Sometimes at Odds, Sometimes Sympatico

As mentioned last time, I've found writing this thing a tad difficult of late, given everything that's going on in the world, and the dizzying rate the happenings are...happening...

This has included reviewing our past few cinema goings.  In the past month, we've seen Lego Batman, John Wick: Chapter 2, Logan and Kong: Skull Island.

In brief:

• Great
• Spectacular
• Tremendous
• Terrible

Those first three are very much in-keeping with the general consensus among critics and audiences alike.  Much like The Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie surprised everyone by being more than just an extended toy advert: witty, inventive, exciting, layered and offering a brand new spin on well-established - sometimes long-tired - characters, ideas and themes (their take on the Joker, and his relationship with Batman, is beautiful).

John Wick Chapter 2 was far less of a surprise, given the quality of its forebear, but there is always the risk of sequelitis, and it can't be denied it did suffer slightly in that regard.  But this is not sequelitis in the usual respect of either trying too hard to outdo the original (Mummy Returns; Independence Day Resurgence) or lazily cashing in (The Lost World: Jurassic Park; RED 2; Independence Day Resurgence).  The one and only issue with Chapter 2 was the very fact that it was't a surprise.  John Wick came out of nowhere, and it was joyous.  Chapter 2 lacked that sense of wonder, but was, nevertheless, spectacular.

Logan too wasn't much of a surprise, but given the diminished-with-time quality of much of the X-Men franchise, there was no guarantee the promise of those beautiful trailers was going to pay off with anything more than The Wolverine with a bit more blood and bad language.  Fortunately, not only were the shackles of the dreaded PG-13 / 12A certificate removed (though, paradoxically, the sheer volume of 'fucks' early on came across as adolescent), but also any forced franchise ties.  While references are made to characters and incidents that have come before, Logan stands very much on its own, creating its own continuity, and playing out more like a western than a super-hero movie.

In fact, as one review pointed out, while this is by some distance the best film to come out of the X-Men franchise, it is not the best X-Men film (that would be First Class).  Logan isn't about the X-Men.  It isn't even about mutants.  It's about an old man looking to escape a troubled past, but being forced to face up to it and find redemption in the form of protecting a (admittedly not exactly helpless) young girl.

A young girl, by the way - and I realise I'm digressing quite substantially at this point, but now that I've started writing about this film and its cast, I just want to gush - who should not be overlooked for a Best Supporting Actress nom next year.  My word, Dafne Keen was awesome!  Charged with being eerily stoic, feral, savage, innocent, athletic and bi-lingual, while carrying some heavy emotional scenes, all of which she steals from her co-stars, despite them all bringing their A-game: Hugh Jackman's Logan is broken, world-weary, and physically and emotionally vulnerable; Patrick Stewart's Xavier is weak and tired, haunted by tragedies he barely remembers, losing his grip on himself and reality, yet consistently funny, and as fatherly as he ever was; Stephen Merchant's Caliban is a tragic, sarky sage, persistently holding Logan to task - and all of them are struggling to come to terms with their past sins.

Even Boyd Holbrook's Pierce, who could have easily been just another henchman, has enough personality to entertain whenever he's on screen.

But it's the 11 year-old Keen who owns the screen whenever she's on it.

All three of these films have enjoyed varying degrees of universal praise, as has - to my slight surprise - Skull Island.

I expected to love Skull Island.  I'm a sucker for a creature feature, regardless of the quality, and will even admit to being a fan of Cloverfield, Roland Emmerich's Godzilla and Peter Jackson's King Kong (the more recent Godzilla had a spectacular climax, but was otherwise a tedious slog of dull human characters, and frustrating teases of monster-on-monster action).  I'm not saying these films are good, necessarily, but I found each of them entertaining in their own way.

And every critic I follow appears to have a similar opinion of Skull Island.  Yes it's silly, yes the characters are a bunch of 2-dimensional archetypes, and yes, the plot's thinner than American beer in a cheap pub, but when 75% of the film is monsters eating people, then being stomped by a giant monkey, who cares?

