Have been very occupied with work and a slight aversion to inflated ticket prices have kept me away from the cinema a while. Still, managed to catch up with a couple of Summer biggies. Quickies tho... Ant-Man [2015]Stars Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas, Evengeline Lilly, Corey Stoll, Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena Directed by Peyton Reed Finally, a Marvel Super-hero movie that doesn’t have some massive destruction raining down on some town / city / the world… or a massively epic battle to wrap things up. What we get is essentially a heist flick, complete with a recruitment sequence, planning and practising, and carrying out the heist with precision only to have something go wrong somewhere (otherwise, where’s the drama?). At its core, it’s about a burglar (Paul Rudd) hired by the man with the plan (Michael Douglas) to steal a piece of tech from the bad guy (Corey Stoll), with some assist from a colourful cast of characters (including Evangeline Lilly, Michael Pena, David Dastmalchian and T.I.) to provide some levity. The catch is that our burglar is given a piece of tech to help in the heist, a suit with some power that shrinks him to the size of an ant! In case you’re worried, it’s not quite Honey, I Shrunk the Super-Hero, even if we have ant helping our hero. While this would make the movie a visual effects extravaganza - and the micro-world is wonderfully realised - the stars do very well to keep the movie light and breezy, i.e. highly entertaining. Rudd makes an unassuming hero, a burglar struggling for a second chance in order to be closer to his daughter who is in the custody of her mother (Judy Greer). His charm make you want to root for him and he is very unlike the more ‘powerful’ hero we’ve met so far. Even so, the training sequence - cool as it it - flies by very fast and raises our hero’s skill level fairly quickly, given they have only “a few days” to pull off the heist. Then there’s Michael Douglas playing mentor to both our hero and main villain! The prologue gives us a Douglas who looks as he does back in the 80s, along with a nice cameo or two. Still, Douglas does very well in lending some gravitas to the proceedings. Overall, the entertainment level is fairly high and the relatively short run time (under two hours!) keep the pace going at a nice clip. The cast does really well even if Corey Stoll feels like he’s missing a moustache to twirl. The visual effects are eye catching, especially with the inventiveness of Ant-Man’s fight sequences. The dialogue plays the humour organically that allows the each character their moments and quirks. There are a few surprises that you may already know about and do stay through the credits for a set-up for the next Marvel film instalment. Rating: ****/5 Partridge Publishing / Barnes and Noble / Amazon / ISBNS Net (for best deals) - Please support by buying or recommending to others, then I can watch more shows and do more reviews. Thank you. Terminator Genisys [2015]Stars Arnold Schwarzenegger, Emilia Clarke, Jason Clarke, Jai Courtney and JK Simmons Directed by Alan Taylor Perhaps Star Trek (2009) has a lot to answer for. Then again, Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles pulled a similar trick in their premiere episode. I’m talking about the use of time travel to change the course of the future, but then, that is a core aspect of most time-travel stories. It’s just that Star Trek (2009) in recent memory that employed the time-travel conceit to change the course of its franchise by creating an alternate reality for new adventures while preserving the integrity of everything else that has come before. Terminator Genisys attempts the same trick by having us revisit the events of the 1984 original (The Terminator) except that events have changed with the arrival of another T-800 further back the timeline. It also give the movie a reason to have an aged Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the T-800. So, as Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) arrives in 1984, as was depicted in the original film and competently recreated here, things change family quickly with he appearance of a T-1000 liquid metal terminator in the guise of a cop (another tribute, this time portrayed by Byung-Hun Lee). Instead of having to rescue Sarah Conner (Emilia Clarke), it is her rescuing him instead. As with the TV series, they then jump ahead to a more contemporary time and setting to carry out the rest of the movie with the same plan - destroy SkyNet. If you’ve seen the main trailer for the film, the biggest surprise is given away there, although there is one more twist that was kept from the publicity machine. Even then, it wasn’t an entire surprise as a set-up for that is telegraphed early. Schwarzenegger does well, enforcing the knowledge that he was, is, and will always be The Terminator even if he gives us a very different T-800 than we’ve encountered before. Even the credits lists his T-800 as “Guardian” even though Sarah constantly calls him “Pops”. Emilia Clarke is surprisingly effective in essaying a very different 1984 Sarah Conner, one who was trained and prepared, to an extent, for the events to come; part warrior from Terminator II: Judgment Day and part youngster of The Terminator. With Reese rounding out the trio, Jai Courtney feels a little out of place and I couldn’t help wonder if they couldn’t have tried reaching out to Anton Yelchin (Terminator: Salvation) to come back to the character. Director Alan Taylor manages to keep things coherent, even with their numerous time-jumps. As displayed with Thor: The Dark World, Taylor handles the action very well, keeping things coherent even when some things defy logic. Overall, it is a decent step forward that wipes out the events of Terminator: Rise of The Machines as well as Terminator: Salvation, giving us a different path forward with some hints that this alternate reality is not quite done with the Terminators just yet. Rating: ***1/2 / 5
1 Comment
Yodie Michelle
8/5/2015 11:25:21 pm
That review was horrifying. Giving this new film anything more than 2 stars is a testament to the dumbness of the reviewer. You gotta be kidding me. Stick your day job Sir, because a reviewer you are not!
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