Adam's Thoughts - Rogue One

Check out Ed's full review of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by clicking here!

The hardest part about judging a movie like Rogue One comes with considering it's context and purpose as a film. Is it meant to be considering fully as its own piece of work, or simply just as an addition to the Star Wars cinematic universe? This experience of entering into a predetermined story is especially jarring for someone like me who is not the biggest fanatic of the Star Wars franchise, but in the end Rogue One can still be seen as a bit of fun in addition to fulfilling its quota of fan service.

Story-wise, this movie was somewhat backed into a corner, in terms of telling a story with a predetermined outcome. Some 40 years later, and a story introduced in the original Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope) makes it onto the big screen in its own feature length film. That alone is a remarkable feat, and shows how powerful the franchise really is. Despite this already established story arc, Rogue One still manages to feel like the plot could go in any direction - a sign of a truly exciting narrative. A point is eventually reached where the audience remembers that this story already has an ending, but this doesn't take away from the viewing experience at all.

In a story that has to be told only in this movie alone (no trilogy for this one), it is understandable that the character building of some supporting characters might be a bit lackluster. This is especially disappointing, however, when considering the amount of unnecessary and somewhat forced comedic additions early in the movie. It's fine for even the most serious of movies to have comedic value in them, but when they are forced and in place of detailed character development, it is hard not to question their relevance. In the end, the characters realistically just fit into the cliche of the rag-tag group of outsiders going against the 'big guy', with most of them being token racial characters from different parts of the world (when I'd assume these countries don't even exist in Star Wars).

Lastly, while the fan service was necessary and ultimately pretty well balanced, I can't help but envision some wasted potential in the 'big moments' of Rogue One. Without going into spoilers, the movie maybe could have been more reserved with their limited space in terms of big reveals. While ultimately this would have led to less fan service, it could have been better fan service. In the end, however, this is just nitpicking at what was ultimately an enjoyable flick and a comfortable addition to the Star Wars movies. I can only hope that their future 'story' movies continue to feel like this one, and less like unnecessary money grabs.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Disney-era of Star Wars is well and truly underway following the success of last year’s The Force Awakens, and it continues this year with Gareth Edward’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first in an anthology of spin-offs that focus on background events and origin stories in the rapidly expanding filmic universe.

Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is separated from her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) at an early age when he is taken by Imperial military officer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn). She finds help from Saw Gerrera (Forrest Whitaker) and manages to stay out of Imperial sights. Years later, the Empire is building a new superweapon, the Death Star, and Jyn is recruited by the Rebel Alliance to join a team who are out to find the design blueprints of the weapon.

As the first major theatrical spin-off of the series, Rogue One is arguably the most hyped about movie of the year. Billed by many as a war-film of sorts, it’s a direction we haven’t seen the series go in before, and strikes a very different tone to The Force Awakens or indeed any of the others. Where space opera sized characters, love-triangles, story twists and endless metaphors about family have dominated previously, Rogue One focuses-down to the nitty-gritty land skirmishes, insane aerial battles and internal politics of the Rebellion that work behind the scenes in the main saga.

Rogue One is in essence the opening crawl of A New Hope, at least that’s what it is intended to be. At the forefront we have the story of Jyn Erso and the team that steal the design schematics of the Death Star. There’s a lot of back-story and character development that falls flat here, primarily because the film moves so quickly that it gets caught up in the rush and the characters don’t have time to breathe. Where these crucial character moments are expedited through the hyperbolic nature of the core films, this instalment aims for more subtlety in style and direction, thus it really can’t hope to build well-rounded characters in the time given and material covered.

Whilst it’s over two hours in length, Rogue One still manages to pack more than its fair share of content into the running time. If we’re not constantly planet hopping, we’re filling in canonic plot holes with new context. If you boil it right down, you could argue the whole film exists to explain the Death Star’s crucial design flaw. Slotted-in at the tail end of the nineteen year timeline-gap between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, the film feels too grand in scale for a contained spin-off, and in many ways there’s not enough meat in the plot to sustain the construct of such a huge summer blockbuster.

Jones manages to do a lot with Jyn when the film slows down enough to give her the opportunity, though at times she gets lost amongst the frantic action and the various other ensemble members vying for the audience's attention. Luna’s Andor has charisma, but like Ahmed’s Bodhi is inclined to blend into the background too much for a core supporting character. Yen and Wen’s characters are the unlikely buddy-sidekicks of the film who work efficiently as a fighting unit, and Alan Tudyk’s K-2SO whilst sometimes a little too forced, is one hell of an upgrade from C-3PO. Forest Whitaker and Mads Mikkelsen are both not given nearly enough screen time, and finally we have Ben Mendelsohn who is really just the archetype evil villain.

Rogue One however does look beautiful and takes advantage of well designed sets and practical effects almost as effectively as The Force Awakens. There’s X-Wings, Y-Wings and TIE-Fighters galore, as well as various Imperial Walkers on the ground, and plenty of idiotic-as-ever Stormtroopers to be mown-down. There are a few moments of fan service just as in last year's instalment, although not as numerous, and the main sequences are tied together with a fantastic score by Michael Giacchino that weaves in just the right amount of Williams’ iconic soundtrack. One of the biggest issues with the film is *possible spoilers* the  use of CGI to bring a character back from the original films (and effectively the actor back from the dead) who I didn’t really think needed to be in the film at all.

Rogue One feels like a slightly-unnecessary, heavily bloated chapter in the greater Star Wars universe that doesn’t do enough with its characters. However it does manage to differentiate itself from the main saga, and has been made with enough love and devotion to the canon to make it worthwhile viewing for Star Wars fans.

Arrival

Science-fiction movies have become a lot different to what the genre is supposed to be about. Instead of asking philosophical questions about the nature of man, like we see in Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey, the genre has become another extension of the action genre with movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Independence Day. Denis Villeneuve's latest movie, however, puts the sci-fi elements firmly in the backseat and focuses instead on the human involvement in an alien arrival on Earth.

The world plunges into chaos as twelve mysterious alien vessels land at various spots around the globe. While the public starts to question why they came and why the aliens haven't reached out, the militaries of the country that each vessel is in becomes proactive about looking for answers. Linguistics professor Louise Banks (Amy Adams) is contacted by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to lead the team that will attempt to speak to the aliens. With her to try and interpret the answers is theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner). Lurking in the background is CIA Agent Halpern (Michael Stuhlbarg), who seems to make his decisions based on what the Russian and Chinese forces are doing in regard to their alien vessels.

It is incredibly hard to talk about this film in broad brush strokes so as to not ruin the film, because so much of makes Arrival great is in its detail. The whole theme of language that runs throughout the film is pretty fantastic because it makes the point of how vital language is to our culture. This is something that we take for granted everyday and never stop to think how everything would fall apart without it. Even the way the film breaks down simple sentence structure really makes you think. And if what I just said makes you roll your eyes, then you probably weren't thinking that this movie was going to be a two hour linguistics class, which it kind of is. Because of this, the movie works at its own pace and isn't hurried along in the way that other movies feel the need to. There was one explosion, but I feel like this was included just because the studio said there should be one.

The other fantastic thing about this movie is that it has a female lead who isn't overshadowed by her male co-stars that seems to happen when a blockbuster has a female lead. The whole way through, Amy Adams commands the screen and she doesn't get shafted by the male characters thinking they know better. Another good turn that this movie does with her is around her recruitment to the mission. Sci-fi movies have the trope of the team of experts being chosen just because they happen to be lying around, but here Louise has to prove that she is the top person for the job. Adams performance is also one of the best I've seen her give. This isn't a spoiler, but the film begins with a whole montage of her raising her daughter and ultimately has to give her up because she dies from a rare disease. This montage lasts a total of two minutes and really lets you get a feel for who the character is through an amazing performance.

The writing did have a few dodgy areas that felt a bit jarring. Once the film gets going and the team starts to be able to communicate with the aliens, there is a montage showing them learning the language with a voice over about their language. Instead of having linguist Laura giving this monologue, it is Ian, the theoretical physicist doing it. It just felt like a weird logical point not to have the linguist character not talking about language. The was line where the on site doctor bluntly asked Louise if she was pregnant. This does have a point in the movie but it was delivered in a bit of a harsh way and takes you out of the film for just a second.

I'm going to give Arrival the top score for its originality and ability to distinguish itself for other films being released in the genre. Villeneuve is able to focus on the human element of the film which is something that so many alien movies are unable to do. The threat in the movie doesn't come from the other, but rather those we are familiar. Also it had a twist that ended up making me second guess myself.

Southpaw

After the first photos emerged from Southpaw, all everybody could talk about was Gyllenhaal's physical transformation for the role. But since the metamorphosis of actors seems to be the current zeitgeist of Hollywood, I was more interested in what director Antoine Fuqua could do with his dark cinematic style and a sports drama. The answer is: everything that's been done before, with Eminem slapped over the top.

Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal) is an undefeated light heavyweight boxer with a wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams) and daughter Leila (Oona Laurence). Billy lives the high life, with his large mansion and blinged-up posse, but after sustaining an eye-injury during a match, Maureen convinces him that it's time to retire. After another boxer, Miguel Escobar (Miguel Gomez) taunts him, leading to a very public brawl, Maureen is accidentally hurt and dies at the scene. Heartbroken and depressed, Billy also loses his daughter to social services. The only way he can get his daughter back is to get his life back on track, which he starts doing by getting a job at a gym owned by ex-boxer Titus "Tick" Wills (Forest Whitaker). After Tick starts to train Billy, he strives once more to seek the redemption he needs.

This is basically an hour of watching Billy Hope's life fall apart, then an hour of him picking up the pieces, in the most unoriginal of ways. I have no doubt that Gyllenhaal gave this role his all, but his character is constantly reduced to polarising extremes of emotions - either depression or extreme anger - but never anything in-between. The blame very much lies with the plot, which, cliche after cliche, tells the same story of redemption that we've seen in boxing films more times than anybody would like to admit. The first act of Southpaw establishes the obnoxious characters, entrenched in a shallow, tedious world. The early development is so shockingly bad that I honestly couldn't care less about Hope's wife dying. From the banal script-writing to the emotion-milking dialogue, the film opens a wreck.

It's not until the second act, when Whitaker's character comes into the mix that Southpaw manages to conjure up some dignity. Whitaker similarly pours everything into Tick, and at times the potential of the character shines through, but he's eventually reduced to the typical enigmatic black motivational trainer movie trope. If it wasn't him, it was Morgan Freeman in Million Dollar Baby before him and so on. As for the other characters, McAdams's portrayal of a sidelined boxer's wife is as dreary as it is two-dimensional, and 50 Cent's character is just an outright arsehole. The biggest insult is the suggestion that we could empathise with almost any of these characters.

Boxing films are well known for their cinematic exuberance, and at times Mauro Fiore manages to capture the raw emotions of the moment, but Southpaw visually lacks the ingenuity that others like it have been brave enough to attempt, and ultimately the film is degraded to the archetypal training montages - complete with Eminem soundtrack - that we could all see coming from a mile off.  In the end, Fiore can't manage to stretch the style of Southpaw beyond what we've seen before. 

Of all the great boxing films - Million Dollar Baby, Raging Bull etc. - the triumphant ones create an atmosphere and tell an original story. Whilst the two leads manage to conjure up surprisingly decent performances given the material, Southpaw is ultimately the antithesis of original, and risks fading into mediocrity.

Tak3n

Before properly reviewing Tak3n it's worth describing the screening conditions as they were out of the ordinary for my cinema experiences. As I walked towards the cinema some woman waiting for a bus yelled at me about not touching my penis in public, and I believe this is sound advice that deserves to be shared. Inside the cinema, things didn't improve as Event Cinemas on Tak3n's opening weekend were only screening the movie in Vmax (larger screen, better audio, better seats, higher ticket prices), but the version shown was the standard format resulting in giant black bars surrounding the screen and only two-channel audio. To add injury to insults, one bloke two rows behind me attempted to start a fist-fight with the bloke seated directly behind me twenty minutes into the film. An argument ensued, other punters yelling for the instigator to "Fuck right off!" and the instigator's girlfriend was presumably pronounced DOA on the way to hospital from the shame and embarrassment of a packed house angrily staring at her and her dickhead boyfriend. While these kinds of conditions could obviously poison my experience I've attempted to remain as objective as possible.

                                                 "She's going to the bathroom."
                                                           "Call for back-up!"

There is a moment in Tak3n where Liam Neeson as the gravelly-voiced, obsessive death-machine Bryan Mills escapes from police by hiding in the sewers of suburban Los Angeles. As he sits there, trapped within a literal river of shit, art imitates life as Neeson reflects on what his career has become. From Oscar Schindler to a 60-year old action-man who has penthouse shoot-outs with bland Russian villains in their underwear. In 2009, Pierre Morel (District B13: Ultimatum, From Paris With Love, The Gunman) directed Taken, a simple story of a retired CIA agent rescuing his teen-aged daughter from Albanian sex traffickers in Paris by murdering EVERYONE. It's popularity and success can be attributed to the one memorable moment of the film, the infamous phone call involving Liam Neeson's cold threat. Most everything outside of this moment is mis-remembered, the action is average at best, the conclusion passable but undeniably lackluster, and minimal character development resulting in a one-note slog of "American man kills foreigners in their own country because they're inherently evil.". Luc Besson (director of The Fifth Element, Leon the Professional and Lucy) co-wrote the script with Robert Mark Kamen, who wrote all of the Transporter movies, The Fifth Element, a lot of the Karate Kid movies, and the pair wrote Taken's two sequels. Taken is an okay film, but its sequel, helmed by Colombiana and Transporter 2 director Oliver Megaton is a power-play of lazy writing, seizure-inducing editing (1:02-1:09) and the "Sequel Cash-grab" (see Hangover 2), where the only difference between Taken and Taken 2 was the setting and the amount of people who were taken. Taken 2 is a steaming pile of shit, but the success of this franchise and Neeson's recent star-power as "angry, fighty, middle-aged man" proved to be a sure-fire path to decent box office earnings.

Tak3n takes places in L.A two years after the events in Istanbul. Brian Mills (Neeson) spends his days obsessing over his young daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and slowly re-connecting with his ex-wife Lenore. That is until she is killed and he is framed for the murder. Lead FBI agent Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) takes charge in the pursuit of Mills, but in the course of his investigation becomes aware of Mills' history and capabilities. This doesn't prevent Dotzler from keeping a close eye on Kim, who he knows is Mills' greatest priority and weakness, and Lenore's husband Stuart (Dougray Scott), a businessman who's relationship with Lenore was deteriorating before her death. Meanwhile, a group of mysterious and deadly mercenaries appear to be following Mills and his family.

In this scene, Brian Mills poisons his daughters yoghurt drink so she'll feel nauseous and leave her university lecture and go to the bathroom. When she enters the very women's toilet he is hiding in, he grabs her and forces her into a stall. Between this and her mum's murder for which he is the prime suspect, Kim is remarkably resilient and doesn't at all act like this is the creepiest fucking thing ever.

To borrow a phrase from BBC's The Thick of It, Tak3n is an omni-shambles, a complete fuck-up of purpose and execution from top to bottom, a movie almost offensively bad and artless. Taken 2 was one of the worst movies of 2012 with it's premise worthy of all the mockery it received, some of the shakiest and incoherent action ever recorded, and a clunky, worthless ending that contradicts itself. But there are moments where Neeson at least appears to give a damn, though as he says in the final scene "I am tired of it all." So when this new mess begins, Neeson grits his teeth and grunts his way through scenes, devoid of any personality or real emotion. It's amazing the world of difference between his performances in the Taken movies and other recent movies like The Grey or even a Walk Among the Tombstones, both films where he plays a comparably dark and grunty character, but with actual humanity and vulnerability. He's not alone in this endeavour, Famke Janssen just blunders her way through her lines, lacking any subtlety or depth as she desperately rushes to finish her lines and fuck off from the movie. Dougray Scott hams it up a bit in his bid to pretend that the audience will not realise he's replacing Xander Berekely and that he totally isn't the villain (SPOILER ALERT: he's Dougray Scott, of course he's the villain). Frankly, Scott was much better in the much more enjoyable Mission Impossible 2, a similarly shit sequel. Though some joy can be derived from his interactions with Neeson as he is much better at hiding his native Scottish accent than Neeson is with his Irish accent. Maggie Grace appears depressed she's still playing a 30-year old teenager and that's the only work she seems to be getting. Forest Whitaker does his best impersonation of Lawrence Fishburne's career recently, in just playing the fat, black guy who is in charge, though someone obviously told him his character needs a quirk so he carries around a chess piece for no conceivable reaosn, unless he thinks he's actually in Inception.

In typical Tak3n style, the action is fast and fucked-in-the-head. Most fights appear as a flurry of black leather before a cutaway of someone falling out of a car, a bottle hitting the ground or a gun sliding away. With the excellent staging of action scenes in films like The Raid, John Wick, The World's End, Why Don't You Play in Hell?, or even  A Walk Among the Tombstones, Tak3n blatantly and bizarrely exists on the side of The Expendables 3, which also lacks any talent or idea of how to present action well. Even outside of the fights, the filmmakers lack the basic ideology behind editing or cinematography as a foot-chase through suburban backyards devolves into the cinematic equivalent of being stuck in a tumble dryer as no less than a dozen cuts can convey Nesson vaulting onto and climbing over a chain-link fence. Comparable to the fucking mess that is the action cinematography is the script, which comes across as a translation from French by a deaf man who converts it into feudal Japanese and then finally into English. Lenore's dialogue is so painfully on the nose, and Stuart's methods and motivations are dismally at odds with the committed family-man he was portrayed as in the previous movies. Dialogue such as the convenience store cashier describing Kim Mills' habits to Dotzler ("She gets the same thing everyday, peach yoghurt drink. I feel bad for the girl. She drank it right there out of the refrigerator. She must've been thirsty.") or Dotzler getting a record of Kim's movements from the FBI agent trailing her (FBI "She's gone to the bathroom." Dotzler: "Call for backup! Now!") will  result in repeated and deserved mocking of the script of Besson and Kamen. There's even a moment where Mills' car is run off the road and over a cliff, and when he confronts the perpetrators five minutes later, he asks "You wanna know how I escaped the car crash" before a 3-second blur of cars crashing and a cutaway of him falling out and hiding next to a rock, because just putting the words "FUCK YOU, HE ESCAPED" in giant letters on-screen at this moment didn't test well.

Tak3n is a perfect example of franchise fatigue, an idea which should have died in 2009 limps on because the internet was stupid enough to immortalise one single moment, as it always does. Oliver Megaton is almost as bad a director as Besson is a writer, and the on-going trend of dark and gritty Neeson is absolutely past any acceptable limit. As a stand-alone movie, this isn't all that bad, but as one of 2015's first major releases, and the second sequel in an action franchise, it's fucking insulting. 2015 shouldn't start off with something like this taking money away from films like Birdman or the Imitation Game, but Tak3n absolutely reiterates the cineamtic creed of "Fuck you, it's January."

Tak3n is a thing now?

The French poster of the movie

That's right everyone. Even after the disastrous sequel to the action hit Taken was a failure, the producers still want to flog a dead horse for all its worth (which is a lot, apparently).

Liam Neeson returns as Brian Mills and this time instead of having someone kidnapped from under his nose, he is being framed for murder. Famke Janssen and Maggie Grace return as his wife and daughter with Forest Whitaker joining as the cop who tries to bring him done.

I think the Wikipedia page for this movie is even mocking it. It refer's to his "specific set of skills" in a very sarcastic way. The film is due for release sometime in 2015.

Robin Williams Tribute Month: Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)

With the exception of Apocalypse Now, Good Morning, Vietnam is possibly the best Hollywood movie about the Vietnam War. Although it doesn't really have a lot of war in it, it captures the feelings of the country (especially the people of Vietnam) during the war. It is also the first time in a movie that Robin Williams played a character that was closer to his stand-up persona. Indeed, a lot of his dialogue is lifted straight from his stand-up.

Adrian Cronauer (Williams) has been stationed in Saigon to become a new DJ at a radio station for the troops. Cronauer is immediately seen as subversive by his superiors, but is liked by both his fellow DJs and the troops in the field. He also falls for Trinh (Chintara Sukapatana) and meets her brother Tuan (Tung Thanh Tran).

I've always found this movie to be hilarious. Williams banter with both Forest Whitaker and Robert Wuhl is fantastic and he once again relies on his amazing improvisation skills for all of his radio dialogue. Bruno Kirby has a fantastic part as Lieutenant Hauk, Cronauer's immediate senior officer, who believes that he is much funnier than Cronauer, but ultimately fails when he tries his hand.

As funny as this film is, it is incredibly poignant too. There are so many touching scenes in this movie that hit me hard. When a bomb goes off at a cafe where many GIs hang out, the scene showing the aftermath is chillingly realistic. Another in which a jaded Cronauer realises how his work has been affecting troop morale. His final broadcast is also one that made me choke up.

It would wrong of me to talk about this movie without talking about its soundtrack. I listened to this soundtrack so many times as a kid and knew every song and piece of dialogue way before I saw the movie. The songs are perfectly chosen from the many rock hits of the 60s and in a way make this movie so special. Songs like "California Sun" and "I Got You" add to the comedy of many scenes, while Louis Armstrong's classic "What A Wonderful World" has the most impact in one of the film's most violent scenes.

Verdict: A really powerful film about the Vietnam War that has a surprising number of classic one-liners from Robin Williams.

The Last Stand

This really should be Arnie's last stand. While it was a fun romp through the Nevada desert, Schwarzenegger has no business fighting crime. It is a young man's game and even he acknowledges the fact.

The Last Stand revolves around Sheriff Ray (Schwarzenegger) and his rag-tag group of deputies trying to stop an escaped cartel boss from making his way to Mexico. The plot is almost that simple. The reason the cartel boss escaped is due to FBI agent John Bannister's (Forrest Whitaker) negligence. The whole thing could have been avoided if he checked up on his agents and moved his prisoner in daylight instead of the wee hours of the morning.

I feel like this movie could have been a whole lot shorter than it's 107 minute running time. There are a whole bunch of extraneous shots of glances between Deputy Sarah Torrance (Jaimie Alexander) and Frank Martinez (Rodrigo Santoro), I'm still not sure what his role was in this movie, and these shots in this modified Corvette, where cartel boss Gabriel Cortez (Eduardo Noriega) shifts gears. Although they looked cool, we only needed to see them once or twice, not every single time he changes speed.

There is a strange sort of familiarity between Ray and Cortez. I feel as though we are missing some scenes where we find out that Ray has run into relatives of Cortez during his stint as a LAPD Narcotics officer. Although they barely hint at this, it would have been nice in this sort of movie to have that explicit connection. It would also explain the reaction Ray gives when he finds out who is making a run for his town.

The cast (apart from the few who I will point out) were not suited for this film. Of course this role was written for Arnie and he does fit in. The same is said for Johnny Knoxville, who is just playing Johnny Knoxville (like he has any other setting!), and Luis Guzman, as the loyal but hesitant and insanely funny deputy.

On the other hand, Forest Whitaker is playing just an angrier version of the role he played in Species. He only really comes off as incapable of following proper protocol. The other person not suited here is Jaimie Alexander. She is capable of extraordinary range and I felt that she was a wasted talent. The way that they built up the character of Cortez, you were expecting a name actor when he would finally be revealed, but instead we get an unfamiliar face.

The person who sort of defies both of those positions and is in sort of a middle ground is Peter Stormare. Whilst you would expect to see him silently shoving body parts into a wood chipper (Fargo, anyone?), here he is playing a loud gunslinger type and at the end of every scene with him, I was waiting for him to spit his tobacco on the ground.

Verdict: Some great driving sequences coupled with callbacks to old Arnie one-liners ("Consider yourself deputised") make for a great action movie. My recommendation to Arnie: quit acting while you're ahead, maybe move into producing and directing like your Twins co-star Danny DeVito.