Star Trek Beyond

Hello dear reader, it’s that time again. Yes, do try and contain your excitement but for the fourth time in under a week, its film review time. Or if you must, blog number 58. But before I get into the meat and bones of why you’re all here, I would just like to say a big thank you to everyone who takes the time to read these ever so slightly comical and dare I say it, informative, bloggy things. I do enjoy writing them and as long as that continues and there isn’t anyone out there of the opinion ‘If it blogs, we can kill it’ I will be more than happy, giving my ever so important assessment of what I go and see on the big screen.  

Now, normally I like to start out one of these reviews with a little background on the franchise, the director or even the actors in it. Sometimes all three, but given that there really isn’t that much I could write, that the awesome public (that’s you) don’t already know. So I’ll just give you a few basics to bring you up to speed and refresh the memories a tad. The Captain of the Enterprise is a lovely young man called James and believe it or not, his dad is Thor. His best friend is alien called Spock, who also works on the Enterprise. He has pointy ears that don’t pick up the Freeview Channels and to the best of my knowledge he’s died at least once. There’s a Medical Officer who once tried to kill Jason Bourne, cosplayed as a very violent judge and has also turned up in Middle Earth ridding a very nice horse. The Chief Engineer pretends to be Scottish and has an assistant that once played ALL the Oompa Loompa’s. We also have a very nice Communications Officer that occasionally likes to wear either green make up and hang around with an angry raccoon or blue make up and with a director that once killed Leonardo Dicaprio with an ice cube. Sulu and Checkov (R.I.P.) sit at the front and do all the driving and pointy weapons stuff and anyone seen wearing a red top will almost certainly end up dying before the end credits roll. Oh and of course, when it comes to the Star prefix, Trek is better than Wars. Lights blue touch paper and retires…

So 2016 is the fiftieth anniversary of the Star Trek and all things that ‘boldly go’, which I always think sounds like having to use the toilets at a music festival. Along with Star Trek Beyond there is also a new series in the works called Star Trek Discovery. This is due to hit the screens on CBS and Netflix in early 2017 and will have a twelve episode story arc that is being overseen by Hannibal’s show runner Bryan Fuller. Not much is known about it at the moment but I wouldn’t mind betting that they’ll be splitting infinitives before you know it and getting into more trouble than a Ferengi in an Acquisitions Anonymous meeting. However, I’m getting off the beaten track here. Star Trek Beyond is why you’re all here so without further ado and further distraction I give you my most humble opinion on what will almost certainly go down in history as the greatest Star Trek film released this year.

It’s Okay. Right, thank you for coming and don’t forget to tip your waiter before you leave… 

There is of course a bit more to it than that and simple describing it as okay is a little bit of an injustice to be honest. This is the third movie in what I’m reliably informed is called the Kelvin Timeline. Now, the first two movies have their detractors, for various reasons. The first film basically reset the clock and with the help of some wibbly wobbly timey wimey bits and bobs, effectively made every single Star Trek series and film, which had come before it, redundant. The second film was on a hiding to nothing when they decided to use Khan as the antagonist. Even with ‘swoony swoon’ Benedict Cumberbatch they were never going to recapture the glory of what is widely regarded as the best film in the entire Star Trek series: The Wrath of Khan. So where does that leave Beyond? Well this time around the director’s chair, that was vacated by J.J. Abrams, has been occupied by Mr Fast & Furious himself, Justin Lin and screenplay duties were handed over to Simon Pegg and Doug Jung. Which is a fairly good base to build upon. Although Mr Pegg’s acting choices recently have been a little bit erratic, he does have form when it comes to screenwriting and you can definitely see the comedic touches spread throughout the film. The action is served well with Lin at the helm and he even manages to crow bar in a motorbike and some stunts for Kirk to show off with. Bad guy duties are provided by Idris Elba, who plays Krall and without giving the too many spoilers away he has a history with Starfleet and feels as if has been abandoned by them. There are other notable mentions that should be given to Sofia Boutella, who plays Jaylah. She also has a history with Krall and it’s safe to say that they won’t be exchanging Christmas cards any time soon. Jaylah is a very strong female character. She isn’t written as a damsel in distress or as a hindrance that needs to be rescued every five minutes. In fact at times it’s the complete opposite and the she has to help those pesky men out of trouble. My only complaints with her character are that she doesn’t seem to have any lines with any other members of the female cast and for some reason, not passing understanding, every time Scotty talks to her; he uses the word ‘lassie’. And when I say every time, I do mean every time. I'm not sure if Simon Pegg was trying to set a world record here, when he was writing the screenplay but it did start to grate on me just ever so slightly a lot. Other shout outs (down with the kids) should go to Zachery Quinto’s Spock and Karl Urban’s Bones. They spend quite a bit of the film together and you can see their chemistry on screen. 

To sum up beyond I’d have to say that the third time was indeed a charm and if I’m being honest I think I enjoyed this more than its previous two films that came before it. It’s certainly a lot funnier and seems to have had more care and attention put into it with regards to the big action set pieces. That said, the final showdown between Kirk & Krall has enough issues with gravity to make Sir Isaac Newton weep. There is a nice nod to the original cast and a special ‘we will miss you’ Leonard Nimoy moment that’s worth mention. If rumours and Comic-Con are to be believed film four has already been given the green light and should be hitting our screens at some point over the summer of 2018. J.J. Abrams, who has had a producer hat on for all three of the new Star Trek Films, has given at least two interviews recently where is has stated that he wants to bring Chris Hemsworth back as Kirk’s father and that he will not be recasting the role of Anton Yelchin’s Chekov. However they deal with his untimely death I do hope that it’s done in a respectful way and it isn’t used as some throw away plot point to help push the story along. Star Trek Beyond continues the franchise with a step in the right direction. With a bit more polish and some tidying around the edges it could have been a contender for five stars. It does come up short in a few areas though. Namely, a bit more about Krall and exactly how he finds himself in the position he’s in far more importantly how he looks the way he currently does, would have been nice. My other main problem with Beyond is that the Star Base ‘York Town’ that plays a pivotal role in the plot it seems to have defences that are about as useful as mud flaps on a tortoise.  

With the original Star Trek films it tended to be the even numbered films that were good and the odd numbered that repeatedly missed the mark. With the new films it seems to be the other way around. So I guess we’ll have to wait and see if the next Star Trek film turns out to be as good as The Voyage Home or as bad as The Final Frontier. Phasers set to wait and see…

Twitter Review: 

Star Trek, Spoilers & Space Opera. Idris does dark & moody and Kirk and co do square jawed heroes.

#ThreeIsTheMagicNumber

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2660888/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvq3y8BhZ2s

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/star-trek-beyond/review/

The BFG

Hello dear reader. I need to start with a confession. Well I say confession, it’s more of an admission really, that could possibly cost me some of those all-important ‘fab & groovy’ cool points that I’ve worked so hard on attaining. Growing up I wasn’t what you would call the sharpest knife in the box. I was slow learner, or as some of the more highbrow inteligencia out there would say, a bit of a thicko. Now, I’m not after sympathy or special treatment but I was effectively the poster boy for the ‘me fail English?, that’s umpossible’ club. However, It wasn’t all doom and gloom growing up. I did have good looks and a rather devilish smile to fall back on but from about the age of five till about nine, I didn’t enjoy reading at all. I found it really hard to concentrate and having to read books I didn’t like at school, basically meant I had absolutely no enthusiasm to read in my own spare time. What saved me from the abandoning the printed page came in the form of a small mobile book shop which turned up one sunny morning at my junior school. This was, if memory serves, a customised Luton van with makeshift shelving and a till. The driver of this magical van recommended a particular book as being fun to read and not like any other book I’d ever read. To his credit he was absolutely right on both counts. The book in question was ‘The Warlock of Firetop Mountain’ by Steve Jackson. It’s a fighting fantasy book which, for the uninitiated, means as you read through it, you get to decide what happens next in the story. This book was a revelation to me. Without it books could have ended up just being something other people did. Without that one book and its subsequent butterfly effect, I could have missed out such great literary giants like Douglas Adams, Steven King and Delia Smith. 

Now, back to that all important confession/admission. Between the ages of five and nine, or as I like to call it ‘the wilderness years’ my reading back catalogue was a little thin on the ground. At school we had novels read to us, in a sort of communal Jackanory, with lots more floor cushions and fewer TV cameras but that didn’t really expose me to wide range of authors. I do remember having ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ read to me and its sequel ‘Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator’ but apart from that my only other Roald Dahl dalliance was with ‘George’s Marvellous Medicine’ and that was in no small part down to the one and only Rik Mayall, The. So what I’m trying to tell you all is, that basically, I have never read ‘The BFG’ and if I’m going to be brutally honest with you, I couldn’t have even told you what BFG stood for until my mid-teens. ‘Basil’s Furry Gerbils’ would have been a good guess at the age of twelve. As would ‘Bilingual Flappy Gangsters’ or even ‘Backdoor French Grandpa’s’ but thanks to the passage of time and the wonders of social interaction I now know that its stands for ‘Big Friendly Giant’ and here’s what I thought of the film…      

The film itself has been a story of stop and start. Or should that be start then stop? It’s been in development for over twenty five years in one form or another but it wasn’t until Steven Spielberg, him off E.T. and Saving Private Ryan, came along that things finally stopped stalling and everything fell into place. For those not in the know, which included me up until a couple of days ago, the story centres around a young orphan called Sophie and the relationship she strikes up with a Big Friendly Giant, or what Richard Osman would call a Big Friendly Person. The Giant in question lives in a place called ‘Giant Land’ (it’s not on Google Maps, I’ve checked) and is pretty much shunned and bullied by the other Giants that live there because he won’t eat children. Now, where things get a little interesting here is when said ‘unfriendly child eating Giants’ start popping up and eating children in Britain. The very nerve of it, I know! So Sophie and the Giant pop off to see the Queen and with the her help the and assistance of some generals from the Royal Navy, Army and Royal Air Force (One of which is played by Matt Frewer or Max Headroom as he’s more commonaly known) they come up with a plan to banish all the nasty Giants and live happily ever after. 

And there you have it. Not the most complex of plots and to be honest, it being a Roald Dahl story, it doesn’t need to be. What it is however is a very well-acted and very well made film. The Big Friendly Giant is played a Mark Rylance, who up until last year’s Bridge of Spies, I’d never heard of. He is a stage actor who’s started to make the crossover from mostly stage based work to appearing on a regular basis in films and television. As the Giant he is everything you could want in twenty four foot tall dream catcher. The computer wizardry that brings his performance to the screen is apparently a hybrid of motion capture, developed by WETA and the system that James Cameron used when he was filming actors in Avatar and you can see where the money has been spent. The Giant is completely convincing as a character and from his large ears to his bushy eyebrows he is able to convey emotion and believability effortlessly. The other great thing about this movie is the actress they’ve found to play Sophie. Her name is Ruby Barnhill and not only does she blow everyone else away when she’s on screen, including Rylance himself, she does it with the confidence of one of her peers, who’s been acting for decades. Ruby Barnhill is a name that you need to remember. She is destined for great things and as her age rises and the scope of rolls she’s offered increases, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there is a golden statue waiting for her, somewhere down the line. 

The overall feel of the film and its visual style are what make it a very pleasant experience to watch. When you give quality script, written by the late Melissa Matheson, to someone who is arguably one of the greatest directors in history you do expect the end product to be polished and meticulously well made. The BFG does not disappoint in this regard. Throw in a score from John Williams on top of that and you have a children’s film that in unlikely to be equalled anytime soon. Spielberg’s thirtieth theatrical release proves that is he capable of not only creating great action icons like Indiana Jones and Bruce the shark but that he can also do deliver films driven by emotion and sentiment too. The BFG is going to have a long shelf life and I doubt that any one will be inclined to try and put this Dahl classic on the silver screen again, for a long time.

Twitter Review: 

A young girl, an old Giant and a lot of magical moments. Rylance & Barnhill, A double act with no equal.  

#scrumdiddlyumptious

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3691740/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ0Bey4YUGI

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/bfg/review/

Victoriia

Hello dear reader, yes I’m back again and yes, I know. There was a gap of about two months before yesterday’s post and here I am with my second offering in less than twenty four hours. The reason for this as you probably guessed from the nice and shiny poster above, is all down to a film called Victoria. Now this blog is going to be a first for a couple of reasons. Namely it will be the first time I’ve ever blogged about a film I didn’t watch at the cinema and equally important. It’s a first because I’m really not going to tell you that much about it, for reasons I shall explain shortly. 

Victoria is a film that first came to my attention in February of this year and when I read its premise it instantly went on my must watch list. It was made in the early hours of the 27th of April 2014. Now, when I say made in the early hours of the 27th of April, I do mean the entire film. You see the reason Victoria peaked my interest is simple. It has a running time of 136 minutes or just over two and a quarter hours long if you want it in imperial and it’s all one shot. Now when I say one shot, I mean one shot. There’s not clever editing or special effects, what you watch from beginning to end is one cameraman filming the entire movie. This accomplishment is made more impressive when you realise that the film starts in a night club and by the time it’s concluded we’ve been on the top of apartment blocks, witnessed fights on street corners and also been put right in the middle of a bank robbery. Other films have had long shots in them. Robert Altman’s The Player has an opening shot that lasts over eight and a half minutes and Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity beats that by four minutes but I’ve never seen a film that was entirely just one shot and no edits. 

Victoria has a director that you’re unlikely to have heard of, Sebastian Schipper. Its cast is also small and full of actors you probably won’t have seen anywhere else, although I suspect we will be seeing Laia Costa, who plays Victoria in a lot more over the coming years. Don’t let the fact that this is a film that has probably slipped under your radar put you off watching it. As I said in the beginning I’m not going to elaborate on the plot, more than I already have. I think it’s probably better going into this film without expectation or prior knowledge of what will take place.  All I will say is this. I took three attempts to film Victoria and what we, the paying audience, see is the third take. It’s set in Berlin but is has large parts of English dialogue in it. So much so that it was disqualified for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language. I sometimes recommend films, in these blogs as being worth a watch but Victoria is the first time I think I’ve ever written that a film should fall into the ‘must watch’ category. As it’s a relatively new film it’s unlikely to be available on Netflix or Amazon Prime yet but when it is, set aside an evening to watch it. It’s nothing short of astonishing. Also, PSA. If you have photo sensitive epilepsy, skip the first two minutes of the film. It won’t impact the story in any way, shape or form. 

One girl. One City. One City. One Take. 

Ghostbusters

Hello dear reader,

9724 Days, or 1389 Weeks, or 233,376 Hours, or 14,002,560 Minutes.

That’s how long the gap has been between Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters and the Ivan Reitman sequel that hit the screens back in December of 1989. Twenty seven years of trying to get the third film off the ground. Several false starts. Numerous rewrites and more drafts than you’d normally see in your average double glazing advert. So why did Columbia Pictures spend put so much time and effort into getting what would have been Ghostbusters III off the ground? The simple answer to that is money. The original that hit the screens back in 1984 was, and by some considerable distance, the year’s biggest box office draw and although the 1989 sequel wasn’t as big of a hit. It crept in at number 7 on the top 10 of the year, with Batman, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and Lethal Weapon 2, claiming the top three positions, it put enough bums on seats to get a script the green light. Now it’s one thing for a studio to want a another sequel but it’s a whole other ball game to get one made when one of the principle stars isn’t overly keen on making it. The star in question being Mr Bill Murray. Now, for those of you who don’t know much about Mr Murray when he’s not entertaining you on the silver screen or on your TV’s, Ipad’s, laptops etc, he is, shall we say, a little bit eccentric. He’s walks to the beat of his own drum and doesn’t really do things the way that others in Hollywood would consider ‘normal’. For example, he doesn’t have an agent, he has an answer phone and from time to time he’s known to listen to it. Rumour has it that when Sofia Coppola couldn’t get hold of Murray when she was trying to get Lost in Translation off the ground, she had to hire a private investigator to track him down.

So it’s safe to say that if Bill decides he doesn’t want to do something he doesn’t do it. Dan Ackroyd and the late Harold Ramis spent a long time trying to get Murray to change his mind but they never did. The closest they came was getting him to agree to it but only if his character ‘Dr Peter Venkman’ was killed off in the first act and then only appeared sparingly, throughout the rest of the film as a ghost. After about fifteen years of back and forth and several unsuccessful meetings Ackroyd, Ramis and Columbia Pictures gave up and the Ghostbusters franchise seemed to be forever languish in development hell.

Then came along Paul Feig, a man whose recent directorial efforts had shown he had a knack for making funny films. He set his stall out, made his pitch and before you could say misogyny and internet backlash he had a healthy budget to play with and marketing campaign that practically looked after itself.  The words ‘Female Reboot’ shouldn’t really be considered as dangerous. But given some of the reaction to this film, when it was announced that the four main lead characters were going to be lacking in that ‘ever so important’* Y Chromosome, you’d have thought that someone had announced that men were being rounded up in there thousands and being subjected to unspeakable horrors, like having their testosterone removed at needlepoint. I have mentioned kneejerk backlash, regarding casting decisions in previous blogs. Daniel Craig being a ‘Blonde Bond’ and Ben Afleck as Batman but the casting of four women in a comedy nearly broke the internet, at least twice.

*Sarcasm klaxon on full volume.

Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Lesie Jones and Kristen Wiig. Four names that shouldn’t really cause that much controversy and if they’d been cast together in any other movie, assuming that also hadn’t have been another reboot of a male-centric movie in the first place, it wouldn’t have caused so much as a ripple in the fabric of movie journalism, to say nothing of the internet itself. But because of, what I hope were, a small group of Neanderthal, knuckle dragging, cockwombles (I would have used harsher language but there could be young’uns reading this) these four actresses have spent the better part of the last twelve months having to deal with trolls, and other assorted inbred, dingleberry fondler’s (still trying to keep it clean). Not to mention probably having to answer questions on it, every time they spend the day on a press junket. And you know what, every single one of them. To all the naysayers, all the ‘You’re going to ruin my childhood’ bandwagon jumper-oners and all the people out there that decided to bash this film before it was even released, I say this. GO FECK YOURSELF AND WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED FECKING YOURSELF, GO FECK YOURSELF AGAIN!

Right, I’ve climbed down off my little soapbox and I’ll now get down to the nitty gritty of why most of you are hear, my opinion of the film. Well I have good news and bad news. I’ll start with the good. It’s funny, not only that, it’s very funny. Paul Feig and fellow screenwriter Katie Dippold have come up with what at times is a laugh out loud script and I can’t remember the last time I watched one of those in a cinema. It also isn’t really based around one main lead character with the rest ridding along on the coattails of their mirth and merriment. Everyone gets an equal share of the spotlight and everyone gets to steal scenes throughout the movie. The other thing that screams funny here is Chris Hemsworth as Kevin the receptionist. If you haven’t been sold on the trailers so far and I’ll be honest, I think I fell into that category myself. The film is worth the price of admission purely on his performance. I wouldn’t want to spoil Kevin too much for you but I will say this. He has a dog called Mike Hat (say it out loud) and he has removed the lenses from his glasses because they got dirty. He’s the sort of character that would try and shoot someone with a sword, whilst shouting bang at the same time. Just think Thor with the IQ of a tennis racket and you wouldn’t be too far wide of the mark. But back to our four main leads. They are a very eclectic bunch. Kristen Wiig plays Erin Gilbert, a former friend of Melissa McCarthy’s Abby Yates, who is now trying to make a name for herself in the academia. Which is made harder when it’s brought to her attention that a book on the paranormal, that she co-wrote with Abby, is now available on Amazon. Abby has set her stall out to prove the existence of ghosts with the help of her assistant, Jillian Holtzman. Played by Kate Mckinnon, who by the way is nothing short of astoundingly brilliant. The three of them end up ‘leaving’ their respective position’s and team up to confirm and provide proof that ghosts are real. It’s whilst they are investigating the paranormal they come across Patty Tolan, a no nonsense, hardworking and  very outgoing MTA employee, played by Leslie Jones. The four of them team up and pull their resources to form…..wait for it, ‘GHOSTBUSTERS’. (Bet you didn’t see that coming did you!)

So to sum up the good news, I’ll say this. It’s fairly obvious that Ghostbusters has had a lot of time and effort spent on it. Twenty seven years to be exact. Paul Feig has done a great job in assembling a top notch cast and with the notable absence of Rick Moranis all of the original cast appear in cameo roles. Even the late and great Harold Ramis puts in a, blink and you’ll miss it, appearance as a bronze bust. There is a credit sting and as for the credits themselves, I’ll say this. If you like your Norse Gods with a bit of the Saturday Night Fever about them, you’re in for a very big treat.

Now for what I shall call the bad news. Or as I suspect some of you will say ‘Bavin, you don’t know what you’re fecking talking about’. For me the biggest let down, and there aren’t many, is the third act. The first two thirds of the film are great and I’d go so far as to say that the opening ten minutes of the film could be described in some corners of the internet, as actually scary. But for me where things go south is the last twenty five minutes or so. The villain of the piece Rowan North played by Neil Casey, stops being creepy and uncomfortable to watch and basically becomes what I would at best characterise as, the big white hype. The whole thing then rips off Poltergeist, pretty much lock stock and barrel, and has people jumping into other dimensions with cables wrapped around their waist and has more continuity errors then you can shake a class four, full roaming vapour at. On the whole though it isn’t a bad film at all. In my humble opinion I would happily sign legal documents to say that it’s a very solid four out of five stars. Columbia Pictures have a film that is not only respectful of what has come before. It’s also good enough to be considered on its own merits. If the universe is a fair and just place and judging on what politicians seem to call normal these days, it must be somewhere! Then I fully expect to see a sequel announced within six weeks of its release date. If they don’t green light a follow up film then going on previous experience it’s likely to be another twenty seven years before someone else comes along and tries a reboot again. And if that happens dear reader, I’ll be just north of seventy and to be honest, unlikely to even be able to spell Ghostbusters.

Twitter Review:

27 years in the making and only slightly overcooked in places. Funny, fresh & full on. 

#We’reReadyToBelieveYou

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1289401/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6hlkIlGFCI

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/ghostbusters-2016/review/