Dark Shadows

For F*** Movie Magazine Singapore

Movie Review                                                                                                                    25/4/12

DARK SHADOWS

(2012)

Starring: Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer, Eva Green

Directed by: Tim Burton

            Tim Burton seems to have found his magic formula for success: slap pale makeup onto Johnny Depp, dress him in Colleen Atwood-designed costumes and have Danny Elfman playing in the background. Here, Burton and his muse take on Dark Shadows, the ‘60s supernatural soap opera created by Dan Curtis. There have been several attempts to revive the series, all falling flat. Do Burton and Depp fare any better?

            Depp plays Barnabas Collins, the wealthy heir to a fishery empire, whose family had relocated from Liverpool to Maine in the 18^th Century. Servant girl Angelique (Green) has fallen for him, but Barnabas spurns her love for Josette (Bella Heathcote). Angelique, secretly a witch, kills Barnabas’ parents, his true love and curses Barnabas to become a vampire. The angry townspeople lock him in a steel coffin and bury him alive.

            200 years later, a construction crew unearths Barnabas’ coffin, and the awoken vampire returns home to Collinswood, the crumbling family mansion. It is now inhabited by Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Pfeiffer) and her nuclear family, including brother Roger (Jonny Lee Miller), rebellious daughter Carolyn (Chloe Moretz), nephew David (Gulliver McGarth), drunken housekeeper Willie (Jackie Earle Haley) and live-in psychiatrist Dr Hoffman (Helena Bonham Carter) and new arrival governess Victoria Winters (Heathcote) – seemingly a reincarnation of Josette. Barnabas goes about trying to rebuild the family name and fortune, while thwarting the machinations of Angelique – still alive and running the rival Angelbay Seafood business.

            When the trailer for the film was released, many criticised the apparently comedic tone of the film, especially when compared to the deadly serious source material. In the hands of Johnny Depp, Barnabas has become his usual quirky, fish-out-of-water (fitting given the fishery town setting) eccentric. Much of the film plays on his unfamiliarity with 70’s-era America, and while some moments are amusing, other gags are about as old as Barnabas himself.

            The main thing going for Dark Shadows is its 70s setting, as reinterpreted by Tim Burton. His gothic sensibilities and the age of hippies and bad haircuts may seem odd bedfellows, but the collision of these two worlds is visually arresting and undoubtedly stylish, and there’s plenty of nostalgia to be had between the lava lamps, the Carpenters and Alice Cooper as himself (whom Barnabas dubs “the ugliest woman I’ve ever seen”).

The cast is also fairly impressive and generally well-chosen.  Femme fatale Eva Green clearly enjoys vamping (heh) it up and Chloe Moretz gives her a run for her money, which wouldn’t be so unsettling if the actress wasn’t 15 years old. Michelle Pfeiffer makes for a good lady-of-the-house, and Helena Bonham Carter is typically, entertainingly nuts. Bella Heathcote lends a wide-eyed, other-worldly appeal to Josette/Victoria, but is otherwise weaker than her cast mates. There’s also a cameo from another famous cinematic vampire, who has previously played Depp’s father in another Burton film.

            Beyond that however, the cracks start to show, just as they do on Angelique’s face. The film struggles to find a cohesive tone, and the horror and comedy elements don’t blend as well as they should. Burton’s fascination with the grotesque overwhelms other components of the film, and there consequently isn’t much room for meaningful character development. Sometimes the campy approach works for the movie, but just as many times it works against it, diminishing any semblance of weight.

            Another point of contention is that Burton seems to be cribbing from another famous gothic TV family, as evidenced by the film’s tagline “strange is relative” being uncannily similar to “weird is relative”. Truth be told, Morticia, Wednesday, Lurch and Uncle Fester are generally more interesting to watch than the Collins-Stoddards.

            Long-time fans of Burton, Depp and especially the two together are likely to enjoy this, but it’s really more of the same from both, and is nowhere near as inventive or clever as it imagines itself to be. Still, if it’s a vampire having a chat with hippies you’re after, you won’t be too disappointed.

SUMMARY: Aimed squarely at those who speak Burton-ese, but unlikely to make converts of those who don’t, leaving them in the shadows.

RATING: 3/5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Marvel's The Avengers

For F*** Magazine

Movie Review                                                                                                              1/5/12

MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS

(2012)

Starring: Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo

Directed by: Joss Whedon

Marvel Studios/Paramount Pictures/Walt Disney Pictures

           

            Ah, it feels like 2008 all over again. This summer’s crop of blockbusters seems to be a bountiful harvest, the likes of which have not been seen since that glorious year. In addition to traditional action movie fare, we’re getting two Marvel movies and a Batman sequel – just like in 2008! Thing is, since Iron Man and the Incredible Hulk, Marvel has given us the likes of Iron Man 2, Thor and Captain America, carefully constructing their movie universe – and DC has given us, uh, Green Lantern.

