Another World - Sci-Fi/Fantasy

Kenneth Branagh - director of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, As You Like It, Love’s Labour’s Lost and… er… Thor.

It is perhaps unfair to pigeonhole Mr. Branagh, and he has plenty of movie titles to his name, but his work in performing and directing Shakespeare has dominated his career, so his selection for a Marvel Comics adaptation that has been a long time coming certainly baffled many. But then they gave the Hulk job to Ang Lee, a man known for directing Sense and Sensibility and The Wedding Banquet, and that worked out great.

No wait, that’s not right. Oh dear.

Moving on, Thor is one of the classic comic characters, but has been denied even a single big screen treatment before this effort, whilst Batman is awaiting his seventh Hollywood outing, Superman gets his sixth in 2013 and Spider-Man is chasing the pack with number four.

In all fairness, the man uses a big hammer as his weapon of choice, and it just isn’t as obviously cool as an array of Bat Gadgets, bullet- beating speed or the ability to sling spider-webbing from your wrists. Still, Thor is actually based on the Norse mythological God of the same name, and once you bring deities in, you can have plenty of fun with a big budget.

Branagh’s movie adaptation of Thor sees the eponymous character (played by Chis Hemsworth) banished from the Godly realm of Asgard by his all-conquering uber-powerful father Odin (Anthony Hopkins). He is slapped with this punishment when his rash actions bring about the threat of war with the neighbouring Frost Giants of Jotunheim. He was all set to be handed the title of King, but felt the urge to start a ruckus due to an overabundance of machismo.

His scheming brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) takes the opportunity to bring about his own plans for ruling the kingdom, once Odin suffers some kind of random collapse. Meanwhile, a disgruntled Thor finds himself landing on Earth with the commoners, much to his displeasure, but his father Odin was kind enough to send his big beast of a hammer, called Mjolnir for some reason, along with him. In a little bit of Sword in the Stone-type drama, Thor will only be able to wield this weapon and its power once he is worthy.

(more…)

Bethesda’s latest instalment in the Elder Scrolls saga has arrived, and Skyrim sets this new story around 200 years after the events of predecessor Oblivion. You play one of the Dragonborn; a rare occurrence of a human with the soul of a dragon, that only appears whenever the world is in danger.

So begins your adventure of dragon-slaying, dungeon-crawling, bandit-beating fun that will take you across a map of epic proportions. From the frozen peaks of the mountains, to the luscious greenery that adorns the forests, every corner of the world that is Skyrim feels unique, boasting breathtaking detail and a mind-bending array of intricate touches.
The hundreds, if not thousands, of dungeons, ruins and tombs that fill the world of Skyrim create a grand and immersive setting. Once you’ve completed one dungeon, there always seems to be another to conquer, and each has its own original aesthetic. The gameplay also involves a new, convenient mechanism which means that you will always be sent to places you haven’t already visited, so you will always be encountering new locations and dungeons.

Clearly, dungeons are only one aspect of this truly open-world experience. Within this world you are able to create your own weapons and armour, and adorn your bodily defence with special enchantments to improve your abilities. You can mix potions to strengthen you and your skills or weaken your enemies, as well as hunt animals for the skins and meat to create food with healing properties and even join a number of guilds to perform special tasks. The game’s progression, and that of your character, appears infinite.

(more…)

Billed as a cross between Saving Private Ryan and Independence Day, this latest alien invasion epic actually offered up one of the most impressive trailers of the last few years.

A few startling shots of an obliterated Los Angeles, a screaming Marine dragged away by an unseen menace, hordes of meteoric vessels striking Earth with such force that they blast rings through the sky, and of course large clusters of confused sheep-like people running around amidst the raging anarchy; all complimented by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson’s beautiful, yet haunting and eerily mechanical piece ‘The Sun’s Gone Dim and the Sky’s Turned Black’.

It is, without doubt, an awesome movie teaser, with plenty to get excited about, and a real sense that maybe this could offer something a little different, whilst maintaining the essence of a summer sci-fi blockbuster.

Such a shame that Battle: Los Angeles is actually as bland as a beige Volvo.

That’s not to say it’s a terrible movie; there’s some remarkable visuals, and even a couple of rousing performances, but clichéd doesn’t even begin to describe this film and its by-the-numbers storyline, direction and dialogue.

As Battle: Los Angeles begins, no time is wasted in pointing out that the Earth is currently being pelted by strange objects from space, thought to be meteorites. All the well known cities are casually referenced in a half-hearted attempt to steer clear of ‘Roland Emmerich Syndrome’, which is a devastating virus that renders large scale disaster movies devoid of multicultural awareness (when the world is under attack, only the USA is affected, and only the USA can save us - sigh).

(more…)

The basic story of Tron was simple; man gets sucked into a virtual world he created, and he has to sort it out whilst negotiating some particularly dazzling obstacles.  Tron: Legacy is quite happy to offer a very similar ride.

Kevin Flynn (a rather spaced out Jeff Bridges) has been exiled from his own virtual world by CLU, the Flynn digital copy that has taken over and turned the world into something far more advanced and dangerous.

Flynn’s son (Garrett Hedlund), now all grown up, manages to get inside this manic, aesthetic frenzy of coloured chaos and goes in search of his dad whilst doing battle with the crazy hordes that dominate the Grid.  Along the way he encounters Martin Sheen’s criminally underused and utterly watchable David Bowie clone Castor, as well the strikingly gorgeous Olivia Wilde, who does the job as Flynn Senior’s confidante program Quorra.

Tron: Legacy has come a long time after its predecessor, and, as expected, there was a lot of hype, particularly from die hard fans of the original.  Long awaited sequels cannot survive on novelty value (see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), so there needs to be enough to refresh the story, and if it’s thin on the ground then sadly the movie is doomed to mediocrity.

Tron: Legacy looks lovely, and fans will enjoy seeing Mr. Bridges taking to the Grid once more, just as this reviewer enjoyed watching John McClane reignite his love for shooting large numbers of terrorists.  However, the movie has zero longevity because it has no depth, and simply feels like a rehash of Tron with concentrated emphasis on the evolution of digital movie effects.  The movie actually has the dubious honour of further dating the original.

(more…)

The dubious Brothers Strause, entirely responsible for the badly lit suck-fest sequel that was Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, had $20m to play with, and chose to splash the cash on an alien invasion flick, spending around 97% of the budget entirely on effects.

This is, of course, a barmy idea. To be fair to these curious gents, they have been behind some eye-popping aesthetics, with their company Hydraulx working on such visual treats as 300, Avatar and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

However, it seems that letting them get hold of the camera may be something to avoid in the future.

Skyline is a pretty formulaic story; some friends in L.A. bear witness to an alien invasion, and hole up in their expensive flat hoping that the unwelcome visitors get bored and fly off. They then decide, for some dull reason relating to water, that a swift escape and journey through the warzone to the nearest coastline would actually be better. This plan causes much death.

You see, these unpleasant invaders emit an attractive blue light, and once it catches your eye then your skin starts to disappear and you get violently sucked into some kind of weird alien sphincter.

Some of these aliens are pretty big and will stand triumphantly on your puny human head, whilst others are small, elegant and partial to the sweet smell of fresh brains.

(more…)

British director Christopher Nolan has been a revelation; he seems to craft innovative, compelling cinema, whilst handling his own side of the publicity with extraordinary skill. He releases tantalising teasers of information, sowing the seeds of intrigue and controlling the world’s awareness of his next movie’s premise and plotline.

His first real success was Memento, a cerebral and original movie that showed the scenes in reverse order, creating a fascinating story and a thrilling ride backwards through the complex mind of Guy Pearce’s Leonard Shelby.

This would be a sign of things to come, and we are all very well aware of Nolan’s pivotal role in relaunching and reshaping the Batman franchise to become an accessible story, grounded in gritty realism. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are astounding, with the latter showing clear signs of influence from big city crime dramas such as Heat; arguably not the kind of movie one would usually associate with a comic book superhero film adaptation.

Once he gained the necessary big budget flick experience, combined with the offer of huge financial backing for anything he fancied doing, Nolan knew it was time to tackle his long-term goal of creating a film about dream thieves; a heist movie set in the mind, where there are no limits, except those imposed by one’s individual creativity. This movie would become Inception, a monster smash-hit that garnered mass critical and public acclaim, technical praise, Oscar wins and a box office return that likely left the film financiers pinching themselves…

(more…)

Love it or hate it, the Twilight beast rampages on, as book number 3 gets the movie treatment mere months after the release of predecessor New Moon.

In The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, emo-vampires and weightlifting-werewolves are forced to form an uneasy alliance after nutty vampire Victoria (Bryce Dallas Howard) breeds an army of ‘newborns’. Vampires are at their most aggressive and lethal just after they ‘turn’, and Victoria plans to unleash this army on the sleepy town of Forks, with the ultimate goal of killing the frighteningly miserable Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart).

Victoria is miffed at sensitive gentleman vamp Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) because he killed her partner back in Twilight, and she believes the best way to exercise revenge would be to kill his beloved Bella. Meanwhile, stroppy werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner), aggravated by Bella’s preferred choice of lover, continues to insist that he is the right man-type-creature thing for her. Bella, to Jacob’s dismay, would much rather be a vampire with Edward, which happens to be part of an agreement made with super-vampires The Volturi, during the last instalment.

With the newborn army, and the aggrieved Victoria, on the warpath and heading straight for Bella’s neck, the awkward alliance of werewolves and vampires trains together for about 30 seconds, as they attempt to sharpen their tools enough to defeat the army before Bella is turned into soup.

Eclipse retreads so much of New Moon, and considering that New Moon was shockingly awful, this has not gone well. Eclipse may be following its source material, but that doesn’t mean that the exhaustive exploration of the love triangle translates well to the screen. The dialogue between Jacob, Edward and Bella is at times excruciating and wouldn’t be lost in a daytime soap opera.

