The Drop (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF IT'S ALWAYS THE QUIET ONES YOU NEED TO KEEP AN EYE ON?)

[Now for a bust of a movie that is all about performance, set in a world that seems strangely out of time.]

The Drop (2014) is an American crime drama film directed by Michaël R. Roskam, starring Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts, and John Ortiz.

In the end, socially reserved barman Tom Hardy saves neighbour Noomi Rapace from her psychologically disturbed, abusive former boyfriend, Matthias Schoenaerts, by murdering him as he attempts to hold-up his workplace, at the secret behest of the bar's manager, James Gandolfini, Hardy's uncle.

No longer able to afford his comatose father's spiralling healthcare costs, Gandolfini, a former small-time hoodlum, hatches a plot to rob his Chechen mob bosses by successively holding up the bar he lost to them, which he now runs with his nephew Hardy, and which is occasionally used to bank the daily proceeds of the mobsters' criminal activities.

Following the initial robbery, frustrated that Hardy has revealed a detail helpful to investigating police detective John Ortiz in identifying one of Gandolfini's secret accomplices, their mob bosses make it clear that the pair are expected to recover the stolen contents of the bar's cash register, provoking Gandolfini to murder, so as to leave the incriminating body part with the stolen loot for Hardy to find and return to the Chechens, who, in recognition, designate the bar for all deposits during the imminent Super-Bowl.

Knowing the night of the big take, but having murdered his sole remaining accomplice, who got cold feet following his incriminated partner's disappearance, Gandolfini recruits local thug, Schoenaerts, who has been intimidating Hardy since discovering the badly injured puppy he abused and left in his ex-girlfriend's trash, has been being cared for by Hardy, with her help.

Suspicious of Gandolfini calling in sick on such a profitable night for the bar, and confused by Schoenaerts' earlier failure to collect protection money he had demanded from him for the puppy, Hardy's nerves are set on edge when Schoenaerts shows up at the bar with a reluctant Rapace in tow and little interest in the cash Hardy has brought with him.

Unmoved by Schoenaerts' threatening demands, once the bar empties, that he should open the drop safe, Hardy calmly confesses that he is responsible for the local murder Schoenaerts had built his tough guy reputation on, and promptly shoots him in the same manner, calling in his Chechen bosses for help disposing of the evidence, who subsequently offer Hardy the job of running the bar, having executed Gandolfini.

Withholding her presence in the bar, as a witness, from both the Chechens and Ortiz, whose attention is now focused on Hardy for both the disappearance of Schoenaerts and the murder he claimed to have committed but which Ortiz knows him to be innocent of, Hardy approaches Rapace in the hope of continuing their friendship.


Despite wonderful performances from everyone on screen, save for the Chechen clichés, there's something that just doesn't quite ring true about this rather slight story that seems to hale from a bygone era of crime, involving plot twists that were far too easily divined, featuring yet another character that stretches the high functioning autistic envelope to include criminals that enjoy perfect recall but have a hard time relating to other people.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Drop_(film)

The Skeleton Twins (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER SUICIDE IS EVER THE SOLUTION?)

[Now for a bust of a movie that is pure drama despite some comic moments.]

The Skeleton Twins (2014) is an American drama film directed by Craig Johnson, starring Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Luke Wilson.

In the end, suicidally depressed serial cheating wife Kristen Wiig is saved from drowning herself by her suicidally depressed gay, child abuse victim, twin brother, Bill Hader.

Interrupted in the midst of her own suicide attempt by the news that her brother is in hospital recovering from his own failed suicide attempt, Wiig flies to Los Angeles and is persuaded to offer him a place to stay in her home in the New York neighbourhood where they grew up.

Meeting his exceedingly friendly and helpful brother-in-law, Luke Wilson, for the first time, Hader is surprised to learn that the couple are trying for a baby, something Wiig was adamantly against in her youth, a fact that she is annoyed to be reminded of by her brother in front of Wilson.

Hader further antagonises his sister when he unilaterally invites their estranged, New Age spiritualist mother to supper, over which old wounds are reopened, when Wiig accuses her of abandoning them for her new interracial family, following the suicide of their father.

