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/

Ant-Man

Anty-Man, Anty-Man,

Does whatever an Anty can.

Looks real small, then looks big,

Catches bad guys then does a jig. 

Look out!

Here comes the Anty-Man. 

Hello dear reader and welcome to what is my twelfth blog of 2015. It marks the end of Marvel films Phase Two and brings to the big screen a film, which at times, looked like it would never make it. Or should that be small screen, given the film in question. 

Ant-Man lost its original director, Edgar Wright, six weeks before principle photography was due to start. This came as a major surprise to most fans of the MCU. Partly because this had been a labour of love for Mr Wright for some considerable time. He’d often gone on record, as far back as 2003, saying he wanted to make this film. He’d co-written a screenplay with Joe Cornish and even shot test footage in 2013, just to see if his particular vision could be brought to the silver screen. However the main reason Mr Wright’s decision to bail caused seismic tremors throughout the superhero world was that Marvel had never really had even the slightest whiff of having a ‘problem film’. From the start of Phase One with Iron Man back in 2008, Marvel had always had the Midas touch when it came to spin and publicity. They could do no wrong. A carefully orchestrated media battle plan that always oozed geek and nerdom in substantial quantities. My superheroes bring all boys (and girls) to the Yard, as Kevin Feige would probably say. 

But then out of the blue came ‘trouble at mill’. Edgar Wright walked away citing creative differences and in walked Peyton Reed, with the rest of the world collectively shouting ‘who?’ in unison. If you’re willing to believe what the internet tells you the disagreement was largely down to screenplay rewrites but there are also reports that Team Edgar and Team Kevin simply did not get on. So not only had the rug been pulled from under everyone’s feet but it was as if the world had been shown a glimpse of the wizard behind the curtain. Fans didn’t like it and even Joss Whedon took to twitter post a simple picture of a cornetto raised aloft in support. 

It became apparent that Marvel were going to have to use a lot of smoke and mirrors and misdirection to pull this off and come up with the goods. Thankfully they could accomplish most of this with the upcoming release of Age of Ultron. ‘Hey everyone, look over here! We have trailers and pictures of shiny things’. Of course also hiring the likes of Michael Douglas, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly also helped allay fears too. The Ant-Man ship wasn’t sinking just yet but there were icebergs on the horizon. Fast forward the better part of ten months and that brings us to Ant-Man's release. And I’m pleased to report that it’s actually rather good…

As with most Marvel films these days, you walk into the cinema with a certain level of expectation. You know what you’re going to get and most of the time they do exactly what they say on the tin. You’re bang for your buck is pretty much guaranteed and the accompanying visual and cerebral download tends to tick a lot of boxes. There will of course be grand action set pieces, a sprinkling of witty one-liners, more costumes and colours than you would expect to find in the performance of the complete works of Shakespeare and more danger and peril than Miss Marple could get her hands on with the help of CSI, Starsky & Hutch and Columbo combined. Highbrow it isn’t but by the same token, you never usually leave your seat felling underwhelmed.  

So Ant-Man starts with our ‘hero to be’ Scott Lang behind bars. Sent to prison by a military court for a crime he didn't commit. This man promptly escapes from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, He survives as a soldier of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find him, maybe you can hire the Ant-Man. Oh, hang on. I may have got myself a little confused there. Normal service will now resume.

Ant-Man is a film about redemption. A man given a second chance in life and the opportunity to be a better father to his young daughter. A daughter that still worships him despite his missing her grow up, due to his time behind bars. What Ant-Man is also, is funny. It’s probably the funniest film to come along in either Phase One or Phase Two by some considerable distance. Michael Pena, who is basically part of Scott Lang’s back up crew, isn’t given much screen time to strut his comedic talents but he pretty much steals every scene he’s in. 

It’s always going to be impossible to tell how much of Edgar and Joe’s screenplay made it into the final film. Rewrites and polishing, including a writing credit for Paul Rudd himself have permanently blurred the lines between the start and finish post but if you do ever bump into Simon Pegg ask him to show you a copy of the original, because he’s got one apparently. 

There are moments of brilliance in Ant-Man and little touches that may go unnoticed by some. Security guards whistling ‘It’s a small world after all’, a passing reference to Spiderman, who can now come and play in the MCU and will have a cameo in Marvels next film ‘Captain American: Civil War’. There also can’t be many action films that would have even thought about using Thomas the Tank Engine in their grand finale. A lot of Marvel films have been fairly formulaic recently, and have had more than just a passing Déjà vu feel when it comes to their endings. Big aerial battles that always have lots of destruction, mayhem and chaos. And yes Avengers, Thor 2 and Guardians of The Galaxy, I’m aiming that last sentence squarely at your clapper boards. It’s very refreshing to find a small scale battle that not only isn’t set against the back drop of a sprawling metropolis but happens within the confines of a family home.  

The other fairly formulaic problem that keeps repeating itself is the distinct lack of Estrogen on screen. There are only three female characters of note in Ant-Man. A mother and daughter who are given about as much to do as the Popes Menorah cleaner. They have virtually no important dialogue and are given character development which is comparable to a new brick being used on ‘Grand Designs’. Evangeline Lilly is the other female actor in question and without giving too much away or heading into spoiler territory, she will be returning to a Marvel cinema at some point in the not too distant future. There’s a blink and you miss it appearance from Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter at the start of the film but that’s basically it when it comes to women. It’s a real shame and I hope this trend starts to change soon or we could end up with a Marvel Cinematic Universe that has as many women in it as the Star Wars Universe currently does. Bad George Lucas, Boo, Boo...

I finish off by saying this. Ant-Man is a good film, despite its flaws. Paul Rudd looks like he enjoyed making it and it has one of the better Stan Lee cameos around. It also has a villain in it called Yellow Jacket, which in case you were wondering, has nothing to do with Hi-di-Hi or Sue Pollard. At 117 minutes long it’s also the shortest film to date that Marvel have released. As always you should stick around for the credits. There are two stings here, one in the middle and another at the end. Both are interesting and give the start of Phase 3 some fresh fuel. A solid four out of five but the report card should also contain a 'Could and should do better'.    

Twitter Review:

Go see Ant-man, No magnifying glass required! It’s good, It’s funny and it has Phoebe's husband from Friends in it. 

#SmallPackageBigPunch

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478970/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5TtFK9C62E&feature=iv&src_vid=1HpZevFifuo&annotation_id=annotation_1112302829

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=134035

Godzilla

Up from the depths, 

Thirty stories high, 

Breathing fire, 

His head in the sky, 

Godzilla! Godzilla! Godzilla and…………………………Walter White.

For those of you old enough, or young enough for that matter, to remember the Hanna-Barbera cartoon from the late seventies and early eighties, you will of course remember the above lyrics (Replace Walter White with the lesser spotted Godzooky). The cartoon in question ran for twenty six half hour episodes and basically ran along the same premise of bad guy/bad thing would turn up and create havoc. The captain of the boat, or should that be Hydrofoil, the Calico would press a little red button on his “Summon Godzilla Utility Belt” and hay presto, one green thirty story high lizard would turn up, breath fire, occasionally shoot lasers from his eyes because you know, large lizards can do that (jumping on the Superman bandwagon if you ask me) and generally save the day before disappearing back into whatever ocean they happened to be floating through at the time. 

Now I can happily report that the new incarnation of Japans very own Incredible Hulk directed by the more than competent Brit Gareth Edwards is to the old cartoon what Ronald Emmerich’s 1998 Godzilla is to highbrow, Oscar winning entertainment. 

Now I have a problem and before anyone else says it, yes I have more than one. However this particular problem centres on how to tell you about Godzilla without venturing into major spoiler territory. This problem is further compounded by Warner Brothers marketing of the film and also all of its trailers. So if you plan on seeing this film please don’t read any further until you have. 

(Waits for everyone to come back………. So how about that local sports team then?............Ok, I’m not lingering around this keyboard any longer, this blog wont write itself)

Right, there really is now way of getting around this so I’m just going to state for the record that the titular big G of this film is actually the good guy. That’s right, the good guy. In a move that I never saw coming they’ve taken Godzilla and turned him into the hero of the piece. I haven’t felt this disappointed or lied too since I found out that naked Wednesdays weren’t compulsory. 

The problem is that ever since the first trailers were released, we the public have been duped into thinking that Godzilla was hell bent on mass destruction and had to be stopped at all costs, because you know, that’s what he does!

Having just re-watched the last trailer that was released earlier this year, it is my sad duty to report that nearly every shot of city damage, planes being knocked out of the sky and the armed forces basically having their bottoms handed to them is a result of the films real bad guys. Two other rather large monsters that are called MUTO’s. Which as far as I can recall stands for “Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism”. 

These two monsters, which buy the way look like giant staple extractors with legs, thrive on nuclear energy and also happen to be very much in love. The female MUTO, the larger of the two, has some real anger management issues and isn’t a big fan of being told no. However I am getting ahead of myself here and I need to go back to the beginning to start this story properly.

Our story starts in Japan, Joe and Sandra brody played by Bryan Cranston and Juliette Binoche respectively, are happily married with a son, Ford Brody. Ford who for most of the film played by the currently much in demand Aaron Taylor-Johnson (He’s rumoured to be in next year’s 50 Shades of Grey and will be in next year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, playing Quicksilver). It’s just a normal day at the home of the Brody’s apart from it being Joe’s birthday, which he seems to have forgotten. However because of a strange set of seismic readings that seems to be getting closer to the nuclear power plant where they both work, they trundle off to their place of employment , leaving number one son at home and before you can say “by jingo, I think that’s a major nuclear disaster” there’s a major nuclear disaster. 

This leaves one of Ford’s parents dead. Spoiler alert: It isn’t Bryan Cranston.

The story the jumps forward fifteen years and we find Ford currently serving in the American armed forces and as luck would have it his primary job is to do with the disposal of bombs in one form or another. This just happens to come in handy in the climax of the film, but before you can say that’s a tad convenient I’ll say it for you, “That’s a tad convenient….” The film does suffer a lot from these types of “Oh really???” moments. A child rescued by Ford in a MUTO attack in Hawaii is reunited with his parents the day after as they just happen to be walking past at the right time. Another Father and daughter manage to evade an incoming Tsunami and all the destruction that comes along with it by running into a local shop that seems to have been fitted with the latest and greatest in Tsunami proof shop front glass. 

Having returned home on leave after a year away from his wife and child Ford receives a phone call that his Dad has been arrested entering the exclusion zone that has been set up around the decimated nuclear plant. Ford hops on the first available plane, with some persuasion form his wife, and heads of to Tokyo to find out what’s going on. Once there Joe manages to, and I’m not really sure how, convince Ford that he needs answers about his wife’s death and the only way to get these answers is heading back into the exclusion zone once again. 

What follows is the discovery of the first MUTO, the male. It’s been feeding of the damaged reactor and growing in a cocoon of sorts over the previous fifteen years and as luck would have it just happens to hatch as Joe and Ford get there. It promptly escapes from and makes a beeline for the water…… 

No I’m going to stop with the plot breakdown, partly because I never normally give everything away when I’m writing these blogs but I think mostly just down to the fact that what follows makes about as much sense as cheese socks. Don’t get me wrong though, I don’t hate this film. I do think that it does suffer a lot from a poor script and there’s so much going on at times that it feels a bit bloated. In the same way that 2007’s Spiderman 3 had too many villains on the screen for its own good Godzilla relies far too much on its visuals. Again don’t get me wrong, some of the CGI in this film is spectacular but it seems to be at the expense of other key elements like character depth and Logic. Ken Watanabe plays a scientist that never really has that much to do and is largely wasted as an actor. What also doesn’t help is having the emotional peek of the film on ten minutes in. It’s almost an uphill battle to get the film to engage with the audience after that. 

As for Godzilla himself I’ll say this. He’s not on screen anywhere near as much as he should be and at times it feels like he’s treated like a background extra. It’s only when he gets to slug it out with the MUTO’s that he really comes into his own. As with the cartoon from the eighties his reincarnation of Godzilla also breaths fire or if you prefer, has atomic breath, and it what is another very cool visual his tail lights up internally when he’s about to let loose with the blue flames. 

I’ll finish by saying this. Godzilla is a flawed film. At times you struggle to work out why certain characters do what they do. Reasoning and understanding from the viewer does not seem to be required for the 123 minutes you’ll be sat in front of the screen. 

At the end of the film most of San Francisco is levelled by the big three-way fight to the finish. Godzilla must kill hundreds if not thousands of people during this fight but is still hailed as the hero.  It’s also worth noting that if you were to remove the human element from this film it wouldn’t change its outcome one little bit. There will almost certainly be a sequel to Godzilla and when that magnificent day does occur I really hope they’ll have spent some of its budget on a screenplay that doesn’t make me leave the cinema confused and disappointed. 

Twitter Review:

An odd film with a sting in its tail. No sense of a real story or character arc. No humans required in it or to watch it. 

#MonstersLostAtSea

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831387/?ref_=nv_sr_1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIu85WQTPRc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBwsUD7jYCI