Indiana Jones & The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Gee whizz! How does one review this movie? Perhaps it would be easier to transport oneself back to childhood to remember the excitement that an Indy film would arouse. If that seems difficult, ask George Lucas how he has manged it. He appears to have remained a child trapped inside the body of an aging Alf the alien lookalike. It seems anything he touches these days is tinged with the feverish and unfocused excitement of a kid with a big train set.

Until we talk to George, you'll have to put up with an adult review for the moment. Crystal Skull has a set-up that, like it or hate it, comes right out of the Spielberg and Lucas playbook. Indy becomes embroiled in the a quest for a Crystal Skull that the Russians (the new baddies) are seeking as it may have powers that are not of this earth i.e. extra-terrestrial. So it's heroes, action and aliens and a bit of sci-fi. The key to this quest is finding an loopy professor and the mother of Shia LeBeouf's cheap imitation of a young Brando. Yes, we are now in an era that Lucas and Spielberg can personally remember, the 1950's. Thus the reds are under the bed, the UFO's are in the sky, everybody looks like an extra from Grease and soft focus apple-pie Americana is everywhere.

Lucas and Spielberg lay all this on thick but somehow the 1st act still works quite well. It zips along at a nice pace and with good humour, charm and top-notch action set-pieces that never let Indy veer into CGI superhero territory. We feel his human limitations and believe the peril we're seeing even if the Russians obviously went to baddie shooting school. Then the quest and the goal arrive and he sets off upon Act 2 and things start to creak until they fall apart.

A horribly expedited plot leads to a quest we don't quite understand involving characters we don't really care about for reasons we're unsure of and we begin to wonder why everybody doesn't just pack it up and go home. That said, putting on rose tinted kid glasses, wasn't this the case with the previous 3 and they worked quite well. The plot is of course irrelevant so as long as all the other ingredients work then what's the problem?

Well ingredient 1 is the breakneck, popcorn friendly old-school action sequences that had us all having epi-fits as kids. Well the bad news is these just don't work. Though impressively choreographed and executed as one would expect of Spielberg, they betray the spirit on an Indy movie in that a) Indy and many of the other principles feel superhuman and immune to injury of any sort. b) Simplicity is jettisoned for an orgy of over-the top action with CGI that feels like it's straight out of The Mummy. There are (almost) no booby traps, closing walls, bridge's over corcodile pits and trap doors from which to rescue his hat. Instead we have characters impossibly swinging from tree to tree on vines as if they are Spiderman, surviving waterfall drops as if they were immortal and straddling 2 jeeps simultaneously as if they were...well, as if they were on a green screen stage in front of a wind machine quite frankly. In other words, simple effective visual drama is exchanged for meaningless, supposedly awesome spectacle. The curse of the CGI era. Shock and awe over story.

Ingredient 2 is Indy's dry wit. Apart from the first act it's mostly missing. Harrison Ford just doesn't have the timing any more and his one-liners are hopelessly cheesy. When he winds up for one, we see Harrison not Indy and we cringe appropriately. To be fair, he's not the only one to let the side down. It's perhaps harsh to say but there might be a reason that Karen Allen hasn't had much work since Raiders. 2 words. Ham Sandwich.

Ingredient 3 is Indy's repeated character arc of reluctant sceptical hero who ends up doing things for the right reasons and truly believes in the mystical power at the end. This is hiding among the mess somewhere, but it's unfocused and unclear and ultimately unsatisfying.

Ingredient 4 is our respect and love of Indy for just being so damn kick-ass and all-knowing. Here he makes so many mistakes that the audience are just screaming at him to cop on! Keep an eye out for his relationship with Ray Winstone's shamefully underwritten character as an example.

To be fair, this isn't a disaster. The set-up is good and it offers us a chance to view Indy in a new era and in an altered cultural landscape, which justifies his return. Dispite the criticisms above, this is still an Indy movie and there are enough traces of the original ingredients of the recipe to make this taste like the real thing. It's fun, it's unpretentious, it's technically well-crafted, and it seems to have been done in the right spirit. Whereas John McClane's return pissed all over the legacy of a rounded trilogy and offered no artistic reason for the comeback, this just about manages to fall closer to Rocky than Rambo in this emerging aging hero sub-genre.

