Bumblebee is the first Transformers spin off and also the first not directed by Michael Bay this time Travis Knight the head of Laika Animation takes the helm and this story is set in 1987 when Bumblebee crashes to Earth from Cybertron and is found by Charley (Hailee Steinfeld) in an auto yard, little does she know that there is more to her new Beetle car than meets the eye.
As a long time Transformers fan I was so so happy to finally see a good Transformers movie and not having Bay in charge makes a big difference for these reasons:
- Firstly there is an awful lot of heart in this movie as writers Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig really do a lot to develop the relationship between Bumblebee and Charley and it harkens back to the boy and his car motif that Steven Spielberg tried to bring to the first live action Transformers movie in 2007 before Bay took charge with his own style but this movie takes that idea and does a much better job with it as it feels front and centre as opposed to an idea that kicks off a film that felt tone deaf in so many ways.
- Secondly the film has a far smaller scale to it than the previous Bay movies and sure there is plenty of Transformers action in the film but it all feels smaller, more personal, more connected to the characters and the storytelling and their also shot wider so you can actually see what the heck is going on and on top of all that the Autobots are not completely useless robuts who constantly get their butts kicked but I’ll stop there about those points this is a simpler story that allows the characters to come back to the focus and I am very grateful for that.
- And lastly the Transformers fan service here is fantastic, the opening scene set on Cybertron was terrific and I thought to myself “There’s Soundwave, There’s Shockwave and Starscream and Thundercracker and Skywarp” and then Ravage came out of Soundwave’s Chest and Optimus was being his noble badass self and I was a very very happy boy though if Megatron had made a cameo in the film I would’ve lost my mind (There was a scene with him in the film but it was very wisely cut.)
And also the way the Cybetron War scenes are used throughout the film it is a little reminiscent of the Future War scenes in the first Terminator film.
However if I have one complaint and its really only a minor one its John Cena and his role as Agent Burns of Sector 7 he does a good job in the role but the way the character is written it feels like a bad knockoff of the Bay style from the previous films and a lot of the scenes feel like a shaggy sideplot but hey when the rest of the film is as good as it is I won’t complain much.
And so that was my review of Bumblebee and it is about fucking time we had a great Transformers movie this has been a long time coming and I hope people go see it, 4 out of 5.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
2018 in Film Part 1
Well its that time again boys and girls, another year in movies has pretty much come and gone and the time has come to write about it and reveal my lists of the best and worst of the year.
But all of that fun is for later as for right now it is time to write about my thoughts overall on the movie year as a whole and it was an interesting one for me to start off with as this was the first full year of movie going for me since 2013 where I wasn’t doing my Radio show with Selina on ABC South East SA that having come to an end in December of 2017 sadly.
And if I was to have one regret with that ending in the way that it did it is not getting to review Star Wars: The Last Jedi with her as we had been talking about it in the last 2 or 3 shows before its December release date and indeed the day my Radio days ended was the opening day of that film so to not pay that off is very disappointing but alas these things happen and nothing lasts forever.
But getting back on track I will actually say that this year movie wise was actually pretty good and certainly better than 2016 and 2017 were and those years I was on Radio, I thought there was a nice mix of great genre cinema and independent type films and a lot of the times I went to the movies I actually enjoyed being there and maybe part of that is because I wasn’t rushing around so much to have reviews of films done by a certain date so I could do that Radio show review but I digress.
The other big film related thing I did this year was make the leap to 4K Ultra HD and it is fantastic especially with the older films I love such as Rambo, Predator, Die Hard and the Hunt for Red October to name as examples all 4 of those films looked and sounded great and made me feel like I was sitting in a Village or Hoyts or Greater Union cinema back in the time of their original release year and that 35mm print was playing in front of me for the first time.
First Blood in particular felt like I could practically smell the film grain in the print and it makes me want to see more older films make the leap to that format such as Lethal Weapon and Back to the Future but with streaming so dominant right now I won’t hold my breath.
Well that being done that was Part 1 of my look back at 2018 film wise keep an eye out for Part 2 I reveal my best and worst of the year so stay tuned.
But all of that fun is for later as for right now it is time to write about my thoughts overall on the movie year as a whole and it was an interesting one for me to start off with as this was the first full year of movie going for me since 2013 where I wasn’t doing my Radio show with Selina on ABC South East SA that having come to an end in December of 2017 sadly.