Attempting to appease his sister by allowing her to demonstrate her skills as a dental hygienist, out of hours, at the practice where she works, the pair, high on laughing gas, swap secrets, Hader admitting he has experienced heterosexual sex, while Wiig reveals that not only is she sabotaging Wilson's attempts to start a family, but she is cheating on him with her scuba class instructor, the third such liaison she has embarked upon since they were married.

However, when the police find Hader drunk on the edge of a roof top, he keeps secret from Wiig the fact that he has hooked up with and then been rejected by an initially wary English teacher who has married and had a son since being forced to give up his post, as a result of Wiig uncovering his abuse of her brother as a teen, instead blaming his reckless behaviour on disappointment at not having succeeded since leaving school, as their father had assured him he would.

But when Wiig accidentally discovers, during Halloween celebrations, that Hader has been in contact with the abuser she tried to save him from, the siblings mutual support breaks down completely, Hader only making matters worse by cluing Wilson in on Wiig's birth-control subterfuge, leading to her confession of infidelity, that, despite having dumped her lover, ends in the breakup of her marriage.

The emotional confrontation between Wiig and her brother where each blames the other for ruining their chances of a happy life, prompts Hader to seek an explanation of what his abuse meant to his abuser, that finally confirms Wiig was correct in her estimation of events.

With her marriage over, and without the support of her brother, Wiig decides to finally act on her suicidal tendencies, that Hader only recognises in time to save her from, when she sends him a message reminiscent of his own original suicide note.


Despite remarkably convincing performances from both Hader and Wiig that perfectly capture the love-hate nature of sibling relationships and in particular the special bond that can exist between twins, it is hard to know what to take away from this unremittingly grim tale of despair and disappointment, other that the fact that if you're serious about committing suicide, you need to be a bit more secretive about it than either of these two characters manage.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Skeleton_Twins

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER GOOD TRIUMPHS OVER EVIL)

[There are some movie plot-lines that were just made to be ultra-busted. This franchise reboot is one such.]

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) is an American science fiction action comedy film, directed by Jonathan Liebesman, starring Megan Fox and William Fichtner.

In the end, four teenage anthropomorphic turtles, named after Renaissance artists, who were trained by their anthropomorphic rat sensei in the art of ninjutsu, save junior television news reporter, Megan Fox, and the rest of New York, from the evil machinations of a villainous ninjutsu master crime boss and his wealthy industrialist adopted son, William Fichtner.

"Cowabunga!"


Of course, there is a bit more than that to this movie, which is equal parts ludicrous exposition and barnstorming CGI effects action. Unfortunately, the immediate jeopardy evil plot-line is completely overshadowed by the heroes' preposterous origins story, reducing it to more of a curtain-raiser for the inevitable sequels, to come. But what saves Liebesman's creation is the genuinely laugh-out-loud humour of the characters and situations, that is in perfect keeping with the franchise's parody conception, and is bound to appeal to kids of all ages, and a fair few adults, too.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_(2014_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles

Fast Romance (2011)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHETHER GLASGOW IS A PLACE TO GO SPEED DATING?)

If you thought what I said about Keira Knightley's performance in Say When (2014) was unnecessarily cruel, then I am ashamed to say that I may be about to out-do myself, as this is very possibly the nastiest bust I have ever penned.

So buckle up, reader, and prepare for things to get messy, and that right soon.

[Now for a bust of a movie that, if you haven't seen yet, you're unlikely ever to. In which case, count yourself lucky.

Some might say that criticising a movie produced on a shoestring is unfair, because, by all accounts, this team employed the Bowfinger model of movie making*. Unfortunately, the movie they ended up with is no Chubby Rain.

Supposedly, it won some sort of audience award. But if that is true, I can only think that the audience must have been packed with the friends and relatives of those involved with its production. Either that or there were no other films in contention.]

Fast Romance (2011) is a Scottish romantic comedy film starring nobody you are ever likely to have heard of and directed by someone even less famous than that.

In the end, a disparate group of Glaswegians either do or don't make some sort of connection following a series of speed dating encounters.

(At this point, there would normally be a slightly more detailed account of the plot. But in this case, the less said, the better. Here, though, is an idea of the characters prepared to undertake an evening of 3 minute chances on love, in this woefully unfunny and unromantic tale. A pair of incurable romantics. One a terminally single Scots-Italian woman who seems unaware that Romeo and Juliet was set in Italy. The other a down trodden wall-flower, eclipsed by the obvious charms of her scheming office rival. Their soon to be married best friend, only there to provide moral support. A predatory con-man looking to fleece the solvent, desperately seeking someones off their feet. A tongue-tied postman computer-gamer, too shy to reveal his true feelings for the woman he daily delivers mail to. His unhappily divorced boss, seeking respite from his care-giving responsibilities at home. Sounds grim, doesn't it? You have no idea.)


I've seen internet reviews of this film that describe it as a "little gem" and rate it 9/10. Let me put the record straight.

Fast Romance is a movie made by people who clearly know movies, but who seem to have no idea how to make them. It is littered with film references, in particular, to, arguably the best movie ever made in Scotland, Bill Forsyth's coming-of-age comedy, Gregory's Girl (1981). But where Forsyth's story was simple and charming, Fast Romance is confused and charmless. And whereas Forsyth managed to coax natural performances out of a largely young and inexperienced cast, the acting in Fast Romance is mostly stilted and amateur, from grown-ups who seem more suited to pantomime gurning than big-screen exposure.

What acting talent there is, is poorly served by a script so lame that, had it been a horse, it would surly have been put out of its misery, well before a single frame was shot.

Fast Romance tells us nothing about love, life or romance in Glasgow. So if you're hoping to find any of that, perhaps you'd be better to look for it elsewhere.

*["Cash, every movie cost[s] $2,184", Robert K Bowfinger.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowfinger
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1504385/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory's_Girl

Say When (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW AT WHAT POINT TO INDICATE YOU'VE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS MOVIE?)

[The above spoiler alert joke only really works for the UK title of this movie.]

Laggies (2014) (released in the United Kingdom as Say When) is an American romantic comedy film directed by Lynn Shelton, starring Keira Knightley, Chloë Grace Moretz, and Sam Rockwell.

"When!"

In the end, twenty-something, perpetual woman-child Keira Knightley ditches her clique of high-school friends, that includes her would-be fiancée, for middle-aged, divorced divorce lawyer, Sam Rockwell, father of high-school graduating, teenage, only-daughter, random acquaintance, Chloë Grace Moretz.

Unwilling to engage with adult responsibilities gradually being adopted by friends from high-school she finds increasingly hard to relate to, Knightley, horrified when her long-time boyfriend attempts to propose marriage during her best friend's wedding banquet, finds an excuse to excuse herself from proceedings, after discovering her ever-supportive father engaged in intimate relations with someone other than her mother, his wife.

Buttonholed on her way into a late-night convenience store, Knightley finds herself relating to high-school senior Moretz and her group of under-age friends, with whom she forms and instant bond, spending the rest of the night in their company, after agreeing to buy alcohol on their behalf.

Unperturbed by his earlier failure, Knightley's boyfriend persists with his proposal of marriage, which she accepts, after he, misconstruing her reticence as an aversion to elaborate celebrations, offers immediate secret elopement as the solution to her nerves.

But when her boyfriend then suggests they wait until after Knightley's friend's honeymoon departure, playing for time, Knightley proposes a further delay so that she can attend a personal growth seminar recommended by him, that she has long resisted.

However, she never makes it to the seminar, when Moretz, asking Knightley to impersonate her absent mother, enlists her help in placating a school guidance councillor who is concerned over Moretz lack of preparedness for her impending graduation.

Now doubly indebted to her, Moretz is persuaded to offer Knightley somewhere to stay, on the pretext of being between accommodations, but is discovered, on the first night, sleeping on Moretz's bedroom floor, by her father, Sam Rockwell, who questions her closely, before deciding to put her up in the spare room, for the night.

