Marvel Avengers Assemble

Marvel Studio's monster mash has earned one billion dollars already, along with great reviews from critics and punters alike.

Avengers Assemble is a Hulk smash of a silly, pixel-pushing, joyous beat ‘em up. If these films can be done either tongue-in-cheek or straight (like Bond), then this is Roger Moore to the Dark Knight’s Daniel Craig.

Director Joss Whedon delivers a hugely entertaining romp that manages to give each of the heroes their due and deliver a satisfying story, while giving fans at least three or four moments that can only be described as geek pay offs. Whedon, the self-confessed fanboy knows his material and has been given the biggest toy box in the world, in no way drops the ball.

Check out my full Avengers Assemble review over at the-void.co.uk

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (Thanet Extra)

If bad movie-making was in the Olympics, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor would be overwhelming favourite for gold. Everything you needed to know about Rob Cohen’s film is in the trailer: it is a-paint-by-numbers supernatural action sequel, with its visuals nicked directly from Chinese ‘Wuxia’ films like Hero and House of Flying Daggers. What the promo doesn’t tell you is just how badly served the action is by dialogue and random exposition; ruining what could have been cornball fun for a rainy afternoon.

This third instalment has probably entombed the Mummy franchise, which in truth was never much more than a poor man’s Indiana Jones. Having finished with Egyptian shenanigans, our intrepid producers from Universal cut and paste the O’Connell family into Shanghai. Rick (Brendan Fraser) is still square-jawed, dim-witted and about as charismatic as a computer generated terracotta army put into suspended animation by an ancient curse brought on by an evil Chinese Emperor from 200 BC (Jet Li). Rick’s wife, Evy is now played by an American actress, Maria Bello (replacing Rachel Weitz) who is saddled with a jarring, cut-glass English accent which is unfortunate for an actress with a solid career in smaller films like The Cooler.

Festering in their British mansion having retired from their Mummy-fighting days, Rick and Evy are spurred into action by a British intelligence officer carrying the maguffin: The Eye of Shangri-la. For some reason they are the only ones who can deliver this gold orb to China; an artefact containing an elixir that could revive the evil Emperor. Already there is their son Alex (Luke Ford) who’s an archaeologist who looks about 12 years younger than his dad, but hewn from the same mahogany wardrobe.

Hokum all the way, as the writers simply make up new mythical rules every time we need to shift to the next CGI set-piece. Elixir not enough? The Emperor must not enter the Temple of Shangri-la! Jet Li’s already in the temple where Michelle Yeoh is re-enacting the end of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade? ‘The terracotta army is not indestructible until they cross the Great Wall!’ And so on. With no rhyme or reason this Mummy grinds on boringly for what seems like a geologic age. At one point some badly rendered Yetis (“They’re Abominable Snow men!”) show-up to fight the bad guys, prompting the classic z-movie line for which this tosh will be remembered: “Oh, you speak Yeti!”

The Dark Knight (Released 25th July 2008)

The film of the summer is here. The Dark Knight arrives intact after truckloads of hype and if you haven’t already planned to see it, do so now before you finish reading this.

Writer/director Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins re-energised the DC comics franchise in 2005 with its dark styling, muscular action and, a rarity for these kind of comic book shows: proper actors, acting.

The Dark Knight follows up and delivers what Nolan had promised us; he’s deepened the mythology and trumped the already impressive action with several mega-tons worth of pure cinema. The second instalment follows the continuing struggle between law enforcement in Gotham City and the corrupt underworld whose influence even extends to the District Attorney’s office, and within the police-squad led by Lieutenant Gordon (Gary Oldman). This precarious balance is upset not just by our hero but by the crusading efforts taken by new D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart). Dent is portrayed as the public face of heroism, Batman without the mask if you like, and his close relationship with Bruce Wayne’s alter ego extends to his wooing of Wayne ’s unrequited paramour Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal replacing Katie Holmes here).

Now, there is a fair amount of plot squeezed into two hours-twenty, and much of which you really don’t want ruined. Suffice to say, all the major players have their own personal schemes in motion, for themselves and for Gotham. And all of these are utterly exploded by a force of chaos which we haven’t mentioned. Heath Ledger’s Joker. He’s the catalyst in this movie, all the performances will be compared to Ledger’s and the kinks in the story that give you the genuine thrill of the unexpected belong to his character. It’s with sadness of course, since his untimely passing, to report that his work here is captivating. He fully takes advantage of the space villains operate in, with a quiet, anarchic turn. With his lispy drawl and facial tics, you cannot take your eyes off him: in one shadow-drenched scene, he reminds of Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. He’s one reason for the price of admission. Another is a screenplay which moulds an epic crime-thriller out of Bob Cane’s comic book world, and if you look closely you find many of ideas which fascinate the director: who’s showing himself to be a brilliant talent.

A third is a screen-bursting set of stunts and special effects which follow up on the movies of James Cameron and Michael Mann, to give you an experience you cannot have on any home formats. Never has Batman glided so gracefully, especially in some amazing scenes when he chases crime to Hong Kong: this film has six sequences optimised for IMAX screens which take some advantage of the vertical possibilities of the screen size, bringing new meaning to word "epic".

This is a sadistic and very dark Batman movie, it’s probably a touch over-long but despite a small gripe over Batman’s voice; what you get is a blistering, must-see summer movie, up there with the very best.

The Incredible Hulk (Thanet Extra, June 20th)

Expectations play a huge part in the summer movie game. Take Indiana Jones. Some people expected a classic, looking to be transported back their childhood, while others just hoped for a throwaway two hours. Either view coloured their verdicts, although to my eyes Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was neither classic nor failure.

For The Incredible Hulk, it was seeking to reboot a character who last had an outing as recently as 2003, in Ang Lee’s underrated Hulk. This time around, the script, co-written by its star Edward Norton, stays more closely to the 1978 TV series. He plays Dr Bruce Banner, who after being self-irradiated with gamma-rays in a military experiment, develops his special super-ego. You know: the green guy, he’s massive, you won’t like him when he’s angry etc. On the run from the military, he escapes to the Brazilian favalas, leaving behind him girlfriend Betty (Liv Tyler), and her ruthless father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross who wants the Hulk formula to make an army of super soldiers.

The General uses an assortment of American troops to hunt down Banner, including a mercenary English snarler called Blonsky; a phoned-in performance from Tim Roth. One of the characters I’ve mentioned also becomes an oversized monster whose trousers are two small for him like Simon Cowell. Unlike the pop guru, both Hulk and his adversary, The Abomination (great name) do not reflect light the way human beings do in front of movie camera-because they are generated on computer. The elephant in the room: despite today’s CGI wizardry, it’s still a tough ask making a humanoid with green skin look real. And they don’t manage it.

Of the plentiful action scenes, most of them feel like episodes in a playstation game, maybe only very young or undiscerning viewers will be able to get over this.
To the film's credit, it moves along at a clip, unlike's Ang Lee's art-house version. Having said that, watching CGI inflatibles scraping is more than a bit dull. Hulk's Marvel friend, Iron Man fared a lot better with his sleek metallic outfit, he was funnier too.

Iron Man (Thanet Extra, Friday May 9th 2008)

We don’t need another hero. All we need is life beyond Ben Affleck as Daredevil. In our murky times, when American Psycho gets to play Batman and villains are more likely to be US government officials than any exotic moustache twirler, we need a leading man who’s a little bit damaged, likely to lead us astray. Step up Robert Downey Junior as Iron Man.

He plays Tony Stark, a billionaire industrialist whose company makes missiles that blow-up, democratically, in every corner of the globe. He likes fast cars, fast women and saunters round like a trainee Al Pacino; complete with small pointy beard. Stark’s charmed life hits the buffers when a military convoy he’s presenting weapons to in Afghanistan is ambushed by Taleban-style warriors and his shrapnel ridden body is dragged into a cave network.

Before you can say “Where in the world is Morgan Spurlock?” the evil-doers are forcing him to build a super-missile. Only Tony is not compliant, and being a bit like McGyver meets Bill Gates (what he can build with his bare hands in the middle of the desert is nobody’s business) he instead fashions a robotic-skeleton which turns the wearer (him) into a walking/flying whoop-ass machine. So he fights the evil-doers with his prototype and returns to America to face the machinations of corporate schemer Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) who wants to make sure Stark industries stay in the weapons game, despite Tony’s newly found reservations.

Iron Man gently mocks America’s bombastic militarism and contains just the right amount of self-deprecating humour with Downey Junior at the sardonic heart of things, like when his PA, (Gyneth Paltrow, essentially Alfred the butler in Manolo Blahnik) finds him with dozens of metallic plates being applied to his body: “Let's be honest, this isn't the worst thing you've caught me doing.” There is plenty of time for moments like this as Iron Man is not weighed down with too much plot or a surfeit of super-villains to introduce. As the Marvel geeks will tell you, it is an origin story, so it takes its time to establish Stark’s motivation for donning the metallic suit and as a bonus you get amusing scenes where the technology blows up in his face (with a nice running gag about his domestic robot too eager to turn the fire extinguisher on him).

As the first instalment of a hoped-for franchise for Marvel, it’s amazing that Iron Man was helmed by Jon Favreau, a comedy actor with only TV episodes on his directing CV. He does a great job. He combines a light touch on the acting scenes with the expected mecha-destruction. The graphics and special effects are very good; Iron Man looks particularly sleek in his retro-futuristic outfit. Jeff Bridges goes up to eleven on the sinister scale (looking like an egg with a beard). Essentially though, this is the Robert Downey Junior show who, unlike Michael Keaton when he was given Batman, relaxes into the role straight-off and makes you think: more episodes please, this is fun.

10,000 B.C. (Thanet Extra, March 14th 2008)

Everybody loves a Woolly Mammoth. Well don’t they? Hollywood director, Roland Emmerich (The Day After Tomorrow) is such a fan of Mammuthus primigenius that he’s funded an entire movie based on the premise: wouldn’t it be cool to see humans running around with the four-legged beasts in 10,000 B.C.

We open in prehistory, somewhere in Eurasia, where a tribe of hunters (The Yagahl) are waiting for the next stampede whilst tormenting the Elders with the question: what is the collective noun for a Woolly Mammoth? Momentous changes are foretold by Omar Sharif’s voice-over, as a mysterious outsider in the form of a girl with freaky blue eyes, Evolet arrives. She quickly pledges herself to young buck D’Ley, and before you can say “love interest” the dwelling is attacked by evil outsiders on horseback.

Poor Evolet is abducted in front of D’Ley and taken into slavery with many of his kin. D’Ley and a rag-tag assortment of his tribesmen have to leave their home and venture to far-away lands, er without shelter or any obviously food supply but hey!
You may have guessed; this is absolute tosh. For starters most of the characters speak modern English, which is incredibly jarring when they say things like “Why does TikTik not ride with us?” The Yagahl (a tribe with remarkably good teeth for their epoch) look like either ageing Rastafarians or extras from a Lynx advert.

Really, the film-makers have thrown together every racial, tribal stereotype in the hope that something will stick. I just don’t understand why, when we eventually see the pseudo Egyptian pyramid site, the leader is protected by Albino midgets?

It seems to go on for about 10,000 minutes too; every time the story sags, they wheel out yet another wise-man, who has a new and improved prophecy to fit the next sequence. For the record (and the kids), you will see sabre-toothed tigers, giant emu-beasts as well as mano-a-mammoth fighting. But the special effects sequences are only fresh if you haven’t seen an adventure film for 5 years. This is Apocalypto with 1% fat, lashings of 300 and very little to recommend.