Film preview – Love or Money: An Unromantic Comedy

Film preview

Love or Money: An Unromantic Comedy

Starring Robert Kazinsky, Samantha Barks, Tony Way

Directed by Mark Murphy

Comedies are like soufflés. You might have the best butter, sugar and eggs, but there’s something in the cooking that leads to the confection either being light and fluffy or collapsed like a deflated balloon. Not enough sugar or sweetness and it obviously ends up bitter. Too much and it becomes hard to swallow. Too many eggs and half can end up on the cast’s face.

Thankfully writer/director Mark Murphy, who made Howden and Bubwith-shot chiller Awaiting, has scored a bull’s eye with his new movie The Revenger: An Unromantic Comedy.

It’s another feather in the cap of local film outfit Goldfinch Entertainment (formerly GSP Studios), Yorkshire-based film producer Alan Latham and Eric Woollard-White.

The Revenger is due for release later in 2018, but I was given a sneak peek at the tale of one man, his scheming bride-to-be and the characters who orbit around them.

Now I won’t give too much away, but the skill of the movie is pushing certain characters to breaking point, and just when you start to lose sympathy with a key protagonist, the plot changes course.

“If it bends it’s funny, if it breaks it’s not,” is a good comedic rule of thumb that always stands up, and The Revenger bends just enough to ensure the comedic snapback is perfect. (No, that’s not a funny baseball cap).

It helps that the casting is wonderful. Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim/Warcraft) is spot on as Mark, the lovelorn hero, while Tony Way (Edge of Tomorrow) is excellent as his best mate, Tim. Some actors have funny bones, and Way is one of them. His face has the comedic appeal of a clown car’s airbag. He’s in danger of stealing the show if it weren’t for Samantha Barks’s Connie, the axle on which part of the vehicle rests. Her mix of sex appeal and comic timing is irresistible, especially during a scene reminiscent of Carry On Camping. But despite her character being capable of horrible things, one tear-streaked scene in a car can also break your heart. If there was any doubt after Les Miserables that a major talent had arrived, this should prove the naysayers wrong.

The film also has a dash of Wedding Crashers, and while some will be reminded of Four Weddings and a Funeral, not least because of the presence of Anna ’Duckface’ Chancellor at her outrageous best, it also feels like a comedy from centuries ago. Amorous in-laws and a sidekick will leave many howling while others watch through latticed fingers.

Solid support comes from Ivan Kaye (Vikings), Rachel Hurd-Wood (Peter Pan) and Edward Speleers (Downton Abbey).

In short, The Revenger is a witty, snappy, stylish comedy which deserves to do well here and overseas.

There are now two major British weddings to watch in 2018, and as we wait for the royal one, here’s a four-word review of a fun, fictional diversion that’s crucial given the title.

I laughed. A lot.

8/10

Bright – Movie Review

Bright

Directed by David Ayer

Starring Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace

So, after months of plugging, Netflix unveil their highest profile streaming movie to date.

Bright has the production values of a major motion picture, the heavyweight star appeal of Will Smith, and a high concept premise: an alternate LA, filled with orcs, elves and fairies.

Will Smith is Ward, the foul-mouthed cop teamed with Joel Edgerton’s Jakoby, the long suffering Orc crime buster who spends most of the movie being sworn at, beaten up or worse.

Their chalk and cheese partnership forms the backbone of the story involving a magic wand, a dark lord and an endangered elf.

Which is all very Harry Potter meets Lord of the Rings with Ayer’s previous movie End of Watch thrown in and a heroine reminiscent of Leeloo from The Fifth Element.

It’s brutal, bloody stuff which for 90 per cent of its running time is hard to stomach. The seemingly endless macho posturing, face offs with gang members and swearing is so abrasive, i’m worn down by the sheer nastiness of the whole production.

Smith is usually good value for money, but even his charm can’t save this Christmas turkey.

Edgerton is okay as his sidekick and Noomi Rapace adds malevolence as the big bad.

So, 30 years after Alien Nation posited an LA filled with ETs, and mismatched cops tackling bad guys,this unofficial remake makes that bad film look a lot better.

