Cell

#StokerScore 2/10

Imagery.... 

Carrie White, bathed in pig's blood, channeling the full extent of her telekinetic powers. Little Danny Glick, floating outside his friend's bedroom window, begging to be invited in. The gurgling voice in the storm drain saying 'they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too–'

"Sam Jackson was GREAT in The Big Game...."

There is a photo of Stephen King in every dictionary in the world next to the word prolific. Not only does he write amazing fiction, he does it consistently. Whether writing under a pseudonym, collaborating with another author, or just amusing himself, the guy is at the very least a hard worker whose writing creates enough dread to fill a lifetime's worth of nightmares.

His books have been read by millions, translated into umpteen languages and even his son has decided to follow in Dad's illustrious footsteps. This family connection may well prove to be prophetic if Joe Hill's (King's son) movies of his work continue to be on a par with some of his Dad's because the problem sure as hell isn't with the book writing, it's the movie adaptations.

Many* seem to agree that the Daniel Radcliffe-starring Horns wasn't a great movie, but it was a million times better than much of Stephen King's book-to-movie translations. (*Horns scores 41% over at Rotten Tomatoes) but compare that to Pet Sematary (43%), Needful Things (26%) or 2011's Pierce Brosnan-starring Bag of Bones which nobody has even bothered to review in five years.

50% of the 1408 audience felt the same way as you, John

The first heckler will no doubt notice that I'm cherry picking the worst and they'd have something of a point <cough> The Tommyknockers <cough>. King's written work has also produced absolute classics like The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile and, of course, Misery.

The second heckler may point out that King isn't responsible for how his books are translated into movies, but he is responsible for the screenplays to Sleepwalkers, Maximum Overdrive and this latest movie, Cell.

Imagine for a moment that the guy who created  The Dark Tower, collaborated on the creation of Jack Sawyer, and whose genius gave us the murderous Plymouth Fury, Christine, is also responsible for getting John Cusack and Sam Jackson to answer phones that have just turned people into murderous zombies and inexplicably reduced the population of Boston from 667,000 to 30 people waiting for Darwin Award levels of stupidity to bring them their next victim. It's hard not to lay some of this blame at the script doctor's door.

I'm not really knocking Stephen King though, the guy is a genius writer in my book whose literary work has given me hours of pleasure, but I am knocking the complete disregard of all involved towards making a great movie. Cusack is making a habit recently of channeling his inner Cage (Nicholas, not Luke), Jackson looks completely bored, and the director shouldn't be allowed near anything more dramatic than a school play ever again. And is it me, but why did this movie need to be executive produced by thirteen people? including Mr Cusack? Maybe that's what pushed Eli Roth away from directing it...

This is unfortunately the worst film I've seen this year..... and I've seen Zoolander 2

Eddie The Eagle

#StokerScore 8/10

The single most embarrassing moment of my life, and there are many to choose from, was when I was 16 and taking part in a school play. It was a small role that only asked me to interview a female football player, maybe a dozen lines at most. 

And on the first two nights I forgot them.

Instead of saying something like "Hey Dorothy, great game you played there. Can I get a few lines for the school newspaper?" what came out was "..................er, Hi..............How are you?" but I got over it and on the third and final night I delivered all the lines perfectly and felt as though I'd just delivered Hamlet's soliloquy

I'm rather uncomfortable even now, just remembering and writing down what happened but I remind myself that I went on to do amateur operatics for 3 years after it and remembered most of my lines during that time. For a while I even dreamed of treading the boards for a living. That small hiccup that these days causes me to cringe when looking back didn't dull the dream in the slightest.

Dreams are what Eddie The Eagle is about. Not exactly a biographical movie, it takes some liberties with characters and chronology to tell the story of Britain's greatest sporting failure, Ski-jumper Eddie Edwards.

the real Eddie

I remember the ridicule that Edwards faced in the UK but is it actually fair to call him a failure? Sure he never competed at the top of his sport but in much the same way as the Jamaican "Cool Runnings" bobsleigh team he captured the imagination. Never expecting to win a medal, rather for him it was realising his childhood dream of becoming an Olympian and in that respect he succeeded.

The movie version of this larger-than-life character sees Taron Egerton look uncannily like the title character and Hugh Jackman as his coach. The chemistry between the two leads, the well-cast supporters including Keith Allen as Edwards long suffering father, and the well written story all combine to deliver a heart-warming film that encourages you to keep your dreams alive and illegitimi non carborundum.

I think we can all take something from that.....

Midnight Special

#StokerScore 7/10

Sci-fi. Often a genre that puts people off before they even consider the film, the actors or the story and the diversity of the genre means that this is not without reason. As with any genre of movie some are well made, well thought out, well written and clearly drawn characters. They can catch the viewers imagination by looking at a subject from a different angle or just playing with our emotions. And then there are the opposite of these and unfortunately sci-fi has too many bad movies. Movies that could have been great but were just too careless.

why is it never somewhere easy, like the local mall?

Close Encounters of The Third Kind was Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi opus that followed a group of people who were motivated to find a place where they would meet aliens, aliens who are increasingly witnessed by people with an affinity. Twenty years earlier John Wyndham wrote The Midwich Cuckoos in which a group of children are born to regular parents but who are ultimately not human.

Midnight Special appears to draw from both of these sources in its tale of Alton, a young boy who seems to be sickening due to his being 'special'  (he cant go out in daylight and needs special goggles and ear protectors to sleep) and the attempts of his parents and their friend to help Alton to reach his destination before either a religious cult or the federal government can stop them.

The movie has a great cast with Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst as the parents, Joel Edgerton as their friend and Adam Driver as an NSA advisor. Jaeden Lieberher holds his own as the young boy, never coming across as a kid who can't act.

annoying

not annoying

The story keeps you involved and we're thrown right into the mix from the get go. Background is filled in through conversations and characters have motivations for their actions. But where the story lets itself down is never really explaining how Alton came to be nor the meaning behind the big reveal towards the end of the movie. It certainly left me with more questions than answers.

Nevertheless, the story was well told, effects were astonishing for such a cheaply made movie and if you can get past the questions and allow your imagination to answer them for you, you'll love this...

Captain America: Civil War

#StokerScore 10/10 

Expectations..... having them means that sometimes we're happy when they're met and unhappy, even angry when they're not, but is it fair to have expectations in the first place? There's a classic quote from Bill Watterson's Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip where Calvin suggests that the lower he keeps peoples' expectations, the easier his life is. As cynical as that quote is and as funny as it sounds coming from the mouth of a 6 year old, the uncanny accuracydoes make you stop and think. 

In my younger days I had the chance to meet a hero. I just want you to imagine that for a minute, I met a genuine hero. Someone idolised by millions to the point that they even transcend normal conventions of the word "hero".

My hero was Henry Cooper and he was a British heavyweight boxer. A 1960's pugilist who actually fought Muhammad Ali twice, Henry was considered a genuine hope for World heavyweight champion.

Was he undone by Angelo Dundee cutting Ali's glove, allowing Dundee's fighter  time to recover from an 'Enry's Hammer' left hook? This seems to be a question for the ages but it didn't stop him from being a hero. 

Approaching my twentiethy birthday I was working as a trainee manager in a bingo hall in York and henry was due to make an appearance as the brand ambassador for Mecca Leisure. Up to this point I'd never really met anyone famous with the exception of a few Leeds United players so so say I was starstruck would have been an understatement. Henry, or Mr Cooper as I called him when I was introduced to him, met every single expectation I had of him, His way of carrying himself, at that time in his fifties, was exactly the regular, working-class-guy-made-good that he was, no need for PR people to manage any character flaws. He wasn't patronising to me as the kid whose job was to help him find whatever he needed on his promotional visit to our club, just the opposite in fact. 

Of course there are others who say "never meet your heroes", just in case your expectations are destroyed and they, whoever these people known as 'they' are, are sometimes right and the person you meet doesn't match your quite realistically irrelevant,expectations.

Expectations went with me to watch Captain America: Civil War. Expectations due to the trailer, the cast, and the story and because here would be a number of characters that I'd been introduced to by many of the preceding Marvel movies as well as from the comics that I'd read as a kid

This movie didn't just meet my expectations, it left them trailing in the dust and not because it was keeping my expectations low. This is Marvel's best movie to date. To say that takes nothing away from the rest of the great movies they've been making since 2008, rather it is just making a very simple statement of fact.

The story is clear even if characters motivations aren't obvious at first. Stark wants to make up for past mistakes and expects everyone to agree. Rogers doesn't trust any politician and never will. But how the other characters fall in line isn't as straight forward. So this mix of action and drama worked perfectly and the witty one-liners gave some real laugh out loud moments too.

It's a Captain America movie and he's the star of the show but the supporting cast weren't bit players. Often the problem is that there's not enough screen time to do so many people justice but because we know the characters so well by now it wasn't an issue. It was also very nearly stolen by up and coming Tom Holland with relatively little in the way of screen time but more than just a cameo.

What was most refreshing was that The Bad Guy wasn't wearing a costume and threatening to destroy the world. By the time we get to Infinity War the threat will be very much in everyone's face so it was a pleasure to watch a superhero movie that kept you guessing as to what happened, but what will happen going forward.

Get your popcorn and sit back for a perfectly crafted movie that will make everyone at DC/Warner Brothers cry over missed opportunities and hopefully rethink their own expectations.

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....