And if I was to have one regret with that ending in the way that it did it is not getting to review Star Wars: The Last Jedi with her as we had been talking about it in the last 2 or 3 shows before its December release date and indeed the day my Radio days ended was the opening day of that film so to not pay that off is very disappointing but alas these things happen and nothing lasts forever.
But getting back on track I will actually say that this year movie wise was actually pretty good and certainly better than 2016 and 2017 were and those years I was on Radio, I thought there was a nice mix of great genre cinema and independent type films and a lot of the times I went to the movies I actually enjoyed being there and maybe part of that is because I wasn’t rushing around so much to have reviews of films done by a certain date so I could do that Radio show review but I digress.
The other big film related thing I did this year was make the leap to 4K Ultra HD and it is fantastic especially with the older films I love such as Rambo, Predator, Die Hard and the Hunt for Red October to name as examples all 4 of those films looked and sounded great and made me feel like I was sitting in a Village or Hoyts or Greater Union cinema back in the time of their original release year and that 35mm print was playing in front of me for the first time.
First Blood in particular felt like I could practically smell the film grain in the print and it makes me want to see more older films make the leap to that format such as Lethal Weapon and Back to the Future but with streaming so dominant right now I won’t hold my breath.
Well that being done that was Part 1 of my look back at 2018 film wise keep an eye out for Part 2 I reveal my best and worst of the year so stay tuned.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Film Review - Mortal Engines (2018)
Mortal Engines is written and produced by Peter Jackson along with Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens who also worked together on the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings movies though Christian Rivers is the director here, the story takes place in a dystopian future where cities are now in wheels in order to survive after a 60 minute War destroyed the world and a man named Valentine (Hugo Weaving) is keen to complete a top secret energy project that may hold the key to defending the future.
Mortal Engines has some terrific visual effects and world building, the world presented here for starters is really good the cities on wheel look great and the tracks they leave behind are like mazes for humans to walk through with the giant walls and the soft ground that is left for people to drink to stave off dying of thurst plus the London city has a history museum of sorts will all kinds of artefacts and it all looks great as is the way with Peter Jackson and his team of Wizards at WETA in New Zealand.
What I wish worked as well was the human characters, Weaving does a good job as Valentine but he’s pretty much doing the standard Hugo Weaving routine by this stage, Robert Sheehan and Hera Hilmarsdottir are given very thin characters to work with and Hera really feels like a stand in for Dakota Johnson, Stephen Lang is okay as Shirke while Leila D’Onofrio was pretty good as Katherine, Valentine’s Daughter but all of them and their story in particular did very little for me and after a while I really got bored of them all despite the impressive visuals.
It also isn’t helped that the film zips along to such an extent that it barely takes anytime to put on the brakes and let its audience take in the world of the film or really develop it in any meaningful capacity which was one of the core strengths of this team’s work on Lord of the Rings where we got to see the world of Middle Earth perfectly realised on film and Jackson and Co took their time to develop that world and let us see the landscapes, environment and regions along with developing its characters whereas here we barely get to do that as its in such a rush to tell its story that a lot of that story and character development just gets passed by like a sign on the road.
And so that was my review of Mortal Engines and its okay with some terrific effects but its overall story and characters felt very thin on the ground and given what this team is capable of with their work on Lord of the Rings it’s a little disappointing, 2 out of 5.
Mortal Engines has some terrific visual effects and world building, the world presented here for starters is really good the cities on wheel look great and the tracks they leave behind are like mazes for humans to walk through with the giant walls and the soft ground that is left for people to drink to stave off dying of thurst plus the London city has a history museum of sorts will all kinds of artefacts and it all looks great as is the way with Peter Jackson and his team of Wizards at WETA in New Zealand.
What I wish worked as well was the human characters, Weaving does a good job as Valentine but he’s pretty much doing the standard Hugo Weaving routine by this stage, Robert Sheehan and Hera Hilmarsdottir are given very thin characters to work with and Hera really feels like a stand in for Dakota Johnson, Stephen Lang is okay as Shirke while Leila D’Onofrio was pretty good as Katherine, Valentine’s Daughter but all of them and their story in particular did very little for me and after a while I really got bored of them all despite the impressive visuals.
