Big Hero 6

For F*** Magazine

BIG HERO 6

Directors : Don Hall, Chris Williams

Cast : Ryan Potter, Scott Adsit, Génesis Rodríguez, Jamie Chung, Damon Wayans Jr., T.J. Miller, Daniel Henney, Maya Rudolph, James Cromwell, Alan Tudyk

Genre : Animation/Family/Action-adventure

Rating : PG (Some Intense Sequences) 

Run time: 108 mins

Moviegoers everywhere are still chanting “make mine Marvel!” and with the announcement of Marvel Studios’ exciting Phase 3 slate, it seems this chanting will continue. Here’s something a little different: the first Disney animated film to feature Marvel characters.

Hiro Hamada (Potter) is a 14-year-old robotics prodigy living in the futuristic city of San Fransokyo with his older brother Tadashi (Henney), under the care of their aunt Cass (Rudolph). Tadashi convinces Hiro to turn away from illegal bot-fighting and to put his intellect to good use by enrolling in the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. Hiro is introduced to robotics pioneer Professor Callaghan (Cromwell) and Tadashi’s friends at the institute: the tough, no-nonsense Go-Go Tomago (Chung), the bubbly and eccentric Honey Lemon (Rodríguez), the heavily-built but timid Wasabi-No-Ginger (Wayans Jr.) and laid-back comic book geek Fred (Miller). Hiro befriends Baymax (Adsit), a healthcare robot invented by Tadashi. When a masked supervillain named Yokai threatens San Fransokyo using microbot technology developed by Hiro himself, these friends must put their scientific knowledge to use, assuming the role of superheroes.

            Big Hero 6 is a loose adaptation of the source material by writing collective Man of Action and one of Marvel’s weirdest super-teams (yes, even weirder than the Guardians of the Galaxy) has been transformed into a cuddly bunch packed with plenty of kid-appeal. For example, Baymax is a shape-shifting robot/dragon in the comics and is not at all cute. Here, he is a comforting, eminently huggable, marshmallow-like medical care robot. The simple, charming character design takes inspiration from the field of “soft robotics” and his face is based on a Japanese suzu bell. Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams have created a crowd-pleasing animated film with fun action sequences, rib-tickling jokes and a good measure of emotion – plus a sprinkling of Tony Stark-style “building the tech” montages. While it is a very familiar story with plenty of plot devices and character types we’ve seen before, Big Hero 6 acknowledges and embraces this and doesn’t feel like a soulless re-tread.

            The design team goes wild with the opportunity to mesh San Francisco together with Tokyo, resulting in amusing, eye-catching touches such as the Golden Gate Bridge with Japanese torii gates in place of its usual towers. While the action is fun and a sequence of Baymax soaring in-between the skyscrapers of San Fransokyo is sweeping and beautiful, there is a lack of truly memorable action set-pieces. The titular team, despite being diverse, seems somewhat homogenised, fulfilling the requisite character types every bunch of rag-tag heroes must possess. There’s the tough chick whose catchphrase is “woman up”, the lanky, hyper nerd, the big guy who’s meek and cautious on the inside and the slacker dude. To the film’s credit, it’s able to keep the energy up enough such that we can go along with the clichés instead of having them pull us out of the experience.

            The voice cast is effective and entertaining. While these certainly aren’t unknowns, there doesn’t seem to be any blatant celebrity stunt-casting going on. Japanese-American actor and martial artist Ryan Potter gives a fluid, affecting vocal performance, managing to make Hiro sympathetic in his moments of grief without coming across as brooding and angsty. Scott Adsit is marvellous as Baymax, conveying endearing warmth and care within the confines of having to sound sufficiently robotic. T.J. Miller has been the comic relief dude bro in a number of films, and he sticks to what works for him here, the geeky Fred providing a dose of genre-savvy winking at the audience. Jamie Chung doesn’t have too many lines since Go-Go is the strong, silent type but she does convincingly sound like someone who won’t take any guff from anyone, playing somewhat against her sweet public persona. Interestingly enough, Génesis Rodríguez’s Honey Lemon is the only character who pronounces Hiro’s name accurately, with a Japanese accent, which is neat.

            While Big Hero 6 falls a little short of the emotional depth and dazzling imagination of Wreck-It Ralph and is not as clever a take on the superhero genre as The Incredibles was, it still is well-made family entertainment. It’s easy to see why Baymax is the centre of the film’s promotional material – the movie is titled Baymax in Japan. He is loveable in just that right way, without being cloying or too obviously, artificially cute. He’s a robot who is programmed to care and the bond that forms between him and Hiro does give the film a good deal of heart. Feast, the short film preceding the feature, is about a Boston terrier who experiences his owner’s romantic relationships by sharing in all their meals. It’s not quite as sublime as Paperman, which ran before Wreck-It Ralph, but dog-lovers will find it utterly irresistible. Also just as with the live-action Marvel movies, be sure to stick around for a great post-credits scene.

Summary: Not particularly cutting-edge but still entertaining, funny and sufficiently moving. This holiday season, kids will be quoting Baymax rather than singing “Let It Go”.

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For

For F*** Magazine

SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR 

Director : Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez

Cast : Jessica Alba, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Brolin, Eva Green, Mickey Rourke, Rosario Dawson, Juno Temple, Jaime King, Bruce Willis, Jamie Chung, Lady Gaga, Christopher Meloni, Jeremy Piven

Genre : Action/Thriller

Opens : 8 August 2014

Rating : R21 (Violence, Nudity & Sexual Scenes) 

Running time: 102 mins

Basin CITY. A cesspool dripping with BLOOD and ALCOHOL and SEX and GRIME. A grimy CESSPOOL. NINE years after the FIRST movie, we RETURN. FOUR interlocking stories. “Just ANOTHER Saturday NIGHT” – Marv (Rourke) BEATS up PUNKS and hangs off the side of POLICE CARS. “The Long BAD Night” – Johnny (Gordon-Levitt), a self-assured young gambler, beats Senator Roark (Boothe) in a GAME of POKER. Big MISTAKE. “A DAME to Kill For” – Ava Lord (Green), sly WICKEDNESS taken the form of a WOMAN. She CASTS her SPELL upon former flame Dwight (Brolin) once more. Can he ESCAPE this enchantress’ GRASP? “Nancy’s Last DANCE” – stripper Nancy (Alba) is victim no MORE. She seeks to AVENGE the death of Hartigan (Willis), her PROTECTOR. AVENGING his DEATH. Her crosshairs are SET on Roark.

            

            This reviewer had planned to write the whole thing in the style of Frank Miller but gave up after that paragraph. The first Sin City film broke its share of ground by hewing closely to the stylisation Miller had drawn into his graphic novels, using visual effects and cinematography to replicate the striking aesthetic of the Sin City books. Black and white with occasional violent bursts of selective colour, often lapsing into animated silhouettes. Miller was initially reluctant to allow an adaptation to be filmed, but Robert Rodriguez won him over and they became co-directors on both movies. It’s nine years later and it’s not quite so novel anymore. In-between then and now we’ve had the likes of 300 and the dismal The Spirit, the latter directed by Miller himself. It’s still a great gimmick and we bet this movie is stunning in 3D (we saw the 2D version). However, any gimmick can only carry a film so far.

            The movie is clearly striving for a noir feel but so much of the Frank Miller dialogue, in reaching for a hard-boiled attitude, comes off as laughably silly. “It’s another hot night. The kind of night that makes people do sweaty, secret things,” Dwight says in voiceover. When he gets kicked in the crotch, he describes it as “an atom bomb go(ing) off between my legs.” The intensity of all the brutal, wince-inducing violence in the film ends up being undercut by the writing. “A Dame to Kill For” has as its central character an evil, manipulative, often-naked seductress. Eva Green vamps it up entertainingly as is her speciality, but there’s not much more to Ava Lord than that – she’s a textbook femme fatale. The character’s speech about the nature of insanity and evil from the graphic novel, which would have added a layer or two, is cut. “Nancy’s Last Dance”, an original story written for this film, also undoes everything the character went through in the first film. Nancy, that narrow beam of light that was able to escape the darkness of Sin City, is now just another avenging angel. “The Long Bad Night”, the other original story, is carried by Gordon-Levitt playing against Boothe but is never wholly compelling.