Well, for some unfathomable reason, I do.  Maybe it was because I expected more - possibly too much - of a new King Kong, made with new technology, and featuring the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson and John Goodman, or maybe it was just a little too slick, lacking the goofiness of earlier creature features that helped audiences look passed the flaws.

Whatever the reason, I had this unshakable sense of detachment throughout.  It all starts promisingly enough, with Goodman's obsessive scientist desperate for government backing, the introduction of Hiddleston as a grizzled badass, and a disheartened Jackson leading an eclectic army unit coming to the end of its tour in Vietnam.  Even Brie Larsson's plucky journalist has some intriguing savvy about her.

In fact - and completely at odds with the usual nature of the genre - all was going well, right up until the monkey showed up.  While I appreciate the lack of fumbling about with character development before getting to the good stuff, and Kong's unexpectedly blunt reveal and subsequent battle is fantastic, once the players are on the titular island, the characters are immediately reduced to type, and become background noise between the fights.

The biggest criticism levied at Peter Jackson's King Kong was it was far too slow, but while I can appreciate that - and can't deny it had some pacing issues - I was personally drawn in by the 1920s setting, Jackson's heart-on-his-sleeve style, and the eclectic cast of characters.  Plus, the extended edition featured a lot more monsters-eating-extras goodness in the build-up (and no extended anything else).

John C. Reilly does show up in Skull Island as the one interesting character amidst the post-monkey blandness, and Hiddleston does get a damn fine set-piece against a bunch of mini pterodactyl thingies, but every set-piece comes so thick and fast, interspersed with standard action-shots of the cast posing against the carnage, that it wound up feeling more like an overblown music video than an epic action film.

It was the exact opposite of Gareth Edwards' Godzilla: while that was trying too hard for emotional depth, tense pacing and thought-provoking plot - failing at all three and boring us silly in the process - Skull Island abandoned all that after 10 minutes for a few rounds of King of Monsters without the interactivity.

I wouldn't say Skull Island was as bad Independence Day Regurgitation, and I can't deny there was a lot that I should have loved about it - and plenty of others did love about it - but I just couldn't suspend my disbelief far enough to enjoy any of it.

Doctor Standard

Another year, another Marvel origin movie.

And, I'm sorry to say, the old formula is showing its age: here's a snippet of your bad-guys; this is your good-guy with a lot to learn (boy-oh-boy, isn't he arrogant); here's his perfunctory love-interest; Look, Avengers Tower!  Eegads, drama!  Journey starts here, folks!  Ooh, this one's about this stuff... Training.  Struggle.  Conflict.  He's catching on... Midway fight!  Now he has purpose.  Now he's a badass!  Climax!  Ooh, sequel bait.

This being Avengers XIV: Quick, We Need Something New to Show! it's hardly surprising the strain is beginning to show  Even with the introduction of magic and the multi-verse, we're given the same old beats; the same old leaning toward style over substance; the same old stock characters for our hero to bounce dialogue off of.  And what's frustrating is they've already found new ways of tackling the origin story.  Guardians of the Galaxy got away with it through humour, a brand new setting, and being about a team rather than a singular hero.  And despite being about a team, the writing and performances were strong enough to convey the background and character of every player.  Even Ronan the Accuser - typical flash-in-the-pan bad-guy that he was - benefited from a memorable design and performance, and having his stoicism contrasted against the 'hero's' general silliness.

Ant-Man too, though it followed the more established formula, managed to stand out by being on a much smaller, more intimate scale.

Unfortunately, Doctor Strange feels a lot like a return to the old.  Mads Mikkelsen does what he can with the villain, but we see so little of him, he joins Yellowjacket, Iron-Monger and Malekith (remember him?) in the category of, 'Well, they were knida interesting... Moving on.'

Similarly, Rachel McAdams gets to be little more than space-filler.  There's chemistry; he rejects her; he needs her; they reconcile; she's gone.  They do change things up slightly by not quite having the two get together (as if to say 'See, she's not really a love-interest! Aren't we original?'), but you could still replace her with Jane Foster and not notice the difference.

The action is also disappointing.  Not that it's not imaginative and well executed, but it's shot so poorly.  Scott Derrickson seems to have come from the same school of action directing as Paul Greengrass and the Russo brothers, thinking shoving the camera in an actor's ear and swishing it from side to side makes for an immersive set-piece, rather than a confusing blur of colourful nonsense.  And it isn't helped by an over-reliance on CGI sets and models.  Okay, when you're doing the Inception building-folding thing with an entire city, practical effects aren't really an option, but having a pair of actors brawl in an actually-rotating corridor was still far more impressive-looking than some green-screen wire-work and bandy-armed character models.

It also doesn't help that the action peaked with a mid-film confrontation, while the climactic fight was a much more brief, small-scale and uninteresting affair (and aesthetically reminiscent of Suicide Squad).

And though the final final face-off was a genuinely cool idea, the design of Dormammu, who should look something like this...

...was pants.

All that said, however, it's still good.

It's an almost frustrating trend with Marvel that even their somewhat throw-away films have plenty about them to enjoy, whether it be the action of Incredible Hulk or Iron-Man 2, or the character interaction and universe development of Thor: The Dark World.  Even Age of Ultron, despite more-or-less being a retread of The Avengers, was packed with enough awesome that it didn't matter.

Doctor Strange, despite being part of the MCU, could probably be most closely compared to Green Lantern in terms of structure and unoriginality.  But while Green Lantern lacked any semblance of effort, depth or excitement, Doctor Strange is what happens when you do all that same stuff (for the most part) well.  The cast are invested, the action (what we can see of it) is imaginative and the writing's sharp.

As a rich, arrogant, goatee-wearing genius at the pinnacle of his field, it would be easy to shrug Stephen Strange off as a Tony Stark clone, but the similarities are superficial at worst, and Benedict Cumberbatch covers the journey from top-of-his-game to despair, to out-of-his-depth, to getting-the-hang-of-things comfortably, while also delivering on the humour and action.  If there's one chink in his armour it's the accent.  Hugh Laurie's in House may have taken some getting used, but at least it was consistent, and I otherwise can't think of a single example of an English actor struggling with an American accent.  Cumberbatch's goes from passable to jarring, and even his weapons-grade cheek-bones couldn't distract from it.

As mentioned, Mikkelsen and McAdams are given very little to do, but they do it well, with both given a solid minute-and-a-half each to show some emotional depth, and even a couple of comedic moments.

Chiwetel Ejiofor is also a little short-changed, but he brings gravitas to what could have been a token side-kick, and offers just enough to hint at Mordo's inevitable (if you've read the comics) arc.

The biggest surprise for me was Tilda Swinton.  Obviously she gives a good performance - she's one of those actors who apparently can't do otherwise - but I was among those who cried foul at the casting of a white actor as an Asian character.  I'm not going to go into the whole white-washing debate here - Hollywood has a problem and it knows it does - but given the already lacking diversity among its heroes, this felt like a missed opportunity for Marvel to (at least in part) redress the balance.  However, in a film so lacking in originality, there was something refreshing in the wise old sage being a (more or less) quite ordinary white English woman.  It would have been easy to make the character the typical Dali Lama knock-off - all wisdom and enlightenment, with a touch of wise old wit - but instead The Ancient One is flawed, uncertain, occasionally vulnerable, and is shown to be mostly just doing their best.  That's not to say the character shows all that because she's a woman, or that an older male or female Asian actor couldn't have portrayed all those things, but the character's gender and ethnicity helped subvert expectations and add something new.  On top of that, Swinton is also given the opportunity to do a bit of arse-kicking, and managed that with aplomb.

I still feel they could've found a happy middle-ground by casting an Asian actress, but it wasn't as embarrassingly tenuous as I expected it to be.

Still, strong as the rest of the cast is, no-one steals a scene quite like Strange's cape - it reminded me of Carpet from Aladdin -  and if there isn't at least one shot of it flirting with Thor's cape when the two inevitably meet, I'll be disappointed.

So, in summary, it's all business as usual for another MCU origin: strong cast playing mostly filler characters, a strong hero, strong action, and some interesting universe building.

Hate to Say I Told You So

It has been well established by now by every review out there - whether positive or negative (and I’ve seen plenty of both) - that Suicide Squad is a mess.  Personally, I had fun with it, but the issues are far too jarring for me to recommend it, or argue with anyone who thought it was utter dog-shit.

The issues are glaring from the off, with the film opening with not one, but two scenes of Amanda Waller explaining her plan to a room of military officials; with the first interspersed with a few quick character bios almost as clumsy and forced as Batman’s Justice League email in BvS.  The trailer featured a line from Rick Flag describing the characters - “Shoots people; burns people; eats people… Crazy person” - that does a far better job of establishing the characters than the opening ten minutes of the actual film.

This clumsiness is prevalent throughout film, with poorly placed and repetitive flashbacks, nonsensical character beats there purely for the sake of plot movement, lazy exposition, terrible pacing...and so on (it’s like a bad Arrow episode).

The list of problems is long and, as I said, already well-established, but I’d like to highlight one in particular.  It’s something I’ve previously mentioned, that I’ve been concerned about since the film was first announced, and a prime example of which we saw in BvS: Who are these people?

Way back in the days when The Dark Knight had just been released, and Marvel’s Avengers experiment was just starting to come together, Warner Bros. announced they would be making a Justice League movie: not kicking off a Justice League cinematic universe - establishing the characters and the world they inhabit - but jumping straight in with Justice League, complete with new versions of all your favourite characters.

It was a terrible idea, and it wasn’t long before internet backlash seemingly made WB see sense, shelve the project and instead allow Christopher Nolan to finish off his Dark Knight trilogy, before bringing him on to oversee a new Superman film that would set the stage for the rest of the Justice League, just as Iron Man did for the Avengers.

Unfortunately, under the hamfisted fan-boy direction of Zack Snyder - that had served him and us surprisingly well on Watchman and 300 - Man of Steel was a dour, tedious, inconsistent, underwhelming mess.

Rather than scratch this off as a false start and hope for better from new Wonder Woman, Flash and Aquaman origins, WB panicked and jumped straight ahead with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

And we all know how that turned out.

One of the few highlights (and possibly the biggest surprise) of BvS was Ben Affleck as Batman - contrary to fan-boy fears the world over (including my own), he proved a good fit for the roles - but that didn’t mean the character himself wasn’t weakly established and poorly represented.  This was a bitter, angry Batman, pushing his violent nature to the extreme, to the point of no longer caring whether he kills.  In one scene, we’re shown a Robin suit, apparently graffitied by the Joker, suggesting Batman’s anger and bitterness stem from the death of the Boy Wonder, as in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns - an idea confirmed (to some extent) by the presence of the anti-Superman Batsuit from said book - but even in that, when Batman is at his most detached, desperate and willfully violent, he never crosses that line.

Not that you can’t have Batman killing people - if anything, showing the Dark Knight pushed over the edge to a point where he’s perfectly willing to break his one golden rule is an interesting piece of character development - but the issue in BvS is it is not shown.  Yes, we’re given a glimpse of the reason behind his mindset, but how much did that event really change him?  Has this always been a more violent Batman?  Was he closer to Tim Burton’s version, Joel Schumacher’s or Christopher Nolan’s?  Did Robin’s apparent death push him just an inch too far, or completely flip his personality?

The same is true for every character in Suicide Squad.  Amanda Waller calls them ‘The worst of the worst’, but that doesn’t hold up.  All we see of them in the movie is Deadshot is an assassin-for-hire who loves his daughter, and never kills women or children, Killer Croc lives in the sewers, and seemingly only attacks people who attack him, El Diablo is a pacifist,Captain Boomerang is a bank robber and Harley Quinn is a mentally-ill gymnast with Stockholm syndrome.  Hardly the worst humanity has to offer.

In fact, other than Enchantress - an evil spirit awakened from a 2,000 year imprisonment, so understanderbly miffed - the only character who truly shows themselves to be a cold, calculating sociopath is Waller.

The most glaring example of this lack of background, however, is Jared Leto’s much-touted Joker.  After all of the behind-the-scenes reports of how scarily ‘method’ he got with the role, the Joker’s entire on-screen character is that of a violent, but strategic gang boss with a weird growl and an obsession with Quinn.  The elements are all there for this to be an interesting new take on the character - how did he establish himself?  what’s he done to earn his reputation?  why is he so obsessed with Quinn far beyond the simple pleasure the character’s previously taken in having a loyal attractive pet around to play with and abuse as he fancies? - but we get none of this, and as a result, he’s little more than a caricature.

Leto has stated that a lot of his scenes wound up on the cutting-room floor, but no matter what’s in them, I struggle to see how a few deleted scenes would cover the gaping holes in the character.

Again, this isn’t just an issue with Suicide Squad.  We’re now three movies into the DC Cinematic Universe, and the only character with a true origin story is the one character who, not only everyone knows - comic-book fan or not - but whose entire character relies on being consistent and immovable.  In other words, the only character in this whole enterprise who doesn’t need an origin story.*

*I realise we also get Batman’s (wholly unnecessary by now) origin story, but that’s just

why he became Batman, not what turned him into this version of Batman.

In WB’s rush to catch up with Marvel, they’ve completely missed what has made the MCU so successful: namely the balance struck between staying true to the characters’ comic-book origins, while making them accessible enough to a new, cinema-going audience.

That said, at least Suicide Squad has added a sorely-lacking element of fun to the franchise.

Teetotality and Transitions both Terrible and Tremendous

By the balmy bloated ball-sack of Beelzebub, it's been warm!

Rather difficult to concentrate on any form of work or writing when the inescapable heat is causing one's head to throb like the temple vein of an anxiety sufferer caught stripping by their in-laws.

Fortunately, clouds have returned to our scorching British skies, so let's talk cinema.

Absolutely Fabulous (on the slim off-chance you don't know) was a truly inspired show of the nineties and naughties that saw Jennifer Saunders as Edi, a middle-aged woman-child, getting up to all kinds of slapstick debauchery with her best friend, Patsy; a drunken fag-hag and relentless cougar played to gut-busting perfection by Joanna Lumley.  At its best, it was awesome: slick, sharp, acerbic, well observed, geniusly performed by main and supporting cast alike, and with a hit-rate Morcombe & Wise would've been proud of.

Alas it does not translate to the big screen.

To be honest, the show has been flagging for years, since it ran its course over three or four series, before the set-up got tired and attempts to keep it fresh - mostly in the form of cameo-ridden specials - got desperate, but even the last brief TV run had its charm.  Unfortunately, it doesn't fit the feature-length format: the comic timing's off, set-ups are lazy, too obviously telegraphed and/or lacking in pay-off, the characters - always the driving force of the show - have become obnoxious to the point of being insufferable, and the only thing about the whole affair that works - and will always work - is Lumley (because, let's face it, how ever shoddy everything else might get, Patsy is one of the all-time great comedic creations, and will never cease to be magnificent).

Happily, something that did translate well to the big screen was The BFG!

The BFG was by no means the first of the 'spunky little orphan taken on a mystical adventure by a fantastical being' genre, but it remains one of the all-time greats and most beloved, so it was always going to be a risk.

Riskier still in the fact that not a lot happens in the story: it's essentially about the friendship of a little girl and an doddery old man, and what thrills there are mostly don't come until the very end.  As a book, this wasn't much of an issue due to the brilliance of Roald Dahl's writing: his wit and whimsy kept readers hooked, regardless of what was (or wasn't) happening, and managed to be perfect for a pre-teen audience, without ever being patronising to older readers.

Without this luxury on film, even a colourful whimsical setting, and the presence of giants, will only get you so far.  A slow-burn character piece - regardless of setting - must be carried entirely by the cast: in this case, Mark Rylance - seasoned veteran of stage and screen - and Ruby Barnhill - a twelve year-old girl.

Even as a Shakespeare vet., Rylance can't have had an easy time of it, not only having to spend much of his time reacting to nothing but a ball on a stick, but having to deliver an almost alien language and speech pattern as if he'd been using it for millennia.  And it would have been all for nought, of course, if he'd been playing against a bland, obnoxious and/or unconvincing Sophie.

Fortunately, they are both superb; with Rylnace both funny and forlorn; wise, yet oblivious; and Barnhill mixing child-like wonder with a far-beyond-her-years maturity that at no point felt fake or forced.

Couple that with some seamless CGI, an entertaining and colourful supporting cast and Steven Spielberg bringing his '80's A-game, and you get something that had Rhiannon - a devotee of the story in her youth - weeping tears of joy for the best part of two hours.

In other movie news, DC have released a couple of trailers, and, boy, has the reaction to the miserable dross they vomited up a few months back put the shits up them!

First, Wonder Woman:


Along with Batfleck, Gal Gadot was one of the pleasant surprises of BvS.  When she was cast, all I'd seen her in was the Fast and Furious films, where she appeared to lack the muscle mass to lift a tooth-pick.  For her to not only turn up in BvS looking the part, but be the only one of the 'holy trinity' to show some balls against the Incredible Doom Troll was almost as welcome a surprise as the former Mr. JLo's turn as Bruce Wayne.

Her solo outing - by evidence of the trailer, at least - looks to build on the badassery, not just in terms of kicking arse, but in the character's attitude and the way she caries herself.

My one concern is how long that final moment with the secretary is drawn out, but I'll get to that in a sec...


I will say from the off that, yes, this does look better than Dawn of Justice - the new Flash is funny, Mamoa looks like an interesting Aquaman, and DK appears to be less of a right-wing douche - but I have some serious concerns about this 'footage'.

The first is the same concern I have with Suicide Squad:


Who are these people?

Okay, I know who they all are, and anyone who doesn't can look them up on Wikipedia, but this is the first cinematic outing for most of these characters, and brand new interpretations of others, yet we're supposed to care about a history that will likely be dumped on us in exposition.

Whether it be Flash and Cyborg, or Killer Croc and Captain Boomerang, we're being shown these characters for the very first time (BvS's bullshit flash-drive preview does not count) and are expected to give a rat's hairy left bollock about their thoughts, feelings and motivations.

My other concern is the same I have with the end of the Wonder Woman trailer: there is an emphasis on humour (yes, there is in the Suicide Squad trailer, too, but at least there it doesn't feel out of place).

Don't get me wrong, after the previous two outings, this series is clamouring for some levity, but there's a desperation in how hard they're pushing it here, as if WB, in their typical accountancy approach, has looked at Rotten Tomatoes and said:

"Jokes!  We need more jokes!"
"How many more jokes?"
"Well, we're averaging 46%, so 54% more jokes!"

It reminds me of Microsoft's furious back-peddling following their horrific pre-release promotion of the Xbone.

Again, the trailers don't look bad, I just have concerns about WB trying too hard and heading too far the other way.

In other non-movie news, I'm off the booze for a while.  It's been apparent for some time that I drink too regularly, but I generally don't binge.  On Saturday, however, I purposefully only wanted to have a few, but then mixed that with too much wine, and realised afterwards that I am rubbish at restraining myself after a certain point (you can see it in my gut).  So, I'm giving it a rest for a while.

Until Halloween, in fact (save for a friend's birthday in September).

Wish me luck!

(I'm gonna need it)

"Independence Day"...?

Well...so...that was a thing...

Given the rate news is coming in right now, there's little point in writing about our EU exit just yet, so let's talk about that other "Independence Day".

20 years ago, Roland Emmerich delivered a big, blustering, spectacular modern take on the classic b-movies of old.  Decent script, great performances, incredible special effects: it was the epitome of a summer blockbuster, the likes of which wouldn't be matched until The Avengers (the Marvel one).

Rumours of a sequel circulated almost immediately, and continued to do so for 2 whole decades, during which time, Emmerich made the likes of Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012.  Hardly a glowing resumé, but at least they were fun for what they were (though I acknowledge it's awful, I am one of the few living entities on the planet who actually quite enjoyed Godzilla).

And now, finally, we have Resurgence...

*sigh*

It's difficult to pin down why this film doesn't work.  Yes, the writing's awful, the story's stupid and the new (and semi-new) characters are one-dimensional caricatures, but the same's true of a vast number of blockbuster b-movies that still manage to be big dumb fun.  Just look at Jurassic World.  In the best of these films, it's entirely possible to detach oneself from the glaring issues, and just enjoy the spectacle.  Even the first Transformers - woeful though it was - wasn't entirely without fun and excitement.

Part of the problem for me is the setting.  The original was set in our world: it was tangible and recognisable, resulting in a genuine impact to all of the destruction wrought in the initial attack.  Resurgence, on the other hand, is set in an alternative present day, replete with alien propulsion systems and weapons, floating TVs and gleaming, futuristic architecture.  It's all phoney and detached, and there is no impact to seeing it destroyed.

That detachment extends to the majority of the characters.  While Bill Pulman and Jeff Goldblum return, and add some gravitas to proceedings, the rest of the cast are given nothing to do but fill their archetypal roles: handsome white maverick hero; handsome black by-the-book hero; plucky lover-interest; nerdy sidekick; token Asian.  Every one of them is as bland, vapid and unconvincing as the setting.

In terms of plot: a MacGuffin lands on the moon just ahead of the return of the previous invaders, who are answering a distress beacon, and chasing said MacGuffin...and looking to harvest the Earth's core, which is their usual plan, apparently, but last time they didn't seem too fussed about that...except that they were, and they tried it; it just wasn't mentioned before, possibly because they tried it in some random African state, rather than somewhere sensible, like a fault-line, so no-one really took it seriously.

Speaking of that African state; the populace there were engaged in a ground war against a bunch of the aliens, in the aftermath of the previous attack, which sounds cool, but we don't actually get to see any of it.

Always frustrating to be teased, in an exposition dump, with a plot far more interesting than the one you're sitting through.

And exposition is pretty much the entirety of the script, which dumps character and post-ID4 history on us, in the brief interludes between action scenes.  No one is given room to breathe or develop, and whenever there is the possibility of a character having to deal with something, it's brushed aside with a shrug and an 'It's all good': the new status quo accepted with as much emotional impact as finding out there's no ketchup for your hotdog.

At one point...
*MILD SPOILER*
...a returning character dies, a teary speech is given about revenge, and they're never mentioned again for the subsequent 90 minutes.
*SPOILER END*

Later on...
*LESS MILD SPOILER*
...we see the start of an attack on the president's bunker, only to cut away to another location where we're told she was killed in the attack, and the new president is sworn in, in a five-second ceremony that has zero impact on anything as he was pretty much running things anyway.
*SPOILER END*

We're also threatened with an even sillier sequel.

FIVE people wrote the script for this thing!

In terms of the action, it's all pretty enough (though the 3D is abysmal), the emergence and landing of the new ship is impressive, and the climactic sequence with a giant alien is the one interesting and moderately original set-piece in the entire film, but the dogfights - which were done brilliantly in the first film - are such a mess, it's difficult to tell which side's which.

It's clear that all effort has gone into the set-pieces, with the connective tissue thrown together as an afterthought, and while that's a perfectly reasonable approach to constructing brainless, high-concept popcorn fair - I've little doubt a similar approach was taken to the first film - there needs to be something for the audience to get their teeth into.

Sadly, two decent performances and a couple of good set-pieces aside, Resurgence is a thin, messy, poorly paced, lazily plotted, bloated shadow of the original.

First Impressions

Last night I finally got around to watching this...


...and it was awesome.  Fast, funny, fearless, and staggering performances from not only Dicaprio as Jordan Belfort (seriously, Academy, you must've been sampling some of the substances on display to have chosen McConaughey over him), but from the entire cast.  Jona Hill, in particular, was a revelation!

I immediately gave it 5 stars on Netflix.

This morning, however, I found myself questioning if it really was that good.

The performances I still cannot fault - there wasn't a single weak link, with almost the entirety of the main cast being asked to play comedy, tragedy, quiet drama and balls-to-the-wall outlandishness at the drop of a hat - but the more I thought about it, the more holes I found elsewhere.

For a start, it's predictable.  As outlandish as the characters behave from scene to scene, the plot is so by-the-numbers you can chart it from the most generic of generic synopses: It's a decadent rags-to-riches, rise-and-fall story.  Scarface, Wall Street, Goodfellas; if you've seen any of them (or a hundred others) you know exactly how it goes.

Then there's the timeline: We're given musical cues throughout to represent the period, but the timing often suggests we've been in this particular year for some unknown time.

There's also little character closure beyond Belfort.  Yes, it's his story (and a 'true' one, so any extraneous info is, presumably, out there somewhere), but I was still left questioning what happened to the supporting characters: How did they deal with the crash of '87?  What happened to her?  What happened to him? Who was charged, what with and what punishment was dished out?

Even an Animal House-style blurb ahead of the closing credits would've been welcomed: "Rugrat was indicted on 600 charges of market manipulation, 300 charges of substance abuse and 1 charge of fraudulent hair.  He served 4 years as a McDonald's scrubber, before being promoted to fries and dying of a salt overdose."

But here's the thing: Should I judge the film on my immediate reaction, or mark it down because of the problems I've thought of after the fact?  Is my initial enjoyment more important than analytical hindsight?

Looking at it from the other side, when I first saw The Dark Knight Rises, I was underwhelmed.  No, it was never going to live up to The Dark Knight, but it was more than that: the film felt bloated and ponderous, the plot was silly, the tone was a mess and the ending as crap.

However, I did enjoy it a lot more the second time around.  Already being aware of the issues, I was able to ignore them and enjoy the spectacle: the airborne heist; the bat-pod chase; Hathaway's Catwoman; the climactic battle; Hathaway's Catwoman...

Did any of that make it a better film?  I'm inclined to say no, because all of that was there before, but was undermined by its issues.

So does noticing Wolf of Wall Street's issues after the fact make it a worse film?  That, I find more difficult to answer.  On the one hand, those issues were already there, but I didn't notice because of how much I was enjoying the rest.  If anything, this elevates the quality of what did work.  On the other hand, when those issues do come to mind, it means that enjoyment can be lessened over time, reducing its lasting appeal.

Maybe it's more of a scale thing.  I thoroughly enjoyed Die Another Day when I first saw it; now I see it as a depressing piece of shit.  I didn't get The Life Aquatic when I first saw it; now I adore it!

You see, none of this is to say I now consider Wolf of Wall Street to be a bad film - issues or not, it's a tremendous and highly entertaining piece of work - it's just that it did get me thinking about how I judge films.

Civil War

When it was first announced that the Russo Brothers were being handed Avengers: Infinity War, I was a tad worried. Yes, Winter Soldier was awesome - one of the best Marvel films up to that point - but their inability to frame an action scene and KEEP THE SMEGGING CAMERA STILL put them in my bad books, and I envisaged big, explosive, overblown action scenes with Transformers level clarity. 

Civil War has put those fears to rest (and not just because they apparently bought each other steady-cams for Christmas). 

Every character is as well-played as they've always been. After 12 of these things, that's hardly surprising - I think RDJ's been playing Iron Man about as long as June Brown was Dot Cotton - but the level of performance extends to the recent additions. Paul Rudd is having as much fun playing Ant Man as his character is meeting Steve Rogers, Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Betany have more chemistry after 2 minutes on screen together than Ed Norton and Liv Tyler manager through the entirety of Incredible Hulk (did you even remember they were in that?), I cannot wait for the Black Panther film, and Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man... 

Sam Raimi directed 3 Spider-Man films: one good, one great and...another one. Marc Webb directed 2 Spider-Man films, and we're all trying to forget (especially Sony). The Russo Brothers directed 5 Spider-Man minutes and I'd take watching them on a two-hour loop over watching four out of five of the previous films. 

But, for me, the most notable thing about Civil War is that it clocks in at just under two and a half hours; about the same length as Batman v Superman. The difference is that, while the plot is by no means simple - featuring twists and turns and characters old and new with shifting loyalties and complex motivations and a core moral dilemma that is in no way easy to reconcile - there was no point in Civil War where I thought, 'Wait, why's he doing that? That's stoopid!' 

As Mark Kermode said: "It's film you're meant to enjoy rather than endure." 

It makes sense, moves at a well-measured pace, features some of the best action of the entire series so far, and manages to be deep and meaningful without sacrificing fun.