            The capstone to Marvel’s movie pyramid is this, The Avengers, the long-awaited mother of all team-ups first hinted at by S.H.I.E.L.D spymaster Nick Fury (Samuel L Jackson) in the post-credits sequence for Iron Man. Here, Fury wrangles up Iron Man/Tony Stark (Downey Jr), Bruce Banner/The Hulk (Ruffalo), Captain America/Steve Rogers (Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow/Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye/Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner). Their opponent: Thor’s vengeful half-brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), who brings with him the alien Chitauri army to wreak havoc on earth. However, the in-fighting and ego clashes within the team itself threaten to break the heroes apart before the villains do.

           “Big man in a suit of amour,” Thor challenges Tony. “Take that away and what are you?” The movie's “suit of armour” would have to be its lavish production design, visual effects that are as high in quality as they are quantity and all the hype and marketing (Avengers cologne? Seriously?) However, take that away and the audience is left fleshed-out characters, a well-constructed mesh of a story, firecracker dialogue and solid performances across-the-board. This is something of a feat considering the immense scale, heavyweight ensemble and various other factors.

            Writer-director Joss Whedon is a self-professed comics super-fanboy and a veteran of cult-favourite TV shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly, and knows a thing or two about character development. Here, he has managed to make a team-up movie that is more than the sum of its parts and that doesn’t collapse under its own weight. Everyone gets their time to shine, which could have well been a problem with all the comic book personalities jostling for the spotlight. His agile screenplay is also quick with the quips, including such gems as Iron Man’s ribbing of Thor (“doth mother know you weareth her drapes?”), S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Captain America fanboy Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) telling his hero “I watched you while you slept”, and Captain America instructing “Hulk? Smash.”

            The film is fine as a stand-alone piece, although it does help to have watched the earlier Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. It’s actually a good thing that almost everyone has played their characters before, and return to the roles with much ease. Robert Downey Jr is all snarky machismo as usual, Chris Evans ably portrays the old-fashion hero flung into a chaotic modern world, Chris Hemsworth channels a slightly more matured demigod that is still prone to brashness and Scarlett Johansson kicks more butt, though she faces competition from Cobie Smulders as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill, who frankly looks better in a catsuit. Mark Ruffalo is the newcomer, filling in for Edward Norton. Ruffalo possesses a scruffy, mild-mannered charm, and while his Banner is a close second to Norton’s (tied with Eric Bana’s), it works better for the team movie than his predecessor’s does. Oh, and there’s Jeremy Renner as the least interesting character – he does what he can, which is mostly looking cool with a bow and arrow.

            Tom Hiddleston is back as Loki, who was also the main villain of Thor. He portrays Thor’s adopted brother as something of a maniacal old-fashioned supervillain, prone to cackling, commanding people to kneel before him and launching into the occasional “puny earthlings” speech. Problem is, Loki’s vendetta is more with Thor himself than with the whole gang, and the Chitauri amount to nothing more than backup singers. It makes one wonder who might have been a better candidate for the villain of the piece. A mid-credits bonus scene promises that things will get worse for the Avengers in the sequel, though.

            Lest this review make the movie sound like an intimate character drama (it was codenamed “Group Hug” during production), rest assured that there is spectacle galore. There is a clever mix of big-scale action sequences and smaller hand-to-hand brawls, and the sets – which include the helicarrier, the airborne headquarters of the team, a crumbling Russian warehouse where Black Widow fights would-be interrogators, a Stuttgart opera house and the climactic battle against the alien invaders in New York, are all excellent playing fields for things to unfold. However, this sometimes borders on visual overkill, with so much happening so fast. The use of post-converted 3D is among the most effective ever though.

Marvel has been pretty consistent with the movies that make up their Cinematic Universe and produced by their own studio, and continue the trend with their biggest yet. All the components that make a successful comic book movie blockbuster have been welded together, spray-painted with nice glossy colours and packaged in a pretty box. To follow through with the analogy, it would fly off the shelves just like the actual Avengers action figures probably will.

SUMMARY: The crown jewel of the Marvel movie crown is a big, sparkly rock that was worth every penny it took to get it made.

