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Movie Review: Columbiana (2011)

February 2, 2012 in Movie Reviews, Reviews

Apparently, allegedly, supposedly, Columbiana was originally envisioned as a sequel to The Professional (otherwise known as Leon), you know, Natalie Portman’s debut as a pre-pubescent assassin wannabe who is rescued and taken in by a super lone assassin played by Jean Reno.  It’s kind of got cult classic status now and is a personal favourite of mine.

But let’s face it, even though it will get the fanboys all hot under the collar, the idea of a grown up Natalie Portman who has fulfilled her dream of becoming an assassin was always going to suck and piss all over the legacy of the original film.

And so I’m glad they didn’t go down that route.  Instead, Columbiana as a similar premise, except with Zoe Saldana (Avatar, Star Trek, The Losers) in the lead role as a little girl who is determined to become an assassin after her family is wiped out by drug lords in Columbia and she escapes to America to live with her uncle.  Fast forward a few years and Saldana has become the real deal — a super svelte, sexy, kick-ass assassin who is intent on tracking down and annihilating all those involved in her family’s demise.

As an action film, Columbiana does produce some thrills and clever ideas.  Saldana looks the part and, because the film is co-produced and co-written by Luc Besson (the man behind The Professional), the style is slick and has that unique “Besson feel” to it — I’m thinking classics like The Fifth Element, Nikita, Taken, Taxi – all films he has been involved with in some capacity).  The gun fights, hand-to-hand combat and in especially the chase scenes are all done extremely well.

That said, when all said and done, Columbiana will likely go down as one of the more forgettable Besson-related films.  There’s just nothing in this film that feels fresh or special, and the storytelling by director Olivier Megaton (Transporter 3 – and said to be at the helm of the much anticipated Taken 2) leaves a lot to be desired.  It was choppy and uneven and simply not engaging.  I actually got a bit bored during the slower scenes.

But I will say that I found the action-packed scenes of Columbiana enjoyable when I was watching it.  As a Zoe Saldana vehicle and popcorn movie, it delivers, but don’t go in expecting a whole lot more.

2.75 stars out of 5

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Movie Review: Dream House (2011)

January 25, 2012 in Movie Reviews, Reviews

At first glance, Dream House appears like your run-of-the-mill haunted house movie.  A young couple moves into a new house, spooky stuff happens, yada yada yada, you know the rest.  But while Dream House is not a particularly good horror film (in some ways it’s not even a proper horror), I do have to say that it is different to what you would ordinarily expect from a movie of this kind.

Daniel Craig is Will Atenton, a successful book publisher who leaves his profession to move from New York to New England with his wife Libby (Rachel Weisz) and his two little girls.  Everything is fine until weird stuff starts happening and Will starts to believe that their dream house has a past that will come back to haunt them.  Someone who knows more than they are letting on is their neighbour, played by Naomi Watts.

Up until this point it’s all pretty cookie-cutter stuff, but Dream House breaks away from the expected trajectory by throwing a curve ball midway through.  It’s not an unexpected twist, but the timing of the twist is curious as it’s usually reserved for the final act.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t really do a whole lot for the film, which is, for the most part, plodding and lacking in both scares or thrills.  It takes the wind out of the sails too early and shifts the focus to melodrama, which simply doesn’t work without the character foundations required.  I guess the only benefit is that it keeps you interested in how they are going to fill up the remainder of the 92-minute running time.

I really wanted to like Dream House because I’m a fan of the genre and all three leads (in fact, it’s where Craig and Weisz fell in love and ended up getting married — which explains their solid chemistry), and despite not expecting very much out of it I still came away disappointed by the stale pace and dearth of scares.  The negatives could have been somewhat mitigated had the drama been more moving but it failed in that regard too.  Strangely, the film has a pretty awesome soundtrack, but when that’s the most redeeming thing about a film you know it can’t be good.

2 stars out of 5

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Movie Review: The Thing (2011)

January 17, 2012 in Movie Reviews, Reviews

I haven’t seen John Carpenter’s 1982 original and went into the new version of The Thing believing that it was a remake.  Interestingly, while the premise is somewhat similar, the 2011 version is not a remake and not a sequel, but a prequel.  Apparently those who have seen the 1982 film will understand why some things in the 2011 version turn out the way they do.

Anyway, I digress.  Either as a prequel or a standalone film, The Thing works on some levels as a sci-fi horror but fails to be nearly as effective as it could have been.  It contains a solid performance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead (the object of Michael Cera’s affection in Scott Pilgrim vs the World), who channels her inner Ellen Ripley, some freaky special effects and a whole lotta paranoia, but I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I had seen it all before (and this is without seeing the original).

The Thing (2011) tells the story of a group of researchers who head to a Norwegian base camp to examine a “discovery” from Antarctica.  As it turns out, the discovery is not quite as dead as they thought it was, and soon the base is turned upside down, with people dying gruesome deaths and the survivors not knowing who they can trust.  There’s tension and there’s paranoia and there’s chills (it is, after all, based in the ice).  As far as freaky scares go, The Thing delivers.  The titular character is a nasty, “WTF is that?” piece of work and kudos must go out to the special effects team that created it.

As I said, I haven’t seen the 1982 film, so I cannot comment on whether the 2011 film compares favourably (though from most accounts it doesn’t).  What I can say is that it is certainly better than the vast majority of films in recent years that have been reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels or spin-offs of other popular/famous horror  films or franchises (eg, those Alien, Predator, Alien vs Predator, Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddie vs Jason, Saw, Final Destination films, etc).  That said, there wasn’t anything particularly clever or special about this film either, and it’s highly unlikely that it will have the longevity of the original, which is still often brought up as a horror classic.

At the end of the day, The Thing (2011) is what it is — a solid prequel that doesn’t nearly live up to the highly touted original but doesn’t crap all over its legacy either.

3 stars out of 5!

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Movie Review: Warrior (2011)

January 9, 2012 in Best Of, Movie Reviews, Reviews

I still don’t really “get” MMA (mixed martial arts) — whenever I see it on TV it reminds me of a prison shower — but Warrior, starring Aussie Joel Edgerton and Inception‘s and soon to be The Dark Knight Rises’s Tom Hardy, has convinced me to give the sport a second look.

Warrior is, without a doubt, the best MMA movie of all time (give that the competition includes Never Back Down I and II, Fighting and Undisputed II and III), and is arguably one of the best films of the year.  You might say it’s 2011′s The Fighter (the true story of Micky Ward starring Marky Mark and Batman) — a riveting family drama disguised as a violent sports film.

Without the benefit of a “true story” behind it, Warrior does have the danger of being construed as cliched, but as always, it’s all about the execution of the story.  I don’t want to give too much away because the mysteries of the relationships play a big part in the film’s allure and sustaining the drama.  Tom Hardy is Tommy, a child wrestling prodigy who escaped his abusive father (and trainer) with his mother as a teenager.  Edgerton is his big brother Brendan, a former UFC fighter turned struggling physics teacher.  Nick Nolte plays their reformed father.  The event that brings them all together is Sparta, a $5 million winner-takes-all grand prix-style MMA tournament featuring the world’s top fighters, including a frightening undefeated Russian champion.

There is a sense of inevitability in this Gavin O’Connor film (he also wrote the script and co-produced), but it hardly matters because Warrior is a genuinely moving, gripping and explosive drama that touches on such universal themes as forgiveness, redemption and unbreakable familial bonds.  I don’t think the film would be what it is without the top-notch performances of its three stars.  Tom Hardy brings a brooding, tragic presence to the enigmatic Tommy, while Edgerton is picture perfect as the underdog fighting for his family.  And Nolte pretty much has his mumbling old man thing down pat, and is perhaps the most heartbreaking character of them all.

As for the fight scenes — while they are secondary to the film’s drama, and keeping in mind that I’m not a regular viewer of MMA, I personally thought they looked fantastic, as good as any film about fighting I’ve seen.  There were some fast cuts and rapidly changing angles, but I never lost track of what the fighters were doing, and most of all I found the choreography highly engaging and exciting.  There is perhaps an element of implausibility in how the story and/or fights unfold, but everything is handled with so much skill and sufficient subtlety that it becomes forgiveable.

Warrior made an emotional connection with me which made the film enormously satisfying to watch.  I’m not sure if it’ll be the same upon a second viewing or years on later, but for now, in my mind, it’s one of the best fighting movies ever.

4.75 stars out of 5!

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Movie Review: Midnight in Paris (2011)

January 5, 2012 in Best Of, Movie Reviews, Reviews

It’s 2012 already but I’m still trying to finish off my 2011 movie reviews so I can do my annual top 10 list.

I still have a quite a few to go, but I’m pretty sure Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris is going to be on that list. Starring Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates and co, Midnight in Paris is one of those rare, magical delights that I just couldn’t help but fall in love with.

Even though I had seen a couple of trailers, I mistakenly thought Midnight in Paris was one of those lazy, forgettable romantic “dramedies” with a bit of predictable quirkiness and lots of pretty scenes of Paris.  While it is indeed a quasi-love letter to the beautiful city, I couldn’t have been more wrong about everything else.  Without giving too much away, I would classify it as a “fantastical” romantic comedy.

It tells the story of Gil (Wilson), an engaged Hollywood scriptwriter working on his first novel, who travels to Paris on a vacation with his fiance Inez (McAdams) and her wealthy parents.  By chance, they bump into Inez’s pompous, insufferable friend Paul (Sheen), who loves to grab the spotlight and take the wind out of Gil’s sails.  Feeling rejected and dejected, Gil decides take a solo stroll through the streets of Paris one evening, thus beginning an unexpected and mystical adventure  involving a whole cast of fascinating characters.  I didn’t know about this aspect of the film so it came to me as a wonderful surprise, and being a writer made it even more glorious.

Despite the scandals in his personal life, it’s hard to not admire Woody Allen as genius filmmaker.  He has made some pretty decent but flawed films in recent years (Whatever Works, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Scoop and Match Point, to name a few), but Midnight in Paris has to be one of his best in quite some time.  The characters are rich and the dialogue is sublime.  The one-liners are hilarious.  And the idea itself is brilliant.  At just 94 minutes, the film is short and sweet, allowing a swift pace.  It might not be a particularly deep film, but the sweet, light-hearted and wondrous vibe that Allen threads throughout the whole film makes it a joy to watch.

The role of Gil was made for Owen Wilson, and he shines here as the affable, slightly dorky Gil.  McAdams is also very good as the spoiled, irritating finance, and Michael Sheen is, as expected, marvellous as the pseudo-intellectual douchebag Paul.  Marion Cotillard is sexy and alluring, but for me, the one who steals the show in a minor role is French actress Lea Seydoux (who was recently an assassin in MI4).  But with the likes of Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody and French First Lady Carla Bruni, it’s hard to pick any holes in the cast or performances.

Midnight in Paris is by no means a perfect film, but I connected with it in a way I never thought I would.  As far as short, witty, memorable films are concerned, this one is right up there in my personal pantheon.

5 out of 5 stars!

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