Spotlight

For F*** Magazine

SPOTLIGHT 

Director : Thomas McCarthy
Cast : Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, Brian d’Arcy James, Stanley Tucci, Billy Crudup
Genre : Drama
Run Time : 128 mins
Opens : 21 January 2016
Rating : NC-16 (Some Mature Content)

It was 2001, and facing great opposition, one small band of intrepid reporters uncovered the truth behind a string of child sex abuse cases. Spotlight tells their story. The Boston Globe’s new editor Marty Baron (Schreiber), arriving from Florida, reads a small column about a paedophile priest whom Boston’s Cardinal Law was aware of and yet did nothing to stop him. Baron assigns journalist Walter “Robby” Robinson (Keaton) and his team to go after what appears to be a much larger story. Alongside Robinson, Michael Rezendes (Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), Ben Bradlee Jr. (Slattery) and Matt Carroll (James) comprise the Spotlight team, the oldest newspaper investigative unit still active in the United States. Because of the sensitive nature of the case and how strongly institutional Catholicism figures in the city of Boston, the Spotlight team faces an uphill battle in illuminating the sobering, horrifying truth of the pattern of abuse that has been perpetuated by the city’s priests.

            Directed by Tom McCarthy and co-written by McCarthy and Josh Singer, Spotlight has emerged among the stronger contenders of the 2015-2016 awards race, premiering to “sustained applause” at the Venice Film Festival. As moviegoers, we’re used to seeing fearless, heroic reporters ducking out of the gun sights of assassins or going toe to toe with Lex Luthor, getting rescued by Superman at the last moment. Spotlight presents a portrait of real-life reporters and the good that they’re capable of doing. It’s a cinematic embodiment of journalistic integrity and a measured, objective handling of a potentially provocative topic. There’s nary a whiff of embellishment and McCarthy avoids a vulgar, sensationalistic approach to the subject matter at every turn. As the cliché goes, this is a movie about “men and women just doing their jobs”, and the realism and credibility McCarthy brings to the film is just the right way to celebrate the accomplishments of the Spotlight team.

            There’s a nobility and a worthiness to the story being told, of course, but seeing reporters standing around the bullpen comparing notes doesn’t exactly scream excitement. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi, who also lensed the Boston-set Black Mass, adds just the right amount of dynamism to the proceedings while restraining from distracting flashiness. There is a clarity to the progression of the story in the sequence of events without it getting too dry. At the same time, Spotlight never loses sight of the human toll of the case. A cleverly-edited sequence which intercuts Pfeifer and Rezendes interviewing two very different victims conveys how many young lives were affected by the scandal without descending into hokey sentimentality.

            Spotlight boasts a luminous ensemble cast who breathe life into unglamorous unsung heroes. Keaton doesn’t get as juicy a part as in the earlier award season darling Birdman, but is still able to bring a charisma to the role of the Spotlight team’s fearless leader. Schreiber’s Marty Baron is the outsider that is desperately needed to examine and evaluate the situation from a distance and without his impetus, the investigation probably wouldn’t have happened, or would at least have been significantly delayed. As a reporter who’s less of the plucky Lois Lane archetype she portrayed in State of Play, McAdams gets some excellent scenes where Pffeifer has to maintain her composure in difficult confrontations with victims and perpetrators alike.  Ruffalo is the stand-out as the dedicated, passionate, somewhat awkward Rezendes. He mostly plays opposite Tucci’s Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney representing the victims. Garabedian is prickly and suffers no fools, but is ultimately well-meaning. Michael Cyril Creighton and Neal Huff both turn in affecting performances as but two of the many victims traumatised in their youth.

            A level-headed telling of the events that’s not out to shock or function as a smear piece, Spotlight offers great insight into the way investigative reporters conduct their inquiries and the positive impact that their work can have. Sure, the quiet, even-handed approach favoured by McCarthy may sacrifice superficial excitement, but Spotlight’s lack of self-conscious prestige picture artifice is refreshing. Spotlight is more concerned with lauding the Boston Globe journalists than delivering a searing takedown of the Roman Catholic Church, which is just as well. Pragmatic without being detached, compelling without being heavy-handed, Spotlight’s unassuming nature is the ideal reflection of the work ethic displayed by the journalists it is about.

Summary: This account of the Spotlight team’s investigation into the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic archdiocese of Boston is concise, fair, dignified and respectful, brought to life by a powerhouse cast.

RATING: 4.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

Wild Card

For F*** Magazine

WILD CARD

Director : Simon West

Cast : Jason Statham, Michael Angarano, Dominik García-Lorido, Milo Ventimiglia, Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci

Genre : Action/Thriller

Run Time : 92 mins

Opens : 12 March 2015

Rating : M18 (Some Nudity & Violence)

If we were rich and famous and had our pick of any contemporary action star to be our bodyguard, we’d probably go for Jason Statham (if Dwayne Johnson were unavailable). In Wild Card, the Stath plays Nick Wild, a Las Vegas “security consultant” for hire. Young self-made millionaire Cyrus Kinnick (Angarano) procures Wild’s protection while he has a night on the town gambling. In the meantime, Wild’s ex-girlfriend Holly (García-Lorido) is dumped outside a hospital, having been beaten and raped and left barely alive. Wild somewhat reluctantly goes after the man responsible, gangster Danny DeMarco (Ventimiglia). Wild loathes Vegas, feeling trapped within the seedy confines of the city, and hopes to win big at the tables so he can cash in and move away to Corsica, leaving sin city behind.

            Wild Card is based on the book Heat, by nigh-legendary novelist and screenwriter William Goldman, whose credits include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and All The President’s Men. The book was the basis for a 1986 film starring Burt Reynolds. Goldman’s involvement seems to suggest that this just might be more than your run-of-the-mill Statham action vehicle. It’s different enough from typical Statham action fare, but not in a good way. Here’s the Catch-22 – most audiences are tired of the Brit playing the same character over and over again and yet, there’s also the comfort of knowing what you’re getting when you go to see a Jason Statham picture. Even if it’s mediocre – which they often are – at least there’ll be some cool stunts. Despite being marketed as an action movie, the fights in Wild Card are few and far between, with no big set-pieces whatsoever. Zero explosions, nobody hanging off the side of a hotel balcony, not even a car chase.

            Wild Card purports itself to be “character-driven”, which is becoming something of a buzz-phrase for action movies. There just isn’t enough to the Nick Wild character to help him stand out from the “cool heroes with impossibly awesome names” pack. The film stays purposely ambiguous on his backstory – he was probably in the military in some capacity, not that it really matters. There are glimmers of character development in that he’s the man about town and knows everybody in every corner. There just isn’t anything really distinctive to Nick and at the end of the day, audiences want to see Jason Statham wrestle bad guys, not wrestle with a gambling compulsion.

            There have been several disposable action flicks where the saving grace is a memorable, scenery-chomping villain. No such luck here. Instead, we get Milo Ventimiglia trying his best to be some shade of intimidating, which he doesn’t succeed at. As the tagalong kid, Michael Angarano is the dweeby semi-comic-relief, a sheltered rich kid who looks up to Nick for his toughness and swagger. There is an attempt to develop the relationship between the two characters but it fails to truly become anything interesting. There are several recognisable actors who pop up, but they do so for one scene each. Hi Sofia Vergara; bye Sofia Vergara. Hi Jason Alexander; bye Jason Alexander. Hi Stanley Tucci; bye Stanley Tucci. Of course, it is Tucci who makes the most impact, playing big-time Vegas crime boss “Baby” with his usual charisma.  The female characters don’t amount to very much either: Anne Heche plays a waitress and Hope Davis plays a croupier. Dominik García-Lorido is the victim-turned-Black-Widow, adding a dash of noir to the proceedings. There is one scene that will make all the men in the audience subconsciously cross their legs.

            Wild Card reunites Statham with Simon West, who directed him in The Mechanic and The Expendables 2. West is known for his bombastic action films and his forays into dramatic thriller territory such as The General’s Daughter are not well-regarded. There are many moments in Wild Card that made this reviewer think “this could make for a really cool TV show”. West consciously shies away from depicting Vegas as shiny and glamorous, instead embracing the seedy underbelly - and yet, he is obviously not the first director to give the town this treatment. There is one moment of striking symbolic imagery, with close-ups of a sewing needle piercing a cross-stitch Holly is working on as she recounts her sexual assault at Danny’s hands. Still, West can’t salvage this Jason Statham action movie that wants to be a Jason Statham drama but half-heartedly throws in a few punches and kicks just because it has to.

