Chernobyl Diaries

As published in F*** Magazine Singapore, Issue 30

Movie Review                                                                                                  13/6/12

CHERNOBYL DIARIES

2012

Starring: Jesse McCartney, Jonathan Sadowski, Devin Kelley

Directed by: Bradley Parker

            Thank goodness for dumb extreme tourists. Without their extreme stupidity, we practically wouldn’t have any modern horror films. If there’s a safe and/or logical way to get things done, expect them to do the exact opposite in the name of our entertainment, and expect them to bring along a cheap video camera to record all the happy memories.

            That’s the misleading bit though – with “Diaries” in the title, a cast of relative unknowns and Oren Peli of Paranormal Activity fame co-writing and co-producing, you’d think this was the latest in a string of mediocre “found footage” horror movies. Mediocre, yes, found footage, no. The premise seems tailor-made for the subgenre, but perhaps in an attempt to be “original”, the end product is pseudo-found-footage: almost all the shots are hand-held, but not by any of the characters.

            “Characters” is a term used lightly: here we have the whiny Chris (McCartney), his girlfriend Natalie (Olivia Taylor Dudley), their friend Amanda (Devin Kelley) and Chris’s brother Paul (Sadowski), whom the three have come to Kiev to visit. Paul springs on them the proposition of taking a tour into the abandoned town of Pripyat, formerly home to the staff of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families. A backpacking couple (Ingrid Bolso Berdal and Nathan Phillips) tag along; the six led by gruff tour guide Uri (Dimitri Diatchenko). They are denied entry into the ghost town by the Ukrainian military, and find their way in through a back passage. Then horrible things happen.

            This has all the hallmarks of a cheaply-made, C-grade horror flick: there are more cheap shocks than a defibrillator factory, trite arguments pass for character development, you’ll impatiently count the minutes until someone dies, and a first-time director and former visual effects artist is at the helm. Perhaps this might work as a student film, were it about 15 minutes long. Like most monster-centric horror films, the Jaws-style “what you can’t see is the scariest thing” ethos is invoked, but ultimately ineffective – it goes without saying that Bradley Parker is no Spielberg.

           

            The acting is pretty bad, but the screenplay is as much at fault as the actors are. Our hapless extreme tourists aren’t given very much material to work with, and earlier scenes with them joking about feel like a particularly painful improv session at an acting school. There is nothing special about the creature design at all, and you barely get a good glimpse at any of the attackers even at the end. It’s hard to imagine this movie going up against something like Prometheus at the box office, given that movie’s superior scares and much more interesting monsters.

            Of course, Chernobyl Diaries was made for a fraction of the cost, and the saving grace is that location filming in Hungary and Serbia does provide the movie with a convincingly eerie, desolate setting. If only the filmmakers knew what to do with it. The ending is extremely unsatisfactory, especially after audiences have been stringed along for a while, and it is worth noting that the group never even sets foot in the actual Chernobyl power plant, only hanging around the neighbouring town.

            Several charitable organisations and activist groups were up in arms over the insensitivity of the premise towards the victims of the disaster and their families. It’s hard to argue that the tragedy is a juicy starting point for a horror film, but these organisations should be amply relieved that this movie is barely competent and unlikely to make anything of an impression on viewers. The only thing slightly amusing to this reviewer was the cockroach in the cinema aisle – to think these guys would be all that’s left after a nuclear apocalypse.

SUMMARY: Chernobyl Diaries is dire, less half-baked and more like the microwaved (and irradiated) leftovers of a better horror movie.

RATING: 1.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong  

Prometheus

For F*** Magazine Singapore

 Movie Review                                                                                              5/6/12    

                      

PROMETHEUS

2012

Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Logan Marshall-Green,

Directed by: Ridley Scott

             WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! WeeeehhhhRRRRrrrrrrrr! The haunting mechanical whine that played in the background of the trailer for Prometheus and before that the trailer for 1979’s Alien was the sound science-fiction fans were overjoyed and excited to hear again after so long. It was the sound that heralded director Ridley Scott’s return to the world he helped create with Alien, and marked his first science-fiction film since 1982’s Blade Runner, in its own right a landmark sci-fi film. The film world has been bristling with anticipation and now, Prometheus has landed.

            The story tells of an expedition into outer space in search of the origins of life on earth. In 2089, archaeologist Dr Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and her colleague/love interest Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green) discover a cave painting on the Scottish Isle of Skye that corresponds to others discovered at sites across the world and spanning millennia. The painting depicts a star map, and funded by the aging multibillionaire CEO Peter Weyland (Pearce), Shaw, Holloway and their crew travel across the cosmos to a distant moon. Weyland Corp employee Meredith Vickers (Theron) oversees the expedition with a watchful eye, assisted by the advanced android David (Fassbender). The crew makes one groundbreaking discovery after the other, coming to the conclusion that humanoid beings called the Engineers was the genesis of life on earth, but encounters more than they bargained for as the mission unspools and they find they should be more concerned about survival than existential head-scratchers.

           The film is best-described as an indirect prequel to Alien – it’s a different beast, but clearly of the same ancestry. This reviewer watched Alien with Ridley Scott’s audio commentary before watching Prometheus, and Scott muses about the mysterious “Space Jockey”, what his purpose in the story was, who or what he might have been and the nature of his cargo of alien eggs. Scott has said that he wondered why the directors who took on the Alien sequels never addressed this, and has his chance to remedy this big-time in Prometheus. That strange skeletal figure is central to the story, and where Alien was a locked-house thriller confined to the dank spaceship Nostromo, Prometheus is far more ambitious in scope and practically announces its intention to be an epic film. It even pulls off making the oft-ridiculed “ancient aliens” theory seem somewhat plausible.

            Prometheus tangles with omnipresent philosophical themes and attempts to tackle the issue of science vs. religion, mixed in with a “curiosity killed the cat” cautionary tale, all on a grand and involving scale. It’s a movie that aims very high, and results in an absorbing and challenging viewer experience. There aren’t just plot twists; there are plot twists on steroids. At times, the intensity is at a fever pitch and may leave audiences desperately gasping for air and reeling in shock. It’s a film that requires the audience to do some thinking – however, this is not necessarily a completely good thing. Towards the end of the film, multiple plot points and bits and pieces are tossed at the audience, and it’s near impossible to connect the dots as the story unfolds before your eyes. Several connections to the original film feel a tad forced and superfluous. As much as one wants to get swept up in the breathtaking moment, one also struggles to sort out all this sensory input. This niggling bit is ultimately difficult to reconcile, and the film occasionally buckles under the weight of the philosophical overtones.

One thing that’s for sure is that the picture is lavishly produced and has a really rich atmosphere. While the Nostromo was a creaky, lived-in commercial freighter, the Prometheus is slick, state-of-the-art and ultra high-tech (it’s interesting in the same way the Star Wars prequels look far more refined than the original trilogy). The barren moon of LV-223 doesn’t look terribly interesting, but inside the cave complex the atmosphere is chilling and menacing and ties neatly into the Space Jockey’s ship. Production designer Arthur Max’s impressive physical sets complement the impressive digital effects, and the lack of an over-reliance on the latter is welcome amongst blockbusters infested with overblown, plasticky CGI. The creature designs are generally excellent and carry over the aliens’ sometimes-obvious sexual imagery from the other films, and all of these beings look decidedly creepy.

An important component of any deep-space expedition movie is the crew. The cast is more than competent; however there are several characters that practically announce that they won’t make it too far, taking some of the fun out of guessing how each of them ends up. Noomi Rapace leads the charge as the typically strong but multi-dimensional woman found in many Ridley Scott films. Dr Elizabeth Shaw is put through the wringer and a whole host of horrible things happen to the character, Rapace pulling us in completely. Her performance during what is arguably the most intense, gory scene of the movie is harrowing and powerful. As her love interest, Logan Marshall-Green embodies a sort of naïve enthusiasm as a character who is as much an adrenaline junkie as he is a scientist. The two have a fairly interesting dynamic that isn’t given a whole lot of attention, but is fun to watch.

Michael Fassbender plain steals the show from everyone else. Playing an android realistically is a remarkable acting challenge few performers pull off seamlessly – Fassbender is certainly one of them, mastering the facial tics, vocal inflection and body language to teeter on the edge of the uncanny valley. He definitely invokes HAL 9000 from the sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in the way the character begins as seemingly childlike but gradually acquires human characteristics; not all of them savoury ones. Machines are usually clear-cut and precise, but David’s moral ambiguity is intriguing in the extreme. Charlize Theron’s icy, no-nonsense, and businesslike Meredith Vickers has something lurking below the surface, and is a character that in the hands of a lesser actor could turn out laughably flat, but is played with care by Theron. Guy Pearce is caked in slightly less-than-convincing makeup as an old man but still makes something of an impact as someone who is powerful in spite of his frailty.

Those looking forward to a masterful science-fiction film packed with captivating visuals, impressive performances, the thrills and body-horror gore expected of the franchise will mostly not be disappointed. Viewers are advised not to expect a carbon copy of Alien, and the slightly muddy bits of plot are compensated for by an altogether-dazzling end product.

SUMMARY: Hop aboard the Prometheus: there may be a little turbulence, but you’re not going to regret taking the ride.

RATING: 4/5 STARS

Spider-Man: The Webs That Didn't Stick

This is a feature article in the current issue of F*** Magazine, Issue 29, out now. Please go get your copy! This issue focuses on the upcoming film The Amazing Spider-Man, and I wrote an article about the versions of Spider-Man that didn't quite make it to the big screen.

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THE WEBS THAT DIDN’T STICK

Spider-Man’s long climb up the water spout

By Jedd Jong

On the special features for the 1989 Batman film, Spider-Man co-creator and Marvel Comics overlord Stan Lee recounts how Batman’s co-creator Bob Kane made fun of him at the time because the Dark Knight had successfully found its way to the big screen while the webhead hadn’t. In 2002, when the Spider-Man movie was finally released, Bob Kane wasn’t around anymore to hear Stan Lee gloat. Kane also didn’t live to see the series rebooted, while Stan Lee gets to see The Amazing Spider-Man.

It’s been pointed out many times that Spider-Man has been rebooted almost instantly, far too soon for audiences to miss the character and want a new take. Given the finger-snap speed with which the new Spider-Man film happened, it’s interesting to see the long, winding and webby journey that led to the 2002 movie. These development hell tales are morbidly fascinating, and include Spider-Man being misinterpreted as an actual human-spider monster, Tom Cruise being considered for the lead, Arnold Schwarzenegger as Doc Ock and Mary Jane and Spider-Man having sex. For all of you who complained about emo-Peter dancing through the streets of New York in Spider-Man 3, take a gander at that.

The first true Spider-Man film is one most people aren’t aware exist, and rightfully so. Technically, it was a TV movie serving as the pilot to the live-action TV series The Amazing-Spider Man which ran from 1977 to 1979. Nicholas Hammond, aka Friedrich Von Trapp from The Sound of Music, played Peter Parker/Spider-Man. The costume was laughably amateurish and the villain wasn’t anyone from the comics, but a new-age self-help guru who inspires people to kill themselves. The sequel to this film, Spider-Man: The Dragon’s Challenge, was two episodes of the TV show lazily sewn together and crawling over to, uh, Hong Kong, for an extended tourism board commercial. From what we can gather, there was also another TV movie that called Spider-Man Strikes Back, in which Spider-Man is framed for attempting to blow up the, uh, World Trade Center. Retroactively awkward. Sure, there are some who derive a sense of nostalgia from these clumsy first eight-legged steps, but the world needed a proper Spider-Man movie.

Z-movie king Roger Corman held the film rights to the property for a brief period and didn’t do anything with them (thankfully). After they expired in 1985, Marvel Comics optioned Spider-Man to Cannon Films, a production house specializing in low-medium budget movies, famous for such immortal classics as American Ninja and Invaders from Mars. Naturally, given their filmography, the studio chiefs were under the delusion that Spider-Man meant the same thing as “Wolf Man” – there actually is a werewolf villain in the Spider-Man comics, and in fact he turns up in human form in the second Raimi movie. Pointless trivia in an article about pointless trivia aside, their version would have been less super-powered nerd and more Dr Smith from the Lost in Space movie – you know, that thing Gary Oldman turns into.

Stan Lee was naturally displeased with this strange abomination of a treatment, and commissioned a new script for Cannon Films, written by Ted Newsom and John Barcanto – the latter of whom would later be one of the screenwriters for the Halle Berry-starring Catwoman movie. Anyway, that version was an origin story with Doctor Octopus as Peter Parker’s college teacher and mentor, kind of like Dr Curt Connors became in the Sam Raimi movies. Doc Ock’s catchphrase was also to be “okey dokey”, which is kinda hokey-pokey. Tom Cruise was discussed for the leading role, Bob Hoskins for Doctor Octopus, Katharine Hepburn as Aunt May and Stan Lee himself wanted to play Daily Bugle editor in chief J Jonah Jameson. However, the film’s budget was put in jeopardy after Cannon Films had their assets drained by Superman IV: The Quest For Peace and Masters of the Universe. From there on, it was downhill for this proposed incarnation of Spider-Man. Several attempts to keep the air in its lungs were made, but eventually the not-yet-movie was taken off life support.

And then, along came a Cameron. A James Cameron, to be precise. Cameron slapped his name onto the earlier screenplay alongside all those who actually wrote it, as a kind of “reserved” sign like you find on restaurant tables. Cameron’s oft-collaborator Arnold Schwarzenegger was rumoured to be considered for Doctor Octopus. A few months later, he turned in a “scriptment” to Carolco Pictures, which had Spidey fight Electro and Sandman, both of whom didn’t really resemble their comic book counterparts. Even though Cameron did more than attach his name to someone else’s work this time, he took inspiration from the myriad screenplay revisions, mainly traits of the villains and the organic web-shooters (as opposed to gadgets Peter Parker invents and wears on his wrists) that ended up in the finished 2002 film – Peter would end up covered in goo at least twice, which is totally not suggestive of anything at all. Oh, and there’s lots of swearing, and Mary Jane and Spider-Man get jiggy with it hanging from Brooklyn Bridge. Imagine all the children’s toys!

Cue the legal trouble. Like Cannon Films before them, Carolco Pictures started to face financial woes and litigations. There’s lots of boring technical stuff, mostly parties squabbling over who would get what credit, with Menahem Golan (who had broken away from Cannon Films) still involved in development and not getting a producer listing. There was also a lot of ignoring of fine print; with the rights for the movie bouncing around so much you’d think they were the Green Goblin’s pumpkin bombs. It seemed as if the movie gods were conspiring against James Cameron’s Spider-Man movie seeing the light of day. Why the same movie gods let Catwoman be released, we have no idea. In 1999, movie rights for Spider-Man were licensed to Columbia Pictures (by then absorbed by Sony) by Marvel.

But the main thing is Spider-Man vs James Bond. No, it isn’t an epic crossover flick, though there’s no denying that would have been awesome. This was a power struggle between two studios, MGM/UA and Columbia Pictures – far less interesting. After MGM/UA’s chief executive John Calley hightailed it to Columbia, he announced that Columbia would be producing a rival James Bond series. MGM/UA, having acquired Menahem Golan’s 21^st Century Films and receiving rights to the roughly 4826 versions of the screenplay, disputed the legality and threatened to do its own Spider-Man series. This would have been the equivalent of two people pulling the rugs out from underneath the other guy at the same time. With all this, John Calley would have been better in Colombia – the drug trade there was probably less violent than all this. Both studios seemed to build a strong case as to their rights to do such films, and eventually an agreement was reached. They essentially said “you give up if I give up”, Columbia letting go of its rights to create a new 007 series on the condition that MGM give up its claim to Spider-Man.

Wow, a whole lot of trouble for one teenager in red and blue tights. Sony Pictures hired David Koepp, screenwriter of Jurassic Park and Panic Room, to write the screenplay for what would finally become the Spider-Man movie we know and (mostly) love, with the Green Goblin replacing Electro. Scott Rosenberg and Alvin Sargent performed uncredited rewrites, removing Doctor Octopus from the movie – he’d later be the central villain of the sequel. Columbia Pictures production president Amy Pascal bypassed a lineup of established directors including David Fincher, Chris Columbus, Roland Emmerich and Tim Burton for Sam Raimi, then best-known for Army of Darkness and The Quick and the Dead. It was a gamble that paid off big time – Spider-Man grossed $114,844,116 in one weekend.

It was followed by two sequels – we won’t get into that here, because the article is about the webs that didn’t stick. A Venom spin-off was announced as in the works in 2007 - apparently it’s still in development, with Chronicle’s Josh Trank attached to direct, and may or may not be connected to the new Spider-Man movie universe. Spider-Man 4 entered development in 2008, with Raimi and his cast, including Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man and Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, set to return. There was even to be a number 5, which for a while was going to be filmed at the same time as the fourth movie. James Vanderbilt, who would later write The Amazing Spider-Man (that’s the Andrew Garfield version coming out now, for all you who are confused) wrote the script, which was rewritten by David Lindsay-Abaire (the Rabbit Hole guy) and later by Gary Ross (the Hunger Games guy).

The film’s villain was to have been the Lizard, just like in The Amazing Spider-Man (that’s the Andrew Garfield version coming out now, for all you who are confused). After having appeared as Dr Curt Connors in Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, Dylan Baker would finally get his chance to morph into the bona fide bad guy. Alas, he would end up just like Billy Dee Williams in the Batman movies, who played Harvey Dent but was replaced by Tommy Lee Jones, who ended up playing Two-Face under the impression he was playing the Joker. John Malkovich was reportedly cast as the Vulture, a role that had been linked to Ben Kingsley in the past – let’s be honest, if a vulture were to take human form, it would look exactly like Ben Kingsley. Anne Hathaway was also going to play Felicia Hardy, who in the comics is the Black Cat (say, we wonder what this reminds us of…) however, Hardy was to become a new character called The Vultress instead.

However, Raimi and Sony couldn’t see eye to eye, and the intended May 2011 release date was slowly slipping through their fingers. In January 2010, Spider-Man 4 was officially kaput, after Sam Raimi left the project over doubts that he could finish the movie in time and over dissatisfaction with the screenplay even after four drafts. *Sniff* we’ll miss you, Sam Raimi-Spider-Man.

Sony Pictures Entertainment then came up with the revolutionary new product, insta-reboot. They even came up with the release date of July 3, 2012, almost immediately after Spider-Man 4 was canned. At least Spider-Man was spared another torturous development phase, and lives to spin another web.

Let’s hope this one sticks.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Movie Review                                                                                                             1/6/12

SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

2012

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin

Directed by: Rupert Sanders

            This must be a pretty twisted world, where Kristen Stewart is fairer than Charlize Theron. Okay, there’s that joke out of the way. Snow White, one of the Western world’s best-known fairy tales, gets another go-round and is given the “Grimm” treatment and takes place in a fairly twisted world– fitting, as it did all begin with a Grimm Brothers story. At the hands of first-time feature filmmaker Rupert Sanders, who has done commercials for the likes of Axe, Nike and Guinness, Snow White (Stewart) becomes a Joan of Arc-like warrior figure who charges into battle to avenge the death of her father at the hands of a wicked queen.

            Said wicked queen Ravenna (Theron) tricks her way into becoming the wife of King Magnus (Noah Huntley), after his wife dies of an illness. Ravenna kills the king and usurps his throne, locking his daughter Snow White in a castle tower and proceeds with a reign of terror, with her brother Finn (Sam Spruell) by her side. When Snow White escapes into the dark forest, she forcefully hires the drunken Huntsman (Hemsworth) to capture her. However, he decides to aid the fugitive princess, and the two run into the seven dwarves and Snow’s childhood sweetheart Prince William (Claflin) along the way. They assemble a revolution to storm the castle and take Ravenna down.

            It’s most appropriate to draw a comparison not with the other Snow White film released this year, but with last year’s Water for Elephants. Both movies feature sweeping period settings and gorgeous art direction, wonderful costumes, evocative musical scores by James Newton Howard, an Academy-Award winner as the villain (Christoph Waltz in Elephants and Charlize Theron here) and, most notably, an out-of-place Twilight star who is incapable of shouldering lead player responsibilities (Robert Pattinson in Elephants and Kristen Stewart here).

            The film goes to a great deal of effort to establish an atmosphere, and in that regard it succeeds. It goes for a quasi-medieval, fantasy-peppered feel – you could call it “Game of Therons”. Once Ravenna takes over as queen, the kingdom is engulfed in a certain bleakness and all life is quenched. The dark forest is all noxious gas, insect swarms, snakelike vines and thorns. In contrast, “Sanctuary”, the abode of the fairies, is a beautifully whimsical enchanted forest that stops short of singing birds and dancing squirrels. The final charge along the beach looks suitably epic, and the actual location of the Marloes Sands beach in Pembrokeshire, UK enhances that war movie effect.

            Colleen Atwood, oft-collaborator of Tim Burton, handles costume design responsibilities and the outfits created for Ravenna are of note. They perfectly convey the deadly mix of treacherous danger and beauty by incorporating feathers, bones and other darker motifs with fitted couture. It’s far less silly than the stuff Julia Roberts wears in Mirror Mirror, that’s for sure. James Newton Howard’s score absolutely lifts the movie and brings to mind romantic-era opuses.

            Charlize Theron is, as expected, a marvellous evil queen. Her performance drips with menace and she clearly enjoys the chance to chew the beautiful scenery for all it’s worth. She shouts orders, sucks the life force from defenseless girls, bathes in a milky rejuvenating liquid and even paces the castle floor. One could argue that her Machiavellian portrayal teeters very close to being ridiculous and at times it would not be out of place in a He-Man cartoon, but then again it does fit the approach taken with the material. Ravenna needs to be scary, and damned if Theron isn’t. Sam Spruell as the Queen’s brother is probably creepiness incarnate and matches Theron in gritted-teeth evil and makes for a memorable henchman.  

            It may seem like the easy route for a critic to take, but once again, everything is Kristen Stewart’s fault. The actress is infamous for failing to summon any emotion in her performances, which may have worked in the Twilight films as her character was pretty much a blank canvas on which young female audiences could project their fantasies, but here threatens to discredit the hard work everyone else has put in. Snow White is meant to possess other-worldly beauty and an inextinguishable life force, but the forest itself is less wooden than her. Her acting against Charlize Theron  is something like fighting a towering inferno with a spray bottle. The girl just cannot carry a movie, let alone put on a suit of armour and charge into battle astride a noble steed.

                                                                                       

            How about the other half of the title, the Huntsman? It’s pretty hard to think of Hemsworth as anybody else than Thor, but the Huntsman isn’t all that different from that role. He’s a tough, alcoholic bruiser with a tortured past who takes on the role of mentor to Snow White, with something of a Scottish accent. He does look a wee bit too clean, but is masculine enough to pull it off anyway. Sam Claflin, last seen in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, seems to be stuck playing the love interest in period movies. He doesn’t share very much chemistry with K-Stew, which is probably more her fault than is. The director has said that he wanted to make a British gangster film and had his ideal cast for that film play the seven dwarves. Somehow, it really works – there’s a bit of a kick to be had seeing usually intimidating character actors shrunk down and singing round a bonfire.

            This movie purports itself as the Snow White we haven’t seen before, but it fits comfortably into the medieval fantasy genre and is a competent example of that kind of film. It tries to be a dark and sweeping epic, and for the most part achieves that goal, helped along by some great art direction and Charlize Theron at her fairy tale villainess best. Thankfully, Kristen Stewart in all her blandness, despite failing to fit into the setting at all and playing a title character to boot, doesn’t ruin all of this. Phew.

SUMMARY: You’d be right to doubt Kristen Stewart’s ability to pull the part off, but be wrong to completely write this serviceable movie off.

RATING: 3.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong