12 Monkeys

Running Time: 127 minutes.

Media: DVD.

This is by far one of the weirdest films out... one of the few time-travel films that still requires me to view over and over again just to make some semblance of sense of it.

12 Monkeys is one of the types of movies that requires maybe one or two viewings to finally get a hang of what's going on. I say this as it seems the film kinda combines a number of time frames and as a result one needs to focus carefully on where and where Bruce Willis' character, James Cole is in... Madeline Stowe plays a somewhat paranoid psychiatrist, Kathryn Railly who gets embroiled with James' time travel adventures, much against her want... Add the zany antics of Brad Pitt as a fanatical animal rights activist and mental patient and you have all the chemistry you need to get a film that kinda loses the audience... And the plot...

To give you a quick run-down on the basic premise of the film - a super duper virus has been released back in 1996, resulting in deaths of pandemic proportions. As a result, the human race has been forced to venture underground to survive... Fast toward some forty, maybe fifty years onwards and the world as we know it seems to have taken on a cross between steampunk, UFC fighting stadiums and New York sewers... James Cole has been given the task to travel back in time, find out what caused the virus and stop it from ever spreading to begin with... James keeps having these dreams of witnessing a guy get shot at an airport as a child, which are apparently repressed childhood memories...

Terry Gilliam directs this film, which kinda explains the costume and stage design for the post-apocalyptic world, and possibly the scripting of Brad Pitt's lines... The film had my head scratching, wondering why the world supposedly seemed to regress in terms of technology, fashion and I'd have to add, intellect...

The film is great in the way it twists and turns, eventually closing the loop in the end... There are a few areas that seemed a bit on the fake side, like the color in David Morse's hair in the film. I guess, the delivery of Stowe's performance seemed a little unbelievable as well... However, there is some light at the end of the tunnel; what with Brad Pitt's performance which resulted in Pitt being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he also won a Golden Globe for his role in the film. Real comic geeks may recognize one of Kathryn Railly's colleagues as being played by Frank Gorshin, who played the role of the Riddler in the 1960's TV series of Batman.

Would I watch this film again? Yes, though not terribly soon... Although it's a great film, the movie seems to get caught up in itself so much, the audience is left wondering what the hell is happening, and you find yourself a little cheated in the end, especially with not having seen the ending in your mind sooner... Bear in mind, this movie is a re-write of the French film La Jetée, a film made in 1962, of which I've yet to see, but will in the near future... 12 Monkeys borrows a number of components from its predecessor and makes it a worthy film, even though it does go over the top at times... I'm giving this film four stars as a result.

Jaws

Running Time: 124 minutes.

Media: DVD.

This was made the year before I was born... And who would have thought that a movie slightly older than the Movie Madman would still shock him enough to still have a fear of open water... I kid you not, it is partially due to Jaws that I hate going into the open water... swimming pools, not too bad; the bathtub, no problem... Bondi Beach, jet-skiing, rubber dinghies... hell no!

On the lighter side of things, Jaws, which has been cited as one of the greatest movies of all time is still a bloody great movie... A fantastic soundtrack (including one very enthusiastic cellist who obviously relished the opportunity to put his abilities to the ultimate test and make themselves immortal!)

So where do we begin? We have the quiet little town of Amity Island, whose police chief Martin Brody becomes involved in a series of not-so-quiet series of shark attacks... He joins forces with Robert Shaw, who plays professional shark hunter Quint, and marine biologist Matthew Hooper, played by a bearded Richard Dreyfuss to hunt down the mammoth of a great white shark that's decided that Amity Island is their idea of a summer smorgasbord... 

I won't give too much of the plot away, as I'm not one for spoilers, but given that there were three sequels made to the original film, which ultimately kinda went in a downhill direction, (and I will prove this statement in later reviews when I can get around to viewing these sequels) that it's safe to say that more shark hijinks are set to be seen as the sequels progress!

