Tuesday 31 December 2013

SPECIAL: The Worst Movies of 2013

By Chris Luckett

2013 hasn’t had as many great movies as recent years, but it’s certainly had its share of stinkers. A Bottom Ten list doesn’t even do justice to some of the rotten pieces of cinema that have come audiences’ way in the last 12 months. As bad as Paranoia, Safe Haven, and Identity Thief may have been, they all at least had some redeemable value. The following movies did not. If you have the choice to watch one of these, refrain.

Dishonourable mentions: Pain & Gain, G.I. Joe: Retaliation

10. 21 & OVER

A tired re-tread of The Hangover – which, let’s be honest, was already a re-tread of Dude, Where’s My Car? – with three teens that feel like first-draft rejects from Project X. The plot is dumb, the jokes are puerile, and the characters are incredibly racist. If 21 & Over achieves anything, it’s leaving you with a stupidity-driven headache to rival the hangovers contained within.

9. HANSEL & GRETEL: WITCH HUNTERS

Photo: Paramount Pictures
After The Hurt Locker, The Town, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, and The Avengers, Jeremy Renner was on an unbelievable hot streak. That ended with a loud thud when this stinker limped into theatres in January. Dealing with the fairy-tale characters as grown-ups had potential, but turning them into witch hunters for hire was an incredibly bone-headed move that reeks of desperation. Jeremy Renner deserved so much better than this.

8. THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS: CITY OF BONES

The post-Harry Potter era is stuffed with YA adaptations, from The Hunger Games to Beautiful Creatures, but even the worst of the Twilight sequels is better than this horribly derivative and boring mess. Even when the movie occasionally gets mildly interesting, the horrendous CGI takes you right out of the experience. The Mortal Instruments book series has six entries in it. Based on this first movie, there likely won’t be five sequels.

7. MOVIE 43

A great cast does not necessarily make a great movie. DVD bargain bins are littered with dreck starring gargantuan casts of solid actors, like Valentine’s Day, North, and Rat Race. After the filmmakers managed to get Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet to film a scene for it years ago, they tricked two dozens other famous faces to film scenes and stitched them together into a horrible movie. Almost all the actors have denounced their involvement in Movie 43. If you let it eat 90 minutes of your life, so will you.

6. RIDDICK

Pitch Black was good, but not great. The Chronicles of Riddick was worse, but wasn’t completely awful. Riddick is the absolute worst of the trilogy. Every scene is derivative of scenes from much better movies, like Aliens, Jurassic Park, The Road Warrior, Starship Trooper, and even the first Pitch Black. It’s the worst movie Vin Diesel has made – and in the shadow of Babylon A.D. and The Pacifier, that’s saying something.

Photo: The Weinstein Company
5. SCARY MOVIE 5

The Scary Movie franchise has one of the worst track records in modern cinema. Even the first one, which was the best, was pretty bad. The sequels have all been terrible, but usually each had at least one or two mildly funny moments. Scary Movie 5 is the new low point for the series, with all the jokes aiming at the ground and still missing the landings.

4. GETAWAY

Remember when, as a kid, you’d go over to a friend’s house and they wanted to show you their new video game, but wouldn’t let you play and you just watched them race around and shoot without getting to participate yourself? That’s what watching Getaway feels like. Ethan Hawke and Selena Gomez are ordered to commit countless crimes by an evil mastermind whose ultimate motives turn out to be so stupid, the already brainless racing movie sputters to an absolutely moronic end.

3. A HAUNTED HOUSE

It’s a truly bad year when the worst Scary Movie sequel still isn’t the worst horror-genre parody of it. After the atrocious Scary Movie 2, White Chicks, Norbit, and Little Man, Marlon Wayans’s A Haunted House continues his streak of making some of the worst excuses for comedies in the medium of film. Not a single “joke” can elicit even a smile from anyone with an IQ higher than that of a six-year-old’s. And even a six-year-old would probably find its humour too immature.

2. BATTLE OF THE YEAR

Dance movies are Guitar Hero/Rock Band games of modern cinema. They’re all basically the same, regardless of the franchise or the number at the end of the title. Battle of the Year is a new low for the sub-genre, cramming every clichéd character and plot development into a story about a breakdancing contest that involves students society has given up on, a alcoholic has-been who comes out of retirement to train them, and a climactic dance-off with every stake on the line. The movie works best as a party game, competing to guess what hackneyed line will be said next.

1. GROWN-UPS 2

Photo: Columbia Pictures
The Waterboy. Little Nicky. Eight Crazy Nights. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. Grown-Ups. Just Go with It. Jack and Jill. That’s My Boy. Grown-Ups 2 is worse than pretty much all of them. The first five minutes includes a deer urinating on Adam Sandler’s face, a teenage boy being caught masturbating in the shower by his mother, and the said deer urinating all over the naked son while his mother watches. And the other 95 minutes are even worse.

Saturday 28 December 2013

REVIEW: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

By Chris Luckett

3½ stars out of 5

1947’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was designed as nothing more than a showcase for Danny Kaye’s comedic talents, with the boring protagonist constantly daydreaming extended sequences wherein Kaye could play various wacky characters. Ben Stiller’s remake improves on the original by making Mitty’s actual story more interesting and rewarding, but the movie is still hindered by toothlessness and predictability.

Photo: 20th Century Fox
Stiller plays Walter Mitty, a negative asset manager at LIFE Magazine during the publication’s final month. Mitty is a man who’s done nothing and achieved nothing. When he’s not shyly pining after his co-worker Cheryl (Kristen Wiig), he zones out into daydreams where he imagines being brave and adventurous.

Tasked with supplying the cover photo for the last issue, Mitty finds the negative is missing. Using the opportunity as a way to get closer to Cheryl, he undertakes a quest to track down the off-the-grid photographer of the shot (Sean Penn), leading Mitty across mountains, through oceans, away from volcano eruptions, and toward self-discovery.

Photo: 20th Century Fox
The first third of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is stuffed with tiresome daydream sequences that add nothing to the movie and will only please fans of Stiller’s zanier work. As Mitty mounts his own adventure, though, he stops daydreaming them, and the movie becomes dramatically richer and more rewarding. By being given time to breathe, the awake Mitty is much more interesting than any of his imagined selves.

Stiller is smartly subdued in the titular role, toning down the spastic antics he’s often known for in favour of a subtle performance more akin to his recent work in Greenberg. Wiig also dials down her mania, resulting in the most defusing and charming character she’s played so far.

Photo: 20th Century Fox
Good performances can’t make up for a lackluster script, though. Everyone in the film is so good-hearted that you naturally root for them all to succeed (except for the villainous downsizers, but even they have their redemptive moment by the end). By being so optimistic and hopeful, the movie loses easy laughs within its reach, sticking to a neo-Frank Capra tone that hinders as much as it helps. Worse still is that the plot ends up being so predictable, it’s often easy to guess, at any given moment, what the following scene or the next line of dialogue will be.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty does well with pretty much everything it does try, but by aiming low, it never impresses or surprises. Stiller and Wiig are enjoyable and you’ll leave the movie feeling generally satisfied, but it could have been much more rewarding if only the makers of the movie had not settled for simply being good.

Thursday 12 December 2013

GOLDEN GLOBES: 2014 Nominations

By Chris Luckett

Artwork: Hollywood Foreign Press Association
The second-biggest movie awards of the year came out with their nominations this morning. Here's a look at this year's nominees.

Best Picture (Drama)

12 Years a Slave
Captain Phillips
Gravity
Philomena
Rush

Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)

American Hustle
Her
Inside Llewyn Davis
Nebraska
The Wolf of Wall Street

Best Actor (Drama)

Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)
Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)
Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
Robert Redford (All is Lost)

Best Actress (Drama)

Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
Judi Dench (Philomena)
Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)
Kate Winslet (Labour Day)

Best Actor (Musical/Comedy)

Christian Bale (American Hustle)
Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis)
Joaquin Phoenix (Her)

Best Actress (Musical/Comedy)

Amy Adams (American Hustle)
Julie Delpy (Before Midnight)
Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)
Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said)
Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

Best Supporting Actor

Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
Daniel Bruhl (Rush)
Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

Best Supporting Actress

Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years a Slave)
Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
June Squibb (Nebraska)

Best Director

Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)
Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips)
Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
Alexander Payne (Nebraska)
David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Best Screenplay

Spike Jonze (Her)
Bob Nelson (Nebraska)
Jeff Pope & Steve Coogan (Philomena)
John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)
Eric Warren Singer & David O. Russell (American Hustle)

Best Animated Film

The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Frozen

Best Foreign-Language Film

Blue is the Warmest Colour
The Great Beauty
The Hunt
The Past
The Wind Rises

Best Original Score

12 Years a Slave
All is Lost
The Book Thief
Gravity
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Best Original Song

"Atlas" (Catching Fire)
"Let it Go" (Frozen)
"Ordinary Love" (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)
"Please, Mr. Kennedy" (Inside Llewyn Davis)
"Sweeter Than Fiction" (One Chance)

Sunday 1 December 2013

REVIEW: Frozen

By Chris Luckett

4½ stars out of 5

Still: Walt Pictures Pictures
From 1989 to 1994, Disney animation was at the top of its game. Starting with The Little Mermaid and continuing through Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, Disney found critical and commercial success that rivalled anything they’d earned before. The arrival of Pixar in 1995 knocked Disney off their throne, which they’ve only recently reclaimed with Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph. Frozen, though, is the best animated movie Disney themselves have made in almost 20 years.

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” Frozen tells the tale of two princess sisters, Elsa and Anna. Elsa was born with a Midas touch of ice, and when she and Anna are playing one day, Elsa nearly kills Anna. After that accident, Elsa stays in her room for a decade, until her coronation day. Her powers are kept secret from the entire kingdom of Arendelle, including from Anna, who lost the memories of them.

Still: Walt Disney Pictures
At the coronation ceremony, Elsa loses control of her powers and sends Arendelle into an eternal winter. Elsa flees and secludes herself in a faraway ice castle. Anna ventures after her, to convince her to thaw the land out, assisted by a prince, his reindeer, and a snowman Elsa enchanted as a child.

Frozen represents a near-perfect fusion of modern Disney and early ‘90s Disney. It covers similar territory as Tangled, but brings back the theatrical musical numbers that were once a staple of animated Disney fare. The songs are insanely catchy and grandly operatic, recalling classics like “Part of Your World” and “Can You Feel the Love Tonight.” And the cast of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Josh Gad, and Jonathan Groff are all magnificent.

Still: Walt Disney Pictures
As great as the songs are, they’re almost all in the first 45 minutes. The movie loses a little of its magic in the second half, once the characters stop breaking into song. As well, at just 90 or so minutes, Frozen’s a little too lean for its own good. An extra 20 minutes in the third act would’ve made for an even more powerful movie with a stronger ending.

Minor quibbles aside, though, Frozen is nearly flawless entertainment that not only redeems a disappointing year for animation but gives Disney their best animated film since The Lion King. If this is the future of Disney, Pixar may soon lose their crown.

Saturday 30 November 2013

REVIEW: Oldboy

By Chris Luckett

1½ stars out of 5

Photo: Universal Pictures
When the Korean revenge movie Oldboy was released in 2003, it became a buzzed-about cult hit largely because of three things: its cringe-inducing violence, its stylized action, and its jaw-dropping climax. Spike Lee’s English remake has no style and it fumbles its ending, leaving a grotesque mess.

Oldboy’s premise is that Joe (Josh Brolin) – a degenerate businessman who hits on his clients’ wives, drinks every chance he gets, and doesn’t visit his 3-year-old daughter – is kidnapped one 1993 night and awakens in what looks at first like a motel room but is actually a personal prison. The room’s window is fake and the only door is bolted shut.

After resignedly giving up hope of escaping, Joe turns to his only window to the outside world, the in-room TV. He discovers on the news that his ex-wife has been murdered, his daughter has been adopted, and he has been named the killer (thanks to planted DNA).

Photo: Universal Pictures
For 20 years, Joe consumes the dumplings and vodka he’s given daily, he writes and stockpiles desperate letters to his daughter, and he watches the world go by through his television. Then one day, without warning, he’s released. With no understanding of what he did to deserve his punishment and 20 years of seething fury, Joe goes on a mission of revenge.

The concept is preposterous and hinges on the ending giving an answer of such scale that it overcomes that. The original, despite its occasional missteps, stuck its landing with a jaw-dropping turn of the plot in its climax; the 2013 version trips and stumbles with it, in part due to Sharlto Copley playing his villainous role as if he has a maniacal moustache to twirl.

Photo: Universal Pictures
Park Chan-Wook’s version had a visual flair that amped up the gore for key moments but shied away from it for others. Lee’s version goes for an all-is-more approach, showing everything from severed tongues to lumps of flesh. Without any style, it starts off nauseating and fast becomes numbing.

As its own movie, the new Oldboy is unlikeable, gruesome and dull. As a remake, it forgets that Joe’s revenge, deep down, is less about exacting vengeance than about trying to understand his imprisonment. By the time Spike Lee’s Oldboy gets to its answers, nobody really cares what the question was.

VIDEO REVIEW: Catching Fire

VIDEO REVIEW: All is Lost

VIDEO REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

VIDEO REVIEW: Blue is the Warmest Colour

Saturday 23 November 2013

REVIEW: Catching Fire

By Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

Photo: Lionsgate
Twenty or 30 years ago, film adaptations usually didn’t have to worry about aping their source books exactly. The recent influx of book series with rabid fan bases being adapted into films, though, has led to filmmakers being afraid to cut scenes that worked in the book but don’t in the movie. Catching Fire is a better movie than The Hunger Games was, but it still ultimately falls into the same traps by treating its source novel as gospel.

A year after the events of The Hunger Games, victors Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) have returned to their lives in District 12, but are continually haunted by nightmares and PTSD flashbacks. Katniss’s defiance of the rules in the prior Hunger Games has led to sparks of rebellion amongst the volatile, oppressed districts of Panem.

Photo: Lionsgate
President Snow (Donald Sutherland) wants to quell any insurrection before it starts, for which he blames Katniss. Along with the new gamemaker, Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Snow creates a Survivor: All-Stars edition of the Hunger Games, allowing for the re-reaping of Katniss and Peeta.

Catching Fire tells a somewhat similar story as the first movie while crafting more complex characters and darker tones than the original had time for. What could have felt reheated instead feels amped up in scale and stakes. It doesn’t hurt that this had twice the budget of The Hunger Games, either, as the visual effects are much better this time around. All the returning actors are excellent, particularly Lawrence and Sutherland, and new additions to the cast like Hoffman, Jena Malone, and Jeffrey Wright fit right in.

Photo: Lionsgate
If there’s a flaw with the movie, it’s being too slavish to the pacing of the book. The first half of Catching Fire is all character development and set-up, which worked much better in literary form than it does here. By the time the Games actually begin, more than half the movie’s running time has elapsed, which barely worked in the first movie and here just feels uneven.

The final book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy, Mockingjay, is being split into two movies, like the Harry Potter and Twilight climaxes. Carrying the momentum of Catching Fire forward will be the filmmakers’ biggest challenge, as this one does pretty much everything right and does it better than the first one. And just maybe, by stretching its story over two movies, Mockingjay will be forced to accept being different from its book.

REVIEW: All is Lost

By Chris Luckett

5 stars out of 5

All is Lost is about a man alone at sea whose sailboat springs a leak when it hits an adrift cargo container. Through a series of misfortunes, his situation slowly gets worse, despite his every knowledgeable efforts. His tenacious battle to survive as every element turns against him is the crux of this marvellously thrilling movie.

Photo: Lionsgate
It’s hard to imagine how All is Lost got made. The entire movie takes place at sea, either aboard a sailboat or in a life raft. Only one actor is seen during the entire movie. At 77, that one actor (Robert Redford) is seemingly too old to appeal to younger demographics or to even meet the physical demands required for the movie. It’s only the second movie written and directed by J.C. Chandor. Oh, and outside of 15 seconds of pre-credits voiceover, only two words are spoken during the entire 106 minutes of All is Lost (one of which isn’t suitable for print).

And yet...

Photo: Lionsgate
All is Lost is an absolutely riveting movie. Much like Ben Affleck’s improvement between Gone Baby Gone and The Town, J.C. Chandor has gone from a great debut to a sophomore masterpiece. His writing is so spare that it’s a shock the few times we actually hear Redford’s voice, yet the action is methodically well-written. The movie is also very effectively shot. There are parts of it that are like Life of Pi, Cast/Away, The Perfect Storm, and Open Water, but All is Lost does each familiar scenario better than its progenitors.

Photo: Lionsgate
Robert Redford wholly inhabits the nameless protagonist and masterfully emotes decades of experiences and relationships without saying a word. (Just the way he gives himself time to momentarily relax after almost dying before doggedly getting right back up, or the way he slightly rolls his eyes at each cruel twist of fate, says more than pages of dialogue could.) And the ocean in All is Lost is a character itself, with its own temper, generosity, and mercuriality.

It’s fitting that 2013 gave the world both Gravity and All is Lost, as they’re almost companion pieces. Like Gravity, All is Lost paints a gripping tale of one person relentlessly struggling to survive against harsh elements and cruel odds. Also, like Gravity, All is Lost is one of the very best movies of the year.

Thursday 21 November 2013

REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

By Chris Luckett

4½ stars out of 5

Photo: Focus Features
Matthew McConaughey doesn’t get enough credit. Yes, he’s done his share of stinkers like Sahara, but he’s also done gems like A Time to Kill and Contact. Over the last few years, McConaughey has refocused himself and delivered a string of complex performances in The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Magic Mike, and Mud. His acting in Dallas Buyers Club is the apex of his career so far.

Set in 1985, when misinformation about AIDS polluted the national conversation and most associated it purely with gay people, Dallas Buyers Club centres on a volatile, vulgar, homophobic Texan named Ron Woodruff (McConaughey) who is diagnosed with HIV and given 30 days to live.

Photo: Focus Features
Woodruff finds experimental drugs in Mexico that help him but that aren’t approved by the FDA in America, which he begins smuggling over the border. He reluctantly teams up with Rayon (Leto), a transgender drug addict he meets in the hospital, to help him distribute the medicine to AIDS sufferers.

To get around the legal restrictions of selling unapproved drugs in the US, Woodruff charges people $400 a month to join the Dallas Buyers Club, which gives them unlimited access to all of his drugs. His ensuing and escalating battle with the FDA and the US Government echoes his battle with AIDS; both last far longer than anyone expected, but the outcome to both is ultimately inevitable.

McConaughey shed nearly 50 pounds to play Woodruff and he learned to carry his gaunt body completely differently. He’s given great performances before, but nothing before was even in the same league as his work here.

Photo: Focus Features
Leto is also absolutely brilliant. He stayed in character for 25 days of filming and he completely disappears in Rayon. Whether you know Leto from My So-Called Life, Requiem for a Dream, Panic Room, or the band Thirty Seconds to Mars, there’s virtually no recognizing him in Rayon, even when all the makeup and outfits are stripped away.

Dallas Buyers Club tells a similar story as Philadelphia, but it does much more with its true story. The characters are complex, the performances are powerful, and the story is both inspiring and haunting. Ron Woodruff and Rayon are one of the most unusual pairings this year, but they’re also one of the most fascinating.

REVIEW: Blue is the Warmest Colour

By Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

Photo: Mongrel Media
The French coming-of-age drama Blue is the Warmest Colour has been making headlines, but not for the right reasons. The story involves two young women who fall in love. Like any movie about a realistic romance, there are sex scenes, which have become all that news articles and the PTC have been able to talk about. It’s a huge disservice to a movie that deserves to be talked about because of its quality, not because of its content.


Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulos) is a high-school girl trying her best to be happy in a heterosexual relationship and feeling like some part of her is broken. Then one day, while crossing the street, she spots Emma (Léa Seydoux), a slightly older girl with vibrant blue hair, and Adèle’s world opens. It’s a story that has been told similarly before, but never like this.

Photo: Mongrel Media
In France, the film was called The Life of Adèle: Chapters 1 & 2, and the movie indeed feels like two distinct halves. The first half, as Adèle and Emma fall in love and build a relationship together, is wonderful and hypnotic. The second half, as jealousies and time chip away at their love, feels more forced. The first two-thirds of the movie fly by, but after one particularly convoluted argument in the second half, the movie loses its momentum and never quite gets it back.

The sex scenes in the movie are graphic enough to have garnered an NC-17 from the MPAA and a hard R from the Ontario Film Board, but they serve a valuable purpose to the story and make up a rather small percentage of the three-hour running time.

Photo: Mongrel Media
The real showcase of the movie is its acting. Both Exarchopoulos and Seydoux are superb, creating a relationship that rarely feels anything but real. The extremes they went to not just physically but emotionally are the stuff of awards, and it’s not hard to see why they each received one at Cannes earlier this year.


Blue is the Warmest Colour is a powerful modern romance with excellent performances and a new story to tell. If the second half had only been as strong as the first, it also would have been one of the best movies of the year.

VIDEO REVIEW: 12 Years a Slave

VIDEO REVIEW: Thor: The Dark World

Friday 15 November 2013

REVIEW: 12 Years a Slave

By Chris Luckett

4½ stars out of 5

Fox Searchlight Pictures
There are lots of great movies that aren’t very fun to watch. Nobody watches Schindler’s List or Requiem for a Dream and says, “That was fun!” Dark or depressing movies can serve a very important purpose, though, as they can make for the most powerful films. 12 Years a Slave is one of the most powerful of the year.

Based on a true story, 12 Years a Slave tells the tale of Solomon Northup, a free black man who, in 1841, was abducted and sold into slavery in the Deep South. Northup endured horrific abuse for a dozen years before he regained his freedom, eventually writing the memoir from which the movie’s adapted.

Fox Searchlight Pictures
Important movies have been made about slavery, like Glory, Amistad, and the miniseries Roots. 12 Years a Slave is more powerful than any of them, largely because it personalizes the incomprehensible atrocities of slavery. By beginning with Northup’s freedom, his slavery feels all the more restrictive, driving home realities that are often glossed over in movies because of their brutality.

Director Steve McQueen very effectively puts you right next to Northup during his unwavering, twelve-year quest for freedom, forcing you to see the life of a slave and daring you not to look away.

Fox Searchlight Pictures
The reliable Ejiofor gives the best performance of his career as Northup. It’s riveting, it’s heartbreaking, and it’s shaping up to be the odds-on favourite for winning Best Actor at next year’s Oscars. This is acting of the highest calibre and the movie would be worth seeing just for him.

In addition to the fantastic Ejiofor, though, the movie also boasts an impressive cast of supporting actors including Paul Giamatti, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Brad Pitt, and Paul Dano. Every one of them brings their A-game to the movie, filling every scene with impressive acting.

12 Years a Slave is not an enjoyable movie. By no means should it be, because the subject matter isn’t really something in which to find fun, but it’s worth noting before heading to the theatre that this is a very dramatic drama. It has a hopeless tone for much of it and the weight of the movie can be crushing at times. Truth be told, though, that’s partly what makes the movie so great.

Saturday 9 November 2013

REVIEW: Thor: The Dark World

By Chris Luckett

4 stars out of 5

Photo: Marvel Studios
If there was much that was disappointing about Marvel’s 2011 movie Thor, it was that so much of the grand story was wasted on Earth. The fish-out-of-water scenes of the exiled alien Thor (Chris Hemsworth) adjusting to life in New Mexico were amusing, but the best parts of the movie involved the gorgeously realized Asgard and the almost-Shakespearean family drama.

After trying to take over Asgard in Thor and Earth in The Avengers, Thor’s Machiavellian brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston) this time takes a backseat to another villain: Christopher Eccleston’s Malekith, a dark elf who is out to destroy the universe because... well, that’s what supervillains just have to do.

Photo: Marvel Studios
The confusing plot also involves a MacGuffin called the Aether that’s basically the essence of darkness and would allow Malekith to destroy the Nine Realms (which include Asgard and Earth). Thor decides he can’t defeat Malekith alone, so he frees his recently imprisoned brother to acquire his help.

Since Natalie Portman was in the original, her character of Jane Foster has been awkwardly shoehorned into the sequel, as well. Through convoluted turns of the plot, Foster finds herself infected with the Aether, which awakens the long-thought-dead Malekith and gives the movie a reason to bring Foster to Asgard, where she stops serving any real function.

Photo: Marvel Studios
Once Thor releases Loki, the movie finds its footing. Being freed from the shackles of having to play the villain, the character of Loki is even more amusing. As the wild card of the plot, you can never tell what his true intentions are, which helps make his character so interesting. Hiddleston plays him with a gleefully sardonic smirk, clearly relishing the opportunity to play up the mischievous side of the god of mischief.

Asgard feels more real here than it did in Thor, no doubt partially due to director Alan Taylor’s experience helming HBO’s Game of Thrones. The movie walks a fascinating line between science-fiction and fantasy that feels quite fresh, deftly weaving a story of aliens and Norse mythology.

Thor: The Dark World is almost as good as the first Thor. While some aspects don’t work quite as well as in the original, others work even better this time around. Marvel has figured out the perfect uses of both Thor and Loki in the series. Now if they just give Foster some actual responsibility in Thor 3, these may just outdo the Iron Man trilogy.

Friday 8 November 2013

THE 50 GREATEST SCIENCE-FICTION MOVIES: Part 5

As a five-part feature, I'll be counting down the best science-fiction through the history of cinema. From dinosaurs to aliens, from Star Wars to Star Trek, from the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of outer space, these are The 50 Greatest Science-Fiction Movies.

THE 50 GREATEST SCIENCE-FICTION MOVIES
Part 5


By Chris Luckett

(Curious about why certain movies were chosen or ranked as they were? Click here.)

10. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)

Before E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, there weren’t many sci-fi movies aimed at kids. There were certainly age-appropriate sci-fi movies, like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the first two Star Wars movies, but even those had adults as the main characters. By making the protagonist of his movie a child, Steven Spielberg found an alchemical mixture that others have been trying to replicate for over thirty years. The genius and power of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is that while it stars a child, the movie appeals to everyone. Kids enjoy it because they can relate to the point-of-view of Elliott (Henry Thomas), but adults love it because it has a magic in it that makes grown men and women feel like children again. No matter how old you are, when you sit down and watch the boy-and-his-dog story of a young alien accidentally left behind on Earth and the lonely boy who finds him, cares for him, and vows to help him get home, you can’t help but feel like a wide-eyed child, filled with wonder at the spectacular storytelling. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is one of the most emotionally powerful movies the science-fiction genre has given audiences.



9. Jurassic Park (1993)

Before Jurassic Park, dinosaurs never seemed truly real. Having died out millions of years before humans were on the scene, dinosaurs had only been depicted before in sculptures, drawings, and stop-motion animation, through the extrapolation of their fossils and the imaginations of artists and scientists. Jurassic Park’s breakthrough CGI made dinosaurs truly scary in a way that hadn’t been possible even a few years earlier. One of the best things about the effects is that it still holds up today (which certainly can’t be said for many other ‘90s movies with early CGI). Steven Spielberg used his masterful skill at building tension to inject thrilling action and suspense elements into the story of an island filled with genetically recreated dinosaurs that break loose and terrorize some visiting scientists and children. The movie is perfectly cast; Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, and a young Samuel L. Jackson were all just recognizable enough without distracting from the dinosaurs themselves. The clever script makes the complicated science of Michael Crichton’s novel comprehensible to both adults and children and makes the story, which had already been done somewhat in Them! and WestWorld, seem wholly original. Jurassic Park influenced many action and disaster movies of the last twenty years and is largely responsible for ushering in the modern popularity of science-based action movies.



8. Inception (2010)

Even the most original movies have cliché elements that can expose themselves upon repeat viewings. Nowadays, it’s unrealistic to expect a completely original movie, because it can no longer be done. What matters these days isn’t if a movie is original, but how original it is. Inception is one of the most original of the last decade. Christopher Nolan, hot off The Dark Knight, brought his ten-years-in-the-making script for Inception to the big screen in 2010, shrouded in secrecy. The trailers looked cool, with Paris folding over on itself and Joseph Gordon-Levitt fighting in a rotating hallway, but it wasn’t until the actual movie began that we were properly introduced to Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, in possibly a career-best performance) and his team of dream hackers. Hired to break into the mind of a businessman and make him decide to break up his father’s empire, the movie spends its first hour firmly establishing its premise and rules, before thrusting you into an intense and expertly made action thriller of dreams inside dreams. Yes, at its very heart, Inception is really just a fancy heist movie, but by the time the maddeningly debatable final shot arrives, all that matters is how amazingly well Nolan spins his tale.



7. Back to the Future (1985)

There are two types of time travel movies. There are hard science ones, like 12 Monkeys and the Terminator movies, that treat the plot device seriously and look at the realistic ramifications of time travel. Then there are fun, loosely scientific ones that are more interested in speeding past the time travel catalyst and getting to the antics that ensue from the premise. When it comes to the latter, Back to the Future is still the one to beat. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) is a teenager who slacks off at school, skateboards around his hometown of Hill Valley, and hangs around with a crazy, old inventor, “Doc” Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd). One night, Doc Brown calls Marty out to a shopping mall parking lot to show him his latest invention: a plutonium-powered DeLorean capable of travelling through time. Soon, Marty finds himself stuck in 1955 and needing to convince a thirty-years-younger version of Doc Brown to help him get back to the future. (Get it?) Along the way, Marty also has to play Cupid with his parents, whose path together he inadvertently disrupts. With a great soundtrack, charming and memorable performances from everyone in the cast, a clever plot, and an excellent sense of humour, Back to the Future has become a timeless classic.



6. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Movies that are ahead of their time are often underappreciated in their own. (Look at the change in the reputations of Blade Runner, The Shawshank Redemption, and Fight Club over the years.) When A Clockwork Orange was released in 1971, it told a story of a near-future when teenage hooligans freely roam the streets at night and terrorize upright citizens. Alex (Malcolm McDowell) is the leader of his gang of “droogs,” who spends his days giving into his base impulses of masturbation and Beethoven and spends his evenings assaulting unsuspecting people with his own disturbing brand of ultra-violence. When he is arrested and subjected to a brainwashing program to rid him of his evil impulses, Stanley Kubrick’s dystopian vision of the future goes from interesting to fascinatingly provocative, raising important questions about free will and choice while also leaving nightmarish images in your memory. The nearly unintelligible language the young protagonists sometimes speak is a quite original satire of the new slang every generation adapts, and the score selections of the soundtrack perfectly compliment the scenes. History has been very kind to the prophetic A Clockwork Orange, which has gone down as one of Stanley Kubrick’s purest masterpieces, if also one of his most dark and disturbing.



5. Aliens (1986) (special edition)

The very best sequels try to be substantially different from the original, to make a name of their own instead of falling back on their progenitors’ (like with the darker tone of The Empire Strikes Back or the altered protagonist in Terminator 2: Judgment Day). James Cameron’s Aliens is remarkably different from Ridley Scott’s Alien and its differences often let Aliens surpass the original as a movie. Instead of the creeping tension of the first one, Aliens loads up on skilfully bombastic action sequences and insanely tense ratchetings of suspense. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the sole survivor of the Nostromo, the rest of its crew having been killed by the stowaway alien of the first movie. Discovered in cryo-sleep 57 years after the events of Alien, Ripley thaws out to find that not only is there no evidence of the alien existing but that the planet where the Nostromo crew picked up the alien has been colonized for 20 years. And then communications with the station on the planet go out. Ripley’s fury and desire to exterminate the creatures that killed her old crew drive her to join a rescue mission to the planet, but things go badly wrong. Weaver’s acting in Aliens earned her an Oscar nomination, as she took the character to even scarier places than in Alien, as well as showing a caring, maternal side that helped make Ellen Ripley such a well-rounded character in cinema. As with The Abyss, James Cameron’s director’s cut is a much better version of the film; the extra 17 minutes makes for a fuller experience, while not slowing the movie down at all. It’s rare for a really good movie to have an even better sequel, but as great a scary movie as Alien is, Aliens is an even better action movie.



4. Minority Report (2002)

One of the best things about science-fiction is how well it lends itself toward examining big ideas, through a different setting with all the right pieces exaggerated in just the right proportions to make a statement. These are the movies that often lead to long conversations in the parking lot of the theatre or around a living room. Minority Report, from the writer of Total Recall and Blade Runner and directed by Steven Spielberg, is one of the very best at causing such conversations. In 2054, the police department in Washington, D.C. has a controversial task force that deals in “pre-crime.” Imprisoned children with psychic abilities can predict murders and Det. John Anderson (Tom Cruise) and his team use them to stop crimes before they happen. Ah, but if a person is arrested before they do something, what’s to say it would have happened? That’s the crux of the movie, especially when Anderson himself is fingered in a murder prediction, causing him to go on the run from his own task force to clear his name. If that weren’t enough, the Pre-Crime Division is also under investigation by an auditor from the Department of Justice (Colin Farrell, showing how strong an actor he can really be) when Anderson runs, leading to complex cat-and-mouse chases as strong as the best scenes in The Fugitive or The Negotiator. Steven Spielberg and his team put an incredible amount of work into making the world of Minority Report seem real. The ingenious inventions that populate the film, from facial recognitionn advertisements to electronic paper, have influenced technological breakthroughs like tablet computers in the years since. More than anything, though, Minority Report is a thought-provoking and brilliant chase movie set in a time that doesn’t seem fictional so much as a peek into our actual future.



3. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) (special edition)

When Arnold Schwarzenegger starred as the unstoppable killing machine T-800 in The Terminator, he gave the world one of the scariest movie villains of the ‘80s. James Cameron brilliantly flipped the tables for the sequel using one simple idea: since the T-800 was essentially just a reprogrammable machine, it didn’t have to necessarily remain an antagonist. After the events in The Terminator, Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) has been committed. (Any evidence of the first terminator somehow disappeared after its destruction.) Meanwhile, in the future, Sarah’s grown-up son, John – the leader of the human resistance fighting a war against self-aware computers and machines – learns of a plot the machines have to send a more advanced terminator, a T-1000 (Robert Patrick), back in time to assassinate John as a child (Edward Furlong). John’s militia have acquired a reformatted T-800 and send him back with instructions to protect John at all costs. Having Schwarzenegger return as a different T-800, now filling a heroic role instead of a villainous one, provided a fresh, radical change in tone. The CGI of the liquid metal T-1000 was revolutionary for its day and paved the way for Jurassic Park. Like many of Cameron’s movies, a slightly longer director’s cut exists, and like The Abyss and Aliens, the special edition is vastly improved just by the additional few minutes. James Cameron has made more amazing sci-fi movies than anyone, but this is his masterpiece. It does everything the original did and does it better, as well as turning two-dimensional characters in complex ones (even the inhuman T-800) while still saving room for a few huge explosions. Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a perfect sci-fi action movie.



2. Star Wars (1977)

If you haven’t seen Star Wars, then what are you even doing reading this list? The original space opera from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Star Wars (or A New Hope, as it would later be rebranded) changed the face of cinema forever. The monomyth concept theorized by Joseph Campbell, which runs through everything from The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter to The Lion King and The Matrix, was retrofitted by George Lucas using an outer space motif. Hero Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) heads off on an adventure with the sage mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), the roguee captain Han Solo (Harrison Ford), Solo’s hairy sidekick Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), and the comical robots C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker). Luke's task: to master The Force (a life force that binds us all) and rescue the kidnapped princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) from the evil Darth Vader (David Prowse and James Earl Jones). Everything about the movie is ingrained into popular lexicon and our collective cultural memories, from lightsabers and “May the Force by with you” to the Death Star and “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.” It’s no accident that Star Wars became the highest-grossing movie of all-time (twice, including the 1997 re-release that dethroned Jurassic Park). It fulfills every element needed of a classic movie, it has a family-friendly rating while still being entertaining for adults, and the connection it made with audiences the world over is felt in all the sequels, prequels, TV series, books, video games, toys, and conventions. Star Wars is the most beloved sci-fi movie of all time and deservedly so.



1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Leave it to the greatest film director to make the greatest science-fiction movie. Stanley Kubrick, the man behind such masterpieces as A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut, and Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, became famous for always wanting to try different genres and never working in the same one twice. After the black dramedy Lolita and the war satire Dr. Strangelove, Kubrick set his sights on space. His vision of space travel and the future was so smartly prescient and clearly thought out, it led to rumours of NASA hiring Kubrick to fake the 1969 Moon landing that still persist to this day. 2001: A Space Odyssey opens audaciously, with the first twenty minutes taking place amongst apes, learning to use tools and weapons millions of years before modern man. The movie then makes the longest flash-forward in film history, jumping from prehistoric times to the year 2001, with a space shuttle heading to Jupiter. There are parallels between the two sections, not the least of which are black monoliths that cause inspiration or progress in any species that discover them. (It makes more sense in the movie.) During the trip to Jupiter, the film finds time to pit man against machine in a subplot with the self-aware spaceship computer system HAL 9000 deciding to eliminate the “unreliable” human element from the mission. By the mind-boggling final 40 minutes, even those who understood the bulk of the movie often get lost the first time around. 2001: A Space Odyssey is not a movie that makes complete sense the first time it’s seen, simply because it is so different from what other sci-fi movies settled for doing and because there is so much going on in it. Much like the best art, it takes time and reflection to appreciate everything the artist attempts. Kubrick dabbled in sci-fi again with A Clockwork Orange, but he never went back to space (unless, of course, you believe the Apollo hoax story). When you achieve perfection the first time, what need is there to try again? The titular year itself may have come and gone already, but 2001: A Space Odyssey remains the greatest science-fiction movie of all time.