Logan (March 2017)

Official Australian release date: 2/3/17. Viewed: 2/3/17.

Director: James Mangold

Actors: Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Dafne Keen, Boyd Holbrook

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: MA

‘Logan’ is the final (we’ll see) Wolverine film, in addition to the six X-Men films, so it’s safe to say it’s Jackman’s last outing – it’s been a good 17 years! ‘Logan’ is again directed by Mangold, who did the previous film (‘The Wolverine’) and is set in 2029 – when Logan/James Howlett is ~200 and Professor Charles Xavier (Stewart) is ~90. They do a great job of making them both look and seem way older than their appearances in the last few films! It’s great to see Logan as an every-man drifter, working as a limo driver between El Paso and Mexico, where he’s looking after Prof X with his dementia. Clearly, some tragedy has befallen them and it’s alluded to a few times.

The “near-future” looks very realistic – almost the same as now, but with driverless trucks and giant robotic harvesting machines. No futuristic ray guns or anything! It’s also cool to see Wolverine kill about five people and swear about 10 times in the first 3min – well-earned MA rating! Also, very true to the comics, where some of the story is from Millar’s ‘Old Man Logan’ (highly recommended). Once X-23/Laura (Keen) comes into it, the film becomes a Western, with Logan trying to protect Prof X & Laura from Donald Pierce (Holbrook – fun bad guy) as they go on a cross-country chase.

There’s some plausible plot, only tentatively linking in with previous films, but particularly X-23 and X-24 (i.e. Wolverine as “Weapon X” was X-1, but this time the experiments were in Mexico, not Canada…) showing Logan both his past and potential future. Getting to see his healing-factor wane and have to face his mortality, as well as reluctantly be the good guy, is all true to character and pulled off expertly by Jackman. It’s long (2.25 hours), with lots of nice, character-building moments – particularly with the family at the farm house. Keen is good as Laura and Merchant has a nice role as Caliban. It’s also touching and poignant in plenty of scenes (good score), but there’s heaps of action and violence too – especially the final 25min, with it all well executed.

Overall: Fantastic finale – I hope they leave Wolverine for quite a few years now!

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.

The Great Wall (February 2017)

Official Australian release date: 16/2/17. Viewed: 15/2/17.

Director: Yimou Zhang

Actors: Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal, Tian Jing, Andy Lau

Genre: Action / Fantasy

Rating: M

‘The Great Wall’ is certainly not a documentary! Not that anyone would be mistaken after seeing the poster or synopsis. One plot summary had: “a mystery centered around the construction of the Great Wall of China” – wrong! There’s no mystery, and certainly no construction of the Great Wall – it’s already there when William (Damon – I think he’s supposed to have a Scottish accent, but it’s horrible) & Tovar (Pascal, from Narcos & Game of Thrones) stumble upon it. Commander Lin (Jing) spares them, and they’re suddenly under attack.

The film doesn’t waste too much time starting the fight against the Tao Tie – monsters/aliens (not really explained) that look like a cross between Wargs from ‘Lord of the Rings’ and the Hammerhead beasts from ‘Avatar’. They emerge every 60 years (from Russia?) to attack the Chinese (for some reason) – and there’s about 500 million of them, obviously controlled by a queen (end-game established), but they have their own, literal, kryptonite. There’s some decent action scenes and plenty of stunts, but nothing really new.

This is director Zhang’s first Hollywood film and is nowhere near as good as ‘Hero’ or ‘House of Flying Daggers’. The editing is jerky at times and almost every shot of the Great Wall looks like CGI – I truly hope some of it was actually shot on location. The main problem is you don’t care about any of the characters, as there’s no backstories (no time – it’s all over in 95min), with most of the generals conveniently colour-coded. The whole thing really feels like a poor rip-off of ‘Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers’. Lau & Dafoe are wasted and Damon seems to coast through, being an archer/mercenary who suddenly decides to be a hero. I was wondering if the Chinese audience would hate it, but it’s already made $170 million there in two months, so it was in 2016’s top 10! Definitely too earnest, when it could’ve been funnier/more tongue-in-cheek, when at it is so ridiculous at it’s core.

Overall: Might re-watch if it was on TV…

Gav's Rating: 2.5 stars.