Enthusiasts of the book Moby Dick will appreciate some peculiar similarities with respect to Quint and his literary counterpart of Captain Ahab, which pepper themselves throughout the movie. There is also the notable theme of the political imbecile that doesn't want to endanger the town's economic health and so lets things continue to escalate until it's almost too late... I hate these token characters as they are so formulaic that I could solve them for x, the unknown quantity... Well, I can't call it an unknown quantity... in the case of such token political comedy relief characters, it's sheer ignorance and stupidity... this is by no means a fault of the writers, it's something that's essential to carry the storyline through to its inevitable conclusion and when you think about it, if these political characters didn't act the way they did, the story would be cut dramatically short... 

Observe, this is by no means the actual plot, so no spoilers here, folks:

Hero: There's sharks attacking people, we need to close the beaches to stop more people getting killed.

Politician: You're absolutely right, close the beaches, we need to think about the townspeople.

[Hero closes beach, everyone lives, movie ends 75 minutes prematurely ]

Like I said, these political imbecile token characters are a necessary evil, but it is these same characters that make us want to throw a shoe at the TV screen in the vain hope that it will scone the idiot on the head... What can I say? This aside, the effects are fantastic, including the final scene, which I cannot divulge (even though most people will see it coming!), the acting is fairly spot-on for the kind of movie that it is, and it is for this reason I am awarding Jaws 4½ stars...

Legion

Running Time: 100 minutes.

Media: DVD.

This film, I must admit is a bit of a mind-f[CENSORED]k to a degree... Let me be honest here, we're dealing with an angel, Michael, the archangel, no less, who falls to Earth, cuts his wings off and tries to stop an apocalypse of epic proportions and save the cigarette-smoking mother-to-be of what is to be the savior of mankind.

Paul Bettany comes across as the very serious, and very well-armed archangel Michael; with Kevin Durand (known for his role as Fred J. Dukes, aka Blob from X-Men Origins: Wolverine) as the archangel Gabriel, Michael's "nemesis". Other old-school actors like Dennis Quaid, Charles S. Dutton, Tyrese Gibson, and Kate Walsh join the cast as well as a number of unknowns including some weird-ass old lady who likes to crawl up ceilings, and an ice-cream truck driver who makes the Frankenstein monster seem tame by comparison...

Movie review websites Rotten Tomatoes, Dread Central and BloodyDisgusting.com all gave reviews for this film with ratings between 10-20% and to be perfectly honest, I can see why.. This film is kinda pathetic, it's an apocalypse supernatural thriller film thinly disguised to be a serious apocalypse supernatural thriller. There's supposed deep and meaningful moments that contrast heavily amongst the somewhat bad acting that make the actors on Saved by the Bell seem like Emmy Award-winning actors. Durand, for some reason sounds too poetic and softly spoken in this film... Quaid's performance is wooden, and I'm starting to think he's been losing his touch after Vantage Point came out in 2008.

As this is the first time I've seen this movie, I had had some expectations, but I found this to be a considerable disappointment. I have decided to give this movie one star... Yes, that's right... one star... this is the lowest official rating I have given for a film and to be perfectly honest... I'm starting to think the film Michael, starring John Travolta was a far better film than this... And even for me that's a bit of a stretch... Legion is a hundred minutes of my life that I will never get back...

Safe House (2012)

Running Time: 117 minutes.

Media: Cinematic screening.

A few weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity of watching this movie with my girlfriend in the Gold Class cinemas at Castle Hill's Event Cinema Megaplex. This wasn't my first time in Gold Class, but bearing in mind that my first film I saw at Gold Class was James Cameron's Avatar, which was a whopping 171 minutes, and in 3D I didn't have much time to truly investigate the environment I was to watch this film.

The food was excellent and was served promptly... The shredded pork nachos was to die for... as well as their "Dynamite Squid"... I enjoyed these on chairs that I never knew until recently were capable of reclining! Why didn't I know this in my first trip back in 2009??

