Warning - this review contains spoilers that may ruin your enjoyment of the film, as I've found it impossible to review honestly without including this information. Suggest you don't read this one unless you've seen the movie. If you're not sure whether to see the movie, I'd rate this a 2.5 out of 5 and say that it passes the time but isn't anything new or particularly compelling.
I read a review of this movie recently which suggested it was the best blockbuster of the year so far. This really surprised me, because when I saw it, I thought it was okay but not that spectacular and I feel that it asked more questions than it had answers for, so it was a little bit of a let-down compared to the director Neill Blomkamp's previous intelligent sci-fi "District 9".
Elysium is a strangely topical release in Australia right now. The story is set on a 'near future' Earth where all the poor and sick people remain living in relative poverty, working in the dreary factories creating the robots that keep them all in line, and medical care is stretched to the limit; while the wealthy have left Earth and moved to a floating nirvana in space called Elysium, where they have endless leisure and advanced healthcare in the form of medi-pods which can heal anything instantly. To be in Elysium and use a medi-pod, you must be a registered citizen with a barcode. Occasionally, citizens of Elysium deign to travel to Earth to keep the robot production ticking along but they make sure their heavily armed robot guards are on hand at all times. Occasionally, citizens of Earth try to get to Elysium to beg for help, but they are either returned immediately to Earth or in some cases brutally shot down in outer space before they can even arrive. Does this sound familiar to anyone? The 'boat people' issue of people arriving on Australian soil by boat and claiming asylum has some very close parallels to the film's plot.
The film follows our 'hero' Max (played by a buffed up again Matt Damon) who has a bit of a dodgy past but is trying to stick to the straight and narrow. One day Max is involved in a workplace accident brought on by his dodgy foreman, ending up with extreme radiation poisoning and only five days to live. The company manager, John Carlyle (played with his usual slimy aplomb by William Fichtner) shows little sympathy to Max as he's essentially let go and left to die. So he goes back to the local 'people smuggler' Spyder and asks for help to get to Elysium so he can be healed. Spyder agrees to help Max with an illegal barcode and trip to Elysium on the condition he helps him with a mission he's had for a while - hijack a legal citizen and steal some important information that might help Spyder's ultimate objective to get all the illegals on Earth made legal members of Elysium.
Once Max embarks on his mission, the action really heats up as his hijack is picked up the 'Government' of Elysium that is constantly monitoring Earth, and a dangerous undercover operative kept on Earth (ham factor set to overdrive and outrageously bad South African accent by Sharlto Copley who was so good in District 9 - stick to playing good guys Sharlto and just use your normal South African accent please) sets out to stop him and an old flame he accidentally drags into it along with her sick daughter. Jodie Foster is the 'Secretary of State' on Elysium whose plans for world domination are disrupted, but her character is pretty wasted as we never really get to understand her motivations in full detail.
This is not a film for those with a weak stomach as there are a series of gruesome scenes included along with the more high-brown concepts. These gave me the giggles as we all cringed as bits of people went flying. But the action and gore are not enough to put you on the edge of your seat and I really felt that the biggest issues that could have been addressed are just pushed aside and not answered. If all the people on Earth are let into Elysium and healthcare is so advanced that nobody ever dies, how will the resources cope with this? Unless we've all evolved to not need food anymore by 2154, the mission is noble but the outcome could be a disaster. Overpopulation is a very real issue in real life, but it's brushed aside like an ant as the film looks for a happy ending for our heroes.
I'd be really interested to know, but probably never will, whether anyone who sees this movie and cheers Max on his mission, which is undoubtedly the right thing to do, then walks out and says that Australia's asylum seekers should be 'sent back to where they came from'. Because ultimately the asylum seekers are Max and the people on Earth, and Australia and its citizens are the Elysiums, just without the technology. I wonder how many will even realise the comparison. Food for thought, but just as there are no easy answers to the issue in real life, there are no answers provided by this movie either.
Thursday 29 August 2013
Saturday 24 August 2013
Sharknado!!
Sharknado. The title alone was enough to send a buzz around the world. Does it live up to the hype? Absolutely. This movie is so bad it's good. It's hilarious. Do not watch alone though, it's much better with a group of friends and a big dose of sarcastic comments.
