Review: Captain America: Civil War (UK Cert 12A)

The third phase of Marvel's Cinematic Universe opens with a bang, pitting the Avengers against each other. When political forces plan to put a panel in place to oversee the Avengers- following the destruction in New York and Sokovia as well as a mission in Lagos which goes awry- the team splits with Tony Stark/Iron Man on the side of the politicians and Steve Rogers/Captain America against. In amongst all this, old secrets are revealed causing a further schism between the two former friends.

The cast list is huge and it is truly a more of an ensemble piece, in line with the Avengers films, which has led some fans to wonder whether this should have been an Avengers film, rather than a Captain America one. In some ways that would be right because there are so many characters flying around (literally in some cases) and it's a fine balancing act to make sure that they're not just window-dressing and all have something to do. But the main heart of the story is the relationship between Steve and Tony and Steve and Bucky so it warrants being a 'Captain America' film. 

Performances are superb across the board; most of the actors have played these characters for years, so they fit right back into them. Evans is great as the all-American hero, determined that his own judgement is more valid than government interference, whilst Downey Jr falls back into the snarky, sarcastic Stark whose own guilt leads him to support the Sokovia Accords. Even though a lot has been made in the trailer of the rift between the two men- 'He's my friend'/'So was I'- it is powerful stuff to see the two allies go at each other. 

Of the new cast, both Chadwick Boseman and Tom Holland really impress and really stand out- no mean feat given the calibre of the cast they're working with. Boseman is a dignified yet dangerous T'Challa/Black Panther, whose introduction really works and his own vendetta against Bucky adds yet another layer to the film. Holland is a wonderfully geeky and gauche Peter Parker/Spider-Man and he adds a much needed modicum of levity whenever he's on screen. I have to be honest, I didn't believe they'd actually cast Marisa Tomei as Aunt May- there's a running joke in the film that she doesn't look old enough to be someone's aunt- but they have and she's pretty good.  

The action sequences are generally good, although there's a lot of kinetic shakycam during the Lagos scene which made me feel a bit nauseous (it's a purely personal thing but I can't stand it). The big smackdown- Team Cap v Team IronMan at the Leipzig airport- is choreographed really well and, importantly, you can tell who is doing what to whom. 

From hereon out, the MCU is branching away from the Avengers- with Doctor Strange, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming up next before the third solo Thor film. This will be a good way to rest the characters. Given how the film ends, it'll be interesting to see how they get the team back together to take on Infinity War.

I may run the risk of being accused of being a Marvel fanboy but Captain America: Civil War is one of the most enjoyable films I've seen so far this year and is another strong entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Avengers: Age Of Ultron (UK Cert 12A)

2012's Avengers Assemble was- it's fair to say- a bit of a hit. Under the virtuoso direction of Joss Whedon (an absolute maestro with ensemble casts), it pulled together the disparate characters that had appeared in the previous Marvel movies and brought them together as a team. Whedon is back behind the lens for Avengers: Age Of Ultron. 

The Avengers have to face a new threat- one inadvertently created by Tony Stark himself. When Stark jumpstarts a dormant peacekeeping programme- the Ultron initiative, designed to bring 'peace in our time'- things get out of hand pretty quickly and the team have to hunt down the rogue Ultron before his plans come to fruition. 

All of the regular actors just fit right back into the characters they've helped create, whilst the new cast and returning faces from previous Marvel films all add to the excitement.

James Spader was a perfect casting choice to voice the villainous Ultron. He has one of those ridiculously silky, sensual voices- anyone familiar with The Blacklist will know what I mean- which is used to good effect here. Ultron's seductive purr as he plots his schemes is a pure joy.

New cast members Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen fit into the already huge cast really well- whilst I preferred Evan Peters' more comedic take on Quicksilver from X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Taylor-Johnson acquits himself well as the super-speedy Pietro. Olsen is just brilliant as Wanda (a.k.a. Scarlet Witch) and her mind-control powers provide the film with some of the best, most freaky and most moving moments. There's a great turn by Andy Serkis as arms dealer Ulysses Klaue and an unsettlingly sinister cameo by Julie Delpy. 

The script, also by Whedon, is jam-packed with smart one-liners and some real laugh-out-loud moments- which is great because there's a lot of drama and one scene in particular which I found unexpectedly very moving. 

The direction is really strong (as you would expect) even if there's a lot more movement of the camera than I remember from Avengers Assemble. Some of the action set-pieces look fantastic and may even warrant seeing the film in 3D- I saw the 2D version.

Go into this film as spoiler-free as you can. Seriously. So much happens that is unexpected and moving and funny and just downright entertaining that to know about it in advance would be to take the enjoyment right out of the film. I could write about this for hours, detailing every nuance that made me laugh or touched me. But I won't. All I will say is this: another absolute triumph for Marvel.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Tez

Review: Godzilla (UK Cert: 12A)

You can picture the meeting at Warner Brothers; several execs sat round a table. “Bleak and introspective, it worked for Batman and Superman, what else can we do?” Somehow someone at Warner Brothers manages to put bleak and introspective in the same sentence as Godzilla, a Japanese monster movie from 1954 about a giant, fire-breathing lizard that toppled buildings. Next item on the agenda: Who do we get on board as director? “How about the guy who directed Monsters?” someone pipes up. Monsters was the debut from director Gareth Edwards who, on a fraction of Hollywood’s big-budget blockbusters, gave us, in my humble opinion, one of the best films of this century. Yes, it involves giant jellyfish aliens who, when wound up, chuck cars, rubble, even people, into the air, but Monsters wasn’t about the impressive special effects, it was a subtle, emotional, at times stunningly shot, character-driven thriller. Getting the man who made Monsters to direct Godzilla is massively missing the point.

Godzilla’s opening is impressive enough. Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston) is a physicist working at a Japanese nuclear power plant when an earthquake brings the whole thing crashing down, Brody barely making it out alive. Suspecting that there’s more going on than just a natural disaster, he becomes obsessed with finding out the truth. There’s a nice little twist later on when it’s revealed that gigantic dung beetle-like creatures, M.U.T.O.s (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Objects) are causing the earthquakes, not Godzilla. The M.U.T.O.s are responsible for wiping out Godzilla’s species, threatening to do the same to ours. Now Godzilla has woken up and he wants revenge.

Godzilla’s script, written by Max Borenstein, Dave Callaham and Frank Darabont, takes itself incredibly seriously. There are no one-liners, not even some nudge-nudge, wink-wink references to the Godzilla franchise. You wouldn’t complain if this was any other film, but Godzilla is all about giant monsters smacking each other over the head. What laughs you do get are unintentional; Ken Watanabe, somehow managing to stay stony faced when he yells, “Let them fight!”

Audiences don’t go to see a monster movie for multi-layered characters, they go for the action. Even for a monster movie, Godzilla’s humans are either clichéd, stereotypes, or are so stick-thin they may as well not be in the film. Bryan Cranston gets plenty to do in the opening ten minutes, but after that he spends the rest of his screen time either brooding or occasionally shouting at someone. Aaron Taylor-Johnston will probably get plenty of stick for Godzilla, with critics saying he can’t act. It’s not that he can’t act, all his character, Ford Brody, has to do is look serious, shoot things, or run for his life. There are several mentions that Ford works in bomb disposal, so that everyone keeps up, but without spoiling things, Ford’s efforts don’t make one jot of difference. Ken Watanabe plays the stereotype wise Japanese man, often sounding like master Yoda, but that’s all that’s asked of him. Elizabeth Olsen, as Ford Brody’s wife, gets a rough deal; she’s only in the film so she can run around and look scared.

Godzilla does have some impressive visuals, best of all being the soldiers sky diving into San Francisco, all happening in real time. We cut to POV shots inside the soldiers’ helmets, glimpsing a Michael Bay sunset before they fall in to a dust cloud, what’s left of the city’s streets all moody greys and blacks. Every once in a while, Gareth Edwards gives us creative, eye-catching set pieces; Monsters, but on a far bigger budget.

Saying that, considering giant monsters scrapping is what audiences are paying to see, chances are they’re going to be disappointed. It’s like the Transformers films never happened. The San Francisco Bridge was meant to be a stand-out moment, but it’s all too obvious that Godzilla and the M.U.T.O.s are not part of the scene; everyone is screaming and running away from something that isn’t there. You wonder whether having the film’s climactic fight shrouded in clouds of dust was actually in the script, or if Edwards came up with this as a way to disguise the below par CGI.

Godzilla could have been a fun, no-brainer blockbuster, but the deadpan script drags it down, exposing the many flaws in its threadbare narrative. Why do the soldiers sky dive into San Francisco when they could have just walked in? If you’ve got a gigantic egg that you know is about to hatch, why do you only guard it with what looks like some flimsy-looking wire? More bizarrely, why does the film try and suggest that Godzilla and Ford Brody aren’t all that different from each other? Godzilla is set in the real world, it wants to be taken seriously, yet has massive skyscraper-size flaws in its logic. If Godzilla had been Jerry Bruckheimer, or Roland Emmerich’s baby, it would have had its tongue firmly in its cheek; you could have forgiven so many of its mistakes. Instead, for the most part, Godzilla fails on all counts, occasionally being tiresome to sit through.

A sequel has already been given the go-ahead. Hopefully someone at Warner Brothers will realise that you can’t remake a franchise that includes King Kong vs. Godzilla and expect people not to laugh.

2 out of 5

Matt

Review: Red Lights (UK cert 15)

Red Lights is a psychic thriller, written and directed by Rodrigo Cortes. The advertising bills this, somewhat hyperbolically, as 'this year's The Sixth Sense'. Sadly, this film shows about a tenth of that film's style. What you have is a very neat episode of The X-Files hidden amongst a feature-length morass. 


Dr Margaret Matheson (Sigourney Weaver) and Dr Tom Buckley (Cillian Murphy) are scientists who spend their lives debunking the paranormal, providing rational explanations for irrational events. However, when reclusive medium Simon Silver (Robert de Niro) emerges from a thirty-year hiatus- after seemingly causing his fiercest critic to die of a heart attack- Tom decides he wants to go after Silver, despite Margaret's warnings.  As Tom's investigations proceed, strange things start to happen around him, driving him into a heightened state of paranoia. Is Silver a charlatan? Or does he truly possess paranormal powers? Will you much care by the time the film winds down to the twist ending?


Performances are pretty decent; Cillian Murphy basically carries the film and despite veering into overacting towards the end as the paranoia builds up, is a solid lead. Weaver gives what can best be described as a glorified cameo, but is absolutely great in the role of Tom's mentor. De Niro sadly seems to have turned into a bit of a parody of himself; however, the slightly hammy script does little to help him out. There's decent support from Elizabeth Olsen and Toby Jones in small and slightly thankless parts as a slightly unnecessary love interest for Tom and a professor who believes in the paranormal respectively.


There's a lot being made of the 'twist' (which I won't spoil for those who may want to see it). It doesn't come so far out of left-field as to be truly implausible; you kind of buy it as an explanation even if you don't truly buy into it. It's fairly neat if not exactly original but provides an interesting denouement to a mish-mash of a movie. Theer are some arresting visuals and several very well filmed and presented set-pieces; the investigation of a supposedly haunted house which opens the film and the elaborate take-down of a fraudulent clairvoyant especially stand out. 


All said, it's a decent enough movie, hardly groundbreaking but certainly worth a look.


Rating: 3 out of 5


Tez