setting very seriously, and I don't think I've ever seen a period film that captured the setting so perfectly. The impeccable costuming and flawless set design of the broken and conflicted city of Berlin create a supremely atmospheric scene, so convincing that it would be easy to mistake it for a genuine 70's film were it not for the crisp HD.

The sweeping zooms and harsh cinematography work in perfect tandem with the films erratic and unpredictable editing. Scenes that do not match, that aren't set in the same place, without even the same subtext, are weaved directly together without managing to stumble the pacing. 

Suspiria can be exhausting to watch. It can be disturbing and sickening. It is intense, with a gripping and passionate heartbeat from start to finish. Slow moments are filled with coiled tension and quiet dread. When it lets loose, Suspiria contains sequences of such absolute uncaged grotesquery that it's authentic fodder for tales of unfortunates passing out in the very movie theater.

Suspiria is built on the shoulders of beautiful performances, with multiple fantastic character performances, especially within the ranks of the school faculty. Tilda Swinton delivers a twistedly nuanced and haunted turn as the stone faced dance instructor Madame Blanc. It is a film of beautiful monsters, and the multi-faceted Tilda is clearly paragon among them.

With a running time creeping over the two and a half hour mark, Suspiria is an investment not to be taken lightly. The intensity doesn't give up until the last dog dies, and it is not a comfortable or playful watch. It is a dark, moody, and uncompromisingly uncomfortable experience. If you have the mettle, Suspiria is a unique horror experience that deserves indulgence.

Movie Review: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

While it takes great creativity to start a film series from nothing, it takes both bravery and love to follow on with a worthwhile sequel. James Gunn is a director that, way back from his Troma roots, continues to show ample amounts of all three.

2014's Guardians of the Galaxy was the pleasant surprise of the Marvel cinematic universe. An original story, with characters positively unheard of to the every day moviegoer (and practically to comic fans as well), it proved to be the most fun and enjoyable entry in the superhero universe to date, as well as one of the highest rated films of the year.

With the predicted major releases of further entries in the MCU like Thor 3, Avengers 4, and recently reclaimed properties like licence-to-print-money Spider-Man, I did not expect Guardians to get a sequel.

Luckily, Marvel seem to realize what they have in Gunn, and he returns with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2, once again at the helm writing and directing with total creative control. These are characters he is clearly deeply passionate about, in a story told with great bravery, and a whole lotta love.

We return to our team's adventures following the defeat of Ronan the Accuser as they ply their galaxy guarding trade far across the universe. The team fight together as a well-oiled machine, rescuing valuable batteries from an intergalactic starfish monster while listening to classic tunes. It's clear that the group have grown closer since the last film. Tighter than friends, they are virtually family, even playing group parents to the tiny infant Groot.

Returning from their adventure, the Guardians encounter the Sovereign, a race of privileged 'perfect' people. Gold skinned, beautiful, and effortlessly fabulous, the Sovereign are one of the most fun-to-hate alien species I've ever seen in film. The Sovereign find dire offence at the slightest perceived affront, and soon enough the Guardians are fleeing an army of insulted intergalactic trust fund kids.

When their pursuers are fought off single-handedly by an unknown figure, the guardians are confronted by their strangest new encounter yet, in the form of the mysterious and powerful Ego.

Elements of each character's past are explored in Guardians Vol 2, and we find out a little more about our heroes. Family plays a strong role in the story told here. There are powerful tales of families past, ranging from the hidden history of Star-Lord's parentage and the tragedy of Drax's fallen wife and daughter, to families broken in need of healing, as Gamora's estranged sister Nebula seeks her out across the stars. Even Rocket, a creature who has no true family to speak of, finds brotherhood in the strangest of places.

As before, the ancillary characters are some of the best, with some brilliant performances by returning faces like the lovable rogue Yondu, as well as many new ones. The Ravagers are wilder and weirder than ever, a complete riot. Once again, Guardians shines in its incredible use of both on set makeup and digital effects to create some standout looking characters.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 is a quieter film than its predecessor by leaps and bounds. The time between action set pieces may be a bit much for some seeking excitement, but the time is well filled, and evenly paced throughout. For a story spanning galaxies and worlds it is also surprisingly focused, with no major sub plots intersecting, preferring to focus more on one neater story.

Once again the gallery of characters is juggled well, with everyone playing their part. While Vol 2 is chiefly a Star-Lord story, characters are never left to fade into the background, and new faces like Mantis, an adorable and naive alien empath, are given ample time to shine. The merchandising-friendly fan-favorite, Groot, is wisely not turned into a gimmick, and with more economical screen time, is never reduced to being predictable or a repetitive joke. An ensemble cast of this size isn't without weak links inevitably, and for the second time I was left unimpressed with Nebula. Easily forgotten when she's not on the screen, her role seems to demand a weight that isn't reflected in the performance delivered.

A trademark of the series, the film is also packed with enough easter eggs to keep you searching, and character cameos both obvious to the casual fan, and so obscure that even comic book fanatics will be wracking their brains.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 stands apart from the other Marvel movies. Not only literally, as the story does stand alone, but in feeling. It is a story more of heart than of action, more of family than of friendship. It is a very well put together film, and bozhe moi, does it remain a lot of fun from start to finish.

Movie Review: Assassin's Creed.

Adapting a video game into other media is not easy. It's almost become expected for game properties to make bad films, and that's usually because they don't have enough story to form the basis of a proper narrative structure from beginning to end. What happens when the opposite is the case? 

