Passengers

Morten Tyldum’s last film The Imitation Game was a serious Oscars contender at the time, which makes it all the more weirder that his latest film Passengers seems to be stuck in Limbo - with not enough action and excitement to be a popcorn thriller and too-poor a story to be a quality drama-romance.

The colonial seeding-ship Avalon is transporting 5,000 colonists to the planet Homestead II, a 120 year journey that has the entire crew in long-term hibernation pods. After some strange happenings on the ship, two passengers are awoken 90 years early, seemingly due to pod-malfunctions. Mechanical engineer Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) and writer Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence) find themselves alone on the ship, their only other mildly charismatic company the android bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) and no way to go back to sleep in the Hibernation pods.

Passengers does seem genuinely confused about what it should be. Its opening act starts off as you might expect a classic sci-fi blockbuster of yesteryear to begin, establishing the confines of the location and building a sense of isolation. It uses montages effectively and manages to keep the foot on the pedal, but after a key decision made by one of the characters - something pretty unethical that should have help contour their character development, but is shrugged off by the film soon after - Passengers starts to go downhill fast. It becomes surprisingly slow and bland, and beyond the first act there are no real twists and turns in the story as you might have expected had you seen the trailer. The agonisingly average story just can’t deliver on the hype Passengers tried to build through an intense marketing campaign.

With obvious homages to several Kubrick films and a smattering of others, Passengers doesn’t really have a personality of its own, and whilst Pratt and Lawrence should be able to deliver oodles of chemistry on-screen, the second-rate screenplay drags their performances down immensely. There were also a handful of blatant overacting moments from Lawrence, whilst Pratt is much more timid (see: boring) than in his usual roles, although you can tell that they’re trying to do their best with the mediocre material they’re given. Indeed, the most frustrating thing about Passengers is that you can tell there could be a really dynamic, well-acted romance in there somewhere - a sort of Lost in Translation in Space - if it just stopped trying to add in all the hallmark sci-fi elements that it doesn’t have the complexity to pull off.

If Passengers does have one redeeming feature, it would be its visual composition. As glossy and beautiful as you would expect a $110 million film to look, it manages to keep a leash on its many CGI elements which blend in near-seamlessly with the live action work. Whilst it doesn’t have a unique style, it does at least manage to suspend disbelief when it comes to location, a challenge that many far higher profile films often fail. The helical design of the Avalon ship is surprisingly cool and is integrated into the action in a reasonably satisfying way. Though ultimately these attributes can’t undo the damage of a poorly written story - or even justify going to see the film - they were at least present when the rest of film collapsed on itself.

Passengers has an interesting enough premise, and could have been a lot better even with subtle tweaks to the order of the story, but ultimately it's let down by an uninspiring screenplay and dull-as-dishwater characters.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

I figured out while watching this movie that the story I really want to see is the love story between Thomas and Martha Wayne (Batman's parents) because maybe I'll actually feel some emotion after seeing them get shot for the thousandth time. But alas this isn't that movie. It's a movie about Superman, so let's get to it.

Set two years after the events of Man of Steel and America is still reeling after Superman (Henry Cavill) destroyed Metropolis City while trying to defeat General Zod. Several people are upset about this and none more so than billionaire Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck). As his crime fighting alter ego Batman, he is dedicated to find a way to show people that Supes is not the hero that everyone wants him to be. Meanwhile, Clark Kent is also trying to write a story showing that Batman is a reckless danger on Gotham City. Between the two dynamos is Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg), who is plotting for each hero to bring down the other, all the while doing research in both metahumans (AKA future movie heroes) like Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) and finding a way to turn the people of the world against Superman.

As you can probably tell from that description, there's a lot going on in this movie. And that's a huge problem that is endemic to a lot of these superhero movies. The studios feel as though audiences are stupid and have to cram as much as possible in a single movie to sell movies that have not yet even been written. Batman v Superman has this in spades, introducing every future superhero in the DC Universe, even if it's only for two seconds at a time. These other hero cameos also just serve as a distraction that the film that you're currently watching isn't any good. This is because it is too full. The convoluted plot tries to fit in two introductions of new characters, although Batman really doesn't need any introduction, and Wonder Woman is really only introduced by maybe five lines of dialogue that doesn't give any insight at all to who she is or where she comes from. And in the middle of all this happening, we are treated to a lengthy and jarring dream sequences that diehard comic fans will be able to link to the Flashpoint storyline, but regular moviegoers might get lost with (if you're part of the latter group, maybe just take a squiz at that link). This really could have been chopped out to make a more streamline story.

The aesthetics of this movie are nothing we haven't seen before either. A lot of CGI smash on smashfest that is just moved to an abandoned part of Gotham because people got so up in arms about that happening in Man of Steel. Newsflash Zack Snyder, taking the people out of the equation won't change people's opinions on the wonton destruction of cities. Side note: while we're on Gotham City, did anyone else notice that it seemed really close to Metropolis, almost as if it were in the Greater Metropolis Area? Because you can definitely see the Bat-signal from Metropolis. Back to visuals now. Why was everything slowed down? I can get the need for some stylising of the fight sequences, but there's a whole slo-mo montage of Superman doing his super thing all around the world. I get that it's building dramatic tension, but this movie is way too dramatic for it's own good.

None of this movie's performances warrant anything to write about, but I will anyway because you know I'm that kind of guy. But because there's so many, I'll be brief about each. Henry Cavill could really instil some of his own real-life charm because Superman is too dark and brooding. On the flip side, Ben Affleck barely brooded at all, which is the only thing Batman is really good at. Up until the last five to ten minutes Gal Gadot was really only eye candy for male teenagers and then she became a badass with the only good musical theme in the whole movie. Jesse Eisenberg was over the top as a character who is supposed to be a restrained genius, not the Joker. Jeremy Irons was a very believable Alfred and the total opposite to Michael Caine, so I'm torn there. Laurence Fishburne was too wacky as Perry White this time round. Tao Okamoto, Callan Mulvey and Scoot McNairy weren't in it enough for my liking.

Five minutes into this movie, I found myself thinking, "This movie needs more Wes Bentley." If you're as confused by that sentence as I am, then allow me to explain. If a movie doesn't impress me in the first five minutes, I often think that only the appearance of Wes Bentley will make it better for me. Granted, it's not a thought I find myself with often, but this was definitely one of them. The lack of Wes and the frustrating slowness of Batman v Superman left me sadder than Ben Affleck. Nawww, poor Ben, won't you let us know what's going through that head?

War Movie Month: Apocalypse Now (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola's epic (and when I say epic, I mean bigger than epic) war film about Vietnam is considered one of the greatest films ever made and after rewatching it for the I-don't-know-how-many time, I am still blown away by the impact it has on me. The film has a storied production, it took 16 months to film and many years to edit, but the film has also influenced pop culture in a way that no other film before or since has done so. The main theme at play is the insanity of war and how that insanity affects the soldiers who fight.

Captain Ben Willard (Martin Sheen) is sent on a mission up the Nung River, where he must locate and kill Walter E. Kurtz (Marlon Brando), a rogue US Army Colonel. Willard is escorted up the river in a Navy PBR led by Chief (Albert Hall) and crewed by famous surfer Lance (Sam Bottoms), Chef (Frederic Forrest) and Mr Clean (Laurence Fishburne).

Aside from being one of the greatest films ever made, Apocalypse Now is also one of the biggest films ever made, not in terms of budget, but more physical scale. Some of the set pieces are truly awe inspiring. There is of course the famous scene in which an air cavalry unit led by Lieutenant Kilgore (Robert Duvall) assaults a river village while Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is blasted from loudspeakers. But rewatching it this time I noticed a few others which really amazed me and I've seen this movie on the big screen. There is a huge night scene where the crew come across an American outpost under attack from Vietnamese soldiers. The number of explosions and the performance of Sam Bottoms in this scene is amazing.

But in general all the performances in this movie are among the best ever committed to screen. Sheen gives the most convincing performance as a man who is obsessed with achieving his objective, but eventually becomes obsessed with the man he is assigned to kill. Despite all the horror stories about Marlon Brando and his actions on the set of the film, he actually gives a great performance, despite only being in the film for close to twenty minutes. Frederic Forrest gives an amazing performance as Chef, a New Orleans chef who was drafted and chose to be in the Navy because he heard they had the best food. He is probably my favourite character out of the group.

Laurence Fishburne is also remarkable in this film, although I find the story of his casting even more remarkable. He actually lied to Francis Ford Coppola and said that he was 17 when they cast him, but it turns out that he actually 14 when they shot the film. Despite this, his skill at that age is amazing. The other performance that is hard not to talk about is Dennis Hopper's. Hopper plays a character known only as the photojournalist. He lives in the compound with Kurtz and is hypnotised by the colonel's teachings, although when I watch his scenes, I can't help but feel he acts as if Coppola was actually a character in the film (Coppola by the way does have a cameo in the film as a director of a news story).

I would really recommend watching the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse, made by Coppola's wife Eleanor during the filming of the movie. It covers everything from the immense damage caused by storms to the film sets to the heart attack that Martin Sheen suffered during the production and also a very creepy interview had with Coppola, who is on the verge of insanity.

Like Das Boot, Apocalypse Now has two versions available and I will say to watch them both. There is the the original theatrical cut, which is a clear and concise war movie and then there is Apocalypse Now Redux, which I watched for this review. It adds about 47 minutes of extra sequences including a big scene where the crew on the boat encounter a French family who have been living in a mansion from back in the old French colonial days of Indochina and a slightly over the top scene involving Playboy bunnies who appeared earlier in the film. Unless your unfamiliar with the history of south-east Asia or just like seeing naked ladies, I would recommend watching the original version more.

Verdict: Apocalypse Now is the pinnacle of big budget movies (for the 70s anyway). It has inspired more pop culture moments than anything else and will continue to do so.