When the Cheshire emerges...

Thor: The Dark World (M)

THE TALE of Asgardian heir to the throne and all-round god Thor is Marvel's most mixed with its elements of medieval living and intergalactic reach. It's an ironic notion to think we're looking for some superior alien race, and Marvel have nothing to suggest that for much of it life is where Earthlings were 1500 years ago.

At the same time, Thor's story is most relatable with its focus on his relationship with brother Loki. The pair could not be more opposite (indeed on-screen representatives Chris Hemsworth and Tom Hiddleston appearance-wise), representing good and evil while managing to keep a light head. 

A parallel of good and evil is what this sequel first shows; while Thor is off fighting for peace within the nine realms Asgard rules over, Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) is still losing a two-year battle of heartbreak. Not even the bumbling charm of Richard (Chris O'Dowd) can improve her mindset.

Jane's work has led her to London, where her time as a singleton comes to an end after falling through a portal to an unknown realm and contracting the Aether. You'd be right thinking that's a bad thing - the Aether is a matter capable of destroying worlds and highly sought by exiled elf Malekith (Christopher Eccleston).

It's a triple whammy for Jane - she finds her love once more, gets to travel to Asgard and meets the parents (Rene Russo and Anthony Hopkins). But the plan to be rid of a threat known previously to Thor only in childhood stories has the saviour in a real predicament.

Photo: perezhilton.com - I love this!

The Marvel Cinematic Universe just keeps on giving with this fine continuation of the thread. The script from Christopher Yost, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely is extremely entertaining, with plenty of unexpected twists and cracking humour delivered well by the cast. Everyone gets a go in contributing, and no one disappoints.

Importantly, the story continues the ongoing feud between brothers, founded from Loki's desire for the Asgardian throne and still fuelled by his view of supposed favoritism towards Thor. It's essentially Marvel's version of any given sibling rivalry, engrossing for its wave of positive and negative emotion as well as Loki's ability to keep everyone guessing.

Hiddleston has fun with his gleeful villain, creating the smallest bit of sympathy while still managing to exude a most evil interior. Alongside him, Hemsworth counteracts nicely as Thor with his strong presence and good intentions. The supporting cast all return, including a crazed Stellan Skarsgard, and new characters create unexpected sub-plots to add to the overall story twists.

As per usual within Marvel's realm, post-credit scenes give an insight of what's to come - and they won't disappoint. The first film delivered a good introduction, and now we learn Thor can withstand complex issues that concern Asgard and Earth. A great continuation not to be missed.

With 12 YEARS A SLAVE now in theaters, @Katiinkaa explores what makes Steve McQueen so great. http://t.co/QqdWp96KJt

— Movie Mezzanine (@MovieMezzanine) October 21, 2013

2 Guns (MA 15+)

WHEN corruption within the US government is presented in film, more often than not it has to do with the country’s president. This film by Baltasar Kormakur doesn't touch on that for a change, but still shows corruption on multiple levels to say that everyone’s the bad guy.

Bobby (Denzel Washington) and Stig (Mark Wahlberg) are a team that liaise in deals with Mexican drug kingpin Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). They rob a bank meant to be containing Papi’s money as a revenge plot for a double-cross before Bobby is found out by his partner to be a DEA agent. Stig’s no different though as a naval intelligence officer, and while the double double-cross is usually a bit of fun, it creates a snowball effect of confusion for the plot that follows.

The script mistakes its flaws as suspense. Characters are introduced without proper explanation, and a failed relationship between Bobby and fellow agent Deb (Paula Patton) serves only to get Patton topless.

Photo: digitaltrends.com

Washington and Wahlberg are a pair constantly at each other’s throats with endless banter that amounts to sheer stupidity. Walhberg’s drawling and chewing is excessive, and reduces him to his failsafe archetype of a wannabe ladies man.

There’s plenty of shoot-offs and menace from everyone involved. Bill Paxton and James Marsden get their hands dirty as government and military officials respectively, while Olmos gets a bit of a laugh out of it all.

What is evil then? In this case it’s everything - the film is not clean in character, story or look. Two guns recur as a motif throughout the film but don’t give us anything to draw from. It’s a mindless journey with typical, but still disappointing, results.

Rating: 2/5

*Published in the Daily Liberal (Dubbo), Western Advocate (Bathurst), Parkes Champion Post and Midstate Observer (Orange) and Rotten Tomatoes from Saturday 12/10/2013

MISSED LAST WEEK'S REVIEW? See what I thought of Gravity.

Photo: spinningplatters.com

Rating: 2.5/5

RED 2 (MA 15+)

Director Dean Parisot has gone with a sequel that tries to replicate that unique quality, throwing the agents back together for another mission. The most notable change is that Frank (Bruce Willis) and Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) are an old married couple, bickering about their protective/reclusive way of life. Sarah wants more adventure; Frank thinks it's too dangerous.

As to be expected in the life of a former CIA agent though, trouble finds them when they are implicated to have knowledge of the location of a bomb created as part of Operation Nightshade.

Like other action sequels (think Taken 2), the story expands to allow international locations and the introduction of what are meant to be more exotic characters. Katja (Catherine Zeta-Jones) is a Russian agent revealed to be Frank's Kryptonite, while David Thewlis plays a man simply known as The Frog.

Anthony Hopkins is Dr Bailey, the English scientist key to the gang's mission. While he appears less strung up in his role than Zeta-Jones or Thewlis, the lunacy his character exudes is ultimately representative of the film as a whole.



Photo: clotureclub.com

The insistence of keeping the story a bit loony as a point of difference fails to create anything special this time around. Frank and Sarah didn't exactly have the beginnings of a conventional couple, but to see them become whiny and mushy towards each other is, for use of a better word, pathetic.

Added nods to the original (comic) material through animated segues clash with the overall style of the film. RED never had the feel of a comic adaptation, and this story doesn't either; for agents that don't hold superhero powers, they don't need to. This story continues with plenty of action, blending traditional blow-ups Willis-style with the Asian martial arts skills Han (Byung Hun Lee) unleashes on his opponents.

The script by returning writers Jon and Erich Hoeber fails to create genuine comedy, instead producing a lot of simple stupidity and gags for laughs to a shallow few. It draws on the previous relationships but lacks inspiration to develop them into anything worthwhile. Even the music is unsettling, switching from Linkin Park to Eastern spy themes and managing to add nothing but unwanted tension.

Parisot has created a pot of boiling madness, and if anyone escapes with minimal injuries it's John Malkovich as fellow agent Marvin, and Hopkins. For the rest, it should be straight to the loony bin - but the announcement of a third film means the madness is far from over.

Rating: 2/5

Tonight's review has a bonus entree for those of you like me keeping warm and cosy on the couch on this Saturday night.

I'm now what I'd like to think a contributor proper to Movie Mezzanine with a second piece now published. Have a read and tell me what you think:

Here's @Katiinkaa on why next year's 'Fargo' series on FX warrants equal doses of skepticism and excitement. http://t.co/iPYTi9rPAH
— Movie Mezzanine (@MovieMezzanine) August 22, 2013

***

This week's film was rather disappointing.

Kick-Ass (MA 15+)

THE FIRST film about Dave Lizewski and his invention of Kick-Ass was a direct response to Sam Raimi's Spider-Man trilogy if nothing else. Twisting direct quotes and scenes, Matthew Vaughn's telling of this fanboy's fantasies was a punchy look at how superheroes in the real world could come to exist. And an 11-year-old Chloe Grace Moretz saying the 'c' word for good measure.

Three years later we see the return of Dave/Kick-Ass (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Mindy/Hit Girl (Moretz) in the time after the first film's events. The crime fighting has stopped but Dave wants back in. The thought of achieving success as Kick-Ass is an addiction, and with Mindy by his side as trainer and potential partner in crime Dave believes they could do great things.

This sequel in many ways is a repeat of its predecessor. The Spider-Man references/style continues, there's another bad reference from the little lady and a new superhero father figure emerges in Jim Carrey's Colonel Stars and Stripes.

More emphasis is placed on Mindy coming out of her shell as a 15-year-old. She is subject to bullying at school from the mean girls she tried to befriend and discovers how males can be seen as an object of desire. Secret fantasies are also a game changer for The Motherf----er (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), in dominatrix-inspired get-up as the world's first supervillain. He's out for Kick-Ass' blood to avenge the death of his father.

It becomes a battle of the supporters as both Kick-Ass and The Motherf----r have strength in numbers. The good team is an odd bunch, but all reveal good reasons for being there in the film's most poignant scene. The bad guys - well, that's where the film begins to spiral.

Photo: collider.com

John Leguizamo is the only sane one in the baddie camp as he tries to explain the political incorrectness of henchmen names like Genghis Carnage and Black Death. It doesn't work, and The Motherf----r steadily declines into a psychotic state. The film eventually hits rock bottom as it attempts to make a potential rape scene a point for laughter.
Taylor-Johnson may impress with his abs but not particularly with a whinier Dave, and Moretz, while the best thing about the film, still threatens to over-sexualise the now-not-completely-innocent Mindy.

Director Jeff Wadlow took over from Vaughn to create a similarly stylised affair. But gags best kept to the Batman series of the 60s somehow make their way into this hyper-violent world where they don't belong, and the film suffers as a painful return as it struggles to kick any butts or gain credibility.

Rating: 2/5

MISSED LAST WEEK'S REVIEW? See what I thought of Elysium.

Elysium (MA 15+)

WE all have a dream, something that we believe will justify the purpose of our creation as a human being. Some go on to win the Noble Prize, others become doting parents, and in one way or another we all get what's coming to us.

Death is one of a few certainties in life, suffering a possibility for many. Neill Blomkamp is, in the early stages of his directing career, expressing uneasiness about the level of suffering in our world.

Blomkamp's anticipated return to the big screen following his 2009 debut District 9 again deals with an unsettled Earth. This time he takes us into the year 2154 as he sees it, showing a Los Angeles littered with disease and chaos. The elite of human society have escaped to Elysium, a constructed living space outside the Earth's atmosphere. A place where sickness can be healed, it is a glimmer of hope just out of the world's reach.

Max (Matt Damon) never stops wondering. As a child, it was a beautiful star in the sky. A tainted view after life as a thief gives him little hope of achieving the dream of getting there. But it is desperation that finally gives Max his way out. He becomes an important part of criminal Spider's (Wagner Moura) plan to extract data that could allow any human onto Elysium.

Blomkamp's script is careful to remind us there can still be trouble in paradise. Perfection takes a stranglehold at Elysium, defence secretary Delacourt (Jodie Foster) particularly feeling the strain. Her actions in working with rogue agent Kruger (Sharlto Copley) are reckless, and the stability of the habitat is shaken with the advance of Spider and Max's plan.

Photo: thevipconcierge.com

It's a while before the story kicks into gear, but Blomkamp's script works in building up to the main event. Max's desperation for change is shown delicately through flashbacks to his childhood, remembering teachings from those who looked after him and the joy of being with his best friend Frey (Alice Braga) whom he still loves.

Regressing to a no less harder but simpler time as a youth is how Max deals with the pressures at hand. While taking Spider's job was initially for his own benefit, he comes to realise that helping others is an important addition to the deal. On that turn in the story, it becomes a story of planetary survival against the fittest.
This underdog story has similar post-apocalyptic themes to other films released throughout 2013, but its strength lies in its psyche of brutality. Humans fighting each other has already changed Earth more than once, but the sheer discomfort from Elysium residents of any diseased Earthling encroaching is enough to make you squirm with discontent at this developed class system.

Blomkamp balances flashbacks with multiple action sequences well, not adhering to a constant style to keep you on your toes. He gets good performances out of Damon and Foster, but his return to working with fellow South African Copley gives the film a creepily outlandish, near psychotic villain. It's for the film's benefit as the hopes and fears of Earth dwindle on a corrupt few on both sides of the coin.

My apologies for not getting this up in the regular timeframe - happy reading!

Pacific Rim (M)

Rating: 2.5/5

*Published in the Daily Liberal (Dubbo), Western Advocate (Bathurst), Parkes Champion Post and Midstate Observer (Orange) from Saturday 13/7/2013

MISSED THE LAST REVIEW? See what I thought of Man Of Steel.