August 2008 - Film Cipher

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Film Cipher - August 2008

The Clone Wars - Kid's Meal Edition

August 24th 2008 08:53

So everyone's heard what a bad movie this is by now. So in an attempt to maintain my feeble grip on the belief that I actually produce new content worth reading, I'm going to take another angle in my review. Yes, the movie is very flawed and I ALMOST walked out of it (I've yet to sit in on something bad enough to warrant actually doing this... But I was close in this film). However, it plays one card that unfortunately, in this current age of entertainment, absolves it of almost any criticism it receives... It's aimed at kids... And with that cop-out in mind, let us journey into the centre of this blight on film history...

The story kicks off about halfway through the clone wars, which in itself is occurring between episodes 2 & 3. After we are 'treated' to a brief announcement, recapping what's happened so far in the clone wars (though not really telling us much of anything), all the while sounding an awful lot like a 60's news caster reporting on how brilliantly 'our boys' are doing in the war. After this, we are thrown straight into a battle between the republic and the separatist armies. Soon enough, we are introduced to a new character... Ahsoka Tano (voiced by Ashley Eckstein). A 14 year old Togruta. The rest of the movie involves a plot to rescue Jabba the Hutt's son from unknown forces in order to try and form an allegiance with the Hutt clan to further the war effort.

Her nickname in the film is Snips. This is supposedly something to do with her height and 'hair'?

The first thing to note about the movie is that Ahsoka is in fact assigned to Anakin as his Padawan. This already takes a serious chunk out of the series continuity as this fact is very obviously missing from all future encounters. Though a little hard to swallow, we really should be used to this kind of thing, as it's certainly not the first time Lucas has changed something dramatically inside the already established timeline and called it cannon. (Vader's new Apprentice in Force Unleashed, and Luke's good friend Dash Rendar who helps him several times in defeating the empire in Shadows Of The Empire). Her character is fairly annoying in her overly 'cutesy' nature, which was my major gripe with her.

The other thing of interest to note is that this is merely the beginning for a TV series. Lucas himself has even stated...

You know, [the Clone Wars movie] was almost an afterthought — we were doing the TV series and looked at some of the episodes on the big screen and said, ''This is so beautiful, why don't we just go and use the crew and make a feature?'' So we did.

This may account for that general feeling of dislike that most movie goers received upon watching this 'afterthought'. The TV series may be better. If you can stand the over use of 'cute' nicknames used by Ahsoka, such as Anakins “Sky Guy” and R2D2's “Artooee”...

One thing purists are sure to notice is the severe evisceration of the cast. Most of the actors we knew and loved have been replaced by cheap knock off's. Anthony Daniels, Matthew Wood, Christopher Lee and Samuel L. Jackson are among the few who managed to survive the transition, though lord only knows how many of these voices will stick around for the series. Nick Jameson, who had voiced Palpatine/Darth Sidious in the animated Clone Wars shorts, as well as various video games, did not reprise his role; nor did Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker), Frank Oz (Yoda), Natalie Portman (Padme Amidala), Ewan McGregor (Obi-Wan Kenobi) or Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious in the movies). The changeover is noticeable, but it's not a 'deal breaker'.

Obi-Wan at least keeps his sense of humour, the few times he uses it...

One of my biggest gripes with the film is the Droid army. They are portrayed as absolute complete idiots, in an attempt to label them the 'comic relief' characters. Even though they are robots built and designed for war, they still make stupid little quips to each other, and both act scared and just generally moronic. It was cringe worthy...

One last 'special' mention goes to Zero the Hutt... A god awful character who no better fit the film than he'd have fit into a scene in Saved By The Bell. His voice was beyond reprieve, and I hope to heaven and high hell that he (or at least, I think it's a he) does not 'grace us' with a return performance in the series...