Lucas and Spielberg neither deserve a pat on the back nor a bat to the head. I can't help wonder how Lucas would defend our criticisms if he had the chance. Based on this slice of Americana apple-pie, one suspects he might stay stuff like gee whizz!

2/5

Doomsday

30 years after closing the gates of a giant wall around Scotland to prevent a nasty and highly lethal virus to spread, the british government faces a new break out. Their only hope : a bunch of super cops are to go on the other side of the wall and make contact with the survivors who are believed to be immune therefore to have the antidote in their blood.
At this stage, you might be thinking you've heard this story a hundred times. Well... That's only because you have heard this story a hundred times !
Neil Marshall's first movies (Dog Soldiers and the Descent) were his own stuff. Even if inspired by horror classics, the man still managed to apply his own vision and tone; and it was good fun and quite scary as far as the descent was concerned.
Marshall was more than likely pushed hard to deliver Doomsday or, for that matter, "any movie" because, well, you know what they say... You've got to feed the monkey! So what do you do if you HAVE TO make a movie but no idea for the story? You borrow material. And there is a lot of borrowing in Doomsday, actually that's all there is...
The arrival in the post-apocalyptic Glasgow clearly takes from Aliens but is not quite as good. The first encounter with the overexcited and, it must be said, totally insane survivors wants to look like 28 weeks later but again, no luck there. The rest of the movie is a mix between Escape from LA (but without Snake Plissken) and Beyond Thunderdome (but without Tina Turner's legs)which says a lot about the overall quality. Because let's face it, when a movie can't match the not very high standards of Escape from LA and Beyond Thunderdome, it is a pretty poor performance.

First of all, someone will have to tell me why every time people survive an apocalypse they turn into insane punks with improbable hairdos and a huge amount of black eyeliner spending their time snarling, sticking out their tongue and obviously slaughtering any living thing in sight. The first half of the movie could have been almost scary if you weren't too busy laughing at the bad guys and their "Billy Idol like" leader. There is even a cameo of "the gimp" from Pulp Fiction... And I'm not going to mention the other "faction" seen in the second half because we're touching here the "mount Everest" of ridicule.

There is action in Doomsday, a lot of it. And gruesome, very gruesome. The scenes follow one another at lightning pace without any order or sense for that matter. And this is the other major problem here. The plot doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We're briefly given material that could be used to build a decent storyline but all of it shoved aside immediately and never mentioned again. Same thing for the characterization. So basically, a lot of people are killed in truly atrocious fashion but we don't care because they mean absolutely nothing to us.
I don't want to go too hard on the actors since all they're ask to do is scream (in pain or rage depending on whether they're good guys or bad guys) and jump around to dodge bullets, blades, cars, explosions and... cows. Rhona Mitra (see picture above) has a good "Underworld thing" going on here and she looks very sexy. That doesn't do anything to improve the quality of the movie but it's always a bonus.
Bob Hoskins, is once more lost in a crap movie but we're getting used to it.

In the end, if you like action and blood, Doomsday might just about do it for you but bear in mind that there is way better out there. Between the price of the ticket, the popcorn, the drink and whatever else you need to be comfortable in a cinema you'll more than likely spend 20 euros. Well, for that price, you can rent out Aliens, 28 days/weeks later, Escape from New York and Mad Max. Doomsday is nowhere near any of these.

1/5

Speed Racer

After ‘Iron Man’ kicked off the summer to an exciting start, ‘Speed Racer’ has the unwelcome task of trying to repeat its critical and commercial success. So here comes ‘Speed Racer’ out of dressing room wearing the brightest, most sparkling colours ever seen on a cinema screen.

‘Speed Racer’, which is based on the 60’s Japanese cartoon, sees ‘Speed Racer’ (yes first name ‘Speed’, surname, ‘Racer’) trying to win the worlds greatest race and overcome the ghost of his older brother who has put the family name in tatters due to selling out and becoming a cheater. Speed aims to do this by defeating all sort of crazy villains on the track.

