Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

#StokerScore 6/10

Imagine you want to make a movie and you want to make sure it includes all of your favourite comic characters. You have research material for those characters that dates back to 1938 and to top it off, these dramatis personae are iconic to the point that everyone is aware of even small background information, meaning you could theoretically throw the audience into the middle of a story and they'd have a good chance of understanding individual motivations. Here's a quick quiz....

                  1. Is Batman a) a bat, b) a man, c) a genetically engineered man/bat hybrid?

                  2. Was Superman born a) on Krypton, b) on Earth, c) in the wagon of a travelling show,                            whose Momma use to dance for the money they'd throw?

                  3. Is Lex Luthor a) the good guy, b) the bad guy c) the ugly guy?

                  4. Is Wonder Woman a) Amazonian, b) Amazuluian c) Platitudinarian

My point is that that's just how goddamn ICONIC they are, as each new age has dawned since 1938, these guys have been there

Finally, you won't need to worry about box-office returns as the movie is likely to be seen by just about everyone.

There's a lot to like about the new movie. Afleck makes old Batman his own with a believably world-weary performance, ably assisted by the always brilliant Jeremy Irons as Alfred. Gal Gadot looks suitably sexy, feisty and capable but just wasn't really given enough to do to give a realistic assessment. Jesse Eisenberg seems to have gone for a "what-if-I-cross-Mark-Zuckerberg-with-Gary-Busey" idea for his Luthor portrayal and whilst it sometimes comes off as petulant, he certainly seems to be enjoying himself

It's Superman, In my opinion unreasonably saddled with the blame for the destructive events at the end of Man of Steel, who doesn't seem to be enjoying himself. Batman enjoys beating up criminals, Wonder Woman enjoys fast cars and light S&M, Superman gets a brief moment to enjoy bath time for two, but that's it, the rest of the time he's just miserable.

In fact the tone of the movie is pretty miserable too. There's no colour, the season seems to be that moment in Autumn where it rains a lot and the trees are leafless, and for pity's sake how many more cities need destroying?

I have to say that I blame the writer, director and studio for a number of less than positive things about the movie. As a nerd I was able to get most of the references casually thrown about but there were more dream sequences than A Nightmare on Elm Street and as much as I understand the anger over the destruction of Metropolis, surely a vigilante master detective could deduce that Superman wasn't to blame? 

The inevitability of needing a problem so big, it needs the combined powers of the three DC heroes to bring it down is understandable enough as Supe's and WW's virtual immortality is going to need destruction on an epic scale but god help us when we add in the rest of the Justice League, most of whom BVSDOJ gave us a glimpse of, along with an Apokoliptic (sic) sense of doom to come.

I think that at two hours and thirty minutes it was thirty minutes too long. three quarters of the movie is really just set-up for the final battle and the coming JL movie. Did we really need to be shown Bruce Wayne's origin story again? I'm starting to think that there's a contract at DC that says every new reboot of the role warrants a retelling of Batman's origin.

As a blockbuster movie it's ok, but for all of the on screen spectacle it was still missing a WOW factor. I certainly didn't leave the two showings of the movie, one in 2D and the better one in 3D, thinking that I couldn't wait for the oh-right-they've-split-it-into-two-parts-again-to-milk-the-cow-dry Justice League movies.

Deadpool

#StokerScore 8/10

I've been waiting to see this movie. Not because it's a Marvel universe movie, nor even that it's a superhero movie, certainly not because it's got Ryan Reynolds in it. No I've been waiting for this because in much the same way I liked Kick Ass and Kingsman I rather like movies that don't take themselves too seriously.

With Superhero movies that can often be the case, they end up dwelling too much on the hero's angst and it has often taken away from the fun that should be inherrent in these kind of films. Marvel/Disney do seem to be doing quite a good job of rubbishing everything I just said but that's still a fairly recent development. 

Deadpool isn't a well-known character. If you'd asked most people prior to the excellent marketing for the movie to tell you anything about the character I'm sure most would have looked a little befuddled. I know the character, but not that well. I was aware he has a propensity for bad language and breaking the fourth wall whereby he often talks to the audience directly, either through the panels of a comic book or in this case through the screen. I was also aware that he knows he's a comic book character and so doesn't really take anything too seriously.

This movie used all of these character habits to a greater or lesser degree and as you can see from the score I gave it they nailed it pretty much spot on, from the irreverent opening credits to the characters behaviour. I'm also not sure that anyone other than Reynolds, who in previous movies could have been accused of egotism, arrogance and downright smarminess at times, could have played the part better.

He is at pains to remind us that he's not a hero, in fact his motives are generally rather unheroic although he obviously has his saving graces. Think Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or better still Mel Gibson in Mad Max 2 where he ended up in a situation where by trying to help himself, he inadvertently helped others. Deadpool has similar situations thrust on him and walks the line between good and bad himself, more often than not falling onto the latter. When you realise that the character is in fact insane it's nearly akin to expecting The Joker to magnanimously do someone a favour. 

I have to admit that I wasn't expecting too much. I've seen movies well marketed before and turn out to be shockingly bad; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen to name just one, but I have to admit that I found myself laughing at a lot (you're supposed to) and with the exception of Ed Skrein's forgettable bad guy I really enjoyed it. I certainly think the immediately greenlit Deadpool 2 could potentially be even better given the name dropped at the end of this first one and, if they can find any way to link him into Fox's mutant-verse, even as a cameo, it might help Bryan Singer to rely less heavily on Wolverine for screen presence.

If you're looking to have a fun movie experience, don't mind (a lot of) bad language and can get past most of Ryan Reynolds previous movies you're in for a treat.

Solace

#StokerScore 7.5/10

I'd like you to think of actors who play themselves in every movie, those actors who may change their physical appearance, but never their voice... which is the first name that springs to mind? For me it will always be Sean Connery who has taken that polished Scottish brogue and, without changing it, played a Russian submarine captain, an alien immortal with strong links to Egypt, A King from ancient Greece and a Moroccan Sheik, to name just a few. Not for Connery is the need to mimic an accent to assume a role, no in his case he allows the way the character is written and the dialogue produced to do the job. And my word hasn't he had a successful career from it?

"shay it, I dare you"

Then again there are the actors who are just excellent when it comes to mimicry. Peter Sellers in just about anything, Gary Oldman who whilst having a couple of stinkers in there is never afraid to try something different, and my personal favourite, Laurence Olivier. Different actors, different acting styles.

As a cautionary paragraph, let's not forget what happens when actors try accents that they should never really have attempted in the first place or which at the very least should have been polished a tad more. Plenty of those to choose from but I think that seemingly any American trying to pull off an English accent could make the list, be it Keanu Reeves in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Don Cheadle in Ocean's 11, and obviously topping the list, the man they all used as a role model, Mr. Dick Van Dyke.

"cor blimey guv'nor, it's a right old pea-souper out there tonight"

Anthony Hopkins is an actor who has tried to use accents but in more recent years seems to have convinced casting directors that his character should be Welsh. There's nothing wrong with Welsh, there are many famous actors from Wales, but I've always felt that Anthony Hopkins should have stuck to the Connery method and never moved. Saying that, and maybe it's Hopkins age or the roles that he's currently choosing, but there does seem to be a world-weariness, an acceptance of the world order and that he's too late to change it, creeping into all of his performances. I hope that his role in the tv show Westworld is going to change this.

Look at  Silence of the Lambs and in his increased screen time in Red Dragon. In these, Hopkins did enough with his English accent (the character is originally Lithuanian) to get an Oscar for the first and regret to agreeing to do the second whereas in Thor, The Rite, Beowulf and The Wolfman he returns to his normal, world-weary Welsh. Even as President Nixon that Welsh accent seemed to dominate but his mimicry of Jodie Foster's Southern accent in Silence showed great skill. As I said, maybe it's the roles he's choosing.

if you have a problem with my accents, come have a chat over dinner

I don't believe that we're ever really told that Hopkins' character in Solace is American, just that he's a psychic and a doctor so this allows Hopkins to get on with being that wise and sage-like character that he's perfected. His character's past also means he can afford to be pretty pessimistic, sarcastic and downright obnoxious if he chooses to be. The other actors that surround him, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Colin Farrell and Abbie Cornish are all very good but what really lifts this above its serial killer flick cousins is the story. Weirdly, I don't think it's a particularly original movie as I was continually getting the feeling that I'd seen bits of it before in many other movies, but I did end the film feeling satisfied and that it had been a worthwhile hour and forty minutes spent.

If you like serial killer/police flicks, this movie is for you. If you like any of the key actors, there's enough here for everyone. If you like a different spin on a common movie trope, this is for you. Hell, find less than two hours and enjoy some Solace....

Sicario

#StokerScore 9/10

Slow-burn movies are those that while taking their time to get where they're going never forget to take the audience with them. If director and screenwriter get it right, then the experience is often one of the best of movie experiences. The brashness that many action movies rely on, the goriness of horror movies, the sentimentality of dramas and romantic movies, all are worthy traits but think of those movies that seemed to draw you in and then take you along with story rather than set pieces, that's the domain of the slow-burn movie and which can also apply to most of those other forms of movies I just mentioned, if done right.

I'm sure you have a favourite or two? A few years ago, struggling to decide on a movie to watch I bought Trade starring Kevin Kline. It was the story of sex trafficking between Mexico and the US and the movie just seemed to keep getting better, partly due to the chemistry between Kline's off-duty policeman and Cesar Ramos as the brother of a kidnapped girl. I remember at the end that I sat back, satisfied that I'd been told a great story, accepting that life isn't fair and definitely NOT needing a sequel. Don't misunderstand me, the characters that Kline and the others were playing weren't unlikeable, it's just that the story was told. End of.

This week I got to see another little gem in the form of Sicario. Starring Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro, who I last saw together in the much maligned The Wolfman, the cast is augmented by Josh Brolin and Daniel Kaluuya, and all of them are bang on form.The story again centres on the connection between Mexico and the US but this time, instead of people, it's the drugs trade. Many of the characters have dubiuos backgrounds and morals, and ethics seem flexible in search of  each character's goal.

Of the three main actors, Blunt has never been better in all of the movies I've seen her in. Josh Brolin is articulate, easily convincing of his potential duplicity and again I've not seen him take on anything this good recently. Even Del Toro tones it down, allowing his character to come to the fore.

If you're in the mood for a movie that makes you think, especially about subject matter that continues to be used by much more mediocre projects, give this a go.........

The Hateful Eight

#StokerScore 3/10

Movies are a personal choice. Professional critics have generally been educated as to the different techniques and the lighting and the script-doctoring and usually know what a best boy and a key grip do on a movie. But for those of us without film-related degrees we are driven by what we enjoy. Those movies may change over the years or become more refined but the originals? the ones we saw throughout our formative years? They never stop influencing us.

"Go on, I dare you to say again that Excalibur is better....."

We're about to head into awards season and already movies are shuffling and jockey-ing for position and, in many cases, have a team of people whose sole job it is to get the awards committee to recognise the movie they've been paid to promote. Certain film directors are always shoe-ins for recognition and it's widely understood that if you make a movie that contains specific themes then it's also more likely to be in contention. 

"We've got you, me, and Michael Mann. The Oscar is in the bag."

Laughingly, and in contrast, you hear of movies being voted worst ever and Golden Raspberries being handed out but what does that really mean? If a movie produces 'x' in terms of ticket receipts, this may be due as much to the number of cinema screens that it is available to be seen in and the marketing machine behind the movie to promote it as it is to if it's a good or bad movie. But trust me when I say I have seen bad movies too.

"the name's Cage, depatment of  bee movies"

So it is that I don't like all movies and I don't think that makes me a bad person. I also have reasons for liking and disliking the movies that I do. I like some horror movies, I like selected comedies, I like many action movies and a lot of sci-fi movies. I'm generally not a fan of dystopian future movies but I can think of some that I enjoy, and what some people call classics I have sometimes called bullshit. I like feel-good movies but conversely I also like black comedies and noir cinema. I'm certainly difficult to pidgeon-hole and friends are constantly surprised, amazed and appalled, in seemingly equal numbers, by my choices.

I suspect, to bring it back to my original point, that this is becuase of our individual conditioning. It's that conditioning that means I love westerns. I rank Pale Rider, Open Range, and Once Upon a Time In The West, ahead of Dances With Wolves, Unforgiven and A Man Called Horse. and because my Dad was a fan I was exposed to more westerns than any other genre as a kid growing up. 

Quentin Tarantino isn't a film school graduate, he's basically just a guy who loves movies, has worked around movies and had a number of peers who exposed him to movies. A mixture of good luck and a singular vision led to Harvey Keitel investing in the production of Reservoir Dogs and once that was followed up by Pulp Fiction it appeared that a new voice in film had been discovered. 

But just how singular that vision is has been open to debate ever since parallels between Reservoir Dogs and a number of other properties were noticed. Maybe I'm being unkind but his reliance on the word 'homage' has really started to lose its value in favour of just rehashing old movies and polishing them for a new generation.

Lots of people like Tarantino movies and forgive him his idiosyncrasies because they are recogniseable by the casts he puts together, the way the timeline jumps around and the clever dialogue. The Hateful Eight very clearly has the first, The cast is a solid mix of Tarantino regulars plus the inclusion of some new faces. The second area it employs sparsely but it's the third where I had problems as it also has a running time that drags unbelievably. I've never walked out of a movie but this one tried my patience. What is potentially a simple set-up and execution in the style of an Agatha Christie drawing room mystery is drawn out to the extent that I was just plain bored. I wanted to enjoy it, hoping that it was going to back to his lean, early movie best rather than my perception of the bloated excesses of his recent films. Maybe an M. Night/Tarantino collaborative piss up might produce more meaningful results for both of them...

Crimson Peak

#StokerScore 1st Half 8/10, 2nd Half 2/10

Guillermo Del Toro

Genius film maker? Uber geek? Misunderstood auteur? Are these titles mutually exclusive?

I've never met Guillermo Del Toro but I'd like to. I've read a lot about him and his works and I've also seen him interviewed on numerous occasions. He's passionate about his work, he works in genre fim making and he responds vocally and vociferously to his fans. But, look at some of his personal film choices and ask yourself, why the hell did he choose to make that?

Imagine that you're being allowed to make a personal project. The studio have negotiated a deal where if you make a film for them then in return they'll bankroll a film for you. It's not exactly unheard of and if you look at some of your favourite stars, either actors or directors, if they've had a big hit then they may also have a pet project that may have been made too. On more than one occasion, to confuse movies and humane approaches to sick animals, that movie should also have then been taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery.

Examples of this are rather too easy to find. John Wayne's bloated Alamo, Angelina Jolie's recent directorial effort By The Sea, Steven Seagal's On Deadly Ground, Travolta's Battlefield Earth, or Shyamalan's After Earth would all apply as studio-funded vanity projects and in at least two of those cases the studios should have known better.

In contrast, and purely my own opinion, Del Toro seems to be considered to be different. The fans love him because if you believe his interviews he says he wants to make films for the fans and he drops project names like confetti; Justice League Dark, Pinocchio, and lets not forget the most deeply personal film that he talks about even more than Hellboy 3, his interpretation of Lovecraft's novella At The Mountains of Madness. This in turn makes the studios love him because he brings that Hall H fervour from San Diego's Comic Con and all the fans that go with it. This may account for why he goes and signs on to stuff like Pacific Rim and follows that with a supposedly personal project like Crimson Peak. I understand that the studios may balk at funding a particularly niche project like ATMoM, especially when the director wants a hard R certificate version, but that didn't necessarily hurt a movie like Cabin In The Woods or even Event Horizon which while not the commercial success it could have been has grown to be more loved. I know they have different source material, hell, they're completely different kinds of movies, but the premise of cost and certificate vs not making the movie at all is similar and with a bit or marketing Cthulu could become better known?

Cthulu plush doll - strange choice for your sleeping infant?

That Del Toro has an eye for the unusual isn't ever going to be in question. Look at the original films that he's made like Cronos, Mimic, and Pan's Labyrinth or his work on Hellboy and Blade 2 to see what he can come up with. My assertion, and I truly believe this, is that he's at his best when working with a small budget.

Thanks to IMDb we know that Blade 2 was made for the cost of $54,000,000 and was green-lit primarily because the first one was such an unexpected hit. Yet Cronos came in at a miserly $2,000,000 and garnered even more praise.

Crimson Peak, made thirteen years after Blade 2, was supposedly budgeted at the same amount as the 2002 vampire sequel and when you look at Crimson Peak from a purely visual and casting perspective he's done a stunning job. But what is Crimson Peak supposed to be? Is it a drama that has ghosts? A ghost story that has drama? A gothic horror with little horror to point out that that is what it is? The movie has a fun first half and, to be frank, a boring second half. Anyone waiting to be scared will no doubt still be waiting. Personally I was expecting a ghost story with touches of Edgar Allen Poe's "Fall of The House of Usher" in terms of tone. But, whilst it certainly has a ghost, it turned out to be more Legends of the Fall for me

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

#StokerScore 9.5/10

I've really enjoyed going to the cinema this year partly because I'm lucky enough to live in a country where cinema tickets and all of the add-ons like drinks and food etc are all reasonably priced, plus we have an IMAX screen too! So yesterday, for less than $10 (6.50 in English currency) , I saw the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise...in IMAX.

I suppose the score I've given generally tells you everything you need to know about my thoughts on the film but instead I'll try to explain why the missing half point rather than the actual score itself, and all without spoilers.

Like many others who are giving up their thoughts on this movie, my memories go back to being a ten year old kid being taken to either the Odeon or ABC cinema in Darlington (somewhere in the following 38 years I seem to have forgotten which).

In 1977 we weren't really used to cinematic blockbusters. Two years earlier had seen Jaws start to change peoples' perceptions on the concept of big tentpole movies, but they were still in their infancy. Saying that, '77 saw plenty of big movies including Richard Dreyfuss playing with his mashed potato in Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Roger Moore's underwater Lotus Esprit emerging onto the beaches of the Cote d'Azur in The Spy Who Loved Me, Travolta's advert for polyester suits, Cuban heels and Bee Gees music in Saturday Night Fever, and everyone's favourite moustache in Smokey and The Bandit. Interestingly the total cost of all five of these movies was $50 million, or as near as dammnit is to swearing.

This was also the year where, as a young cinemagoer, I got my first look at Nicholas Hammond as Spider-Man - a tv movie that got a cinematic release in the UK, The awesome Sinbad and The Eye of The Tiger, and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo, all of which were equally as high, if not higher than Star Wars on my personal movie radar at the time and often inspired as much by the poster art rather than the trailers for the movies. Obviously the following years have shown which of these movies would stand the test of time.  

That Star Wars has gone on to become so highly regarded owes nothing to the initial thoughts of many of the cast. Alec Guinness who played Obi-Wan Kenobi in the first (4th chronologically-speaking) movie reportedly thought it was fairytale rubbish and only agreed to be in it once his pay was doubled. Harrison Ford lobbied for Han Solo to be killed off in the first movie and even George Lucas himself ditched the premiere in favour of a Hawaiian holiday, so sure was he that the movie would be a flop.

So after the high expectations for the disasters that were the Star Wars prequels, I admit that even through the hype I still had doubts walking into the cinema. I'd managed to keep myself spoiler-free having only seen the trailers so I, my wife and five friends settled back to watch amidst a packed house.

From the familiar scrolling text to the iconic music, from the weird and diverse alien characters to the ones who we're more familiar with, from the action to the quieter, character-defining moments, this movie did the unimaginable and exceeded all of my expectations. We left the theatre over two hours later questioning much of what we had seen and how it would impact on future sequels. But we left knowing that we had seen Star Wars return triumphantly and due in no small measure to J.J. Abrams. The director has followed, some might say a little too closely, the ideas that made the original Star Wars film so memorable to audiences and critics alike. I'm going to need to go back and re-watch it now that I am comfortable in what I'm looking out for as well as just to damn well sit back and enjoy it all again, especially knowing what's coming.

The acting talent is great from the returing characters to the debutantes. That there is not one annoying character says as much for directorial influence over the marketing department and I have no doubt that your first glimpse of the Millenium Falcon in action will leave you gobsmacked. The potential for where this story can go next is so diverse I can't wait to see what's in store.

So why the half mark? Well it is down to that slight sense of repetition with which I watched some things play out. It's a small, small thing in the concept of a much bigger and immensely varied tale, and it didn't stop my enjoyment of the movie, but in the hands of such a talented director I think he could have switched things up a tad........