Wow! So…um…The A-Team has a lot to live up to this summer.
The Losers is an action movie based on a comic book from DC/Vertigo about a band of special forces guys who get framed on a job they were doing. Left for dead in Central America, they eventually get the chance to return Stateside in order to enact their revenge and clear their names. So far so very A-Team. Now I’ve not read the original comic this movie was based on so I have no idea how much of a rip off…I mean homage to the much loved eighties TV series it is. All I do know is that, as a movie, The Losers rocks! The story of The Losers is pure nonsense. But it doesn’t matter. The script by Peter (The Rundown, Hancock) Berg and James (Zodiac) Vanderbilt is fun, tight, fast-paced, witty, and sharp as sharp can be. The direction by Sylvian White is stylish mixing glossy, fast cut MTV/Michael Bay-isms with a hefty dose of Peter Berg’s own hand held grit. But neither styles overplay themselves, they just mix wonderfully and give The Losers its own distinctive comic book look and feel.
But above all else it’s the terrific cast that truly makes this film. Right from the get go each and every one of them radiates effortless charisma and charm. They all seem immensely comfortable playing off each other, like riffing jazz musicians in one of the coolest bands you’ve ever heard. But at the core of it all are four great performances. The team’s leader is the tough, laconic and hugely charismatic Jeffrey Dean Morgan. You might remember him as Edward ‘The Comedian’ Blake in Watchmen. Dean Morgan is like a more world weary Robert Downey Jr minus the smartass. And spookily he looks a lot like him too, only a beefier and more rumpled version. His gruff sparring with the also great Idris Elba is a wonderful character cornerstone to the movie. Chris Evans plays the teams tech guy and the main source of comic relief. Evans once again shows why he is a big star just waiting to go stratospheric. He brims with charm and humour, but, as he proved with the likes of Danny Boyle’s Sunshine, he is also a genuinely strong actor. Plus he isn’t afraid to take the piss out of himself as he does to great effect here. His character in The Losers is a bit of dork who can’t talk to women and is mostly unaware of his own dorkishness. The sequence where he infiltrates a tech company to steal info from a computer is hilarious. I never laughed so hard at a Journey song. Luckily for us Chris has been cast as Captain America in Marvel’s upcoming movie adaptation of its legendary patriotic hero, which means he will also play the dual lead with Robert Downey Jr’s Iron Man in Joss Whedon’s movie of The Avengers. Wow! My head nearly exploded just attempting to contain the enormous geeky coolness of that sentence. And then there is Zoe Saldana in the femme fatale role. Ah, Zoe. I’m so in love with this girl it ain’t funny. Last year with Star Trek and Avatar she proved she was a wonderful actress with so much natural poise and feeling to her performances. Here she is just as good, although her character doesn’t have as much depth to work with as in those previous two films. But she is still an intense presence who looks stunning and who moves with a seductive feline grace. Maybe it’s the trained ballet dancer in her but she moves like nobody else on screen. You can tell Zoe from only her silhouette, purely from the way she moves. Also, in this movie, she is in what is probably THE greatest single shot of the year: stood tall and poised atop a cargo container while firing a rocket launcher from the hip. In slow motion. As sexy and lethal as all hell. But for all good heroes you have to have a good villain. And with The Losers we do get a good villain, a very good one. Which brings me to the fourth top-notch performance in the movie: Jason Patric as the vicious, sarcastic Max. He’s coldly evil, casually shooting a girl dead just because she accidentally moved the parasol she held over his head to let in some sun. And then, later on, he is bitingly sarcastic to his main henchman in what are some wonderfully amusing put-downs. It is that nasty sarcasm that does the trick. You rarely get that in films - especially American films. But Patric does it so well here. He really is a cold, snide, ruthless, ghastly monster. And what more could you want from a comic book bad guy?
So, in the end, despite the visual razzmatazz and the very cool action, it is the cast and the characters of The Losers that stays with you. It has that feeling of a perfect group coming together to make magic happen. It’s like watching Firefly/Serenity, or Predator, or the new Trek movie. Every role has been perfectly defined, cast and played, with the group chemistry being immediate and evident. Together this band of brothers (and sister) light up the screen, and by films end you just wanna be able to hang out with them and have a few beers and a few laughs. I loved The Losers. A lot. I had a huge grin on my face all the way through (when I wasn’t drooling over Zoe). It entertained me in a big way. And I can’t wait to see it again. 4.5/5
Okay, so here is my much considered and pondered over list of favourite films of 2009.