It also isn’t helped that the film zips along to such an extent that it barely takes anytime to put on the brakes and let its audience take in the world of the film or really develop it in any meaningful capacity which was one of the core strengths of this team’s work on Lord of the Rings where we got to see the world of Middle Earth perfectly realised on film and Jackson and Co took their time to develop that world and let us see the landscapes, environment and regions along with developing its characters whereas here we barely get to do that as its in such a rush to tell its story that a lot of that story and character development just gets passed by like a sign on the road.
And so that was my review of Mortal Engines and its okay with some terrific effects but its overall story and characters felt very thin on the ground and given what this team is capable of with their work on Lord of the Rings it’s a little disappointing, 2 out of 5.
Film Review - Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018)
Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse is the newest Spider-Man movie this one however is animated and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and concerns Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) who like Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider and becomes a new Spider-Man but when the Kingpin (Liev Schriber) instigates a science experiment that goes wrong other Spider-Men show up and now the race is on to stop Kingpin and get them all home.
Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse was okay for me but also felt like a typical Spider-Man story but before I delve into those I want to talk about what I do like and firstly the animation style is very good combining digital animation, a comic strip drawing style, a hip hop style that nicely reflects Miles and his world and even some hand drawn style and it makes for a very trippy experience that at times is hard to keep up with but would be an absolute treat in 3D in fact I nearly went to a 3D session last night but decided not to as it would’ve finished late.
And also the voice cast are pretty good, its nice to see Nicolas Cage give a shit for once and not just phone it in for a paycheck in a B grade film, Spider-Ham is a real delight especially if you’ve seen the Simpsons Movie and Hailee Stenfeld is great fun as Spider-Gwen but sadly Lake Bell is wasted as Amanda Fisk as she barely has any lines and as someone who loved her as Chloe the Cat in Secret Life of Pets I was particularly disappointed.
There are also some very fun cameos which I will not give away.
Sadly the storytelling here just felt like a typical Spider-Man story where a loved one dies, Spider-Man throws some quips with his web, there’s a scientific angle to it all, there’s family matters and I personally have seen this all webbed up in all of the other Spider-Man movies and like those ones it was okay but kind of the same after a while and after seeing the character play around with the Avengers in Infinity War earlier this year and also having great fun with the Playstation 4 game a couple of months back I got a bit bored of it all after a while.
And so that was my thoughts on Spiderman into the Spiderverse and its okay it has some great animation and some cool voice acting but I wasn’t as fond of its story, 2 and a half out of 5.
Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse was okay for me but also felt like a typical Spider-Man story but before I delve into those I want to talk about what I do like and firstly the animation style is very good combining digital animation, a comic strip drawing style, a hip hop style that nicely reflects Miles and his world and even some hand drawn style and it makes for a very trippy experience that at times is hard to keep up with but would be an absolute treat in 3D in fact I nearly went to a 3D session last night but decided not to as it would’ve finished late.
And also the voice cast are pretty good, its nice to see Nicolas Cage give a shit for once and not just phone it in for a paycheck in a B grade film, Spider-Ham is a real delight especially if you’ve seen the Simpsons Movie and Hailee Stenfeld is great fun as Spider-Gwen but sadly Lake Bell is wasted as Amanda Fisk as she barely has any lines and as someone who loved her as Chloe the Cat in Secret Life of Pets I was particularly disappointed.
There are also some very fun cameos which I will not give away.
Sadly the storytelling here just felt like a typical Spider-Man story where a loved one dies, Spider-Man throws some quips with his web, there’s a scientific angle to it all, there’s family matters and I personally have seen this all webbed up in all of the other Spider-Man movies and like those ones it was okay but kind of the same after a while and after seeing the character play around with the Avengers in Infinity War earlier this year and also having great fun with the Playstation 4 game a couple of months back I got a bit bored of it all after a while.
And so that was my thoughts on Spiderman into the Spiderverse and its okay it has some great animation and some cool voice acting but I wasn’t as fond of its story, 2 and a half out of 5.
Friday, December 14, 2018
Film Review - Roma (2018)
Roma is the new film by Gravity and Children of Men director Alfonso Cuaron and is also a new Netflix production and takes place in 1970-71 in Mexico and concerns a maid named Cleo (Yalitza Apiricio) as she cares for a family in that city and her own journey within it.
Roma is very well made which isn’t a huge surprise given Mr Curaron’s skill as a craftsman but as much as I enjoyed the film and I did I would also say that I find myself admiring it more than I love it but there are 2 huge positives going for it:
- The first of those is Curaron’s direction and camera work, yes he does a lot of those signature tracking shots that he used to great effect in Children of Men and Gravity but their always worth a watch and they always take your eye on a journey of all kinds of little details that most edits would probably leave out feeling a need to go from one scene to the next, Curaron served also as cinematographer and he does a great job with the black and white photography as well.
