The Grey (2012)

Live or Die on This Day

Seven survivors of a plane wreck somewhere between an isolated oil refinery in Alaska and civilisation find themselves in a desolate freezing snowy windswept landscape, with no hope of rescue, and under threat from a large pack of ferocious wolves. Luckily, wolf-expert and salaried protector of the oil workers from dangerous animals, John Otway (Liam Neeson), who we have seen shoot an attacking wolf at the start of the film, is among the survivors.

This is a fine film, about endeavour and courage and tenacity and despair, and about accepting death and letting go of life, and about the puniness of humans lost in a wilderness when pitted against the terrible overwhelming forces of nature, as exemplified here by the wolves, as at least one critic said.

As Neeson's character says at the outset, the group is made up of outcasts and renegades and no-hopers, without much immediate charm. Some of the characters are overtly annoying or unsympathetic. Somehow, though, we come to care about the fate of each of them.

There is a clever use of wallets as almost spiritual icons standing for the characters, and providing glimpses of the inner man.

Very effective use of flashbacks / daydreams, where people are brutally wrenched back from idyllic reveries into the nightmarish present.

Neeson does an excellent job as a man without hope and of uncertain faith who nevertheless finds himself the group's main hope of survival.

My wife commented that the technology used to portray the wolves was not quite as invisible and so convincing as it might have been, but in my opinion, the strength of the script and the quality of the acting and the stunning location work easily make up for any failings in the realisation of the "monsters".

There are tears along the way.

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• Director: Joe Carnahan
• Writers: Joe Carnahan, Ian MacKenzie Jeffers
• Starring: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 May 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Attack the Block (2011)

Urban city vs outer space

This British comic science-fiction thriller kicks off with an exciting opening scene. Young nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), walking home alone along dark inner city streets, is menaced, then mugged by a gang of masked teenage "hoodies" from a big tower block, a crime interrupted by the nearby crash-landing of an extra-terrestrial. While investigating the crash, the gang leader, Moses, is attacked and slightly injured, and in the resulting hubbub, the nurse escapes. After triumphing over the extra-terrestrial, the gang return to their tower block, little realising that this is only the beginning of their troubles.

The tower block scenario is very well chosen: as civilian combatants in an alien invasion story, members of an inner city teenage gang are hard to better. They will already be battle-ready and will be able to lay their hands on weapons of some kind. They will also be used to handling challenges themselves, rather than calling on police and other officials. The rationale behind the invasion is very well thought out and credible, and the way informed exposition is brought in is clever. The script is admirably lean, with a running time of only 84 minutes.

The character arc for the main protagonist, Moses (John Boyega), is great. The nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), functions in part as an avatar for the audience's developing point of view of these teenage gangsters.

Fast-paced, funny, quite frightening, this film succeeds as a window into the world of teenage gangs, and as a comic science-fiction action thriller.

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• Director: Joe Cornish
• Writer: Joe Cornish
• Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost, Danielle Vitalis, Paige Meade, Michael Ajao

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 6 Oct 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011)

Here comes trouble!

The eponymous books are great, essentially based on the premise that kids are totally selfish beings ruled by their desires, and that these desires are in conflict with what their parents think is best for them. (Henry is the junior equivalent of Fat Freddy in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic books, ruled by the desires of his id: for food, drink, drugs and sex.) Kids like being on holiday, weekends, junk food, TV, computer games, lazing around, having fun, being rude, playing tricks on other kids. They hate school, homework, chores, getting up and going to bed early, being polite and well-mannered, eating proper meals, eating vegetables and so on. Their parents want them to do the opposite. With this conflict, kids are always in trouble. Perfect Peter, Henry's annoying younger brother, is essentially an idealised mirror intended, by contrast, to highlight Henry's character, who is in fact a pretty normal kid writ a little large.

What's good: the central kid's characters are well played: Henry (Theo Stevenson), Peter (Ross Marron), Moody Margaret (Scarlett Stitt) and indeed most of the other kids. Some of the adults rein in their performances sufficiently: Siobhan Hayes and Mathew Horne as Henry's Mum and Dad, Rebecca Front as the headmistress, Miss Oddbod, and Parminder Nagra as the teacher, Miss Lovely. Other adults portray their characters rather too large, too cartoonish, namely Angelica Huston (Miss BattleAxe), Richard E Grant (the head of Box Hill School), Jack Sanders as the gym teacher, Aerobic Al. Dick and Dom, talented comic creatives in their own TV shows (the "Mini Dick and Dom" shorts are brilliant), portray TV hosts so extremely unpleasantly nightmarishly styled that I wondered how they passed the censor for a U certificate.

There's quite a lot of breaking the fourth wall by Henry, which is OK, though used here rather lazily as a disguised voice-over to spoon-feed us backstory.

What's mainly wrong with this film, to my mind, is the script. The plot device of the kids having to save the local primary school is just so tired. And the idea that the head of the local private school would scheme to make money by getting the state school shut down and gaining fees from the desperate parents of kids from that school seems extremely unlikely. Also, the script is very laboured at times, with Moody Margaret metaphorically beating the audience over the head with key plot points that seemed obvious to me anyway.

Worse, the story betrays the characters of Henry and Peter at various points. The idea that Henry has had the self-discipline to become the lead singer of a fairly proficient pop band stretches credibility. And when Peter's rendition of the traditional canon "Frére Jacques" morphs into an extraordinary contemporary interpretation, it seemed like demonic possession. And when Henry, uncharacteristically altruistic, plots to save the school, it's as if he and Peter have swapped personas.

Annoyingly, the two ten-year old boys in my charge, though seemingly bored during the film, afterwards gave it 4 stars and 5 stars!

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• Director: Nick Moore
• Writers: Lucinda Whiteley (screenplay) based on the books by Francesca Simon
• Starring: Theo Stevenson, Scarlett Stitt, Ross Marron, Anjelica Huston, Richard E. Grant, Rebecca Front, Parminder Nagra, Siobhan Hayes, Mathew Horne, David Schneider, Wladmir Klitchko, Vitali Klitchko, Noel Fielding, Richard McCourt, Dominic Wood, Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Tyger Drew-Honey, Kimberley Walsh, Helena Barlow

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• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 14 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Fast Five / Fast and Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011)

This is the best of the franchise so far. Within its genre, this film achieves all its goals fantastically well: Great non-CG special effects. Great action set pieces. Good characters with clear strong stakes. Good "Mission Impossible" style story-line. Actors with the chutzpah to carry it all off. The suspense of waiting to see if / when the two alpha males on each side of the law, car thief Vin Diesel and DEA agent Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, will face off. What's not to like?

As Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic, enviably quipped, "Who knew that the best place to put Vin Diesel would be between the Rock and a hard place?"

The film kicks off where number 4 left off, on a deserted US highway, with the rescue of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), sentenced to life imprisonment without hope of parole, by rolling the prison transport coach off one end of Brian O'Conner's (Paul Walker's) car, in a mind-boggling display of timing and bravery.

The action shifts to Rio, Brazil, where Dom's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), and Brian and Dom agree to take part in an equally amazing theft of several hot-rod cars from a moving train. Again, the pure mechanics and logistics of the equipment and techniques used to pull of the crime are in themselves fascinating and thrilling. Throw in the human drama that emerges as a double-cross is revealed and lives are put in peril, and the result is pure cinematic joy.

The aftermath is that the trio are blamed for the deaths of three US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers, and a team of DEA DS officers, led by legendary Captain Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), arrives with an arsenal of weaponry and a mission to arrest Dom, Brian and Mia, and enlists the assistance of local rookie cop, Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky), as an interpreter.

Meanwhile, the trio discovers that the brains behind the double-cross is Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), a drug-running local crime lord / politician in virtual control of all the favellas (slum areas) in Rio. Dom decides to take on this crime lord, and assembles a team of specialists, very much in the style of a classic heist or modern Mission Impossible scenario.

To come is a great chase sequence across the roofs of the favellas; a well-orchestrated unarmed combat sequence between two of the principals; a very well staged and bloody fire-fight in the suburbs, and last but not least, a brilliant breath-taking extended chase sequence through the streets of Rio following the heist.

The heist elements are cleverly written, with more than one unexpected turn. The car chases are brilliantly filmed, partly using a very effective rig that allows the director to shoot cars driving head on into the path of the camera, as is explained in a DVD extra documentary short.

The principals are very sympathetic. Dom is a career criminal with a strong ethical code in which loyalty to family and workmates is paramount. Brian, in previous films as an undercover cop torn between his sworn duties and his love of Mia and his liking for Dom, is now an out-and-out renegade cop on the run from the law. Dom's sister, Mia, once again in a relationship with Brian, as we have seen in previous films in the series, is clearly a "good" girl. Hobbs is given no back story but has a strong onscreen presence. His police interpreter, Neves, is given enough screen time and back story to make her sympathetic. The villains, Reyes and his lieutenant, Zizi (Michael Irby), are given just enough character and show of villainy to make the audience welcome their come-uppances. The characters of the heist team that is assembled, including Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Tyrese Gibson and Sung Kang, are much more perfunctorily sketched in, and are little more than one-note performances. High full price.

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• Director: Justin Lin
• Writers: Chris Morgan (based on characters by Gary Scott Thompson)
• Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Matt Schulze, Tego Calderon and Don Omar

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• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 31 Dec 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

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Chocolate (Chokgohlaet) (2008)

Taste the fury.

A Thai martial arts action thriller, where an autistic young teenage girl, Zen (JeeJa Yanin), learns to fight by copying moves used in martial arts classes next door and from TV shows and movies. It is a B-movie graced by a series of beautifully staged fight scenes between the girl and different groups of gangsters.

As for the plot, I was not entirely clear about people's roles or relationships but, in essence, Zin (Ammara Siripong), her Thai mother, and Masashi (Hiroshi Abe), her Japanese father, were mixed up in the world of organised crime, and her father had to return to Japan before she was born. She grows up autistic, becomes transfixed by people doing martial arts training, takes to working out herself.

Her only friend is Moom (Taphon Phopwandee), a much-bullied fat kid, who discovers she is able to catch anything thrown at her from whatever direction, and uses this as a money-making scheme, getting her to perform in public for donations. When somebody throws a knife at her and she catches it, he realises he has something special, and when a gang of teens attack them, her fighting ability is triggered.

Then Zin, the girl's mother, falls ill with cancer, and they desperately need large amounts of money for treatment and medicine. The boy finds a debt book amongst the mother's possessions, with names of local debtors and the sums that they owe, presumably as protection money to a gangster organisation. The boy realises that this money would pay for the mother's treatment, and he takes the girl with him to start collecting the debts...

Compared to Kill Bill 1, for example, for me, this is preferable. This is grittier, more authentic in setting and feel. The boy Moom is a believable and interesting character, and in the lead role of Zen, JeeJa Yani is very sympathetically portrayed and has amazing athleticism. The stunts are very well staged, and the end credits includes, Jackie Chan like, a series of injury clips, showing how arduous the stunts were, and how they were done in real life, not with digital effects, The villains, however, crime boss Number 8 (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) and his henchwoman, Priscilla (Sirimongkol Iamthuam), are completely two dimensional, with little plausible motivation, and a laughably foolish set of henchmen and henchwomen, who insist on throwing themselves into the fight despite the piles of bodies of their colleagues already littering the floor.

The very definition of a well done genre movie.

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• Director: Prachya Pinkaew, martial arts choreography by Panna Rittikrai
• Writers: Chookiat Sakveerakul, Napalee
• Starring: JeeJa Yanin, Hiroshi Abe, Pongpat Wachirabunjong, Taphon Phopwandee, Yanin Vismitananda

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• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 15 June 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro