I Survived 'Survivor'

It's taken me a while to get around to reviewing 'Survivor' even though I saw it a week or so ago; I've just not thought about it much since. It's that sort of film.

If Hitchcock was alive today he'd be making films like 'Survivor'. It's an espionage thriller in which a falsely accused murder suspect goes on the run, plays cat and mouse with a ruthless enemy and everything builds to a suspenseful finale in a memorable location.

Not that I'm saying that 'Survivor' approaches the level of the great auteur; clearly not. This is just a bit of cinematic fluff to pass the time featuring Milla Jovovich and Pierce Brosnan. It's not 'North By Northwest'; it's not even 'Topaz' or 'Torn Curtain'. I make the comparison only to illustrate that this is the sort of film that studios used to make all the time. This updating of the formula is perfectly serviceable for what it is. It's strange that it has been so savaged across the board by reviewers. It doesn't pretend to be anything other than a lightweight thriller and if you stumbled across it on a movie channel you'd probably stick with it. It's not a very good film, but it's not a turkey. It's a liitle bit more cinematic and slightly more enjoyable than the 'Spooks' movie that was out not so long ago. If this was a Bruce Willis vehicle it would probably have it's fans.

Milla Jovovich is Kate Abbott an American Foreign Service Officer stationed in London. She rides a motorbike, she lost friends in 9/11 and has an artist friend and....um....well....that's it. What a fascinating, complex character she is. We know she's super great at her job because we see her in action refusing to give someone a visa stamp. It's exciting stuff.

Pierce Brosnan plays the world's greatest assassin: The Watchman. He's called The Watchman because he makes bombs....and....get this...makes watches. No wonder Interpol have failed to find him. No one knows what he looks like....despite him looking like Pierce Brosnan. He wears an overcoat, fiddles with gadgets and occasionally wears glasses and/or a moustache. What a fascinating, complex character he is. We know he's the world's greatest assassin because we're told that he is....but all we see him do is make bombs that kill innocent people and miss his targets at close range with alarming regularity. He does stab someone in the ear. It's exciting stuff.

Kate asks too many questions, steps on too many toes and refuses too many visas. The bad guys decide that she has to go. The Watchmaker is summarily despatched to assassinate her. But his cunning plan to blow her and her Embassy co-workers up in a swanky restaurant goes awry because.....she's buying a gift in the shop opposite. The restaurant blows sky high anyway and it is only when The Watchman (a master assassin remember) finds Kate standing in the rubble that he thinks that maybe shooting her would be the best option. He misses and so the chase is on.

Everybody that you think is going to be a double crossing traitor turns out to be a double crossing traitor and pretty soon Kate is framed for murder and running for her life. This forces her to fall back on ingenious spy craft like asking her only friend in London to meet her at a rendezvous with a change of clothes. Before you know it she's being chased through the Underground and trying to break in to her own workplace.

And then some gubbins about terrorists wanting to blow up New York on New Year's Eve or summat.

All in all it's rubbish.... but it's enjoyable rubbish.

Milla Jovovich is an okay actress but is completely charisma free in this. Brosnan has clearly been cast to play against type and give the Watchmaker an aura of "Bond gone bad". He's just bad; a ludicrous unthreatening villain. Robert Forster again makes you wonder how Tarantino managed to get a first rate performance out of him in 'Jackie Brown' because he's clearly just on auto-pilot again here. Bizarrely, Frances de la Tour is in it and she's always good....so that's something.

'Survivor' then: implausible, barely competent but still enjoyable and definitely the best Pierce Brosnan abseiling down a stairwell whilst shooting at lamps film you are ever likely to see.

One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing. 'Jurassic World'.

Twenty two years on, Jurassic Park has re-branded as Jurassic World but it is still a health and safety nightmare. Even before Chris Pratt can finish a risk assessment of the latest top secret attraction's paddock, Indominus Rex has escaped. The corporations have moved in and money is now the principal motive behind everything. Jaded and unimpressed tourists are demanding bigger, nastier, more ferocious attractions and the geneticists have been more than obliging; engineering a designer dinosaur - the very beast that's now free and killing for sport. Meanwhile, the velociraptors can be trained (but not tamed) and are drawing the interest of the military who want to weaponise them for combat zones. There are dinosaurs in the sea and dinosaurs in the air. Two children have gone off-roading and there's a female executive in charge who is too uptight to form meaningful relationships with anyone. What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, just shut up and take my money already!!!!

Yes, 'Jurassic Park' finally gets a decent sequel that manages to be something more than a mediocre cash-in. It's a blast of nostalgia, an exciting thrill ride and a whole lot of smile-on-your-face fun. It's not as well crafted as the original and it needs Spielberg's special touch to shift it into the exceptional. It struggles to replicate the awe, the showstopper set-pieces and the scares that we remember....but that's only to be expected. It does keep supplying the thrills however and definitely doesn't short change you on dinosaur action.

It's a shame that it is so sexist, it's a shame that the characters are such cardboard cutouts, it's a shame that it takes too long to get started....but strangely, those very elements all add up to give it a lot of old fashioned B-movie charm.  With a little bit more care this could have been a great film. As it stands, it is just a very entertaining one. But you can't really fault a summer blockbuster for being entertaining, can you?

Insidious and Insidiouser. Insidious:Chapter 3

'Insidious' is probably my favourite mainstream horror film of the past five years. When it was released it was a refreshing move away from the torture-porn cycle of films and a return to the more measured, subtle chills of classic horror. It was built on characters we cared about, suspense, a creepy build up of events and some effective sudden jolts. It was a deserved hit  and paved the way for the current vogue for cattle prod cinema.

I have seen 'Insidious 2' but can't remember much about it at all. Something about the cross-dressing ghost of a serial killer, or something. I remember it was quite disappointing.

'Insidious 3' is somewhere in between. It's not as surprising or as engrossing as the first one but it's not a waste of time either.

This one is a prequel of sorts. I'm not quite sure where it fits in the chronology. There's a girl who wears a Pixies t-shirt and has P J Harvey posters on her wall, so I'm guessing its sometime in the mid 1990s but then again the wi-fi is pretty good so who knows? Maybe it's just to show that she's the "alternative" type, although she clearly isn't.

Anyhow, the plot, this time is about a teenage girl who wants to communicate with her dead mother, gets knocked down by a car, has half her soul stolen by "the man who can't breathe, the man who lives in the vents", enlists reluctant psychic Elise to stop the demon stealing the other half of her soul and tries to find the time to rehearse for her drama audition. It's that plot. I think Shakespeare did it first.

On top of all that we have the scary cross-dressing woman in black screaming in people's faces and the horrible Darth Maul-styled demon from the first one relegated to a cameo in the final reel.

The real strength of the 'Insidious' franchise is when it depicts characters crossing over to "the other side". This is something that has always done well by these films and it is truly nightmarish when it starts to happen in this one. This film is at its best when it focuses on Elise the psychic lady as she wanders into the various levels of the spiritual abyss within which the demons live. Those scenes have genuine power and come close to a David Lynch like level of menace and surrealism. It helps that Lin Shaye is a really good actress and that we really don't want any harm to come to Elise.

I tried hard, but wasn't really that bothered by the other parts of the story. The film seemed to take forever to get started. Now, I don't mind horror films taking their time, actually I like it in fact, but when you spend the first twenty minutes of the movie building up to a "big scare" that's been telegraphed for months in the trailer it becomes a bit of a chore. Once it kicks in properly though the film is pretty good with lots of suspense, a few unnerving moments and big jump scares that actually are scares rather than false alarms.

There's a new monster introduced into this one: "The man who can't breathe". I'm not sure about this. "The man who leaves messy footprints everywhere" would be a more accurate moniker. At times it's a really, really, creepy creation but for the most part it's just not. His actions are certainly horrible. There's a strong scene where the victim lies defenceless on the floor of a room whilst this horror slowly, methodically shuts down all the light sources in the room. At other times it just looks like a shuffling patient who has lost his way in a hospital corridor; it's Darth Vader in a night gown. Overall he just seems a blander adversary to overcome in comparison to the foes faced in the other instalments.

One of my complaints about Chapter 2 was that there was too much explanation, too much backstory for what remained more frightening as an unknowable force of evil. Hypocritically, I would have like more information about who "the man who can't breathe" was. Why does he make people commit suicide? Why does he vomit up dust? Was he an asbestos engineer? is he related to the Mothman?

But....as much I can find ways to knock "Insidious: Chapter 3' I have to admit that it was still a hundred times better than 'Annabelle' or 'The Conjuring' or 'The Woman In Black 2". It's a good entry in the series, had some unique moments and is worth seeing if you liked the other ones. The couple behind me upped and left three quarters of the way through because it was becoming too much for them. Always a good measure of success for a horror film when people walk out.

'Insidious 3' is an okay horror. It's not great, but it will do.

'Tomorrowland' Never Comes.

'Tomorrowland' is unquestionably a two hour long commercial for Disneyland....but don't let that put you off, because, here's the thing... it's actually quite good.  It's a refreshingly optimistic, inventive and original movie. It's inspiring, philosophical, has challenging themes and operates on dream logic. In other words - it's box office poison. Reputedly on course to lose Disney something in the region of 140 million dollars. The film has already been dismissed as this year's blockbuster turkey; this year's 'John Carter' or 'The Lone Ranger'.

But here's the thing, I loved 'John Carter' and I loved 'The Lone Ranger' (which I saw in a cinema full of kids who were totally enraptured by it.). It's like Disney are deliberately sending a film out each year just for me. Bless 'em. Whilst I'm not overly concerned for the mouse empire  (they own Marvel and Star Wars amongst other assets so I think they'll be okay) it is a shame that superbly crafted films like these that offer something different can't find an audience. I guess people really do just want an endless succession of big eyed princesses singing show tune ballads and computer animated anthropomorphism.

Essentially the film explores that "Where's my jet-pack?" question. Where's the future of we were promised? Why is the 21st Century not as exciting as science-fiction told us it would be? What went wrong? Who's fault it?

The film provides plenty of answers, sometimes uncomfortable ones and wags it finger a little too much at the audience for it ever to become a hit. But if you're open to it, it's a great ride; entertaining, thrilling and thoughtful. And it shows us the jet packs.....and much more besides.

The plot is difficult film to summarise without making it sound silly and trite. Essentially it's about a teenage girl who comes into possession of a badge (or pin, if you're American) that gives her brief access to 'Tomorrowland', an advanced utopia full of awe and wonder. Interested parties steal the pin from her and she has to team up with grumpy old George Clooney to help her get back there and understand what's going on.

Britt Robertson is wonderful in this. Her heroine is a likeable, believable, girl next door struggling to stop her family from falling apart. She's feisty and capable, without having superhero traits, or teenage angst. She's just able look after herself and is a determinedly glass-half-full kind of person. She doesn't need to rescue a boy, or be rescued by one. There's another girl in this too, played by young actress Raffey Cassidy. She delivers a great performance as a sort of mini child Terminator. Great stuff. In other news, George Clooney is George Clooney and Hugh Laurie is Hugh Laurie. It would have been a more interesting film if their roles had been reversed, but even so, they're both good in this.

The film does lose it's way a little bit in the final act where it becomes a little bit confusing and a little bit repetitive (but that's true of most films these days). There's a fine emotional ending but dramatically it is a bit of a let down. The fault would seem to be with the writing. This is from the same scriptwriter as 'Prometheus' and it is similarly frustrating and great in equal parts. The direction is excellent though. Brad Bird again proves himself a great director of inventive action sequences. There is a "home invasion" scene that is as kinetic and breathless as anything in 'Mad Max:Fury Road'. The 'Tomorrowland' he creates is full of cinematic magic. It does the job of making you wish that this is a place you could actually visit.

It's unashamedly a message movie, but it's not heavy handed or patronising. Not to me, anyway. If anything it's like a kids' version of 'Interstellar' and there's nothing wrong with that. I guess it's too "Un-Disney" for most tastes. It certainly seems to too "socialist", too "green party wacko", too "lefty" for Americans to take. It is of course none of those things, just an impassioned plea for personal responsibility, optimism and change  - served up with some stunning eye candy.

I don't suppose Disney will make anything like it again. I don't suppose anyone will. A shame.

Christopher Lee. 1922-2015

Christopher Lee was Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu and Rasputin. He was a Bond villain, a Star Wars villain, Saruman and Lord Summerisle. He sang opera and heavy metal. He served in the SAS and his war record is still classified. He was prolific and appeared in films of variable quality but I have never read a bad word about him. He was a true gentleman and impossibly cool and is woven forever into our collective memory. A fond farewell to Christopher Lee. 1922-2015.

'Spy' plays it Stath.

Can Jason Statham do comedy?

There are those who would say that he has never done anything else.

And there is some truth in that....because I've never watched a "Stath" film without finding it funny on some level. Just the fact that someone from Britain is the world's most bankable, bald-headed, badass action star is in itself an endless source of joy and amusement to me. He's got to where he is by looking the part and playing the part well. Every role is within the range of Jason Statham but it always works. You get the sense that Jason Statham makes the sort of films that Jason Statham would like to see. But some people forget that his career was kick-started by his anchoring presence in 'Lock, Stock....' and ' Snatch' before graduating to action movie anti-hero. Can he do comedy? Of course he can...we've seen him do it from the offset. The only wonder is that he has avoided out and out comedy for so long. Most of his peers would have appeared in a Kindergarten cop type scenario long before now. Not The Stath; The Stath always plays it anti-hero, always plays it...well, 'Stath'. In 'Spy' he plays it 'Stath' to the max and it's off the wall apeshit funny.

But, alas, 'Spy' is not a Jason Statham vehicle; 'Spy' is a Melissa McCarthy vehicle.

Is Melissa McCarthy funny? Personally, I'm still undecided. I do like her...but only in small doses. She's clearly at her best when allowed to fly loose with improv. She's not exactly held back here, but she doesn't go full on batshit insane either. She needs a good foil to push her. I'm not sure Miranda Hart was quite up to scratch.

As is often the way with these things it's never as funny as you want it to be but it does have a better laugh-out-loud hit rate than most one-joke-premise movies. The joke, in case you don't know it, is that Melissa McCarthy is a fat Miss Moneypenny who get sent into the field. It's good for sixty minutes but wearying when the plot starts kicking in towards the end. It's too foul-mouthed and coarse to be family fare and yet too silly, too safe and too glossy to be a full-force blast of adult entertainment. It is constantly falling between those two stools. McCarthy's Susan Cooper is all over the shop as a character as well. I get that her journey is supposed to take her from reticent backroom person to confident, capable super-spy but her behaviour sways from one extreme to the other, often within a single scene.

But I don't wish to be too harsh on it. It's good enough for the most part, genuinely hilarious at times, with a likeable and unusual heroine. It has a great cast and they're clearly all having a great time. Rose Byrne in particular seems to thrive on playing a sweary, cold-hearted bitch of a villain.

And The Stah gets to insult Jude Law. Worth the price of admission alone.