The Movies of This Winter…

The Big’uns:

 Jack Reacher (dir. Christopher McQuarrie) stars Tom Cruise (oversized smurf) as a former military man who is described, in Lee Child’s novels about him, as a blonde giant of a man. Little that can go wrong there then. Wreck-it-Ralph (dir. Rich Moore) is a Disney feature about the bad guy in an arcade game, who decides that he does not want to be the bad guy anymore and sets out on a journey to other games. Very promising indeed, if only for the appearance of beloved characters from games that were played by people who were kids in the 1990s. Django Unchained will see Quentin Tarantino tastelessly screwing up (movie) history once more, now with the help of Jamie Foxx, Christopher Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. Get your act together Quentin, and go make another Jackie Brown. Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters could be real fun, or it could be the next Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But it is directed by Norwegian horror prodigy Tommy Wirkola, and stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, so the odds are reasonable. Finally, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey sees Peter Jackson (and everybody else involved in the LOTR madness) revisiting Middle Earth. I expect abolutely nothing from this mind-numbingly boring property, so I won’t be disappointed in any way. On the plus side: the 48 fps images look good in the trailer, and in Martin Freeman it does star a personal favourite of mine.

 

The Award Darlings

You’d think that a book about a boy and a tiger in a little boat would be unfilmable, but Ang Lee decided to give Life of Pi a chance. In 3D. Also considered unfilmable was David Mitchell’s book Cloud Atlas, but Andy and Lana Wachowski, together with Tom Tykwer, decided to give it a try. However good the film may turn out to be, it won’t win prizes. It’s too weird probably. Much more conventional is Hyde Park on Hudson (dir. Roger Michell), about president Roosevelt (Bill Murray gunning for a career Oscar) receiving the King and Queen of England as his guests. Speaking of American presidents: Steven Spielberg’s biopic Lincoln stars Daniel Day-Lewis, so Bill Murray may have to wait for his Oscar a little longer. Another biopic that may score big is Hitchcock (dir. Sacha Gervasi), starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren. Already a favourite is Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest, the Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman starring The Master. Argo (dir. Ben Affleck) will be a contender, as will Les Miserables. The latest one is directed by Tom Hooper, who dug up quite some gold for The King’s Speech two years ago. And if the director is anything to go by, look out for Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. A new The Hurt Locker? We’ll have to wait and see.

Review: The Bourne Legacy (dir. Tony Gilroy)

Story: Jeremy Renner is Alex Cross, another agent in the secret Treadstone project of the CIA. His superiors want him dead to cover up the project after Jason Bourne exposed it. Together with a doctor (Rachel Weisz) who is also on the kill list, Cross escapes and sets out to reclaim his life.

I have never been a big fan of the Bourne movies. I liked Robert Ludlum’s novels well enough, but I though that The Bourne Identity was a poor adaptation. The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum, directed by the much lauded Paul Greengrass, took their titles from the novels, but nothing else. Supremacy and Ultimatum are widely considered to have changed the face of action films. But I never much cared for that new face. The shaky camera style that makes it impossible to keep up with what is happening in an action scene is in my opinion but a trick to conceal that the filmmaker does not know how to properly shoot an action scene.

(Proper action scenes, I think, are hardly shot anymore, now that this trick has become widespread. Even the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace was hampered by it. I much prefer old-fashioned action set pieces like those directed by Michael Mann or Philip Noyce)

Where I find Greengrass’ contribution to the Bourne series to be overrated, I must admit that I was a big fan of Matt Damon as Bourne. Over the years, I’ve grown into the idea of Damon as a bona fide character actor, rather than as a Hollywood pretty boy. But for the fourth film in the Bourne series, The Bourne Legacy, both Damon and Greengrass have not returned. Tony Gilroy is now in the director’s chair. He was one of the writers of the previous films and he directed the exciting thriller Micheal Clayton. And the leading man is now Jeremy Renner, the rising star of The Hurt Locker, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Avengers.

