Tag: Geoffrey Rush

Stake Land / Green Lantern

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsDespite my feeling somewhat under the weather, we managed to squeeze in two films this evening before I collapsed into a snot-soaked lump, coughing and feeling pitiful. Yes, it’s man-flu’… I sincerely hope I didn’t annoy the people near us too much. I did try to reserve my coughing and sneezing for the noisier segments of both films.

Stake Land

Plot-in-a-nutshell: A drifter adopts a young boy when his parents are killed by roaming vampires in a collapsed United States

See it if you like: bleak, post-apocalyptic movies without huge set pieces

Comparisons first of all. Stake Land is like a cross between The Road and Zombieland. It has more of the dark, depressing feel of the former, but the constantly stalking monsters of the latter – albeit vampires rather than zombies. It’s a good mixture as well. With the cast being relative unknowns (with the exception of a very well played part by Kelly McGillis – a far cry from her Top Gun days) you never know who’s going to get it in the neck – so to speak – next.

There’s no long drawn out introduction. We’re dropped right into the middle of the story, the US already in tatters and people trying to make for a mystical “new eden” in Canada. No explanation is ever given for the vampire rising, the closest we get to a back-story is the occasionally-glanced newspaper headline.

The vampires themselves are more like fast-moving zombies. In fact, I’d say they’re nearer the monsters from the 28 Days Later franchise with an added inability to face sunlight. Feral, unintelligent and all the more dangerous for it.

The never-otherwise-named “Mister” (Nick Damici) takes Martin (Connor Paolo) under his wing when the young boy’s parents are killed, and together they head north. Along the way they encounter nice people in townships which are holding out… and The Brotherhood, a collection of religious nutbags who believe the vampires have been sent by God as a means to cleanse the planet. Or somesuch.

Between these two sets of villains and the environment itself, the journey unfolds and the characters develop well. It’s not a fast-paced adventure, but neither is it as slow as the incredibly dull The Road, mentioned earlier. Certainly, we both enjoyed it and would happily recommend it. If you think it sounds like you’ll like it from what I’ve said, then you probably will.

Green Lantern

“Ring. Finger.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: jet pilot gets will-powered green ring from dying aliens and associated superpowers. Saves world (sorry if that’s a spoiler)

See it if you like: amusing superhero stories with decent special effects and tongue-in-cheek dialogue.

Green Lantern has never been a superhero I knew much about. He’s green. And he has some kind of magic (no, it’s not magic, sorry) ring which lets him fly and create stuff from the air. And his secret identity is Hal Jordan. That came in useful in a pub quiz once.

What I didn’t know is that there are 3600 Green Lanterns, one for each galactic sector. This means there are a lot of aliens in this film. Which means a lot of CGI and creativity. In fact, a fair few of the characters in the film are 100% CG constructs with the actors related to them just being vocal pieces – Michael Clarke Duncan as Kilowog and Geoffrey Rush as Tomar-Re being two examples.

The story is a typical “origins” one, being the obvious start for a franchise. I’m sure it will annoy a huge number of purists as they’ve taken many strands of Green Lantern history and interwoven them. For the layman ( that would be me), it’s resulted in a decent enough film that was worth going to see.

Ryan Reynolds is good enough in the lead, and Gillian’s main reason for going to see it especially as you see him dressed in nowt but boxers twice, and there’s a decent enough supporting cast. The effects are well done, the story decent enough and the dialogue never gets too cheesy. In fact, there are a handful of scenes with genuine laugh-out-loud moments.

A couple of points – and you could argue they’re spoiler-y but only to the tiniest amount:

1) Why do intelligent overlords always imprison evil beings instead of executing them? You’d think a group of all-wise immortals would have learned from the Zod episode that Superman went through in Superman II.

2) One moment Hal is saying “how do I know all this?” about the Green Lantern Corps (apparently the ring’s “higher functions” fill him with this background knowledge), and then three minutes later he’s having said background explained to him anyway by Tomar-Re? He already “knows” it, so what’s the point? Yes, I know the audience need to be filled in, so in that case drop the “higher function” thing and have hi know nothing at all.

Anyway.

Taken as it is – a silly superhero movie – it’s a pretty decent one. Certainly DC’s best effort outside of the Batman canon, and hopefully open to a sequel or two. In fact, hang around to the middle of the credits. Predictable though it is, that’s definitely an indicator that Green Lantern 2 may well be out in 2013.

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Season of the Witch / The King’s Speech

The King's Speech
The King's Speech

Two films on a Friday – back to a semi-regular way to round off the week with Gillian. We opted for a nicely opposing pairing this weekend. One silly action film and another deemed somewhat of a classic from the previews.

Season of the Witch

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Absconding knights offer to take an alleged witch across country for trial so they don’t get executed. Like a road movie with armour.

Behmen and Felson (Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman) get a little sick of being told to kill innocents in the name of God, so decide to turn their backs on the Crusades. Popping through a small town, they are discovered as deserters and sentenced to death. As luck would have it, the town is suffering a plague brought on by a witch and in exchange for offering to transport her to a monastery to undergo trial, they’re given their freedom.

That pretty much covers the plot. Other than that it’s moderately average action / medieval fare. Cage and Perlman get all the good lines and there is some decent banter. The effects are passable (until the end when there’s some CGI that makes Doctor Who look big-budget) and the acting’s tolerable.

It’s not a classic, but even by Cage’s standards is just not up to par. Certainly, it’s not a complete heap of arse like Ghost Rider (seriously – they’re making a sequel?), but there’s just not a lot to it. By the end, there’s a feel that you’ve watched an over-long TV drama rather than a decent motion picture.

The King’s Speech

“I have a voice!”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: true story of a king-to-be who has a speech impediment, and the work done by a therapist to get him through it.

Short review: See this film. See it now.

Longer review: This is a heartwarming tale of royalty meets common-folk set in the 1930s as Britain gears up for war and the royal family goes through some upsets. King George V doesn’t have long to live and his son (the soon-to-be King Edward) is filandering with a twice-divorced American. Marrying her would mean he can’t be king, and his younger brother Bertie would take the reins.

Bertie (better known historically as King George VI, and played magnificently by Colin Firth) has a problem. His job is to be head of state, he need to give speeches… and he has a very pronounced stammer. At the insistence of his wife, Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) he does the rounds of speech therapists, eventually ending up with the rather unusual Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush).

Thus begins a story that takes us from Bertie’s small speeches as Duke of York through to his first – and famous – speech as King just as Britain announced that it was to go to war with Germany for a second time.

The film very much focusses on the relationship between  Lionel and Bertie. The Australian voice doctor much preferring to be informal with his patients initially sits very badly with the occasionally bad-tempered King-in-waiting, but the two do gel as time goes on.

The dialogue between the two fizzes, even when Firth is stammering away. One of the therapy sessions includes the funniest swearing sequence I think I’ve seen since Steve Martin’s car hire rant in Planes, Trains and Automobiles – a segment which initially earned the film a 15 rating due to the number of “****”s. It was downgraded to a 12A with the warning that it was “language in the setting of speech therapy”. So remember, kids – it’s acceptable to swear at your doctor.

There isn’t a single bad member of cast in the entire movie. A small surprise for me was seeing Timothy Spall as Winston Churchill. A far cry from the labourer he played all those years ago in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. Derek Jacobi is superb as the pompous Archbishop of Canterbury, a man obviously used to getting his own way.

Firth plays the Prince/King very well and the script portrays him as a troubled man who underwent a harsh childhood being by far the second most important behind his elder brother. Despite this, he’s a good father to his two daughters and by all accounts was a popular king before being succeeded by our current monarch.

I’m no royalist, but this is an incredible story and certainly one that deserves two hours of anyone’s time. With some excellent dialogue, funny moments and a story that doesn’t stop with a ton of history and trivia thrown in it’s great value for money.

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