Review: Oblivion ★★★

Oblivion is another crack at the sci-fi whip for Joseph Kosinski, who’s attempted rebooting of the Tron franchise in TRON: Legacy was flawed and not particularly well received. Oblivion is a better film and a step forward for Kosinski but it is far from perfect.

The film is set sixty years after an alien invasion that left Earth uninhabitable, in the year 2077. The human race is living in limbo on a space station, preparing to evacuate to a nearby moon. The film centers around two technicians still remaining on Earth, Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) and Victoria (Andrea Riseborough), who have had their memory wiped pre-mission so they will get the job done effectively. The ‘effective team’ maintains the drones protecting the resource gathering machines that are sucking the earth dry. Shortly before the mission can be accomplished, a spacecraft from before the war crashes whilst Jack is on Earth. The craft contains a woman haunting Jack’s dreams (Olga Kurylenko), and Jack soon starts to realise that things are not all that they seem to be and that maybe he’s been following orders a little too readily. The story was born out of a graphic novel penned by Kosinski himself, that he started back in 2005. The rights to turn the novel into a screenplay, having been given up by Disney for its inability to acquire a PG rating, were swiftly acquired by Universal.

The plot, whilst clever and enjoyable, is actually one of the film’s pitfalls, for it feels very much like major plot points have been ‘copied and pasted’ into the screenplay from classic sci-fi films. Its obvious that Kosinski’s influences have come from cult movies, such as Blade Runner, Silent Running, 2001: A Space Odyssey and there’s even traces of Star Wars. It’s so blatant at times that one can’t help but feel Kosinski lost sight of his own story. Nevertheless, the story is still an enjoyable ride purely because of its classic influences. It also allows for Tom Cruise to partake in spaceship dogfights and manly interchanges with drones and Scavs (the aliens still on Earth), which he executes with true Tom Cruise professionalism.

Oblivion does lack rich characters, which is a massive shame, and often the relationships between the actors are a little stale. Andrea Riseborough is the one exception to this statement, who brings a real fullness to Victoria. Her character is living in conscious ignorance of the suspicious nature of their existence on Earth and Riseborough is wholly convincing.

However, what Kosinski has done is create one of the most visually impressive films of recent years. Partially shot in Iceland and coupled with CGI effects, Oblivion looks every bit the alien wasteland it is trying to portray. It’s a majestic visual display from Kosinski and the rumours that he will be consulted on the upcoming Star Wars reboot are all the more exciting having seen the Lucas-esque visual style that he brought to this film. 

On the whole, Oblivion was enjoyable and the visual effects were completely worth the two hours spent watching it. The fairly hollow characters were easy to overlook because of how visually impressive it was. The supporting cast of Morgan Freeman and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) are more than capable of delivering solid acting performances, and the story was completely acceptable as homage to the classics of the sci-fi genre, even it was slightly over-exuberant. 

Review: Jack the Giant Slayer ★★★

Jack the Giant Slayer is the latest fairy story to get a modern makeover, following films like Snow White and the Huntsman and with a proposed Cinderella film on the horizon. Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, X-Men) was the man in the director’s chair for this adaptation and whilst it cannot be called a triumph, it will certainly not disappoint its target audience.

Everyone knows the story of Jack and his magic beans that sprout into a beanstalk with vines twisting into the sky, where the giant bone-cruncher inhabitant awaits the young lad. Singer’s film takes a slightly different direction with this story, although its core remains very similar. Jack (Nicholas Hoult of About a Boy and Skins fame), instructed to sell his uncle’s horse, returns with ‘magic beans’ (or ancient relic beans if you believe Singer’s adaptation), which end up getting wet and bam, hello beanstalk. But wait, did the princess end up getting caught in the beanstalk as it shot up into giant land? Yes. Does she need rescuing by our farm-boy hero? You bet.

One giant can’t be that hard to defeat when you have all of the king’s army ready to fight to the death to save the beautiful princess (played by Eleanor Tomlinson). Shame, then, that Bryan Singer decided to make the land at the end of the beanstalk awash with giants hungry for human; and so the story continues in true fairytale fashion with a predictable plot point involving the King’s sinister advisor Roderick (Stanley Tucci) and some monumental effects, paid for by an extraordinary budget.

Let’s get down to the flaws, of which this film has quite a few. Firstly, the opening scene is horrible. It features a young Jack being told a ‘fictional story’ about King Eric the Great who defeated the giants when they tried to take the kingdom from him. Sounds fine but Singer made the story a voiceover for a bizarre re-enactment of the events in a graphic style that can only be likened to an early noughties’ video game! It may have been an attempt to emulate the classy graphics of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 when they regale us with the story of the deathly hallows but it was horrible.

Another quarrel is the use of 3D in this film, which was pointless. As someone who isn’t a fan of 3D in the first place, to see it used so pointlessly was irritating. It detracted from the colour of the film and literally didn’t add anything, even as a gimmick.

Another element of the film that I struggled with was the humour. There were few laughs when Singer intended there to be laughs and the jokes were childish to a point where it just wouldn’t appeal to an audience over the age of about 10. This is fine if that is his target audience but the film carries a 12A rating, meaning that he hoped to bring in an older audience as well as a younger one; his jokes and the pantomime nature of some of them (especially Roderick’s bumbling sidekick) may well put the older audiences off.

Even more strained than the comedy was the relationship between Jack and Isabelle (Hoult and Tomlinson). Both are incredibly talented young actors but their on screen chemistry was about as believable as the storyline. It was forced and impossible for the audience to buy into.

All of these flaws aside, the film actually moves past its incredibly weak beginning and becomes quite enjoyable. Whilst the romance and jokes fall a little flat, it is easy to lose yourself in the grand scale of the film and the action sequences are spectacular. There are a couple of scenes that up the tension and do genuinely engage the audience, including a fantastic scene with a giant attempting to cook a Ewan McGregor pie, and the final battle sequence leaves very little to be desired. There’s also a short but very funny turn from Eddie Marsan, who shows his acting quality in what felt like a very short 45 minutes or so.

The film ends on a note of absolute genius from Singer, which actually left me leaving on a high. It’s a flawed film but it’s also good fun and, in parts, Singer shows some creative genius. I would recommend it so long as you go in aware that it is a family film; for Jack the Giant Slayer is, after all, a fairytale film.

Review: This is 40 ★★

This is 40 is the latest film from Judd Apatow’s comedy conveyor belt and, in fact, a spin off of his previous film Knocked Up. We have come to recognise Apatow’s work from the spine of a cast consistent throughout every one of his films and the frequently crass (although often hilarious) jokes. However, and unfortunately, This is 40 simply does not reach the benchmark set by his classics like 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad.

The simple premise is that this family is a slightly dysfunctional one, where the parents are approaching 40 and the kids have grown up since we last saw them in Knocked Up presenting us with the moody, pubescent Sadie and the hyperactive Charlotte. Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann (Apatow’s wife off camera) play two exasperated parents who are not coping well with the onrushing categorisation of being middle-aged, least of all with the money problems that are leaving them staring down the barrel of having to sell their house.

Apatow clearly intended this film to be a funny and insightful film about the pressures of becoming middle-aged. I have three quarrels with this film, having sat through its 133 minutes. Firstly, their attempt to portray the truths of financial trouble and mid-life crises is wayward; this is a very ‘Hollywood’ portrayal of being middle-aged. Rudd and Mann are both on extreme fitness regimes in the film and do not look like they are anywhere near 40 (even though they are both 43 and 40 respectively) leaving this illusion of ‘getting old’ in the film’s wake.

Secondly, it feels like a lot of the jokes are geared at parents and if they aren’t geared at the adult viewer, then they’re overly crude to compensate. There are some individual jokes that had me laughing but for an Apatow production this is disappointingly not very funny. It’s only saving grace in the comedic department is Chris O’Dowd, who seems to have landed himself in Apatow’s good books, and was by far and away the funniest character in this film. Jason Segal, on the other hand, was really very poor (which is a shame because he is one of my favourites in Apatow’s contact book). Don’t get me wrong, Rudd and Mann are also great but their lines were just not funny enough for a comedy film.

Finally, this film was far too long. The joke circling in the reviews is that “This is 40 minutes too long” and I would have to agree. By the end, I was sat stony-faced waiting for the end.

This film tried to be too many things: a comedy and an insightful, satirical jab at the pressures of being middle-aged. In the end, sadly, it fell short of both. 

Review: Seven Psychopaths ★★★

Seven Psychopaths is the latest from Irish writer Martin McDonagh (Six Shooter, In Bruges) and unfortunately, it doesn’t quite hit the high satirical standards that he has set for himself in his previous offerings.

Colin Farrell plays Marty, a screenwriter bereft of any ideas bar the title for his newest film: “Seven Psychopaths”. His friend Billy (Sam Rockwell, Moon) attempts to inspire Marty by posting an ad in the paper calling for psychopaths to come forth and share their eccentricity with Marty. Billy, meanwhile, has a job on the side with Hans (Christopher Walken, Wedding Crashers) where the duo kidnap dogs and return them for the monetary reward. The main plot point comes when Hans and Billy kidnap a Shih-Tzu dog belonging to a trigger happy gangster called Charlie (Woody Harrelson, Zombieland), who then proceeds to hunt down his beloved dog’s kidnappers.

The main problem with Seven Psychopaths is McDonagh’s self-referencing throughout the movie makes it feel self-indulgent. This theme of satirical self-referencing will only get you off the hook to a certain point before the audience start to question why the writer didn’t fix the problem if he could see it as enough of a problem to joke about it. The best example of this comes when Hans reads Marty’s script and comments, “Your women characters are lousy.” This is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek poke at McDonagh’s male dominated film, where the female characters are weak and ineffectual. I found myself wondering why it hadn't been corrected if it was so evident to McDonagh. 

That said, the film does offer some exceptional one-liners from Walken, who is superb, and the comic pairing of Rockwell and Farrell is inspired. I found myself laughing out loud on quite a few occasions and it begins with such promise and potential for another subtly dark comedy from the talented Irishman. However, the film untangles into chaos in the final third and these glimmers of McDonagh’s ingenuity as a comedic writer were lost within a menagerie of smug, self-referential apology.