It’s toxic stuff alleviated only by some great photography and flashes of excitement. The whole time I’m watching it I want it to get better, and be less brutal, but it feels like crawling through a two-hour long tunnel of offal.

The only bright bit comes at the end.

The music is yawnsome, the script mostly dreadful with the odd decent one liner from Max Landis, and on the whole a horrible experience.

No matter how much you may love the Fresh Prince, or the good ideas, avoid at all costs.

2/10

Star Wars: The Last Jedi – Spoiler Free Review

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Directed by Rian Johnson

Starring Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver

Certificate 12A

There was a time the average gap between Star Wars movies was three years. But when Disney took over the franchise in 2012, they planned on releasing at least one Star Wars-related movie a year. And with Kathleen Kennedy in charge, 2015’s The Force Awakens proved the franchise was in safe hands.

Now we have the eighth chapter in the saga (ninth if you count the sublime episode 3.5, Rogue One).

And with JJ Abrams passing the baton to Looper’s Rian Johnson, we’re off on another dazzling adventure.

The opening space battle is pure Star Wars. Dizzying, thrilling and glorious cinematic magic accompanied by John Williams’ bombastic score.

Seconds after the opening crawl, I have a big stupid grin as Rebels fight the bad guys; a familiar face pops up as an evil officer, and the whole thing slots together beautifully.

But that space battle is just the eye candy-laced doorway to one of the most complex, divisive and bold chapters in the saga.

Safe to say The Last Jedi will leave die-hard fans emerging from the theatre processing what they’ve just seen.

Johnson takes the saga to interesting places, and though the script could have done with some polish, one scene involving a key character’s actions against insurmountable odds definitely needed rejecting at the script stage. Some force-related feats push things too far.

The new cast we met in The Force Awakens feel a lot more at home here. Not that they did a bad job in TFA, but it’s good to see the likes of John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac given a chance to flex their acting muscles.

Obviously given the passing of Carrie Fisher, the whole movie feels like a tribute in all the right places, but if the film belongs to anyone it’s Mark Hamill. The hermetic Luke Skywalker is now as weathered as the craggy island he calls home.

Giving a terrific performance as the hero millions grew up with, to see him back in action for the first time since 1983 is a treat fans never thought they’d witness.

And while old beloved droids like C-3PO and R2D2 are also back, BB-8 steals the film once more.

There are inevitable nods to The Empire Strikes Back, but at times it also feels like the first episode of the revamped Battlestar Galactica, with a touch of The Two Towers’ Helm’s Deep thrown in for good measure.

There’s also a low tech clunkiness to the props. Maybe it’s hi-def cameras showing more than film ever used to, but some gadgets and sets feel a bit Blue Peter. Then there is Snoke’s lair, a blood red screen which looks striking but temporary, like a stage set.

And the Vegas-style Canto Bight features a few too many weird characters in the now obligatory cantina-style scene that adds colour to most SW movies.

As it’s the longest of the saga, my oft-repeated comment of it being 20 minutes too long is completely on the money.

The Last Jedi is still a compelling sci-fi adventure, but kids will be restless in the second act, and their parents nursing aching legs by the finale.

So, a flawed but fascinating chapter which fails to match the dizzy heights of Empire and Rogue One, but is still a must see on the big screen. The 3D is pretty effective, the sound design excellent, and that shot of fighters soaring over salt flats, leaving scarlet scars in the Earth is unforgettable.

Who knows what’s in store for Episode IX, but with JJ Abrams back at the helm, it should be much tighter than this ambitious curio.

8/10

Film review: Paddington 2

Paddington 2

Starring Hugh Bonneville, Hugh Grant, Sally Hawkins

Certificate PG

Directed by Paul King

Perfection, as we all know is an elusive quality. We may strive for it, but despite Fairground Attraction’s foot-tapping pleas, few things are rarely perfect.

Except occasionally a film comes along where everything clicks. The right producer hires the best director and the ideal cast and crew, together with spot-on effects technicians. And the story is strong enough to carry the weight of expectation from start to finish. Every second of celluloid is a well-crafted dream; finely tuned, expertly crafted and dovetails with the next scene.

It’s a film with a start, a middle and end. It makes sense. There’s a cross generational appeal, so those pushing 50 can enjoy what’s on screen as much as those in the spring of youth and the winter of their years.

Paddington 2 is one of those movies, a film so utterly wondrous, it feels like a dozen Christmases rolled into one.

Three years to the day after seeing the first Paddington movie on the big screen, I’d hoped the sequel would live up to that wonderful starter of a motion picture. A film which introduced us to the eponymous bear from darkest Peru who finds a new home in London with the Brown family and proceeds to steal the hearts of almost everyone around him.

Film one was a toe in the water, a brilliant mix of wry humour, sight gags, action scenes and delightful musical segues. It was everything I’d hoped for from the bear who stole my heart as a six-year-old kid reading Michael Bond’s books for the first time.

With the ideal casting of Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins and Julie Walters as key members of the family who take Paddington under their collective wing, the inevitable move for the sequel was to pluck the bear from his adoptive family.

While trying to save up enough cash to buy a pop-up book for his Aunt Lucy, so she can experience a flavour of London in Peru, Paddington embarks on a window cleaning round, which owes a spiritual debt to Wallace and Gromit and countless silent movie stars.

There are so many gags in Paddington 2, it’s hard to keep count of the amount of times I giggled, but it’s a lot.

When ham actor Phoenix Buchanan (Hugh Grant, in a career-best performance) pinches said book, for reasons which eventually become clear, there’s no prizes for guessing who’s framed for the crime and winds up doing a long spell inside.

So most of the movie is a prison caper, but the likes of which you’ve never seen. Brendan Gleeson gives another of his effortlessly brilliant performances, this time as a fearsome prison chef.

Paddington, seeing the best in everyone, proceeds to change the lives of those inside, while back in that moneyed region of London he had to leave behind, the locals are falling apart without him.

Writers Paul King and Simon Farnaby construct such a beautifully crafted screenplay, there’s no lull in the story from minute one to the breathtaking final few minutes. In terms of emotional sucker punches, the finale is up there with ET for the most tear-jerking final 15 minutes of any film I’ve seen. Yes, it was dusty in that cinema, and yes, I did get something in my eye. A lot.

And as with film one, Farnaby leaves me giggling like an idiot as the amorous security guard who takes a shine to Grant’s disguised nun. (In film one, Farnaby’s flirting with Hugh Bonneville in drag was one of the funniest scenes of 2014).

Director King proved he could tell a beautifully touching and original tale with The Bunny and the Bull many years ago, and armed with a bigger budget three years ago, he adapted that indie quality with great success. I’d wondered if Paddington was a fluke and he’d drop the ball with the sequel, but with the training wheels off, he’s now become the Chris Hoy of British comedy directors. A more assured but no less brilliant film maker whose lightness of touch is astounding. And that pop-up book scene with Paddington and his Aunt is among the best things you’ll see on screen in this or any other year.

There no doubt it’ll land technical awards for effects, and maybe production design, but if there’s any justice, this should also land a BAFTA nod for Best Film. It won’t of course. That will be reserved for a socially conscious, political drama deemed far more worthy, but for me Paddington 2 is easily the best British film of 2017.

Michael Bond, the little bear’s much missed creator, would be more than proud.

9/10

Film review – Justice League

Film review

Justice League

Certificate 12A

Directed by Zack Snyder

Starring Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ciaran Hinds

Apparently Justice League, the long awaited conversion of the hit DC Comics series, is one of the most expensive films ever made at a reported $300m. At times you can see where the money went, though there are scenes where the visual effects look like they were knocked up with a £1.99 app.

Going in, my expectations were at rock bottom. After all, Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice had lowered the bar to almost Superman IV/Batman and Robin levels of badness, so in the words of Yazz or a lift attendant in a basement, the only way is up.

Director Zack Snyder has long been one of the genre’s premier visual stylists, who came tantalisingly close to cracking sublime graphic novel Watchmen, and did a fine job with 300, while Man of Steel was hit and miss.

Rocked by a personal tragedy, Snyder left the movie early in 2017, so Joss Whedon stepped in to finish it, adding his own flourishes.

There’s a scene in a graveyard where I half expect Buffy to turn up singing Going Through the Motions from the peerless Once More With Feeling episode.

