The LEGO Movie

Before I compose my thoughts on hit animation The Lego Movie, you need to know a little about me. I quite like Lego. OK, that’s a slight understatement. You could say I enjoy Lego more than the average person. To be perfectly honest, I’m days away from my twenty-eighth birthday and live in a house in which the spare room is begrudgingly titled ‘the Lego room’ by my long suffering girlfriend. I love collecting the stuff, building it, looking at it and have even dabbled in stop motion animation. Hello everyone, my name’s Tom and I’m a Legoaholic. Attempting to put aside my love of the brightly coloured Danish bricks, I saw The Lego Movie and came to the conclusion that, it. is. awesome.

Bought to life via the minds of the wacky duo behind the insanely fun Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, The Lego Movie combines stop motion and GCI animation. Injected with copious amounts of wit and childish humour, it’s unleashed on an imaginative world, packed full of recognisable characters. One of Lego’s strengths in recent years has been its ever expanding universe, creating tie-ins with popular movie franchises. Added to the company’s long history of inventive subjects and sets, the film is given a blank canvas to fill with all manner of characters and creations. The movie’s central theme is that of creativity and individualism and no toy typifies this more than Lego. The main narrative is as unoriginal as a knock-knock joke but it’s surrounded by a colourful universe into which all manner of surprises and joke are crammed. Like a cardboard box surrounded by an acid trip, it’s expanded, melted, twisted and contorted until something hilarious plops out of the backside of a psychedelic aardvark.

Taken 2

Those of you who know me personally will be well aware that 2008’s surprise hit Taken is one of my least favourite films since, well ever. I deeply disliked the casual xenophobia, cartoonish depiction of Yurop (Europe) and all round head kicking dullness. As you can imagine then, the idea of Taken 2 did not excite me and I had no intention of putting myself through another dose of nonsensical, skull crushing chaos. That was until I was on a recent flight with eight hours to kill. Having already seen films I wanted to see on the flight out I was short of things to entertain me so tentatively pressed the Taken 2 button and closed my eyes in shame and fear when I hit ‘play movie’.

The film follows on from the events of Taken which if you don’t know involved the teenage daughter (Maggie Grace) of ex C.I.A. man Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) being ‘taken’, get it? by a group of Albanian people traffickers to be sold into sexual slavery. This all happened in Foreign (France) where everyone is evil and speaks English, not French. So, it’s a few years later and Mills is still overly protective of his teenage daughter, who looks about thirty by the way. He goes to Istanbul for a job and his daughter Kim (Grace) and ex wife Lenore (Famke Janssen) surprises him with a visit. Meanwhile the family of the nondescript but dead Albanians from the first movie are seeking revenge and ‘take’ Bryan and his ex wife.

Schindler's List

As the Germans are relocating the city’s Jews into a self contained ghetto, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) arrives in Krakow to make his fortune from war profiteering. Having lavished gifts and charm on the ruling Nazis, Schindler persuades the influential Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to oversee his business of manufacturing mess kits. By hiring Jews, Schindler has a seemingly ever lasting supply of cheap/free labour and gets rich quick but his attitude towards the treatment of the Jews changes when he witnesses the clearing of the ghetto. While before he turned a blind eye, he soon became more interested in the plight of his workers until finally trying to save over a thousand from certain death at great cost and risk to himself.

Undoubtedly one of the most powerful and films of the last twenty years, Schindler’s List has become the foremost film for telling the story of humanities darkest and most irrepressible days. Despite incredibly moving films such as The Pianist and Life is Beautiful, Schindler’s List stands alone at the top as not only a moving and distressing portrayal of humanity at its worst and best but also as a sublime exercise of film making. For me Schindler’s List of one of the rarest of films for which I have no criticism whatsoever. I can’t think of a single shot, line or movement which could be improved.

Breakfast on Pluto

"Well, fuck me pink with a hairy arse!"

A boy is born in conservative 1940s Ireland to a Priest (Liam Neeson) and an unknown woman who flees to London after the birth. Bought up by a strict Catholic foster mother he shows signs of difference at an early age when he is caught in a dress and heels. By the 1970s the teenage Patrick ‘Kitten’ Braden (Cillian Murphy) is a proud and open cross dresser, still living in the small, conservative Irish town. As he gets older he wonders about his mother and discovers that she fled to England. He decides to try to find her and along the way joins a glam rock band, has brushes with the IRA, turns to prostitution and comes close to death on a number of occasions.

