Godzilla review

Godzilla (12A/PG-13, 123 mins)
Director: Gareth Edwards
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Director Gareth Edwards caused something of a splash with his no-budget sci-fi from a few years back, Monsters, albeit as much because of its cost than it actually being especially good.

The film’s reception and Edwards’ way with, well, monsters, was instrumental in landing him the gig for this mega-budget updating of a series that’s been a fixture of Japanese moviemaking for 60 years now.

A ropey Hollywood effort from 1998 was as much an excuse for director Roland Emmerich to blow up bits of New York in the style of his Independence Day as it was a remotely successful Godzilla movie, and is best quietly forgotten. But just a year on from Pacific Rim, whether audiences have the appetite for another monster mash remains to be seen.

Tonally this is very sober stuff compared to the cheesiness of the 1998 version, but it remains true to the origins of Godzilla, an allegorical product of post-Hiroshima disquiet and the thirst for nuclear testing in the 1950s.

We kick off in the Philippines in 1999 where scientists played by Ken Watanabe and Sally Hawkins discover enormous fossils underground. Meanwhile in Japan, Joe (Bryan Cranston) is an engineer at a nuclear plant which is experiencing tremors. Everyone thinks earthquake, but as Joe’s wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) dies in the resulting meltdown, he believes something else is afoot.

Fifteen years on from this their son Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) is in the navy, and has just returned to his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and son in San Francisco. Joe is still in Japan, living like a crackpot and trying to expose the cover up and prove it wasn’t a natural disaster.

This is all part of a lengthy setup that ends up taking up more screen time than it merits because it never really pays off down the line. It’s just one of a checklist of flaws to be ticked off that explain why this is a movie with a debit column bigger than its credits. It offers a commendable centre but little momentum, but the upshot of all the preamble is the release of a pair of insect-like creatures called Muto that feed on radiation.

Like on Monsters, Edwards certainly has empathy for them, which is fine, but it does rather come at the expense of being interested in the humans. For all the effort to add poignancy and emotional depth, there are no interesting characters to speak of.

It also thoroughly wastes a very respectable cast. Watanabe and Hawkins disappear into the background after a while with nothing to do but deliver clunky exposition. Cranston just yells a lot and Olsen barely registers as a presence. We spend most of the time with Taylor-Johnson, as he and the military chase the Muto across the Pacific.

But then all that groundwork is abandoned anyway for monsters fighting, because obviously in a film called Godzilla, you need some Godzilla. The enormous dinosaur-like creature is awakened from the depths and could end up being mankind’s only hope against the Muto.

A blockbuster shouldn’t live and die by the special effects, but in many ways that’s often as much as Godzilla has going for it, alongside a number of exquisitely composed and atmospheric shots. The visuals are astonishing, whether it’s the creatures tearing down entire cities or a tsunami devastating Honolulu.

The first big sighting is just about worth the wait and the one thing Edwards certainly manages to get right are the reveals. As Godzilla or the Muto appear from out of smoke or out of the sky to maul each other or a skyscraper, he’s able to deliver a handful of truly jaw-dropping sequences. Godzilla is huge and really quite unsettling as a presence, and in one or two moments the film touches on being a proper horror, posing genuine danger from these massive Lovecraftian beasties.

And yet it’s often to be found skimping on the action, cutting out early from the scraps and only showing us the aftermath rather than the main event. As a result the first two-thirds consist of an awful lot of teasing, although it could be argued that an all-out assault would be exhausting in a Transformers sort of way.

A little lightness of touch might have worked wonders too. It’s an entirely humourless affair, which makes you question the point of having something as silly as two hours of monsters hitting each other when it doesn’t try to make you smile once.

Enjoy the thrill of the few times when Godzilla lets rip with all his might, but mayhem isn’t really enough if you're not having fun with it.

Red Dawn review

Red Dawn (12A, 93 mins)
Director: Dan Bradley
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

by Steven Neish

Arriving home to Spokane, Washington on leave, U.S. Marine Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) meets his father, Police Sergeant Tom Eckert (Brett Cullen), at a football game being played by younger brother Matt (Josh Peck). Following a blackout at the after-party, Jed and Matt wake to find the sky full of invading soldiers paratrooping from overhead transport aircraft. Forced to flee without their father, the brothers pick up a number of Matt’s peers on the way out of town, moving into the family retreat as they try to decide what to do next. Opting to fight rather than flee, the young rebels name themselves after their school football team and wage guerrilla warfare on the enemy forces.

A remake of John Milius’ 1984 film of the same name, Red Dawn finally arrives in cinemas after years spent on a shelf at MGM due to the studio’s financial troubles. Due to the emergence of a lucrative Chinese market in the interim, director Dan Bradley used this prolonged post-production to manipulate the film’s antagonists, changing their ethnicity from Chinese to North Korean. As a result of this delay, any momentum that the project might have built has long since dissipated.

Luckily, this has done the finished result something of a favour, as Red Dawn is best viewed on a whim with little in the way of preconceptions or expectation. Just as the original Red Dawn was far from a revelation, so too is this Red Dawn a nuts and bolts actioner that will entertain you across its running time only to unceremoniously vanish from memory shortly after the credits have rolled. Good thing really, as any further thought would only serve to reveal how ridiculous the film actually is. And my word is it ridiculous.

Opening with a football game so loud it may well register on the Richter Scale, Bradley does his best to bludgeon audiences into a sort of drooling submission to presumably stop them from questioning the plot as it unfolds. Why is the music louder outside of the car than inside, he doesn’t want you to ask. What sort of Mickey Mouse military would ever attempt to colonise America? How do The Wolverines enter and exit the captured zone with such ease, and why does nobody else exploit this obvious enemy oversight? Also, wasn’t this remade already as Tomorrow, When The War Began?

If all war movies were summarily dismissed for being silly, however, there wouldn’t be much of a genre left. You’re not meant to take it seriously, and it is hard to imagine how anyone could possibly be offended by a film so readily ridiculous, yet a number of reviews have accused the film of being jingoistic and hateful, citing the same rhetorical speeches and racial stereotypes that litter most of these films. Strange, really, as you don’t exactly have to read between the lines to hear Chris Hemsworth compare his Wolverines to the freedom fighters battling against U.S. forces in Iraq or calling out a local girl for her geographical ignorance. And then there’s the absolute gem of a one-liner: “Marines don’t die, they go to hell and regroup”.

Red Dawn is not a good movie, but neither is it anything to get worked up about. A capable cast (bolstered in the third act by a late appearance from Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and a laughable script will likely keep its target audience entertained, but even the most undemanding viewers will be as hard-pressed to distinguish 2012′s Red Dawn from the original, or any other action film from the 1980s. Or, for that matter, their subsequent remakes.

Maniac review

Maniac (18/R, 89 mins)
Director: Franck Khalfoun
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

1980 slasher Maniac gets the remake treatment with the added hook of a first person point of view, with the slaughter seen through the eyes of Elijah Wood’s killer. We only ever see him in reflection, and it’s a clever bit of casting to present an actor known for his cuddliness as a psychopath whose thing is to scalp his victims for wigs, Vincent Price style, for his mannequins. Maniac is certainly grotesque, and sometimes that’s all horror fans ask, but getting involved in this savage and scuzzy little film is harder. The arrival of a photographer whom Wood wants badly not to kill shakes things up a little, but it’s not enough to dispel the need for a point to his journey, and repetition sets in quickly. Ed Gein, Hannibal Lecter and more are the touchstones, but simply referencing them is not enough, and no real comment on audience voyeurism is offered in the way that Michael Haneke might. Where it does succeed is in making modern day Los Angeles look like hell on earth or, at the very least, New York in the 1970s, but that’s really not enough to hang an entire movie on.

Dinner For Schmucks review

Dinner For Schmucks (12A, 114 mins)
Director: Jay Roach

★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

In order to impress his loathsome boss, financial analyst Tim (Paul Rudd) must find the biggest idiot he can to bring to a dinner party and finds him in Barry (Steve Carell), who likes to spend his time dressing up stuffed mice and doesn’t appear capable of functioning in the real world. With its high concept in place, this desperate comedy then proceeds to ignore the dinner bit by spending most of the running time having Barry jeopardise Tim’s relationship with his girlfriend. By the time we actually get to the dinner there are finally a couple of laughs to be had, but only after scene upon scene that suffocate in a comedy vacuum of ridiculous situations and detestable characters. It’s another of those movies where 100 minutes of despicable behaviour is swept away by five minutes of moralising at the end. Just as bad is the total waste of two top drawer leading men, with Rudd as the straight man reduced mainly to reaction shots while Carell channels his inner Jim Carrey to mug as manically and gratingly as possible. If you want to see him play an idiot to infinitely greater comic effect, take another look at Anchorman instead.

The Karate Kid review

The Karate Kid (PG, 140 mins)
Director: Harald Zwart

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

If the words “wax on, wax off” mean anything to you, you’re probably already familiar with The Karate Kid, a fondly remembered part of many an 80s childhood.

Sadly you won’t be hearing those words in this slick remake, one of quite a few changes  - some worse and some for the better. For one thing the kid really is a kid this time out, instead of the 22-year-old Ralph Macchio we got in 1984. Replacing him is 12-year-old Jaden Smith, son of Will, as Dre. And instead of suburban USA, the action now takes place entirely in China where Dre and his mother have moved for her work.

Most fundamentally, the martial arts involved is no longer karate but kung fu, but really that’s neither here nor there, expect for purists. Replacing the late, Oscar-nominated Pat Morita (the much loved Mr Miyagi from the original) is Jackie Chan, playing Mr Han, the jannie in the building Dre and his mother move into.

For all the superficial changes, the template of the original is closely adhered to, as Dre falls foul of local bullies and is taken under Han’s wing and trained for the big competition where he’ll be able to restore his pride and honour.

Jaden Smith has the natural, easy charm of his father and the makings of a real star, while he also pulls off the kung fu action extremely capably. And it may be Chan’s best English language role, one that actually allows him to act and even pull off a big emotional scene with some success. He only gets one fight scene, but it utilises some classic Jackie tomfoolery to allow him to take out the six boys attacking Dre without actually hitting any of them.

The Karate Kid nods to the original without aping it, replacing “wax on, wax off” with the somewhat more prosaic “hang up your jacket”. It’s all part of Mr Han’s muscle memory techniques that will help prepare Dre for the big fight. Training scenes are done with imagination and humour, and without making a meal of oriental mysticism like the original was wont to lean on.

For an action drama aimed at youngsters it’s unusually well paced, with a slow, deliberate build and no flashy editing, treating its target audience intelligently. But though its leisurely pace is to be commended, it could still easily stand to lose 40 minutes from the generous running time.

But that’s not a major problem in a highly entertaining film that still provides pleasures for fans of the original and newcomers alike.

The A-Team review

The A-Team (12A, 118 mins)
Director: Joe Carnahan

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

If The Karate Kid hasn’t made all you 80s nostalgists misty eyed, then this one surely will. The Saturday teatime action romp makes the move from the telly to the big screen with all its characters intact: leader and the man with the plan, Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson); smooth talking Face (Bradley Cooper); muscleman B.A. Baracus (ultimate fighting champion turned actor Quintin ‘Rampage’ Jackson) and crazy Murdock (District 9’s Sharlto Copley). They're army rangers based in Iraq where a mission to find counterfeit money ends with them framed and in jail. As they attempt to clear their name through a series of elaborate and increasingly ridiculous set pieces, the frenetic action that ensues is often imaginative but much too reliant on over the top CGI, although watching Hannibal’s plans come together offers moderate levels of fun. It’s incredibly loud and hypnotically dumb, although that’s not necessarily a criticism, but the problem is it frequently treats the audience the same way. A nice cast helps but it’s really not as funny as it ought to be, and a little more polish to the script could have made all the difference.

Death at a Funeral review

Death at a Funeral (15, 92 mins)
Director: Neil LaBute
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

As remakes go this has to be one of the strangest; an American re-run of a British comedy that came out less than three years ago which, though nearly identical in plot, has managed to lose everything that was good or funny about the original. It’s set entirely at a funeral where the extended family has gathered to bury Chris Rock’s father. The trouble starts when one of the guests (James Marsden, getting reasonable mileage) inadvertently takes a hallucinogenic pill and Peter Dinklage, reprising his role from the original, turns up to throw an unexpected spanner in the works. What should be high farce is botched in execution by a thoroughly bizarre choice of director in Neil LaBute, not exactly known for his lightness of touch. So it’s leaden when it should zip, timing is entirely absent and every burst of unfunny physicality is punctuated by a sitcom score. It’s broad, infinitely unsubtle and everything is dreadfully forced, not helped by some actors (Martin Lawrence, Tracy Morgan and Danny Glover being the worst offenders) mugging and screeching for all they're worth.

A Nightmare on Elm St review

A Nightmare on Elm St (18, 95 mins)
Director: Samuel Bayer
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

With seemingly no end in sight to the cycle of horror remakes, A Nightmare on Elm St is the latest refried mess gifted to a new generation of moviegoers who don’t really know any better.

The problem is, most of the films being remade are genuine classics, so by taking on a 1984 original that was ferocious and primal, blessed with some exceptional imagery and the hallucinatory power of a bad dream, the makers of A Nightmare On Elm St have nowhere to go but down.

All this lazy retread manages to carry over is the admittedly ingenious premise of a bogeyman who invades your dreams and kills you in your sleep. That killer is Freddy Krueger, possibly the most iconic horror figure of the 80s, and the only way to avoid being slaughtered by him is to stay awake. That’s the task facing Nancy and her friends, who have all been having the same dream, of a man with a burned and scarred face and knives on his fingers.

Plot-wise it follows the original reasonably faithfully, going so far as to recreate some of the gags, only nowhere near as effectively. So we get Freddy’s face and hands coming through the wall above Nancy’s bed and a botched version of the scene where Johnny Depp is eaten by his bed and turns into a geyser of blood.

To give it its due, it doesn’t overdose on the CGI, but that’s perhaps more an indication of the lack of money that needs to be spent to fleece modern audiences into seeing any old tat than any great taste or restraint on the part of the director.

Making his feature debut, Samuel Bayer aims for loud and jumpy over creepy and unsettling but ends up with tame and lacklustre, a slick product utterly lacking the nightmarish quality of the original. Early flashes of Freddy are too brief to matter and Bayer is never able to bluff the audience on when the action is real and when it’s someone’s dream.

Explanation and back-story is given precedence over taking things forward in any interesting way, especially when it comes to Freddy’s origin story which is introduced in a completely arbitrary fashion.

Jackie Earl Haley, who made such an impression last year with his performance as Rorschach in Watchmen, replaces Robert Englund as Freddy and he does as well as can be expected in the circumstances, but eventually it’s reduced to a generic teen stalker where really bland actors spout trite dialogue. Don’t be afraid to fall asleep.