And it’s on the track where ‘Speed Racer’ is great. The visuals are bright and vibrant, the special effects are almost comprehensible by comparison to last summer’s ‘Transformers’. The races themselves are visceral and a feast to the eyes. But it’s off the track where the film suffers.



‘Speed’ (Emile Hirch), our hero and middle child of the race obsessed ‘Racer’ family, is a bit of a drip off the track. He spends most of his time being told what to do and having heart to hearts with his parents. ‘Speed’ (excuse the pun) doesn’t drive the story, he broods a bit too much and as a result the film slows unforgivably down.

It’s as if the Wachoski Brothers are covering their bets by making a light, child friendly film to contrast the philosophically heavy ‘Matrix’ trilogy. As if ‘Speed Racer’ were to be a critical failure then they could always say that it’s a film for children and not critics.

8 Year old boys will love this film and some of their dad’s will find it fun also. The style and colour are OTT and the races are wacky. It’s almost worth the admission for those genuinely curious.

2.5/5

Where In The World Is Osama

Morgan Spurlock shot to fame in 2004 with his documentary Super Size Me, an exposé on the fast food industry in the US. With an original hands on approach Spurlock deserved the plaudits he received. His follow up Where in the World is Osama seems an absurd idea. After finding out that he is to become a father, Spurlock decided to make a documentary on the biggest threat to the US and his unborn child, Osama Bin Laden.

In practice this involves Spurlock travelling around the middle east to find Bin Laden and maybe prove to his fellow rednecks back in the US that not everyone in the Middle East is a religious fanatic out to get them.

Spurlock touches on some of the contentious issues in the Middle East. US support for authoritarian regimes, the Israeli - Palestinian conflict and so forth. But it’s a very basic. Michael Moore has been similarly criticised in the past. The difference is Spurlock hardly makes reference to Iraq an issue which has inflamed anti-western sentiment in the Middle East.

Avoiding controversy hardly makes a great documentary filmmaker. Nevertheless its not all bad. Spurlock seems like a rather affable chap, he communicates well with ordinary people in the middle east. If he achieves anything it is showing that poor people in the middle east, rather than having religious or political motivations, have the same aspirations as the poor anywhere else - to survive.

Ironically Spurlock states later in the film of the faith he has in the good people of the middle east to fight extremism. Maybe someone should have pointed out to him that the rest of the world believed in the good people of America during the presidential elections in 2005 to do the right thing - instead we got four more years of GWB.

Rating: 2/5

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Judd Apatow has been hailed as the saviour of comedy. It's easy to see why. He seemed to have cracked it. The box office figures would agree. His producing template is simple. Get a talented troupe of comedic actors and directors together, including himself. Generate the material from within that group allowing the talent to try their hand at writing, directing, producing and whatever you're having yourself. Ensure that the material is foul-mouthed and crude to appeal to the guys and has a strong romantic element to appeal to the girls. Ensure it has genuine characters and arcs to make people care (if they're so inclined). Lastly, let the talent loose by allowing them to improvise and come up with stuff that is too random and inspired to ever be dreamed up by a scriptwriter sitting in front of a laptop, thus making it all feel like a party that the audience is let in on.

Unfortunately there have been dark clouds gathering. His saturation of the marketplace after his initial success (possibly the studios fault for giving him the keys to the city and unloading his waste on the public) has lead to diminishing returns at the box office. Drillbit Taylor was a recent notable failure. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a slightly safer bet, sailing closely as it does to Knocked Up. Written by the goofy self-effacing everyman star that we can all root for, playing opposite a highly attractive female lead who is more famous for her TV roles, an enticing blend of improvised Apatow sweet and sour from a selection of his usual troupe. A simple low-concept premise: Man gets dumped, goes on holidays to get away from it all, his ex his there with her new rock star boyfriend and he can't avoid them. It should work. And it does. Though it never quite reaches the heights of Superbad or Knocked Up.

Segal is endearing and funny at times but can't quite match Seth Rogen in these stakes. The movie unfolds predictably but it doesn't matter when there are enough laughs along the way. Russell Brand delivers a lot of these, essentially playing himself and, as in real life, initially seeming like a prat but actually turning out to be likable. Mila Kunis holds her own as the new love interest but her character is pretty thin and falls annoyingly into a new cliched character-category - the quirky girl who 'understands' the lead and whose passion for life helps the protagonist over a recent trauma. See Garden State and the awful Elizabethtown . Some of the supporting cast seem to be on auto pilot or a little miscast. Jonah Hill is still effortlessly funny though.

