THEGAYUK

Tag: Movie Genre Adventure

  • FILM REVIEW | Teenage Mutant Nija Turtles: Out Of The Shadows

    FILM REVIEW | Teenage Mutant Nija Turtles: Out Of The Shadows

    TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: OUT OF THE SHADOWS – The sequel to the hit family rebooted franchise now in its 30th year about the four amphibians up against Shredder once again and another old favourite bad guy. This is the seventh full length turtle film to date.

    CREDIT: Paramount/YouTube

    Nutshell – The Turtles are still hiding in the sewer from public view acting as vigilantes with their two human and one rat accomplaces. Their nemesis Shredder breaks free of custody, makes it to Dimension X where he meets Krang the ultimate Turtle enemy. He has a device to conquer earth but just needs two more parts and the amphibians out of the way. A breakneck adventure takes them all to the Amazon and back and along the way the Turtle Power team disintegrates and find a way to become human and leave their amphibian lives behind forever.

    Time – 113 mins; Certificate – 12A

    Tagline – ‘Raise Some Shell….Only One Team Can Save Us All’.

    THE GAY UK FACTOR – It’s a family film but the new love interest for April O’Neil is megahunk Stephen Amell playing the ongoing character of Casey Jones. You may know him as Green Arrow from the hit superhero TV series and he is 10 out of 10 in anyones books with an ass built to be rimmed. Hopefully the shirt comes off in the next film.

    Cast – The worlds hottest babe Megan Fox, Will Arnett, Laura Linney, Will Amell and a heavily made-up and barely recognisable Tyler Perry.

    Key Player – The special effects team as you really forget that the four leads are not real and it makes the film truly entertaining. Even more important is the special effects crew producing two of the top five stunt sequences of the year.

    Budget – $135 Million and in this special effects delight it is all up on the screen. Already profited with $150 million and in the top 10 most successful movies of the year and climbing so bring on the next one.

    Best Bit – 0.14 mins; A great action sequence where ‘The Foot’ on souped up motorbikes set about kicking some cop ass to free Shredder from his prison convoy. The Turtles enter the fray and all hell breaks loose. Simply the best stunt scene of the year so far.

    Worst Bit – 0.18 mins; Our first visit off planet to Dimension X which is fine but the problem is Krang himself. As the ultimate bad guy here in a huge robot suit he just looks like Davros with a headcold and easily defeatable. Shredder alone as seen last time around is the perfect foe and there was no need to steroid up the bad team.

    Little Secret – The fan base goes wide – Director Dave Green has been a huge TMNT fan from childhood; he used to dress up as Donatello.
    Kevin Eastman the creator of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” universe all those years ago, appears as a pizza delivery guy.

    Movie Mistake – They get it spot on except for April’s reappearing and disappearing black trousers in the Britney Spears school girl spy tracking scene.

    Further Viewing – Any of the many entries in the Turtle Power cannon, Ghostbusters, Transformers 1-5, Men In Black, Any Marvel or DC superhero film especially the Spidermans.

    Any Good – As with other sequels you will have made up your mind on your interest level when you saw the title alone. If already on board then this is a step up from the last one with some clever ideas and great stunt work, if not then nothing new here to bring you on side.

    Rating – 39/100 (39th out of the last 100 films reviewed with 1 being best and 100 being a damp squib).

    Order it from Amazon

  • FILM REVIEW | Alice Through The Looking Glass

    FILM REVIEW | Alice Through The Looking Glass

    ★★★★ | Alice Through The Looking Glass

    Disney’s new film Alice Through the Looking Glass hit theatres this weekend and it’s bound to be another huge moneymaker for the studio.

    CREDIT: Disney
    Alice Through the Looking Glass sees the return of the same actors who played the same characters from the 2010 film. Alice (Mia Wasikowska) travels back in time to try to save the Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp). Along the way she reconnects with her friends including the White Rabbit (Michael Sheen), Absolem (the late Alan Rickman) the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), twins Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), the White Queen (Anne Hathaway) and of course the Mad Hatter. We’re also treated to a delicious turn by both Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen (and Alice’s sister) and Sacha Baron Cohen (as Time).