Eclipse was marketed as the action-packed instalment that would be more accessible to those who have not been blown away by the surprisingly popular notion of emo-vampires. Considering that these films are about vampires and werewolves, the first two instalments haven’t seen a lot of action from either party, with the movies focusing mainly on Bella mulling over her oh-so-difficult life, whilst two men vie for her affections. In Eclipse we see more of Jacob trying to win her over, more of Edward being very dull and apparently uninterested in premarital sex with the gorgeous Kristen Stewart, more trees and fields, more shockingly bad CGI werewolves doing very little, more topless men and more of Bella being man-greedy, indecisive, morose, selfish, thoughtless and generally irritating.

We have seen so much of Eclipse in the other films, so perhaps it would have been best to cut down on these elements and bring the focus to some of the saga’s new story threads and themes. Unfortunately there is nothing else to the story, other than a weak plot about an advancing army that turns out to be somewhat of a pushover, so there’s nothing to fall back on that could provide the film with something refreshing.

(more…)

In 1997, director Vincenzo Natali wrote and directed a sci-fi horror movie called Cube which revolved around a group of strangers stuck in a construct of sadistically booby-trapped rooms, with no clue how to survive other than some seemingly random numbers engraved on each door. The fates of the characters were generally quite grisly, but the film itself posed some interesting questions about morals and the will to survive.

Natali planned to follow up that effort with a film exploring the concept and potential ramifications of genetic modification. His idea required a budget that simply was not available, but 13 years later he has finally been able to deliver Splice, a creepy, unnerving and ultimately thought-provoking slice of sci-fi horror pie.

Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play Clive Nicoli and Elsa Kast, two genetic engineers who have been conducting research and experiments investigating the outcome of DNA splicing. They plan to start introducing human DNA into the mix, but the pharmaceutical company with all the cash is not too keen.

The persistent duo decide to oppose their financiers and proceed with their plans in secret, convinced that successful splicing of human DNA with that of other animals could provide cures to several devastating diseases.

Their secretive work spawns a creature that they name Dren (the reversed letters of the pharmaceutical company’s acronym N.E.R.D). The creature displays impressive cognitive development and rapidly grows into something akin to an inquisitive feminine teenager, albeit one with a tail and stinger.

(more…)

Back in 1987, Arnie and his platoon of tough hombres took on a freakishly ugly and manically violent alien creature with a penchant for hunting humans as sport. Needless to say, it did not go well for the humans, but Arnie came out on top using a clever combination of mud and one-liners. It also helped that he was built like a brick outhouse and was able to distract the beast with his confusing accent and peculiar dialogue delivery.

Predator is a classic, and one of many highlights on Arnie’s very respectable 80s action résumé. So it was a moderate shame when the somewhat lacklustre Predator 2 appeared and changed the setting to the concrete jungle of Los Angeles. It could have worked, and Danny Glover is pretty good, but it lacked the original’s sense of fun, and sported a far less entertaining cast, not to mention the fact that Predator was directed by Die Hard‘s John McTiernan, whereas Predator 2 was helmed by the director of Nightmare on Elm Street 5 and Lost in Space, Stephen Hopkins. Oops.

The intriguing and excessively violent character of the Predator lay dormant until Paul W.S. Anderson (Event Horizon, Resident Evil) made the move to combine Alien and Predator on the big screen; such a move had been equally revered and requested by the fans. Alien vs. Predator was acceptable yarn, despite slightly compromising the integrity of the canon of both sets of movies. However, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem was utter dross, shot in total darkness using a script that offered the dialogue equivalent of horse faeces.

This could have killed both Alien and Predator, but Robert Rodriguez (From Dusk Till Dawn, Desperado, Sin City) had a script gathering dust for an alternative Predator 2 titled Predators (a rather blatant nod to Aliens). The execs found it, removed said dust and went to work getting Rodriguez to revisit his original idea.

(more…)

In 2002, relatively unknown author Alice Sebold saw her first fiction novel, The Lovely Bones, become a bestseller, garnering almost universal critical acclaim from the literary world, and owing many of its sales to word of mouth.

Such surprise success would almost certainly result in talk of a film adaptation, and Peter Jackson, the man behind the glorious Lord of the Rings adaptations, was the man eventually handed director’s duties by producer Steven Spielberg.

The film adaptation of The Lovely Bones sees 14 year-old photographer-wannabe Susie Salmon lulled into an underground trap by a neighbour named George Harvey. It appears at first that, after a brief struggle, she manages to escape and run to freedom, but it quickly becomes clear that she has been murdered and is watching the subsequent events that occur after her death.

She watches from a heaven-like place; a world that is only limited by her own imagination, and one which serves as a precursor to her spirit’s final resting place. She remains in this limbo until such time that she chooses to move on; something which she is regularly encouraged to do by a mysterious little girl who accompanies her.

She observes her family and friends, and their respective responses to her untimely, grotesque demise. Her attempts to contact her loved ones have minimal success and only serve to aggravate the situation, as her father, Jack, starts to lose his mind in his relentless quest for justice. Meanwhile, her murderer attempts to cover up any evidence of his sickening act, although it is clear he has other secrets to hide.

(more…)