Superman Returns - IMax 3D

Director: Bryan Singer
Starring: Brandon Routh, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey, James Marsden, Parker Posey
Production Budget: US$270M
Running Time: 154 min

The title sums it up really. After a five year search for his home world, Superman (Routh), er, comes back. Everyone is pretty chuffed to see him, except the love of his life, Lois Lane (Bosworth). Nevermind the fact that he has just saved her from guaranteed death on an aeroplanes stuck to a space shuttle - in 3D thank you very much - she's moved on with a new man (Marsden as Richard White), a small child, and a Pulitzer prize for an article entitled "Why the world doesn't need Superman". Meanwhile, professional evildoer Lex Luthor (Spacey) is up to no good, with a typically harebrained scheme to create a new continent in the middle of the Atlantic.

The events in this movie follow on from Superman 2 - Singer has wisely ignored the travesties that were Superman 3 and 4; advice we would all do well to follow.

If you are of the age where the original Superman was a childhood masterpiece, there is no way to watch this film without making comparisons. Unlike in Batman Begins, Singer hasn't tried to do recreate the Superman mythos from the beginning; he has remained faithful to the original movies. Brandon Routh was specifically cast for his resemblance to Christopher Reeve, and he does a fine job, although he doesn't bring anything new to the character. Kate Bosworth is OK as Lois Lane, although she lacks the sassiness of Margot Kidder. Kevin Spacey has fun as Lex Luthor, channeling Gene Hackman to good effect. His mistress Kitty, played by Parker Posey, is a joy.

In 1978, the SFX in Superman: The Movie were groundbreaking. Looking at them now, some are good, some look terrible. The effects in Superman Returns are in general awesome. It contains the best use of bullet-time since The Matrix, including an awesome shot of Superman being shot at point blank range in the eye. In the Imax version, four scenes have been transformed into 3D: a scene from Clark's childhood where he first learns to fly, the aforementioned jumbo jet + space shuttle near disaster, a sea rescue and the final scene. They look pretty good, with plenty of depth, but as with all 3D movies, fast action is a little hard to follow. I enjoyed the novelty of the 3D scenes, but I was pleased that the whole movie wasn't done in 3D, because 2.5 hours of it would probably have done my head in.

My favourite scene in the film involves an earthquake in an amazingly detailed scale-model city, complete with explosions, train collisions, people falling into cracks in the ground - all the things you'd expect to see in a real earthquake. It's beautifully filmed, and is clearly a nod by Singer to the scale model effects that were used in the original Superman.

The love triangle between Lois, Clark/Superman and Richard is quite well done. Typically, you would expect the Richard character to be either bad or incompetent, someone the audience can easily hate, and who is bound to get dumped by the end. In Superman Returns, however, Richard as a nice, loving, genuinely resourceful and even heroic character. This adds a lot of emotional weight to the story, as the audience is torn over who to support, and there is therefore no linear progression to an obvious, happy ending.

Superman Returns is probably the most expensive movie made to date, and the spectacle is, as they say, spectacular. Throw in a pretty decent story and you have the best blockbuster I have seen this year. I still find it hard to see $270M on the screen. Considering most of the effects are obviously completely computer generated, I reckon you could get a lot of computers (and nerds to work on them) for much less than that. But at least it was a good movie.

Overall, a fun time was had by all.

$$$$

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Director: Gore Verbinski
Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Kiera Knightley, Bill Nighy
Production Budget: US$225M
Running Time: 150 min
Extraneous Running Time: 50 min

The biggest hit of the Northern Hemisphere summer, DMC reunites pretty much all of the characters from the previous film, The Curse of the Black Pearl, and some.

The story goes: Will Turner (Bloom "what I lack in personality I make up for in prettiness") is threatened with the execution of himself and his soon to be wife Elizabeth Swann (Knightley "when are people going to realise that I'm not that attractive and am a bit annoying, really") unless he gets Captain Jack Sparrow's (Depp "woohoo, this is fun, and I'm getting paid a shitload of money") magic compass for the new head of the East India Company. Not everything goes to plan (duh?) and Turner ends up getting caught up in Captain Jack's latest adventure, trying to escape the dreaded Davy Jones (Nighy who is always good in a grumpy kind of way, although surely it would have been more appropriate to use the real Davy Jones), who has come to claim Jack's soul for eternity, which is about how long the movie goes for.