Assassins Creed is a video game series that to date spans 20 games. It's known for having one of the most complex, sophisticated science fiction story-lines in modern gaming, and there's no sign of it slowing down anytime soon. Can you truly condense hundreds of hours of gaming into a single film, and bring with it the thrill and excitement of controlling a character running across a rooftop and shimmying down an awning, sneaking from shadow to shadow to finally piece the heart of your foe with a hidden blade? 

Let's take a look at Assassins Creed. 

Callum Lynch is a man on death row, a man made cold-hearted by the murder of his mother at the hands of his own father. When Cal is secretly spirited away from his own execution to awaken in the offices of the sinister Abstergo corporation, he learns that he will be the test subject in the ongoing experiments of Doctor Sofia and her amazing Animus. Only Cal possesses the genetic data necessary to use the Animus for its true purpose, and Cal must learn to master the machine's secrets, as well as escape the open walled prison he finds himself within.

Now, a plot-line that is already tenuously coherent in the source material is similarly so here, with quickly summarized techno-babble and inconsistent physics detailing the powers of the enigmatic Animus machine. The life's work of Doctor Sofia, the Animus allows people to relive the details of their ancestors, presented in a giant holographic simulacrum. The Animus machine itself is here depicted as a giant VR machine, complete with moving robotic arm, that allows Cal to re-enact every move, jump and thrust of combat throughout his reliving of  his ancestor Aguilar's adventures. This provides plenty of simple physics plot holes by its existence alone, but as the source material simply had the Animus as something out of an Ikea catalog, it gives some movement and energy to Cal's trip through the Animus that would otherwise be watching Michael Fassbender pretend to twitch in his sleep for half the film, so it's an understandable change.

The problem here really isn't so much some wonky science, it's really with Cal himself. For a hero, he is astoundingly unlikable. He's a man on death row for unrepentant murder. He's cold, dark, and unpleasant. If we are to care if Cal escapes his predicament, we need to care about him. We at least need to like him a little, and for some time it really isn't quite clear if Cal of Sofia is the one we should be rooting for here, as neither of them show much heroism. Cal shuffles from scene to scene, engaging the other test subjects in vague dialogue, and doesn't care what happens to him. He has no driving plot of his own, no home to return to, no child to save. He even seems unconcerned with solving the murder of his own mother.

What should be the highlight of the film, of course, the adventures of the guild of Assassins in war torn Spain under the inquisition of Torquemada, is simply not very exciting. You would think, with a title like Assassin's Creed, this would be the story of an Assassination. The plot and counter plot, the plan, the lead up to the climactic strike, these are the things that should have formed the thread that ties the adventures of Aguilar together. Unfortunately this is not the case. The entire film is a simple macguffin story, an item is lost, and Abstergo want to know where in history it was last seen. It is not compelling, it is not even interesting.

Each time Cal ventures back into the story of Aguilar in the search for the mysterious object, it's another loosely connected chapter in what seems to be the Guild of Assassins routinely messing up. These characters are meant to be skilled, trained assassins, striking from the shadows and disappearing like ghosts. We see none of the suggested skill or brilliance in the events of the past, in fact almost all of the Guild are killed in the first scene by random guards, leaving the surviving duo of Assassins to spend each scene they are in to ineptly be discovered and pursued noisily through buildings. These tiresome chase scenes form the basis of each regression into the Animus. They are loud, showy, full of flips and suspiciously modern parkour, and absolutely none of the excitement or physical thrill that they should deliver. There is more brilliance and tension packed into the on foot chase scene at the beginning of 'Casino Royale' than in the entirety of Assassin's Creed. Each scene here simply feels like a farce, with nameless goons chasing after the fleeing assassins from every angle, seemingly ahead of the heroes at every turn, to be punched and kicked, and then chase after them some more. You could stick the Benny Hill theme over most of these scenes and it wouldn't feel out of place, really. The film's production spent a lot of time boasting of the amazing feat of actually shooting the franchises famous 'leap of faith', a freefall from incredibly height. If they'd actually shot the thing, you certainly could have fooled me, as the scenes are covered in such heavy CGI fog and filler, that any real stunt performed is lost.

The absence of a compelling villain is a huge detractor in a film about professional Assassins. The games knew this, and even though the stories were 'find the item' plots as well, each had fiendish historical villains to eliminate in complex plots along the way. Here, we are presented with a handful of bad guys, none of which fit the bill.

Torquemada himself is of course the villain of the time period, and certainly is presented here as the big bad early on, and although he's present, he plays no impacting role in the heroes story. There is a big, scary looking warrior who seems to always be present to chase our Assassins, and gets a lot of screen-time looking intimidating, but he's a nobody. He doesn't get any lines, or as far as I caught, even a name.

It is thus left to the characters in the present to form the true villains of the piece, and they are unfortunately, both uninteresting to us as the viewers, and seemingly uninterested in the events of the story as well. The stone faced Jeremy Irons is the manager of the Abstergo institute. He's not particularly evil, he's even a supportive father to his daughter Sofia. We're not given any reason to dislike him, and he doesn't really do anything to make Cal dislike him either. He actually treats Cal remarkably fairly, all things considered. If we aren't in our seats waiting to see a great villain get his comeuppance, why would we be interested in watching a film about heroic assassins? There is a recurring mention of the Templar order as overarching villains, but we barely see them, and they don't seem to be all that invested in the events of the story at all, happy to pull their funding to the Animus project and move on right from early events of the film. If even the main bad guys don't want to waste their time with the story-line, why should we?

Assassin's Creed comes to its finale with a collection of events, some out of nowhere with characters we never got to know, others half-hearted resolutions to plot lines that simply never paid off. It ends with an uninspired whisper, some bait for future films, and no solid resolution for the events we've seen. I could confidently say it's the worst film I've seen in 2016, and it's been a shit year, everything considered. I was not excited, I was not thrilled, and the only real assassination in the film is truly anti-climactic in the most PG-13 way possible.

You will find more to enjoy in the franchise's games than in this adaptation. There's more compelling stories to be found, more likable heroes, more devious villains, and more simple entertainment in any of them than you'll find here.

Movie Review: Suicide Squad.

DC have got a long way to go to catch up with Marvel when it comes to movies.
After the disastrous critical failure of Batman vs Superman, it's clear they needed to spruce things up a bit, and you really would have had to have been under a rock for the last couple months not to have seen the banners, billboards, tv spots, and multiple merchandising tie-ins to DC's latest ensemble the-bad-guys-are-the-good-guys action mash-up, Suicide Squad.

Who the main character really is in Suicide Squad, it's a little hard to say. We begin with the mind behind the whole idea, military officer Amanda Waller, a high ranking strategist who is selling her idea of an elite team of super-villains, to be used in the event of a superhuman terrorist threat. With the powers of the mysterious Enchantress under her thumb, she begins assembling her team, selecting the finest thieves and hit-men from the darkest cells of Belle Reve Supermax penitentiary.

Amanda's trump card, the incredibly powerful Enchantress, has an ulterior motive. That of the destruction of the human race, naturally, and when given a little too much leeway with her powers, soon seeks out the means to put her apocalyptic plans into action. When Enchantress and her demonic minions begin laying waste to a major American city, Task Force X, the titular Squad, are put into action under the command of hard edged soldier Rick Flag, not to save the day, but just to rescue a person of value from the equation and get out of there alive.

The set up and the swift devolution into anarchy leading up to the actual mission is a big chunk of the films run-time, and if there's a first place you could criticize Suicide Squad, it's the pacing. A little too much time spent here, not enough there, and then a sudden apocalyptic threat, doesn't go down so smooth. The ride to the films third act is bumpy to say the least. Fortunately, the characters that populate the film are where the majority of the fun to be found lies.

The best performance in the film, without much surprise, is of course Will Smith. He's Will Smith, playing Will Smith, and as always, it's great fun. He has a character arc, a snappy personality, scene after scene introducing his incredible skills and the force that drives him. He is of course the big star of the piece, so naturally a ton of screen time is going to be devoted to him, but it would have been nice to see more of the other enjoyable members of the group, like Captain Boomerang, who gets a laugh from the audience on the majority of his dialogue, or the great Killer Croc, both of whom we get next to nothing of by way of backstory. Some characters, like Kabuki and Slipknot, displayed prominently on posters and promotional material, barely make an impact on the film's events at all.

There are many fine performances among the multiple cast members, like Viola Davis as the stern faced Amanda Waller, the cold commanding military commander who organised the whole shindig. She's a great character, but needed a bit more variety to her scenes than stone faced dialogue, in my opinion. El Diablo, who takes the role of the heart of the team, is lovable, enjoyable to watch, and just plain kicks ass when he needs to. Rick Flag, the commander of the team, is a confusing character however, he's not at all badly acted, he's just not a likable character. Everyone knows the goody-goody 'soldier' among the dirty dozen is always the boring character you root to get killed. So why then was Flag such a huge part of the film? He gets more screen time than everyone but Smith's Deadshot, and his love affair with Enchantress is actually the film's main character based plot. He doesn't seem to be intended to be likable, and he's not particularly heroic, not even in the 'honor among thieves' way.

A film with an ensemble this big isn't without some obvious duds, of course, and Suicide Squad does have a few turds in the punch-bowl.

Harley Quinn is a character that people have waited YEARS to see on the big screen. She's one of the most significant comic characters of modern day, and possibly the most popular female DC character ever. The character we get here, is something of a disgrace. Almost every line Harley delivers is a flat joke, and she comes across as a dull imitation. Her accent is sporadic and uneven, her personality is unclear and undefined. She's referred to as crazy a half dozen times in her first scene, yet at no point in the movie acts remotely insane. In fact, we see her clearly change her attitude to give the appearance of being crazy to others more than once, giving the suggestion that the entire crazy thing is an act put on by a completely sane character.

Harley Quinn wasn't the worst character in the film however. The Razzie without a doubt goes to Enchantress, who I really don't think could have been worse.
A body swapping Goddess of the old world controlled by Amanda Waller, Enchantress delivers a frankly nonsensical performance as the film's main villain. The visual design we see on the movie posters, a green skinned, black haired hag, looks fantastic for the few scenes she's in, and blissfully keeps her mouth shut, but for the most part of the film she takes the form of an idiotically gyrating everyday white girl who looks like the Empress from The Neverending Story, delivering stilted dialogue in a dopey deep voice. A huge amount of plot development is devoted to the relationship Flag has with the 'real' girl trapped within Enchantress, but as an audience, it's impossible to connect with this relationship as we never meet that character. We see a few scenes of an awkward, gawky woman in big spectacles deliver a few lines, but we don't see the lovable character she's apparently meant to be, and that we should be rooting to escape Enchantresses control. A poor villain is an inexcusable error in a superhero film, and having a great antagonist for our Squad to battle against would have changed the dynamic of the entire film for the better.

Of course, they did have that antagonist there the whole time, which is frankly baffling. The character everyone wants to know about, the latest in a long line of performances that define the way a comic book villain can be played, The Joker.
Leto's performance is definitely not the character we know from the comics. He's a street smart gangster, obsessed with obscene displays of wealth and outrageous showmanship. We wouldn't see the comic book version of the character owning a high end strip club, wielding a gold plated pimp cane, and driving a purple chrome Lamborghini, but this is a new Joker, and he's king of the underworld. The few flashback glimpses we see of The Joker and Harley running things from their ivory tower, the criminal world operating in fear of them, are great to see, and there really is no excuse that this wasn't the plot of the film. Why have a character like the Joker, well known as the most popular comic book villain IN HISTORY and use him for less than ten minutes of screen time?

Suicide Squad is not a bad film.
It's extremely popular to hate it right now, and I think it's not getting fair treatment as a standalone film. It's being lumped into the fun-to-tear-apart DC cinematic universe.
Although it is full of references to the larger world around it, the glimpse of the Flash isn't really ham-fisted in for example, and the sporadic appearances of Batman are actually pretty cool. Although I fully expected it to be the case, I didn't feel that it's PG-13 rating severely castrated it either. There weren't any obvious scenes that felt distinctly hampered by the lack of an R rating. If an R rating had been the case, we might have seen more dynamic enemies than faceless, safe-to-slaughter blob people, however.

A bad film has wonky parts that fit together poorly into a displeasing whole.
Suicide Squad has the parts. They're there. The cinematography is great, the soundtrack is top tier, and some of the characters are tremendous fun. The parts just don't fit together all that well. Massive slow motion scenes slow down the great cinematography, the soundtrack is SO full of hits, they play ten seconds of a genre defining song before cutting it off to move to the next track, three or four times in the same scene. Why put these enjoyable characters in a story that doesn't fit them? With protagonists so full of life, why make the villain a goofy caricature devoid of personality with the poorest acting performance in the entire film?

It feels like Suicide Squad wasn't quite the main event, and that this was the sequel, or the spin off, even. They had a great villain, in the form of the Joker, and they put him in as many scenes as they could manage, so why not just make the film about him instead of the uninteresting, uninspired and frankly unenjoyable Enchantress?

Something could be done with Suicide Squad. Whether they are waiting for the home media release to re-edit it and force everyone to pay for it again, like they did with BvS, we'll see.

Movie Review: The Brothers Grimsby.

It can't be easy to top a previous success in comedy, and Sacha Baron Cohen has been a successful man over the years. With characters of enduring worldwide popularity like Ali G and Borat, Cohen is one of Britain's top comedy personalities, but one that also refuses to continue using the same old characters forever. Starting up another new character with that kind of expectation is a laborious task. His previous offering, The Dictator, was hilarious, but no one seems to have seen it. With the films of Cohen, everything falls on the shoulders of the character he's playing, and Admiral General Aladeen just wasn't Borat.

With The Brothers Grimsby, Cohen makes a slight departure from the styles of his earlier films, by not making his own character the be all end all focus of the narrative, but a partner in both plot and screentime with the other titular character.

Nobby Butcher is a hard drinking working class football fan from Grimsby, the arse end of the worst part of North England. He lives a happy life with his nine kids in his council flat, but still holds out a candle for his brother Sebastian, who he has been separated from for 25 years.

When Nobby gets a tip off that Sebastian has been seen by a friend attending a swanky black tie benefit party, he runs off to try and reunite with his beloved brother at any cost.

Sebastian turns out to be Britain's top spy, on a mission to stop a high profile assassination attempt, and thanks to the interference of his long lost brother, misses the shot he was aiming for, gets himself on a kill order from MI6, and sets off a chain of events that could lead to the apocalypse (and gives Harry Potter AIDS, but that's a whole different subplot)

Sebastian's character is the ideal British secret agent, suave, sophisticated, skilled. Nobby is an England fan who doesn't want to drop his pint as they run from bullet spraying bad guys. It's not hard to see where the movie goes with this dynamic. You can't say it's sophisticated humor, by any means, but it is funny, if you have the stomach for it.

The Brothers Grimsby really does push the limits of taste in every respect, and if you thought it would be tough to top the gross out sweaty naked wrestling from Borat or the sexual escapades of Bruno, you'd be very much mistaken. Some sequences you'll witness here simply can't be unseen, and you will know what an elephant gang bang looks like from the inside, and you'll have to live with that image forever. Scene by scene gets wilder and weirder, and certainly breaks the barrier of good taste in more impressive and disgusting ways than any other major motion picture you'll likely see for a long time.

The film as a whole is very very English, and some humour might get missed by foreign audiences, (Nobby himself being a grotesque effigy of Liam Gallagher) but it's often used in some pretty clever ways, and there's some solid laughs to be found specially for UK audiences, especially if you're a football fan.

The Brothers Grimsby isn't as iconic as Ali G, and it isn't as clever as Borat, and it may simply be too gross for many viewers. What it does have is some good laughs, some very en pointe modern references, shockingly brilliant action sequences that will surprise with their sheer technical execution, and a surprisingly heartfelt message in between all the arse jokes and jabs at Man U. Having as much screen time dedicated to Sebastian as well as Nobby is a wise move on Cohen's part, and the film feels more like a whole, rather than just a character piece as a result. I can't imagine the characters here will resurface at any point like Cohen's more classic incarnations, but while they're here, they're good for a laugh.

Movie Review: Deadpool.

Deadpool is a huge risk for the studio that made it, everyone knows this. A character popular with fans of the genre but almost entirely unknown to everyone else, and an R rated superhero film to boot. There hasn't been a successful one since Blade. How this film got made is probably a fantastic story in itself. Whoever talked such a thing into production will hopefully now be investigated, because Deadpool is fucking great fun for everyone involved.

For those who haven't read comics or walked into a Hot Topic in the last year, Deadpool is one of Marvel's current flagship characters. The alternative to the goodie-goodie stock heroics of Iron Man and The Avengers, Deadpool is a fast talking gun-for-hire with a split personality who constantly abuses the fourth wall. Translating this to other mediums is touchy, sometimes it works, sometimes not so much. Deadpool had a great video game release a few years ago that took the violence and quirkiness of the character and ran with it in a really fun way, but attempts to translate the character to novel form felt weird, and attempts to shoehorn him into the family friendly box for some of Marvel's cartoon shows left the character feeling justifiably neutered.

Making the Deadpool movie an R, and a HARD R at that, was the wisest thing anyone could have done with the property.

Deadpool pulls no punches. You'll see the most graphic violence on the screen so far this year, with the wise cracking mercenary cheerfully dropping F-bombs as he causes a multi car pileup and decapitates a motorbike rider with his own bike chain in the first few scenes. Then Deadpool turns to the camera, address the viewers, and invites us to enjoy his story. It's a story filled with blood, violence, naughty naughty words, elder abuse, masturbation, and a surprising amount of full frontal nudity for a film that, at some point, someone at Disney had to sign off on.

There isn't much depth to the plot, but it doesn't feel too light. It's an origin story, mixed with good old fashioned revenge. Deadpool takes us through his fated life as a street mercenary, spending his free time with the rowdy crowd of a local bar, where he meets Vanessa; the woman of his dreams, a take no shit prostitute who can talk Star Wars and generally best him at life decisions. The backstreet romance that Wade and Vanessa share is more convincing than most forced partnerships you'd see in a rom-com. When Wade is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he finally finds he has a reason to live, and so signs up for the terrible mutant experimentation of cockney-as-fuck supervillain Ajax.

Ajax probably isn't a villain that gets comic fans excited, he was a second rate character in the source material, but the Deadpool character does have a startling lack of true villains of his own in any medium, and what is done with Ajax on screen is really good. He's a no-nonsense, professional bad guy. More like something out of Lock, Stock than The Avengers. The urge to have him act like a supervillain is subverted in favor of him being a genuinely nasty piece of work.  When Ajax's horrific forced evolution experiments turn Wade into the hideous Deadpool and leaves him for dead in a blazing inferno, Deadpool pulls himself from the wreckage embued with his new mutant powers and a thirst for revenge.

There's pretty much just a first act and a third, and I could have done with a bit more meat in between, but keeping the pace moving with the snappiness it does, took careful work, and maybe shaking that up wouldn't work. There are an assortment of side characters, like Wade's friend and confidant Weasel, who is somehow both comedy sidekick and straight man foil at the same time, and the brilliant Blind Al, a character much loved by fans who is just fantastic here. All of these characters only see brief screentime, which is a shame in my opinion, some of these little characters needed plot resolution too.

Deadpool's only genuine allies along his path to revenge are Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead. The inclusion of these two X-Men property characters is actually incredibly well done in a few ways. It opens the door to most of the best fourth wall breaking jokes in the movie, as well as somehow giving the hint of an expanded universe in a more enjoyable way than ever before.

The most noticeable thing about Deadpool is that it doesn't really feel like a superhero movie. It is an action-comedy-romance-horror. A romactiohoredy, if you will. It has scenes of a relationship more honest and fun to watch than a lot of other films out there, and scenes of claustrophobic body horror that'll make you squirm, The action sequences are visually stunning, with incredible fight choreography. The writing is noticeably sharp. Deadpool is in almost every scene in the entire movie, and talking through each one as he goes, and he doesn't get irritating, he's lovable. His quips are closer to the observations you'd hear watching MST3K than the sort of goofy stuff Spider-Man would come out with. The humor is current and en pointe, with just enough line toed between jokes for everyone and jokes for comic fans that no one is left bewildered by the comedy.

I believe Deadpool will be loved by fans. Deadpool is a ton of fun in almost every way, it's one of the most satisfying adaptations of a comic book in years, and most impressive because it's managed to make itself more adult than the source material. Perhaps most importantly, the success of Deadpool could mean the reevaluation of the R-Rated comic book movie. It could pave the way for properties like Preacher, Transmetropolitan, and Rat Queens to be seriously considered for the big screen, and expanding the world of what is acceptable in film is beating censorship, and that's fantastic.

Movie Review: Hitman Agent 47

I thought I'd be hard pressed to see a film worse than Fantastic Four this year.
In only one month, I have been proved wrong by Hitman Agent 47.

