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

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.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Director: Brett Ratner (not as good as Bryan Singer, well duh)
Starring: Hugh Jackman (good), Halle Berry (dull), Ian McKellen (good at being bad), Patrick Stewart (good) and many, many, many more...
Production Budget: $210M

Whose side will you be on? Indeed. Following on from the rather good X-Men and X2, the third and final (shyeah right, I'd bet its $100M+ opening weekend in the U.S. on there being more) X-Men movie has a reasonable amount to live up to. Replacing director Bryan (The Usual Suspects) Singer with Brett (Rush Hour) Ratner did not so much increase my anticipation as reduce my expectations, which I suppose made it harder for me to be disappointed.

X3 yet again sees a disagreement between the two factions of mutants, the 'good-guys' led by Patrick Stewart's Prof. Charles Xavier, and the 'bad-guys' led by Ian McKellen's Eric Lensherr/Magneto. And once again this disagreement leads to the near destruction of the world as we know it. Why can't these guys just learn to get along? This time around it's a 'cure' that turns mutants back into regular people, with Magneto deciding that this is yet another attempt by the humans to wipe out mutants, and therefore all humans must die. Throw into the mix the return of Jean Gray (Famke Janssen) as the super-powerful, emotionally desturbed, boyfriend-killing Phoenix and about twenty new mutant characters and you're in for one hell of a super-speedy, porcupine skinned, Goldengate Bridge levitating juggernaut of a ride.

The problem with this film is that there are too many characters, and therefore too many subplots involving teenage angst, love triangles, prodigal sons and other distractions. The main characters, do still get ample screen time even if they don't really contribute to the story, presumably to either apease fanboys or to fulfill contractual obligations (I'm still not sure what the point of Halle Berry's character is after three movies). Sometimes it looks like instead of writing a story, and adding characters where appropriate to the story, they have chosen characters, and then written a series of set-pieces showing off each of their powers, and slapped a story around it. At other times it's as though characters have been inserted into the story to somehow increase the emotional impact, but really, how can one become emotionally attached to a character with five minutes of screen time (see Angel below).

Here is a selection of new characters and how they fit into the story:

Beast (Kelsey Grammar): The mutant ambassador to the White House. He's a bit embarrassing as the blue-skinned/glasses wearing/suited ambassador, but quite cool when he starts kicking arse.

Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones): Magneto's new toughguy. He looks a little weird with his huge body, but is good fun as he runs through walls head first, and the highlight of the movie is his battle with Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page replacing Katie Stuart from X2).

Angel (Ben Foster): Son of the guy who invents the mutant cure, oh, and he's a mutant. Everything that is wrong about this movie is summed up in this character. Corny and overly melodramatic, and more of a plot device than a fully developed character. Oh, and he is a crap mutant - sure he can fly, but I reckon I could beat him with a pair of wing-clipping scissors, or maybe one of those leather thongs falconers use to control their birds.

Callisto (Dania Ramirez): Magneto's new 'flashy' right-hand woman. The badguy equivalent of Halle Berry's Storm. Would you be surprised if I told you they came up against each other one-on-one at some point?

And I have to mention Rebecca Romijn's character Mystique because... well... you know...

The special effects cannot be faulted, but then for that kind of money they bloody well should be good. And that's all they are, good. Not awesome, not mind- or wad-blowing, just good. The major set-piece involving the Golden Gate Bridge is so ludicrous that it's kind of distracting from what is otherwise a reasonably cool standoff on Alcatraz. And I kept wanting to say "Pyro, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!".

The ending keeps the sequel option wide-open, and by doing so ruins the emotional edge it would otherwise have had. Oh, and there is a bonus scene after all of the credits that fans will probably enjoy (if, like me, you couldn't be bothered waiting through the credits, or you saw the film and didn't know about it, there is a good description in the wikepedia entry).

As far as this kind of crap goes, it was OK, I guess. But then I'm more of a D.C. boy anyway.

$$1/2 (in other words, exactly average)

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).