There's enough in here to make this a DVD that will be brought around by a comforting friend with a tub of ice-cream after a break-up in years to come (again, if you're so inclined) But it still seems a little further down the graph as Apatow's stock slowly falls. Maybe the upcoming Pineapple Express can buck the trend and make the graph U-shaped again.

3/5

Street Kings

Street Kings, based on a story by James LA Confidential Ellroy, tells the story of detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves) a veteran LAPD cop who is willing to break the law in order to bring down the bad guys. His methods bring him into conflict with his former partner detective Washington (Crews) and internal affairs captain Biggs (Laurie). Though with the support of his boss captain Wander (Whitaker) and other cops Ludlow always manages to come out clean. When Detective Washington, who was talking to internal affairs about Ludlow, ends up dead Ludlow vows to track down the killers even if it means implicating himself.

Looking at the cast, the plot, the director and the writers of Street Kings you would think you where on to a winner. You would be wrong. The only thing Street Kings succeeds in doing is proving that it takes more than the right ingredients to make a good film.

With his first and only other film as director, Harsh Times, Ayer gave us an excellent study of a gulf war veteran unable to fit in after returning to LA after a tour of duty. To say Street Kings is not as good would be an understatement. The story is convoluted and yet the ending is obvious ten minutes into the film, the characters are clichés and the dialogue tries far too hard to be cool.

Keanu has given us some great films over the years but the poverty of this material shows up his limitations as an actor. Neither Forest Whitaker nor Hugh Laurie offers any salvation. Indeed there are some memorably bad performances. If there is a silver lining here it is some decent action scenes and a good supporting performance by Chris Evans.

Rather than going to see Street Kings, go rent LA Confidential or NARC.

2/5

Leatherheads

George Clooney’s third directorial effort sees him tackling the difficult genre of the screwball comedy. A genre which is defined by the use of sharp, witty dialogue and with strong romantic leads by films like ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Adam’s Rib’ and in more recent times ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’.

Set in 1925, Leatherheads sees Clooney play ‘Dodge Connelly’, manager and player of a struggling professional football team. Facing financial ruin, Dodge concocts a scheme to lure ‘All-Star’ college footballer and War hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to the team in an effort to boost ticket sales and save the day. Enter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), a feisty reporter with her eye on the assistant editor’s desk; which, she’ll bag if she gets the story that will shatter the tale which made Carter an American golden child. All sounds pretty screwbally so far, doesn’t it?

So, Leatherheads should work, all the parts are there; screwball comedy set against the backdrop of the birth of professional football where the rule book hasn’t been written and dirty tactics are par for the course. Also, Clooney has had some experience with the Coen Brothers who know a thing or two about this flavour of film. For all intensive purposes, this film should at the very least have us giggling from beginning to end. It doesn’t.

The film makes too many wrong decisions. First the script, all that witty, snappy dialogue that should be there, isn’t. And when it is there, it’s forced. The ‘wacky’ football team which is set up from the beginning and should the gold mine of fun and frolics is simply thrown to one side to focus on the lesser and underdeveloped love triangle between our three leads.

A staple in the genre of the ‘Screwball Comedy’ is the feisty leading lady. Her presence and machine gun delivery of dialogue will set the tone and pace to all of her scenes. Not here, Zellweger seems laboured in a role that isn’t freshly realized leaving her to act via squint.

Leatherheads is mostly one big missed opportunity. Apart from minor laughs from the football team, there is little to recommend about this film. Instead get your hands on ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ for a proper contemporary stab at the screwball comedy genre. Then for to get your fix of some reckless sporting team antic watch ‘Slap Shot’ where Paul Newman tries to manage violent but hilarious ice hockey team.

This doesn’t mean we don’t like George, we do. Let’s just hope that his next directing effort (which should be the Coen Brother’s script ‘Suburbicon’) will be better.

2/5 (for effort)