Please note I say ‘favourite’ and not ‘best.’ I make no claim that any of these films are definitely better than other films released last year, only that I personally preferred them. And I make no apology for being populist in my tastes. I saw a fair bit of stuff last year, which included Oscar winners and indie/art house films. And while many of those were great I have to remain honest about what I loved most and what connected to me either emotionally, thematically or just on a pure unabashed entertainment level. Films that, for whatever reason, had an instant rewatchability factor. Or, better still, films that gave me the feeling while watching them of being totally transported away, of simply hoping for them never to end. That last feeling is one that doesn’t happen very often. Normally no matter how good a film is after a couple of hours have passed in a cinema I'm ready to go home. But sometimes movies come out that so captivate me that I become instantly lost in the world they create, so engrossed that I don’t ever want to leave that world. That happened twice last year with Let The Right One In and The Dark Knight and twice again this year with my top two choices. So, without further ado, here goes:
10. District 9 Peter Jackson produced, Neill Blomkamp directed sci fi tale of aliens as refugees in South Africa and the ensuing cultural and civil strife caused. A brilliant allegory for race relations and apartheid with excellent FX by WETA and an affecting and star making central performance by first time actor Sharlto Copley. Sci fi doing what sci fi does best – holding a mirror up to society and asking us who we are and why we do the things we do.
9. Zombieland An inspired, zany, inventive zombie comedy (zomcom?) with a great script and a great cast headed up by the never better Woody Harrelson as nutty zombie killer 'Tallahassee.' Opposite him Jessie Eisenberg as the nerdy, insecure college kid ‘Columbus’ is just as good. And the movie is filled with tons of very funny sequences and lines of dialogue all brilliantly played and delivered by the spot on cast. This flick is a whole lot of crazy, clever fun that had me laughing hard while admiring the gruesome zombie mayhem, which wasn’t skimped on one bit with the blood and gore is still there, as you’d expect from this sub-genre.
8. Inglorious Basterds Tarantino is back! Basterds is a gruesome WW2 fairytale, historical accuracy be damned. I loved the inventive cinematic style on show here. Basterds is gorgeously photographed and designed employing everything from captions, insertion of old film clips, narration, flashbacks and gloriously shot imagery - especially around the beautiful Melanie Laurent as Shosanna and her lovely old style cinema. The performances are all very good with two being great: Christophe Waltz as the Nazi Jew hunter Col. Landa and the aforementioned Laurent. Waltz is charming and brutal while Laurent is lovely and calmly compelling. Of the Basterds, Pitt is thuggish and funny and Til Schweiger as ex-German soldier turned Basterd Nazi killer is quietly psychotic. A great movie with QT back on top form.
7. Paranormal Activity A genuinely scary, tense, creepy and unsettling mockumentary film where atmosphere and tone is everything. A young couple, Katie and Micah, have become isolated in their own home. Sleep deprived, paranoid, terrified, they are being persecuted by an unseen supernatural entity. Nobody will come and help them and they can't run, as it is Katie who is being haunted and not the house. There is something most unsettling about watching people sleeping through a locked off camera while you scan the screen tensely awaiting the next freaky incident - be it a moving door, ghostly footprints appearing, a moving bed sheet or a nasty sudden and violent attack. Yes, a couple things make you jump like any decent horror film should, but it is the hopelessness and the relatability of the situation that scares the most. Brrr!
6. Valkyrie Bryan Singer makes a tense, old fashioned and highly skilful adaptation of the real life attempt by high-ranking German officers to assassinate Hitler in the hopes of preventing the destruction of the fatherland in the later days of WW2. This is great stuff with a solid and commanding central performance by Tom Cruise as Von Stauffenberg, the leader of the plot. Cruise is excellently supported by a top-notch cast including the always wonderful Bill Nighy and Kenneth Branagh. But it is the true story itself and the meticulous telling of it along with the brilliant recreation of the period that impresses most. It was also shot on location using the real places where the events actually happened lending a genuine sense of grim reality to the whole thing. Excellent.
5. Drag Me To Hell Or ‘When Sam Raimi stopped messing about with Spider-Man and dramas and went back to what he does best.’ Drag Me To Hell is a crazy, inventive, scary roller coaster of over the top horror. Sam pulled out all his favourite Evil Dead/Army of Darkness tricks and made a really loud, intense, scary spookablast of a film. It's ninety minutes of earsplittingly loud sound effects, yucky gloop, superjumptastic scares and tons of zany black comedy. Watching this I was jumping out of my skin one moment then laughing so hard my sides ached. Drag Me To Hell is huge fun and is one of those films that really does deserve to be seen in a theatre with an audience. It's a proper movie going experience. Screams and laughter all around. Popcorn flying. Great stuff!
4. Up Once again Pixar knocked the ball way out of the park with Up, a gloriously entertaining adventure that’s also a bittersweet tale of life, love, loss and life again. Up has a wonderful, layered, intelligent script packed with so much depth, honesty and meaning. The entire film is brilliant but the first act transcends brilliant to become something quite special. It is genuinely moving in a way most films can never hope to be. The montage of Carl & Ellie’s life together is simply one of the most beautiful pieces of storytelling put on screen. But the emotional story never overshadows the humour. Up is consistently very funny in smart and inventive ways. All the characters are fab but I especially love Doug the Dog, "SQUIRREL!" Pixar is something to treasure. They are not driven by selling merchandise but rather by creating art that generations will come back to again and again long after the likes of the Ice Age’s and Monster’s vs. Aliens have been forgotten.
3. Watchmen
Director Zack (300) Snyder pulled off something pretty darn special here: an incredibly faithful film adaptation of beloved source material.
The story of Watchmen poses the question what would society be like if masked vigilante heroes really did exist as they do in comics? What would these heroes really be like and what would that choice to don a mask and ‘do good’ actually do to them - physically and mentally - as well as to the world around them? My overriding memory of the book is of Rorschach - the streetwise, moral absolute and unbalanced vigilante with the ink blot shifting mask who narrates a lot of the story by writing in "Rorschach's journal". It has to be said that Jackie Earl Haley who plays him in the film is perfect. The character has come direct from the page to the screen intact. The rest of the cast is also great - especially Nite Owl/Dan Dreiberg played by Patrick Wilson. Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Edward Blake aka The Comedian is also very good. The character is a vile, misanthropic, murderous nutcase and Morgan plays him disturbingly well.
The whole film looks stunning and captures the feel of a nihilistic and hopeless time just counting down the hours until its own end. Watchmen is also extraordinarily violent with a lot to say about the often depressingly vile nature of humanity and our unending capacity for cruelty and (personal as well as global) self destruction shown by nuclear demigod Dr. Manhattan's gradual disconnection and eventual isolation from humanity. Towards the end of the film there is a small hopeful note of beauty amidst all the horror and chaos as the doomsday clock eventually hits midnight, but the story finishes on a final bleak note; a last truthful, moral absolute which could still destroy everything.
I loved the book and I thought this adaptation was note perfect. It is a great movie that looks fantastic and makes you think.
2. Star Trek
JJ Abrams movie is exactly what this franchise needed - a reboot/sequel that relieved it of the intolerable weight of over forty years of canon. Star Trek went back to the beginning and returned the idea to its original concept: Kirk, Spock and the USS Enterprise. Above all, though, it just made Star Trek fun again.
The new cast is perfect. I was initially concerned about Chris Pine as Kirk as I wasn’t familiar at all with him as an actor. And with Shatner as such an iconic presence in this role, how could anyone else capture the essence of James T. Kirk without just descending in to parody? But to his enormous credit Chris Pine doesn’t do that. He’s done his own thing as Kirk with just a few tiny classic Shatner/Kirkesque poses creeping in. Pine just exudes charisma like a young Harrison Ford and also has excellent comic timing. The sequence with Kirk charging around trying to convince everyone of the Romulan trap while McCoy is running after him and injecting him with various hyposprays is hilarious. In short Pine is amazing and delivers my favourite male performance of the year. A big time movie star was born right here. Karl Urban inhabits Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy completely. His take on the irascible doctor and extremely reluctant space traveller is awesome. It’s almost as if Deforest Kelley is back with us. Zachary Quinto is also very good as Spock, although he is quite a different Spock than I remember. He’s far more emotional and easy to rile. He’s even having a full on romantic relationship with a certain lovely young communications officer. And speaking of… Zoe Saldana as Uhura. What a year she’s had starring in two of the biggest and best films of 2009 with her being one of the very best things about each. I love this girl. She is a damn good actress and just so natural, charismatic and likeable. She has real presence. Her Uhura is immensely intelligent, wise, emotionally sensitive and supportive. Another big time movie star was born right here.
To sum up, Star Trek is enormous ear to ear grin making fun, a wonderful adventure with a great cast who brim with charisma and talent. Star Trek manages to be both nostalgic and modern and is just tons of rip roaring, space faring fun.
1. Avatar
Nobody makes films like James Cameron. He makes very few, but when he does they are huge in scope and cost more money than the GDP of a small nation while always pushing forward new technologies and methods of filmmaking or just inventing entirely new ones. Every time the naysayers and doom mongers predict his latest film will be rubbish and unsuccessful. And (almost) every time they're wrong. Hugely wrong. Okay, so The Abyss was financially not so successful, however it was still a very good film. But apart from that (and Piranha 2) every film Cameron’s made has been either awesome or a classic and been embraced by audiences worldwide. His last, Titanic, was twelve years ago and is a great movie. If you haven’t seen it (how come?) then do so. Don’t believe the haters. Since Titanic rewrote the books on box office success it has taken JC a very long time indeed to get around to making his next film and to develop the technology to a point where he could make that film exactly how he wanted, to do it justice and to give audiences something special.
And, boy, did he ever.
I love Avatar. A lot. It may not be perfect or the most original story ever told but that really misses the point as similar stories to this have been told and retold for as long as people have told stories. They are just reinvented and retold in different ways. It is not what you do it is how you do it. And nobody has ever told this story like Cameron has with Avatar. He has created an entire world called Pandora with an eco system based on sound science and come up with great sci fi ideas within that eco system that bring to life many similar real life concepts here on Earth such as the Gaia hypothesis. But Cameron’s genius is to present it all in a quasi fantasy/pulp sci fi romantic adventure style that harkens back to the otherworldly tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Frank Herbert. Plus it has real emotional weight and is chock full of relevance to our current world. For instance the destruction of Home Tree is a fabulous and terrible sequence that carries a huge visceral and emotional wallop. It is awful to behold and reminds us of real life atrocities – none more so than 9/11. And Cameron has not lost his touch in directing action and spectacle either. The sweeping vistas of Pandora are stunning, as are the intense, violent and perfectly choreographed battles.
So the story is familiar but great and the world created is perfectly constructed and stunning. That brings me to the single best thing about the film. The Na’vi. They are simply amazing. The level of performance capture and CGI realism is far beyond anything previously managed. But the technical side of their creation would mean nothing without the performances of the actors playing them. And they all do great work but especially the fabulous Zoe Saldana as Neytiri. It astounds me. Neytiri is incredible, a wonder to behold every time she is onscreen. She lives and breathes. She is the single greatest synthespian character ever. Zoe’s gestures and movements - be it subtle look, a twitch of a cheek muscle, a trembling lip, a ferocious snarl, a tiny giggle - are all captured perfectly. Neytiri is a brilliant character and Saldana nails it perfectly.
It was a close run thing this year between Star Trek and Avatar for my fave movie and truth told there is not much in it at all. They could easily be swapped. But I think Avatar just edges it for the sheer scope and scale of James Cameron’s imagination and creation, for the utter mind boggle I get every time Neytiri is on screen, for the incredible use of 3D, for the emotional wallop I get when Home Tree falls. For the nerve jangling animal howl of rage and grief Neytiri gives as her father dies in her arms. Gives me goose bumps just thinking about it.
As I write this, Avatar has been a strong critical success and a huge financial success with it looking likely that James Cameron will end up being writer/director of the two biggest grossing films of all time. Nice going JC. So can we have Avatar 2 please? Just not in another twelve years.
Seeing is believing on the world of Pandora. A recurring theme in Avatar is of seeing what is real and important around you. The Na'vi greeting is 'I see you' and the film is bookended with Jake Sully opening his eyes. Another theme is the world of dreams vs. reality. You can wake from a dream in to reality but can you wake from reality to live a dream? Characters are constantly being told to wake up and to see things they can't or won't see. And the Na'vi refer to human driven avatars as 'dreamwalkers.' It is James Cameron's way of saying to humanity, "Wake up and look around you. Look what you are doing to your home." It ain't a subtle message but it is one worth giving.
I had faith in James Cameron and he didn't let me down.
Avatar is a great movie and something to be experienced on the biggest screen possible in perfect quality 3D. The lush, intricate and stunningly beautiful bioluminescent world of Pandora is realised in huge sweeps and in minute details. Cameron takes us on a wondrous journey through this world, through its seas and skies and floating mountains and colourful rainforests as if he’d taken a natural history camera crew to a real and previously undiscovered location of infinite beauty and danger. It’s hard to imagine that this is all just ones and zeros on lots and lots of hard drives somewhere, as the world of Pandora feels genuinely alive. With its varied flora, fauna and wildlife all bound together in a complex ecosystem, this new world is a truly beautiful, hostile and thrilling place.
And then, on top of that, Cameron only goes and gives us the best and most believable CGI characters yet created.
The Na’vi are simply amazing. The level of performance capture and photo realism is far beyond anything previously managed with the dreaded dead eye that plagues most synthespians nowhere to be seen here. Quite the opposite in fact as the Na’vi’s eyes burn with feeling. But the technical side of their creation would mean nothing without the performances of the actors playing them. And they do great work especially the fabulous Zoë Saldana who makes leading lady Neytiri the single greatest synthespian character ever. And I don't care what anyone says, I say Neytiri is beautiful...even if she is eight feet tall and blue. Zoë's gestures and movements - be it subtle eye work, a twitch of a cheek muscle, a trembling lip, a ferocious snarl, a tiny giggle - are all captured perfectly. After a short time I totally forgot I was watching a CGI character. Neytiri is brave and ferocious yet gentle and wise. She is patient, funny, caring and ultimately forgiving. And Saldana nails it perfectly. Blue cat lady or no, how could any man not fall in love with her? The humans are all fine too with leading man Sam Worthington doing a solid if unspectacular job. Better is the legend who is Sigourney Weaver playing a scientist who runs the Avatar program and Stephen Lang as the nasty ‘shock and awe’ mercenary Colonel in charge of security at the human base and who's just itching for a fight.
Storywise Avatar is nothing original. The Dances with Wolves, Last of the Mohicans, Ferngully comparisons are all valid. But that’s fine as Cameron borrows elements from lots of other things too including Frank Herbert’s Dune and most notably to me Edgar Rice Burroughs’ tales of pulp sci fi fantasy in which human soldier John Carter gets mysteriously transported to Mars (or Barsoom as it’s known locally). On Mars Carter falls in love with a beautiful alien princess, becomes a great warrior, unites separate factions and leads them to fight off invaders and other threats. Just as in Avatar. Make no mistake Avatar is most assuredly pulp sci fi drawn from everything that James Cameron has read, watched and digested since he was a small boy. Cameron also borrows from his own back catalogue too. The hardware in Avatar is very Aliens inspired and the final intimate good guy vs. bad guy showdown is highly reminiscent of a certain legendary sci fi heroine encased in yellow metal telling a scary monster to “Get away from her you bitch!”
No matter what recycling is being done here (very fitting considering the films eco themes) Cameron is a consummate storyteller who can pull it all together in to a sparkling new, well-told package. He is also an unashamed romantic. All of his films have a love story at their core. They have heart and a passion for something but aren’t exactly what you’d call subtle in their ideas, themes and messages. Jim likes broad strokes and wears his heart on his sleeve. He says as much. But his broad strokes are always so much better than anyone else’s while being coloured by the finest of paints. Whatever you might think of his films this stuff comes from deep down inside of the man. He lives and breathes it. Nothing is done cynically. In Avatar what we get from Cameron is a huge and gorgeous pulp sci fi movie that tells a familiar cautionary tale about a ‘superior’ race exploiting and ultimately threatening to destroy a more ‘primitive’ indigenous race to selfishly take what it is they have. The eco message in the film is big and blatant. It is made clear that in this future humans have all but ruined Earth yet have learned nothing and are quite happy to do the same to another world. “On their world nothing green remains. They’ve killed their mother and now they want to kill ours,” says a Na’vi. Not subtle but poignant and, sadly, likely to be true if we carry on the way we are. So the story isn’t original or subtle. But what it is, though, is expertly told and emotionally engaging. And this makes it feel fresh. I swear the destruction of a tree (a very big tree) has never been as devastating as it is here. It’s a horrible, mindless, cruel image that evokes memories of 9/11 and other similar atrocities. A reminder of just how callous and cruel humanity can be.
Avatar's structure follows Cameron’s usual steady, methodical plotting and storytelling style. A patient build up with time to meet the characters and get to know a bit about who they are and what they are after. All the while enough information is given in small enough chunks to be easily absorbed. Elements are set up throughout the film, which come in to play later on and pay off handsomely. His pacing is spot on. At two hours forty minutes Avatar never feels like a long film as all too soon we have come to the giant finale. And what a finale it is. It’s an epic, mythic showdown; a massive battle between human gunships and Na’vi flying on dragon beasties in the skies while on the ground infantry and powersuited human mercenaries battle Na’vi armed with only bows and arrows and some charging creatures. It is huge scale but filmed exactly how something like this should be filmed - meaning not with crazy random destruction and epileptic editing ala Transformers 2 (I hate that film). Nope, this battle is structured and has clear goals and obstacles with clever tactics being employed. It is also personalised so we follow the characters we care about and will them on to win, or at least to survive.
Other technical aspects are top notch. The production design is intricate and detailed, as you’d expect from a Cameron film. The cinematography by Mauro Fiore is beautiful with muted blues and greys and deep shadows for the humans while being lush, colourful and glowing for the Na’vi. James Horner’s score is fine and services the story nicely. He does do his usual trick of cannibalising past themes here and there – a bit of Star Trek 2, a bit of Aliens. Was that Titanic? But it sounds nice and is fairly unobtrusive. The main theme (which forms the basis of the theme song ‘I See You’ sung by Leona Lewis) is a pretty piece of music and is used to good emotional effect throughout.
So, anything that I didn’t like or that bugged me? Very few films are perfect and you can usually find things that niggle in most. Avatar is no exception. If I was to nit pick then some of the (human) dialogue gets just a tad cheesy at times. Also some of the characterisation felt a bit lacking. I really wanted to know a bit more about what made Jake Sully tick, why Michelle Rodriguez’s pilot acts as she does. But more importantly I wanted more time finding out about life among the Na’vi. Jake stays with them for three months but most of that is in montage. Could we not have had more of him spending time amongst The People and forging deeper bonds so we get to know more about them as individuals? We do get to know the big and important stuff while rightly focussing on Jake’s burgeoning relationship with Neytiri. So I guess I’m just being greedy here. I’d have loved to have seen more day to day life amongst the Na’vi. Seeing their kids at play, how their families functioned, Jake making some friends’ maybe.
To sum up - I loved every second of Avatar and can’t wait to see it again. The way I measure the personal success of a film is by how I’m feeling near its end. If I truly love a film, then when I’m watching it I’m hoping for it not to end, dreading leaving its world behind. Not many films get that reaction from me. The last one being Let The Right One In. Avatar is beautifully made pulp sci fi, a lush imaginative epic with a soft heart and a thumping fist. It is broad strokes story telling, which is what James Cameron does. And he does it so very, very well. Long live the King of the World.
Get me a seat on the next shuttle back to Pandora.
Is it just me or does the female alien character Neytiri from James Cameron's soon to be unleashed Avatar look very beautiful? To be honest I hadn't paid much attention to how she actually looked up until now, being more interested in the animation and technology behind the movie. But as I've been seeing more clips and more images of Neytiri and getting more and more excited for the film - especially as the reviews are now coming out saying it is pretty darn amazing - I've been looking closer. I love this picture below. I think that through the performance from the uber-hot and highly talented Zoe Saldana, Neytiri is going to become a favourite sci fi poster girl of mine right next to lovely Zoe's Lt Uhura. I'm so jazzed to see Avatar. Come on Jim, knock my socks off!
