Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Posted on October 25, 2017 by badblokebob

It’s been a busy year for the MCU. Long gone are the days of Marvel Studios putting out one or two movies a year — this is their third theatrical release in 2017, alongside three full seasons of Netflix shows and two network TV series currently running. Whew! Nonetheless, according to Rotten Tomatoes this Thor threequel is the best-reviewed thing they’ve released this year (so far). Some critics have even said it’s the best Marvel Studios movie ever made. Well, let’s not get too hasty.

Two years on from Age of Ultron, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has been scouring the universe in search of Infinity Stones, to no success. After the Goddess of Death (Cate Blanchett) emerges from her prison intent on conquering Asgard, the God of Thunder is cast out to a remote world ruled over by the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum). There he must compete in gladiatorial championships in order to escape and prevent Ragnarok, the long-prophesied destruction of Asgard.

Having previously attempted to make the Thor movies Shakespearean (by hiring Kenneth Branagh to direct the first one) and Game of Thrones-esque (by hiring Alan Taylor to direct the second), to diminishing returns as far as critical reception and audience responsiveness went, Marvel have tried a different tack for this third instalment. Essentially, they’ve done what they’ve done to most of their movies of late: made it funny. Tonally, you could be forgiven for thinking this was a Guardians of the Galaxy sequel (apart from it not starring any Guardians characters, that is).

To this end, they hired director Taika Waititi, who’s been gaining attention with this comedies What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople. Waititi’s influence is definitely felt in the film’s splashes of irreverent humour, but everything else about Ragnarok is a typical Marvel Studios blockbuster. Critics who’ve said it’s more a Waititi movie than a Marvel movie were overselling it. The plot, the locations, the characters — they’re all your standard Marvel stuff. It’s colourful, it’s fun, it’s exciting — all standard Marvel operating procedure.

Therefore, just as with almost every Marvel movie, the devil is in the details. Ragnarok is a good one because of Waititi — because of the extra humour he injects, a consistent presence throughout the film, but also because he clearly has a good eye for imagery. If you want a taster, a lot of the most striking stuff is, unsurprisingly, included in the trailers. (Though, interestingly, there are several shots in the trailer that have been modified for the sake of spoilers. But to say more would be, y’know, a spoiler.) Action and more dramatic material are handled as well as ever. That’s the way the cookie crumbles with Marvel Studios movies: a bad or unremarkable director will make a bad or unremarkable Marvel movie, but a good or unique director can seemingly only make their presence felt so far as making “a good Marvel movie”, perhaps with a few of their own flourishes.

You may have heard some reports claim Ragnarok is an intergalactic buddy movie. It isn’t. Or, if it is, it’s a buddy movie where one of them’s Thor and the other one’s constantly changing. As the eponymous hero, Hemsworth gets to flex the comedic chops he revealed in movies like Ghostbusters. Everyone’s favourite Marvel movie villain, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), is back as well. While Ragnarok may ignore its predecessors tonally, it does a good job of continuing to build on Loki’s character arc. Blanchett is, if anything, under-hammy as the villain, pitching it too low when she’s sharing space with the likes of Goldblum. The expansive cast list means that both returning characters (such as Heimdall (Idris Elba) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo)) and newcomers (such as Skurge (Karl Urban) and Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson)) can only snag so much screen time each, but several of them are given efficiently-told arcs nonetheless (as usual, Heimdall mostly misses out).

Arguably the film’s standout character is Korg, voiced by Waititi and spewing lines that feel very much from the director’s wheelhouse, even though he’s not credited as a writer. Most of the biggest laughs come from him, especially as bits like “friend from work” are now very familiar from the trailers. There’s also a cameo from Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), which feels like it’s there just because they included that credits scene in his movie and so were committed to paying it off. I suppose it may have future benefits, as I believe Thor is now the only Avenger to have met Strange, but we shouldn’t be thinking about that — what have we all said before about the MCU being needlessly over-connected?

