Mårlind & Stein | 89 mins | Blu-ray | 2.35:1 | USA / English | 18 / R
Just when you think the Underworld series is dead, it suddenly lurches back to life with a new instalment. Fitting for a series all about vampires & that, I suppose.
Having diverted to a prequel telling us a story we largely already knew, here we rejoin Selene (Kate Beckinsale), last seen six years ago (real world time) in Underworld Evolution, which was very much Part 2 to the original film’s Part 1. They told a pretty complete tale, actually, so rather than try to find something there, Awakening launches into something new. Following a two minute recap of the first two movies (it’s so long ago that this is actually very handy), a quick-cut prologue-y bit tells us that the long-secret war between vampires and Lycans (aka werewolves) was discovered by humans, who set about wiping them out. Trying to escape, Selene’s crossbreed lover Michael (Scott Speedman) is killed and she gets frozen… only to wake up however-many-years later into a changed world… And so on and so forth. Escapes, shooting, action-y-business all ensues.
Said violence is very bloody and brutal, much more like the second film — I swear the first (especially) and third weren’t anything like as gory. Evolution well earnt its 18 certificate, after a very 15 first film, and quite surprised me at the time. This isn’t as extreme as that, but still. The main drama and attraction in the Underworld series lies in the vampires-vs-werewolves-with-modern-tech concept, not in ripping off limbs or spurting blood or whatever. Or maybe that’s just me.
By taking such a bold move with the plot, meanwhile, the story pushes the series’ mythology in new and relatively interesting ways. It’s becoming a bit dense and fan-only (unless you let it wash over you and just enjoy the punching), but at least they’re not regurgitating the same old stuff. It manages a few twists along the way too, which is always nice. The plot seems to have been half worked around Speedman’s non-involvement, leading me to wonder why — he’s not too busy, surely? Perhaps he’d just had enough? But no, apparently it was genuinely just written this way. I guess he couldn’t be bothered to turn up for some cameo shots, because the stand-in is really obvious.
Also glaringly obvious is the set-up for a sequel. Not so much as the first film, which had such an End of Part One feel (including a direct cliffhanger) that the sequel picked up mere hours later. But this is still a story obviously incomplete (again, there’s a sort of cliffhanger), but at least it has the courtesy to… actually, no, it’s only as complete as the first film. The main narrative drive is resolved, but other bits are blatantly open.
But it didn’t seem to go down too well, so what are the chances of us seeing it continued? Well, as we’ve learnt, you can never write the Underworld series off. And its niche fanbase, semi-independent production, and relatively long three-year gap between sequels 
means the next one will probably turn up out of the blue with little hype, much as Awakening did last year. Plus, though this is the most expensive film to date (double the budget of the preceding one!), it’s also the most financially successful: $160.1 million worldwide, beating number two’s $111.3 million. Assuming Beckinsale still feels up for it, I imagine 2015 will bring us a continuation — and, hopefully, a conclusion.
The higher budget and higher gross I mentioned are surely both down to one thing: 3D. Shooting in proper 3D (as opposed to the ever-so-popular post-conversion) costs a fortune, as a producer reveals in the BD’s bonus features, but it can also net you more money at the box office thanks to that 3D premium. Such a gamble hasn’t paid off for everyone (Dredd), but it clearly did here (how the hell did Underworld 4 make four-and-a-half times as much money as Dredd?!) Watching in 2D, it’s clear that some sequences were designed with 3D in mind — not in the way that, say, Saw 3D or The Final Destination sometimes only make sense with added depth, but in ways where 3D would (I imagine) enhance the visuals. There are some instances of stuff flying at the camera, a popular sticking point for the anti-3D crowd, but that’s actually been part and parcel of Underworld’s style since the start (just watch a trailer for the first film — there was a shot of it used prominently in most of the marketing).
Also worthy of commendation: new-style ‘evolved’ Lycans; a small role for Charles Dance (always worth seeing); the evocative near-future setting; good quality action sequences; some nice steel-blue cinematography/grading. Some of it was shot at 120fps on brand-new pre-alpha never-used RED cameras — take that Peter Jackson, eh. Plus it’s only a little over 1 hour and 18 minutes long without credits. Some would bemoan such brevity, but it has its positives.
I’ve always quite liked the Underworld series, even if the first one is still clearly the best. Awakening gets most kudos for taking things in a new direction, even if, as a film in itself, it’s only OK.
For many Westerners of a certain generation, Akira was their first (conscious) exposure to anime. Not so me: a step or two down, 
The visuals remain something to be savoured; they’re probably the film’s strongest point, in my opinion. Akira was an expensive production and it pays off on screen. It’s not just the bike chases that I appreciated either, while an extra decade of experience made the ending a bit less freakish! The other strong point is the audio. The BD’s booklet goes on about “hypersonic” sound. I’ve no idea if that worked on my system, but it sounded fantastic regardless.
US Air Force pilot Jon Travolta crashes a plane, steals a nuke, and former friend and colleague Christian Slater must stop his dastardly plan in this ever so ’90s actioner.
Battleship never sounded like a good idea. An adaptation of a board game that in no plausible way resembles real life? At least 
hobbling up a mountain on prosthetics to realise he’s still worth something as he saves the day. America, fuck yeah! And when the main battleship is ruined, our plucky heroes have no choice but to co-opt the museum piece (literally) WWII ship; and because most of their crew is dead, the museum guides — all of them septuagenarian WWII vets — have to man their ship once again. To defeat those invading scum, just like before! 
In this big screen live-action version of some old US cartoon, a dog gets superpowers and, naturally, becomes a superhero. That’s pretty much it.
Andrew Garfield dons the webbed onesie for an unwarranted reboot of the only-one-decade-old Spider-Man film franchise, retelling his origins… but with a twist! Cos, y’know, the last version was only out about 10 minutes ago.
some of the action sequences are alright. Mercifully, the much-trailed first-person segments are cut down to a minimum; kind of a “we made this so we ought to use it, but we’ve realised everyone was going to hate it”.
Not that it pays off — instead it just feels like the action scenes were bunged together because, hey, some of the fans want that stuff, right?
As Jason Bourne flits around London and New York making trouble for what’s left of Treadstone, a group of shady men go about safeguarding their own secretive activities. When Bourne exposes Treadstone, a series of convoluted join-the-dots links means it could bring them down too, so they set about destroying their risky initiatives, including killing a bunch of medically-enhanced operatives. What they didn’t count on was one surviving…
For my money, 
Perhaps also, after four films, he’s too close. Clearly that has advantages for remembering the intricacies of the timeline and continuity, especially with the trilogy’s increasingly complex web of conspiracies and conspirators; but maybe Gilroy has become too deeply embroiled in that. After all, he thinks it’s OK to spend the first half hour of the film connecting up the dots between the previous story and his new plot — who really wants that? That’s for geeky fans to do later.
At the end, the two films come together, adding a few seconds more story to what we saw at the end of IV, and ready to move on with unified purpose (well, sort of) in 
is wasted staring at monitors; Albert Finney is literally wasted, his one meaningful moment relegated to the Blu-ray’s deleted scenes section; Zeljko Ivanek gets a pivotal character but is underdeveloped and so his talents are wasted; and some actors from previous Bourne movies appear to be credited merely for use of their photos, until they turn up for ten-second cameos near the end that you’d rather weren’t there because it means someone is planning on a Bourne 5.
#44 The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)
#48a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010)
The clear victor is the Alfonso Cuarón-helmed franchise-revitalising third film, 
You can’t have a list of great car chases without including at least one Bond. Indeed, I could easily fill this top five with that series alone. TND wins because of two stand-out sequences: Bond driving a BMW saloon around a car park in Germany, which sounds dull as dishwater… except he does it via remote control and the car is stacked with gadgets; and a motorbike vs helicopter chase on the streets — and rooftops — of Saigon.
To bring extra swish and excitement, the Fast & Furious films often use CGI in their car chases. Ronin, however, does it all for real — often with the actual actors in the cars. There are several chases in Ronin, but the extended climax through the tunnels of Paris is of course the best. The film used 300 stunt drivers and they wrecked 80 cars, but the exhilaration provided is entirely worth it.
Many times, a great sequence is born out of an idea to innovate or do something different (to go back to Tomorrow Never Dies, the bike chase was a deliberate counterpoint to GoldenEye’s tank chase), and the first Jason Bourne film is no exception: he’s in a Mini! Americans always find small cars striking (see also: Da Vinci Code’s Smart car), but at least it’s put to good use — he drives it down some stairs!
For sheer throw-everything-at-the-screen bombast, you can’t beat the car sequence in the first Matrix sequel — it was so big, they had to build their own stretch of freeway! Of course, it’s as much about the fighting going on in and around the cars as it is the chase, and there are bikes and lorries and stuff involved too — including a spectacular head-on collision — but it’s all road-based, so it counts.
I wanted to avoid having two Bond films, and I tried, but I couldn’t think of anything significantly better than the opening minutes of 2008’s widely maligned Bond adventure. Cut like lightning, almost intuitive and impressionistic rather than classically clear, and viscerally destructive throughout, it demands your attention — and indicates the kind of pace the rest of the film will move at. Then the reveal at the end makes it all the sweeter.
Read most lists of the greatest car chases and one of these will be at the top, usually with the other in second place. They’re iconic for different reasons: there’s The French Connection’s frantic illicitly-filmed chase between Gene Hackman and Brooklyn’s elevated railway; and there’s Bullitt’s eleven-minute pursuit around the streets of San Francisco, with Steve McQueen and co gaining plenty of in-car air-time on those famous stepped hills. So iconic, I know this much without having seen either.
Bruce Willis stars as a down-on-his-luck PI who stumbles into a sport/politics conspiracy in this early-’90s action-thriller from screenwriter Shane Black (
— pitch black frames punctuated by glowing coloured lights. On the whole, it looks gorgeous.
2001’s car racing actioner 
If I sound dismissive, it’s slightly affected: Tokyo Drift is surprisingly decent. Surprisingly decent for a Fast and Furious film, that is. In 
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