The Verdict: If you are or have children around the age of 10, than this is a movie to take them to see, if only so they they can wrap their supposedly vastly inferior minds around the big bad story in the upcoming TV series. (That's not a stab at kids, that's a stab at writers dumbing everything down with the 'justification' that it's for kids... There are plenty of well written children's shows!) Otherwise, I cannot recommend it. Not even to hardcore star wars fans. Just keep fondling the old cartoon shorts and keep your memories of a better time in tact.

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Hancock - Not Another Superhero Movie

August 14th 2008 08:49

What makes a good superhero movie? Or rather, what makes a superhero movie at all? There was once a time where we could easily answer that with the response "A movie that had a hero of superhuman ability as it's star." But with the recent influx of films about these men and women in tight spandex, we are left begging the question... Is this still the truth? Or have the lines begun to blur between superhero movies and movies containing superheroes? There is at least one film I can think of right now that very clearly walks that tightrope, and it's name is Hancock.

The film's plot follows a very peculiar hero living in Los Angeles. His name is Hancock (Will Smith), and he is effectively a bum. Bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, he drunkenly flies to the scenes of the many crimes in LA, but when he gets there, he more often than not destroys everything in his path, and is never very welcomed upon arrival. Everything seems business as usual, until one day, he saves the live of a PR executive, one Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman of 'Arrested Development' fame). Ray wants to save the world, but since he's having trouble with that, he decides to try and save one man first. And so he sets out on his own quest to rescue Hancock from himself.

Scruffy and smelling of liquer... Check... Time to save the city.

The movie swings violently between being a comedy, an action movie, and a life drama, which is enough to leave the viewers more than a little disorientated. It's hard to pin down just what makes Hancock a good movie, but then, it's flaws are not so glaring that you can't push past them and enjoy the ride anyway.

Will Smith acts about as well as can be expected. He didn't ever say 'Aw hell no', though even so, it seemed as though he was just playing another one of his roles. Though he does play it well, and it's not quite a case of Steven Seagal syndrome (where the actor plays the exact same role in every movie they do), but it's still feels like we've seen this character before, perhaps without the ability to fly. This could also be due to the fact that this reworked version of the script was written with him in mind as the lead. Director Peter Berg even said that if Will had turned down the roll, than the movie may never have happened, they were just that set on having him play Hancock.

Charlize Theron is perhaps my least favourite actor in the film, as much of the later story hinges on her character, and she seems determined to give a robotic performance in a lot of these key scenes. Her big explanation scene is done so ridiculously that I had trouble taking it seriously. It's unfortunate that such a wooden actor be given this role, but we can't have everything I guess.

Well at least he's not wearing speedos...

Jason Bateman gives a good performance. He's a likeable character, and while we still see slithers of Michael Bluth, his character from Arrested Development, he manages to distance himself enough from the roll that we're able to separate the two, which was something that had worried me when I decided to see this movie in the first place.

And special mention goes to the young Jae Head for his role as Ray's son Aaron. There's only so much you can expect a child his age to be able to do in an acting career, and yet he manages to stay a likeable character whom I actually felt for during the films climax. Which is a feat in and of itself. I can only hope that he is able to keep his spirit without the film industry crushing it underneath it's own weight, because he could go places later in his life.

The Verdict: Hancock is a mixed movie. It has many things that made me enjoy it, but when it's bad it's bad... If nothing else, it's a very interestingly written story, and the Hancock character is well presented, taking the Superhero stereotype and running it into the ground. Hancock is a very human hero, who starts out already broken, and as we see him try and pick up the shards of his life, we're left with an endearing image. I think it's a rent. And I pray to whatever gods may be up there that they don't try and make a sequel out of this...

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Rogue Assassin - It's War On The Streets

August 6th 2008 01:46

If there's one thing I can't stand about films... Then I wouldn't be a very good critic. However, there is something that this particular film does that really rides on my nerves... When someone decides that it would be a good idea to give a movie more than one title, and depending on where in the world you are situated will depend on which version you are treated to. It's a small niggling little thing I know, but it makes finding that film an annoying task if you happened to end up with the less popular of the two titles. And seeing as I need to access these sorts of things myself in order to give you all the best detailed review I can, it makes my job just that little bit harder. So thank you Lionsgate. Thank you for annoying me before the film even started. Just so you know, since it was the version I watched, I shall be referring to the movie as Rouge Assassin from here on out.

Now, I spent the better part of my morning watching this film. And two words sum it up nicely... Jason Statham. Have you ever seen Transporter 1 or 2? Crank? How about Chaos? Their defining and connecting features? They all star Jason Statham, and he plays almost exactly the same character in all of them. And Rouge Assassin is no different. After having seen both The Forbidden Kingdom and Rogue Assassin, I'm noticing that Jet Li is starting to act as more of a supporting character in his newer films, always playing to the style of the actor's he is working with, and seldom bringing his own bag of tricks to the set. It doesn't feel so much like he's leaching off their talent, as it feels almost like he's afraid that they will leach off his. It's almost interesting enough to warrant going and seeing this film, if only to witness this strange phenomenon.

If you're waiting for him to flip out and do something awesome, you'll be waiting most of the movie...

Well I'm 2 paragraphs in and I haven't started talking about the movie itself... So let's cut the crap and get this train wreck a rollin. Rogue Assassin follows the exploits of FBI agent Jack Crawford (Jason Statham) as he tries to hunt down the ever elusive expert Yakuza assassin who goes only by the name Rouge (Jet Li). Things are kicked off after his partner, Tom Lone (Terry Chen), and Tom's family are murdered by the infamous Rouge, a man they thought they had killed. Jack finds Rouge's signature weapon at the scene of the crime... Bullets with titanium shells & depleted uranium slugs. Three years pass before Rouge re-emerges, and the chase is on, while Rouge himself has a hidden agenda of his own, pushing all the right buttons on both the Yakuza and the Triads.

The movie's fairly mediocre. A lot of it has been done before and usually done better. Statham's character is the same one we always see, and his story is straight out of a movie making hand book. Good cop looses his partner, buries himself in his work, thus loosing his family and leaving him to focus only on his target. Thank god they didn't also add a subplot about him refusing a new partner, or I would have had to condemn the movie right there. All the other police characters are bland and under developed, leaving me to have no real reason to care when any one of them catches a stray bullet and dies dramatically. Though it seems that director Philip Atwell realized this, because none of the films characters seem to care either.

Most of the character development strangely enough seems to go to the films villains, although their motives are never really explored. They get more screen time than anyone else (aside perhaps Li and Statham), but they never really do anything with that time. They essentially just set the scene that they are the leaders of the Yakuza and the Triads, and they're both trying to get their hands on some golden horses for no reason deemed interesting enough to be given an explanation. This reads fairly weakly to me, but hey, I already knew that I wasn't watching golden cinema by this point.

Rouge Assassin / War (Jet Li & Jason Statham)

It's Jason Statham just... Doing what he does...

The only really likable character is the entire film is the Triad boss's daughter, who has all of 5 lines in the film, but is the only one introduced who didn't then give sour looks, sound irritable, or in general be unpleasant to someone else. Tom Lone's family also get an honorable mention for not living long enough to be unpleasant.

The Verdict: If you absolutely love everything Jason Statham, including a ton of action sequences, a mandatory chase sequence every 10 minutes, and at least one woman randomly undressing for no apparent reason and then leaving the room, than this is the film for you. If however, you'd rather a little more sustenance than this, I recommend you look elsewhere. Whilst the end twist is unexpected, it hardly makes up for an entire movie of mediocrity.

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Hellboy 2 - Black, White & Red All Over

August 1st 2008 02:32

Hellboys are red, Abes are blue. I liked this movie, and so might you too. Hellboy 2 is a fun movie that builds on the first one and in many ways improves on it. The story this time is about a race of magical beings (I can only assume they're elves since they are tactfully left unnamed, despite all other races being clearly defined) who made a pact with humankind many centuries ago. This pact has been broken by the humans, and the heir to the throne, Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), decides to take matters into his own hands, and attempts to resurrect the indestructible golden army that his father had used to try and defeat the humans so long ago

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