In The Bourne Legacy, Renner does a decent job with admittedly poor material. This film is shockingly underthought and underwritten. Entire plot strands and developments make no sense at all (including a lengthy opening scene in Alaska). Characters are introduced and dropped at a whim, or not used at all (why Joan Allen’s Pam Landy had to reappear is a mystery to me). Curiously, the action scenes were better than they ever were in the previous films. Especially the Manila motorbike chase is a spectacle the likes of which we have not seen since The Matrix Reloaded.

Verdicht: This film will entertain as long as you do not overthink it. Renner and Weisz are always a pleasure. There is some realy good action. But I can’t escape the thought that this was an idea for just another action movie first, and that the Bourne label got stuck onto it later, for marketing purposes only. And exactly that change has made this film such a mess.

Trailer Tuesday: The Master Girl Hunters Quartet

The Master

Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson. Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman & Amy Adams

Release date NL: December 6, 2012

 

The Girl

Dir. Julian Jarrols. Starring: Toby Jones, Sienna Miller & Imelda Staunton

Release date NL: TBA

 

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

Dir. Tommy Wirkola. Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Zoe Bell, Peter Stormare & Famke Janssen

Release date NL: February 28, 2013

 

A Late Quartet

Dir. Yaron Zilberman. Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Christopher Walken & Catherine Keener

Release date NL: TBA

Trailer Tuesday: Lay Miserables’ Premium Legacy

Lay the Favourite

Dir. Stephen Frears. Starring: Bruce Willis, Rebecca Hall, Catherine Zeta-Jones & Vince Vaughn

Release date NL: TBA

 

Les Miserables

Dir. Tom Hooper. Starring: Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Sacha Baron Cohen & Amanda Seyfried

Release date NL: January 10, 2013

 

Premium Rush

Dir. David Koepp. Starring: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Michael Shannon, Aaron Tveit & Jamie Chung

Release date NL: November 22, 2012

 

The Bourne Legacy

Dir. Tony Gilroy. Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz, Edward Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Donna Murphy & David Strathairn

Release date NL: August 30, 2012

Boom! Aargh! Pow! – the The Avengers review

Boom! Aargh! Pow! Good Joke! Green Monster! Flying Aircraft Carrier! Eye-Scorchingly Bad 3D! Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth &  Chris Evans! Scarlett Johansson, Hot! Gwyneth Paltrow, Not Enough Of! Jeremy Renner, Samuel L. Jackson and Cobie Smulders in Too Small Roles! Boom! Aargh! Pow! Directed by Joss Whedon! He of Buffy! And Cabin in the Woods! Chonk Boom Aargh Pow! Tom Hiddlestone Dressed Up As A Golden Reindeer! Chunk! Crunch!

Trailer:

Judgment: Entertaining, funny, too long, bad 3D, some good acting, annoying kids in the auditorium (it’s a 12 certification stupid parents!), bad beginning, better ending. Bring on Iron Man 3.

Trailer Tuesday: The Legacy of Seeking Lincoln in the Iron Sky

The Bourne Legacy

Dir. Tony Gilroy. starring: Jeremy Renner, Edward Norton, Rachel Weisz, Joan Allen & Albert Finney

Release date NL: September 13 2012

 

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Dir. Lorene Scafaria. Starring: Steve Carrell, Keira Knightley, William Petersen & Patton Oswalt

Release date NL: TBA

 

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Dir. Timur Bekmambetov. Starring: Benjmain Walker, Dominic Cooper, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Rufus Sewell & Anthony Mackie

Release date NL: July 11 2012

 

Iron Sky

Dir. Timo Vuorensola. Starring: Julia Dietze, Christopher Kirby & Udo Kier

Release date NL: TBA

Trailer Tuesday: Superhere, Superthere, Superheroes Everywhere

The Avengers

Dir. Joss Whedon. Starring: Everyone (Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Downey Jr. , Scarlett Johansson, Chris Evans, Chris Hemswort, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddlestone & Jeremy Renner)

Release date NL: April 26, 2012

 

The Amazing Spiderman

Dir. Marc Webb. Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans & Martin Sheen

Release date NL: July 4, 2012

 

John Carter

Dir. Andrew Stanton. Starring: everyone who is not already in The Avengers (Taylor Kitsch, Willem Dafoe, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, Polly Walker, James Purefoy, Lynn Collins & Thomas Haden Church)

Release date NL: March 8, 2012

Popcorn and Skyscrapers – The Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol review

Reviewing this film is a hell of a job. If you want to come up with something original to say, that is. Reviews of Mission: Impossible films are always reviews of Tom Cruise. How does Tom Cruise look for his age? Tom Cruise does his own stunts. Tom Cruise is a super star / lunatic / talented actor? Tom Cruise produces these films. Tom Cruise comes up with the stunts and the director is hired to film a flinsy story around them (in case of John Woo for Mission: Impossible 2)…

How to review this film as that which it is? Just a film. A light-hearted comedy/action adventure spy film. Popcorn.

So, I’ll briefly say that the highlight of this fourth installment is indeed the scene in which Ethan Hunt has to climb outof a window on the 130^th floor of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to climb up to another room seven floors up in order to enter it from the outside. Yes Cruise does that himself. Yes it is spectacular and yes it is outrageous and stupid. But as filmed by director Brad Bird it is foremost a visual adventure.

Bird is a former Pixar director, who previously made The Incredibles, amongst others. His move from animation to live action is a surprise, but a succesful one. Bird directs with confidence and visual flair. Especially the first hour of the film has an absolute minimum of ‘ expository dialogue’. Bird does not tell, he shows.

But after an hour you’re going to need more exposition. The plot moves racecar fast and is completely ridiculous. Evil Swedish (!) scientist Cobalt (Millenium‘s Michael Nyqvist) wants to start a nuclear war to help evolution along. He frames the Impossible Mission Force for a Kremlin bombing so that Cruise and his team are disavowed by the government and can’t stop him. Or can they? Then it also involves a sexy French assassin (Lea Seydoux), launch codes, an Indian billionaire (Anil Kapoor) a satellite and a futuristic Bombay car park. By the time they start talking about the satellites you will feel cheated out of the plot. And crucially, the Bombay section in the third act of the film is not exciting enough to make up for the distraction caused by such questions as: why does Cobalt have to buy the launch codes if he worked in the Kremlin previously?

Ghost Protocol does not have the dramatic heft and the character development that made the previous film, by JJ Abrams, so good. When it attempts to force it in, it fails to do so, thereby only directing attention to its failure. It is much better when it just tries to be spectacular and funny. For that is what it is best at.

Because Ghost Protocol is outright funny. Mostly, but not only, because of the promotion of Simon Pegg’s character. His tech wizard Benji Dunn now is a proper team member, and his asides and banter with newcomer Jeremy Renner provide genuine laughs.

The film is also very spectacular, and a party for the eyes.

It is slightly too long, but not annoyingly so. It is popcorn. With Tom Cruise dangling of skyscrapers.

Over the Top Trailers

Sometimes. .. Every so often… A film comes out that is so over the top ridiculous and nonsensical and too much in the most literal sense of those two words, that you might actually like ot. More likely is that the film is a mess. Next year, there’s two of these:

The Avengers

Good news is that only one thing pisses me off: Scarlett Johansson posing in black leather. Literally posing. And the director co-wrote Toy Story. So he probably got some sense for story.

Dir.  Joss Whedon. Starring (don’t flinch): Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow & Tom Hiddleston.

Release date: May 3 (NL)

 

New Kids Nitro

The first New Kids film, New Kids Turbo, was a huge success, but not a testament to highbrow taste and PC sensibilities. Considering this trailer, the standards have even gone down, and in the makers’ logic that should mean even more success at the box office.

Dir. Steffen Haars & Flip van der Kuil. Starring: Huub Smit, Tim Haars, Wesley van Gaalen, Steffen Haars & Flip van der Kuil

Release date: December 8 (NL)

 

Spy Trailers

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Dir. Thomas Alfredson. Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, John Hurt & Benedict Cumberbatch

Dutch release date: unconfirmed (UK: September 16 2011)

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Dir. Brad Bird. Starring: Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Jeremy Renner & Simon Pegg

Dutch release date: December 15 2011