Patriots Day (February 2017)

Official Australian release date: 2/2/17. Viewed: 4/2/17.

Director: Peter Berg

Actors: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, Alex Wolff

Genre: Drama / Action

Rating: M

‘Patriots Day’ is another “based-on-real-events” film by Berg, after ‘Lone Survivor’ and ‘Deepwater Horizon’ – and this is just as good. I think once he got ‘Battleship’ out of his system, he’s only got good directing left! He takes his time introducing a set of ~10 characters in the first 20min (no titles), in the lead up to and the start of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Tommy (Wahlberg) is the everyman cop, Carol (Monaghan) is his wife, Ed (Goodman) is the police commissioner, DesLauriers (Bacon) is the FBI agent, Tamerlan (Melikidze) and Dzhokhar (Wolff) are the bombers, and there’s a few other ‘regular’ couples introduced, so we get coverage of the incident from various angles.

Once the bombs go off, it’s utter chaos and is shown very realistically – heart-wrenchingly so – with plenty of smoke, blood, sirens and people screaming everywhere. Tommy does the best he can, but it’s good to see him exhausted and overwhelmed once he’s back home with Carol. We see firsthand some of the victims in hospital – plenty of amputations. Then, it turns to police/FBI efficiency, with a “hours since bombing” graphic letting us know the timeline, as they try to catch the suspects. This man-hunt aspect of the film keeps the momentum up.

Some of the characters we’ve been following that seem to have no role are suddenly involved (i.e. Sergeant Pugliese [Simmons] and Meng [Yang]) as the man-hunt escalates into a shootout. I’m not entirely sure of the actual events that happened after the marathon bombing, so I’m not sure how much creative license was taken by Berg, but there’s a satisfactory conclusion. The film wraps up with the real-life people of the characters we’ve been watching speaking on the impact it’s had on their lives. There’s some truly emotional and touching moments throughout the film, and while it’s sometimes too overtly patriotic, it shows the impact on real people and their resilience.

Overall: Well-made and touching true story.

Gav's Rating: 4 stars.

Manchester By The Sea (February 2017)

Official Australian release date: 2/2/17. Viewed: 3/2/17.

Director: Kenneth Lonergan

Actors: Casey Affleck, Lucas Hedges, Kyle Chandler, Michelle Williams

Genre: Drama

Rating: M

‘Manchester by the Sea’ (a town one hour north-east of Boston) is the setting and title for this film that’s nominated for multiple Oscars, based around a man dealing with grief. Lee (Affleck) is a guy just trying to get by, working as a janitor, when he finds out his brother, Joe (Chandler) has died of a heart attack. He has to drive up to Manchester and try to figure out what to do with his 16-year-old nephew, Patrick (Hedges).

There’s not much backstory as to why Lee is separated from his ex-wife, Randi (Williams), but this, as well as some history of Lee and Joe together, is sporadically filled in throughout the film. The big reveal explains why people look at/whisper about Lee and the very heavy burden he’s carrying. Affleck is great, softly-spoken, but with so much hurt in his eyes – it’s easy to see why he’s nominated for Best Actor. Hedges is as good as the teenaged son, grieving for his dad, but continuing on with life as best he can, including playing ice hockey, band practice and trying to date two girls, while trying to understand and help his uncle.

There’s a decent support cast – Joe’s friend George (Wilson), the coach (Donovan), Patrick’s girlfriend Sandy (Baryshnikov) & her mum Jill (Burns) – but it’s really up to Affleck, Hedges and Williams to do all the heavy lifting. It’s certainly not a fun or exciting film, but it is engrossing, as you learn more about the characters and some of the heartbreak they’ve all endured. It’s a little long, with lots of slow and quiet parts, “endure” is an apt description for what the characters have to do.

Overall: Well-made character-driven drama.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.

La La Land (January 2017)

Official Australian release date: 26/12/16. Viewed: 30/1/17.

Director: Damien Chazelle

Actors: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, John Legend, J.K. Simmons

Genre: Musical

Rating: M

Lots of people have been asking if I’ve seen ‘La La Land’, so I thought I had better give it a chance, even though musicals aren’t my thing – better late than never, right? I always list the four most prominent actors when I do a review, but I truly struggled to think of anyone else to fill the 3^rd & 4^th slots, since this film has two stars, and at least one of them is on screen the entire time, with little time dedicated to anything/anyone else. Maybe not a bad thing, but it does mean the film gets a bit monotonous.