Anyhow, I digress... I'll probably put in a post some time later about cinemas and the like, but for the mean time, it's back to the review! Safe House, geez.. I came out of this blown away by the incredible "BAM!" factor that kept repeating itself over and over and over again... Surprisingly, you don't get bored of this, because you keep anticipating when it's gonna happen, and you miss it... and then as soon as your guard lowers, "BAM!" - they hit you again! I think I experienced this in at least five separate moments throughout the film, as I lost count after that. Ryan Reynolds plays his part well as a low-level CIA agent, Matthew Weston, who acts as a "housekeeper", an agent who maintains a safe house in South Africa. Along comes a convoy of agents, who with Denzel Washington, who plays ex-CIA agent (now turned rogue), Tobin Frost, become the target of a group of assassins. Both Frost and Weston escape, part ways, re-unite, ad nauseum; but with multiple action sequences in between...

Suffice it to say, you are NEVER gonna be bored with this one. Denzel, regardless of his character, regardless of which film he stars in, is always is cool and calm... That's just Denzel... Ryan on the other hand, could very well be our next brand of action hero; always thinking on his feet and thorough. I will confess, in the Ryan side of things... this film craps all over Green Lantern. I'm sorry, Ryan... a lot of people crapped on that film a lot... I do like Green Lantern, but Safe House is far better.

I have one teeny, tiny little problem with this film... and it's not my fault, let alone theirs... well, okay, maybe it is their fault, a bit... The film falls flat in one area, and that is with the incorporation of a character called "Ana Moreau", played by actress and singer Nora Arnezeder... I found her character flat and dimensionless, and to be perfectly honest, it seems she was added into the screenplay to pad it a little and to give the character of Weston a little more emotional depth... I personally feel that the movie would have worked just as well without her and that while her being in this film did allow the movie to end on a more peaceful note, the writers did not even do so well in that either. As a result, I can't give Safe House the five-star rating it deserves.

Regardless of this, the film, featuring twists you could never see coming, as well as an incredible panorama of the culture and life of South Africa, where this movie was filmed; Safe House, receives 4½ stars.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Running Time: 127 minutes.

Media: Cinematic screening.

One of the hardest things one can do is take a book and turn it into a film. A number of books have successfully made it because they are part of a series. Other films, based on a singular storyline, however are the ones that tend to be heavily scrutinized and as a result usually end up coming up trumps. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is no exception to this rule.

John Le Carré, who originally wrote this book back in 1974 would be incredibly pleased with the results in my personal opinion. The film takes place back in 1973, around the time Le Carré first published the novel, and the atmosphere and suspense in this film are kept remarkably well. The colors are washed out perfectly, the wardrobe and authenticity of the era are captured with clockwork precision. The only exception I could make was the haircut given to Benedict Cumberbatch who plays Peter Guillam, an associate of the main character, George Smiley, a retired agent with British Intelligence who has been summoned to investigate the possibility of a Russian mole within the current administration at British Intelligence.

This film at just over two hours, seems to be slow at first, as very little is said, particularly by Gary Oldman (who plays Smiley). However, despite the drab surroundings and often quite "loud" silences, the movie takes on a more biotic quality. It... for the lack of a better phrase, breathes.. the movie literally breathes and moves with the characteristic of a living thing... Although you think "Thank God, he's finally speaking..." you begin to wonder whether it's really all that necessary that he does!

This movie has been nominated for several awards at the Academy Awards as well as the BAFTAs... and a few others, taking eight out of the various nominations. I find that an amazing achievement, and I can see why. You are engaged from the get-go, and are taken on a ride as you play through the plots and paragraphs you would normally read in your head and see it unfold on the screen... up until the very end. It's really something incredible to behold.

I'm giving Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy my highest rating of 5 stars and hope that a few other of  Le Carré's other books are fortunate enough to be treated with as much relish to produce similar works of art.