> 7 Feb 2012 ~ FILM NEW REVIEWS

Underworld: Awakening

Kate Beckinsale returns to the Underworld film series for the fourth installment, which finds fierce vampire Selene (Beckinsale) escaping captivity and taking up arms against humans after mankind discovers the existence of vampires and lycans, and launches a massive war aimed at wiping out the creatures of the night. Stephen Rea and Michael Ealy co-star.

Chronicle

Ham-fisted storytelling undermines this otherwise clever found-footage epic.

Big Miracle

When a family of gray whales becomes trapped in the Arctic Circle, a Greenpeace volunteer and a small-town reporter go to extraordinary lengths to save the majestic creatures in this romantic adventure inspired by actual events. Alaskan newsman Adam Carlson (John Krasinski) has grown weary of working in such a small market. He's eager to move on to bigger and better things when the story of a lifetime lands right in his lap

Man on a Ledge

An NYPD hostage negotiator (Elizabeth Banks) attempts to talk cop-turned-fugitive Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington) down from a high ledge, but she learns that he may have a hidden motive for threatening to take his own life.

The Grey (2012)

Liam Neeson stars in producer/director Joe Carnahan's tense adventure thriller about a group of tough-as-nails oil rig workers who must fight for their lives in the Alaskan wilderness after their airplane crashes miles from civilization. With supplies running short and hungry wolves closing in, the shaken survivors face a fate worse than death if they don't act fast. Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, and Frank Grillo co-star.

Tuesday 7 February 2012

'Big Miracle'

. Perhaps that’s the “miracle” of which the title speaks.

John Krasinski, taking care not to stray too far from his Office persona, stars as Adam Carlson, a Barrow, Alaska, TV newsman dreaming of the big time when a local boy (Ahmaogak Sweeney) arrives with a story that just might get him there: On the eve of their annual migration, a trio of grey whales have become marooned under the Arctic Circle’s fast-forming ice sheet. Incapable of making the four-mile trek to open seas without running out of air, they cling to a shrinking hole in the ice, their only source of oxygen, as time slowly runs out.

No sooner has Adam filed his first report than Barrow is inundated with reporters, turning the plight of the whales into a media cause célèbre. A broad-based coalition is formed to free Fred, Wilma, and Bamm-Bamm, as they come to be nicknamed, bringing together such strange bedfellows as a headstrong environmental activist (Drew Barrymore), a scheming oil magnate (Ted Danson), a White House political operative (Vinessa Shaw), a native Alaskan tribe, and the Soviet navy.

Big Miracle is conceived an inspirational family film, and as such there are the usual array of heart-tugging scenes, but there’s also an odd strain of cynicism that permeates it. Hardly a soul in the film, save perhaps for Barrymore’s character, embraces the whales’ cause with what might be deemed altruistic intentions. Krasinski’s anchor eyes the crisis as an opportunity to advance his career, as does a rival reporter, played by Kristen Bell, who arrives on the scene shortly thereafter. Danson’s oilman is seeking a public-relations boost, while Shaw’s politico hopes to burnish the eco-friendly credentials of George H.W. Bush in advance of his presidential run. Even Krasinski’s Eskimo sidekick makes a killing hawking souvenirs and accessories to visiting rubes. The whole thing ends up feeling like some kind of saccharine paean to the virtues of self-interest, a Hallmark special scripted by Ayn Rand.

Big Miracle never quite rises to the level of tear-jerker, despite the best efforts of Barrymore, who all but channels the whales’ suffering with her histrionics. Part of the problem, frankly, is that grey whales aren’t the most photogenic of species. (There’s a reason why their oceanic rivals, the dolphins, get the bulk of the plum movie jobs.) At any rate, their majesty is scarcely apparent when confined to a hole in the ice, depriving Big Miracle of those endearing “Awwwww…” moments so crucial to the success of animals-in-peril films.

Still, it’s hard not to feel bad for the poor creatures, unsightly as they may be, as their plight is gradually overshadowed in Big Miracle by the contrived human drama that ensues on their periphery. (They are, in many ways, surrogates for the audience.) In the end, when the whales finally escape their icy prison and take leave of their human “helpers,” one longs to escape with them.


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The Woman in Black












Release Date: 3 February 2012 (USA)
Runtime: 95 min
Director: James Watkins
Writers: Susan Hill (novel), Jane Goldman (screenplay)
Stars: Daniel Radcliffe, Janet McTeer and Ciarán Hinds


Review

A horror flick stuck in the limbo between cinematic life and death by boredom.
There isn't much of a twist to The Woman in Black's haunted house tale: man goes to a creepy, old house, runs into an angry ghost, and mayhem ensues. That standard horror plot would be fine if the execution were thrilling, every scare sending a chill down the spine. But star Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter outing has less life than its spectral inhabitants, with impressive early 20th century production design, sharp cinematography and solid performances barely keeping it breathing. Much like the film's titular spirit, The Woman in Black hangs in limbo, haunting the quality divide.
ALTArthur Kipps (Radcliffe) is barely holding on in life, having lost his wife during the birth of their child and struggling to stay employed as a lawyer. To stay afloat, Kipps reluctantly takes on the job of settling the legal affairs of a recently deceased widow. Living in her home, the you-should-have-known-this-house-was-haunted-by-the-name Eel Marsh House, Kipps quickly realizes there's more to the woman's life than he realized, unraveling her mysterious connections to a string of child deaths and a ghostly presence in the home. Even with pressure from the townspeople, Kipps continues his investigation, hoping to right any wrongs he's accidentally caused by putting the violent Woman in Black to rest.
Radcliffe bounces back and forth between the dusty mansion, made even more forbidding by the high tides that routinely cut it off from civilization, and a town full of wide-eyed psychos who live in fear of the kid-killing Woman in Black. Even after losing his own son, Kipps' neighbor Daily (Ciarán Hinds) is convinced the "ghost" is a fairy tales, while Daily's wife (Oscar nominee Janet McTeer) finds herself occasionally possessed by her dead son, scribbling forbidding message to Arthur about future murders. Arthur wrestles with the two extreme points of view, but Woman in Black doesn't spend much time exploring the hardships of a skeptic, quickly slipping back into standard horror mode at every opportunity. When they have time to play around with the twisted scenario, all three actors are top-notch, but rarely are they asked to do anything but gasp and react in a terrified manner.
Director James Watkins (Eden Lake) conjures up some legitimately spooky imagery, leaving the space behind Arthur empty or cutting to an object in the room that could potentially come back to haunt our befuddled hero, all in an effort to tickle our imaginations. But like so many "jump scare" horror flicks, Woman in Black relies heavily on the "Bah-BAAAAAAH" music cues, obtrusively orchestrated by composer Marco Beltrami. A rocking chair, a swinging door and the reveal of a decomposing zombie ghost lady could work on their own, especially in such a well-designed environment as Eel Marsh House, but Woman in Black insists on zapping a charge of musical electricity straight into our brain, forcing us to shiver in the least graceful way possible.
The script by Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class) tries to throw back to the slow burn, character-first horror films of classic cinema, while injecting the sensibilities modern filmmaking. The combination turns Woman in Black into visually appealing, dramatically bland ghost story. Radcliffe still has a long career ahead of him, as Woman in Black does suggest, but this isn't the movie that get people thinking there's life after Potter.

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'Journey 2: The Mysterious Island'

"[the film] runs its course quickly without ever leaving a moment to reflect on how ridiculous it is."


It’s hard for me to judge a movie like Journey 2: The Mysterious Island too harshly because I am not representative of its intended audience. A pre-teen or fifth-grader may not be dissuaded as I was by the blindingly hurried pace, plot discrepancies or absence of any character development while watching Brad Peyton’s (Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore) attempt at reliving the success of Eric Brevig’s original Journey. And you know what? That’s okay, because as a family film it adheres to a formula laid out by far superior fantasy adventures and runs its course quickly without ever leaving a moment to reflect on how ridiculous it is.

Essentially a series of set pieces tied together by a thinly drawn father-son story, Journey 2 picks up a few years after the first film and finds Sean Anderson (Josh Hutcherson) searching for the titular location, where he believes his long-absent grandfather has been stranded. Upon retrieving a coded message from a satellite tower just outside of town, he enlists the help of his new ex-Navy stepfather Hank (Dwayne Johnson) to get to the bottom of the mystery. Together, they travel to a tropical paradise and hitch a helicopter ride with Gabato (Luis Guzman) and Kailani (Vanessa Hudgens) before crash landing on the Mysterious Island, where an action-packed escapade awaits them.

The above description reads like a standard adventure template, and that’s exactly what Journey 2 is. With a bare bones script from the writers of Bring it On Again, neither director nor actors had significant material to work with, but they run, jump, duck and dive through sets that resemble the jungle-gym from Legends of the Hidden Temple and various theme-park attractions as if they were cast in Peter Jackson’s King Kong, giving every scene everything they’ve got. It’s a good thing that the ensemble was so enthusiastic about the picture; though there isn’t much chemistry between them, they collectively draw your attention from the gratuitous, gimmicky 3D, videogame-inspired digital environments and outdated creature design.

Every role has a designated responsibility in this by-the-numbers production: Hutcherson is the brains, spitting out expository literary facts to keep the story going throughout, while Johnson is clearly the brawn. Guzman, with his incessant infantile comedy, is the mouth, while Hudgens – quite frankly – is the eye candy. Only as unit can they come close to making Journey 2 entertaining, but even when working in relative harmony it’s hard to find much qualitative value in the film. As previously stated, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island wasn’t made for all audiences. It will provide a few moments of underage humor and three-dimensional thrills for the kids, but everyone else will be wondering why they had to watch The Rock sing “What a Wonderful World” in an adaptation of a Jules Verne novel.


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'Chronicle'

Chronicle, a dark sci-fi thriller about teenage superheroes, is a “found-footage” film, and it counts as one of the rare instances in which in which the increasingly prevalent – and increasingly maligned – technique is appropriately deployed, and not merely a cheap gimmick for manufacturing tension.

The story begins with Andrew (Dane DeHaan), a pale, saturnine lad, switching on a camera and declaring to his drunken father, who fumes outside his bedroom door, that he intends to “film everything.” And so he does. Narrating in a gloomy, nasal drone, he documents the daily indignities of high school – being accosted by bullies, eating lunch alone on the bleachers – and crafts what by all appearances promises to be a smashing audition video for the Trenchoat Mafia.

Andrew’s circumstances change considerably when he, his cousin Matt (Alex Russell, miscast as a cerebral egotist), and Steve (Michael B. Jordan), the school’s reigning alpha male, chance upon a hole in a forest clearing that leads them deep underground, where they encounter something strange and otherworldly. Soon thereafter, the boys begin to manifest powers of telekinesis that would make a Jedi envious.

Rather than don spandex suits and hunt criminals, the boys do, well, what you would expect impulsive, judgment-impaired teenage boys to do: They play pranks on unsuspecting department-store shoppers, try to one-up each other with increasingly hazardous stunts, absolutely dominate beer pong competitions, and otherwise prove the perils of mating great power with great irresponsibility. (Their more prurient impulses, it should be noted, are kept safely within PG-13 limits.) This is when Chronicle is at its freshest and most compelling, enacting the mischievous daydreams of sci-fi-steeped youths.

Of the three, Andrew emerges as the most gifted in the use of his powers, and he clearly relishes the newfound confidence they bring. But his less admirable qualities – emotional instability, hypersensitivity, and a troubling amorality – stubbornly remain, and when events turn against him, they lead him down the dark path all-too-conspicuously foreshadowed from the film's outset.

Chronicle’s director, Josh Trank, making his feature-film debut, demonstrates a keen grasp of sci-fi theatrics as well as a gift for spectacle. He adheres strictly to found-footage parameters, refusing to cheat matters even during the film’s blistering climax, which cobbles together security-camera footage, cell-phone recordings, television news broadcasts, and other video sources without losing coherence. It's a thrilling sequence, unlike any the genre's seen before, and a testament to Trank's technical flair.

It’s when the action slows that Trank’s hand grows exceedingly heavy, pummeling us with scenes of ham-fisted histrionics that undermine the sense of verisimilitude the found-footage format is designed to foster. The milestones along Andrew's path to supervillainy are culled directly from the Handbook of Psychological Distress, from the taunts of his cartoonishly abusive father to the incessant hacking of his terminally ill mother to the varied humiliations inflicted by insensitive peers.


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Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011)

Release Date: 12/16/2011                                                            
Genre: Action, Mystery
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Robert Downey, Jr., Jude Law, Noomi Rapace, Jared Harris


REVIEW
2009’s Sherlock Holmes found unexpected synergy in the pairing of Robert Downey Jr.’s impish charm and Guy Ritchie’s macho, kinetic visual style, reinventing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective for a modern blockbuster audience. The follow-up, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, employs the same winning formula while adhering judiciously to the Law of Sequels and its more-more-more dictates: more action, bigger set pieces, higher stakes, and a darker, more convoluted plot. But more, as so many past sequels have taught us, is rarely better. Game of Shadows marks the emergence of Doyle’s most famous villain, James Moriarty (Jared Harris). Glimpsed only in darkness in the first film, Moriarty takes center stage in the sequel as Holmes’s foremost criminal foil, a genius-level university professor whose extracurricular interests range from horticulture to homicide. Holmes has deduced him to be at the center of a wave of terrorist bombings as well as the seemingly unrelated deaths of various titans of industry, but can’t quite discern just what the professor’s endgame might be. Composed and calculating to a menacing degree, Harris makes for a promising counterweight to Downey’s manic verbosity. But, as in the first film, Game of Shadows’ best moments are found in the comic interplay between Holmes and his reluctant sidekick, Dr. Watson (Jude Law), who is plucked from his honeymoon to accompany the detective on a trans-continental trip in search of clues to Moriarty’s machinations. And it’s very much a boys-only trip. The female leads from the first film, Rachel McAdams and Kelly Reilly, are tossed aside – literally, in the case of the latter – in Game of Shadows, while the cast’s highest-profile new addition, Swedish star Noomi Rapace (best known as the original, non-emaciated Lisbeth Salander) is a curious non-factor in the role of a Gypsy (or Roma, if you prefer) fortune-teller. The film maintains only the slimmest pretense of a romantic subplot between her and Downey. Rapace, looking perhaps a bit lost in her first English-speaking role, can’t hope to eclipse the Holmes-Watson traveling road show. Ritchie’s technique, with its signature blend of rapid cutting and slow-mo and super-high frame-rates – perfect for admiring the odd apple tossed in the air, or a piece of bark shot off a tree – is once again evident in the film’s awe-inspiring (and occasionally coherence-defying) set pieces, the most memorable of which is set in a munitions factory, with Watson wielding a gatling gun like an early T-600 prototype. But some of the novelty of the stylistic juxtaposition has faded since the first film. Ritchie tries to compensate by ramping up the firepower, to limited effect. Absent amid the hail of mortar blasts and automatic weapons fire is any real sense of intrigue or suspense, which proves to be Game of Shadows’ most vexing mystery.

 
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