Sharknado is the latest production in a long line of Z grade, low budget, straight to DVD movies from "The Asylum". The Asylum is an American movie studio which realised back in 2007 that it could make more money from capitalising on cheap knock-offs of big budget studio productions than it could from making cheap movies with their own original ideas. And very proud of it! They zip between these similarly named knock offs and making their own 'original' horror films such as Sharknado, Mega Piranha, 2 Headed Shark Attack. According to that scion of accuracy Wikipedia, the budgets for each movie are less than $1,000,000 (a sliver of most Hollywood independent films let alone the mega-blockbuster) and the scripts are usually knocked up in 4 to 6 weeks with pre-production times of a few weeks and actual filming taking a few weeks. That's extremely short. And it really shows!
The ridiculous premise to the film is that, due to some bad weather (I think anyway), a huge pack of sharks have moved in close to the California coast. Then they are picked up by a storm and deposited into various land-locked areas of Hollywood thanks to various far-fetched water borne methods. The culmination of which is a tornado containing multiple sharks. The word ridiculous doesn't go far enough to describe the ways these sharks get where they're trying to go.
The main character in the film is Fin Shepard, played by Iain Ziering (annoying Steve from Beverly Hills 90210). He owns a bar right on the beach, whose chief bartender is a kick-ass chick who happens to be in love with him but Fin's too dumb to notice. Fin decides that he has to take her, his Aussie mate Baz and old mate George on a mission to 'rescue' Fin's daughter, son and ex-wife from the sharky emergency about to hit their inland Hollywood Hills home. Fin's ex-wife is played by Tara Reid (still best known for American Pie) and she shows absolutely no acting skills whatsoever in this, her big comeback film.
The movie is a series of battles with the sharks, connected by Fin, Nova, Baz and George travelling around and trying to save everyone, because Fin is like the biggest hero ever, he's so heroic duuuude. One of the most ludicrous scenes occurs where he spots a school bus trapped in rising flood waters, which appear to get lower and lower as the rescue progresses, taking several minutes in the movie but would actually take several hours in reality. The continuity in this movie is absolutely non-existent, and I am still yet to figure out whether this is deliberate to be funny, or accidental because of the short production times and low budgets. Regardless of which reason, it makes for rich pickings for your own sarcastic commentary. One minute there's a hurricane, the next it's sunny and blue skies, then we get a graphic of rain on a camera which is unrelated to anything.
I spent a large amount of the running time saying "Why would they do this" or "Why would that happen" which tells you that the script has a few problems. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and got a huge amount of laughs from it. Some movies are just plain bad, but this one definitely makes it into the so bad it's good category. I wish to thank my friends B & W for taping this off Foxtel and inviting us over for a Sharknado party, which really made my week. Highly recommended for a fun night in! Hopefully the already in production sequel "Sharknado 2: The Second One" - I kid you not - will be out really soon and keep up the same low standards.
Sharknado is the latest production in a long line of Z grade, low budget, straight to DVD movies from "The Asylum". The Asylum is an American movie studio which realised back in 2007 that it could make more money from capitalising on cheap knock-offs of big budget studio productions than it could from making cheap movies with their own original ideas. And very proud of it! They zip between these similarly named knock offs and making their own 'original' horror films such as Sharknado, Mega Piranha, 2 Headed Shark Attack. According to that scion of accuracy Wikipedia, the budgets for each movie are less than $1,000,000 (a sliver of most Hollywood independent films let alone the mega-blockbuster) and the scripts are usually knocked up in 4 to 6 weeks with pre-production times of a few weeks and actual filming taking a few weeks. That's extremely short. And it really shows!
The ridiculous premise to the film is that, due to some bad weather (I think anyway), a huge pack of sharks have moved in close to the California coast. Then they are picked up by a storm and deposited into various land-locked areas of Hollywood thanks to various far-fetched water borne methods. The culmination of which is a tornado containing multiple sharks. The word ridiculous doesn't go far enough to describe the ways these sharks get where they're trying to go.