- The second is Ms Apiricio’s performance, she is wonderful in this film and she does so much with just her body language alone with the looks she gives, the way she walks around and the expressions on her face that do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting without needing to say much dialogue and the film works best when the focus is purely on her.
And here is where the film faulters for me I’m afraid and yes I have some well one mainly and that is the use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and look this is a great looking film but there are a lot of times in this movie for me where the 2.35 ratio kept pulling back from the central intimate nature of this story and when you think back on Children of Men which was shot in 1.85:1 the film worked beautifully allowing the human story to shine element admist the dystopic spectacle that film also created.
And also the use of the 2.35 ratio tended to push Cleo to the background and away from the central focus of the film and for me I wanted her to be that central focus as its where the film works best but most of the time she has her scene and then she’s pushed away to focus on the streets and the people and those scenes are good but I didn’t really get into them as much as it felt like the background coming to the foreground to a certain degree.
And so that was Roma and look the film is good and worth watching but I also wish I had gotten to see it before the hype machine got a hold of it as I feel that as much as I like it it did fall short of that hype to a certain degree still it gets a 3 and a half out of 5.
Roma is very well made which isn’t a huge surprise given Mr Curaron’s skill as a craftsman but as much as I enjoyed the film and I did I would also say that I find myself admiring it more than I love it but there are 2 huge positives going for it:
- The first of those is Curaron’s direction and camera work, yes he does a lot of those signature tracking shots that he used to great effect in Children of Men and Gravity but their always worth a watch and they always take your eye on a journey of all kinds of little details that most edits would probably leave out feeling a need to go from one scene to the next, Curaron served also as cinematographer and he does a great job with the black and white photography as well.
- The second is Ms Apiricio’s performance, she is wonderful in this film and she does so much with just her body language alone with the looks she gives, the way she walks around and the expressions on her face that do a lot of the emotional heavy lifting without needing to say much dialogue and the film works best when the focus is purely on her.
And here is where the film faulters for me I’m afraid and yes I have some well one mainly and that is the use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio and look this is a great looking film but there are a lot of times in this movie for me where the 2.35 ratio kept pulling back from the central intimate nature of this story and when you think back on Children of Men which was shot in 1.85:1 the film worked beautifully allowing the human story to shine element admist the dystopic spectacle that film also created.
And also the use of the 2.35 ratio tended to push Cleo to the background and away from the central focus of the film and for me I wanted her to be that central focus as its where the film works best but most of the time she has her scene and then she’s pushed away to focus on the streets and the people and those scenes are good but I didn’t really get into them as much as it felt like the background coming to the foreground to a certain degree.
And so that was Roma and look the film is good and worth watching but I also wish I had gotten to see it before the hype machine got a hold of it as I feel that as much as I like it it did fall short of that hype to a certain degree still it gets a 3 and a half out of 5.
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Film Review - The Old Man and the Gun (2018)
The Old Man and the Gun is written and directed by David Lowery who also made 2016’s Pete Dragon and stars Robert Redford in his final screen role as Forest Tucker an old man who loves to rob banks even if he is very polite about it but a detective named John Hunt (Casey Affleck) is now on his trail.
The Old Man and the Gun is a nice movie and also a fitting tribute to Redford’s presence on screen and his appeal as an actor as his down to earth charm, his no fuss charisma and his ability to do so much with his mere presence on screen is on full display here and Lowery who also directed him in a small role in Pete’s Dragon doesn’t let his direction get in the way of his performance instead focusing on recreating the 1981 look on film with the heavy grain and long takes and it works really well.
Someone else I enjoyed seeing in this movie in a small role was Danny Glover even though all I could think the entire time he was on screen was “I’m too old for this shit” and as for Casey Affleck I thought he was okay but he had a bad tendency to mumble a lot of his lines most of the time and as a result I never really got fully on board with his performance.
But this is very much Redford’s movie and his presence more than carries it though one scene in particular made me think of Grand Theft Auto 5 the game which I still love playing.
And so that was the Old Man and the Gun and it’s a nice movie that serves as a great tribute to Robert Redford and his career and afterwards it will make you want to watch your favorite Redford films I know I wanted to rewatch Sneakers from 1992 after this one, 3 out of 5.