            The film’s ensemble cast gets to play it up in ways few other movies would let them, to mostly entertaining results. Josh Brolin, playing Dwight before the character had plastic surgery to look like Clive Owen, is convincingly tough and grizzled. Powers Boothe is a hoot as a “love to hate” villain of the most extreme variety. Gordon-Levitt sinks his teeth into playing Johnny in his transition from cocksure and feeling untouchable to wounded and seething. The afore-mentioned Green, taking the role long-linked to Angelina Jolie, does look like she’s having a ball and seems extremely comfortable with the nigh-gratuitous nudity. Speaking of showing skin, Jessica Alba famously has a no-nudity clause but given Nancy’s get-ups in this film, she might as well be naked. Her attempts at playing an angry Nancy galvanised into taking up arms against Roark are ropey at best. Bruce Willis plays a ghost. Odd sense of déjà vu there.

            In 2005, before the full-on boom of movies based on comic books and graphic novels that we’re experiencing now, Sin City was unlike anything else out there. It was striking, bold and impactful. Now, the cool factor of the film being shot on a digital back-lot with everything but the actors and key props computer-generated has subsided. As over the top as A Dame to Kill For is, it falls short of the visceral oomph the first film had. Comic book fans know Frank Miller as a writer and artist who helped define the medium with the likes of The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, but who seems to have lost his mind, judging from the atrocious likes of Holy Terror and All Star Batman and Robin. His misogynistic attitudes and obsession with dark faux-poetry are on full display in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, Robert Rodriguez serving as little more than his errand boy.

Summary: There’s no kill like overkill –Sin City: A Dame to Kill For brims with eye-catching imagery and uncompromising depictions of violence and sex, but there is little beneath its glossy, lurid surface.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Premium Rush

For F*** Magazine, Singapore

Director:	David Koepp
Cast:	Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Dania Ramirez, Jamie Chung
Genre:	Action, Thriller
Run Time:	91 mins
Opens:	27 September 2012
Rating:	PG13 - Some Coarse Language

Quick, off the top of your head, name some dangerous jobs, lines of work where risking life and limb are all part of the daily grind. Fighter pilot? Fireman? SWAT Officer? Naval Diver? How about bicycle courier? Fuelled not by diesel nor octane, just adrenaline, these daredevil deliverymen (and women) put the ‘special’ in ‘special delivery’, and the ‘rush’ in ‘rush delivery’, taking the merciless New York traffic head on.

Wilee (Gordon-Levitt) is a rather extreme example, who puts getting the job done and the thrill of it a fair bit over his personal safety as he weaves through the city streets at blinding speeds astride his brakes-less, single-gear fixie bike. His ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Ramirez) is also his colleague, and he faces competition in both professional and personal fields from his cocky rival Manny (Wole Parks). He is tasked with delivering a mysterious envelope from Vanessa’s roommate Nima (Chung), and soon finds himself being pursued by crooked cop Bobby Monday (Shannon), who is in deep with Chinese gambling syndicates and needs to pay his way out. Wheels are spun, blows are traded, bullets are fired, cars and bikes are wrecked – and Wilee needs to stay on top of it all, somehow.


The idea of an action story based around the world of bike messengers is not completely new: there was the 80s film Quicksilver, starring Kevin Bacon, Taylor Lautner’s upcoming flick Tracers, and the 1998 novel The Ultimate Rush – the author of which has actually sued the filmmakers of Premium Rush for copyright infringement. Still, it is pretty novel to see the central vehicles in high-speed road chases not be muscle cars, souped-up choppers or Humvees, but rather comparatively humble bicycles. The key is in making said chases still feel exciting, still having them carry an element of danger in spite of the more mundane modes of transportation used to carry them out.

Premium Rush’s greatest strength is that the chases – and there are loads of ‘em – do indeed feel intense and exhilarating. Director David Koepp and his crew had the task of getting audiences’ blood pumping as they stay seated for two hours, and Premium Rush does a mighty fine job in that regard, with dynamic camerawork and a real tactile feel to the action, genuine enough to draw gasps from all those very, very close calls. There are however, one or two spots where one can tell that Gordon-Levitt has been replaced by a stunt double. The film may have gotten a little carried away in the style department, with sequences showing how Wilee mentally maps out the immediate path to take in “bike vision”, and a visual representation of New York City in miniature buildings-3D map style. At times, this can get a little too dizzying, and one gets the sense that perhaps Koepp was trying a mite too hard to make this ‘cool’ and ‘hip’.

The story is rather straightforward and this is an old-school chase flick at heart. Our hero has something the villain wants, and thus needs to evade the villain by any means necessary. There is actually nothing wrong with this relatively simple story, and it is made more interesting by being told in non-linear fashion, the action occasionally flashing back to show how we got here. It can be a little distracting, but it also adds a layer or two to the proceedings. The plot can be compared to that of the Jason Statham-starring film Safe, also involving a protagonist caught in a web of Chinese mobsters and dirty cops. However, where Safe was generic and boring, Premium Rush is frequently refreshing and a lot of fun.