But that will have to wait for Whedon Buffy/Batman crossover episode, of which we can but dream.

Back in the real world, and here’s the plot.

Millennia ago, bad guy Steppenwolf (an unrecognisable Ciaran Hinds) and his legions of Parademons attempt to conquer the planet via the combined power of three ’Mother Boxes’.

However, thanks to the forces of Olympian Gods, Amazons, Atlanteans, humans and Green Lanterns, Steppenwolf’s army are repelled, the mcguffin boxes are separated and hidden in locations around Earth.

Fast forward to now, and Superman’s death at the end of Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvSDoJ) has left the world in mourning.

The Mother Boxes reactivate; Steppenwolf returns to terra firma and starts collecting DC’s answer to the MCU’s Tesseract.

In one of the best action scenes, he attempts to retrieve one from Wonder Woman’s idyllic island of Themyscira.

Queen Hippolyta warns her daughter, Diana Prince, who joins Bruce Wayne, and they go off to recruit other metahumans (aka superheroes) for their mission.

Wayne seeks out ripped surfer dude Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) and Big Bang-worthy nerd Barry Allen (though Sheldon Hofstadter might be a better name), while Diana tries to find emo-cyborg Victor Stone, a man blinged up with shiny metal attachments perfectly fused to his skin.

Socially awkward, lightning-fast Allen jumps at the chance to team up, while the others are more reluctant. (Hmm, wonder if that will lead to some last minute saving the day posturing. Possibly).

As Steppenwolf continues to wreak havoc during his box-hunting, the scene is set for more action set pieces in which the Justice League slowly comes together.

To reveal much more would be spoilerific, but despite the overly complex plot and generic bad guy who looks like a hybrid of Thanos and a Thor villain from the Marvel movies, this is not the car crash I’d feared. One of the many problems is the exposition. While en route to tackling the bad guys, Bruce, Diana and company stand around talking. A lot.

Exposition is always best during action scenes, so even Wayne fixing bits on his Batship would be better than just character A talking to character B.

Bruce may be loaded, but who builds and maintains his armoury? Jeremy Irons’ Alfred, who spends most of his scenes dispensing quips and operating a keyboard? Unlikely. I’m guessing Wayne Industries has an army of interns working behind the scenes, but that’s worthy of another movie.

As the third act arrives, and our heroes face off against the big bad and his army of demonic soldiers, I find I’m enjoying the ride. It’s obviously not Whedon’s peerless superhero team-up Avengers Assemble or as empty as David Ayer’s cosplay-friendly “Hey, we’re the bad guys” Suicide Squad.

Yes, some of the effects are ropey; JK Simmons’ Jim Gordon is given a woeful lack of screen time; Amy Adams’ Lois Lane is utterly wasted, and as with BvSDoJ and Wonder Woman (2017), the generic finale involving mostly empty streets is hampered by too much CGI and green screen work. But I’ve no doubt Whedon’s involvement helped immensely.

A shame Ben Affleck looks like he’d rather be anywhere else, but hey, it’s still Batman, the comic book character I’ve loved for most of my life up there on the big screen, wrecking every vehicle he pilots or drives, and still looking uber cool as he crashes from scene to scene.

Some of his colleagues may be second-rate heroes, but like the age-old tradition of the pretty girl befriending a less attractive lass to make her look better, the Dark Knight is still magnificent, eclipsing his less alluring second rate allies.

Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman (definitely not in the second rate category), continues to shine, even if this project lacks the emotional heft of her blockbusting solo movie.

Jason Momoa’s Aquaman looks great, and can carry a scene, so his pending standalone movie is not too horrific a prospect, though I doubt Cyborg or The Flash will land solo films. They’re just a bit too bland.

Without the chorus of seat-kicking kids talking all the way through it, I’ll happily watch this again when it arrives on TV in a few months. Some scenes and characters might even make more sense.

This has been a terrific year for superhero movies. And while Justice League may not match the dizzy heights of Thor: Ragnarok, Logan, Spider-Man Homecoming, and Wonder Woman, like all good fantasy cinema, it’ll help take your mind off real world problems for a couple of hours.

For that alone it’s worth the price of admission.

7/10