The main character in the film is Fin Shepard, played by Iain Ziering (annoying Steve from Beverly Hills 90210). He owns a bar right on the beach, whose chief bartender is a kick-ass chick who happens to be in love with him but Fin's too dumb to notice. Fin decides that he has to take her, his Aussie mate Baz and old mate George on a mission to 'rescue' Fin's daughter, son and ex-wife from the sharky emergency about to hit their inland Hollywood Hills home. Fin's ex-wife is played by Tara Reid (still best known for American Pie) and she shows absolutely no acting skills whatsoever in this, her big comeback film.
The movie is a series of battles with the sharks, connected by Fin, Nova, Baz and George travelling around and trying to save everyone, because Fin is like the biggest hero ever, he's so heroic duuuude. One of the most ludicrous scenes occurs where he spots a school bus trapped in rising flood waters, which appear to get lower and lower as the rescue progresses, taking several minutes in the movie but would actually take several hours in reality. The continuity in this movie is absolutely non-existent, and I am still yet to figure out whether this is deliberate to be funny, or accidental because of the short production times and low budgets. Regardless of which reason, it makes for rich pickings for your own sarcastic commentary. One minute there's a hurricane, the next it's sunny and blue skies, then we get a graphic of rain on a camera which is unrelated to anything.
I spent a large amount of the running time saying "Why would they do this" or "Why would that happen" which tells you that the script has a few problems. But I thoroughly enjoyed it and got a huge amount of laughs from it. Some movies are just plain bad, but this one definitely makes it into the so bad it's good category. I wish to thank my friends B & W for taping this off Foxtel and inviting us over for a Sharknado party, which really made my week. Highly recommended for a fun night in! Hopefully the already in production sequel "Sharknado 2: The Second One" - I kid you not - will be out really soon and keep up the same low standards.
Saturday 17 August 2013
Movie #23 - This is the End
OK, this is the first comedy I've LOVED this year. As soon as I walked out of this movie, I wanted to see it again. But it's not gonna be for everyone - it's rude, crude and lewd. But hilarious!
This is the End is a film starring Seth Rogen as Hollywood comedy actor and writer Seth Rogen. His best friend Jay Baruchel (played by Jay Baruchel) still lives back in Canada but as a film writing partner for Seth he often visits Los Angeles where Rogen now lives. He's in town for the weekend to hang out with Seth, but Seth has agreed to go to a party at James Franco's house (they co-starred in Pineapple Express) and drags Jay along, much to his distaste as he really doesn't like Hollywood or Seth's new friends. James Franco (played by James Franco) and Craig Robinson (played by, yep, you guessed it, Craig Robinson who is probably best known for Hot Tub Time Machine) aren't too friendly to Jay, but Jonah Hill (played by Jonah Hill) is super nice to Jay, but only to please Seth. So yep, this is a movie where everyone is playing themselves, but allegedly these are "exaggerated" versions of what everyone thinks these famous people would be like. Which leads to much hilarity.
The first 20 minutes of the movie are outright hilarious, as Franco's party heats up and plenty of celebrities are happy to send themselves up. Michael Cera (Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) is in top form and steals the whole movie as a complete asshole version of himself. Jay is struggling to break into the Hollywood crew and decides to take a walk to the nearest convenience store for smokes and snacks, convincing Seth to accompany him. There, a bizarre event occurs which feels like an earthquake to Seth but Jay thinks it is the apocalypse. With blue lights sucking people up into the sky, mass destruction and car accidents and the earth itself splitting, Seth and Jay decide to get back to Franco's recently built fortress for safety. Inside, nobody has a clue what's going on in the outside world. After hearing Jay's story, everyone runs outside which sets the scene for some very funny celebrity deaths as a sinkhole to hell opens up on the lawn. Our core crew (Jay, Seth, James, Jonah and Craig) become the sole survivors left barricaded in Franco's house as they try to figure out whether it is in fact the apocalypse or just some random act of nature.
Act Two is the survival period as the boys (augmented with Danny McBride who takes his annoying persona from Pineapple Express, 30 Minutes or Less and Eastbound and Down and dials it up to 11) try to figure out what the hell is going on, how they can ration the only food and water remaining and how they can find more supplies when they don't know what's out there. When they do eventually have to venture outside, we get a glimpse of some pretty nasty monsters that are roaming around. At this point, we still don't really know what's really going on. But the bickering is damn funny and so is the way they pass the time (I loved the 'sequel' to Pineapple Express that they make). This is where the jokes turn towards the gutter, but if you're fairly liberal minded and in the right mood, it's consistently funny and highly quotable.
Act Three I won't give away too much, but Franco's mansion is no longer safe and so forced to split up and venture out, we get a bit more action and a lot more explanation. There are actually a few scary moments as the boys deal with some demonic beasties (I jumped out of my seat at one point). But it stays funny and there is a late cameo that is absolutely hilarious.
The most interesting thing for me about this movie was wondering how close to real life the story and acting really are. This film was written and directed by Seth Rogen and his frequent writing partner Evan Goldberg, who just happens to be Seth's best friend since high school, still live in Canada and has confirmed in interviews that he does not enjoy coming to Hollywood to write with Seth and doesn't exactly love Seth's new friends in Hollywood. But since Evan is not an actor, they have subbed in Jay Baruchel to play the "Evan" character. But other than that, all these guys do know and work together regularly, and James Franco would have to be a pretty pretentious and yet laidback guy I'm sure. But very handsome, so I'll forgive him!
This is a 5 star comedy in my opinion. Our whole group all enjoyed it a lot and spent the drive home regurgitating the quotes and what we thought were the best scenes. A must-see if you're not easily offended.
This is the End is a film starring Seth Rogen as Hollywood comedy actor and writer Seth Rogen. His best friend Jay Baruchel (played by Jay Baruchel) still lives back in Canada but as a film writing partner for Seth he often visits Los Angeles where Rogen now lives. He's in town for the weekend to hang out with Seth, but Seth has agreed to go to a party at James Franco's house (they co-starred in Pineapple Express) and drags Jay along, much to his distaste as he really doesn't like Hollywood or Seth's new friends. James Franco (played by James Franco) and Craig Robinson (played by, yep, you guessed it, Craig Robinson who is probably best known for Hot Tub Time Machine) aren't too friendly to Jay, but Jonah Hill (played by Jonah Hill) is super nice to Jay, but only to please Seth. So yep, this is a movie where everyone is playing themselves, but allegedly these are "exaggerated" versions of what everyone thinks these famous people would be like. Which leads to much hilarity.
The first 20 minutes of the movie are outright hilarious, as Franco's party heats up and plenty of celebrities are happy to send themselves up. Michael Cera (Juno, Scott Pilgrim vs the World) is in top form and steals the whole movie as a complete asshole version of himself. Jay is struggling to break into the Hollywood crew and decides to take a walk to the nearest convenience store for smokes and snacks, convincing Seth to accompany him. There, a bizarre event occurs which feels like an earthquake to Seth but Jay thinks it is the apocalypse. With blue lights sucking people up into the sky, mass destruction and car accidents and the earth itself splitting, Seth and Jay decide to get back to Franco's recently built fortress for safety. Inside, nobody has a clue what's going on in the outside world. After hearing Jay's story, everyone runs outside which sets the scene for some very funny celebrity deaths as a sinkhole to hell opens up on the lawn. Our core crew (Jay, Seth, James, Jonah and Craig) become the sole survivors left barricaded in Franco's house as they try to figure out whether it is in fact the apocalypse or just some random act of nature.
Act Two is the survival period as the boys (augmented with Danny McBride who takes his annoying persona from Pineapple Express, 30 Minutes or Less and Eastbound and Down and dials it up to 11) try to figure out what the hell is going on, how they can ration the only food and water remaining and how they can find more supplies when they don't know what's out there. When they do eventually have to venture outside, we get a glimpse of some pretty nasty monsters that are roaming around. At this point, we still don't really know what's really going on. But the bickering is damn funny and so is the way they pass the time (I loved the 'sequel' to Pineapple Express that they make). This is where the jokes turn towards the gutter, but if you're fairly liberal minded and in the right mood, it's consistently funny and highly quotable.
Act Three I won't give away too much, but Franco's mansion is no longer safe and so forced to split up and venture out, we get a bit more action and a lot more explanation. There are actually a few scary moments as the boys deal with some demonic beasties (I jumped out of my seat at one point). But it stays funny and there is a late cameo that is absolutely hilarious.
The most interesting thing for me about this movie was wondering how close to real life the story and acting really are. This film was written and directed by Seth Rogen and his frequent writing partner Evan Goldberg, who just happens to be Seth's best friend since high school, still live in Canada and has confirmed in interviews that he does not enjoy coming to Hollywood to write with Seth and doesn't exactly love Seth's new friends in Hollywood. But since Evan is not an actor, they have subbed in Jay Baruchel to play the "Evan" character. But other than that, all these guys do know and work together regularly, and James Franco would have to be a pretty pretentious and yet laidback guy I'm sure. But very handsome, so I'll forgive him!
This is a 5 star comedy in my opinion. Our whole group all enjoyed it a lot and spent the drive home regurgitating the quotes and what we thought were the best scenes. A must-see if you're not easily offended.
Movie #22 - The World's End
This was the first movie I saw of two similarly named and
kinda similarly themed movies which just happen to have come out at the same
time. This is not the Seth Rogen/James
Franco/comedian filled version set in Hollywood. That one will be reviewed next.
I already had a soft spot in my heart for this film before I even went to see it, due to the makers of it and what it represents as the final movie in what has come to be known as the “Three Flavours Cornetto” trilogy started off with ‘Shaun of the Dead’ and followed by ‘Hot Fuzz’. All three are directed by Edgar Wright (also known for ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’) and co-written by Wright and star of all three movies Simon Pegg (Scotty in the Star Trek reboots) and ably assisted by Pegg’s real life best friend Nick Frost (‘Paul’). These guys are geeky and funny and they do a great job of mining comedy gold from the bromance between Pegg and Frost. So I was prepared to love it and I have to say I really, really, liked it but I didn't totally love it. Not sure if it was too much expectation by me, or they wrote it too fast and didn't have time to polish it (it was written when they discovered a producer they'd worked with had cancer and they wanted to make this before he passed away).
The World's End is the name of the film, and the name of the pub at the end of a series of 12 pubs that a group of friends did not get to on a pub crawl after finishing high school. Bad boy Gary (Pegg) and best mate Andy (Frost) almost made it, but Gary's rival/bandmate Steven (Paddy Considine), uptight Oliver (Martin Freeman) and passed out early Peter (Eddie Marsan) pulled out early. All have lost touch over time. All but Gary have built successful careers and/or good family lives. All but Gary have forgotten about the unfinished pub crawl. Gary is a pretty pathetic character who has never moved beyond his high school glory days and is generally just a really unlikeable guy. So what better idea than for Gary to visit the old gang and convince them through bribes or trickery to head home to Newton Haven and finish that pub crawl?
The early part of the film is enjoyable for the 'getting the gang back together' humour, mostly at the expense of Gary. It is particularly fun to see Frost as an uptight non-drinker on a pub crawl and Pegg and Frost not being best friends (Andy has the least love for Gary after he OD'd, causing Andy to drive him to hospital, have a serious car accident on the way only for Gary to come to and run off). As the afternoon wears on, the guys are seriously considering pulling the plug on Gary when a weird turn of events spins it into becoming essential to finish the mission. And that weird turn of events is a fantastic scene in a men's toilet where Gary is first to discover that some of the residents of Newton Haven seem to have been replaced with some kind of alien robots, soon confirmed by the other 4 in a fantastic humans vs robots fight scene. From there we are more in sci-fi mystery territory rather than straight comedy.
Most of the 'twists' are pretty easy to pick and ultimately the sci-fi elements are just a plot device to get back to what the "Cornetto" trilogy is really about - friendships between men. The bond between these 5 guys and particularly Gary and Andy is revived as they soon become the potential saviours of Earth. The jokes continue right through almost to the end, but they're of a fairly gentle variety. A running joke through all 3 movies about jumping over fences really hits the spot for fans. But it's just not hilarious, and this one is a bit of a case of falling a bit short of what 'might have been'.
