Captain America: The First Avenger

WARNING

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS THEN DON'T READ THE BITS WRITTEN IN RED.

OTHER THAN THIS BIT, OBVIOUSLY.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Since the birthing of the internet the world has been forced to accept the nerd contingent as something that should be respected rather than ridiculed. There are more films directly aimed at nerds, TV shows aimed at and depicting nerds as well as an all round acceptance that comic books are a legitimate form of literature and not just something little kids enjoy. I am all for this. I am a nerd and indeed have really enjoyed the wealth of material that has been cast my way over the past decade but with that being said, the amount of comic book movies being released in such quick succession this year has started to exhaust me of the genre. This wasn't at all helped by the life scarring appearance of The Green Lantern, which nearly caused me to skip both X-Men First Class and Captain America: The First Avenger out of fear that I would have to suffer a similar torment again. Thankfully I opted to face my fear and piss into Marvels wind both times, granting me the experience of two decent films.

Captain America is the final instalment in Marvels often awkward grand scheme to bring comic book continuity to the movie world. We've had both Iron Man movies, one of which was good but lacked a third act and the other simply being a absurd mess with almost zero charm. There was The Hulk which got some things right but most things wrong and has the unfortunate association with 2003's Hulk. Then recently we saw Thor which was surprisingly good for what it was, but fell short in the grander scheme of things. All of this left me with low expectations for Captain America, expectations that were not only met but surpassed by the majority of the piece. It's by far the best of the Avengers set up films thus far.

The story is simple. Steve Rogers wants to join the US army so he can go and stop the Nazi's. He is however too short and scrawny to be considered for battle so is drafted into a genetic experiment program that provides him with superhuman strength and agility. Once the process is complete he becomes Captain America and runs off to beat up bad guys. At face value it's a story that lacks any kind of surprise factor, but in actuality what it does do is service the film and its bigger picture in a way that allows the films themes and characters to thrive much more than is usual in a comic book film.

The film as a whole is completely devoid of irony, something which almost every comic book movie of the past decade has had a shit ton of. Rogers is a good guy by definition and personification, he's not a reluctant, depressed, overburdened or near psychotic hero like many of the popular fare, he is just a good guy who wants to stop bullies. Now I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of cinema goers would reject the character for this seeing as it goes against the norm', but I found it refreshing not to have to suffer with the character at any point and simply sit back and route for him without any further thought. Going in I expected the portrayal of an 'ideal American' dressed in an American flag to be irritating, but the unforced depiction and the dialled back patriotism allowed me to see past my prejudices and enjoy the character for what he is.

The lack of irony also aided the script in many ways. Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely's script is a no bull shit, to the point affair that revels in its characters, situations and primacies. There's no cheese, fat or filler contained within this tightly constructed script allowing it to stand back and support its actors and director rather than call attention to itself.

The writers also appear to understand their homeland more than most. At the point in the film just after Rogers is granted his powers, the character is forced into becoming a pro-war poster boy for the army rather than being sent out to aid his fellow countrymen in battle. I have no doubt at all that if the American military created a super human, all they would want to do in reality is advertise and boast about it rather than use it. It's such a true development in fact that many American reviewers have pointed out their discomfort in relation to the sequence, a discomfort born, no doubt, out of seeing this aspect of American culture being displayed so truthfully and not in any kind of good light. Its like having someone show a man a tape of how many times he masturbates in a year, everyone knows it happens but seeing it from an objective perspective only heightens their intent to keep that kind of stuff hidden away from others. As a Brit, I found this section of the film both funny and relieving, the relief coming from the knowledge that there are some Americans out there who know just how wrong their countries 'high and mighty' attitude can be at times.      

The cast of Captain America is pretty much flawless. Chris Evans (the actor from Scott Pilgrim, not the ginger Radio 2 presenter) is pitch perfect as an action hero. Hayley Atwell's role as the love interest is also played well and adds a lot of drive to the story as well as adding much need glamour to a predominately male cast. Hugo Weaving shows up to once again prove that he knows how to play a dastardly villain to near perfection as Johann Schmidt, a man so evil that Hitler himself threw him out of the Nazi regime for being too evil. Then finally theres Tommy Lee Jones's who's usual bone dry comedic schtick never fails to entertain me.

I also feel I must applaud the score of the film. The often overlooked talent of composer Alan Silvestri is something which I can't understand. Most of todays films are scored by the talented likes of Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, but very few of the bigger budget films have looked to Silvertri for their scoring needs. Has everybody forgotten that this man wrote the theme for Back To The Future? The theme that makes hairs stand on the back of your neck and leads you into wanting to watch that film again for the thousandth time? His work in Captain America is text book perfect, each composition adds depth and background to the scenes without calling attention to itself. If I were to be choosing a composer for my film and I could afford him, Silvestri would be at the top of my list and I honestly don't understand why he's relegated to films like G.I. Joe, Hannah Montana: The Movie and Night at the Museum. It's such a waste of wonderful talent.

Now before Captain America bows it's load as a result of all of this overly enthusiastic cock sucking, I must point out that Captain America does fail on a couple of accounts.

Firstly, Captain America is set in 1942, during the penultimate moments of World War Two. As a result I have to treat the film as a period piece, something which it failed to do in my eyes. As I have said in previous reviews, comic book movies are allowed a lot of artistic licence when it comes to portraying a period in history. But that licence only allows a film to go so far. Most of the films depiction of the 40's is  totally accurate, but every now and then something happens that discredits the hard work being done. For example, why did they have to include a sequence where a hovering car is displayed? I know it's a Stark Enterprise invention but I don't remember that kind of tech' existing in Iron Man, which was set in todays times. Also the use of the mythical magical inventions brought over from the Thor continuity look so out of place in the time setting that all it did was to take me out of the time period and add a level of disbelief so large that by the films end, I couldn't see past it. Rule number one in any film is to make your world believable. Even a fantasy epic like The Lord Of The Rings managed to convey a level of reality in order for audiences to accept what they were watching. With that example in mind there should be no excuse for a film that is set in our real world history not to be a believable place. When all is said and done Captain America might as well be set in outer space for all of the liberty's it takes.

My final irritant with the film is a smaller, more nit picky one. There are a couple of action sequences that require Captain America to jump long distances or hop on car rooftops. These moments are clearly heavily reliant on stunt work being performed on wires, but here it looks so incredibly fake. Even if a character has super human abilities and can defy gravity, the force gravity puts on an object is always very apparent and no effort has been put into adding this force to these particular stunts. These few moments in Captain America are so absurd looking that in the long run it damages some of the films biggest set pieces, which is a shame because if they simply didn't include these moments the entire film would have benefited from it. The lesson here is sometimes less is more.

Overall I really enjoyed Captain America: The First Avenger, especially considering all it really is is a two hour long advert for next years Avengers. The films pacing is brisk and to the point, the overall feel is refreshing and light hearted and where the film does suffer from a heavy dose of unbelievability, the end result is a two hour escape into a world that I would happily visit again. It has also pumped me up to the point where Joss Whedon's Avengers movie seems way to far away. I may be exhausted when it comes to superhero movies this year, but if that film were to come out tomorrow, I'd be the first in line to see it.

Captain America: The First Avenger gets...

3.5 out of 5

Missed Movies: Rio

WARNING

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS.

IF YOU WISH TO AVOID SPOILERS THEN DON'T READ THE BITS WRITTEN IN RED.

OTHER THAN THIS BIT, OBVIOUSLY.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Well, I'm sorry, but I didn't see the point in reviewing the latest Harry Potter and I hate that you feel you have the right to expect any such thing of me. It's my review page and I can review whatever film I damn well please. If you want me to review Harry Potter then give me the money for the ticket and I'll simply go and spend it on something else entirely. Maybe after that you would accept that I am in charge of this relationship and thusly I call the shots. Now sit back and listen to me wax prophetic about something you wont care about, Rio.

Any of my regular readers (you both know who you are) will be aware of my love for almost anything Pixar and usual distain for anything other than. To date I've enjoyed exactly one non pixar CG animation and that was the first Shrek. Everything else released that hasn't run through Pixar's God like phalanges I've deemed as less than worth of my upmost attention. Usually these forgettable embellishments fail to make me laugh, engage me in story nor turn me away wishing to promote what I'd seen to my friends, family or loved ones. So it should come as no surprise that after taking in Rio, my reaction was a fair distance short of enthused.

Rio is the story of a blue macaw that goes by the amazingly imaginative name of Blu. Blu is that last male of his species and as a result is flown off to Rio de Janeiro in order to mate with the only surviving female. Tagging along for the ride are the two birds respective owners and a simultaneous love story evolves. It isn't long however before the birds get kidnapped and have to find their way back to their owners. As plots go its simple and straight forward. It fails to impresses or surprise at any point but it does service the film as well as can be expected, though I expect that even the current generation of kiddies will find it a little boresom. It's about time that Hollywood started waking up to the fact that our youth isn't as innocent as we'd like them to be. Since the invention of the internet the average primary school age student knows what sex is, is aware of what drugs are and has seen enough horror movies to find the gore they contain somewhat humorous. What this means is that 'family films' can now allow themselves to delve slightly deeper into darker material. I'm not saying that Dreamworks needs to remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or anything, but go ahead and take a few more risks. I hate to sound like a stuck record but Toy Story did it and that turned out just fine.

Other let downs within Rio can be found in numerous other places. The first thing that jumped out at me as off was the soundtrack. I have nothing against musicals, in fact I'm a not so closeted fan, but the days of animation containing musical set-pieces has passed, its out of date now. Rio spends a decent amount of time trying to establish its tone, then throws in a musical number after twenty or so minutes which completely breaks what little momentum the film had gathered thus far causing it to undignifiedly shit all over itself. And it continued to do this for the films duration. Most of the songs don't even feel relevant to the scene that their contained in, opting to go for the modern R&B style that has been shrinking our nations brains for the past century. This decision has not only dated Rio for any future sufferers but has also highlighted exactly who it's target audience is.

Rio exists, solely to cater to the scum and scourge of modern society, the twenty something mums with their multiple kids who are all jumped up on second grade drugs. You know the type, its the people who shout into mobile phones about who is sleeping with who, or what his or her son did with his or her mother aunt. The type of people that spit on the street, fart in lifts, wear sports gear all the time and watch X-Factor. It is for these very types that Rio attains to entertain. It's a very simple demographic to aim a film at, and as a result the soundtrack, story and humour all suffer from being unoriginal, predictable and overall dull. It will in no doubt succeed with its intended audience however seeing as they all share an IQ that would be poor for a glass of flat Fanta.

On the plus side Rio looks gorgeous. Its bold colour pallet, effective use of lighting and warm feeling visuals provided me with something to look at while the story was going on. It is clear that native Brazilian director Carols Saldanha and his team have put a lot of work and effort into creating the city of Rio. The backgrounds to almost every external shot within the film are a beautiful vista to behold, something which was clearly very important within the films design. Alas though, it's simply a nice distraction from the atrocities being committed in the foreground.

The final plus point to Rio and one that took me a little by surprise was its voice cast. As is very much the usual for an animated film Rio contains a star studded cast that contains Jesse Eisenberg, Anne Hathaway, Jemaine Clement, Jane Lynch and Tracy Morgan to name but a few. For the most part this cast do a superb job with the vocal work. I particularly enjoyed Tracy Morgans contribution which when inserted into the body of a small pit bull painted a big child like grin upon my usually dissatisfied facial features. The best voiceover work however has to be Jemaine Clement who voices the films main villain, Nigel. The work that Jemaine does here reminded me in many ways of Jeremy Irons superb work in The Lion King. Never since Irons has any actor been able to play an animated villain with that pitch perfect mixture of both menace and dark comedy. Clements performance brings surprising depth and danger to the character, something which the film didn't deserve or indeed use to its full potential. In the scheme of things, Irons still reigns supreme in the world of the evil cartoon characters, but it was great to be reminded of how much difference a good piece of casting can make to a film like this.

Now I've made it to the beginning of paragraph eight I feel it may be time to start looking at Rio as a whole and giving my verdict. All in all it's mostly forgettable. There are a couple of laughs to be had and a few of moments where the plot suggests darker things but these moments a very few and far between, buried under a rubbly mess of cheap humour, crap music and lacklustre story telling. Rio is yet another GC animation that failed to impress me, another suggestion that my biased opinion towards anything non Pixar is every bit warranted.

Rio is not the worst of its kind, but its far from the best. Instead it lingers like a bad smell somewhere around the middle with Despicable Me and Madagascar. 

Rio gets...

1.5 out of 5

Transformers: Dark Of The Moon

***WARNING***

THE FOLLOWING POST MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS AND CONTRADICTIONS THEREFORE IT MAYBE UNSUITABLE FOR SOME FUCKS.

 ***YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED***

I have never really been a huge fan of Transformers in any of their incarnations. I had an Optimus Prime as a child which I seem to remember never being able to transform properly. It came in its packaging as a robot, and it took me months to work out how to fold and twist it into its automobile form. In fact, now I come to think of it, I believe I broke the toy during that working out process and wasn't overly upset to simply leave it in the bottom of my toy box along with my armless Hulk Hogan and curiously stained Care Bear.

Even the cartoon neglected to impress my simple young mind. I already had Thunderbirds, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Thundercats and numerous other awesome flights of fancy keeping me busy so the idea of squeezing in some talking robots that never did anything I considered funny simply wasn't going to fit into my tightly crammed TV schedule.

Despite this however I almost got excited about 2007's big screen Transformers adaptation and even enjoyed some aspects of it. The irreverent humour made me smile (not laugh) once or twice and the pacing was half decent to the point where the films many errors flew past me without leaving too much of a regrettable stain. Despite these factors however I do not consider Transformers to be a good film, not by a long shot and the less said about the atrocious sequel the better. So it comes of very little shock to me, or anyone else on the planet, that Dark Of The Moon fell quite short of my already low expectations.

What is wrong with Transformers: Dark Of The Moon? In short, it gets almost everything wrong. The longer winded version leads me to begin with the third time in a row this franchise gets the focus completely wrong. Now, forgive me if I'm unwittingly spending my time in la la land, but isn't a "Transformers" film supposed to star and follow the story of the Transformers? Yeah, sure the titular characters do feature in The Dark Of The Moon but yet again they have been sidelined in favour of the under developed, two dimensional, irritating little music video reprobates that are the franchises human type creatures. Shia LaBeouf finds himself, once again, undeservingly hogging the limelight while he, once again tries to make more of a man out of himself. His girlfriend, as usual, has very little personality and, as usual, has nothing better to do than to stand around and look pouty. I don't understand why we have to sit through hours on end of forced melodramatics and boring dialogue about the Transformers when we could be spending our time watching the Transformers themselves running around and knocking the living shit out of each other in potentially entertaining ways. Now I'm sure the reason for this shift is mostly a matter of budget and the fact that it costs a hell of a lot to put the ugly mecha men up on screen. This wouldn't be a problem though if Bay would calm the fuck down, laying what little plot he has on way too thick and cut his running times down to bellow the two hour mark, thusly freeing up the budget enough to spend on the robot heroes we all came to the cinema to see.

While I'm on the topic of running times, Dark Of The Moon is 155 minutes long. This isn't the first time Michael Bay has forced me to waste my time in this manner. Revenge Of The Fallen was 150 minutes, Bad Boys 2 was 147 minutes and Pearl Harbour was a staggering 183 minutes in length. Bay seems to enjoy taking his time in getting to the point in his films. Now, sometimes this is necessary in a film, The Shawshank Redemption for example requires all of its 142 minute running time to fully play out its meaningful, interesting story. However not one of Bay's films have the need to take their time in this fashion seeing as everything he puts out is nothing more than simple minded explosion porn. I'm tired of giving Bay a chance to prove himself. I enjoyed Bad Boys, I can even sit through The Rock without wanting to castrate myself with a potato peeler, but everything this simple minded, wannabe military fuck toy churns out these days can be and are best left well alone. Its about time somebody John F. Kennedy'd this mother fucker and put us all out of our misery. We've suffered this ignoramus long enough. 

As far as I can tell Transformers: The Dar Of The Moon has exactly the same plot as the previous instalments. There is a glowy maguffin that the good and bad robots want to fight about, if the Decepticons get it, humans will be wiped out. If the Autobots get it, humans live on until next time. That's the plot, and you win bugger all if you guess how it turns out.

Now, onto Dark Of The Moons better attributes, which, surprisingly it has a few of. Firstly The final battle looks pretty impressive and has some half decent pace to it. Granted it suffers from way too much human based action while the Transformers fight off screen but, as action sequences go its not a bad one. The special effects in the film and in this climactic sequence in particular are very impressive and should be applauded to a certain degree.

Another almost favourable factor is the absence of Greasy, Grubby Megan Fox in exchange for the less repulsive Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. It's only a slight improvement mind you, a slightness that I'm sure can be attributed to Bays now infamous, frat boy like over indulgence of "looks over substance" directing style.

A final plus point to this mine field is actually a backhanded complement towards the film being shot in 3D. I did not see this film in 3D, but as a direct result of the heavy camera equipment and technical inability to cut such footage into a speedy montage like sequence has forced Michael Bay to calm down. The shots aren't as shaky as Bays usual offerings and the editing actually allows some shots to linger on screen for more than a couple of seconds, something which I didn't mind at all as it spared me the usual "Bay headaches" I usually suffer from after being subjected to such things.

I do feel I should point out at this point that while the last few paragraphs of this review have sounded pretty close to actual praise, they shouldn't be mistaken for me recommending the film. It is never good to praise something for being slightly less shit than it has been. While Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon is better than its previous instalments it still falls way short in terms of actually being an entertaining work of cinematic fiction. I'd see this film over Hangover 2, Sucker Punch or Green Lantern any day, but give me the choice between Dark Of The Moon and forcing out a ten tonne shit, I'd take the bloody boxer shorts every time.

Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon gets...

0.5 out of 5           

The Expositionist

After taking two weeks off I am almost ready for my triumphant return. My review of Transformers 3 will be up soon, but in the mean time check out this ad for the upcoming EXPOSITIONIST website.