Sharknado

Sharknado doesn’t deserve a full review. At a time when I’m only writing reviews for about one film in eight that I watch, I’m not going to spend too much time dissecting the finer points of the plot, acting and direction of this film. The movie is the latest in a long line of terrible B-Movies commissioned by The Syfy Channel and made by The Asylum film studio. The films appear to be title first, plot second affairs which owe a great debt to the B-Movie classics of the 1950s and 60s but lack their antiquated cousins’ charm and ideas. As I can’t be bothered discussing the film in depth I’m just going to write some sentences that come into my head when I think about this ‘film’. In honour of the movie they will make little sense and won’t interest you

It’s rubbish.

The action begins with characters surfing on a beach without waves.

Different beaches are used from shot to shot.

In one early scene, it’s obvious that a pod of dolphins are being filmed instead of sharks.

Aftershock

In the hours after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake, mother Yuan Ni (Fan Xu) is forced to make a horrific choice between saving either her son (Jiajun Zhang) or daughter (Zi-feng Zhang) from the rubble of their former home. With both children trapped under opposite ends of the same slab of concrete, the rescuers can only get one out alive. After making the hardest choice imaginable, Yuan and her badly injured son leave the city with the rescuers returning three years later to restart their lives. What neither of them know however is that the presumed dead daughter survived and was adopted by two of the soldiers who helped with the rescue effort.

I wasn’t aware of this film until a couple of weeks ago when I was talking about The Impossible at work and The Wizard mentioned to me that the plot sounded remarkably similar to a Chinese film he owned. He lent me the movie and while the two films do share certain thematic similarities, they are very different and excel in different areas. Whereas for me The Impossible’s strongest moments came in the moments of disaster, Aftershock isn’t so strong in those moments but the following hour and a half is very good.

The Impossible

Man, I wish I was a heart string salesman. Sales will be going through the roof after the two hours of tugging and eventual breaking of heart strings due to the release of The Impossible. A Spanish production and based on a real life Spanish family’s experiences, The Impossible stars Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor as the husband and wife of a family caught up in the Boxing Day Tsunami that struck South East Asia in 2004. While on holiday the Tsunami hits the Thai beach resort that the family are staying at, separating Wife Maria (Watts) and eldest son Lucas (Tom Holland) from Husband Henry (McGregor) and youngest sons Thomas and Simon (Samuel Joslin and Oaklee Pendergast). With Maria seriously injured and little help at hand, the family struggle to survive in the most unimaginable conditions.

I have mixed feelings about The Impossible. On the one hand it is an expertly made film which brings a terrible tragedy to the big screen but on the other hand that tragedy is still fresh in the memory and the lengths to which the movie tugs at the audience’s emotions feel cheap and unnecessary. Although I’m sure it will be well received by critics, I have my reservations and my girlfriend downright disliked it.

Contagion

A married woman (Gwyneth Paltrow) stops off in Chicago on her way back from a business trip in Hong Kong to engage in extra marital activities with an old boyfriend. When back home in Minneapolis she feels ill and believes she has contracted a cold while away. It turns out to be something much more serious though when she suffers a fit and is rushed to hospital. Unable to save her, doctors inform her husband (Matt Damon) that she has passed away and medical examiners begin tests to figure out what the deadly virus is. Meanwhile people all over the world are contracting the virus and it soon becomes clear that there is an epidemic on a global scale. WHO epidemiologist (Marion Cotillard) travels to Hong Kong to try to find the source of the infection and Disease Control boss (Laurence Fishburne) sends field agent (Kate Winslet) to Minneapolis to get a grip on events there. In a final strand to the story, blogger (Jude Law) is informing millions of his readers about Government cover-ups and conspiracies but has an agenda of his own.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s (21 Jump Street) directorial debut, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a computer animated family pastiche on the disaster film genre. Flint Lockwood (Bill Hader) is an enthusiastic but sometimes misguided inventor who lives on a small island in the Atlantic Ocean which has come on hard times since the local Sardine factory closed its doors. The islanders are left with nothing to eat but the oily fish so in an attempt to create a different source of food for the islands inhabitants, Lockwood invents a device which turns water into food. While an intern weather girl Sam (Anna Faris) is visiting the island from New York to document the opening of the theme park ‘Sardine World’, Lockwood accidentally launches his invention into the sky. After a short time, food begins to fall from the sky and the islanders are overjoyed but soon things take a dramatic turn when Lockwood’s invention becomes sentient and creates food-weather storms which threaten the entire planet.

This is probably the most visually appealing computer animated film I’ve ever seen. The animation is bright, colourful and bold. It really is a joy to look at. Some of the animation such as certain foods and especially water look incredibly real while the human characters have an eccentric and unique look to them. There is also great detail given to the background. In one scene for instance, two children are seen squirming while two adult characters kiss. Although they can barely be seen, it’s a nice little bit of attention to detail.

The script is full of wonderful witty and quirky sight gags and the dialogue had me laughing out loud. The characters are great and well defined. I especially like the way the cop (Mr. T) says ‘Flint Lockwood’ as if it is three separate words. Other fantastic characters include Lockwood Snr (James Caen), a technophobe who only communicates in fishing metaphors and Steve the Monkey (Neil Patrick Harris) who Lockwood has given the power of speech to via a Monkey-translator. I think Steve is funnier than the dog in Up.

The story is obviously crazy but it works. I was enthralled by it and even though most of what was going to happen was pretty obvious, I went with it. Other than the actual premise of precipitating food, there isn’t really anything new here. Like most modern children’s films, there is a strong message which it delivers to its young, captive audience. The film shows the perils of overeating and also warns that actions have consequences.

The film isn’t afraid to make fun of itself but more importantly the disaster film genre. One scene in particular was very amusing. After seeing giant food land in Times Square, on the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of China and on Big Ben, a weather man pronounces that the storm is taking a strange course, focusing on the world’s major landmarks before spreading to the rest of the world. The film is full of little nods to disaster films.

Since watching the film, another thing that has amused me has been the discovery of what the film was called in non-English speaking countries. For instance in Poland the title was Little Meatballs and other Weather Conditions. In Russia it was Cloudy, possible precipitation in the form of meatballs. While I could continue to laugh at funny foreigners, I end by saying that Cloudy… is a unique and quirky film which has great visuals and a funny script. The story isn’t groundbreaking but the animation perhaps is.        

9/10

Deep Impact

High School amateur astronomer Leo (Elijah Wood) discovers a comet on a collision course for Earth but he doesn’t realise it and sends his photos to an observatory where the find is undiscovered for several months. Meanwhile, reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) believes she has a scoop regarding a sex scandal but has actually stumbled upon E.L.E. the Extinction Level Event comet which is on course to strike the Earth. To attempt to combat the comet, the USA and Russia build a space ship which is landed on the comet’s surface to drill nuclear bombs deep under its surface in an attempt to blow it up and save mankind.

It’s unfortunate for Deep Impact that it was released during the same summer as Armageddon, a film which is probably better remembered, cost twice as much and had a better known cast. That being said, Deep Impact comes off well against the aforementioned film. It’s CGI has held up well and the various family goodbyes are very emotional. The plot unfolds at a decent pace and features a couple of twists. On the downside there are some quite sizable holes. Firstly, it is extremely unlikely that an amateur astronomer would discover a comet heading for earth, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Even if they did, the observatory they sent their discovery to would have more than one staff member and it would be thoroughly studied. Another problem is that if we were facing the end of the world, why would the Government only build one space ship? With all of the world’s resources at their disposal, why not build two and send them up a few days apart for backup? News network MSNBC also makes Tea Leoni their lead anchor for the biggest story in history despite never having done it before. How unlikely it that?!

The acting was mixed. I thought that Elijah Wood was alright and his girlfriend Sarah (Leelee Sobieski) was excellent. She bought a lot of emotion and sadness to some scenes. The crew of the space ship which featured Robert Duvall, Jon Favreau, Blair Underwood and Ron Eldard were all fine. They were all convincing as astronauts. Morgan Freeman was convincing and comforting as the US President although his main job appeared to be explaining the plot. It is a shame that lead actress Tea Leoni is so disappointing as it is extremely rare that an actress has such a pivotal role in an action-disaster movie. I didn’t feel that her performance was convincing as a reporter and she appeared to have little emotion given the circumstances. Overall I think that director Mimi Leder created an average disaster movie which is in no way great but passes a couple of hours. Leder’s record breaking success with the film however, (this was the highest grossing female directed film until 2008’s Twilight) is a damming statistic on the number of female directors working in Hollywood.

6/10

2012

Who knew the apocalypse would be so boring? If the Mayans were right and the world ends this year, at least it will probably be quicker than sitting through 2012.

This science fiction disaster movie, directed by Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow) is set in the year 2012, the year that the Mayan civilisation supposedly predicted that the world would end. Dr. Helmsley (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is an American geologist, working for the White House. He travels to India where his friend and fellow scientist has discovered that neutrinos (remember them?) from a giant solar flare have mutated and are heating up the Earth’s Core. The US President (Danny Glover) begins a top secret project which involves building giant ships in order to save around 400,000 of the worlds best and brightest (and richest). The more human side to the story comes in the form of John Cusack’s character, Jackson Curtis who spends the film trying to avoid the disaster and save his family.