Sebastian (Gosling) and Mia (Stone) are easy to watch and are good in this, but I don’t think either of them is a particularly good singer or dancer. My main problem with musicals is: why? If a scene’s not interesting enough to sustain momentum without having song and dance, then cut it! At least in animated films, they seem to find ways to weave songs in organically – and they’re catchy. Here, I didn’t find any of the songs very catchy or interesting – most are kind of mopey. Otherwise, it’s all quite predictable – they fall in love, they chase their dreams, the end.

The ending is semi-interesting, but every time I started to get pulled into the film when there’s a stretch with no singing, it suddenly appears again – always out of context – and pushes me back out. It’s definitely not a bad film, I just felt like nothing really happened – sure, there’s some romance and they’re good actors, but there’s no real story or humour to be found.

Overall: Average romance musical.

Gav's Rating: 2.5 stars.

Split (January 2017)

Official Australian release date: 26/1/17. Viewed: 28/1/17.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Actors: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley, Hayley Lu Richardson

Genre: Thriller / Horror

Rating: M

‘Split’ refers to James McAvoy’s split personalities – or dissociative identity disorder (DID) – of which he has 23. He plays Barry, Hedwig, Kevin, Dennis, Patricia and a few others you get to see. The film wastes no time, with him abducting Casey (Taylor-Joy), Claire (Richardson) and Marcia (Sula) and they all wake up in a strange room. You’re then introduced to a few of his personalities – Dennis is mostly in charge – and they’re not all malevolent.

He also visits Dr Fletcher (Buckley), who genuinely tries to help him and slowly figures out it’s not Barry she’s been talking to, but Dennis. The girls try to escape, but are thwarted, as it becomes a race against time before “the beast” arrives. This ominous arrival drives the momentum and plot. It’s a little slow in parts, but keeps your interest throughout.

McAvoy is excellent, with his ability to change expressions, accents and mannerisms fantastic, and Taylor-Joy shows good depth too (Casey’s childhood is slowly revealed to give background). The final 20min is frenetic and the ending is both scary, creepy and well-handled – except perhaps for the final minute cameo. Good to see Shyamalan back.

Overall: Well-made creepy thriller.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.

Live By Night (January 2017)

Official Australian release date: 26/1/17. Viewed: 26/1/17.

Director: Ben Affleck

Actors: Ben Affleck, Chris Messina, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper

Genre: Drama / Action

Rating: MA

‘Live By Night’ (FYI, “live” as in ‘liv’, not ‘lie-ve’ – “sleep by day, live by night”) is the fourth film Ben Affleck’s directed (after ‘Gone Baby Gone’, ‘The Town’ and ‘Argo’), and sadly it’s my least favourite of his. That’s not to say it’s bad, since he’s a better director than he is an actor, but that’s where the problem lies – it’s quite hard to truly warm to his character, Joe, in this. I wish he’d cast other people as leads, like in ‘Gone Baby Gone’. It’s set in 1920’s prohibition-era Boston (where else), but he eventually relocates to Tampa, Florida, to run the rum trade for the Italian gang.

The start’s OK, but needed more of his father (Gleeson), as he gets caught between the Irish and Italian mobs. Joe meets Graciela (Salanda) in Tampa and falls in love and has to put up with the KKK calling him and her all sorts of things, but that’s eventually sorted – the film doesn’t really delve too much into the racial implications of things. Joe & Dion (Messina), his trusty off-sider, meet the police Chief (Cooper) and his daughter, Loretta (Fanning), which has implications later on. The main plot centres on Joe & Dion trying to branch into the gambling/casino business and the hurdles they face.  

There’s a tale of vengeance in there, plus a cautionary tale of not losing yourself while trying to be someone you’re not and all the while you still feel a little bit of “why do I care?” There are some great fly-over scenery/sunset shots in Florida, and a decent ending, but it all feels a bit too dragged out (130min, when it could’ve easily wrapped up after 105min) with no real connection or purpose made. The set design and cars are certainly cool and of the era, but the shootouts never seem enough or to have enough at stake.

Overall: OK gangster/vengeance film.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.