Unsure of her motives, Rockwell decides to work from home, the next day, in order to keep an eye on Knightley, whose playful antics with the family's pet tortoise, and sympathetic attitude towards Moretz gradually win him over.

The friendship between Knightley and his daughter is further cemented when Moretz, bunking off school, has Knightley accompany her on a clandestine trip to visit her estranged mother, a self-obsessed lingerie catalogue model, who ran out on Rockwell and her daughter when she realised she had little idea of how to be a good parent.

Aware of his daughter's growing attachment to Knightley, Rockwell steals her away from a sleepover Moretz is having with one of her friends, for shots at a nearby restaurant bar, just as it is closing.

Dis-inhibited by the alcohol, the pair engage in a passionate kiss on their way home, and end up secretly spending the night together, only for Moretz to spy them canoodling in the kitchen, the next morning.

Initially uncomfortable with the idea, Moretz eventually accepts that Knightley might be her father's best shot at happiness, following his marriage break-up, until she uncovers the truth behind Knightley's sojourn, during a trip with her friends to arrange formal-wear for their upcoming graduation dance.

The revelation leads to a chain reaction of heated exchanges between the group during the ride home, resulting in an accident which lands Knightley in jail, after she decides to take the fall for the young driver who was drunk at the wheel, and is herself discovered to be under the influence, having accepted a hair-of-the-dog hangover remedy from Rockwell, that morning.

Assigned his legal services, Knightley destroys any hope of a relationship with Rockwell, by confessing her impending nuptials, before he reveals she is to be discharged with a warning.

Returning to her boyfriend, Knightley is surprised when Moretz's sleepover friend shows up with the evening dress she bought and an invitation to the dance, saying that Moretz is missing her council.

Determined to go through with their secret elopement, after having come to terms with her father's momentary lapse and recognised her parents' commitment to work things out as a couple, it isn't until her boyfriend fails to resist involving their clique of friends in arrangements, that Knightley realises she has to break up with him in order to get away from them.

So after advising Moretz, at the dance, to take a chance on the guy she has so far been unwilling to commit herself to, Knightley sets about winning back Rockwell, which she does with a carton of wine, and a high-school style love note.


Once again Knightley impresses with her ability to secure leading roles that far exceed her acting talents. This is not the first time she has been mistaken by a casting director for some kind of female Hugh Grant, which is fantastic news for Grant, who is made to look very good in comparison.

Her awkwardness in the role is not helped by being out-acted by every other cast member, including the bit-players, (I was going to include the tortoise in that comparison, but realised that would be unfair... to the tortoise, lacking theatrical training, and only a wrangler to rely on for direction) none of whom are well served by a script that gives the impression of having been spit-balled together by a gaggle of the kind of women found endlessly discussing female issues on day-time television, or possibly their daughters, which is a great shame, because Rockwell and Moretz really shine, despite the stultifying presence of "Coco Mademoiselle".

In fact, I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit to watch Rockwell and Moretz.

Unfortunately, that's exactly what Laggies requires.

If, like me, you're wondering what the movie's title means, neither Urban Dictionary, nor Lynn Shelton are much help on the matter. The most the movie's director will say is that it means something to the movie's screen-writer and her clique of friends from high-school. Hang on! Is it just me, or is that starting to sound familiar to anyone else?

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laggies
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=laggy
Director Lynn Shelton talks about the meaning of the title of her film Laggies

Interstellar (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER LOVE IS A FORCE THAT CAN REACH ACROSS SPACE-TIME, LIKE THE FORCE OF GRAVITY?)

[Busts aren't really meant to be read before seeing a movie. But this is one of those stories that appears to swallow its own tail. So you might want to prepare yourself before wrestling with it in the wild.

Remember, in a bust, facts are presented as they are relevant to the plot, which is not always the order in which they are revealed on screen.]

Interstellar (2014) is a science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan, starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine.

In the end, theoretical physicist, Jessica Chastain, receives critical help, via her intrepid astronaut father, Matthew McConaughrey, in solving an equation that enables the evacuation of the remnants of humanity from an Earth that has become uninhabitable.