Saturday 10 August 2013
Movie # 21 - The Way Way Back
So we are over half way through the year (already?) and it looks like I'm on track to beat last year's number of movies seen. For helping with this goal, I have to thank my Brisbane International Film Festival Film Club. As a member, you're entitled to at least 8 free movie screenings per year. And for 2013, they have been even more active with some months having 2 screenings. And now they have given me free tickets to what would have to be the feelgood movie of the year to date.
The Way Way Back is a silly title as it tells you nothing about the movie. It's actually a sweet movie about an awkward 14 year old boy who gets dragged on a summer vacation to his mother's boyfriend's beach house. Duncan is really not happy about the idea as he'd rather be with his dad, gets a hard time from the two-faced boyfriend, is ignored by the boyfriend's cool daughter and is unsure how to react to the boyfriend's summer group of friends who act as though they are on Spring Break. What is a shy, geeky young boy to do? Befriend the local king slacker man-child who runs the local water park of course! And keep his daily activities a secret from his mum too.
The movie succeeds for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is no gimmick, no flashbacks and no big revelations. It's a simple tale, told in straight-forward linear fashion, of a young guy trying to find somewhere where being himself doesn't feel bad. But it doesn't hit you over the head with big life lessons to get there. The script is really restrained and well-written. The movie isn't distracted by being set in the 80s or 90s as so many 'coming of age' films tend to be, keeping itself pretty much time neutral - it could be any time in recent history really.
Secondly, the performances are really strong across the board. Liam James isn't a newcomer but you won't know his face I reckon, but he does a great job of conveying the misery of holidaying with parents and their friends. So many awkward moments are handled well. Toni Collette as the mum is excellent as usual, as the outwardly nice veneer of her boyfriend Trent is gradually peeled back as the summer progresses. Steve Carell as Trent gives the first really 'asshole' performance of his career and pulls it off convincingly. Alison Janney, Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash provide good support as the often childish grownups. But Sam Rockwell (Moon, Charlie's Angels) steals the whole thing as slacker king Owen. A guy whose life is about running the local water park and being the king of the kids, while trying to hold onto a functional relationship with co-worker Caitlin (my favourite SNL comedian, Maya Rudolph). He does a great line in snappy banter and impressions but the core is a sweet heart which takes Duncan under his wing and helps him to be okay with himself.
I really can't find fault with anything in this movie. The great shame is that it has virtually no profile despite the big-name cast and no marketing push, so most people probably won't see this movie. What a crime. It's just a really nice movie that makes you feel good afterwards. Highly recommended.
The Way Way Back is a silly title as it tells you nothing about the movie. It's actually a sweet movie about an awkward 14 year old boy who gets dragged on a summer vacation to his mother's boyfriend's beach house. Duncan is really not happy about the idea as he'd rather be with his dad, gets a hard time from the two-faced boyfriend, is ignored by the boyfriend's cool daughter and is unsure how to react to the boyfriend's summer group of friends who act as though they are on Spring Break. What is a shy, geeky young boy to do? Befriend the local king slacker man-child who runs the local water park of course! And keep his daily activities a secret from his mum too.
The movie succeeds for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there is no gimmick, no flashbacks and no big revelations. It's a simple tale, told in straight-forward linear fashion, of a young guy trying to find somewhere where being himself doesn't feel bad. But it doesn't hit you over the head with big life lessons to get there. The script is really restrained and well-written. The movie isn't distracted by being set in the 80s or 90s as so many 'coming of age' films tend to be, keeping itself pretty much time neutral - it could be any time in recent history really.
Secondly, the performances are really strong across the board. Liam James isn't a newcomer but you won't know his face I reckon, but he does a great job of conveying the misery of holidaying with parents and their friends. So many awkward moments are handled well. Toni Collette as the mum is excellent as usual, as the outwardly nice veneer of her boyfriend Trent is gradually peeled back as the summer progresses. Steve Carell as Trent gives the first really 'asshole' performance of his career and pulls it off convincingly. Alison Janney, Rob Corddry, Amanda Peet, Nat Faxon and Jim Rash provide good support as the often childish grownups. But Sam Rockwell (Moon, Charlie's Angels) steals the whole thing as slacker king Owen. A guy whose life is about running the local water park and being the king of the kids, while trying to hold onto a functional relationship with co-worker Caitlin (my favourite SNL comedian, Maya Rudolph). He does a great line in snappy banter and impressions but the core is a sweet heart which takes Duncan under his wing and helps him to be okay with himself.
I really can't find fault with anything in this movie. The great shame is that it has virtually no profile despite the big-name cast and no marketing push, so most people probably won't see this movie. What a crime. It's just a really nice movie that makes you feel good afterwards. Highly recommended.
Sunday 4 August 2013
Movie # 20 - Pacific Rim
Sometimes life can be a bit rough and tough to you, and you think "I just want to get away from reality and problems and have a bit of mindless fun". So this is how I and my friend L came to be sitting at the movies on a Monday night, marvelling at the fact that us two girls were about to watch a dumb giant robots vs giant monsters movie, which the men in our lives didn't really want to see. And it was EXACTLY what we wanted and needed. Giant robots smacking the fluorescent guts out of the giant monsters invading Earth! Hell yeah! End of review. Oh, you want a bit more information?
Pacific Rim might come across from the ads as a Transformers rip off. But I can assure you it is a lot better than Transformers. This is the latest film from Guillermo del Toro, the man whose wonderful imagination has given us the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 1 and 2, Cronos, Blade 2 and Mimic. If there is one thing del Toro excels at, it is inventing amazing monsters and creatures, and he has done a fantastic job with this movie. And that's because it's a subject close to his heart. Empire Magazine has a great feature article this month written by del Toro himself, outlining how as a child growing up in Mexico he saw many Japanese 'kaiju' (giant monster) movies, loved robots and sci-fi and also enjoyed Mexican wrestling. These three major influences are combined with a lot of love into this blockbuster action film.
A portal has opened deep in the ocean, and a giant monster comes through and destroys San Francisco. Another follows some time later to destroy Milan. The various countries stop fighting each other and come up with a way to defeat the bigger enemy: build a giant robot which is operated from within by a brave pilot to kick, punch, saw, shoot, burn and generally slice and dice the monsters. These are known as "jaegers". Sadly the movie has missed the opportunity to use the term "jaegermeisters" for the operators and has gone with the much less fun title of "jaeger pilots". The jaeger pilots operate the machine through something known as "the drift" and there must be 2 pilots who are extremely compatible with each other and the drift which is a mental link that allows them to know each other's thoughts and operate the giant robot in unison. Because the portal is in the ocean, a lot of the fights take place, or at least start, in the ocean.
The jaegers initially win the war, but the problem is that the portal seems to be sending through more and bigger kaijus all the time, who seem to be intent on destroying the entire planet and can defeat the jaegers. The jaeger program is in danger as the world searches for a better solution.
So after getting all that out of the way in the first 5 minutes, we open with a cool jaeger vs kaiju fight, with pilot Raleigh Beckett (played by Charlie Hunnam who is Jax Teller in TV's Sons of Anarchy) and his brother seemingly kicking the crap out of the kaiju, who uses the old wrestling trick of playing dead but it's not! Raleigh's brother is fatally injured but he manages to finish the kaiju and get to land. He then disappears from the jaeger program, which is being shut down anyway. But one man, Major Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba) is given one last chance to save the world by using the remaining jaegers to try to plug the portal and stop the kaijus for good.
The movie then follows Pentecost as he recruits the best remaining jaeger pilots and combines them with a couple of mad scientists to come up with the best plan to save the world - use the jaegers to throw a nuclear bomb down the portal while fending off any kaijus that come through. The mad scientists are really overdone but at least they provide some much needed comedic moments as the rest of the film is deadly serious and full of weighty speeches.
The best part of this movie are the fight scenes. They are filmed really well and anyone familiar with wrestling will recognise certain moves or plays being used. You can actually understand what is going on most of the time, so you cheer along with the good guys. At some times I was either clapping my hands or throwing my fists up in victory! And the special effects and use of 3D are pretty spectacular, with del Toro's typical skill with industrial design showing in the jaeger bunker.
The worst part of this movie is the "Australian" jaeger pilots. As played by two non-Australian actors who have obviously never been to Australia, they sound like a mangled cross between English, South African and New Zealand, and have some terrible clichéd dialogue. Every time they spoke, which was frequently in the middle section of the movie, I laughed. Surely there are enough Aussie actors in Hollywood these days that we could have had something authentic? It really ruined my immersion in the film. The acting by Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi (best know for Babel) and Idris Elba is convincing but ultimately the characters are just hero clichés. But it didn't stop me from wanting them to succeed!