    Alice has spent several years sailing the high seas (and following in her father’s footsteps). When she returns to London, she is asked (and demanded) to sign away her ship to her ex-boyfriend James (Ed Speelers). When she attends a meeting with him and her mother (Lindsay Duncan), she goes to an upstairs room and steps through a mirror, and through this mirror Alice takes a journey (literally through the looking glass) to Wonderland. It’s here where she sees all of her Wonderland friends, but something is not right with the Mad Hatter. She needs to turn to Time to correct things in the past that will make the Mad Hatter’s life better. Alice ends up taking a device called the Chronosphere, which allows her to travel back in time. She sees ways where she can help the Mad Hatter, but also comes across the events in her own life, which include a lie that she told as a young girl that tragically affected her sister the Red Queen. It’s all told, as expected from Disney, in very visual colors and 3D.

    There was no way that anyone could top Tim Burton’s 2010 film, but James Bobbin (The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted) successfully manages to bring the story back to life, with the help of screenwriter Linda Wolverton (who also wrote Alice in Wonderland). But no film would be as good as this if it were not for the excellent cast. Wasikoska does her bit as Alice as well as she did in the 2010 film, but it’s the addition of Cohen as Time that adds a fun element to the film, where he, and the Red Queen, live literally in time. And it’s Carter as the Red Queen who steals every scene she’s in. With a huge head, and a huge head of hair, and makeup that’s expertly applied on her face to give her a highly unusual look, Carter chews up every scene she’s in (and in my opinion it’s an Academy-Award worthy performance, though it’s rare for a performer to receive one in a Disney movie – however, Meryl Streep was nominated for Into The Woods – but of course it was Streep!).

    Expect Alice Through the Looking Glass to make lots and lots of money (though it doesn’t help that Johnny Depp is currently embroiled in a nasty separation with his wife Amber Heard)

     

    Available as pre-order on Amazon | iTunes

  • FILM REVIEW: Everest: Breathtaking Epic Adventure

    In 1996, dozens of people tried to get to the top of Mount Everest. Some succeeded, and some died trying. The gripping and realistic ‘Everest’ recounts, in dramatic fashion, this event. ★★★★

    There were quite a few expeditions on Mount Everest in May 1996, and they all had one goal, to get themselves, and their clients (who each paid $65,000), to the top of Mount Everest, and it was up to the expedition leaders to make this happen. Rob Hall was the leader for Adventure Consultants, and he happened to have Jon Krakauer on his team (journalist Krakauer, who was on an assignment for Outside magazine, would go on to write ‘Into Thin Air’ – a book about the disastrous events that took place on the mountain during this climb ). Hall was also responsible for 7 other clients. The Mountain Madness expedition was led by Scott Fischer, who also had 8 clients, including Sandy Hill Pittman, a very wealthy New York Socialite who was, at the time, the wife of Robert Pittman, the founder of MTV. In addition to the clients, several sherpas (local people who are hired by the expedition companies to carry up the mountain supplies and food, to fix the ropes and ladders to make it easier and quicker for the clients to get up – getting everything in place) were part of the teams as well. Of course most of Hall’s and Fischer’s clients were not professional mountain climbers, they climbed mountains as more of a hobby, and expected to reach the top of Mount Everest because of the huge amount of money they paid. One of Hall’s clients was a postman (Doug Hansen). Another was a doctor from Texas (Beck Weathers). Also on Hall’s team was Yasuko Namba, a Japanese woman who had climbed six of the Seven Summits. And Hall and Fischer knew that it’s good for their businesses to have their clients actually make it to the top. So along with these two expeditions groups, other groups of people trying to climb the mountain at the same time were from South Africa, France, Tibet, and 13 members of a Taiwanese team.

    But the weather gods were not smiling on Hall and Fischer and their clients during this climb. And this is the story that ‘Everest’ the film successfully and gloomily brings to life. We are introduced to the teams six weeks prior to the start of their expedition. Hall (played by Jason Clarke) is from New Zealand who leaves his pregnant wife (Keira Knightley) behind to go to work. Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) says goodbye to his wife (Robin Wright) in Texas to try to accomplish the almost impossible task of getting to the top of Mount Everest. Doug Hansen (John Hawkes) meets up with the gang in Nepal, as does Sandy Hill Pittman (Vanessa Kirby), which is the starting point for all expeditions. It is in Nepal where the teams get to know each other and bond, but it’s when they get to base camp that the adventure, and danger, begins. Base Camp is already at such a high altitude (17,600 feet), that climbers need to be acclimatized so their bodies can get used to the high altitude. It’s also where the operations for the expeditions take place, led by Helen Wilton (Emily Watson). ‘Everest’ takes us on the journey of these team climbing the mountain. But first they need to navigate the Khumbu ice fall, soaring ice towers and crevasses so deep that there really is no bottom. Camp I and Camp II are where the teams stop and rest and basically take their time. But it’s Lhotse Face that is one of the most challenging bits on the mountain. It’s a 3,600 foot wall of ice that they have to climb to reach Camp III, where most climbers need to use bottled oxygen to breath. But it’s above 26,000, right below Camp IV, which is where the climbers use as the final stop before their ascent, called the ‘Death Zone’ because it’s where humans cannot survive for long. If climbers have survived as high up as Camp IV, then it’s full throttle ahead to reach the summit, usually at midnight so that the teams can reach it before noon, that if they survive the heavy gusts of wind and the Hillary Step, a 40-foot tower of ice and rock on an exposed part of the mountain that becomes a human traffic jam for people getting to the top, as well as coming back down. But it’s the climb back down that is hardest. The climbers are exhausted, some suffering from high altitude conditions, but it’s the lucky ones who are in ok shape, and it’s these people who have to decide whether to save the almost dead or to leave them behind to save their own lives. As recounted in ‘Everest’, Hall and Fischer’s teams encountered a major storm on their way down, but it was not the only mistake that took place on that climb. Besides too many people on the mountain, Hall took Hansen up to top, way past the agreed time. And the search for them cost another climber his life. Fischer was not in the best of shape as he was climbing to the top, and had a much harder time going down. And a storm overtook the climbers, which turned out to be unexpected and deathly. And it’s reenacted in ‘Everest’ to extreme detail; high winds, blowing snow, climbers struggling just to survive, dead bodies littered here and there, and almost blacked-outconditions. ‘Everest’ also recounts Weather’s struggle for survival, Hall’s loyalty to his client, and the operations team realizing that there is nothing they can do for the people trapped on the mountain.

    ‘Everest’ successfully, and grippingly, tells the story of the people who survived the mountain that fateful year. And while there have been a few books and one television movie made about this event, ‘Everest’ is based on the book by Weathers ( Left for Dead: My Journey Home from Everest (2000)), recollections from some of the survivors, as well as satellite phone conversations between the climbers, their families, and base camp. And the actors who portray the real life characters are superb. Josh Brolin has his best role in years as Weathers, a man who amazingly was left for dead on the mountain but somehow survived. Jason Clarke as Rob Hall is excellent – he’s determined to get his clients to the top and at the same time determined to get back home to see the birth of his first baby. Emily Watson as Wilton, the base camp operations coordinator, is concerned, and then doomed, after she realizes that a few lives have been lost on the mountain. And John Hawkes as postman Hansen gives us a portrait of a man who wants to be there but is not experienced in any way to climb the mountain. Luckily Knightley is relegated to a role not on the mountain, she plays Hall’s wife back at home, and there’s nothing she can do to help him. Gyllenhaal’s role as Fischer is relegated to a few scenes, mostly up on the mountain – he’s far from being the star of the movie. Director Baltasar Kormakur (2 Guns, Contraband), working from a script by William Nicholson and Simon Beaufoy, takes us with the teams on their journey, and it looks all too realistic. While there are lots of characters to keep track of (the all important Sherpas are virtually ignored), especially when they are all wrapped up, ‘Everest’ brings to the big screen the real life 1996 Mount Everest disaster. Eight people eventually died during this expedition. ‘Everest’ was shot at high elevation on the trek to Everest in Nepal, in the Italian Alps and at Cinecitta Studios in Rome, and Pinewood Studios in the UK. It can be experienced in IMAX 3D as well as standard 3D and 2D. ‘Everest’ is an epic adventure that will take your breathe away.

     

     

  • FILM REVIEW | The Last Knights

    In the current climate of sword and sorcery fever, stirred up by the wonderful Game of Thrones, we are seeing a surge of books and films set in Machiavellian worlds, with plot twists and turns to keep you on your toes.

    This film is one of those – probably more by happenstance than by planning. This film seems to seek to ride that wave – however, it falls short, far short.

    A fallen warrior, one of the last knights of the title, seeks to avenge his former and now dishon-oured master against a cruel and corrupt ruler in a pseudo-medieval land.

    Beautiful backdrops, amazing scenery, weather fit for Winterfell and its frozen North, there just seems to be something missing.

    The cast work hard, the plot, in theory at least, should entertain but it fails somewhere.

    Have you ever settled down to watch a good movie, only to be left a little, well, a little flat and dis-appointed?

    With a cast that includes Clive Owen and Morgan Freeman, we could expect more but they can only work with what they have. The scenery is wonderful, spectacular even. The castles and courtyards appropriately epic, the costumes perfection.But, and its a big but, it doesn’t succeed – and I can’t put my finger on why?

    I read a few reviews on this film from Amazon and my favourite one read: “utter ball bag”. Not sure why this tickled me, but it did! It was also too harsh as it only gave the film 2 stars – I’d give it 3 and maybe a second watch at some point to check if my review was right.
    A mild-mannered 3 stars

    BUY ON AMAZON

  • FILM REVIEW | Interstellar: Bigger Than It can handle, And What We Can Handle

    ★★★ | Interstellar

    There’s a lot of hype surrounding the new film Interstellar, which opens on Friday.

    It’s directed by Christopher Nolan, the man who brought us the billion-dollar grossing films (each!) The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Returns. He also brought us 2000’s smart and highly intellectual film Memento and 2010’s highly confusing Inception. Also upping the hype around Interstellar is that it stars recent Academy Award winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, multiple Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain, as well as Oscar winners Michael Caine, Ellen Burnstyn, and in an uncredited/unbilled but pivotal role in the film, Matt Damon. Also by the look of the trailer, it looks visually and experimentally stunning. It’s on the path to be this year’s Gravity.

    Interstellar is a lot of things. But according to Nolan, it hinges on the provocative question of humanity’s place in the stars. Interstellar means ‘occurring or situated between stars,’ and that’s basically what the movie is all about. It’s also about Black Holes, distance galaxies, uninhabitable and habitable planets, spaceship travel, and what drives the plot is the relationship a father has with his daughter.

    Set in the near future when an agricultural crisis has hit Earth and there is not enough food to eat and the population is slowly dying. The land is very dry and there are massive sandstorms that engulf the planet. With the possibility of the extinction of humans, a dangerous and daring mission takes place to look for planets outside of the universe where humans can move to, survive, and most importantly, reproduce. It’s a mission that goes above and beyond the barriers of time and space, defying not only gravity but inter-galaxy travel as well. It’s an experimental mission that’s not only very dangerous, but life altering as well.

    Cooper (McConaughey) is a former test pilot and engineer who’s now a farmer because that is what is needed in this decaying, dry new world. The only crop that is left on earth is corn, so this is what he grows at his vast farm, with the help of his father-in-law Donald (John Lithgow) and his two children – teenage son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Cooper hears of some sort of experimental space project going on in his area, so he drives off attempting to find it, at the same time finding Murph in the back of the car when she was told to stay home. She’s as much of a space geek as her father.

    They find the compound, or actually, the compound finds them, and they both get whisked into the underground bunker. It’s actually a fortress made up of scientists and engineers, led by Professor Brand (Caine). He leads the project for the search of a planet in perhaps another universe that can sustain the human race. A project which includes a newly built spaceship.