Growing up with her widowed farming father, McConaughey, a former space engineer and test pilot, forced into agriculture when environmental catastrophe resulted in the world-wide collapse of civilised, industrial society, young Chastain is convinced that her bedroom is haunted by a poltergeist, in reality McConaughey trying to communicate with her from the future, trapped in a higher dimension behind her bookcase.

Dismissive of his daughter's paranormal interpretation, following several machinery failures he attributes to a gravitational anomaly, McConaughey determines that a pattern of lines left on her bedroom floor after a dust storm are the result of the anomaly and represent a set of geographic coordinates, that lead him and his daughter to a secret space research facility headed by his former boss, theoretical physicist, Michael Caine.

Explaining that they are humanity's last desperate attempt to escape the doomed planet through a wormhole in space that has mysteriously appeared near the orbit of Saturn, McConaughey is re-recruited by Caine onto the program, despite the pleas of his daughter, who correctly figures out that the message future McConaughey is trying to send himself, is that he should stay.

Following in the tracks of a number of loan pathfinder astronauts sent ahead, many years previously, McConaughey pilots his small crew through the wormhole, identifying three worlds that deserve further investigation, the first of which proves disastrous to the mission, when their landing craft is swamped and almost destroyed by gigantic tidal waves whipped up by the extreme gravitation of the black-hole at the heart of the system they have arrived at.

Having lost one of their party and despite only being delayed on the planet by a matter of hours, due to the time-warping effect of the nearby collapsed star, on their return they find the crew-member left in sole charge of the mother ship has aged by decades, much of which were spent in sleep hibernation, having almost given up hope of ever seeing his crew-mates again.

Driven to despair by recorded messages that reveal his young son, left in charge of the family farm, is now older than him, with children of his own, McConaughey, desperate to find a suitable planet and return home, determines their next target should be the world showing most promise, which turns out to be a bleak, frozen wasteland.

Reviving the planet's pathfinder from an indefinite period of hibernation, McConaughey discovers, too late, that he faked the data used to lure them to its surface, knowing that it was his only chance of rescue, given the true nature of the mission, which is to find a home, not for Earth's doomed population, but for an embryonic seed bank that they are carrying with them, that Caine's scientist daughter, Anne Hathaway, is in charge of, a fact confirmed by Caine's deathbed confession to Chastain, who grew up to become his successor on the program.

Only just managing to save it from total destruction, after the pathfinder, attempting to commandeer the mother-ship using the crew's lander, instead knocks it towards the planet's atmosphere, McConaughey, resigned to the fact that return to Earth is now impossible, resorts to a suicidal navigational maneuver in order to ensure Hathaway and the genetic cargo reach the third target world, that leaves him and one of the mission's robotic assistants hurtling into the black-hole.

But, far from being ripped apart by its extreme gravity, McConaughey finds himself not only able to communicate via his space-suit's intercom with the robot, whose instrumentation he had configured to study the nature of the singularity, but also with his daughter, who has been drawn back to the family farm, looking for clues that might help her solve the gravitational problem Caine was struggling with.

Realising that he is somehow responsible for his inter-dimensional state in which he can reach back in time to his daughter, McConaughey succeeds in first directing the pair to Caine, and then communicating the robot's analysis of the black-hole's secrets through the flittering second hand of his stopped wrist watch parting gift to her, at which point the super-dimension collapses, transporting him, via a brief encounter Hathaway experienced as the crew originally passed through the wormhole, back to Saturn, where he is miraculously rescued, along with the mission robot, and taken to an artificial satellite, named after his daughter, that acts as a staging post for humanity's evacuation of Earth.

Reunited with his dying daughter, now barely a third her age, she encourages McConaughey to resume his space odyssey and seek out Hathaway, who is shown to have succeeded in establishing the human genetic outpost, on the far side of the wormhole.


Although the cast, when interviewed, resort to describing Christopher, and his writing partner brother Jonathan Nolans' movie as "epic", which it is only in terms of running time, the impression left by what is undeniably a very entertaining bit of hokum, is of having watched a pair of master magicians perform an extraordinarily elaborate conjuring trick, that you are certain could not possibly be real, but which you are at a complete loss to explain.

I must confess that a particularly jaundice review of this film, in a magazine named after the people from the city "So good they named it twice", had prepared me for the worst excesses of Nolan pseud'ness. And yet, despite that, or maybe because of it, I find myself wanting to declare, in my most "Cockneyfied" accent:

# Clap 'ands, stamp yer feet
Bangin' on the big bass drum
What a picture, what a picture
Um-tiddly-um-pum-um-pum-pum
Stick it in your fam'ly album #

(I'm pretty sure that must have been the chorus Nolan sang to fire his actors up before each take ;)

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_a_Sixpence_(film)

Prometheus (2012)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE ORIGINS OF THE ALIEN (1979) ALIEN?)

[I'm not going to pretend that this bust is anything more than an excuse to comment on what was for me, at least, a bit of a let down.]

Prometheus (2012) is an Anglo-American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott, starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, and Charlize Theron.

In the end, spacefaring archaeologist Noomi Rapace encounters an ancient survivor of the extraterrestrial super-race responsible for life on Earth, and unwittingly spawns the progenitor of a species of super-predator with a turbo-evolutionary parasitic life-cycle.

Convinced that ancient cave art is proof of the extraterrestrial origins of life on Earth, mega-wealthy space-industrialist, Guy Pearce, nearing the end of his life, mounts an interstellar voyage of discovery, lead by his daughter, Charlize Theron, in the hope of learning the secret of immortality.

Roused from an extended period of stasis, unaware that Pearce has travelled with them, the crew set down on a barren planet near a series of artificial looking mounds, one of which they set out to explore.

Finding the structure riddled with tunnels, the party discover the headless remains of a long dead, giant humanoid, that a holographic projection they trigger shows was killed when a massive overhead stone door slammed shut during a panicked evacuation.

Opening the door reveals an elephantine severed head and further giant corpses, in a cavernous chamber dominated by a gigantic statue of a recognisably human head, surrounded by a large number of stone flasks that immediately begin to leak their contents.

With the party forced, by an approaching storm, to return to their ship, a pair of geologists, who, finding themselves first lost and then cut off, after having earlier decided to head back separately, return to the chamber seeking shelter for the night, only to both be attacked and killed by large snake like creatures that developed rapidly from tiny worms in the chamber's soil floor, since the flasks started leaking.

Examination of the grotesque head recovered from the chamber by Rapace reveals it to be a helmet containing a giant human head resembling the chamber's monolith, tests proving it shares the same genetic heritage as humans.

Delighted with their momentous discovery, Rapace celebrates by having sex with her archaeologist colleague and life partner, neither of them aware that he has secretly been infected with the contents of one of the stone flasks, surreptitiously removed from the chamber by the mission's caretaker artificial intelligence, Michael Fassbender, an android designed by Pearce to maintain the ship and see to the needs of the crew and himself while they are in stasis.

Returning to the chamber, the crew discover the dead geologists, and the monstrously evolved worm-snakes, just as Rapace's partner starts showing disturbing symptoms, which escalate so rapidly, that by the time they make it back to the ship, mission leader Theron refuses him entry, and at his request, flame-throwers him to death.

Appalled by this turn of events, Rapace is horrified to discover she is pregnant, despite being infertile, with a squid-like creature that she uses an automated surgery unit, in the medical bay of the ship's lifeboat, to remove.

Heavily self-tranquillized, following the procedure, Rapace confronts Theron, only to uncover Pearce's presence on-board, and him preparing to lead a party to a still-living giant, Fassbender has separately discovered in a life support capsule, part of a craft located within the structure.

However, before they can leave for their rendezvous, the ship is attacked by the zombie-like corpse of one of the dead geologists, killing several of the crew, leading the ship's captain to speculate that what they have stumbled upon is not the remnants of the civilisation that seeded humanity, but a purposefully isolated biological warfare facility that suffered some catastrophic failure that lead to its dereliction.