The entire film is set against the backdrop of the ‘troubles’ in Ireland during the 1970s. Kitten comes face to face with both sides of the war on a number of occasions and the conflict forms a major stand throughout the story. Another stand is her struggle to fit in with a world that tends to reject her choice of lifestyle and her difficulty with everyone taking life so seriously. The film is cut up into thirty or so chapters. Each is numbered and titled but the plot flows smoothly throughout. This mostly worked well to set up a scene but did become a little tiresome after a while.

Kingdom of Heaven

"I once fought two days with an arrow through my testicle"

Ridley Scott directs an all star cast in a story about the Crusades and in particular the 12^th Century battles in which Muslims attempted to recapture the city of Jerusalem from the Christians. Balian (Orlando Bloom) is a blacksmith in rural France. A Knight (Liam Neeson) visits him and informs him that he is his father. After Balian kills a Priest who mocks his dead wife, Balian is given the chance to join the Crusades in the Middle East. While there he learns the ins and out of the Politics and Religion of the region and ends up in a prominent position in the defence of the Holy city of Jerusalem against a Muslim invasion.

This was the second Ridley Scott film I watched today having watched Alien for the first time this morning. Kingdom of Heaven is not anywhere near as good as that. The first thing I’ll say is that the sets looked sumptuous and were well dressed. The costume also looked good and the special effects were on the whole excellent, despite the odd dodgy shot. The acting was also generally quite good. Charisma vacuum Orlando Bloom was actually alright but still far from the screen presence that a role like this requires. He is joined by a fantastic cast which includes Eva Green, Jeremy Irons, David Thewlis, Brendan Gleeson, Michael Sheen, Ghassan Massoud and an almost unrecognisable Edward Norton. Had I not looked at the cast beforehand I honestly wouldn’t have known he was in the film. Marton Csokas was a bit of a let down on the acting front.

Battleship

Battleship is loosely based on the board game Battlships and stars Taylor Kitsch as an unlikely hero in a battle between the US Navy and alien invaders. We see Kitsch at the beginning of the film in a bar being told he has to think about his future. He is 26 and without a job, living on the sofa of his Naval Officer brother’s house. He is reckless and seemingly lacks direction. Then suddenly he is a Lieutenant in the US Navy and in charge of the weapons or something on the USS John Paul Jones (which isn’t named after the Led Zeppelin bassist unfortunately). While out on manoeuvres with an international fleet off the coast of Hawaii, Kitsch (and Rihanna…sigh…) are sent to investigate a crashed UFO somewhere in the Ocean. It transpires that five alien ships have been dispatched to Earth after a transmission to their home planet. After travelling though millions of miles of space, one ship inexplicably hits a satellite in Earth’s orbit, while the other four plunge into the Pacific Ocean. Admiral Shane (Liam Neeson) orders a warning shot which starts a battle. A battle with ships.

I was sceptical going in about how a film could be made based on a game I used to play with my dad using two pens and a maths exercise book. For about five minutes, two thirds in, the film succeeds in making a film like the game. This sequence is also exciting and interesting. For the rest of the film, bar the odd overhead shot of ships in formation, it might as well have been any old Naval action movie.

There is so much wrong with this movie that I could go on for pages but I’ll try and keep it brief. Firstly, the dialogue is atrocious. It’s like it was written by a teenager who has seen two action movies. It is so cheesy that it is actually funny. Secondly, the acting is really bad. Good actors such as Neeson and Alexander Skarsgard have no more than fifteen minutes of screen time between them and instead we are left with Rihanna who mainly sits by a computer and says “Yes Sir!” I’m pleased that she didn’t take the Britney Spears Crossroads route into acting but she hardly sets the world alight and her casting is an obvious attempt to draw in people who wouldn’t see the movie without her in it. Brooklyn Decker spends most of the film standing on a mountain with a legless man, looking confused but pretty. This is apart from one scene in which she is somehow channels Colin McRae and becomes a rally driver. She is nothing more than eye candy here. After the critical and commercial failure of John Carter, Taylor Kitsch again fails to impress and lacks the charisma to carry the film. I personally think that Skarsgard would have been a better choice for the role. He completely outclasses Kitsch in their scenes together and has bags of charisma.  The whole film is played far too straight. It is always so serious. Blockbusters used to be fun and this definitely isn’t.