Summary: Wild Card is an episodic crime drama focusing on an uninteresting character instead of the action flick it’s advertised as. By the time Jason Statham takes on a bunch of thugs armed only with a butter knife and a spoon, it’s too little too late.  

RATING: 2 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

            

Transformers: Age of Extinction

For F*** Magazine

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

Director : Michael Bay
Cast : Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Li Bingbing, Sophia Myles, Titus Welliver, T. J. Miller and the voices of: Peter Cullen, Robert Foxworth, John Goodman, John DiMaggio, Ken Watanabe, Frank Welker
Genre : Action, Sci-Fi
Opens : 26 June 2014
Running time: 165 mins

Lord Bay of House Boom has returned locked and loaded for the fourth live-action Transformers film despite saying he would quit the franchise, this time with a new human cast. It has been four years since Chicago was decimated in the battle between Autobots and Decepticons and the U. S. government has decided to end their partnership with the Autobots, declaring them enemies. CIA official Harold Attinger (Grammer) is in charge of hunting them down, engaging the services of mercenary Savoy (Welliver) and ruthless Decepticon bounty hunter Lockdown (Ryan). Joshua Joyce (Tucci), owner of tech giant KSI, has a lucrative government contract to manufacture man-made facsimiles of the Transformers by reverse-engineering captured and dismantled Autobots and Decepticons. Meanwhile, Texan inventor Cade Yeager (Wahlberg), his best friend Lucas (Miller), his daughter Tessa (Peltz) and Tessa’s boyfriend Shane (Reynor) get drawn into the conflict when they unwittingly come into the possession of a beat-up old truck that just happens to be Optimus Prime (Cullen) himself. With the extinction of humanity imminent, Optimus and the remaining Autobots must defeat Attinger and the Decepticons in pursuit.

            Tennis champ Boris Becker said “you get used to eating caviar and at some point it tastes as ordinary as everything else.” In the context of action movies, explosions are akin to caviar. More doesn’t necessarily mean better, but director Michael Bay has wilfully rejected this notion and continues to stuff his films with more and more. He promised a “less goofy” outing but as this reviewer has learnt the hard way, a Michael Bay cannot change his spots. The elements in the second and third films that led to them being critically panned are still here, just in slightly more controlled doses. There’s still juvenile humour, there’s still racism and sexism, there’s still obnoxious product placement, the action scenes are still overwhelming flurries of whirling, clanging metal, it’s just reined in a bit and therefore slightly more tolerable than before. Bumblebee still talks using voice clips. Instead of an annoying actual dog, there’s an annoying homemade robot dog. Instead of Linkin Park, there’s Imagine Dragons. The film’s stabs at self-aware winking at the audience (an elderly movie theatre proprietor bemoans how all major releases are remakes and sequels) are more awkward and on the nose than anything else.

            Apologists of this film series have often used the “this is not Citizen Kane” argument. Well, even Citizen Kane had a running time of 119 minutes. This bad boy clocks in at 165 minutes, the longest Transformers movie yet. It’s overkill. Were this around 100 minutes long, we might’ve been really entertained. Still, there are definitely parts of the movie to commend. Bay and screenwriter Ehren Kruger have decided to make the human villain a CIA official, which combined with the decreased role of the military, makes this less of a jingoism party than the earlier films in the series. Having human scientists attempting to create their own Transformers without comprehending the danger and complexity of the technology is a perfectly viable angle to come at the story from, if somewhat Terminator-esque. And best of all, our protagonist is no longer the useless, unbearably annoying Sam Witwicky.

            Mark Wahlberg is certainly an upgrade from Shia LaBeouf, even if Marky Mech doesn’t break into an off-key rendition of the Transformers theme song “The Touch” like in Boogie Nights. Cade Yeager is a bundle of clichés: All-American everyman turned hero, amateur inventor whose workshop is filled with knick-knacks plus he’s an over-protective single dad who utterly disapproves of his daughter’s boyfriend just on principle. But Wahlberg being significantly less punch-worthy than LaBeouf makes a difference. Nicola Peltz of The Last Airbender infamy fulfils the pre-requisites of being the female lead in this series: she can’t act and she rocks the Daisy Dukes. Reynor is a typical modern Hollywood imported pretty-boy; some kind of attempt made at explaining away the Irish actor’s accent - Cade ends up disparagingly referring to his would-be son-in-law as “Lucky Charms”. Once again, at least he’s significantly less annoying than Shia LaBeouf.

