Review: 28 Years Later

Everyone remembers the superfast zombies (well, technically not zombies, but...) from 28 Days Later. Largely forgotten is everything else. Director Danny Boyle and scriptwriter Alex Garland used the broad outlines of the zombie movie - and a bunch of other British horror: the memorable opening owes a lot to The Day of the Triffids, for one - to lure audiences in to something that was at times fairly experimental. And so it is again.

It's been 28 years since the rage virus was unleashed on the UK (turns out the European spread seen in sequel 28 Months Later was short-lived). The few uninfected survivors live in isolated settlements, such as the island Lindisfarne, where 12 year old Spike (Alfie Williams) has two worries on his mind: his mother Isla (Jodie Corner) is ill, swinging between coherency and delirium, and his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is about to take him to the mainland for his first kill.

Connected to the mainland by a causeway that can only be crossed in low tide, the island community needs to scavenge to survive - and the only way to survive a scavenging mission is to be ready to kill any infected that come along. After a generation, some infected are now bloated crawling things, while others remain the usual screeching running horrors. 

And then there are the Alpha's, giant killing machines that are almost impossible to stop. Suffice to say running into one of them can turn a straightforward hunting trip into a nightmare, and even they're not the worst things on the mainland. When Jamie and Spike see a fire off in the distance, Jamie tells Spike about a doctor he once knew who went mad and became obsessed with the dead. But all Spike hears is "doctor" - the only person left who could possibly save his mother.

Boyle can still generate the usual terrors when he has to. There's plenty of sneaky zombies, unstoppable zombie hordes, people backed into a corner by zombies, and people having their heads torn off and spines ripped out by Alphas, who are extremely scary and clearly big fans of Predator. 

But there's also a fair amount of experimentation going on, starting with much of the events being filmed on iPhones to continue the digital feel that made the first film stand out (and look extremely dated today). Deaths often occur in freeze-frame, there's night vision footage of glowing-eyed zombies, and the journey to the mainland is sound-tracked by a century-old recording of a Rudyard Kipling poem about marching to war.

Spike's story is more about coming-of-age than merely of survival, as he eventually strikes out from his village - probably a good idea, as the whole place feels a little cult-y in an inbred UK way - in search of the fabled doctor (Ralph Fiennes). After a fair amount of slaughter in the first two acts, the third turns into something closer to a meditation on death and its meaning - before a final twist that sets up a sequel due early next year.

The first film ran counter to the established zombie tradition; two decades later, that tradition is as strong as ever, and this film is even less interested in its cliches. There's plenty of scares here; there's also plenty to think about. It's the most exciting film Boyle has made in years; seems it took the living dead to bring him back to life.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: How To Train Your Dragon

Live action remakes of animated hits are just one head of the remake / reboot / reworking hydra that currently dominates pop culture. With the media so splintered, the only way to get people to notice something new is for it to be connected to something they already know about. Sometimes that's a way to slip something new in audience's diet; other times it's the new version of How to Train Your Dragon.

On a Viking island constantly under attack by dragons, Hiccup (Mason Thames) does not fit in. He wants to kill dragons like everyone else, but being a nerd more suited to building gadgets than swinging an axe has made him a misfit who's shunted aside for every battle. 

Being the son of the chief (Gerard Butler) doesn't help either, as his fellow teens see him as the islands nepo baby - which hurts coming from determined up-and-comer Astrid (Nico Parker), who shows zero interest in returning Hiccup's crush.

Then when Hiccup's latest invention secretly brings down the most feared dragon of all - a Night Terror - he's forced to face facts: he's just not a killer. In fact, he soon befriends the crippled dragon, naming it Toothless (it does have teeth, they're just retractable). 

The closer the two get, the more Hiccup realises everything the islanders know about dragons is wrong. But will the insights he's getting from Toothless - which are helping him ace the warrior training the teens are going through under the watchful eye of Gobber (Nick Frost) - lead his people on a new path? Or will things go horribly wrong and make Hiccup even more of an outcast until the teens hey look we all know how this wraps up.

Story-wise this sticks extremely close to the 2010 animated film, which is neither surprising (2010 film director Dean DeBlois returns for his first stab at live action), nor automatically a bad thing. That effort (itself based on a book) was a high point in Dreamwork's animation: making this a do-over is a good way to make a good film, which this is.

What it isn't is a great film, in part thanks to the limitations of live-action (even in a film where numerous scenes have enough of a CGI sheen to feel more than a little unreal). The best performances are the most cartoony - that'd be Butler and Frost - while the teen leads make their characters feel grounded and down to earth when a bigger presence wouldn't go astray - they're standing next to dragons, after all.

The big visual scenes still soar. Hiccup and Toothless flying together is thrilling; the epic final battle has some awe-inspiring moments. And the story's big messages around family and acceptance and the pointlessness of tit-for-tat conflict pack a punch. It feels a little unfair to compare this decent live action film to an excellent animated one made a decade and a half ago - or it would, if they didn't both share the same name.

- Anthony Morris 

Review: Ballerina

What's a John Wick movie without John Wick? The original appeal of the franchise was that super-assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) was committing all this carnage over a dead dog; take that away and all that's left is a whole lot of action, which is not exactly something in short supply at the movies. 

Sure, there's all the stuff with the tattoos and gold coins and The High Table. But as anyone who saw the prequel TV series The Continental knows, that alone does not a decent story make. So Ballerina (tagline: From the World of John Wick) is doomed to fail? Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Left on her own after a bunch of opening-scene gunplay with bonus explosions, a young girl named Eve is collected after the carnage by Winston (Ian McShane), who is presumably on holiday from running his hotel or something, it doesn't really matter. He drops Eve off at the New York ballet school-slash-murderer academy run by The Director (Angelica Huston), where she spends the next twelve years learning how to dance and kill people, as you do.

Now all grown up (and played by Ana de Armas), Eve starts work as a kind of proactive bodyguard; she protects people by murdering a lot of people around them. But when she finds one of the many, many people she's killed has the same mark as the people who killed her father back at the start of the movie, it's payback time. Which is something the world of John Wick has had a bunch of experience with.

The good news is, Ballerina is close enough to the source material to feel like a John Wick movie, and just different enough to keep the franchise feeling fresh. Having a smaller, self-contained story definitely helps; this also avoids the feeling with the later Wick movies that what we were watching was a string of 20 minute action scenes glued together with some inessential lore and Reeve's charm.

Oh yeah, Reeves makes an appearance here (it's set between John Wick 3 and 4), in a role that's possibly bigger than you might have expected but doesn't pull focus from Eve's story. It feels like Reeves is doing a favour for a friend by appearing here - which is a coincidence, because that's what Wick is doing too.

Otherwise this is your last chance to see the great Lance Reddick (this was his final outing as Charon before his death), McShane is always fun, Huston gets to be a bitchy teacher (also fun), and Gabriel Byrne hams it up in scene-stealing form as the big bad. As for de Armas, she easily sells Eve's angst in the quieter moments while being convincing in the action scenes, which swing between slick professionalism, flustered desperation, and at her most charming, "I can't believe this shit".

The action scenes, which as you'd expect make up a large percentage of the film (which was directed by Len Wiseman; producer and John Wick director Chad Stahelski oversaw extensive reshoots), continue the Wick tradition of combining movement and stylised gunplay with exciting new ways to kill people. Here that includes a fair amount of grenade work and excessive use of multiple flamethrowers towards the end, which is pretty impressive even for a series such as this.

You wouldn't call this a comedy, but there's just enough humor running throughout to provide texture. Early on, someone gets beat to death with a remote control; each blow changes the channel to bring up another influence on the franchise (who doesn't love the Three Stooges?). And it's always entertaining to see John Wick's reputation preceding him.

Backstory and lore isn't enough to create a decent spin-off, and this knows it. If you've had enough of Wick this probably won't turn you around, but if you're already a fan this'll remind you why. It builds (a little) on what came before, adds just enough to stand alone, and then sits back and has some fun with a constantly escalating climax featuring a whole lot of implausible action. This Ballerina's worth a spin.

- Anthony Morris 

 

Review: Bring Her Back

Nobody really expects a horror movie to stand up to serious examination. By their very nature they're often full of implausible stuff: the trick is to get the vibes right and hope that'll put off any serious questions until after the credits roll. For much of the run time, Bring Her Back does a solid job with the vibes - just don't look too hard for a pool fence and it'll be fine.

Blind teen Piper (Sora Wong) and her older stepbrother Andy (Billy Barratt) are out on the street after their father dies in the shower, but good news: seasoned foster parent Laura (Sally Hawkins) is more than happy to take Sora in and yeah, guess she'll take Andy as well if she has to.

Things seem suspect from the start. Laura's shaven-headed nephew Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) is a creepy silent presence, while she's subtly wearing down the bond between the siblings every chance she gets. Andy is already on shaky ground due to a troubled past, and Laura seems more than happy to exploit things to get the result she wants.

But what exactly is that result?  A well-worn video tape showing glimpses of a sinister ritual suggest something more unnatural behind her unsettling antics (having her along at the dad's funeral was not a good idea), while Oliver has to be locked up constantly and that big white line running around the house seems to be there to keep something in.

And oh yeah, Laura's daughter - who was also blind - died not that long ago after falling into the now empty backyard pool. But there's a big rain storm on the way, and that pool is going to fill up fast... 

There's no denying there's some memorably nasty things going on here; it's everything in between that's a little thin. The whole trauma angle is enough to keep things ticking along, but it's not exactly fresh or insightful. You may not have seen it before, but at times it feels like it.