Much of the film is stupid and makes no sense. After an alien craft destroys a 7,000 tonne Cruiser, a mile away, it then fails to blow up a rubber dinghy carrying Kitsch and Rihanna which is ten feet from its hull. Also, after a ship has been destroyed with tremendous loss of life, someone asks Kitsch if everyone is ok to which he replies “Yes!” What he meant to say is “Well I’m fine, Rihanna’s fine and the Japanese guys alright too”. The entire plot is as full of holes as the destroyed Cruiser while the obvious product placement will have you stopping by Subway on your way home to pick up a Coke Zero. One thing that really annoyed me was the constant robotic/electronic noises which permeate the whole film. They are present in most sci-fi action films but just sound ridiculous. The film’s ending is ridiculous too.

The next paragraph contains spoilers.

After aliens have destroyed all of the modern ships, Kitsch et al find the 70 year old museum ship the USS Missouri and along with about five shells and a crew of pensioners manage to defeat the aliens when 21^st Century technology has failed! Its admirable that the film makers used real WWII Veterans but their inclusion helps to pile on the cheesiness.  

Spoilers over. 

On the plus side, some of the GCI is good. The design of the alien ships and particularly the aliens themselves were excellent. A lot of though had gone into what they looked like and why and they were very believable. Another aspect I liked was that the aliens are never the aggressors. This also felt realistic and believable. If we went to a new world, we wouldn’t go in all guns blazing Independence Day style but would identify targets and differentiate between friend and foe. At the beginning of the film I thought that maybe this would be a rare Blockbuster in which the USA doesn’t go it alone but apart from a token Japanese guy, the excellent Tadanobu Asano (Zatoichi) this turned out to be the case.

The message the film delivers is commendable but is unfortunately lost in the explosions. The film is trying to tell us that sometimes the old ways are better and that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on technology but the way it tells you is ridiculous and laughable. On the whole the film is a massive disappointment. It is too long, it takes itself far too seriously, is no fun and features terrible acting and dialogue. The relationships feel false and while you’d expect a side of cheese, here it is served as the main course. If you want to watch Transformers on water then this is for you but if you want something more you need look elsewhere.

3/10

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace

When Avatar 3D became a huge box office hit in 2009, taking over $2.8bn in theatres alone, one had the feeling that it was only a matter of time before George Lucas recycled his Star Wars franchise one more time with retro-fitted 3D. The first film to be released in 3D is the worst of the bunch The Phantom Menace.

The plot is basically the back story of Luke Skywalker’s parents, Anakin Skywalker and Queen Amidala. It shows their first encounter as well as about an hour of nonsense politics that even I with a Politics degree couldn’t care less about. Anakin is a slave on Tatooine who gains his freedom with the help of Liam Neeson’s Qui-Gonn Jin while Queen Amidala is under threat from The Trade Federation who with backing from Darth Sidious is attempting an invasion on her home planet of Naboo.

The first problem to address is the 3D. There is absolutely no need for it whatsoever and it actually detracts from what was already a quite bad film. At times I had to take the glasses off due to the background being fuzzy and sometimes it was like I had double vision in certain areas of the screen. It looked really shoddy. I had two pairs of 3D glasses with me and the problem was consistent with both. While I had the glasses off, it became apparent that only about half of the film was even in 3D. But this at least meant that it only looked crap half of the time. I can’t think of one scene in which the 3D enhanced my viewing experience. One can’t help but feel ripped off when the quality of the product is this poor. My 3D hopes had been raised after Scorsese’s Hugo but with poor retro-fitted 3D like this around, it is surely only a matter of time before people say enough is enough.

My problems with the film are two fold. Firstly it is really boring. I hadn’t seen it for a couple of years so thought maybe id been overly harsh on it before, but if anything I wasn’t harsh enough. There are a few scenes which get the blood pumping but these are usually interrupted by an annoying character. For the most part it is like you are watching an episode of The Daily Politics in a country you no nothing about and care even less. My second problem is with the films the characters. Upon its release, many people complained that Jar Jar Binks was just an opportunity for extra commercial tie-ins but I see him as more of a lazy, racist stereotype. It is quite clear that he and his race of Gungan’s are based on the people of Jamaica and it is quite incredible that no one during the films production pointed this out and had the character altered in some respect. The Trade Federation also sound like a ten year old doing a Chinese impression and slave owner, Watto is a hideous caricature of an Arab trader. Where the human characters are concerned, it cant be often that Yoda comes across as one of the most natural speakers in a film but here he is surrounded by Natalie Portman who sounds as though she is trying to do an English accent while eating peanut butter, Ewan McGregor who seems like he is acting with a baseball bat up his arse and Jake Llody who gives one of the worst performances of any child actor I’ve ever seen. The only actor who comes out with any credibility is Liam Neeson who does a decent job playing Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn.

On the plus side, while the thirteen year old CGI looks quite cartoony, it has held up well to the test of time. I liked the character of Darth Maul and his fight scene was good. Also, some of the scenes did look spectacular. The pod race in particular looked very nice but was incredibly boring. Another positive note is that it’s over now and we only have two more films to sit through until Episode IV.

5/10

If you don't like my review then try this from the BBC's Mark Kermode. click here for short video

DVD Extra --- I've seen the film at least four times now but yesterday I noticed something new. When I got home I googled what I thought I saw and it turns out I was correct. During one of the long, boring Senate scenes, have a look out for a well known alien from outside of the Star Wars franchise. When you see him you can 'phone home'...

The Grey

I read somewhere the other day that in the last three years, Liam Neeson has had more number one movies than Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, George Clooney or Denzel Washington. This is down to movies such as The Grey. It is a no nonsense stupid action movie that draws in the teenage and young adult audience like a chav to a velour tracksuit.

Neeson plays John Ottway, who is employed by an oil company to kill wolves in the wilds of Alaska. During a flight back to Anchorage, the plane crashes, killing most on board but leaving a few survivors to fend off the isolation, bitter cold and a pack of ravenous wolves who seem hell bent on killing everyone. Joining Ottway in his quest for survival are a bunch of typical action movie characters; there’s a cocky, arrogant man who learns cooperation is better than going it along, an annoying, say what you think guy, a geeky type with glasses and a notepad and a few more cliché characters who have the task of speaking briefly with Neeson before being eaten alive. 

Fight for survival

The freezing Alaskan landscape creeps into the audience during the film. It feels very cold! You feel like the actors were really there, freezing their bits off. A faulty multiplex heating system also helps add to the cold feeling so I have our local Cineworld to thank for the freezo-vision.

The animatronic and CGI wolves look quite realistic and behave in a menacing way throughout. The human actors are also quite good and there is an unexpected emotional scene just after the crash which surprised me. It was really good.

The plot is fairly formulaic. It is obvious that the men will be picked off one by one until there is only one left, and I bet you can’t guess who that one will be? This being said, the ending was very satisfying. The film happily wastes 117 minutes of your life and goes along at a decent pace. There are some silly bits and plot holes and it is extremely annoying when Neeson, who is obviously in the wolf’s den, almost turns to camera and says “I’m in the fucking wolfs den!” But other than this, The Grey is thoroughly enjoyable. 

7/10

Unknown

Unknown is a smart and interesting psychological thriller set in modern day Berlin. It stars Liam Neeson as Dr. Martin Harris, who along with his wife arrives in Berlin for a Biotechnology summit. Things start to go wrong for Dr. Harris though when the taxi he is riding in plunges off a bridge and into a river. When he wakes up in hospital four days later he has trouble remembering what happened and worse still, his wife doesn’t recognise him and is with another Dr. Martin Harris.

The film follows Neeson on his quest to uncover the facts behind his memory loss and stolen identity. While Neeson does nothing out of the ordinary, he is suited to the role. (To see Neeson in his best role for a long time click here). Along the way Neeson is both helped and hindered by a fantastic, mostly European cast, including Diane Kruger, seen in Inglorious Basterds who is fantastic as the driver of Neeson’s ill fated taxi. Bruno Ganz, famous for playing Hitler in Downfall as well as countless YouTube parodies excels as an ex Stasi agent who helps Neeson uncover the truth. Sebastian Koch who was fantastic in Black Book and also appeared in the masterful The Lives of Others plays a Professor at the summit and he is joined by Karl Markovics from The Counterfeiters who here plays a well meaning doctor. Along with these fine European actors, Frank Langella joins the cast and the only weak link in the whole cast is January Jones of Mad Men fame who as far as I can tell must surely still be getting roles due to her looks as she is as wooden as ever here.

Another star of the film is Berlin itself which looks beautiful. Set in November, the film shows both Berlin’s famous sights as well as the grittier side which I personally love. The concrete buildings of East Berlin help to add to the coldness of the film and a car chase through snowy streets is a highlight.

The twist is not totally obvious and is left for the third act. When it does unfold it is welcomed and the whole plot falls into place. While the film is in no way perfect it is a decent thriller with enough action to go along with its fine acting. It is a far better film in my opinion than Neeson’s recent thriller Taken.

7/10