The film has been lauded for its special effects, and they are spectacular. While it is impressive to see cities destroyed and mountains covered with waves, the characters never appear to be part of it. Even when John Cusack is driving a limousine through the crumbling streets of Los Angeles he feels distant and separated from it and you never get the sense that he is in any real danger. It never feels real. Perhaps part of the problem is the realistic knowledge that none of the main characters are going to be killed off in the first two acts and this takes away any feelings of peril.

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

The script is really poor. The dialogue feels unrealistic and lacks drama while the characters are one dimensional. Much of the film is ill thought out; for example upon returning early from holiday, Cusack’s character suddenly receives a call to say he is late for work. He’s meant to be on holiday. Also, every time the US President walks into a room, the rest of the world’s leaders are waiting silently for him. I expect in real life they’d probably at least be talking amongst themselves about the end of the world and not always waiting for the US to sort everything out. Without giving too much away, the President also does something which he would never be allowed to do once the disaster strikes.

The acting isn’t very good. Many people are miscast. Danny Glover is unconvincing as the President and John Cusack’s wife is an empty shell. I expect some of this is down to the script and characterisation though. Cusack is affable but nothing more but Woody Harrelson shines in a small role as the token nut-job who was right all along.

"Stay perfectly still. Earthquakes can't see you if you don't move".

At 158 minutes, the film is about half an hour too long. It is too boring to keep you entertained for even two hours, let alone nearly three. Maybe the obligatory shots of the Eiffel Tower and Big Ben could have been lost. We get it, we are in France, we don’t need to see the bloody Eiffel Tower. As with any film of this nature there were plenty of moments where the audience are left thinking “come on! What are the chances?” Examples include the whole earth shifting on its axis so that Cusack and co doesn’t run out of fuel over the sea and a chance meeting with a Tibetan monk on a Chinese mountainside. I know I should cut the film some slack but come on!

There is plenty more wrong with the film but I try to keep these reviews fairly brief. It took over $700m at the box office so it must be doing something right. All I can say is that Independence Day wasn’t that good but it had more likeable characters and was shorter. The Day After Tomorrow had equally as good GCI, more likable characters and was MUCH shorter. And despite both having fairly poor storylines at least they didn’t have (SPOILER ALERT) a character called Noah saving everyone on an Ark and a parallel to the evolution of our species by resettling in Africa.

4/10 

Outbreak

Outbreak came at a time before infection type disaster movies were the mainstay of Hollywood. Since 9/11, film makers have shied away from the terrorist type disaster movies of the 1980s and 90s and films such as 28 Days Later, Rec and Contagion have taken over from the likes of Die Hard and The Siege. So Outbreak was perhaps slightly ahead of its time. I am too young to remember its initial release in 1995 but I can imagine that its actors were as big a draw as they are today with some of them at the height of their careers. Morgan Freeman features, a year after The Shawshank Redemption, Cuba Gooding Jr was a year away from his Oscar win for Jerry Maguire and Kevin Spacey had appeared in Seven and The Usual Suspects in the same year. With the additions of Dustin Hoffman and Donald Sutherland, this film is the definition of an all star cast.

The film is about a virus that is found in Zaire which later turns up in a small town in California. It has mutated and infected the town’s population and a team of military scientists which includes Dustin Hoffman and Cuba Gooding Jr must battle both the virus and the military to save the town and possibly America itself.

The plot is fairly formulaic with few surprises. Due to the nature of the story there is also little peril. At one point, the President orders the infected town to be bombed but you know this will never happen in a mainstream Hollywood movie. In another scene, Hoffman and Gooding Jr are in apparent danger when a plane is on course to hit their helicopter but again, you know this won’t happen. I think this is where films such as 28 Days Later and Children of Men have an edge as the danger feels more real and the characters more at risk. The film also features a lot of plot explanation which gave me the feeling that the writers thought the audience was too dumb to understand certain parts of the script. There was one very good plot device in which the outbreak of the virus in the Californian town happened in a cinema which I thought would have increased a cinema audience’s fright/enjoyment.

Kevin Spacey after being shown the finished film

Considering the film contained such an esteemed cast I didn’t feel like any one of them excelled. Either they cancelled each other out, weren’t trying very hard or the script and direction didn’t allow for any great performances. I have a feeling it is down to a mixture of the last two.

The film hasn’t aged too badly considering it is now seventeen years old and one of the two countries in which it is set no longer exists but this is a nuts and bolts disaster movie with a cast that promises a better film than it delivers.

5/10