Talking of credits scenes, you may wish to know that there are two here, Marvel’s default number nowadays. Without spoiling anything, one is the vaguest of vague teases, the other a funny button on one of the film’s subplots. Neither are going to be remembered among the studio’s best credits additions.

If Thor: Ragnarok has a problem it’s the hype that’s been attached to it since the likeable trailers and glowing reviews started coming out. For those with appropriately managed expectations, make no mistake, it is a highly entertaining couple of hours. But it doesn’t break the Marvel mould, instead just filling it with more colourful materials. The best Marvel movie ever? No. The best thing they’ve released this year? Maybe.

Thor: Ragnarok is in cinemas in the UK and various other countries now. It rolls out across the world in the coming weeks, ending with the US on November 3rd.

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Posted on July 24, 2017 by badblokebob

The king of the giant apes returned to the big screen this year as part of Legendary’s MonsterVerse, which will see him tussle with Godzilla in three years’ time. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

This new incarnation of Kong wisely dodges being a third remake of the original classic, opting for a new story of how mankind first comes across the eponymous island and its super-sized inhabitants. Set in the ’70s as the Vietnam war comes to an end, a mixed group of scientists and military men head for the uncharted island to see what lies within, and a monstrous battle for survival ensues.

Skull Island is a monster B-movie realised with a modern blockbuster budget and a dose of class from director Jordan Vogt-Roberts. Its major thrills come from the dust-ups between humans and giant beasties, or giant beasties and other giant beasties, but these are executed with a verve and enthusiasm that renders them a constant delight. Vogt-Roberts unleashes his skill with a palpable sense of excitement for the material, never seeming to hold back as he fills the entire movie with cool imagery and vibrant colours. The period setting is well evoked, bringing the sensation of witnessing a certain kind of non-specific throwback to adventure and monster movies past, even as lashings of expert CGI realise this new vision. (Also: two monkey movies this year and both with an Apocalypse Now vibe? Coincidencetastic.)

There’s a game cast, too, with Tom Hiddleston, Brie Larson, John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, and, in particular, John C. Reilly having a whale of a time as just some of our adventurers. Between them they help navigate a tone that could’ve been a jumble but instead feels just right, neither too pompous nor too comical. It’s never so grounded that the ridiculous stuff feels silly; never so silly that any of it stops mattering.

Kong: Skull Island might be the most fun I’ve had at the cinema so far this year. I can’t wait to watch it again on Blu-ray, and in 3D this time — I’m hoping that’ll really show off the scale of the big ol’ monsters. At the end of the day it’s a B-movie about giant monsters hitting things, which is what has held me back from giving it full marks, but don’t be surprised if this ends up on my year-end top ten: it’s superb blockbuster entertainment.

Kong: Skull Island is released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK today.

It placed 10th on my list of The 17 Best Films I Saw For the First Time in 2017, which can be read in full here.

My review was a bit short to have more than one picture, but here’s a bonus one of Brie Larson being badass:

High-Rise (2015)

Posted on September 26, 2016 by badblokebob

I was looking forward to this sci-fi-ish ’70s social satire, but, having let it percolate for a few months, I still have no real grasp of what it was about. I mean, it’s obviously about society, but what its point about society is… I have no idea.

I will add it reminded me of Shivers. I didn’t like Shivers.

Technical merits are first rate — it’s magnificently designed, shot, and edited; a visual delight throughout. Plus it finds two fantastic uses for Abba’s S.O.S. But at a full two hours, pleasant aesthetics are slight sustenance.

Not so much disappointing as indecipherable.

Crimson Peak (2015)

Posted on July 16, 2016 by badblokebob

Mia Wasikowska stars opposite a British thesp best known for playing a comic book villain and a red-headed repeat-Oscar-nominee, in a Gothic drama-thriller from an acclaimed non-Anglo director? That’s a description of Stoker, Park “Oldboy” Chan-wook’s modern-Gothic chiller that co-starred Matthew “Watchmen” Goode and Nicole “The Hours” Kidman, which I awarded a five-star review and a place in my top ten last year. It’s also a description of Crimson Peak, Guillermo “Pan’s Labyrinth” Del Toro’s classic-Gothic chiller that co-stars Tom “Thor” Hiddleston and Jessica “Zero Dark Thirty” Chastain, which struggled to find an audience in cinemas last year. That last fact has often been attributed to its marketing, which I presume was as a horror movie (I never watched any of the trailers). It’s understandable the studio went for that, though: they know how to sell horror, but Crimson Peak is actually something more uncommon.

If you’ve not at least heard of The Castle of Otranto then there’s a chance your expectations of Crimson Peak may be misaligned. Which is not to say you won’t like it, especially if you’re of an open-minded disposition, but if having heard it’s “Gothic” and a “horror movie” has conjured up something Hammer-esque in your mind, then you are indeed off base. I think most people hear “Gothic” and automatically extrapolate “Gothic horror”, at least as far as movies are concerned. Crimson Peak isn’t a Gothic horror, though — at least, not in the Hammer sense — but rather a Gothic Romance, which is as distinct from “horror” as it is from “romance”. Perhaps “Gothic melodrama” would be a term better suited to today’s audiences. OK, maybe not — frankly, it’s difficult to imagine any scenario in which a movie of this kind generates big bucks at the box office unless you somehow made one that features a comic book character beating the crap out of the cast every 20 minutes.

The story actually concerns Edith Cushing (Wasikowska), a well-to-do businessman’s daughter in upstate New York who is occasionally haunted by ghosts. She falls for visiting English gent Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston) and, long story short, moves with him and his haughty sister Lucille (Chastain) back to their crumbling — literally — pile in the English countryside. The house hides many secrets, and ghosts, too. Having said it’s not a horror movie, it would be unfair to class Crimson Peak as simply a tame drama — as you’d expect from writer-director Guillermo del Toro, those ghosts can be bleedin’ scary, and there are certainly a smattering of good old fashioned jumps to boot.

If you start reading online (the ones I read, at any rate), you tend to find people either: a) thought there weren’t enough ghosts, or b) thought there were too many ghosts. And there’s an element of truth in this: the horror bits are a little bit too horror-genre for a Gothic romance/melodrama, but they’re undoubtedly not in it enough to transform it into a full Horror movie. Someone with the predilection to enjoy both is required to stomach the film, which I must say I am, and I dare say Del Toro would fit that bill also. It seems clear that he’s made exactly the film he wanted to make; it’s just unfortunate that turned out to be a tricky sell, and consistently misunderstood by a mainstream audience. (I say “mainstream audience” because you can find an abundance of comments on film-fan websites noting how it was incorrectly marketed, etc.) That said (minor spoiler here), it’s stated in the film itself that the ghosts are a metaphor. OK, it’s stated by Edith about the story she’s writing, but you don’t need a degree in Film Studies to realise this is meant as a meta-comment on the film as well. Or maybe you do.

Whatever one’s thoughts on the story and tone of the film, it can’t be denied that its technical merits are extraordinary. Every inch of the design work is gloriously imagined, and the cinematography — the lighting in particular — is spectacular. And that gigantic house set…! And the climactic ‘limbo’ set, too — incredible work. (That’s not a spoiler, incidentally: it was the set’s nickname, not its literal location.) The ghost effects are excellent too — original, creepy, and executed in a way that blurs the lines between make-up, animatronics, and CGI. It’s a shame the film as a whole wasn’t better received, because I imagine that’s all that held it back from numerous awards-season nods.

Crimson Peak is exactly the kind of film that, on reflection, I may wind up liking even more than I do now. Perhaps others will feel the same and it will also gain better standing in assessments of the director’s filmography — even as it is, it’s definitely one of my favourite Del Toro films (though I really need to give Pan’s Labyrinth another go, to see if I can see what all the fuss is about this time). The film’s tagline was simply “Beware”, but perhaps the viewer needs to be warned instead to “be prepared” — if you know what you’re getting in to, I think Crimson Peak has a lot to recommend it.

Crimson Peak premieres on Sky Cinema (including via Now TV) tomorrow, Sunday 17th July.

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Posted on August 22, 2014 by badblokebob

Thor was one of the best surprises of Marvel’s Phase One for me: they took a character I had no interest in, and if anything thought seemed like a silly idea (what’s a Norse God got to do with superheroes?), and produced one of the first wave’s most entertaining and accomplished movies. They followed this up by turning the widely-acclaimed Avengers Assemble team-up into Thor 2 in all but name: sure, there’s plenty for all the other sub-franchises’ characters to do, but the major villain and cosmic scope are much closer to the events of Thor than any of the other lead-in films.

Cut to the real Thor 2, The Dark World, and there’s no small degree of expectation to live up to — not to mention that director Alan Taylor and the five credited writers (story by Don Payne and Robert Rodat, screenplay by Christopher L. Yost and Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely) are landed with the need to resolve plot threads left dangling by not one but two preceding films. What are the chances of them succeeding?

Mixed, as it turns out. When it works, The Dark World is exciting, inventive, and often genuinely hilarious. Placing most of the movie’s biggest laughs during its climactic battle — which already features a thrilling conceit in and of itself — makes the ending one of the best action sequences in the entire Marvel movie canon. Sometimes that climax is a long time coming, though, with a story that has so many disparate elements to juggle, you can be certain some have got lost in the mix. There’s hints of a love triangle, which disappears almost as soon as it begins; the rules of Loki’s green-tinged cloaking-y-thing are never expounded upon, meaning it can be whipped out whenever a cheap twist is required — indeed, it’s ultimately used once or twice too often.

Good will towards the participants counts for a lot, though. Tom Hiddleston’s Loki steals pretty much any scene he’s in, but Chris Hemsworth’s Thor is not an unlikeable hero, building further on the responsibility-and-honour story arc of the first film. Idris Elba also benefits from an expanded role, but others are less lucky: one of the Warriors Three is ditched as soon as we’re reacquainted with him; more criminally, Christopher Eccleston’s villain has nought to do but stomp around spouting exposition in a made-up language. Anyone could play that role, you don’t need an actor of Eccleston’s ability. Maybe something got cut (though it’s not in the Blu-ray’s deleted scenes), because I don’t see why else he’d’ve taken the part. Well, possibly the payday.

At the helm, Taylor was a late-in-the-day replacement for Monster director Patty Jenkins. Previously best known for TV’s Game of Thrones (as well as episodes of pretty much every other major HBO series), thanks to Marvel Taylor is now a Major Motion Picture Director: his next project is the Terminator reboot/prequel/whatever. He steps up to feature film level well enough, though the much-heralded “more grounded” Asgard he was supposed to be providing is little shown: we see a pub and a training area, and other than that there’s too much going on to linger in the one-realm-to-rule-them-all. In fact, we get a better look at the film’s Stonehenge-and-sunny-London version of England, where if you get arrested at Stonehenge you’re locked up in London. Ah, American movies.

Despite the title, there’s much fun to be had with The Dark World. It can’t deliver on all of its aims — the equally-promised expansion of Thor and Jane’s relationship is equally sidelined — but there’s enough entertainment value to make it a worthwhile proposition. Perhaps the longer lead-in that the third film seems to be getting (there’s no announced slot for it among Marvel’s numerous future release dates, meaning it’s unlikely to arrive before 2017) will allow them to round everything out a little better.

Thor: The Dark World is on Sky Movies Premiere from today at 4:15pm and 8pm.

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