RATING: 4/5 STARS

Jedd Jong

           

The Raven

For F*** Magazine

Movie Review                                                                                                                   16/4/12

THE RAVEN

(2012 Release)

Starring: John Cusack, Luke Evans, Alice Eve

Directed by: James McTeigue

            In National Treasure, America’s founding fathers were the guardians of a secret treasure stash. In the Men In Black films, Elvis, Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone (who is coincidentally planning his own Poe biopic) are aliens. The Brothers Grimm fought mythical monsters. Here, Edgar Allan Poe is roped in by Baltimore’s finest to solve a series of murders based on his stories. This may not seem as impressive, but taking into account the legendary author’s dark imagination and famously macabre stories, the crimes are pretty gruesome. This is the guy credited with the creation of the modern horror and detective stories, after all.

            There is tremendous potential in the idea of Poe pitted against a killer who takes direct inspiration from his tales. Unfortunately, most of it is squandered in favour of unsophisticated slasher movie fare. “People love blood and murder”, Reynolds (Kevin R McNally) the newspaper editor tells Poe. And in that respect, the movie delivers – the most gruesome murder happens relatively early on in the movie, where the victim is cut in half by a lowering bladed pendulum, something out of a Saw film – though Poe did it first in The Pit and the Pendulum.

Problem is, more people are likely to have a Saw film than read Poe’s story.

            John Cusack’s Poe is quite a disappointment. He’s portrayed as the typical eccentric artist, and there’s no mystique or danger, especially given the enigma the real Poe was. Cusack also doesn’t fit into the period surroundings at all; one would half expect him to lift a ghetto blaster over his head. At its worst, it brings to mind Nicolas Cage – not a good thing.

            Inspector Fields, as played by Luke Evans, is earnest, hardworking, dedicated – and absolutely one-note and boring. The interesting dynamic that might have existed between the author and the policeman is all but absent. The inclusion of Alice Eve as Emily Hamilton, a love interest for Poe, is done rather lazily, considering that he had a wife but was famously asexual and apparently only loved her platonically. But that would have been too difficult to portray and would have gotten in the way of the pulpy thrills now, wouldn’t it? And so, she’s quickly put in jeopardy as a motivator for Poe, and to force Poe and her disapproving father (Brendan Gleeson) to work together.   

            When the identity of the killer is revealed, it is more likely to induce an indifferent “meh” as opposed to the desired “gasp!” And that’s the cardinal sin when it comes to whodunits. Director James McTeigue also delights in heavy-handed faux-symbolism – just because the title of the movie is “The Raven” doesn’t mean one or more of the birds have to flutter into frame in every other scene. However, the art direction and the re-creation of 19^th Century Baltimore are generally pretty good.

So, this is pretty much average Poe.

PS: I take offense to the newspaper editor dismissing criticism (i.e. reviews) as “the easy stuff”.

SUMMARY: I’m no Poe, so the best I can come with is “you won’t be ravin’ about The Raven”. Hey, give me points for trying.

RATING: 2/5 STARS

Jedd Jong

Battleship

Movie Review                                                                                                                   17/4/12

BATTLESHIP

(2012 Release)

Starring: Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgard, Rihanna, Liam Neeson

Directed by: Peter Berg

 

            After the 3-D re-release of Titanic comes more giant ships and another ‘berg (director Peter). I fondly remember playing the board game with my brother on boring Chinese New Year afternoons visiting my grandmother’s house. I also remember attempting to play the game on a plane and losing some pegs. I don’t it ever crossed my mind that the game would make a good movie, and as far as I remember, aliens weren't involved.

            Alex Hopper (Kitsch), a 20-something ne'er do well, is forced to join the Navy by his older brother Stone (Skarsgard), after the former pulls a crazy stunt to win over the attractive Sam (Brooklyn Decker). Sam also happens to be the daughter of Admiral Shane (Neeson), Stone’s superior. Several years later, Alex has become a lieutenant aboard the USS John Paul Jones, and is about to seek permission from the Admiral for his daughter’s hand in marriage.

            While Alex and Stone, serving on different ships, participate in the RIMPAC naval exercise alongside the navies of countries across the world, alien ships land in the waters near Hawaii, as one crashes into Hong Kong. Having lost their communication equipment onboard the crashed ship, the aliens plan to hijack a NASA satellite array to call their home planet for reinforcements. Alex and co, including weapons specialist Petty Officer Raikes (Rihanna) and Japanese Captain Nagata (Tadanobu Asano) attempt to repel the invaders.

            To draw another connection to Titanic, James Cameron has famously lambasted the film while it was in production stages, saying “we have a story crisis. Now they want to make the Battleship game into a film. This is pure desperation...Battleship. This degrades the cinema.” Many cynical moviegoers echoed this sentiment when the project was announced, but in the end, Battleship really isn’t all that bad compared to the mass-produced action movie garbage we get fed every summer. It isn’t all that good either, though.

