Friday 29 May 2009

Movie Review: Angels and Demons (2009)


The Vatican has a few problems. The Pope has just died. Four of the Church's most senior Cardinals, the group from which the Pope's successor will emerge, have been kidnapped, and are threatened with death within hours. And an anti-matter bomb with the capability of flattening a large part of Rome is ticking away, somewhere in the Vatican, about to explode at midnight. Who're you gonna call?

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), the symbolist who was very much a thorn in the side of the Church while unravelling The Da Vinci Code.

The Vatican calls upon Langdon since the evil forces behind the kidnappings, the death threats and the ticking bomb appear to be a re-emergent Illuminati, a science-loving fraternity that locked horns with the Church centuries ago. The Vatican had brutally repressed the Illuminati, who appear to be back to extract a gruesome and final revenge.

The Illuminati demonstrate their cleverness by hiding clues to their intentions using riddles, and by revealing seemingly incredible ambigrams -- perfect terrain for the skills of Langdon. He needs to race against time to follow hidden religious clues to try and rescue the kidnapped Cardinals before they are sequentially and brutally eliminated, while at the same time trying to find the hidden bomb, and uncover the whole evil plot behind one very bad night.

Although novelist Dan Brown wrote Angels and Demons before The Da Vinci Code, director Ron Howard and writers David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman cleverly transform it into a sequel movie. Hanks returns as a thinner and less dour Langdon. Ewan McGregor is the Camerlengo, the stand-in papal authority dealing with the threats while a new Pope is chosen. And the token female scientist is Ayelet Zurer, who mostly rolls across the movie doing a good impersonation of a fifth wheel.

Angels and Demons is much more crisp and sharp than the mess of the movie that Howard managed to mangle out of The Da Vinci Code. Although this is helped by a more straightforward original story, the real improvements were achieved by being brave enough to streamline the movie compared to the book, eliminating characters and scenes and improving several plot twists.

The result is that Angels and Demons works just as well as a movie as it did as a book, despite being less faithful to the original story, while The Da Vinci Code was a disastrous movie trying to be too faithful to a brilliant book.

Angels and Demons will not win any prizes, but it is an entertaining Rome-set thriller, complete with modern pseudo-science, historical gobbly-gook, gruesome deaths, and a story that effectively fights its way through the Rome traffic snarls and the gathering crowds in St. Peter's Square.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.

Saturday 23 May 2009

Movie Review: State of Play (2009)


State of Play cannot quite decide what it wants to be: a glorification of the newspaper industry; a reality-based political murder-and-scandal thriller; or an investigative whodunnit. It ends up being an interesting enough hybrid meal that samples several cuisines without effectively proving to be totally competent in any. Not a surprise, since there are five names on the writing credits of the movie, a perfect recipe for a somewhat bland concoction.

Russell Crowe is Cal McAffrey, an old-style slob of a journalist working for the Washington Globe, which (of course) has just been taken over by a faceless multi-national and profit-driven corporation. McAffrey starts investigating an apparently drug-related double-shooting on the streets of DC, while his young blogger colleague at the Internet edition of the Globe, Della Frye (Rachel McAdams), start poking around the apparent suicide of an aid for the rising young Senator Steven Collins (Ben Affleck).

It turns out that the death of the Senator's aid and the street-level shootings are related (of course), and Collins joins forces with Frye (cue the yawningly expected young / old; traditional / digital; ink / blog tensions) to unravel the evil behind the deaths.

Senator Collins was (of course) having an affair with his aid before she died. He also happens to have been the college roommate of McAffrey. Collins is also just about to open investigative hearings into an evil Blackwater-style mercenary conglomorate. And Collins' wife (Robin Wright Penn) once slept with McAffrey. And the Globe's editor (Helen Mirren) is torn between the need to deliver good journalism and the need to satisfy the new owners' lust for profit.

In other words, there are enough contrived layers of connective tissue between the characters' personal lives and today's real headlines to keep the plot moving, generally in a forward direction.

Let's not ask to look too much at the details of the movie, where the journalists are significantly more competent at crime-solving than the police, and professional assassins are outsmarted by over-weight journalists, and particularly let's not look too closely at the muddled ending, where the plot desperately tries to add one more sharp twist, but can only conjure up a damp tissue.

What keeps State of Play on the safe side of over-cooked is the talent on display. Crowe, Affleck, Mirren, McAdams, and Wright Penn are very watchable, and all do their bit to round out their characters. Even Jason Bateman and Jeff Daniels make an appearance and are effective in relatively small roles.

Kevin MacDonald, best known for The Last King of Scotland, directs with a slightly jittery hand-held style, enough to maintain an edge without being too annoying.

For those who enjoy good acting talent, State of Play is watchable, if not terribly memorable.







All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.


Tuesday 5 May 2009

Movie Review: Revolutionary Road (2008)


An examination of life behind the facade of 1950's suburban normalcy, Revolutionary Road's strength and weakness lies in the performances of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio. Both deliver passionate and committed performances, but both exhibit continuously dramatic love/hate neck-breaking changes in emotion that are often unexplained. While the emotional roller-coaster drives the drama forward, it all rings hollow as a believable narrative.

April (Winslet) and Frank Wheeler (DiCaprio) have settled into a seemingly typical suburban marriage, where she has given up on an acting career to raise two kids (who seem to conveniently disappear from the latter part of the movie) and he has settled into a typical corporate job. Looking to re-ignite a passion for life, April proposes that they leave American suburbia behind and move to Paris -- quite the radical thought for the 1950's. A relatively quick downward spiral in their fortune ensues when Frank receives the opportunity for an unexpected promotion, and April receives an unwanted surprise.

Revolutionary Road creates a 1950's world where no one is very pleasant. April and Frank are mostly argumentative. Frank's co-workers and bosses are not exactly role models. The neighbours are just there to be tolerated, with the added attraction of the adult son of the local realtor, who is on leave from the local mental institution, which gives him licence to say exactly what is on his mind. It's a useful but rudimentary plot device to explicitly expose what may be going on inside the minds of April and Frank.

Do these two love each other or hate each other? Do they share the same dreams or are they just being polite while using each other? Why do they sexually betray each other with seemingly not a second thought? And is one of them actually insane? The movie just raises these questions and leaves them hanging, which would be fine if the behaviour on display is half-way believable, but when both the questions being asked and the wild swings in affection are blatantly over-the-top, it's difficult to feel much empathy for the couple.

The movie, based on the book by Richard Yates, feels quite theatrical and stage-bound, and there is not much imagination shown in filming locations outside the Wheeler's house. The performances of Winslet and DiCaprio do rise above the material, as they both demonstrate commitment to the turbulence of life.

Revolutionary Road is a companion piece to Director Sam Mendes' award winning American Pie (1999), which tackles the same themes in a contemporary setting. Mendes appears drawn to the death of individual dreams within crumbling suburban marriages. The debris from crumbled aspirations is interesting, but it's always better to build a sturdier structure before tearing it down.






All Ace Black Blog Movies Reviews are here.

Monday 4 May 2009

Movie Review: Yes Man (2008)


Yes Man occupies the harmless terrain at the intersection of comedy, romance, and lessons-in-life-as-taught-by-Hollywood. It gives Jim Carrey ample opportunities to display his comedic talent, and thankfully he stays relatively in control.

Carl Allen (Carrey) is a loan approval officer at a local bank. Since his wife left him he has become negative and depressed, avoiding all social interactions and life experiences. After he skips out on his friend's engagement party, he is convinced to attend a self-help Yes! seminar where he commits to turning his life around by saying Yes to every single opportunity that comes his way.

This of course leads to a boy-meets-girl, boy-loves-girl, boy almost-loses girl convoluted romance with a sweet artist (Zooey Deschanel); convulted success at work; and mis-adventures involving learning the Korean language; a mail-order bride from Iran; an unplanned trip to Nebraska and unwanted attention from the FBI.

The film, directed by Peyton Reed and loosely based on a true story, moves briskly, and never dwells too much after making its funny point in every scene. Carrey and the supporting cast are game, with good comic timing and general avoidance of excess. Rhys Darby as Carl's boss at the bank particularly stands out, playing a seemingly happy character with his own personality issues.

There is nothing dramatically surprising or overwhelming about Yes Man. The comedy is moderate, the romance is mellow, and the characters are refreshingly almost normal as far as movies like this go. For fans of light vanilla ice-cream with just a light dusting of chocolate sprinkles, Yes Man is satisfying.






All Ace Black Blog Movie Reviews are here.