Film review by Jason Day of the American version of Stieg Larrson’s thriller, directed by David Fincher and starring Daniel Craig.
Thriller/suspense/film noir
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Author: Jason Day
Mission: Impossible. Ghost Protocol (2011)
Director: Brad Bird. Paramount/Skydance/Bad Robot/FilmWorks/Stillking Films/TC Productions
ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY
Producers: J. J. Abrahms, Brad Burke, Tom Cruise. Writers: Josh Applebaum, Andre Nemec. Camera: Robert Elswit. Music: Michael Giacchino. Sets: James D. Bissell.
Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg, Paula Patton, Michael Nyqvist, Vladimir Mashkov, Ivan Shvedoff, Anil Kapoor, Lea Seydoux, Josh Holloway, Ving Rhames, Tom Wilkinson.
SYNOPSIS
After the Kremlin is blown up, Ethan Hunt’s (Cruise) IMF agency is implicated and officially disbanded. Forced to clear their name, Cruise and his team (Pegg, Patton and analyst Renner) turn rogue to catch the real culprits and restore the lustre to the name of the Impossible Missions Force.
REVIEW
Now limping home with the fourth instalment of the blockbuster franchise, surely co-producer Cruise could have the title changed to something more factually correct – as we have now established that these missions are in fact completely and utterly possible.
One thing he should definitely get changed is the title credits sequence – sometimes these can make or break a movie, either setting the tone for what is to come with artistry the following film can sometimes struggle to match or being completely forgettable so as not to detract from the feature or the movie’s budget. Here, they are the film, summarising the whole movie. For those who don’t close their eyes, the plot on its own is somewhat superfluous.
M:I4 treads a well-worn path to audience satisfaction; the satisfaction deriving from the remarkable stunt work, a good deal of which (it is said) is performed by the star. Forget the ridiculous and overly convoluted narrative structure (employing multi-layered flashbacks), the fun as with the other films comes not from why Cruise et al solve the problems they are faced with, but more with how they do this and what gadgets and trickery they employ. Here we have a dizzying array of invisibility screens, balloon cameras and levitation chain-mail suits to fix the audience’s eyes and ensure the nonsense jibber-jabber the characters utter flies conveniently over their heads.
They also make those aforementioned stunts seem just slightly more plausible, but none the less incredible to watch. The piece de resistance here is Cruise’s stomach-jumping traverse and run around the outside of the world’s tallest building, Dubai’s mighty megalith the ‘Burj Khalifa’. If you don’t suffer from vertigo before watching this scene, pre-book yourself some Cognitive-Behavioural therapy sessions for when you have.
Cruise is looking too long in the tooth to be shilly-shallying from skyscrapers, which might explain the preponderance of ‘young uns’ supporting such silly geriatric antics: Hurt Locker‘s Renner gets second billing as the shifty analyst with a few secrets up his sleeve, sexy Patton scores well as a thoroughly self-reliant tough girl, Pegg provides the comic support and well-haired Kapoor is also amusing as an oily Indian playboy of a certain age. Lost‘s Holloway pops up briefly as an IMF agent who meets his end in double-quick time.
The series is looking as tired as its star, but there is clearly some mileage still left here – the constant product placement of a certain Apple invention (IMF systems are seemingly built around them) shows there is a lot of money still to be milked from this cash cow.
Rhames, who starred in all of the previous MI films, appears here uncredited as the same character; Wilkinson likewise eschews creditation in a brief cameo as the IMF Secretary. Monaghan, Cruise’s wife in MI3, also rears her head again.
Orphans of the Storm (1921)
Film review, by Jason Day, of the silent epic set during the French Revolution starring Lillian Gish and Dorothy Gish. Directed by D.W. Griffith.
Director: D.W. Griffith. United Artists.
SILENT
Hugo (2011). Review of the fantasy film about a boy who discovers a silent movie director in a train station.
Film review by Jason Day about an orphaned boy who, whistle hiding from the conductor of a Paris train station, happens to find Georges Melies, the ‘grandfather of cinema’, who now mends watches for a living. Starring Asa Butterfield and Ben Kingsley.
Action/adventure/fantasy
The Polar Express (2004)
Director: Robert Zemeckis. Warner/Universal CGI/Castle Rock et al (U)
ANIMATION
Producer: Gary Goetzman, Steve Starkey, William Teitler, Robert Zemeckis. Writers: Robert Zemeckis, William Broyles Jr. Camera: Don Burgess, Robert Presley. Music: Alan Silvestri. Sets: Rick Carter, Doug Chiang.
Tom Hanks, Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Eddie Deezen, Peter Scolari.
SYNOPSIS
A little boy, doubting that Santa Claus is real, is woken one Christmas night by a magical train that trundles down his street. Along with other children who also question Saint Nicholas’ existence, he boards the train and is whisked away on an amazing night-time journey to the North Pole where his doubts are washed away.
REVIEW
Director/co-producer/co-writer Zemeckis’ contribution to mainstream movie culture cannot be underestimated – he is the man behind blockbusters such as the Back to the Future series, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump and Contact. All of these films are vastly different of course, but they are bound by a creeping sense of schmaltz and whimsy, wrapped up in increasingly beguiling special effects.
Polar Express duly falls in line then, featuring some of the most astonishing ‘motion capture’ animation techniques (‘motion capture’ being that which captures a live actor’s movements and performance in animation); the ‘animated’ conductor (Hanks) looks like an an eerily lifelike, computer generated version of the star himself.
There are some ovation-inducing moments, not least the train’s rollercoaster, physics-defying journey across frozen lakes and up snow-capped montains and the waiters serving hot chocolate as if auditioning for Cirque de Soleil.
It’s a simple and saccharine product (based on the book of the same name by Chris van Allsberg) – imagine a festive Coca-Cola advert elephantised to full-length. But the homespun messages about never losing faith or belief in something, no matter where you come from, are never cloyingly or embarrasingly told. The result is a cosy, comfortable film to wallow in. Imagine, just for a second, you are eight years old again and this happens to you – I challenge you not to be at least charmed.
King Kong (2005)
Film review of the fantasy about an enormous gorilla on a prehistoric island and his love for the female sacrificial offering (Naomi Watts).
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Director: Peter Jackson. Universal/WingNut/Big Primate/MFPV (12)
ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
Director: Andrew Adamson. Disney/Walden Media
ACTION/ADVENTURE/FANTASY
Producer: Mark Johnson, Philip Steuer. Writers: Ann Peacock, Andrew Adamson, Christopher Markus, Stephen McFeely. Camera: Donald McAlpine. Music: Harry Gregson-Williams. Sets: Roger Ford.
Georgia Henley, Skander Keynes, William Moseley, Anna Popplewell, Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy, Jim Broadbent, Kiran Shah, Liam Neeson, Ray Winstone, Dawn Fench, Rupert Everett.
SYNOPSIS
Evacuated to the countryside during World War II, the Pevensie siblings (Henley, Keynes, Moseley and Popplewell) soon find themselves bored kicking about the Professor’s (Broadbent) stuffy mansion. During a game of hide and seek, they find a large wardrobe in an empty room that acts as a portal to the fantasy world of Narnia. Narnia is a land of snow and ice, lorded over by the White Witch (Swinton). But the coming of the human children sparks a rebellion from the creatures who dwell here, led by the wise and powerful lion Aslan (Neeson).
REVIEW
Wittily summarised by Empire magazine as ‘Lord of the Rings in fuzzy felt’, as brief and accurate a description as any critic could dream up, Chronicles may not live up to Peter Jackson’s mighty trilogy but this first part has a certain, chilly kick to it.
For those who still fondly remember the entrancing childrens TV version made in the eighties will know that this Disney version doesn’t hold a candle to it. One improvement, however, is with the casting and styling of Swinton, in what turned out to be the film that ‘made her’, aged 45 and after years on the art-house film circuit. She is a frostily enigmatic megalomaniac, seductively whispering sweet nothings to an underage Skandar, offering him neverending sweety rewards before trying to spear him with an icicle. She’s dressed in a shimmering, post-box style bodice, with alabaster white make-up and long, blond dreadlocks. It is a striking display of lip-smacking, movie-psycho villainy, shaded with a greatly talented performer’s control and determination.
The children are annoyingly middle-class, but Henley is an adorable find as Lucy, the youngest of the group and McAvoy is a sweetie as Mr Tumnus. A raft of British stars voice some of the animals; there are more parts here than on Noah’s Ark. Notably, Everett is a heroic fox and Winstone and French are the bolshy beavers.
The effects are workmanlike and effective. Lion tries hard to emulate the Tolkein adaptations in terms of scale and thrills but it merely fizzes when the action starts rather than presents eye-popping spectacle. Its amusing to see how on this level the two films are so similar but also vastly different at the same time.
Disney and Walden Media furnish a slap-up production and this first installment proved a hit, but despite the razzmatazz publicity drive, the other additions to the series (Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – in 3D) have failed to capture similar audience attention.
Vertigo (1958)
Film review of the thriller about sexual obsession, starring James Stewart and Kim Novak and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
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Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Paramount.
The Towering Inferno (1974) . Is this the best of the glut of seventies disaster dramas?
Film review of the 1974 disaster drama about a skyscraper on fire, starring Steve McQueen and Paul Newman and directed by John Guillermin and Irwin Allen.
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Directors: Irwin Allen, John Guillermin. (165 mins). Warner/20th Century Fox. (15)
Disaster
He Who Gets Slapped (1924). Film review of the silent tragedy starring Lon Chaney
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