Writer / directors the Philipou brothers (Talk to Me) are clearly pretty canny when it comes to horror, so it's a bit of a surprise that the story here all but fades away in the final act once the various mechanisms to wrap things up are in place. It's more predictable than it should be: once we know what's going on, that's what we get even though there feels like there's room (and need) for an extra twist or two.

Hawkins is, as you'd expect, excellent as a creepy foster mother, and the middle stretch where she's up to no good but it's not quite clear how or why is the film's strongest. Barratt does pretty well too as someone in over his head, while Wong has to wait a while before her time to shine.

It all adds up to a film that features a cast of characters driven by grief in a story that doesn't really have much to say about grief. Piper feels betrayed that her brother has shut her out from his loss, but by the time he fully explains what he's feeling it's too late to have much impact on anything. Likewise, Laura's grief motivates the plot, but because this is a horror movie we just see her acting creepy without explanation until well towards the story's end.

On the other hand, there are some very nasty moments of body horror here that won't easily be forgot. Which is probably more important in the scheme of things than speeches about how having a dead relative really sucks.

- Anthony Morris

Review: Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Something the marketing for Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning doesn't want you to remember is that it's the second half of a bigger film. Don't worry, it goes out of its way to remind you of previous events via an astonishingly sluggish first hour that at times feels like a chopped-down version of something that probably would have made this into a trilogy. But tonally? Once this gets going, it's a final act all the way.

In practical terms, that means a hefty slice of what traditionally makes a M:I film fun to watch is now in the rear-view mirror. This still holds up as a stand-alone film (just), but it's a much narrower version of previous installments, like star Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie started believing their marketing and decided that so long as Cruise was in a couple of real-life death traps the rest of the film didn't matter.

So the first hour is mostly muddled recap with some half-hearted gestures towards franchise requirements: there's a torture scene, a mask reveal, and a lot of exposition which can be summed up as "an evil computer program called 'The Entity' wants to take over the world's nukes and kill everyone, some people want to help it, some want to harness it, and Ethan Hunt (Cruise) wants to shut it down".

As always, the way to do that requires a fair amount of globe trotting. What it doesn't involve this time is a whole lot of traditional action. There are a couple of fight scenes, plus a shootout or two - almost the only joke in the entire film comes in early, when an especially brutal fight is shown solely in the horrified expressions of Grace (Haley Atwell) and some nasty sound effects. But again, the big action beats (remember the car chase through Rome in the previous film?) are a thing of the past.

Pretty much everyone from the previous film returns (it's a part 2 after all), with evil assassin Gabriel (Esai Morales) now wanting to control The Entity, previously evil assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff) now helping the good guys, computer genius Luther (Ving Rhames) now confined to a sick bed and spare computer genius Benji (Simon Pegg) now looking pretty worn down. Possibly because there's multiple leaden speeches here about the power of choice and saving those we'll never meet and so on, like this was a series about teaching serious life lessons and not people constantly pulling off rubber masks.

Angela Bassett is back too, only now she's the President and gets some surprisingly tense scenes as it becomes increasingly clear that the only options left are either she nukes everyone else or The Entity nukes everyone. It's also a reminder that this is a franchise where a large amount of the tension often comes from scenes the star has nothing to do with - they're spy thrillers where Hunt's role is basically that of a human screwdriver, a tool used to defuse the bomb.

Defusing a bomb can be a lot of fun to watch though, and as benefits a film that is basically one big climax to a five-hour story, this features two big dialogue-free set-pieces that make this worth the price of admission on their own. In one Hunt has to navigate the insides of a wrecked sub; the second is a biplane chase that somehow involves Hunt crawling all over the outside of not one but two planes mid-flight.

The big selling point is supposedly "Cruise does all his own stunts!", and fair play, his stuntwork is extremely impressive. But it's telling that the sub sequence (which may involve Cruise inside what is basically a giant washing machine set on spin dry, but did not take place in an actual sunken sub) is just as thrilling as the plane chase, which does involve actual planes flying not-that-high above the real earth. Watching a 62 year-old multi-millionaire risk his life purely for our amusement is fun, but not as much fun as a well-crafted suspense sequence.

More than most Mission: Impossible films, which don't exactly have a reputation for smooth storytelling, this feels like a grab-bag of parts. The good parts are extremely good and build towards a thrilling climax that's a shot of pure adrenaline guarenteed to send you out the cinema on a high. 

The bad parts? Well, if they ever make another one - and this most definitely does not shut the door on that possibility - maybe Hunt could stay out of those endless crumbling brick tunnels he's always running down.

- Anthony Morris

 

 

Review: The Surfer

You can't go home again. If home is A Land Down Under, you're a fool to even try. For Nicolas Cage's unnamed character (okay, he's "the Surfer"), a return trip to try and salvage his shattered life by purchasing the house he spent some of his childhood in goes horribly wrong seemingly for no other reason than, well, it's Australia. Surf's up.

Things are looking shaky from the start. The deal to purchase the house is on a knife-edge, his son (Finn Little) doesn't seem all that impressed with stories of past glories, and when they head down to the beach to hit the waves they're bluntly told that the only thing that's going to be hit is them if they don't piss off. 

Localism (a real thing) is where surfers don't take kindly to outsiders - after all, good waves are a finite resource, and the locals rarely like to share. So they retreat, his son heads off (his parents are separated, obviously; no prizes for guessing which one has moved on with her life) and our hero sticks around to make a few calls from the carpark.

Getting away turns out to be surprisingly difficult thanks to a mix of urgent phone business, some extremely aggressive teens, a local hobo (Nic Cassim) even more hated than the Surfer, and a slowly growing sense that maybe he doesn't want to go anywhere - he was a local once too, even if nobody will acknowledge it.

What follows is a nicely balanced decent into madness as the Surfer takes up residence in the beach carpark, partly to spy on surf thug cult leader Scally (Julian McMahon), partly because events seem to conspire to strip everything from him, and partly because everything seems to be going wrong at such a rapid rate we're not quite sure how much of everything is all in his mind. Maybe even none of it?

Fortunately this is Nicolas Cage we're dealing with, and his ability to finely judge just how over-the-top his performance should be is put to good use here. He maintains an element of desperation throughout that keeps the insanity grounded - he's just a regular guy, with a past that may or may not be as solid as it seems, and while he certainly plays a part in his downward spiral he's still the victim here.

Scally's cult (their big marketing hook is rhyming "surfer" with "suffer") brings in themes of toxic masculinity, but they're there more to motivate the hilariously aggressive locals than provide any real social commentary. What this film is really about is simply seeing Cage become increasingly sunburnt and shabby as the world wears him down. Sometimes the waves carry you out, sometimes they bring you back.

- Anthony Morris

 

Review: Thunderbolts*

The golden age of Marvel movies was three and a half stars at best. A decade or so ago, when Marvel ruled the screens, the secret of their success was consistency: while they only rarely served up something truly exciting or memorable, they never (well, almost never, looking at you Thor: Dark World) delivered a real dud.

And then suddenly they were serving up misfires, and turning out for every movie in a series seemed a lot less essential when you knew there was a good chance you'd be sitting down to watch something bad. What Thunderbolts* does - and does well - is reset the quality counter. It's not great, but it's good enough: if Marvel can just make another few movies like this, they might really be onto something.

Depressed after the death of her sister and basically just going through the motions of being a professional murderer, Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) is looking for a change. She's thinking a move to more public facing superheroics might do her good; her employer, shady spy maven Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) sees her as more of a loose end. With political pressure being brought to bear on her in Washington, it's time to tidy up.

When Yelena's next mission turns out to be something of a circular firing squad - with a bunch of fellow shady types including John "U.S. Agent" Walker (Wyatt Russell) and Ghost (Hannah John-Kamden) pointing guns at each other - they all realise they've been set up. Figuring out what dazed regular human Bob (Lewis Pullman) is doing there will have to wait: escaping the bunker and getting past the guards is job number one.

Once they do get free, with the help of Yelena's dad Alexi "The Red Guardian" Shostakov (David Harbour), they're still in trouble. Valentina wants them gone; Congressman Bucky "The Winter Soldier" Barnes (Sebastian Stan) wants them to help him take her down. Could there be an even bigger threat lurking in the wings? One that will force this rag-tag group to come together as a team and learn to trust one another? And let's not even get started on the power of love.

Almost none of these characters are original to this film, but there's next to no backstory required, making this feel a lot fresher than most of Marvel's recent output. The usual mix of relatively grounded action and wisecracks is more of the same, but the action generally makes sense and it's surprisingly how well the usual zingers land when they're delivered by decent actors.

The ensemble is Thunderbolts* real strength. Just about everyone here could support a solo feature (c'mon, Dreyfus has already has multiple TV series), while Pugh is a genuine movie star and Marvel doesn't really have a surplus of those. You want to see what happens to these characters, even when it's the usual run of scenes standing around throwing quips at each other; when the post-credit sequence propels them into the next stage of the MCU it's hard not to think "hang on, why can't we just hang out for a while?"

Marvel movies have to be good at what they do because what they do is pretty restricted. The action can't be too violent, the jokes have to be PG, forget about sexual tension. If this feels like a James Gunn movie without James Gunn, that's because he's the first director since Joss Whedon who figured out how to thread this particular needle - the secret ingredient here being sincerity, as it turns out super-powered beings get depressed too.

- Anthony Morris