I give this a very enthusiastic four out of 5 for anyone who likes a good robot vs monster rumble or just a big, dumb action flick that has more style than most Hollywood blockbusters.
Pacific Rim might come across from the ads as a Transformers rip off. But I can assure you it is a lot better than Transformers. This is the latest film from Guillermo del Toro, the man whose wonderful imagination has given us the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy 1 and 2, Cronos, Blade 2 and Mimic. If there is one thing del Toro excels at, it is inventing amazing monsters and creatures, and he has done a fantastic job with this movie. And that's because it's a subject close to his heart. Empire Magazine has a great feature article this month written by del Toro himself, outlining how as a child growing up in Mexico he saw many Japanese 'kaiju' (giant monster) movies, loved robots and sci-fi and also enjoyed Mexican wrestling. These three major influences are combined with a lot of love into this blockbuster action film.
A portal has opened deep in the ocean, and a giant monster comes through and destroys San Francisco. Another follows some time later to destroy Milan. The various countries stop fighting each other and come up with a way to defeat the bigger enemy: build a giant robot which is operated from within by a brave pilot to kick, punch, saw, shoot, burn and generally slice and dice the monsters. These are known as "jaegers". Sadly the movie has missed the opportunity to use the term "jaegermeisters" for the operators and has gone with the much less fun title of "jaeger pilots". The jaeger pilots operate the machine through something known as "the drift" and there must be 2 pilots who are extremely compatible with each other and the drift which is a mental link that allows them to know each other's thoughts and operate the giant robot in unison. Because the portal is in the ocean, a lot of the fights take place, or at least start, in the ocean.
The jaegers initially win the war, but the problem is that the portal seems to be sending through more and bigger kaijus all the time, who seem to be intent on destroying the entire planet and can defeat the jaegers. The jaeger program is in danger as the world searches for a better solution.
So after getting all that out of the way in the first 5 minutes, we open with a cool jaeger vs kaiju fight, with pilot Raleigh Beckett (played by Charlie Hunnam who is Jax Teller in TV's Sons of Anarchy) and his brother seemingly kicking the crap out of the kaiju, who uses the old wrestling trick of playing dead but it's not! Raleigh's brother is fatally injured but he manages to finish the kaiju and get to land. He then disappears from the jaeger program, which is being shut down anyway. But one man, Major Stacker Pentecost (played by Idris Elba) is given one last chance to save the world by using the remaining jaegers to try to plug the portal and stop the kaijus for good.
The movie then follows Pentecost as he recruits the best remaining jaeger pilots and combines them with a couple of mad scientists to come up with the best plan to save the world - use the jaegers to throw a nuclear bomb down the portal while fending off any kaijus that come through. The mad scientists are really overdone but at least they provide some much needed comedic moments as the rest of the film is deadly serious and full of weighty speeches.
The best part of this movie are the fight scenes. They are filmed really well and anyone familiar with wrestling will recognise certain moves or plays being used. You can actually understand what is going on most of the time, so you cheer along with the good guys. At some times I was either clapping my hands or throwing my fists up in victory! And the special effects and use of 3D are pretty spectacular, with del Toro's typical skill with industrial design showing in the jaeger bunker.
The worst part of this movie is the "Australian" jaeger pilots. As played by two non-Australian actors who have obviously never been to Australia, they sound like a mangled cross between English, South African and New Zealand, and have some terrible clichéd dialogue. Every time they spoke, which was frequently in the middle section of the movie, I laughed. Surely there are enough Aussie actors in Hollywood these days that we could have had something authentic? It really ruined my immersion in the film. The acting by Charlie Hunnam, Rinko Kikuchi (best know for Babel) and Idris Elba is convincing but ultimately the characters are just hero clichés. But it didn't stop me from wanting them to succeed!
I give this a very enthusiastic four out of 5 for anyone who likes a good robot vs monster rumble or just a big, dumb action flick that has more style than most Hollywood blockbusters.
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