We're shoved full steam through a rushed overview of the film's setting by a narrator for the first few minutes. It's meant to set the scene, but does little towards making the film we're about to see make any sense. This film is not about an assassin, it is barely even about the titular 47 at all in fact. For the majority of the film we follow a young woman, Katia, who has spent her whole life searching for a mysterious man.
That really is all we're given to go on, as due to the truly awful plot, not much more makes sense. The man Katia seeks is her father, the creator of the secret project that created 47, but she doesn't know either of these details. So why or how she has spent her life searching for him is utterly a mystery, with no forthcoming explanation as the film goes on.
Pursued by the over-aggressive Agent 47, and teaming up with a strange man who calls himself John Smith, the woman continues her search across the globe. When they aren't being shot at by 47, we're treated to some truly excruciating dialogue scenes between Katia and John, that just feel incredibly awkward. Katia spends the whole film with tears in her eyes for no reason, making her performance seem melodramatic, and John Smith is just plain one of the worst characters put to the screen this year. His dialogue is dull, his personality is non-existant, and everything is delivered by an apparently stoned Zachary Quinto in his worst role to date.
47 pulls more face/heel turns than the Undertaker in the films first act, going from brooding, thoughtful hero to a bullet spraying maniac in minutes. Anyone who has played a Hitman game knows that it's about subtlety and subterfuge, the goal being for 47 to eliminate his targets with precision kills, and escaping entirely unseen. The 47 we see here has less subtlety than Anton Chigurh, pulling out his twin Berettas and blasting noisily away in every scene.
After 47 and Katia team up to find her father, the film settles into an uneven pace of extreme, almost comedic violence and long boring scenes of tiring dialogue. How a film can spend so much time talking and still make no sense is beyond me. So much of the film's plot runs entirely on hunches and pure guess work that it seems none of these highly specialized characters really know what they're doing. 

By the time the film rolls to a climax, we've switched protagonists a few times, and we've barely seen the character who is meant to be the arch villain, and really never even get an idea of who he's even meant to be before our heroes confront him.

There is so little enjoyable about this second adaptation of the popular video game series that it's really hard to know where to start. The protagonist, the titular 47, is soulless and devoid of personality, but not in the good way you expect from this character. His lines are wooden, and his wishy washy character simply doesn't make any sense. He's demanding his female ward to "Trust me!" in a desperate tone one scene, and then sadly sighing "Don't put your faith in me." the next. We see none of the thoughtful, intellectual character here, and he frankly comes off as awkward throughout the whole film. To make matters worse, the actor taking the mantle of 47, Rupert Friend, is simply not intimidating in the role. His voice carries no weight, and his stature is neither imposing, not threatening. The character of 47 is meant to be a human apex predator, a perfect, precise killing machine. What we have here is a James Bond sidekick at best.

Katia is an oddly soulless lead as well. A character who seems driven for no clear reason, with goals we never truly understand. She is said to have 'advanced survival abilities' which appear to manifest in the film as her literally seeing the future, and these abilities are continually used as a segway between scenes or get-out-of-awkward-situation free cards. Instead of it appearing like she's a character with advanced, inherent skills, it just seems supernatural, almost psychic in nature, and doesn't fit at all. There's even a baffling moment suggesting that Katia and 47 communicate telepathically that isn't remotely satisfactorily explained. The film can't quite decide if her story or 47's is the central one, so neither feel properly fleshed out, and her relationship to 47 is so thin and unconvincing, there's absolutely nothing to suggest she wouldn't switch alliances again at the drop of a hat.

This is a film that insists upon mood with nothing to back it up, providing a facade of drama without any substance behind it. 47 or John Smith will have action scenes of such little interest or impact, backed up with a soundtrack that desperately suggests to you that the scene is cool. The same is true of several painful scenes of drama, where a sudden violin overture will kick in to remind you to switch from excitement to sadness, because the dialogue sure as hell isn't going to get you there. You'll notice dialogue exchanges lifted straight from other films, in fact.

Hitman: Agent 47 boils down to an uninteresting and predictable climax, with little excitement along the way. The journey to the finale feels routine and genuinely uninspired, and the last scene is empty of any real feeling of satisfaction or resolution. There aren't loose ends, so to speak, just empty plot points. Why introduce 47's dispatcher at all if she never plays any significance on the plot whatsoever, and why does 47 disobey his orders without any reason? Why repeatedly show that Katia takes apart objects when she's bored, and never bring it back in the story? Unanswered questions that pull apart the integrity of the main characters make the whole thing feel like a half baked plan, a first draft that never saw another look.

It's hard to make a good video game movie, we know this from the long history of tepid adaptations, but Hitman: Agent 47 is a poor excuse for an attempt in almost every way.

Movie Review: Fantastic Four.

I have never been a big fan of the Fantastic Four.
In my opinion, they're the product of an older era of the superhero concept, one that has moved on in leaps and bounds in the sixty-odd years since the original Marvel team first appeared. They've tried to give a fresh spin to the familiar characters of Mr Fantastic, Johnny and Sue Storm, and The Thing so many times you would think they'd be unrecognizable, but nothing ever really seems to change with these guys.

The same seems to be true every time they cross to a new media. Sure, they had a popular cartoon in the 90's, but no one liked it as much as the X-Men cartoon, and the last two Fantastic Four film adaptations were coughed up among other, more successful comic movies and were swiftly forgotten. Did we really need another reboot of the team that just keeps getting left behind?

For the first hour of the brand new, imaginatively titled 'Fantastic Four', you could have fooled me that we did. We follow the misadventures of a young Reed Richards, a genius scientific prodigy building his teleportation device in his father's garage with the help of his friend Ben, and it's good cinema all the way. We watch their friendship grow as they work on Reed's device in his high school science fair, and then be tested as Reed is recruited by the project head of a secret government test site to finish ironing out the kinks in their grand design.

All this is good stuff. The character work is strong, the acting is enjoyable. The characters aren't a far stretch from what we know and expect. The project lead's two children, the frosty and detail oriented Sue Storm, and her cocky street racing brother Johnny, join Reed on his development of the teleportation device that will save mankind from itself. Also working on the project is the foreign wild-card Victor Von Doom, an outspoken youth with just as much genius as Reed, but dangerous personality quirks. At least, this is what we're told about Victor, from the point of view of the government suit who takes the role of the film's villain through 90% of the runtime.

The Victor we actually see isn't all that bad at all. He's just a confident, unforgiving young man who considers the ruling cliche of America unacceptable. Which isn't villainous at all, considering the proof we see of the nefarious intentions of these same government characters.

Together, the soon to become Fantastic foursome and Victor perfect the project, and in a twist of drunken college intent, decide to send themselves through the teleporter before some astronaut can take all the glory. Instead of it being the four we expect who get to travel to the alternate world, however,  they leave Sue Storm behind and drag along Ben Grimm, which seemed not particularly sensible, but friendship IS magic after all.

The excursion doesn't go as planned, and while Sue watches helplessly from her monitors back on Earth, Victor plunges his hand into a pool of living energy and sets off an earthquake that threatens to kill them all. Reed, Johnny and Grimm are thrown back through the teleporter (each with fitting and appropriate twists and malfunctions that decide their powers) and back to Earth to face the results of their mistake.

We see a glimpse of them afterwards, the four just beginning to show signs of their powers, before we are treated to the screen that, in my opinion, completely ruined the movie. A fade to black with the words: 1 year later.

Instead of following the characters we've seen for the whole film, and watch them experience their new powers, with all the joy and horror that would come with it, the film just skips it all entirely to take us to a future where they have already all mastered their abilities. We don't get to see Johnny Storm realize he can fly and throw fireballs, we don't get to see Sue learn to control her invisibility or develop her force fields, we don't get a single scene with poor old Ben Grimm realizing what he has become as he looks down at himself. All the character development up to this point is essentially wasted, and what should have been the most dramatic, intense part of the movie, is skipped completely.

From here, the film takes a roller coaster spiral downwards into the finale. No time is wasted on characters anymore, it's just government conspiracy and half-hearted arguments between the characters we don't really know anymore.

The finale rushes in like a truck, and after a second attempt to send travelers to the alternate world, Victor is back on the scene and becomes the movie's instant villain, with little to no real reason or drive. He's back, he wants to destroy everything, and the Fantastic Four must stop him.

The problem here is that we haven't seen these characters grow together, we haven't seen moments of reprieve from the training, or scenes of friendship or the characters just being themselves. From what we gather from the choppy sequences post time skip, they've barely even seen each other in a year. This doesn't feel like a team at all, as much as four characters who're just conveniently together in time to fight the bad guy. Which they do, and in under five minutes have defeated and saved the world.

The whole thing is over so fast and so effortlessly that Doom feels entirely like an afterthought instead of the great villain he's meant to be. The final battle is almost a joke, it's over so quick, not to mention they actually have a moment where Reed stretches out one of his arms to box Doom in the face, complete with comedy elastic noise, and expect us still to be taking the fight seriously.

It all started out so good, and it's such a shame that after the first act, the film just became a trial in the expected. There's no dynamic between our heroes, which is incredibly noticeable in the awkward scenes between Reed and Ben towards the end of the film, and there's not even any effort to develop the heavily hinted at love triangle with Reed/Sue/Doom that should have been so important. With its short run time, it seems to be missing its entire second act altogether.

The worst part is, for a superhero team that above all else and all others is about family, friendship and being close with one another, the Fantastic Four feels like less of a team than any other superhero movie I've ever seen. By the finale they seem to have no real connection, no genuine friendships, and the scene where they are meant to be taking friendly shots at each other just feels like they are being intentionally cruel to one another.

If the film could have continued with the fun and cleverness that it started with, there would be something here. What we have here instead, is a film that will be doing a very fine Invisible Woman impression at the box office.

Movie Review: Dude Bro Party Massacre 3.

I saw a film last week. I saw it in a quiet little theater after hours during San Diego Comic-con. It had the aura of going to some banned piece of cinema, no posters on the walls, just a few eager filmmakers and a lot of t shirts with exploding heads on them.
I was going to see Dude Bro Party Massacre 3, and I was not disappointed.

What unfolded on the screen before me was the most brilliant homage to the slasher horror genre of the 1980's you'll find out there today. It's inexcusably violent, unapologetically crude, and a huge amount of fun.

We're introduced to the blood soaked world of Dude Bro Party Massacre through a mile-a-minute recap of the previous (Non-existent) films in the series. Where we learn the terrible origins of serial killer Motherface, and how she has terrorized the beer swilling souls of the local fraternity, Delta Bi Theta, for years with grisly murders and truly terrible one liners. All presented stylishly in glorious 80's quality film, complete with fake commercials and tracking errors.

Now, at the dawn of Dude Bro Party Massacre 3, the identical twin brother of a previous victim of Motherface's rampage must infiltrate the frat house to find his brother's killer, and finally end the terror of Motherface. What follows is the most enjoyably silly take on the slasher genre you could hope for, complete with shirt ripping, dramatic monologues, nude tai-chi, and some wickedly funny dialogue. 

The true fun here is in the personalities. The filmmakers themselves fill out the roster of drunken louts that make up the frat house, and they're a lovable lot to watch on screen. Among the most memorable are Turbeaux, a high-energy freak played with a Jack Black-like zeal who beats pledges and is terrified of puppies, and Nedry, the wheelchair bound nerd who can't catch a break.

As the frat party head off to the lakeside house to inevitably get murdered, we also have a sub plot of a pair of police officers investigating the case, in their own special way. Officer Sminkle is a barely capable but kind hearted moron just about kept in line by the exasperated but eager-to-prove-herself officer Buttiker. These two are a great double act, give us just enough of a break from the frat storyline when needed, and Officer Sminkle just has some of the film's funniest lines. Appearing as the Police Chief is Patton Oswalt, and the smattering of celebrity is used perfectly, with just a perfectly fitting role and none of the ass kissing usually aimed at celebrities in smaller budget productions.

In short, Dude Bro Party Massacre 3 is exactly what you could want from it. It'll be your new guilty pleasure, your new party movie. A gory, offensive, foot stompingly funny time full of murders and unfortunate pledges and well-timed celebrity cameos. A mix of Kids in the Hall style comedy and Troma class gross out violence, with a surprising amount of heart. Most importantly, it feels like the filmmakers had fun making it, and that fun shows through in every scene. Just sit back and enjoy it, and join in the eternal speculation, what really goes on in the beef box? Will the world ever know?

Movie Review: Mad Max: Fury Road

Taking one look at the theatrical poster for Mad Max: Fury Road, gives you all the suggestion you need that this won’t be what you expect.

The titular character is masked, facing off screen, his eyes fixed on something entirely different, and partially eclipsed by a shaven headed, badass woman in war paint. She’s close to us, her eyes fixed just beside us, right here with the problem at hand. There is a lot of meaning in that arrangement, as you'll soon see.

The post-apocalyptic genre has seen an awful lot of come and go over the decades, with sizzling hits and staggering failures throughout, all because it’s a polarizing genre. Not everyone gets or enjoys it, and some just can’t stand the bleakness of the concept. Sure, it’s bleak, morbid even, seeing the future of a destroyed world and the barren folk who still live there. For those with a taste for adventures taking place after the world as we know it, you pretty much can’t beat Mad Max: Fury Road. 

More so than any other film in recent years, Mad Max: Fury Road lives up to its title. Usually the words after the colon in a film title seem to be chosen entire at random, like they just chucked a bunch of words like ‘Redemption’ and ‘Revelations’ into a bingo machine and just had at it.

In Mad Max, you better believe there’s a road. And damn is it fucking furious. Right from the ass-kicking opening, our titular hero being captured by crazed white painted desert marauders, you can’t be ready for the chaos that will ensue, as before you know it, you’re thrust along on a 2 hour non-stop, high speed car chase through the wastelands of the world that once was. 

Max has been captured by the foot soldiers of Immortan Joe, the god-like leader of his own personality cult filling an entire city. Immortan Joe holds the thousands under him in rapturous worship, controlling all the water and all the power in the known region. Organizing cargo runs that control the supply of bullets and gas with sister cities across the wastelands, Joe is master of all he surveys, most of all leading the white painted Warboys who serve his wishes with an obsessed zealotism.

Setting his latest tanker full of supplies off on a run across the wastes, Joe basks in the idolatry from his audience, unaware that what he holds most dear is being smuggled out from under his nose by his most trusted of soldiers, the one armed sharp shooter Furiosa.

When Furiosa turns off the planned course in her tanker, taking the precious cargo contained within, the enraged Joe gathers a force unlike the world has ever seen to reclaim his property. The poor-fortuned Max, currently being used as a living blood bag to a sickened warboy, is dragged along, and strapped to the helm of one of a thousand revving cars, trucks and crazed automobile monstrosities that blast out to give chase after Furiosa. From that point on, all you can do is hold on for the ride.

There are great characters at play through the action, and they’re a huge part of what makes the film so enjoyable. Furiosa, the driving (badum-tish) force behind the heroes, is as strong a character as you’ll see on screen today. A brutal woman with a shattered past, a killer shot, and a Mean-Machine style mechanical arm, it’s tough to take your eyes off her. 

The villains of the piece are works of art in themselves. Immortan Joe himself is the echo of a military general crossed with a spiritual leader, bearing a booming voice and a horrific breathing apparatus rigged to his face. He’s a great villain, not just for his silver tongue and commanding screen presence, but because he leads the forces of the wastelands at every turn personally, he’s a constant threat at the heels of the heroes, not a distant enemy, and it makes him a far more enjoyable villain.

Another fascinating personality at play amidst the chase is Nux, one of Immortan Joe’s warboys. Young, feisty, and desperate to please his beloved Joe by any means, Nux drives a flaming classic car armed with explosives and a death wish. Nux is a wonderful alternate viewpoint to see the events of the film through. So different from the cold, determined logic of Furiosa, Nux is impulsive, obsessive and blinded by worship. The travels of Nux through the story is one of the films highlights.

Lost amidst the races and flames and fire blasting guitar players suspended from trucks? Max himself is there too. It’s easy to forget the unfortunate man strapped to the front of Nux’s car. 

Max is an interesting spin on the classic action hero. He’s not as good a driver as Nux, he’s not as skilled a shot as Furiosa. He has no personal vendetta against Joe, he doesn’t know where he’s going, and he’s just along for the ride. He barely grunts a few lines of dialogue through the entire film. Thrust through the storyline set into motion by Furiosa, and contested between her goal and her enemies, Max is a lost soul who we can watch the crazed proceedings through, who never overshadows the rest of the cast. The titular hero is not the most interesting character, so in a remarkably wise writing choice, isn't hamfisted into being main focus. 

The closest thing I can compare Mad Max: Fury Road to, is a great anime film. The old ones, the ultra-violent, apocalyptic worlds populated by the most crazed, disfigured villains you’ve ever seen. Watching Mad Max put me back in the place of unique excitement I first found watching Violence Jack or MD Geist as a kid, that crazy, wild fun that you almost don’t believe you’re seeing for a moment. From start to finish, it’s larger than life, it’s noisy and wild, and It. Does. Not. Stop.