    So Cooper (without the blessing of his daughter) and Brand’s scientist daughter Amelia (Hathaway) and two others blast off into space, into the darkness, on a mission that seems impossible. But what Cooper doesn’t know is that 13 other astronauts had previously attempted the mission, and all have not been heard from since. And to add drama to the story, Amelia was in love with one of them.

    It’s the space mission (and Cooper and Murph’s relationship) that drives Interstellar. And what a drive it is. Nolan takes us into space and beyond like no other filmmaker has. We are transported into another universe, through black holes, to other planets. One planet has waves the size of the Empire State Building, while another is caked in ice, where they find one of the 13 astronauts alive – Dr. Mann (Damon). And this is when Coopers’ and Amelia’s mission strays off it’s course, in a detrimental way. One hour on this planet equals 20 years on Earth, so the more time spent there, the more time Cooper’s children grow up, and old, without him.

    What Interstellar tries to do is use the magnitude and grandeur of space as a backdrop for exploring the relationships that Cooper has with his children, especially his daughter. It’s also about all kinds of things – our lives on earth, what will happen when our earth can no longer sustain us, who are are, and it makes us look at the relationships we have. It basically asks us to examine, all this, and more, in its 169 minutes. London-born Nolan successfully puts the audience into space, and McConaughey successfully makes us believe that he’s got the passion for being in space, but Interstellar leaves us mere mortals behind in a film that is a bit overwhelming, mind-bending, demanding and a bit confusing. And the sound quality is not the best, the music and noise at times drown out what the characters are saying in a few crucial scenes. And with two recent air space accidents in the last couple weeks, no one is really in a rush to get to space.

    Written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan, Interstellar is a movie bigger than it can handle, and what we can handle.

  • FILM REVIEW | Life Of Pi

    ★★★★★ | Life Of Pi

    An Indian boy (Suraj Sharma), the son of a zoo keeper, with the improbable name of Pi, short for the even more improbable Piscine (I’ll let you find out for yourself how he came by that name) is shipwrecked and finds himself adrift in the Pacific Ocean, with a zebra, a hyena, an orang-utan and a Bengal tiger, called Richard Parker.

    Sounds improbable? Well that’s kind of the point. This is David Magee’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s novel The Life of Pi, which, I should point out, I have never read, so I have no idea if it is a good adaptation or not. What I am quite sure of is that it is one of the best movies Ang Lee (director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain) has ever given us.

    The first thing to say is that, visually, this is a very beautiful film, and often a stunning one. The 3D effects and CGI are amazing, but the movie is so much more. Often these days, one feels that a movie is all about effects, but in Life of Pi, the effects are used to enhance what is already a compelling narrative. Lee’s use of 3G is almost poetic, immeasurably helped here by Claudio Miranda’s wonderful (in its true sense of full of wonder) cinematography.

    Suraj Sharma gives an incredible performance, growing in stature as the movie progresses and Pi learns more about life and survival, all the more remarkable when you consider that for the most part he had to react to a beast that wasn’t actually there (Richard Parker, the tiger, is mostly depicted through the magic of CGI). His performance is matched by that of Irrfan Khan, who plays the older Pi, telling his story to a Canadian writer (Rafe Spall). Like the writer, we are drawn in by Khan’s magical storytelling, the pain behind his eyes hiding a truth that is never fully explained. Like Pi, Ang Lee knows how to tell a story, how to draw his audience in. He did it in Brokeback Mountain, and, in a completely different way, he does it here. His direction is never less than masterful, more than that, poetic, inspiring.

    At the end of the movie, Pi tells us that when he was finally rescued, the story of how he survived was not believed by the authorities investigating the shipwreck, so he came up with another one, more prosaic, but even more brutal. Is the first story an allegory of the second? We are left to make our own minds up, but I know which one I choose. Definitely one of my movies of the year.

    Available to buy / view on: Amazon | Amazon Prime | iTunes