Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters review

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (PG, 106 mins)
Director: Thor Freudenthal
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

The mash-up of Greek myth and Harry Potter (lots and lots of Harry Potter) that was Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief from a couple of years ago was always intended to kick off a series of movies, and so we return to the world for this rather tired sequel.

Modern day teenager Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) discovered in the opening entry that he was the son of Poseidon, but without the need for lengthy setups this time round, we jump straight into Percy at Hogwarts, sorry, Camp Half-Blood. After saving the day in the first movie, his worry is that he was a one-quest wonder, not as worthy a hero as believed, but an attack on their enchanted camp sends Percy and his pals on a quest to recover the Golden Fleece, which involves travelling to the Sea of Monsters where the bad guys are trying to resurrect the Titan, Cronos.

Though far from original, this is reasonably agreeable fantasy fare, especially when compared to the lumbering Clash and Wrath of the Titans from which it takes much inspiration. But it’s just all so forgettable, so where the first film still managed to be acceptably fun, despite its glaring similarity to Potter, this is dull as well as derivative. Grave import is given to very goofy events, with none of the heft of Potter, nor the breadth of characters to invest in, with only a cameo by Nathan Fillion briefly piercing the torpor. Drenched in CGI, the action set pieces are unmemorable, just stepping stones on the way to a dumb finale and the threat of yet more adventures to follow.

The Smurfs 2 review

The Smurfs 2 (U, 105 mins)
Director: Raja Gosnell
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Having hauled in over half a billion dollars worldwide with their first adventure, the return of the tiny blue Smurfs was inevitable. This agreeable sequel finds Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) worrying about her place among the Smurfs, since she was a creation of evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) until Papa Smurf turned her blue and made her one of their own. Gargamel meanwhile, defeated in the first film, is now a famed magician in Paris and has a plan to harness the Smurfs’ essence and take over the world. There’s also Neil Patrick Harris and his family returning from the first film and pitching in to help the Smurfs, though this does mean the film can get rather too bogged down in human subplots that will make tots itchy. But if they liked the first Smurfs movie they’ll like this, and the computer graphics used to realise the Smurfs is tip-top, while Azaria doesn’t short change with a full-blown zany performance.

The Wolverine review

The Wolverine (12A/PG-13, 126 mins)
Director: James Mangold
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Though it seemed to have run its course by the conclusion of The Last Stand in 2006, the X-Men series continues to rumble on through sequels, prequels and spin-offs.

Chronologically The Wolverine is set after all of the films that have come so far, which at least dispenses with the problem of prequelitis, the main reason the previous standalone in the franchise, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, didn’t really work.

But though a more worthwhile endeavour, and for all that Wolverine, or Logan to give him his Sunday name, is arguably the most popular and compelling of all the X-Men figures, this is the sixth time we’ve seen this character on the big screen, so perhaps he’s starting to lose his lustre.

We’ve seen him so many times that fatigue is beginning to set in, even with the benefit of a pure, unadulterated movie star in the lead. Make no mistake, Hugh Jackman is sensational as the mutant with claws of the hardest metal and astonishing regenerative powers, but he’s yet to find the story to fully exploit his appeal.

As Origins demonstrated, this is a guy who has been around for a very long time. We first meet Logan here as a prisoner of war in Nagasaki just as the Bockscar flies into view, his healing powers and near indestructibility saving both himself and a Japanese soldier, Yashida (Ken Yamamura), from the atomic blast.

Then we head to the Yukon wilderness in the present day, where Logan is a wanderer and a tortured soul, a loner keen on justice. He’s also dreaming of Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), whose descent into dark and dangerous power forced him to kill her at the end of the third X-Men movie, The Last Stand.

That’s a gritty setup for a hero who has never exactly been defined by his sunny disposition. A no-nonsense title (certainly when compared to the clumsy X-Men Origins: Wolverine) promises much more than it delivers, but this is at least another successful attempt at portraying Logan as a prowling, rage-filled beast.

Maybe there’s something to be admired in a comic book movie that (for the most part, anyway) doesn’t follow the standard path of hero trying to foil super-villain, that does try to be more about character. But it’s a lot harder to actually turn this dark potential into a workable superhero tale which, let’s face it, is why we’re here. And what else is there to learn about this character that we haven’t already?

The other admirable aspect is the strong female characters, beginning with Yukio (Rila Fukushima), who tracks Logan down in Canada to persuade him to return to Japan at the request of the now very old and very ill Yashida. His old friend says he can make him mortal, which sets in motion a dense plot involving the Yakuza wanting to kill Yashida’s granddaughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto), power struggles and mysterious ninja protectors, and which ends up with Logan on the run with Mariko.

This exposes one of the major flaws at the heart of the entire enterprise; a plot that would be easier to justify if it were driven by Logan. But he is a passenger in his own story, a tag-along in this Japanese conspiracy plot and family saga, as allegiances switch at the swing of a sword, and who is on which side at any one time is anyone’s guess.

The rest is kinda tiresome, low on incident and long on intricate but largely unfathomable plotting. A few samey fights break up the tedium, as Logan’s claws clang against samurai sword. It’s the least X-Men-like of the movies so far, with barely another mutant to be seen save for Viper, whose encounter with Logan leaves his powers of healing on the wain, which at least gives some momentary interest when he isn’t indestructible.

The movie’s centrepiece comes fairly early, a fight atop a speeding bullet train that for sheer kineticism is hard to beat. But for all that it tries to avoid the usual tropes, inevitably the climax involves a clattering showdown between Wolverine and a super-foe that’s as tired as everything else in the film.

A post-credit tease for next year’s X-Men: Days of Future Past is almost worth the wait, but until that point The Wolverine is boring and incomprehensible, and that’s the two worst things it could have been.

The World’s End review

The World’s End (15/R, 109 mins)
Director: Edgar Wright
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The movie-making team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright has been one of the biggest success stories of British cinema of the past decade.

With Shaun of the Dead and then Hot Fuzz they showed that home grown products can be original, imaginative, entertaining and, significantly, capable of drawing a sizeable and appreciative audience.

Now they're back with the long-awaited third of what’s become unofficially known as the Cornetto trilogy, with Pegg once again co-writing with director Wright for what could be described as a bit of a blend of Shaun and Fuzz, combing the first’s monster-bashing with the latter’s sinister small town setting.

Pegg returns alongside his co-star Nick Frost and joining them are Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine and Eddie Marsan, completing the group of five friends whom we first meet as youngsters in the early 90s. Living in a sleepy small town, they're a rowdy but likeable group who set out to tackle the Golden Mile, a challenge to drink a pint in every one of the dozen pubs in town, from The First Post to The World’s End.

They never made it round all 12 but now, over 20 years on, Gary King (Pegg) is determined to recreate their crawl. But the rest have moved on, becoming respectable businessmen and family men. With little else going on in his life, Gary drags them back to their old stomping ground to try to relive their youths.

That would be enough for a lot of films, but Pegg and Wright are more ambitious than that. So on top of that setup, the lads quickly discover the town seems to now be mostly populated by aliens, or robots, or robotic aliens, in some Invasion of the Bodysnatchers style takeover.

The result is one of the year’s best comedies, hitting the mark in the early stages through the other guys’ reluctance to take part in Gary scheme, then later when they're facing down their enemies. But it’s also able to hit some strong dramatic and emotional beats. Fittingly, since we’re now dealing with guys who’ve left 40 behind, it’s even more thematically mature than the first two films, tackling aging and regrets, old memories and wounds, as lessons are learned and growth achieved.

Yet it’s still impressive that Frost and Pegg have kept their characters fresh from film to film, Pegg going from layabout Shaun to Fuzz’s hotshot cop to near-destitute alcoholic here. Frost has gone from an even bigger layabout in Shaun to a dim but sweet sidekick to a suited businessman, albeit one with a few smackdowns in his arsenal.

If there’s one level on which The World’s End doesn’t quite hit the bullseye it’s aiming for, it’s in the character of Gary. Set up in the beginning as someone who’s meant to grate, he’s positioned for a clear journey to reformed hero, which is fine but never quite impacts in just the way intended.

But we’re mostly on board for laughs, and this is a film that never forgets how to be funny for a second. Physical gags are brilliantly timed, humour is drawn from the characters, and every actor shines, although Pegg does bag himself many of the top lines.

It also manages to be an exciting sci-fi horror at the same time, while throwing in raucously choreographed brawls, even if everyone suddenly seems to have the fighting skills of Jackie Chan.

In the end, the second apocalypse comedy of the summer is not quite the perfect send-off the trilogy merited, but it’s a pretty close run thing. Pegg and Wright represent all that’s good about British genre filmmaking, and when it comes to collaborations between them, it would be a shame if this is the end.

Pacific Rim review

Pacific Rim (12A, 131 mins)
Director: Guillermo del Toro
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Wildly anticipated, Guillermo del Toro’s first film since Hellboy II five years ago is a thundering slice of sci-fi action that, given its premise and budget, emerges as a typically overbearing, sporadically very entertaining blockbuster.

It’s got problems, and plenty of them, but these are papered over with enough skill, exuberance and spectacle that more forgiving audience members should find much to tickle them.

In an extensive prologue we learn that massive alien beasties, Kaiju, are coming to earth via a portal deep beneath the Pacific, kicking off a seven-year war after humanity’s response comes in the shape of enormous people-controlled robots, Jaeger, used to battle the Kaiju.

One such Jaeger pilot is Raleigh (Charlie Hunnam), an orders-ignoring hotshot the likes of which we’ve seen a thousand times in movies like this. They're fighting a losing battle, with the Jaeger programme due to be retired in favour of erecting defensive walls, until it becomes clear that the few remaining robots are earth’s last hope.

With all the bombast and subtlety of a Michael Bay effort, Armageddon and Transformers being the most obviously referenced, and with the woeful banter to go along with it, this is brainlessly chaotic stuff. Elements of Avatar are in there too, and naturally plenty Godzilla, but such considerations aren’t really at the top of the agenda. This is a movie with little but carnage on its mind, and on that front it delivers.

Once the initial heavy bursts of destruction are out of the way, the movie pauses for a lengthy bout of training and character introduction. This midsection finds the film at its weakest, with the most periods of talk, and the clunkiest of interactions and relationships. During this down-time, the need for action is covered by flashbacks and memories and internal squabbling between Raleigh and his rival pilots.

But, notwithstanding the fact that it can get rather dull during that middle stretch, what saves Pacific Rim is its well-drilled structure and sense of pacing, a ruthlessly controlled build that takes us from glimpsed skirmishes to colossal scraps between Kaiju and Jaeger, as cities topple beneath them.

We’re well used to seeing this level of photo-real devastation in Transformers or The Avengers, and right up to last month’s Man of Steel, but Pacific Rim still manages to throw up moments that astonish and, given its very straightforward setup of monsters versus robots, even surprise. A thumping score propels it too, while Idris Elba generally manages to rise above the risible dialogue with a commanding turn as the soldier in charge.

As long as you don’t pay too much attention to most elements of the story, Pacific Rim does the job it set out to do. It gets better as it goes along, which is important, and in its scale and threat it’s genuinely epic. It doesn’t maintain it all the way to the end, and it’s regularly thoroughly dumb, but when it’s good it can be very good indeed.

Blu-ray prizes to be won

Win Movie 43 on Blu-ray

To celebrate the arrival of the star-studded comedy of the year ‘Movie 43’ - out on DVD and Blu-ray 24th June through eOne - we have a Blu-ray copy to give away to two lucky winners!

'Movie 43' showcases a plethora of Hollywood starlets including Chloe Grace Moretz, Emma Stone, Kate Winslet and Halle Berry to name but a few. Other Hollywood A-listers include Hugh Jackman, Gerard Butler and even Richard Gere!

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To be in with a chance of winning, simply send an email with your name and postal address to aloneinthedarkcomps@gmail.com by Monday July 1st.


Terms and Conditions

Only one entry will be accepted per person.
Entrants must be UK residents and aged 18 or over.
The judge's decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

Hummingbird review

Hummingbird (15/R, 100 mins)
Director: Steven Knight
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Jason Statham is Joey, a former special forces soldier now living rough on the streets of London. On the run from some heavies, Joey takes refuge in a rich guy’s apartment and when he discovers he’ll be out of town for several months, he takes on his identity and stays in the flat. Haunted by his experiences in Afghanistan, we learn about his past and why he’s hiding, as he strikes up a friendship with a Polish nun and gets mixed up with some gangsters along the way. The enigmatically titled Hummingbird (aka the rather more prosaic Redemption in the States) isn’t the usual Statham kick-fest, although he still gets to show some skills in the odd bit of action. He gets to emote too, something he’s proves perfectly capable of, but this is an odd concoction, part bleak drama about the underprivileged, part tale of an avenging angel. It’s a curious melange of plot threads, with no real surprise about how they fit together, but still kind of interesting and with enough action to keep Statham’s core fanbase amused.

Despicable Me 2 review

Despicable Me 2 (U, 98 mins)
Directors: Pierre Coffin,Chris Renaud
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Reformed super-villain Gru (Steve Carell) is now a family man in this sequel to an animated comedy that was built almost exclusively around the perceived charms of Gru’s little yellow Minions. This second go-round decides to take their presence up several notches, and if tots find their reaction shots, slapstick and farting funny then so be it. The plot involves Gru getting recruited by the Anti-Villain League, who get him out of retirement to track down a bad guy with a serum that turns people (and Minions, lots and lots of Minions) into monsters. It’s the most perfunctory of storylines, with a subplot that sees Gru’s daughters trying to find him a girlfriend, and grasps for laughs are desperate. There’s lots of physical hijinks and the animation is expertly timed, but there’s no soul, and it quickly becomes evident this is every bit as pointless and forgettable as the first film. It’s candy-bright and Carell gives an energetic and committed vocal performance, but it’s not enough to raise Despicable Me 2 from the ordinary.

World War Z review

World War Z (15/PG-13, 116 mins)
Director: Marc Forster
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

It was almost two years ago now that the centre of Glasgow was taken over by Hollywood, as George Square and the surrounding streets were transformed into Philadelphia for Brad Pitt’s zombie-apocalypse epic World War Z.

Since then rewrites and reshoots have tarnished its reputation somewhat, to the extent that serious questions are being asked about the wisdom of spending $170m on a zombie movie, a genre that flourished in low budget, almost underground circles.

As it turns out it’s neither disaster nor total triumph, but a solidly put together thriller with plenty of entertaining scenes. And while Glasgow isn’t exactly blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, if you miss the first ten minutes, you’ll miss Glasgow.

It’s where we meet Pitt, his wife and two young daughters, stuck in Philly traffic. We’ve been hearing news reports of trouble around the world and disease outbreaks, when suddenly all hell breaks loose around them. There’s panic in the streets and people attacking each other, attacks that are close up and frantically edited to the point of confusion, compensated for by their intensity, with the sense of fear and danger real enough.

Barely escaping with their lives, the family makes it to an aircraft carrier, where it’s soon revealed that they're in the middle of a worldwide zombie infestation. Zombification is almost instantaneous, the walking dead are fast, savage and abundant, and the sustained threat in the early stages is palpable.

As a former United Nations investigator, Pitt is needed to go back into the mix with a scientist to try to find a cure or a way to stop the outbreak. This takes us to Korea for a gloomy and hard to follow sequence that’s just a stepping stone to get us to Israel.

This is where the movie really starts to gain traction. For a start everything there happens in daylight, and gives us a proper sense of the scale of the devastation. But the eye-catcher is the sheer number of zombies attacking a walled Jerusalem, and they're working together, forming undead pyramids to great effect, in those spectacular shots from the trailer.

Based on a novel by Max Brooks, World War Z is a reasonably original take on the zombie movie, focussing on the people actively fighting against the hordes, rather than just trying to survive or avoid them. There are some thrills, some tension, and a lot of impressive sights, though Pitt's family become something of an afterthought once they're separated, so emotional investment is limited.

He makes very interesting films, but this is only time outwith Troy that Pitt has been the solo anchor of a summer blockbuster. He’s fine in the lead, neither out of his depth nor particularly dynamic. His character is not a man of action, instead using his smarts to pick up clues, and this is a refreshing change.

Things grinds to a halt at the beginning of a third act that brings us back to the UK, before picking up significantly for a well-realised climax, then turning lazy again for an uninspired final outcome. It’s a pedestrian end to a patchy action horror that more or less delivers on what it set out to do.

Man of Steel review

Man of Steel (12A/PG-13, 143 mins)
Director: Zack Snyder
★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Continuing what’s been a fairly decent summer season so far, the year’s most anticipated movie arrives with high hopes of successfully furthering the adventures of the most iconic of all superheroes, Superman. Henry Cavill dons the cape as Kal-El, the only survivor of the doomed planet Krypton, sent to earth as a baby by his father Jor-El (Russell Crowe).

Part origin story and part continuation of the mythology, it’s a smartly structured blend of Superman and Superman II that flashes to Kal’s childhood, filling us in on adoptive parents, the Kents (Kevin Costner and Diane Lane) who bring him up as Clark. It’s this that gives the film a real emotional depth, as Clark struggles with who he is, coming to terms with his powers in a film about choices and decisions on a massive scale.

Steeped in the classic Superman iconography and acknowledging but not overplaying Kal-El’s status as a god among men, Man of Steel is respectful to its cinematic predecessors without the need for the suffocating reverence that blighted Superman Returns.

The serious threat that forms the comic-book conflict of the second half comes from General Zod (Michael Shannon), who was banished from Krypton and has made it to earth with plans of resurrecting his planet at the expense of ours. A properly menacing Shannon facing off against the perfectly cast Cavill is the backbone of a rousing adventure, while Amy Adams adds layers of strength and intelligence as Lois Lane.

The action is truly cataclysmic, fully recognising the fact that these are near indestructible super-beings fighting, so when they hit each other, they stay hit, and entire cities crumble in their wake. It’s stunning stuff, with director Zack Snyder gleefully taking advantage of the $200m worth of resources available to him as all memories of the disappointing Returns are wiped clean, and the best Superman movie since the first one in 1978 reaches the stratosphere.