Tag Archives: TV

The A-Team [2010] The A-Team [2010]1 star

September 27th, 2010 by surlaroute

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Oh dear, I have no notes to go by and it’s a while since I watched this, and there’s no way I’m watching it again lol. I think I might’ve been pretty excited when I first heard this was being made… but how long ago was that? Then suddenly it was upon us. It was one of my parents who told me, after the movie had been out for weeks in the states, that Liam Neeson was Hannibal, and I honestly didn’t believe them. And yet there, in various places, were people saying Neeson was one of the best things in it.

I think Neeson is all I have to talk about with this movie. You know, I would probably want to sit here and say how “nobody could fill George Peppard’s shoes” no matter who they cast, but seriously, Liam Neeson? He literally, once again, just plays himself here: only here, that’s not a good thing. I honestly feel like I’m taking crazy pills if anybody thinks Liam Neeson is even half-good as Hannibal here, and that’s just scratching the surface of the pointlessness on display.

This is the kind of movie that’s critic proof because everyone who loves it will simply shoot you down with “it’s The A-Team, it’s SUPPOSED to be dumb, stoopid!” … well, fair enough. I would point to it’s most pathetic thread – the removal of B.A.‘s mohawk. When this first occurred, I mistakenly took issue, thinking it was the remake police ironing out one of the TV show’s most iconic features (they’d already blown up the freakin’ van, for heck’s sake) for the sake of better publicity pictures of one of its actors or something. Instead, this turns out to be a “clever” message about violence, a setting up of a new reason why this B.A. 2.0 even has a mohawk. I would ask, if this movie is supposed to be as dumb as it is elsewhere in its overlong running time, why it’s wasting time making such hokey statements?

I wouldn’t say the script is a mess so much as it’s just equally tedious. The bulk of this movie is literally just the opening credits monologue of the TV series (just to rub it in, before the end credits role, we get that “if you have problem” spiel, supposedly meant to give us oldtimers goosebumps the way, say, the same tactic did in JJ Abrams’ more deserving Star Trek reboot). It took me about half the movie to notice this, so you can imagine how annoyed I was when I did, lol. This fact alone just makes the entire movie a presumptive a**-hole … it’s just sitting there plain expecting you to buy a ticket to the sequels it’s setting up without even trying to earn its own place on your schedule. If you hadn’t figured it out yet, the movie just annoyed the living pi** out of me, and I was never even that much of a fan of the original. Next please.

Batman: The Movie [1966] Batman: The Movie [1966] 3 star

September 5th, 2010 by surlaroute

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I watched this as part of a weeklong HD re-watching of all the more recent Batman movies, from Burton to Nolan (no new reviews of those, alas, I have too many others to catch up on: I’ll do it again maybe when I get the blu-rays, maybe before the next one hits cinemas). I was kind of excited to see this old one, having watched the TV series quite a bit as a teenager, and having kind of missed a little (just a little, mind) of Joel Schumacher’s inclination to the old school camp in Nolan’s darker masterpieces.

The fun gets started early here, right in the credits, in a note from “The Producers” flatly stating where the movie is coming from, which pretty much anticipates the bulk of any criticism the movie will ever get, as follows:

“We wish to express our gratitude to the enemies of crime and crusaders against crime throughout the world for their inspirational example. To them, and to lovers of adventure, lovers of pure escapism, lovers of unadulterated entertainment, lovers of the ridiculous and the bizarre — to funlovers everywhere — this picture is respectfully dedicated. If we have overlooked any sizable groups of lovers, we apologize.”

Thereafter we are plunged quickly into the end of a typical Batman and Robin scenario, a structural technique we’d become used to in the likes of the Bond and Indiana Jones movies, which here involves Batman literally punching a shark (which is clearly made of rubber) in the face. If you’re still hoping to take the movie seriously at this point, then it’s really not the movie’s fault lol. If you’re still having issues later when exchanges like “Holy hallucination!” “I wish it were, but it’s not! It’s 3 dehydrated pirates… rehydrated!” are being thrown around, then you should probably stick to picture books.

I’ll be honest. This isn’t as much of a riot as I’d hoped for. It’s been over a decade since I saw the TV series with Adam West and Burt Ward, but I have vague memories of scenarios even wilder than this movie has. I remember the crazy fight scenes (all the Biff! Baff! titles etc) bizarrely turning into dance sequences in some episodes, for example, and there’s none of that here (do comment if I have merely dreamt this lol). Lee Merriweather’s Catwoman has nothing on the Eartha Kitt or Julie Newmar version I remember, too. But it’s still seriously worth checking out for a wildly different approach to Batman than we’re used to today. I’d love to write more on this but it’s better perhaps to simply link to this page which says all I want to say and more on the subject. The new movies are near perfection as cinema, it’s true, but this one has a place that urgently needs defending.

Dr. Who and the Daleks / Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. Dr. Who and the Daleks / Daleks’ Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. 3 star

July 20th, 2010 by surlaroute

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So, background to my watching these is: the first part of the season finale to Matt Smith’s first run as The Doctor on BBC1 thrilled me so much, and there have been so many references to the legacy of all the old Doctors in this latest series, that I decided to watch the whole thing from the beginning. My plan was to watch everything (reconstructed episodes where necessary – a lot of stuff was “junked” by the BBC in the 70s) in the order that it aired or was released, and there were a few episodes between these two movies, but I ended up watching them one after the other, reasoning (despite the fact I really hate when fans talk of “canon”) that they’re not really canon anyway.

I’m kinda-sorta sure I may have seen the first of these at least before, but my early Doctor Who experiences are a major blur and the imagery so iconic across the board that I could really be remembering anything. Both these movies are remakes of existing stories in the Hartnell years, but from the very title music and credit design, you know the approach is gonna be different. The Doctor is painted here as a much more fun and contemporary character than he was in the early years of the TV series, if only through the way he’s presented (Peter Cushing’s actual performance is beautifully refined as ever).

You’ll find way better informed views on why the TV versions of these stories were ideologically better than these lavish remakes all over the net, and that’s why I decided to blend these two movies into just one review here. What will bring me back personally to watch both movies again is two-fold… firstly, that very lavishness in the design. Early Doctor Who on the TV was adventurous but because of the sheer number of episodes frequently came out wobbly, cheap, even to the point of line-fluffage from the actors. There’s none of that here, and the sets, effects etc are simply beautiful.

Secondly, and more importantly, there’s Roberta Tovey. I love that they make The Doctor’s granddaughter so much younger here. There’s something just plain more aesthetically satisfying about Susan being genuinely precocious, not to mention her physical size, in these environments. She’s far more convincing as “An Unearthly Child” for me than the teenaged Carole Ann Ford (though fine in her own way) ever was in the TV series, and her presence just makes the whole thing a little more fun. If I ever did see either of these when I was younger, there’s no doubt I related most immediately to her, and I’m not sure if anything’s changed :)

In short, these movies aren’t exactly essential viewing for anyone be they film-lovers, modern Who-fans or passing sci-fi geeks. But if you’re just a little of all the above, they are worth a look. For the time they were made they have crazy production values and Cushing makes for a Doctor so good (if, as I said, you can ignore the presentation) that you almost wish there was more.

Edge of Darkness Edge of Darkness 4 star

July 20th, 2010 by surlaroute

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It’s odd that I didn’t realise just how much I wanted to see this movie until long after its initial release.

I watched this following that second underwhelming viewing Shutter Island pretty certain I would enjoy it more, and it hooked me fast. This is a movie that launches quickly, with a gutwrenching moment between Mel Gibson and his screen daughter that made me jump out of my skin in such a way I’m not sure I’ve done since the car crash in The Forgotten. Let me say now, I’m increasingly easy pleased when a movie can still do this to me, and this one managed to do it twice in its duration.

Because of how powerful these moments of the movie were for me, it’s hard for me to talk about the story because I’d hate to spoil a similar experience that might be waiting for others. In short, this is mostly a conspiracy thriller, concentrated mainly on a kind of revenge story for Gibson’s character. If you liked him in Ransom or Payback, you will love him here, because it’s that Mel Gibson and in light of his own well documented real life personal problems (to say nothing of his latest tirade: I watched this a while before all that came out), it’s even more intense than ever in this movie. At one stage he seethes at someone, “I’m the guy who’s got nothing to lose and I don’t give a sh*t!” and boy, do you believe it. Fortunately, if being so raw onscreen again was any kind of gamble for Gibson at this stage, I feel confident in saying it pays off hugely. I personally loved (if that’s the right word) every minute of this movie – it goes as far as I believe all movies of this kind need to, with a broad corporate conspiracy line and a deeply personal cause, with Martin Campbell giving equal weight to the emotional side as he does the action – but what I’m sure no one will deny is the power of Gibson’s performance.

It was only midway through the movie that I remembered reading/hearing/being told that it was based on a 1985 BBC series which intriguingly was also directed by Campbell. I loved the idea of the story, and the idea of a director remaking his own work, so much that I got hold of and watched the entire 1985 production immediately (over a couple of days) after the credits rolled on the Gibson movie. The thing to note by comparison is that they’re really very different productions, and I find myself now I’ve seen both loving each in starkly contrasting, but equally passionate, ways. The TV series runs to nearly 6 hours. The story is very slightly different, and the flow simultaneously calmer, more procedural, but (in the last episode particularly) actually ultimately that bit crazy and surreal. I would definitely recommend the TV series to anybody who liked the movie, but I imagine it’s even more pertinent to recommend it to those who don’t like the movie at all… the TV version might be exactly what you’re looking for. Me, if I had to choose… I would have to pick the streamline plot and sheer rage of the movie… I’m not a hateful person, but when it’s so pointed and heightened as this, I can really go for it, and this one really had me rooting for the vigilante.

Odd Girl Out Odd Girl Out 4 star

May 25th, 2010 by surlaroute

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Again, I wanted to watch this for a long time (a very long time, in fact) not only for Alexa Vega’s role, but also a rare post-Annie appearance by Alicia Morton, shortly after which she seems to have quit acting completely. I’d also heard seriously good things about the movie in general, and there aren’t many movies like this which I don’t find at least marginally more interesting than most others.

The problem initially for me was pretty much related to that… there have been so many other good movies on this subject – and this one seemed immediately to fall bang in between two of the best, Mean Girls and Thirteen, the former for its extreme bullying (albeit here with the humour stripped away) and the latter for its rawness, here found in Alexa Vega’s performance. It was interesting to watch this straight after Remember the Daze where she’s older and glossier. The only way I can describe Alexa’s face in this movie is, it’s like a Carpenters song… you know that empty, lonely, drained and sad but still beautiful quality their sound had? Something like that. You utterly believe her loneliness in this movie and that helps a ton in understanding a lot of her decisions.

What I wanted and hoped for from this movie, and it was a big ask, was some kind of answer to the behaviour it presents. Alexa Vega’s character here ultimately finds herself cornered with literally nobody that she can go to for help because all her trust circles collapse for various reasons and the bullying she is subjected to is not easily explained to anyone who isn’t involved. I understand that place well, and I kind of still find myself there sometimes, but like the mother here explains to her daughter at one point, I never really figured out how to deal with it.

Astonishingly, I felt like the movie kind of gave me such closure. Something far more satisfying than I expected, at least. This movie gets so sad and this girl’s situation so impossible that I really feared that it was simply that kind of movie, that merely presents the seeming unconquerable nature of these situations and leaves it hanging there. There’s a really excruciating moment following the girl’s attempt at suicide when she returns to school and once again accepts her “best friend”‘s apology with open arms and part of me was just hoping she was finally leading them on, setting up some kind of revenge. I kind of lost all sympathy for her once I realised nope, she was just that naïve (there are a lot of moments like this, it must be said, when the whole thing is a little too extreme to be believable). But then the truth comes out, and it’s the final straw, and she confronts the one person who hurt her most and says something simple but perfect,

“You have nothing that I want.”

It worked for me, anyway. I don’t know about the state of bullying in schools today, there are a lot of people over on this movie’s IMDb board claiming this kind of thing never happens and certainly not these days: but I believe that it could happen, anywhere; that these situations don’t just occur in school; and that for anybody who finds themselves in such a situation, or anything even close, would find a light at the end of the tunnel in this movie. It’s the best performance I’ve seen yet from Alexa Vega, truly haunting, and the rest of the cast aren’t too bad either (Alicia Morton is particularly frightening, about as far removed from her button-nosed Annie as you could get). Really worth looking for.

The Addams Family The Addams Family 4 star

April 27th, 2010 by surlaroute

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Being as I actually have a review of the pales-in-comparison 3rd Addams Family movie Reunion on this site, let alone the more official sequel Values, I guess it’s about time I wrote something on this, the 1st, even though I only ever watch it now in conjunction with the infinitely more brilliant 2nd. It’s kind of unfair. This one is always in fact a lot better than I remember. The thing that always makes it “less” for me – the less scene-stealing nature of Christina Ricci’s part (though she even has her moments here – “Are they made from real girl scouts?” lol) – makes it necessary to focus on the other family members, and it has to be said, they’re just as fantastic.

I watched it today for the first time in HD which is probably the best I’ve ever seen it looking (I don’t think I ever saw this one on the big screen), and it made me really notice how amazing the set design is. It’s the embodiment of the one aspect that makes these Addams movies such surprising classics the more I see them – the sophistication. We have proof of how an Addams Family movie would turn out under normal mainstream movie-making circumstances, and that’s the too-slick, flat, cheap and wobbly “Reunion”. It’s almost a miracle that these ones were permitted to be so much more, with real veteran actors like Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Dana Ivey, Carol Kane, and such a find in Ricci. Literally the only thing here with the typically broad appeal needed for an “event movie” is the title, yet event movie it kind of became… it certainly made a ton of money.

At 90 minutes apiece there’s kind of no excuse for not watching both this and “Values”, as I usually do, in tandem. But this one certainly has enough to recommend it if it’s the only one available for whatever reason. It’s in its final act when the Addamses are ejected from their home and forced to engage with the real world that it really takes off, and where the mastery of that first sequel was perhaps born.

In the Loop In the Loop 4 star

November 17th, 2009 by surlaroute

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I watched this after a large catch-up session watching all of the “Thick of It” episodes that had aired before the release of this spin-off movie and I’m not really sure whether it helped by setting me up with the world and style or just hindered by sheer overexposure to it in such a short time. In any case, I didn’t feel the time was entirely wasted. I found myself towards the end of the TV episodes I watched rather unfavourably comparing it to The Office in my mind and I still feel as a whole it is “good” rather than “great” … though that could be that I’m just not interested enough in politics, even if I am far more interested than I was when I first passed on watching the show.

On the “Thick of It” side of things, I have to say I preferred it in TV form. A whole other side of the story is presented in the movie in the shape of America and it’s too much of a leap, while the shooting style remains the same and I found myself thinking how I couldn’t imagine going to the cinema to see something like this. It’s entirely uncinematic, almost anti-cinematic, and I felt compelled before writing this to dig up Mark Kermode’s review and was surprised to find he liked it.

However, there was one unexpected surprise waiting for me here and again I can’t quite decide whether it helped or hindered my appreciation of the film. I had no idea Anna Chlumsky (of My Girl fame) was in this movie, and frankly she steals the movie entirely. I was pretty sure of her impressively honed acting skills in Blood Car but her performance here seals it for me, she has officially survived “the child star thing”, and the double whammy of those two movies shows just how interesting her choices an an actress are going to be. As for “The Thick of It” side of things … I look forward to getting back to the third series of the TV version.

Star Trek Star Trek 4 star

May 7th, 2009 by surlaroute

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This one comes with such good spirit that reviewing it is entirely a waste of time … but I’ll do my best to recount my experience as always. I came to this, the first midnight screening available locally, not quite knowing if it’d be the biggest cinematic misstep I could make in 2009 or if, in fact, I might actually be the ideal audience for JJ Abrams’ approach to resurrecting the franchise. I’ve never been a huge Trekkie by any stretch, always citing the over-attentiveness to the details the show and movies seemed to have compared to more frivolous sci-fi outings like Star Wars, for example; I never really watched any of the TV series for any great amount of time, but I have seen all of the movies, even on the big screen, and with the possible exception of Final Frontier, I enjoyed them.

The biggest barrier for me here from what I’d seen in the small clips that had been released to the public seemed to the cast, in particular the two most important characters Spock and Kirk played by Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine. What I’d seen made the new crew look horribly fratboy-ish and to my mind horribly unbelievable in terms of their becoming the Enterprise crew of the original series. To make a wild comparison, like the Tinkerbell movie of last year, it looked like it wouldn’t matter how great the movie looked, no matter how they served it up, and even though like I say I was never even a fan, I would just never buy this crew as that crew.

How unwarranted could my worries have been? Though I still have my misgivings about Quinto in the Spock role (I don’t know, there’s something about his face like Casey Affleck that makes me feel like he’s constantly making private mockery of the material), the character here I found more “fascinating” than ever. The emotional content of this movie absolutely bowled me over and a lot of it centers around Spock of all creatures. Add to that of course (I’m sure you’ve heard) the presence of Leonard Nimoy who lends the movie an all-important sense of authenticity (I won’t touch on the what-where-how of why he’s there except to say sequel-prequel-wise this movie is insanely clever) and I can easily forgive this piece of casting. Chris Pine along with the rest of the main crew are another story entirely. Simon Pegg’s accent notwithstanding, I adjusted to them all almost immediately. Pine almost weirdly channels Shatner at some points, and like a lot of the could-be-awfully-cringeworthy-but-we-have-to-do-it-anyway moments, the balance struck is near perfect.

One of the things I always did love about Star Trek was the music and it was always gonna be interesting to see what happened after Jerry Goldsmith’s death. I was surprised to find nary a hint (at least until the glorious end) of Star Trek music past in Michael Giacchino’s score here and he dives in boldly creating the kind of score that overhypes the imagery that I’m usually averse to, yet he somehow gets away with it so much does the imagery live up to his hype. The visuals here are stunning – I was so afraid I would come away from it saying something along the lines of, “it’s good, but it’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” but I think I can say for sure that there were things here I really hadn’t seen before.

In short, it’s a stunning creation. It stands alone and it fits in with what came before. I don’t know if it fits in enough for some fans, but then I wouldn’t know that, but they do a valiant job of showing they care a little about those fans. Again, I won’t hint at the plot and how it ties in etc, but I want to point out again how incredible this movie is in terms of being a part of everything that came before it. It is not another reboot (god, how I hate that word applied to cinema), it’s much more than that, it’s almost dare I say genius. Just in purely objective terms this must be one of the cleverest and smoothest continuations of a long-running franchise that has ever hit our screens. The more I think about it the more impressed I am. The Nimoy factor is the icing on the cake. At the risk of being corny, may it live long and prosper.