            Sure, it’s loud, silly and pretty generic, but Battleship isn’t all flotsam. For one, the film displays a hint of winking self-awareness, as if the screenwriters knew they were recruited to craft an audience-pleasing blockbuster and nothing more. There are attempts to reference the gameplay of the original board game, and the aliens use projectiles shaped like the pegs used in game. Apparently, Admiral Shane was supposed to say “you sunk my battleship”, but it was (wisely) left out of the final cut.

            The visual effects are of high quality and fairly photo-realistic, but the alien invaders and their arsenal immediately bring to mind another Hasbro-product-based movie, and it’s not G.I. JOE. Bits and pieces seem like leftover animation from those films, but thankfully Peter Berg is much less of a hack than Michael Bay. The aliens themselves are amphibian-esque humanoids in Iron Man-style exo-suits, and employ “shredders”, circular saws on steroids, to rip through ships, highways and military bases. The main flaw in the design of the aliens is that they are far too humanoid and visually not very interesting. It would have more interesting if the movie revolved around naval strategy and pitted two rival fleets against each other rather than resorting to the extraterrestrial threat plot device.

            As for the movie’s human cast, Taylor Kitsch is able to muster more charisma here than he did in John Carter, and is far better as a modern military man than a Civil War-era one. Alexander Skarsgard, best-known for TV’s True Blood and for being the son of Swedish actor Stellan, is also not bad as the serious, responsible big brother.

Liam Neeson has no problem furrowing his brow and barking commands, and Brooklyn Decker as his daughter delivers the performance one might expect from a swimsuit model, though slightly better than that of her peer Rosie Huntington-Whitely in last year’s ghastly Transformers: Dark of the Moon. There’s a nice subplot involving Sam stuck on Oahu with army combat veteran and double-amputee Mick Canales (Gregory D Gadson) and Cal (Hamish Linklater), the stock nerdy comic relief scientist.

Rihanna’s appearance is the product of nothing less than stunt casting. What, was Michelle Rodriguez otherwise occupied? The Barbadian singer seems incapable of pulling of the tough chick shtick, and it doesn’t get more unbelievable than the “Umbrella” singer playing a gun-toting weapons specialist. At least she doesn’t single-handedly ruin the movie, as she well could have.

            The best thing that I can say about Battleship is that it is nowhere as bad as it could have been, and when it comes to big-budget alien invasion military recruitment poster flicks, you could do worse.

             

          The worst thing that I can say about Battleship is that Rihanna is a weapons specialist.

SUMMARY: This dreadnought is not completely dreadful, but its hull isn’t watertight either – but it does have big guns and fires them often.

RATING: 2.5/5 STARS 

Jedd Jong

Lockout

For F*** Magazine Singapore.

Movie Review                                                                                                             16/4/12

LOCKOUT

(2012 Release)

Starring: Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Peter Stormare

Directed by: James Mather and Stephen St. Leger

         

            Looking at today’s crop of action movies, it’s easy to become sentimental and nostalgic about the good old days of macho one-man-army action heroes with bulging biceps and even bigger guns, delivering headshots one second and corny, quotable one-liners the next. For fans of the era, especially those who grew up on such movies, Lockout is one such wonderful blast to the past.

            Sure, this sci-fi actioner is set in 2097, but boy does it feel old school. Just look at the plot: ex-CIA agent Snow (Pearce) has been framed for the murder of a former colleague. Secret Service chief Scott Langral (Stormare) gives him one chance at redemption: rescue Emilie Warnock (Grace), daughter of the President of the United States (Peter Hudson). She just happens to be stuck on MS-One, a super maximum security prison complex in orbit around the earth – and the 500 psychopaths once peacefully stored in stasis have taken over.

            Are you having flashbacks of Escape from New York and (perhaps even more so) its sequel Escape from L.A.? Lockout brings to mind a whole bunch of other sci-fi/action/both cult classics too, with its future-Chinatown right out of Blade Runner, Battlestar Galactica-style space fighter planes, Die Hard-esque scenario and “gyrocycles” that look suspiciously like Tron’s lightcycles. It’s okay if you aren’t original, as long as you make something out of all the borrowed parts that is entertaining – and boy, if this isn’t entertaining, I don’t know what is.

            From start to finish, this is a breathlessly rollicking ride. The action is wham-bam, non-stop and unrelenting, yet somehow coherent and enjoyable. Guy Pearce’s Snow is as old-fashioned as action heroes get. He displays the right mix of cocky self-assurance, badass physicality and comic timing to pull off what is essentially a homage to the days of Schwarzenegger and Van Damme, albeit with better English, and acting. His every other line is a witticism of some kind, and some are pretty good - turning a good portion of the film into a genuine laugh-riot.