            While Stanley Tucci is subjected to a good deal of embarrassment as a send-up of tech icons like Steve Jobs, he is spared the depths of indignity that the likes of John Turturro and John Malkovich suffered in the previous movies. Kelsey Grammer takes his role as primary human antagonist surprisingly seriously and his frighteningly pragmatic Attinger is a bright spot in the film, so many steps up from Patrick Dempsey in Dark of the Moon. Titus Welliver is also quite imposing and the sequence in which he pursues Cade as they cling to the exterior of a Hong Kong apartment building is plenty of fun. As the head of KSI in China, Li Bingbing is the stock boss lady and without Sally Cahill to dub over her like in Resident Evil: Retribution, she valiantly battles the English language. The voice acting is good as well, not only is definitive Optimus Prime performer Peter Cullen back, but the legendary Frank Welker reprises his role as Galvatron from the various animated series. Thankfully, Ken Watanabe and John Goodman’s distinct voices are still recognizable even after being treated with that robot voice filter. Watanabe also gets to deliver the film’s funniest line, Drift’s reaction upon first seeing the Dinobots transform.

            One thing has been true about this series: no matter how bad the rest of the film gets, the visual effects work certainly can’t be faulted and we’d like to salute visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and the armies of artists and technicians who brought the Autobots, Decepticons and those fan-favourite Dinobots to life. Amidst the bombast, we also get genuinely beautiful shots, like those of the Autobots convening in Monument Valley and a shot in which Lockdown’s ship is reflected in Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture. We saw this in IMAX 3D and even though it is often pretty to look at, the constantly shifting aspect ratios can be very distracting. Transformers: Age of Extinction is more bearable than Revenge of the Fallen and Dark of the Moon, albeit certainly not the paradigm shift in quality it is touted to be. But hey, this is a movie with a humanoid robot semi-truck astride a giant robot T-rex charging into battle, so it’s not like anything we say matters too much anyway.

SUMMARY: While relatively better than its predecessors thanks to more likeable leads and less superfluous subplots, many of the problems that plagued the earlier Transformers movies are still very present throughout the 165 minute duration.

Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor and Nicola Peltz do not love the smell of napalm any time of the day.

RATING: 2.5 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong 

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

For F*** Magazine

THE HUNGER GAMES: CATCHING FIRE

Director: Francis Lawrence
Cast:   Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Lenny Kravitz, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Toby Jones, Woody Harrelson, Jena Malone, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amanda Plummer, Lynn Cohen, Patrick St. Esprit, Meta Golding, Bruno Gunn, Alan Ritchson, E. Roger Mitchell, Maria Howell, Stephanie Leigh Schlund, Sam Claflin, Jeffrey Wright
Genre: Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
Run Time: 146 mins
Opens: 21 November 2013
Rating: PG13 (Some Violence)

2012 probably saw an uptick in the number of kids signing up for archery classes, characters like Merida from Brave and Hawkeye from The Avengers making a weapon dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic cool again. The figure who played the biggest part in this was Katniss Everdeen, the protagonist of the blockbuster adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series who returns in Catching Fire.



Katniss (Lawrence) and Peeta (Hutcherson) come home triumphant from the 74th annual Hunger Games and embark on a victory tour throughout the twelve districts of Panem, leaving behind loved ones including Katniss’ sweetheart Gale (Hemsworth). The autocratic ruler of Panem, President Snow (Sutherland), sees that Katniss and Peeta have given the masses hope and might have sown the seeds for a revolution. Together with the new gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Hoffman), he plans for Katniss and Peeta to take the fall in as dramatic a way as possible. For the 75th Hunger Games, the tributes are reaped from existing winners – meaning Katniss and Peeta are plunged back into the lion’s den and pitted against experienced killers. The pair work to form an alliance with the other tributes, including the dashing Finnick (Claflin), the elderly Mags (Cohen), rebellious and unpredictable Johanna (Malone), and the tech-savvy duo of Beetee (Wright) and Wiress (Plummer). Mentor Haymitch (Harrelson) warns that “there are no winners, only survivors” – and Katniss and Peeta learn just how right he is.



Young adult novels and film adaptations of said novels have earned something of a bad reputation, often associated with shallow romance and the inane cries of “woe is me”. The Hunger Games is a series that is firmly about something, exploring the idea of violence as the opiate of the masses through the eyes of a strong, relatable heroine. This film delves deeper into the futuristic dystopia that is Panem, having established what the Hunger Games are and being able to spend more time further developing the characters of Katniss and Peeta. Director Francis Lawrence (no relation to star Jennifer), known for films like Constantine, I Am Legend and Water for Elephants, takes the directorial baton from Gary Ross with an assured turn behind the camera, working from an eloquently-adapted screenplay by Oscar-winners Simon Beaufoy and Michael Arndt (credited here as Michael DeBruyn).



The immense success of the first film allowed this one a bigger budget, $140 million in comparison to $78 million. While an excellent film, The Hunger Games did suffer a tad in its production values and this film is definitely an improvement in that regard. For example, the murderous mandrills look better than the wolf-like Muttations in the first film. However, the film is not spectacle-driven and it is a good one and half hours before the 75th Hunger Games actually begin. The focus of this one is the aftermath of the events of the previous film and the toll that that experience has had on Katniss and Peeta, Katniss in particular emerging as a shell-shocked veteran, haunted by the carnage she bore witness to first-hand. It is to the filmmakers’ credit that just because the games haven’t begun proper, it doesn’t mean the proceedings are boring. Moments that are equal parts intense and emotional, including a scene in which Gale is flogged in public by the totalitarian “peacekeepers”, are not in short supply.



Jennifer Lawrence, now an Oscar-winner for The Silver Linings Playbook, makes a confident return to the role that made her a superstar. The character doesn’t sit around moping and licking her wounds, Lawrence excelling at showing the conflict between Katniss’ true anguish and the public façade she has to don in the midst of this life-or-death situation. Josh Hutcherson’s Peeta has not lost all of his idealism from the first film and learns to play to the cameras, though he wishes that the romance wasn’t all for show. Hutcherson ably supports the film’s leading lady alongside Woody Harrelson, Lenny Kravitz and Elizabeth Banks, all returning from the first film as the team who prepares Katniss and Peeta for the Games.



The casting in the first film was pitch-perfect, and that certainly continues in this film. Philip Seymour Hoffman effortlessly lends the picture gravitas as the sly master strategist Plutarch, sharing most of his scenes with Donald Sutherland – who is once again absolutely frightening without so much as lifting a finger. Also, since Toby Jones returns, this means there are two Truman Capotes in the same movie. The tributes who align themselves with Katniss and Peeta in the arena are all well-portrayed as well: Lynn Cohen bringing a warmth and sadness to the silent Mags, Jena Malone entertainingly spunky as Johanna, Sam Claflin suave and strapping as the sexy Finnick and Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer eccentric but reliable as Beetee and Wiress respectively. This is a bunch we truly can root for and yet are never 100% sure if they won’t turn on each other.



While The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is a solid film, it is very much a middle instalment in the vein of The Empire Strikes Back and viewers are advised to watch the first film beforehand. The events of this film are not cleanly resolved and it does end on a cliffhanger, but this does not feel like a lazy tactic and we are keenly looking forward to Mockingjay Part 1.

SUMMARY: This sequel sets the screen ablaze with an engrossing, masterfully-told follow-up to The Hunger Games. Now can we stop with the Twilight comparisons already?

RATING: 4 out of 5 Stars

Jedd Jong

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

For F*** Magazine

PERCY JACKSON: SEA OF MONSTERS

Director: Thor Freudenthal
Cast: Logan Lerman, Brandon T. Jackson, Alexandra Daddario, Jake Abel, Melina Kanakaredes, Brandon T. Jackson, Douglas Smith, Missi Pyle, Yvette Nicole Brown, Mary Birdsong, Nathan Fillion, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Head, Leven Rambin
Genre: Action, Fantasy
Run Time: 106 mins
Opens: 29 August 2013
Rating: PG (Some Violence And Frightening Scenes)

2010’s Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was generally written off as a big studio attempt to come out with a franchise to replace Harry Potter, which was nearing its end at the time. However, it did do well enough to warrant a follow-up, based on Rick Riordan’s second Percy Jackson novel, The Sea of Monsters. So, does this seafaring sequel stay afloat or leave the series dead in the water?

The film begins with a prologue depicting the origins of the protective shield around Camp Half-Blood, safe haven for demigods-in-training. When a familiar foe attacks, weakening the barrier and threatening the safety of the camp, Percy Jackson (Lerman), son of Poseidon, sets out to retrieve the fabled Golden Fleece, which will help heal the magical tree that is the source of the force-field. He is accompanied by Annabeth (Daddario), satyr friend Grover (Jackson) and his newfound Cyclopean half-brother Tyson (Smith). Together, they have to traverse the treacherous body of water of the title, more commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle. Percy’s competitive rival Clarisse (Rambin), the daughter of Ares, has also set out in search of the Fleece and must eventually team up with those she has scoffed.



The first film was an entertaining if rather derivative teenage-aimed fantasy-action flick that put several clever spins on Greek mythology, creatively integrating elements like the Lotus-eaters and the multi-headed hydra into a modern-day context. In that regard, this film is very similar, albeit a tad more lighthearted than its predecessor. It’s good to see a young adult novel adaptation that doesn’t take itself so seriously, considering how ridiculously po-faced a lot of them have gotten. It’s paced pretty well, has a straightforward “go get the macguffin!” plot (with the Golden Fleece in place of Zeus’ master lightning bolt) and has enough interesting visuals to hold the attention. For example, there’s a stunning, stylish stained-glass-style animated sequence which brings to mind the “Golden Army” animated prologue from Hellboy II.

Taking over the reins from Harry Potter alum Chris Columbus is Thor Freudenthal, director of Hotel for Dogs and the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid film, whose background is in conceptual and storyboard art. It’s a good thing that, given his résumé, the film doesn’t overly pander to the younger set and still packs decent amounts of excitement for the older kids and parents in the audience. The action set-pieces are not quite as strong as those in the first film, capped off with a slightly anti-climactic denouement set in an abandoned theme park. However, there still are some pretty cool moments, including an attack on the camp by the fire-breathing mechanical Colchis bull that looks like something out of Transformers: Beast Wars, as well as the appearance of the iridescent Hippocampus, a literal “sea horse” that is summoned so Percy and company can hitch a ride.



The central trio of Lerman, Daddario and Jackson appear comfortable stepping back into their roles, Lerman now able to play Percy as a slightly more experienced hero and leader. Newcomer Smith is endearing as the awkward, oafish but good-natured Tyson, who is met with initial hostility from Annabeth. Naturally, we are presented with the moral of learning to look past one’s appearances but hey, better than no character development at all. Rambin has fun with the part of the determined and confrontational warrior – the moral with Clarisse is, of course, the value of humility and trusting in the abilities of others. Thankfully, we don’t get beaten over the head with this. Abel does more unconvincing angsting and flat-line delivery as Luke, but doesn’t get a whole lot of screen time.

This film has to make do without the illustrious supporting cast of the first, the likes of Sean Bean, Uma Thurman, Rosario Dawson, Steve Coogan and Pierce Brosnan (he’s replaced by Anthony Stewart Head) all absent. That’s not to say it suffers overly for this, though: Stanley Tucci is funny as Dionysus, the god of wine, ecstasy and assorted hedonism-turned stir-crazy camp director and christened “Mr. D”. Nathan Fillion also pretty much steals the show in his one-scene cameo as Hermes, functioning as a Q-type character who dispenses a couple of nifty gadgets to Percy and friends. Being the fan-favourite herald of geekiness he is, Fillion gets to do a wink and a nod to the television shows he’s best known for, Firefly and Castle. Also worth a mention are Missi Pyle, Yvette Nicole Brown and Mary Birdsong as the Graeae; the bickering crones re-imagined as taxi drivers.




The film aspires to be nothing more than a fun, entertaining family adventure flick – and that, it is. We’ve seen these character types and story arcs before and yes, it's been scaled back a bit from Lightning Thief, but the decent visual effects work and ADI’s make-up and animatronic effects make this a lively ride. The novelty of a world in which the tales of Greek myth are all true and lurk beneath the surface of our contemporary existence is put to amusing use, and a third film certainly wouldn’t be something we’d be vehemently against.

SUMMARY: A generally enjoyable adventure that, in spite of several well-worn elements, has enough vim and verve to keep audiences, kids in particular, interested. Also, the 3D’s not half bad!

RATING: 3.5 out of 5 STARS

Jedd Jong