The Old Man and the Gun is a nice movie and also a fitting tribute to Redford’s presence on screen and his appeal as an actor as his down to earth charm, his no fuss charisma and his ability to do so much with his mere presence on screen is on full display here and Lowery who also directed him in a small role in Pete’s Dragon doesn’t let his direction get in the way of his performance instead focusing on recreating the 1981 look on film with the heavy grain and long takes and it works really well.
Someone else I enjoyed seeing in this movie in a small role was Danny Glover even though all I could think the entire time he was on screen was “I’m too old for this shit” and as for Casey Affleck I thought he was okay but he had a bad tendency to mumble a lot of his lines most of the time and as a result I never really got fully on board with his performance.
But this is very much Redford’s movie and his presence more than carries it though one scene in particular made me think of Grand Theft Auto 5 the game which I still love playing.
And so that was the Old Man and the Gun and it’s a nice movie that serves as a great tribute to Robert Redford and his career and afterwards it will make you want to watch your favorite Redford films I know I wanted to rewatch Sneakers from 1992 after this one, 3 out of 5.
Film Review - Creed 2 (2018)
Creed 2 is not directed by Ryan Coogler this time (He left to make Black Panther) instead Steven Caple Jr takes the reins and this time Adonis Creed (Michael B Jordan) has to fight Viktor Drago (Florian Muntenau) the son of Rocky IV’s Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) who famously killed Apollo Creed in Rocky IV so now the sons will have the same fight their fathers once had 33 years ago.
Creed 2 is an okay Rocky sequel but Coogler’s absence is deeply felt mainly because I felt he was able to do a Rocky sequel in the first Creed film in 2015 while also telling a new story that made it feel fresh and new whereas here and it probably is due to the fact that Stallone is a screenwriter on this new film the old beats of the traditional Rocky sequels are back:
- The new opponent who tears through his competitors
- The loss of the eye of the tiger
- The hero having to deal with family affairs
- The training montage
And then the big fight and well you get the picture and look some of that was in the first Creed film but here it really feels more prevalent and as a result I felt a bit more bored with this sequel and look it isn’t bad but it really makes it feel more like we’ve been here before.
And Tessa Thompson’s character Bianca who was very memorable in the first film as this deaf woman who was still living a very full and productive life is turned into the new Adrian where she worries about her man, gives very concerning looks and sits at the side of the ring worrying about her man and boy does that get old after a while especially when she has a very touching side plot about her baby daughter.
As for the performances both Thompson and Jordan are great together and these 2 are among the best actors of their generation and really do a lot to make their material shine, Stallone is his usual self while it was fun to see Dolph Lundgren again as Ivan Drago and Mr Muntenau looks like a mountain as Viktor even if his dialogue is very minimal at times.
And so that was Creed 2 and its okay but the first Creed was a better film and felt more fresh whereas this feels like a tired Rocky sequel with all the old beats of the punching bag dusted off, 2 out of 5.
Creed 2 is an okay Rocky sequel but Coogler’s absence is deeply felt mainly because I felt he was able to do a Rocky sequel in the first Creed film in 2015 while also telling a new story that made it feel fresh and new whereas here and it probably is due to the fact that Stallone is a screenwriter on this new film the old beats of the traditional Rocky sequels are back:
- The new opponent who tears through his competitors
- The loss of the eye of the tiger
- The hero having to deal with family affairs
- The training montage
And then the big fight and well you get the picture and look some of that was in the first Creed film but here it really feels more prevalent and as a result I felt a bit more bored with this sequel and look it isn’t bad but it really makes it feel more like we’ve been here before.
And Tessa Thompson’s character Bianca who was very memorable in the first film as this deaf woman who was still living a very full and productive life is turned into the new Adrian where she worries about her man, gives very concerning looks and sits at the side of the ring worrying about her man and boy does that get old after a while especially when she has a very touching side plot about her baby daughter.
As for the performances both Thompson and Jordan are great together and these 2 are among the best actors of their generation and really do a lot to make their material shine, Stallone is his usual self while it was fun to see Dolph Lundgren again as Ivan Drago and Mr Muntenau looks like a mountain as Viktor even if his dialogue is very minimal at times.
And so that was Creed 2 and its okay but the first Creed was a better film and felt more fresh whereas this feels like a tired Rocky sequel with all the old beats of the punching bag dusted off, 2 out of 5.
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