The Dead Man's Chest title turns out to be quite clever, given that it refers to the chest or locker that our heroes must find to defeat Davy Jones, but it also alludes to the object that resides therein. Hmmm...

What follows is a mash of action, comedy and drama. Most of the way too long running time is spent either in huge action set-pieces (some are over-the-top great, especially early on, and some are over-the-top confusing, especially later on) or introducing or re-introducing a multitude of semi-major characters. They manage to squeeze in a story, although it doesn't make a lot of sense, and that doesn't seem to matter. Its pretty easy to get the gist of it. One gripe I have is that there is no sense of time or distance between locations, leaving me wishing for a simple map like that used so effectively in Indiana Jones. After all, it is a pirate movie, a map would make sense.

DMC is a mostly enjoyable movie. It's fun to watch Johnny Depp hamming it up, and the locations are stunning, but it's too long. Some movies genuinely need a long running time because there is so much story to get through, but here the story is very light, and it's not like they had a huge novel that they had to remain faithful to, such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. I just think they had such a massive budget, that the producers must have kept saying things like "Uh, Gore, we've still got $80 million left, better make the Cracken attack the ship again, and uh, that scene where three men are sword fighting on a huge waterwheel, it looks great on the trailer, make it twice as long will you, and why not have it go crashing through the jungle. We've paid for this location, so we're bloody well going to trash it. Thanks".

If you've seen Star Trek 2 or The Empire Strikes Back then I guess I just gave away the 'Cliffhanger' ending... and the plot of the next movie in the trilogy. I think it's going to be called The Return of Barbossa's Search for Sparrow.

$$1/2

The Seven Samurai

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Starting: Takashi Shimura, Toshirô Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Seiji Miyaguchi, Minoru Chiaki, Daisuke Katô, Isao Kimura
Production Budget: $500,000

I was planning on seeing Superman Returns last weekend for my big budget action movie review, but things unfortunately didn't pan out. So in lieu of that, I've decided to go back to the beginning, the beginning of all action movies that is. The Seven Samurai, made in 1954, is touted as being the very first action movie. Ranked at number 7 on the IMDb top 250, I had high expectations that this movie was going to be an all out sword slashing, face pummeling, blood gushing samurai romp. Let me tell you now, it is not. The first piece of sword play comes almost 45 minutes into the movie and without a hint of that Hollywood metal clinging and clanging.

The basic plot runs like this. A farmer inadvertently hears the bandit's plans to attack his village after their barley harvest. They gather round and seek the advice of an elder who tells them to seek out samurai who are willing to help them in return for 3 meals a day. The first part of the movie deals with the recruitment and each samurai(s) character introduction. It would have been insanely boring if all 7 samurai were ruthless warriors, instead we had a commander, a youngen, a perfectionist, a crazy man, a joker, commander's friend and a red shirt. They return to the village and work on training the farmers and building defense. The final battle sequence does not disappoint, long enough to make the whole 206 minutes worth it.

The movie works on subtle cinematic techniques. Suspense is built with clever cinematography; close up on faces, body language, environmental effects. All taken for granted in today's movies. Action sequences are rudimentary, not like the scripted and rehearsed scenes nowadays where combatants SOMEHOW know where their opponent is going to strike next. They are also filmed in wide angle so you can actually see what is going on. Dialog, even though it is in Japanese, is well delivered, interspersed with jokes to not make the whole film too dire or desperate. The only negative points I have about the movie are the farmer characters. They can't all be that scared and sad!

The Seven Samurai has been consistently listed as one of the top movies of all time. This, of course, is subject to other peoples tastes, likes and dislikes. If you had never planned on seeing this movie, I would recommend you find the time to do so, even if it is just to see what all the fuss is about.

$$$$

Poseidon

Director: Wolfgang Peterson
Starring: Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinta Barrett, Emmy Rossum
Production Budget: US$160M

Poseidon was a flop (it did less than $60M in the USA, creeping towards $130M worldwide). What a disaster of a disaster film... the irony of it all! Although really, if a cheaper film had made that kind of money, it would be a massive success. Hell, Brick, my favourite film so far this year, has only made just over $3M worldwide, yet it is technically as successful as this year's biggest movie at the box-office, The Da Vinci Code (both made back around 6 times their production budgets).

And the strange thing is, Poseidon is better than The Da Vinci Code. Unlike The (abysmal) Da Vinci Code, it doesn't pretend to be anything it isn't (i.e. clever), it goes for less than 100 minutes (i.e. it isn't boring) and it has reasonably likeable characters and they are used to suitable dramatic effect. That doesn't mean that Poseidon is a good movie, but it is a reasonably well made genre movie. The problem is that the genre is high concept disaster movie, which typically has mediocre acting, horrible cliches throughout and costs a lot of money. This movie is typical of the genre.

Even if you can't tell from the poster, or the fact that it's a remake of a 70's movie, the plot of Poseidon doesn't take a lot of explaining. A ship tips over, and a group of survivors try to escape. The survivors fit the following stereotypes: father figure, young lovers, old man (although he is gay, and he is Richard Dreyfuss which adds some interest to the character), mother and child, the arsehole (I wonder if he's gonna die comically early on?), and a single, attractive man and woman. Sadly, there is no token black guy, unless you count the ships captain.

The best two scenes occur before 20 minutes have passed. The opening scene, panning from underwater to a 360^o tour around the ship, entirely computer generated, is cool, and the ship-tipping scene is equally impressive... big, loud and not at all like a model in a bathtub. From then on, it's a by-the-book escape from the sinking and burning ship type thing. Coincidentally, the two main stars just happen to be a former fire-fighter and navy seal... how convenient. The female leads do nothing except provide the usual eye candy, emotional angst and up the tension by slowing down the men. And the kid isn't at all annoying, which is annoying. Once the wave hits, we pretty much follow this group as they race to reach the bottom (which is the top... the boat tipped over you see) before the ship sinks... cue lots of just making it to the next level as the level they are on goes completely under water.

I saw this in the IMAX, and it certainly is an IMAX friendly movie, big, loud, and dumb.

So, while Poseidon has very little going for it, apart from some nice effects at the start, it isn't bad, and if you like this kind of thing, then you'll like this. And I did enjoy the fact that for most of the movie the floor is the ceiling and vice versa.

$

Warning: although it is not a long movie, Poseidon has over an hour of the sound of pouring water, so you may want to check the level of your bladder before entering the theatre.

Mission: Impossible 3

Director: JJ Abrams(Felicity, Alias, Lost)
Apperances: Felicity (Felicity), Eric Weiss(Alias), Flight Attendant #2(Lost)
Production Budget: USD$150M

What do the three pictures on the right have in common? Answer, they're all COOL. When going to see a movie that was made for over $150M, you can't expect the producers to spend $140M on the script and $10M on the action. The more likely distribution is to have $5M on the plot and $145M on COOL.

Being the third installment of the M:i franchise, this movie works on an already proven formula. (Just like for Bond films). We not only see one infiltration operation, but three. We not only see that patented face first drop from a wire once, but twice. Add a storyline where the agent tries to hide his work from his wife and his co-workers ribbing him about it. Combine in COOL guns(H&K G36E), COOL locations(Shanghai), COOL hotties(Felicity), a plot twist and you've blown your $150M.

Okay, top 3 COOL scenes:
1. Swinging from building top to building top, landing on your back, sliding backwards while taking out 2 former Red Army soldiers, spinning around, and stopping yourself on the very last edge.

2. Lip reading. Once at the beginning to then be linked to a crucial plot direction later on.

3. An older, but still hot, Felicity firing a H&K P9S.

$$$(out of 5)

Continuing with the trilogy theme, my next movie will be X3(Hugh Jackman), not to be confused with xXx(Vin Diesel) or a triple X(crazy horse).