And then there are the performances, which truly elevate the material. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is perfectly cast as Wilee, the combination of youthful energy and focused intensity he brings to the part well-suited to a bike messenger living life on the absolute edge. Dania Ramirez as his love interest and colleague is good too, she brings a certain physicality to the part of Vanessa and with those toned arms and the athleticism she displays, it isn’t hard at all to buy her as someone who cycles at 50 mph for a living. Wole Parks as the requisite rival is annoying, but then again the character is meant to be. Jamie Chung is a tad stiff and struggles somewhat with her Mandarin Chinese lines, but is okay anyway.

The show is stolen squarely by Michael Shannon as corrupt policeman Det. Bobby Monday – and it seems that was the actor’s intention to begin with. Shannon will play Superman villain General Zod in next year’s Man of Steel, and if his turn as the antagonist here is any indication, Supes had better watch out. Shannon’s portrayal is utterly unhinged, and he manages to be over-the-top yet still intimidating, his Det. Monday sometimes comic, but always scary. It brings to mind Gary Oldman’s iconic portrayal of psychotic DEA Agent Stansfield in The Professional, and while Shannon may come off as a little goofy to some, he still makes for a memorable adversary to Wilee.

Premium Rush makes for a pretty exciting time at the theatre, its buoyant tone with tongue somewhat in cheek making sure it’s always light on its feet – or its two wheels, as it were. Perhaps where it went a little off track was in gearing itself a little too much towards the younger set.

SUMMARY: Lightning-paced entertainment that doesn’t stop to put on the brakes, but has a basic narrative bodywork and sometimes gets a little carried away in its stylisation.

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 STARS

Sucker Punch

 As published in F*** Magazine Issue #15, Apr 2011

SUCKER PUNCH

2011 Release

Starring: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone

Directed by: Zack Snyder

            Having made only film adaptations of existing material, director Zack Snyder takes the opportunity to break out something original before making Superman: the Man of Steel – emphasis on “original”. A balls-out fantasy action adventure, Sucker Punch promises to be unlike everything we’ve ever seen, but ends up being more hit and miss than a knockout.

            Babydoll (Browning) is sent to a mental institution by her wicked stepfather, after the death of her mother and sister. Her only escape is an imaginary realm (and several more within that), in which missions against dragons, alien robots, monster Samurai and zombie WWI-era German soldiers serve as metaphorical goals as she and four other girls in the asylum fight for their freedom.

            Snyder has made his name with hyper-kinetic slow-motion camerawork and a keen eye for larger-than-life action sequences. It’s a given then that Sucker Punch is a very stylish film, and the fantasy and action are indeed kicked into high gear. The production design is eye-popping, the computer-generated animation work of high quality and the action itself pretty wham-bang.

            As such, it’s a big pity that all this is in service of what is pretty much a non-story. The Inception-styled world-within-worlds conceit, combined with the old-fashioned 50s asylum and brothel elements, make this quite a high concept that never quite takes root. The plot and characters quickly become reduced to little more than excuses to string the video game-style fantasy sequences together.

            The five girls are easy on the eye, but the characters are hardly distinguishable and with one or two exceptions they seem interchangeable for each other. Abbie Cornish is mostly flat and unlikable, Emily Browning in a constant daze. There’s something of a novelty factor in seeing High School Musical-alum Vanessa Hudgens in an action film, but not much more beyond that.

 Good thing that the supporting cast is decent – Carla Gugino hamming it up and enjoying herself as the Polish-accented Madam Gorski, Oscar Isaac sleazy and mean as asylum orderly/brothel-runner Blue and best of all Scott Glenn as the Wise Man, a character akin to Charlie in Charlie’s Angels who pops up in each of the fantasy realms to brief the girls on their mission.

Sucker Punch is more an experiment than a film, really, and “experiment-films” haven’t exactly had a sterling track record. An alien city straight out of Total Recall and a steampunk re-envisioning of the First World War are all well and good – if they do something, anything at all, for the story – which they don’t. A disparate patchwork that is in constant danger of falling apart, we wanted a cocktail with kick, but ended up with plain old fruit punch.

RATING: 2.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong