Assassin's Creed review

Assassin's Creed is based on the video game series of the same name and stars Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard and Jeremy Irons.

 

I have played the games up until 3, when I decided that because Desmond's story was done, I was done with the games. I bought Black Flag simply because it was on sale and it was a special edition.

It's terrible. I'll start with what I liked. I thought some of the action scenes were good. I appreciate that they didn't tell the same story as the games.

 

However, both these points both have negatives. Justin Kurzel decided that all the action scenes needed to have dust and sand everywhere because it worked in Macbeth(a completely different film). And if they were going to tell a new story they should have done it by expanding the canon of the games like, I believe, the books do. Instead they opted to just make their own canon.

The story itself feels rushed, underdeveloped and not really there. The film is split between the present and the time in the Animus, like in the games. However, unlike the games, there is more time spent in the present than there is in the Animus. When inside the Animus it is usually just to have an action scene to keep the film interesting with a very thin plot to be there just because one is needed.

There is a great cast wasted on a very poor script. As mentioned before, there is Fassbender, Cotillard and Irons. But there is also Michael Kenneth Williams, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling, all of whom are given nothing to do.

 

This wouldn't have improved the quality of the film greatly but they could of at least gone for a higher age rating. The first few games were rated 15 by the BBFC, then PEGI have rated all the main games since as 18. So why is an adaption of a violent video game franchise rated 12a. This becomes extremely ridiculous at times when you think there should be at least a bit of blood but there is none. For example there is a scene where a character's throat is slit in a slow motion, close up shot. The blade never looks like it made contact with the neck, but with the collar instead, and there is no sign of the knife making a cut and it is completely bloodless. Literally nothing.

 

In short: Assassin's Creed joins many others in the league of bad video game movies.

Why Him? review

Why Him? is a comedy about a man(Bryan Cranston) who meets his daughter's tech millionaire boyfriend(James Franco).

This is an interesting case. I found a lot of the film to be very funny, but; the story is basic, predictable and at points cheesy;  it's way too long, and I hated Franco's character of Laird Mayhew. This isn't a case of he's meant to be unlikable so it works. No. He is a terribly written, easily hateable guy who you're meant to sympathise with. It's very easy to take Cranston's side in this by simply looking at him for what he is: a loud, corrupting man who has no idea what is socially acceptable and just throws money around.

There are several jokes that are stretched out so thin that they start to become almost transparent that add to it's 1 hour 50 minute run time! There is one scene in particular involving a Japanese toilet that could easily have been under 2 minutes but keeps going on for over 5 minutes.

In short: There are some definite funny parts but as a film it's rubbish.

Manchester by the Sea review

Manchester by the Sea is about a man who has to return to his home town where dark memories lie, to look after his nephew after his brother dies.

Casey Affleck is great here. Watching a film like Gone Baby Gone you can see that Affleck is a good actor, but he is able to show his full potential. I have often thought of Casey as the better actor of the Affleck brothers, not that Ben's a bad actor, but I feel like Casey has more range. It is a performance heavy film, with Lucas Hedges giving a good performance as Affleck's nephew, and Michelle Williams is excellent in a small supporting role.

I haven't seen Kenneth Lonergan's other films or any of his stage work. The dialogue is wonderful and feels natural. There's not much of a story and is more of a look into peoples lives, similar to Boyhood and Moonlight(more on that when I get to mid-January). If you like seeing character arcs as opposed to twists then this is for you.

However, in some scenes there are uses of music which feel like they are over imposing and didn't add to the emotional nature of the scenes the way Lonergan, presumably, wanted them to.

In short: MbtS is a well written and acted character study.

Passengers review

Passengers is a film about a man who is woken up early while on a ship travelling to a new planet, and after a year of being isolated from human contact wakes up a woman.

Did the trailers mis-market this film: yes. Am I going to complain about it: no. Passengers is deeply flawed. The story is mainly uninteresting, as are the characters, and when it tries to bring up moral questions it doesn't handle them well at all. Chris Pratt does well with what he's given and I've never been a fan of Jennifer Lawrence's, and I was really disappointed because it had an interesting concept and a good director.

Spoilers because it has been a month and is too late to do this as it's own thing
Personally I understand why Chris Pratt woke up Jennifer Lawrence, but I don't agree with his reasoning and how he went through with it.

So Pratt is alone for a year with only Michael Sheen's robot bartender for company. He then accidentally stumbles upon Lawrence's hibernation pod and proceeds to learn everything about her before waking her up under the pretence that she woke up for the same unknown reasons he did. I found this really creepy but not once is Pratt vilified for what he's done and is usually seen sympathetically, even when Lawrence brings it up and hates him for it. He essentially picks the person he decides to strand on the ship with him, almost as if they were a toy in a store, without giving much thought about their situation as a whole.

I have seen several other posts by people asking "What if Jennifer Lawrence had woken up Chris Pratt?". It would be the same creepy concept and wouldn't help improve it. The same if it were two people of the same gender.

All the problems on the ship in the film are caused by the ship malfunctioning. They make the hibernation pods to be un-failable. They never say this about the ship. We see shots of an ever increasing number of error messages appear in the bridge, and there is nothing done by the ship to fix it. No crew are woken up to fix it, nothing happens. And if a crew member is woken up they might be able to solve the whole hibernation pod problem.

Also, as I'm ranting, I might as well give my thoughts on the pay issue. For those who don't know Lawrence wrote an essay on pay equality after the Sony hack revealed she was paid less than her co-stars in American Hustle. She blamed herself for her negotiating power(if I remember right). I can't comment on her screen time there but I keep meaning to watch it and I haven't got round to it yet. So then she and Pratt sign on to this film and it's revealed Lawrence is getting paid around $20 million while Pratt is paid around $12-15 million. This would be more understandable if the roles were reversed, but Pratt has a lot more screen time than Lawrence so it would make more sense if he were paid more. Or, even better, if they are paid equally, as they are both big stars whom people like.

In short: It's not good.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story review

I'm going to keep this short. I really liked it,  preferred it to The Force Awakens, helps make A New Hope better, The Empire Strikes Back is still the best and Gareth Edwards proves himself as one of my favourite current directors with this war film. The last half hour to forty five minutes is brilliant, especially the hallway scene.

Office Christmas Party review

Office Christmas Party is a comedy about a Christmas party that is meant to save the branch that goes wrong.

It's a passable comedy that is probably best viewed around Christmas after having a few drinks and stumbling upon it on TV or Netflix. There are some good jokes but they are few and far between, and the best joke in the film is in the outtakes during the credits. It is a shame because there is a lot of wasted comedic talent here; Jason Bateman, T.J. Miller, Jennifer Aniston, Kate McKinnon,  Rob Corddry, Jillian Bell and probably some others that I have forgotten about. When there is a lull in the film, instead of letting the comedians do their thing, the directors instead decide to just show some "crazy" partying because apparently that's funny. Then the ending feels like it's out of a completely different film.

In short: It's OK. Or maybe I'm not harsh enough on comedies.

Snowden review

Snowden is the new film by Oliver Stone starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the titular whistle blower Edward Snowden.

I haven't seen the award winning documentary CitizenFour but was familiar with the story. I thought this was a good biopic with solid acting and a well thought out script. However, there were times when it would just jump forward with Snowden explaining "well this happened and I ended up here".

Minor spoilers
At the end of the film there is a shot of JG-L's Snowden giving a lecture or something over Skype, and at one point the camera turns around and the real Snowden is revealed. This annoyed me for two reasons; if you're going to show the real person, do it during the end credits; during the rotating shot it is really obvious that it is a completely different setting.

In short: Snowden is a well made biopic with some minor structure problems.

A Monster Calls review

A Monster Calls is based on the book of the same name and is the story of a boy, whose mother has a terminal illness, who is visited by a tree monster.

Before I start, I love Patrick Ness's book. It takes a very good book for me to read it more than once, and I have with this book. It only takes a few hours to read and is brilliant.

I am glad to say that A Monster Calls is one of the most faithful book adaptions I have ever seen. There are a few minor changes to dialogue(e.g. "McDonald's is changed to "Tesco's") and some other small changes, but those changes add to the film and make it possibly better than the book. That is helped in part by J.A. Bayona's use of visuals. The Yew Tree is brought to life with magnificent cgi, and the watercolour stories are beautiful and stunning to behold.

The cast all give excellent performances, the standout being the young Lewis MacDougal who gives an absolutely tremendous performance as the conflicted Conor. The film has an emotional center that focuses on Conor and the whole thing would cave in on itself if Conor were not portrayed as well as he is here.

In short: I could go on for ages about how brilliant A Monster Calls is easily one of the best films I saw in 2016.

The Edge of Seventeen review

The Edge of Seventeen is a teenage comic drama about a girl who becomes friendless after her only friend engages in a relationship with her brother.

 

I must admit that if I hadn't heard good things about it, I wouldn't have seen The Edge of Seventeen as that premise did not interest me at all. Despite this I found the film to be highly engaging, hilarious and, at times, emotional. Writer and director Kelly Fremon Craig does a great job at making the characters believable and giving them smart dialogue. Hailee Steinfeld is the standout of the cast and gives depth to a character that could have just been shallow. While Steinfeld is great as Nadine, Woody Harrelson as one of her teacher is absolutely hilarious.

I can't really complain about actors in their twenty's playing teenagers in films because it happens all the time, but there are two examples here that just feel like the filmmakers must have been joking. The first is 24 year old Blake Jenner as an 18 year old. I would believe him as a college student but he looks too old to be a high school student. The second is 31 year old Hayden Szeto as a 17 year old introverted art student who is in good shape. He looks slightly younger than his age, but not 14 years younger. And there will be people in schools who are in shape, but his character doesn't seem like the person who spends time in the gym every day to stay in shape.

In short: It is very good and a shame it didn't find it's audience.

Moana review

Moana is a Disney animation about a Polynesian tribe "princess" who teams up with the demigod Maui.

 

Moana is extremely enjoyable. There are plenty of characters that keep you entertained throughout, several fun and good songs and a nice story to go with them. Moana and Maui have some great conversations between them as their friendship evolves over the film. A lot of meta humour comes from Dwayne Johnson's Maui, an example being an argument about whether Moana is a princess or not, is greatly appreciated. There are also some fun visual references to Mad Max: Fury Road and The Ten Commandments thrown in as well.

 

In short: Moana is a great addition to the vast catalogue of Disney animated movies.

Sully review

Sully is a Clint Eastwood directed drama which follows the pilot Chesney Sullenberger during the investigation into the forced water landing in the Hudson river in 2009.

Tom Hanks is brilliant in everything, but not everything he is in is brilliant. Sadly this is the case here. I found Sully to be boring, repetitive and, at times, even emotionally manipulative. I understand why director Clint Eastwood decided to show the landing several times from different perspectives because without it, an already short film would be even shorter. But instead of finding it engaging or exciting I didn't want to see it at least three times.

While there were parts I liked, there were a lot more parts that I didn't. Tom Stern's cinematography is well done, and, of course, Tom Hanks is brilliant. I also liked Aaron Eckhart as the co-pilot, but his moustache kept distracting me. Apparently it is real but it looks really fake and took me out of the film even though it shouldn't have(similar to Alexander Skarsgård's hands in The Legend of Tarzan).

In short: Sully was uninteresting and repetitive but has some redeeming factors.

I'm doing terrible at writing reviews when I say I will so they will all be shorter until I catch up, as I have something I really want to write about.