Ghost in the Shell (March 2017)

Official Australian release date: 30/3/17. Viewed: 29/3/17.

Director: Rupert Sanders

Actors: Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbaek, Juliette Binoche, Peter Ferdinando

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: M

‘Ghost in the Shell’ is a remake of the mid-90s anime film, which explored cyborgs and digital immersion before the internet became commonplace. It’s a bit of a shame there’s not more Japanese actors, seeing as it’s still set in futuristic Tokyo (but filmed in New Zealand & China…), with heaps of shots of the annoying super-size digital billboards. Aramaki (Kitano) has an OK cameo as the police chief, but is otherwise wasted.  

Basically, Major (Johansson, doing her best to walk stiffly) is a human brain (“ghost”) transplanted into a robot body (“shell”), who’s then trained to be a SWAT operative – they show you all this in the first 5min, before picking up where the original film starts. Her partner’s Batou (Asbaek), who they do a good job of how he gets his enhancements. Dr Ouelet (Binoche) is her “creator” and conscience, as Major battles to define her humanity and ‘soul’. Cutter (Ferdinando) is a poorly-written bad-guy.

It’s quick – just over 90min – and, like the original, I’m left feeling “why?”. Didn’t have a huge impact on me, unfortunately. Sure, it’s got some good fights and explosions; Kuze (Pitt) poses some interesting questions; and you’re constantly almost seeing Johansson nude, but there’s not much meaning or a bigger picture of why we should care for the characters. Still, it’s better than ‘Lucy’.

Overall: OK remake with some decent action.

Gav's Rating: 3 stars.

Kong: Skull Island (March 2017)

Official Australian release date: 9/3/17. Viewed: 9/3/17.

Director: Jordan Vogt-Roberts

Actors: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly

Genre: Action / Fantasy

Rating: M

With almost no plot – island is hidden by a “perpetual storm”!?! – not sure why this version of King Kong is set in 1973? At least it’s not a direct re-make, but rather a sort of re-imagining. It has a good soundtrack – Stooges, Sabbath, Creedence, Bowie – and a few pretty good action/fight scenes. It’s spends 30min introducing most of the characters and seeding a plot, but it seems pointless, since you hardly learn anyone’s name. And as for the plot – not sure how it took three people to write this screenplay!

There seem to be a lot of shots that were made just for the trailer – zooming into Kong’s eyes; Kong in front of giant sun/moon (how can you see either setting, if there’s a perpetual storm?); 12 helicopters flying into the storm/sun; Kong slow-mo chest thumping. Kong’s obviously not the bad guy, but he’s not the star either – probably with less than 30min screen time, as he fights giant lizards. I’m not sure if Packard (Jackson) or Conrad (Hiddleston) is either, since no-one’s the hero or has that much to do. Larson is OK, Goodman’s wasted, but Marlow (Reilly) saves the day with some almost-humour. At least some of it was filmed in Queensland, although you can tell the bits that were filmed in Hawaii, as it looks like ‘Jurassic Park’!

Of the three King Kong films I’ve seen (1933, 2005, 2017), this is probably my least favourite – they seem to be on a slowly-deteriorating scale. Also, what’s up with Jackson’s right eye near the end? It seems about 75% bigger than his left eye in a few shots! Anyway, predictable ending, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Hard to get too attached to Kong when we have such well-developed CGI characters in the current ‘Planet of the Apes’ series.

Overall: Not horrible, but adds nothing to the King Kong mythology.

Gav's Rating: 2.5 stars.

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.