            Maggie Grace, known for her appearance in the earlier Luc Besson-produced Taken is at first glance your typical First Daughter, but successfully toes the line between damsel-in-distress and Ripley-style action heroine (her prowess with a gun leads Snow to quip “and I thought you were a Democrat!”) and has a nice back-and-forth banter with her leading man, and the film doesn’t resort to a romantic plot tumour.

The films lead villains, a pair of Scottish thug brothers, don’t actually do a lot during the film, but are plenty scary as is – especially Joseph Gilgun as the chaotically-deranged Hydell. Peter Stormare is one of those actors who can lend gravitas to proceedings just by standing around and is content with appearing in B-grade-or-lower genre pictures, which helps.

A large part of the movie’s success has to do with MS-One being a convincing location, and the audience is effectively sucked in and feels trapped on the space prison with Snow and Emilie. The movie is heavily reliant on CGI and yes, the visuals aren’t as convincing as we’re used to and sometimes the reliance on the technology borders on egregious, but then again we’ve been spoilt by the likes of Avatar (this movie somehow works in the line “I see you”) and Transformers, and this film was made for a fraction of the budget of either.

Ultimately, that’s the core strength of this flick – it makes no bones about being a B-movie, and it’s refreshing to see a quality action film that isn’t overly processed and packaged. In not taking itself too seriously, it is strangely honest despite “stealing” from many other films. There’s an unpolished rough-around-the-edges charm, and once this is understood it is very easy to totally go along for the ride.

SUMMARY:  (Lock)out with the new, and back in with the old – relive the heyday of the mid-budget sci-fi actioner, complete with space fighter planes.

RATING: 3.5/5 STARS

Jedd Jong

The Hunger Games review published!

Thanks to Royston Loh, editor of F*** Magazine, for publishing my review of The Hunger Games in the April issue.

Justice League: Doom

Movie Review                                                                                                             31/3/12

JUSTICE LEAGUE: DOOM

2012

Starring the voices of: Kevin Conroy, Tim Daly, Susan Eisenberg

Directed by: Lauren Montgomery

Based on the “Tower of Babel” storyline from the JLA comics, the latest in DC’s line of animated films, Justice League: Doom tells the story of how Batman’s healthy paranoia and hyper-preparedness get turned against him. Batman’s fiendishly clever contingency plans to immobilize the Justice League in case they go rogue get stolen and used without his consent. The perpetrator is the immortal warlord Vandal Savage, who has assembled the Legion of Doom, comprised of supervillains who each hold a vendetta against a member of the Justice League.

Justice League Doom has a great voice cast, mostly comprising players from the original Justice League animated series. You’ve got Kevin Conroy as Batman, Tim Daly as Superman, Susan Eisenberg as Wonder Woman, Michael Rosenbaum as Flash and Carl Lumbly as Martian Manhunter. New to the crew is Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern, the role many argue he should have had in the live-action movie. There’s a synergy that only comes from a cast having worked together for a while, and benefits the film greatly.

There’s a good deal of action and the movie is pretty well-paced. It opens with a bank heist by the Royal Flush Gang, and then segues into a frenetic sequence of the individual members of the League being put through their paces. Each bit is inventive and suspenseful – however, it can be hard keeping track of five or six scenes intercut simultaneously. There’s also a bit of a problem when it comes to the villains – the Legion of Doom are mostly comprised of such second-stringers as Mirror Master, Star Sapphire and Bane. Speaking of Bane, his costume in this one looks terrible. It’s a good thing then that the League themselves and, primarily, Batman, are the main focus

The animation looks good, the style is nothing too edgy or inaccessible, but is stylish thanks in part to the anime influence. The action sequences are sufficiently eye-popping and visually exciting. Justice League Doom is also a good way to remember the late screenwriter Dwayne MacDuffie by, and is a decent movie in its own right.

EXTRAS:

There’s a wonderful and emotional tribute to Dwayne McDuffie, consisting of interviews with former colleagues and loved ones, telling the story of the trail-blazing whiz-kid who revolutionised animation and comic books with such titles as Static Shock, Justice League and Ben 10.

There are featurettes about Batman’s relationship with the League and about Cyborg, who was not in the original Tower of Babel story. Rounding out the features are a commentary, a digital comic book of the Tower of Babel story, two episodes from the Justice League series and a peek at the upcoming Superman vs The Elite.

RATING:  MOVIE: 3.5/5 STARS  

                 EXTRAS: 4/5 STARS