Unperturbed, Pearce has Fassbender rouse the sleeping giant, and explain Pearce's ambition to meet his makers and learn their wisdom, only for the giant to rip Fassbender's head off and kill Pearce and his body guards, before engaging the craft's drive and navigation systems, that reveal Earth to be its intended destination.

Exiting the craft, Rapace manages to warn the ship's captain of the danger its departure poses to Earth, should it escape, prompting him to ram the craft out of the sky, in the process crushing Theron, who was attempting to flee in an escape pod.

Reaching the shattered lifeboat the captain had ejected as a refuge for her, Rapace receives a warning from what remains of Fassbender, that the giant survived the crash and is headed her way.

Discovering the aborted squid foetus has grown to monstrously fierce proportions, Rapace releases it from the medical bay, just at the giant attacks, allowing her to escape, collect Fassbender's remains and make off, with his help, in another alien craft located in the structure complex, leaving the monster to impregnate the giant with a chest-bursting alien off-spring. And so it begins...


Unfortunately, this is an example of a production that ignored the first rule of science fiction, which is "If you're going to reboot a franchise, get J. J. Abrams to do it."

Rather rashly, it also ignored the second rule of science fiction, which is "IF YOU'RE GOING TO REBOOT A FRANCHISE, GET J. J. ABRAMS TO DO IT."

Of course, it is entirely understandable that someone like Ridley Scott would want to wrest back one of his (and Dan O'Bannon and H. R. Giger's) most iconic creations from the grip of adolescent beat-em-up-gamer-generation film-makers, and demonstrate that science fiction movies can be about more than just my-alien-is-better-than-your-alien school-yard arguments.

And certainly there is no lack of ambition to the tale he aims to tell, or the sumptuous gorgeousness of the images he uses to do it. But in hitching his creation myth chariot to the discredited ravings of a lunatic from the land of cuckoo clocks, Scott has really betrayed the science fiction purity of its original concept, and firmly planted this movie alongside the science fantasy offering of those he might have sought to distance it from.

Because, although it is entirely possible that in the vastness of reality, some extraterrestrial organism might have arisen and evolved with acid for blood, silica reinforced exoskeleton armour and a nasty habit of parasitizing other species to incubate its young, there is no evidence (let me just repeat myself, for emphasis) absolutely no evidence, whatsoever, that little green men pooped in the primordial soup in order to kick-start life on Earth.

And to try to justify your "little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum" proposition by suggesting that NASA and the Vatican are singing from the same hymn-sheet when it comes to matters creational, is to so misrepresent both organisations stances on the subject, that it is beyond risible.

You can fool some of the geeks, some of the time, Ridders. But you can't fool all of the geeks, all of the time. (Or maybe that should be "some of the Greeks" given the movie's title?)

Perhaps Scott can be forgiven, though, for having taken his eye off the ball with this and his, frankly bonkers, tarantino-ish pulp-fiction-esque The Counselor (2013) given the personal trauma his family tragically suffered.

Let's just hope there's still plenty of lead left in his directorial pencil, because even his a-bit-of-a-let-down productions are better than practically anything anyone else cares to put up on the big screen.

By the way, was absolutely anyone surprised to learn that it will be man's hubris in creating a free-thinking automata servant, that ultimately decides it knows what's best for us and instigates the greatest threat to our survival? I don't know about you guys, but I think it's time we called a halt to all this research into artificial intelligence. Don't you? :P

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus_(2012_film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._J._Abrams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_von_D%C3%A4niken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Counselor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_9000

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2013)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF CHARLIE COUNTRYMAN'S DEATH IS NECESSARY?)

[You'd think that with such a self-explanatory title, a bust of this movie's plot would be entirely unnecessary. But you'd be wrong.

I must apologise for once again describing a character as someone's "true love". It's just that there seems to be an awful lot of them about, lately.]

The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman (2013) is an American-Romanian adventure drama film directed by Fredrik Bond, starring Shia LaBeouf, Evan Rachel Wood, and Mads Mikkelsen.

In the end, jet-setting, hobo with an iPod, adventure seeker, Shia LaBeouf is saved by crack-shot cellist and true love of a few days, Evan Rachel Wood, from certain death at the hands of her violent, ominously fatalistic gangster-enforcer ex-husband, Mads Mikkelsen.

Following the confused advice of a pill-induced spirit vision of his dead mother to travel to Bucharest, LaBeouf finds himself seated next to a salty old Romanian, flying home after a bucket-list visit to the States, who consoles him over the recent death of his mother by recollecting the sad loss of his own wife, many years previously.

Charmed by his candour and friendliness, LaBeouf is later shaken to discover the old man has passed away, in his sleep.

Forced to remain next to the body, when cabin crew are unable to re-seat him, LaBeouf experiences another pill-induced spirit vision, this time of the old man asking him to pass on a gift, together with a message in Romanian, to his daughter, when they land.

Despite a run-in with airport security, when he eventually passes on the message, LaBeouf discovers it was the father's pet-name for his daughter, Rachel Wood, who he is immediately and profoundly attracted to. So much so, that when he later spots her parked by the side of the street, he demands to be let out of the taxi he is travelling in.

Explaining that she was too upset to keep up with ambulance carrying her father's body, LaBeouf offers to drive, but, paying more attention to Rachel Wood that the chaotic traffic, ends up causing an accident that flips the ambulance, when they catch up with it.

Deciding to ride with her father's body in the replacement vehicle, LaBeouf is left with Rachel Wood's car and only the clue that she plays in the Bucharest opera's orchestra, to go on.

Eventually finding his way to the opera house, LaBeouf manages to slip into the building behind a musician, who he follows to the gruff and agitated orchestra leader, who gives LaBeouf a very hard time, until a call from Rachel Wood confirms him as a friend.

Permitted to remain for that night's performance, LaBeouf spots another audience member paying keen attention to Rachel Wood's playing, that turns out to be her ex-husband, Mikkelsen, whose continued interest in her is clearly unwanted.

Annoyed with both men's masculine posturing, Rachel Wood dismisses them, directing LaBeouf to a nearby youth hostel, where he is roomed with a pair of excitable clubbers from Britain, one of whom is trying to break into the local porn industry, who encourage LaBeouf to join them for a drink, which they duly spike.

Out of his head on acid, LaBeouf encounters a contrite Mikkelsen, before running into Rachel Wood, who he insists on tagging along with, to her bemusement, until she finally shakes him off on the steps to a subway station, with some promising sounding words of Romanian, whispered in his ear.

Deliriously happy with himself, LaBeouf races through the streets, until he is struck by a taxi, and suffers a portentous hallucination of Mikkelsen.

Having somehow found his way back to the hostel, the banged-up LaBeouf is disturbed when his room-mates return, one of whom is suffering the extreme consequence of a Viagra overdose, help with which they decide to seek at a local strip club, where they get into trouble with the club's owner, a gangster and former associate of Mikkelsen's, keen to know his current whereabouts.

Released on the understanding that he has 24 hours to serve up Mikkelsen, LaBeouf spends most of the day camped outside the opera house, until the orchestra leader emerges and reluctantly agrees to take him to Rachel Wood's father's house, where a party celebrating his life is under way.

Delighted with LaBeouf's arrival, Rachel Wood ushers him aside, to deliver the kiss she had secretly promised him in Romanian, after which he confesses his encounter with Mikkelsen's threatening former associate, that concerns her considerably, as does Mikkelsen's violently intimidating behaviour towards LaBeouf, when he later interrupts the party, and Rachel Wood is forced to see him off with a passing shot from a revolver, that brings celebrations to an end.

Alone, together, Rachel Wood explains her doomed romance with Mikkelsen and the reason behind his and his former associate's renewed interest in her, that her well informed orchestra leader has just revealed, which is an incriminating video her father was using against the pair, that they are now both interested in recovering.

The next morning, finding Rachel Wood gone, after a passionate night spent together, following LaBeouf's declaration of love, he chances upon a tape with a label that reminds him of something her father mentioned on the plane, that turns out to be security camera footage of a bloody massacre, