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Reviews
Iron Man Three (2013)
After the events of The Avengers Tony Stark is having trouble sleeping and having anxiety attacks.
The Iron Man series of films has a couple of key strengths that put it just ahead of other super hero movies: Robert Downey Junior, the character of Tony Stark and snarky banter. Robert Downey Junior is delightful to watch as Tony Stark quipping his way through life, cracking jokes and just generally being effortlessly cool. He's a lot more fun to be with than brooding tortured souls like Batman, Spider-Man or the Hulk.
The producers of the series know this too and so in the third installment of the franchise they give the audience exactly what we want, lots of Tony Stark being glib, making jokes and being charming. Bringing in Shane Black (writer of Lethal Weapon and director of Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang which is another Robert Downey Junior quip fest) was a great decision in this vein as the man knows how to delivery good banter.
But whilst the dialogue was always the best part of the previous films it wasn't the only aspect necessary to make Iron Man 1, 2 and the Avengers work. For all his glibness Tony Stark as a character has depth. He's a conflicted character using his bravado to mask real feelings of inadequacy, of losing control of his life and fear of death.
This film seems aware that it has to have a character arc for Tony Stark but it forgets to have one. It starts well. In fact the set-up is great. After the events of The Avengers Tony Stark is having trouble sleeping, kept awake at night by nightmares of how he nearly died stopping the alien threat and haunted in the day by hallucinations and anxiety attacks. With his best weapon, his mind, seemingly fracturing two threats emerge. One a terrorist with unclear aims but seemingly immense power named the Mandarin, and the other a mistake from his past in the form of a biomechanical virus named Extremis. In short order Tony is stripped of his home, his supporting cast and even his Iron Man armour. Now the only tool he has left to fight back with is his mind, and he may be slowly losing that too.
That is a brilliant first act with just two problems.
Firstly that's the start of Iron Man 1 with Tony kidnapped and forced to use his wits to escape. Spoilers, he builds a suit of armour and kicks ass. Further spoilers, that does not happen in this film.
Secondly, and more importantly, all of that set up gets tossed away haphazardly in the second act. Tony gets a pep talk from a cute kid and suddenly decides, okay, no more PTSD. There isn't any pay off. It's like the film knows it has to get rid of that stuff so we can have our big fight in the third act but can't think of a satisfying way to do so, so it just drops it.
The psychological set up isn't the only thing that's jettisoned either. The most glaring example of this problem is the Mandarin. Ben Kingsley's Mandarin is fantastic in the early scenes; a terrifying and enigmatic presence that literally interrupts the film to deliver ominous warnings of doom. He's tremendously scary and the audience is eager to learn more about him. Then the second act undercuts all of that with a reveal that, whilst hilarious, leaves a gaping hole where the antagonist should be. Guy Pearce's mad scientist character Aldrich Killian suddenly has to step in and be the bad guy but he doesn't have the charisma or the personality to carry it. That's no slight on Guy Pearce by the way it's a fault with the script. We just don't get enough time with Killian to care when he suddenly becomes the big bad.
The suit is another, similar, problem. At the start of the film Tony gets separated from his Iron Man armours and has to make do with a malfunctioning prototype. Now, unlike the other problematic aspects this one does build on the set-up. Tony has to use improvised weapons and his fast mouth to deal with physical threats until his armour is repaired. All of this builds up to Tony getting back in the suit and kicking righteous butt in the third act. And it does.
The problem is they then proceed to do it again, and again. Tony gets suit, loses suit, gets suit. In fact the final battle is literally Tony getting into one suit after another as each breaks down or gets destroyed in turn. I know that the aim is to literalise the theme of Tony having to rebuild himself but the effect is just one big cinematic cock tease. Your film is called Iron Man, a significant part of the appeal of your film is seeing the man in the robot suit hitting things; get to the money shot people!
Despite my complaints it's not a bad film by any means. I enjoyed it more than Iron Man 2 (which was a bloated overcrowded mess) and there's a lot to like. I loved the banter. I loved the multiple armour designs in the final fight. I loved the stunt with the people falling from the plane. I really, really loved Gary. It's just frustrating that there's one third of a truly great film here that gets sabotaged by its own plot twists.
Flawed but enjoyable.
Find out more about me and more film reviews at http://about.me/adamhalls
Evil Dead (2013)
A remake that amps up the scares of the original but downplays the laughs, not as innovative or weird as the original but a decent effort.
The problem with being a fan of horror films is more so than any other genre the law of diminishing returns sets in fast. We watch horror films to be scared by them, but the more we watch the more we become used to the tricks of the trade and the harder it is to become scare us. That's why the primary audience for horror films is teenagers; they literally haven't seen enough horror films yet to become jaded.
So when a horror film comes along that is actually scary it really is something special, something to be held up and admired and that you excitedly tell all your other horror loving friends they need to see. The Evil Dead remake, as shocked as I am to say it, is just such a film. Don't get me wrong, The Evil Dead is not a wholly original film by any stretch of the imagination. Plenty of this is familiar territory. A bunch of young adults in an isolated cabin? Jump scares? Discordant music? We've seen all this before right? I mean this is a remake, we've literally seen all this before. Ah but director Fede Alavarez masterfully plays upon the fact that this is a remake for some of the scares. The old Hitchcock nugget about what is tension goes roughly as follows. Two people sit at a table, a bomb goes off, it's boring. Two people sit at a table, the camera pans down to show a bomb, then goes back to them sitting at a table. The audience knows what's going to happen and it's the waiting for that to happen that builds the tension. Fede Alvarez uses this trick repeatedly explicitly showing what will happen to a character in a page in the necronomicon and then making us slowly, gradually, agonisingly wait for the reveal to happen. But he's at his most clever when he uses the audience's prior knowledge of the earlier films to pull off the same trick. When one character gets an infected hand fans of the original films know exactly what's going to happen but he makes us wait for what seems an unbearably tense eternity for the inevitable to occur.
He also doesn't flinch away from his reveals. This is a gory and explicit film. Gore doesn't usually bother me since it's normally so flat and lifeless but Evil Dead had me peeking from between my hands on more than one occasion. It also helps that almost all of the effects in this film are practical. You'd be amazed how much that helps sell the horror. Or maybe you wouldn't, I know most horror fans despise cgi blood so they'll be pleased to hear there's plenty of dyed corn flour in this flick and nary a computer in sight.
But, whilst I think it being a remake is actually a really crucial aspect of the success of the film what a lot of fans want to know is, is it better than the original?
Well cards on the table guys. Evil Dead 2 is in my top ten favourite films of all time and the first Evil Dead is a brilliant, imaginative, innovative, insane film. The remake doesn't even come close to the twisted genius of the original. Partly that's because this film makes no attempt to be funny whereas the first Evil Dead film is one of the few films to ever successfully tread the line between scary and funny. If you go into this wanting it to be Evil Dead all over again then I'm sorry but you'll be disappointed.
Some have said this film would have been better received if it just dropped the Evil Dead name all together, but as I hope I've made clear much of the pleasure is in remixing those familiar Evil Dead elements in new ways. Think of it like a cover version. Take a song like somewhere over the rainbow and do it in a punk style, or a heavy metal style, or a jazz style. The covers aren't trying to improve on the original; they're trying to do the original in a different way. So we have with the 2013 Evil Dead. It's Evil Dead but played straight. I didn't think I would ever want such a thing but the film genuinely surprised me with how enjoyable a straight forward horror version of Evil Dead can be. And really what was Evil Dead 2 but a cover version of Evil Dead with the comedy dials turned up and the horror toned down? Why not do another version with the horror amped up instead?
It's not perfect by any means though. The biggest problem by far is the script which is clunky and contains some of the worst chunks of obvious expository dialogue you're likely to encounter. The acting is workmanlike at best with no real standouts and certainly nobody to rival Bruce Campbell's magnificently charismatic Ash. In fact the characters are another weak point. Nobody is annoying but they're all fairly flat and we don't have a stand out star. Although it's not like the non-Ash characters were well developed in the original. It also has very problematic sexual politics even for the relaxed standards of horror films. And the less said about the ending, the better.
So, not perfect, nor as good as the original but a worthy addition to the series and an increasingly rare example of a genuinely scary horror film.
For more film reviews check out www.wordpress.mummy.com or find out more about at http://about.me/AdamHalls
Dai-Nihonjin (2007)
Big Man Japan tells the tale of Masaru Daisato also known as Big Man Japan, the giant 30 foot tall super hero that defends Japan from invading monsters.
Big Man Japan is one of the weirder films I've seen from Japan and anyone who's passingly familiar with Japanese cinema knows what a statement that is. Starring, written by, directed by and produced by one man comedy auteur Hitoshi Matusmoto, Big Man Japan tells the tale of Masaru Daisato also known as Big Man Japan, the giant 30 foot tall super hero that defends Japan from invading monsters in a similar vein to Ultraman and other Kaiju films.
The twist being that everything in Masaru's life, including his monster fighting, absolutely sucks and the people of Japan hate him and think he's terrible at his job.
That's a brilliant high concept but it's not really the film that Big Man Japan gives us, and partly that's why the film is so odd. It's not the subject matter, although stuff like a giant starfish/vagina monster that stinks is pretty oddball, but rather the tone. Big Man Japan is deadpan to the point that it seems sometimes to be actively taunting the audience with how unfunny it's being. Long sequences of the film are taken up with Masaru eating at a noodle place, driving his scooter, talking about how he likes umbrellas and doing other mundane tasks all filmed in a documentary style with minimal camera movement and subtle acting. It's actively boring at times but it seems to be intentional because the central gag is presenting the absurd and surreal monster battles in as deadpan and ordinary a way as the mundane aspects of Masaru's life. The long boring segments means the eventual pay off of a giant pair of purple pants seems all the funnier. Not that the documentary segments are without humour, particularly the scene with Masaru's daughter in her bunny hat and pixelated face, but it's a subtler humour than the giant electric nipples or enormous cat eared baby spouting poetry. Tolerance for this level of deadpan is likely to be low though so it's certainly not a film with wide appeal.
People have moaned about the special effects for this feature but frankly on the budget this film had, and especially considering they're using motion capture technology I think they look great and even add to the humour since, again they mix the oddball and the deadpan. Being able to see the actor's facial expressions is much more important than a good looking suit or smooth CGI when you're doing this kind of subtle comedy.
One final note, the last ten minutes of this film are absolutely hysterical. Having built up the threat of this unknown red monster with Masaru running away from it and finally having to face it again at the end we're all primed for a typical redemption story where Masaru overcomes his own incompetence and beats the big bad. I won't spoil the ending but suffice it to say the film undercuts this expected trope in the most ludicrous and hilarious manner possible. Much as individual scenes have a slow, tedious, excruciating, agonisingly, long build up to a gag so the film as a whole is 90 minutes of deadpan and 10 minutes of utter unrestrained insanity that had me laughing like a loon.
For more film reviews check out www.wordpress.mummy.com or find out more about at http://about.me/AdamHalls