Elysium Review - OR - Medicool

Plot

In the year 2154, the Earth stands on the brink of ruin. Overpopulation and pollution have decimated the planet, leading the world’s elite to build and live in the utopian space station Elysium. With no disease or worries, life on Elysium is what Max (Matt Damon) dreams of and, after being pushed to the brink of desperation, he finds himself embroiled in a plot that could change everyone’s lives, on Earth and Elysium both.

Quite why they put the mech-suit over his shirt is anyone's guess. What if he needs to dress up for a fancy dinner?

Review

To say that Neil Blomkamp ‘made an impact’ with his debut feature District 9 is like saying space is ‘kinda pretty big’. On a shoestring budget, he molded a modern sci-fi classic that addressed real issues in an honest, affecting and most importantly entertaining way.

Elysium is his follow-up feature and this time it’s healthcare caught in the crosshairs rather than apartheid and prejudice.

But unfortunately, much as the French quaffing Eloi of Elysium demonstrates, money is a corrupting illness.

There’s a lot to like in Elysium: Matt Damon’s glistening bald head falls just shy of a Natural Wonder; there’s gun porn on show that’ll put hair on your palms and make your thingy fall off, capitulated by bullets that explode into a thousand other bullets to make sure that the thing you want to kill is mince beef in the next life too; everything looks absolutely gorgeous, from the sleekly clinical orbital suburbia of Elysium to the dusty, dystopic L.A. palace of misery; resident big-bad murdering psycho Kruger (Sharlto Copley) is fantastically unsettling/weirdly comical.

And its bravery.

And this guys bravery. Those dudes don't look medically trained to me.

Because if there’s one word Elysium deserves to have stamped up-and-down its exoskeleton it’s ‘brave.’ It’s not every day, or even every decade, that a director uses his $100 million budget movie to make a political message. It’s tantamount to suicide at those heady fiscal heights (as it is indeed proving to be at the domestic box office) and Elysium’s health-care allegory is a resolute satirical middle finger to the corporate suits and political briefcases.

It makes for a film that threatens to be a contemporary breath of fresh sci-fi air on par with District 9 or Moon and yet one which stumbles just short of the finishing line. For every way in which Elysium layers on its satire, weaves a metaphor or conjures a nicely symbolic image (of which there are plenty) it shoots itself in the face (before promptly healing it up with a magic tanning bed elixir) elsewhere.

Blomkamp may be unwilling to stick to blockbuster formula, but a $100 million budget does a blockbuster make. And so, we’re left with a film rife with god-awful dialogue (why can’t anybody in Hollywood even remotely write child characters?) wearying pacing issues (it takes far far too long to actually get toElysium) and utterly vacant, largely uninteresting characters.

Don't worry guys, it's not Halo.

Damon does well as the untoward hero figure Max – even if his prime motive is quite simply ‘I want to live’ – but Max himself is a universe away from the colourful, subtly messed-up figure of District 9’s Wikus. Much worse is Jodie Fosters’ defence wizard Delacourt, who speaks both French and English in a thousand jarring accents in what may actually be a clever representation of a character who hasn’t got a clue who she is. Or who has more likely been bastardised by poor writing. Oh and don’t forget about the love interest Frey (Alice Braga)…though you probably will so screw it. At least Sharlto Copley’s on hand to save the day as the delightfully disturbed sleeper agent Kruger.

Naturally, as with anything that even remotely dices with the amorphous beast of sci-fi, Elysium suffers from the one-two cyberpunch of plot-holes and inconsistencies. There’s nothing too egregious, just the odd event that’s more ‘eh?’ than ‘cool’: shooting down a spacecraft from Earth because…the Secretary of Defence loves of bit of drama? Keeping standard healing products when every house and its shed has a machine that can fix literally anything (including melted faces) because…um, yeah I have no idea.

When Elysiumcan be bothered – and isn’t arbitrarily nauseating the audience with needless bouts of shake-tastic handy-cam – it can put on one hell of an action show. Some of Blomkamp’s camera quirks are fantastic and when the action isn’t being obscured by the aforementioned handy-cam drudgery it can be a joy to behold, full of visceral movement and sound accompanied by smartly blocked set-pieces, ranging from exoskeleton mech-suit fisticuffs to plane-baiting. If only the inevitable assault on Elysium could have been a little bit more exciting and little less tied-up-in-the-neatest-ribbon.

In Elysium, badassery is directly proportional to how much greasy metal you wear.

Verdict

Elysium is a challenging film; easy to like but hard to love, filled with all the sci-fi chicanery to be a classic but without the aplomb to pull it off. Ultimately, there’s enough brain and enough heart on show to fuel many and more post-picture bickers.

3/5

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Kick-Ass 2 Review - OR - Oedipus's Bloody Soul

Plot

After showing the world that superheroes aren’t necessarily fiction with his crime-fighting persona Kick-Ass, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and super ninja come bloodthirsty, foul-mouthed child-shaped WMD Mindy ‘Hit Girl’ Macready (Chloë Grace Moretz) are trying to lead normal lives. Sort of. The world is different place now however – with new heroes pouring from the woodwork, including aged avenger Colonel Stars and Stripes (Jim Carey) – and one-time hero sidekick Chris Damicco (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) has sworn super-villain vengeance for the death of his father.

This is how your brain punishes you if you eat too much cheese before beddy-byes.

Review

Kick-Ass 2 was always going to be fighting an uphill battle (possibly against an army of suited goons to the tune of some obscure 80s punk metal). The original Kick-Ass was a breath of fresh, rebellious, ultra-violent air; comic-book movies are so formulaic as to render the word redundant and Kick-Ass reveled in its unique sense of frenetic anarchy.

With both original director Matthew Vaughan and original writer Jane Goldman AWOL on the sequel, Kick-Ass 2 was dicing with the sharp repugnant edges of critical boo-hooing before it started: too similar and ‘boo, it’s a copy’; too different and ‘boo, it’s lost its identity.’

As it turns out, Kick-Ass 2 is neither of these extremes. And yet…boo, where’d the heart go?

For the first hour or so Kick-Ass 2 picks up so flawlessly from the be-jetpacked, Presley serenaded conclusion of its predecessor that the last 3 years feel like little-more than an extended ad-break, albeit still shorter than the arduous jingled vistas of an average afternoon on Comedy Central.

3 years have passed in the film universe as well and many and more loonies and outcasts across the broad and scary spectrum of society have come sprinting all bandy-legged and latexed into the world of superheroes. Swift removal of previous love interest Katie Deauxma (Lyndsy Fonseca) aside, it’s business as usual for our returning heroes. Dave ‘Kick Ass’ Lizewski remains the affable everyman while Mindy ‘Hit Girl’ Macready is every bit the potty-mouthed, murderous, scene-stealer as before. Albeit less of a screen revolution. 

You could wax comedic about Chloe Grace Moretz...but she'd probably murder you where you stand. 

Jim Carey’s Colonel Stars and Stripes is the obvious Big Daddy surrogate figure here, but his influence is a mere drop in his predecessor’s ocean of eccentric weirdness. Carey has been quick to distance himself from the film on moral grounds, a move that could have proved immensely damaging had his character been given much to do. As it is he’s little more than a short-lived underused quirk to bring the bumbling Justice Forever group of assorted social oddities together.

Talking of said social oddities, Dr. Gravity (Donald Faison) with his anti-gravity baseball bat is endearingly goofy and effortlessly fun while new filly Night Bitch (Lindy Booth) is largely pointless eye-candy. All in all, the eclectic diversity of Justice Forever is measurable as both a narrative and a visual cacophony of mutual weirdos.

Everything that made the first film what it was – the violence, language, attitude, energy, soundtrack and general absurdities – are all present and accounted for, warped by the sequel lense that demands ‘bigger and better’…and so are therefore naturally just a little worse off, stretched beyond capacity rather than bulked up for the next level.

However, from the 2^nd act onwards, the tone shifts and what was once a comedic subversion of genre tropes painted in the blood of a thousand thugs to Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation becomes an unsettlingly intimate, tonally mismanaged affair. It’s only for a few sequences, but it’s enough to potentially sour the entire experience.

'So wait, my pay-cheque's banked already? Yeah, fuck this film.'

Watching the majestically ridiculous Mother Russia brutalise an entire street-full of suitably inept cops in an escalating orgy of creative bloodlust? Fantastic, more please. Watching two roid-head thugs assault and murder a defenseless elderly man? Um…not so much. Watching a group of equally dithering, absurdly costumed, loveable losers, loving life and fighting crime with all the clinical skill of a drunk toddler to the rousing cry of ‘The Saints Go Marching In’? Yes! That, that and more of that. Watching a helpless woman’s potential rape being played for a crass cock joke?...yuck. All of these scenes happen within 20 minutes of each other, sequencing amongst others, and may very well completely decimate the tone and enjoyment-factor of the film depending on your capacity for stomaching discomforting violence.

It’s a real and surprising shame. Kick-Ass (original and sequel) revels in ultra-violence, a glorious litany of luminous buckets of comic book crimson, broken bones, dismembered limbs and many and more ghastly delights. What made the first so uniquely and riotously enjoyable was it’s shameless and obviously comical treatment of screen violence without ever losing that sense of heart (Big Daddy…sob). And until that mid-point 20-minute period where the villains dive headlong into villainy, Kick-Ass 2was right on the same track. Quite why it all went wrong is up for debate – though the missing influences of Vaughan and Goldman certainly have something to do with it – but go wrong it does and despite the relative strength of the climactic warehouse blow-out (though it’s got nothing on the skyscraper jet-pack caper) Kick-Ass 2 struggles to recover from the ugly smear it leaves.

And yet, Kick-Ass 2 is an undeniably, shamelessly fun experience. It struggles to live up to its forerunner (as it was always going to) but juggles that delicate sequel balancing-act well: paying homage to its heritage while adding enough new strings to its military-grade bow. Case-in-point: Mindy’s struggling to handle the evils of High School Life, complete with a pop-music reference epic in unexpectedness. Most impressively, the film manages to recover from the loss of Mark Strong. Mintz-Plaase is a talented comedian, but his ability to pull off 'big-bad' was doubtful to say the least. Thankfully, in his oedipal reincarnation as The Motherfucker, he's zipped together a villain as childishly inept as he is crudely cruel.

This year's annual meeting of BDSM maniacs was going to be a big one.

Verdict

Less of a barnstorming success than before, but still successful in its own right. Repulsive sequences put aside (and an unwillingness to do so is understandable) Kick-Ass 2 has enough heart, soul, backbone and bloody giblets to support its own legacy, just ignore the critical panning and intellectual dong-comparisons.

4/5

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The Lone Ranger Review - OR - Buck-Buck-Buckaroo!

Plot

Native American Comanche Tonto (Johnny Depp) and sole-survivor of a brutal slaughter – come spirit-walker and legendary masked renegade for justice the Lone Ranger – John Reid (Armie Hammer) team-up to bring notorious outlaw Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) to justice. Naturally however, things aren’t quite as they seem. To the detriment of trains everywhere.

Hollister were really pushing the boat out with their newest models.

 Review

Sequels and adaptations…you can’t move for sequels and adaptations in modern cinema. The logic is sound (it’s a hell of a lot easier to make that all important profit) but some are perplexingly pointless: Percy Jackson 2? Total Recall remake? However, with its radio show, comic books, TV show and everything else you dig up over a 70-year history, The Lone Ranger was begging for the modern Hollywood treatment. Not that Hollywood has done well on the Western front in recent history – Wild, Wild, West and Cowboys & Aliens…oops – but it was a similar situation with those scurvy dogs on the seven seas until Jerry Bruckheimer and Johnny Depp came along.

Now they’re teaming up again, hoping lightening can strike twice with The Lone Ranger.

Well…at least it’s no Wild, Wild, West.

Complete with comedy side-kick horse. We need more of those in the world.

Outside of the omnipresent grimmer-than-a-public-toilet light filter that depresses the entire production, The Lone Ranger is something of a visual feast. The hats, boots, costumes and doodads are all present and accounted for and, thanks to the few characters that flirt with vibrancy, Ranger is as aesthetically coherent as it is visually engaging. How much is on-location and how much is green-screen is up for debate, but at least all those desert vistas look appropriately vista-ry.

For a film like The Lone Ranger, where you’re tussling with seven decades of collective nostalgia, the treatment of the characters is something akin to a game of Operation, but instead of setting the light off when you mess up you murder someone’s childhood. Johnny Depp as Tonto is back boots-and-all into the role of Captain Jack, albeit with a different costume and accent. And make no mistake, he’s still entertaining - all  wide-eyes, goofy charm, gurning ways and flailing limbs - but the Captain Jack shtick has gone too far now (it’d gone too far by the end of the Piratestrilogy) and Tonto is just the eponymous dead cow back on the flogger (that’s a thing right, the place of flogging?). He’s even colour coordinated.

The sense of villainy is also far too vague and indistinct to matter. When 11 out of 10 men are greasy and bearded across the broad range of ‘brown to grey’ it’s hard to tell quite who’s who. Not to mention quite hard to care.

Captain Jack Sparrow took unemployment hard.

When The Lone Ranger feels like it however, it can be the most entertaining film of the year. Depp is as capable as ever as the enigmatic weirdo (déjà vu aside), Armie Hammer holds up surprisingly well as the inept-come-mythological hero, the music canters along with an irresistible joviality and the action is as good as anything else yet seen in this blow-out of a summer; all jocular quips, slapstick clashes and visceral comedy. Rangertreats trains the same as too many films this year have treated skyscrapers: like Lego. Working on a smaller scale has allowed Ranger to both distance itself from the apocalyptic mediocrity and create tight, tense and ludicrously OTT action sequences. And we can all enjoy that.

It’s ultimately half an hour plus too long. The climactic train-robbing blow-out is an absolute hoot, the pinnacle of blockbuster (or should that be ‘Bruckheimer’) entertainment that tears by to the tune of that timeless riff of Rossini’s William Tell Overture – you know the one – but there’s a definite sense of lethargy by the time it comes chugging along. When the film isn’t blowing up dust or engaging in remarkably bloodless violence it feels much like how horse travel itself must have felt back in those days: repetitive, largely bereft of anything more interesting than a cactus and very likely to give you a rash somewhere.

Of the many franchises this year - new and old, sequels and start-ups - The Lone Ranger would arguably best benefit from a good sequeling (Stateside money woes aside). It so nearly threatens to be so good but frequently, almost purposefully shoots itself in the foot. For every legitimately interesting character – Bonham Carter’s underused sassy brothel owner Red Harrington - there’s roughly a billion identikit grizzled men. For every fast, furious and exciting sequence, there’s a drudgerous exchange that adds little to the characters and less to the story. The framing device, where an old(er) Tonto regales a young pretender with stories of his adventures, is entirely superfluous and actively pace-breaking. With seven decades of source material to work with – and the industrial clout of Disney behind it – there’s more than enough scope for a barnstorming Lone Ranger film, the sort that this particular canter only pretends to be.

You can tell he's a bad guy because of all the ugly.

 Verdict

Quite where its Stateside failures have come from (financially and critically) is hard to tell. The Lone Ranger is by no means perfect and has a swag bag of miss-steps, but it’s still an endearing and entertaining Western romp, one of those rare films that’ll paste a smile across your face.

3/5

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