Rob Cohen | 110 mins | TV (HD) | 12 / PG-13
Daylight is a disaster movie; the kind they apparently made lots of in the ’70s, and has seen a revival (to some degree) thanks to Roland Emmerich and his brand of apocalypse-bringing. This was made in the ’90s though and, lacking any self-aware qualities, might be seen as a throwback. Whether that matters is probably an issue for more well-versed disaster movie fans than I.
The plot concerns the collapse of an underwater car tunnel, trapping people inside (naturally). It’s a tunnel that connects Manhattan to another bit of New York. Or possibly New Jersey. To be honest, I can’t remember now. Suffice to say, it doesn’t matter, besides the points that, a) who doesn’t like a movie set in New York?, and b) it allows for a moderately diverse array of victims-in-waiting. How diverse? Not very. But a bit.
Following the collapse, a fireball rips through the tunnel. It seems to destroy most cars and kill most people, except for about a dozen survivors. How are they not killed by the fireball? Well, it seems to be by the good fortune of Because We Need Some Characters. Should you ever get stuck in an exploding tunnel, pray you find yourself in a disaster movie and had been doing something mundane yet passably interesting earlier on, and you might get to survive. Naturally some of these will die later, because a disaster movie works in more-or-less the same way as a slasher movie, only with less jumps. After a few “well, they sort of deserved it” characters are dispatched with, screenwriter Leslie Bohem seems to have drawn up a list of 
Which Characters Would It Be Most Tragic To Lose and started to work his way through them until he reached the end of the screenplay. I suppose it’s flat-out good advice for a disaster movie, but, try not to get too attached.
The film continues to stretch credibility to the max at every turn. Are there really a series of giant fans that Stallone could conceivably lower himself through to get into the tunnel? Maybe there are — it’s got to be ventilated somehow — but it doesn’t stop the sequence in which he does it from feeling like a science-fiction movie. On the bright side, the lack of concern for plausibility makes for a couple of moderately impressive effects sequences. Despite the notion that CGI has somehow made everything look more realistic, sometimes the limits of ’90s technology help. OK, most of Daylight’s effects still look like effects, but they’re at least as believable as the plasticky sheen that still pervades most CGI.
A closing pan up to the twin towers of the World Trade Center provides, thanks to hindsight, a crushing reminder of reality when it comes to disasters. It’s a shame that an arbitrary shot of a New York landmark almost 
inadvertently overshadows the whole film. I suppose any shot of the Center calls up those memories now, but it’s unfortunate that this one comes at the end of a disaster movie.
All things considered, Daylight’s pretty ridiculous; in fact, it’s so daft you might begin to wonder if someone actually researched the facts of what might happen in such a disaster and it’s all a case of Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction. Or perhaps it really is just The Movies. If you don’t care for disaster movies then it’s certainly not going to change your mind, but for anyone who is prone to liking them, Daylight is, for all its faults, an entertaining way to spend a couple of hours.
Daylight is on ITV tonight, Friday 21st November 2014, at 11:15pm.
Back in this blog’s early days, I established the rule that where a different cut of a film was not significantly different to the original version it wouldn’t be counted towards my total (assuming I’d seen the original, that is — if it’s the first time I’ve seen any version of the film, it still counts). There’s no hard criteria for what counts as “significantly different” though. A couple of additional minutes? No. A lot of additional minutes? Yes. Where’s the line between “a couple” and “a lot”? No idea. Thus far, I’ve left it up to “a feeling”, perhaps not always correctly (the 
but other than that if you’d told me this was the cut I watched in cinemas I’d believe you. This longer cut doesn’t make the film better or worse, just less suitable for younger viewers.
It’s still riddled with flaws, mind. Some of the dialogue is fairly atrocious (but at least it’s only some); exposition is often blatant and repetitive (we’re told what the preferiti are three or four times in as many minutes); some of the deductive leaps are a bit much; and the whole antimatter bomb still seems scientifically suspect. It all depends how much you’re willing to forgive, really. In a similar vein, one of the most contentious issues of Dan Brown’s novels is his use of “truth”. He mixes well-researched fact with his own creation at will, often leaving you to wonder if what you’re hearing is pure truth, truth bent to the plot, or a total fabrication. But then this isn’t a history or art lesson, it’s a mystery thriller, and if one wants to know more I’m sure there are books to read and documentaries to watch.
Night at the Museum is fine. And by “fine” I mean less “of high quality… worthy of or eliciting admiration” and more “good; satisfactory”.
Perhaps it makes it a little disjointed — “here is our character-centric opening; here is the bit we actually wanted to make; here is an exciting climax” — but the tale still rattles by.
“Remakes are not as good as the original” is one of the rules of filmmaking. Of course there are plenty of exceptions, and everyone has their own opinion, and most modern remakes are expressly about making a quick buck from a US audience who can’t watch a film and read at the same time rather than making a better quality film — but, more or less, the rule persists. It may have won him an Oscar, but the consensus seems to be that 
It does have its moments: a couple of songs are shoehorned in (even if there’s only two or three and each gets two or three airings) and the cast do succeed in making some of their indulgences entertaining. Nonetheless, this would definitely be for Rat Pack fans only had it not been for the remake… and, really, there’s no reason the remake should change that.
Origin stories are, as we well know, all the rage at the moment, and so Ridley Scott follows in the footsteps of 
a likely-fictional creation, and so the style is suitably believable, whether it be precisely factual or not.
Mark Strong in a villainous role (it might be nice to see him play a good guy sometime, I’m sure he’s capable). Danny Huston’s King Richard is a nicely revisionist take — not the flawless hero we’re used to seeing — which sadly gets too little screen time. Oscar Isaac’s Prince/King John is suitably brattish and inconsistent, but by playing the part fairly straight he doesn’t come close to being as memorable as Alan Rickman, Keith Allen or Toby Stephens in the key villain’s role.
after numerous scenes of them doing stuff, they just are. King John ums and ahs about various things, and if we’re being charitable his chief characteristic is ‘changeable’; and if we’re not, he’s a weakly-written, inconsistent character. Do I believe he’d go charging into the fray during the climax? No, I don’t. If he’d gone in when it was virtually over, just so he could later claim he had? Yes, that would fit.
I wanted the reviews to be wrong; for Ridley Scott’s Gritty And Realistic™ take on Robin Hood to be worth the potential of the concept. In places, it almost is — the era is evoked stylishly, the battles are largely well-staged if not perfect — but it drags, and ultimately Robin only becomes Robin Hood proper at the film’s end. (In fact, a surprisingly large amount of the trailer was taken from the film’s closing minutes, obviously to imply the usual Robin Hood story.) It’s copied Batman Begins and Casino Royale too precisely in this respect, perhaps. It also makes it feel like nowt but setup for a sequel, over-explaining how (this version of) Robin came to be where he was. As the final card says, “And so the legend begins”.
Terminator Salvation begins with a title sequence that displays the film’s title twice. I know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover and all that, but somehow it just doesn’t bode well.
sequences that could benefit from a wider perspective, for example Connor’s helicopter crash. That said (again), I’m a little torn what to think of that example: keeping the camera on Connor produces an unusual spin on a potentially familiar sequence, but it’s also a bit disorientating and, as I say, compounds this sense of watching someone else play a game.
And even if you hadn’t seen it on the box or heard about it in all the film’s publicity, it’s obvious pretty early on that Marcus Wright will turn out to be a Terminator. To McG’s credit, he plays the ultimate reveal quite well — for those who know, it just about functions as a scene in its own right; for those who still hadn’t guessed, it works as a reveal — but if any filmmaker genuinely thought they’d kept it covered up they were sorely mistaken, and the first half could’ve done with a more knowing rewrite to compensate. Or just delete the prologue.
He’s fine as ever, though his accent seems to waver between American and his native Australian. The same can’t be said of Helena Bonham Carter’s brief turn — her voice hits a constant fake American. Meanwhile, Arnie’s digitised cameo is just that. On the one hand it’s a nice touch, on the other it’s ultimately pointless — Connor doesn’t even react to the familiar face.
More interesting than these slight tweaks is the behind-the-scenes story of a very different film, which I alluded to earlier. I don’t want to discuss it at length, but 
From the company that brought you such pinnacles of cinematic excellence as 
But, in The Asylum’s favour, their Sherlock Holmes doesn’t hide what it is. Yes, it’s called simply Sherlock Holmes rather than Sherlock Holmes and the Implausible CGI Monsters, but at least said monsters are plastered all over the DVD cover (both US and UK). If you see that and still expect something faithful to Conan Doyle, more fool you. That said, at times it’s surprisingly faithful to Doyle’s spirit. There’s some decent-ish investigation and deduction, the story structured like a mystery rather than an action-adventure.
Anachronisms abound, the best being the first: the film opens in London, 1940, the middle of the Blitz, and the opening shot foregrounds the Millennium Bridge. I don’t think you have to be too familiar with London to know when that was built. Elsewhere we get intercoms on houses, incongruous light switches and period inaccurate telephones, just to mention a couple. It’s shoddy, yes, but almost part of the fun.
Is 1945-1998 actually a film? Or is it a piece of video Art? Or just another online video?
attention didn’t already wander, that is). There are ultimately so many flashes and bleeps, and the effect is so lulling, that I had to force myself to remember these represented Big Nasty Bombs that were Not A Good Thing. Perhaps something more aurally grating would’ve been appropriate; the counter argument going that this would cause even more viewers to abandon the work.
In the special features on The International’s Blu-ray, director Tom Tykwer comments that architecture is a focus of his when making a film. It certainly shows here: there are many, many lingering shots of buildings (and just about everything else, actually), all very modern, with straight, clean, crisp lines. The cinematography matches it in pin-sharp perfection, which at least means the Blu-ray image is a pleasure to watch. The film itself, however, is a little dull.
Not that her continued presence would’ve improved the film’s final act. The ultimate resolution is half brave and half cop-out: the goodies fail in bringing the baddies down, the film explicit in the fact that such business will always continue; and yet most of the baddies are dispatched, one way or another, and a closing array of newspaper headlines serves to imply that the law got the Big Bad Bank after all. As “have your cake and eat it” endings go, it’s a damp squib.
The filmmaking skill Tykwer exhibits during this one action sequence, plus the beauty with which he shoots international scenery, suggests he’s the perfect director to take over the Bourne franchise (should that rumble on). He already seems to be borrowing from it, including the choice to underscore all his long, slow shots with punchy, driving music, as if this in itself will give the film some dynamism. It doesn’t. Though The International may occasionally remind you of that trilogy, then, it doesn’t come close in the entertainment stakes.
It’s the end of the world, and Roland Emmerich feels fine. The “master of disaster (movies)”, as I’m sure someone (probably himself) has labelled him, here attempts the biggest disaster of them all — as I said, it’s the end of the world.
as the US President, but a couple of the cast members hold the screen well enough.
On the other hand, you do get more or less what you’d expect from the film. No one’s going into this thinking they’re getting a deep character piece — it’s great big spectacle all the way, and while it’s not the greatest big spectacle ever, it delivers something close enough to prevent it being the ultimate disaster of a movie — but it’s not the ultimate disaster movie either.
100Films.co.uk 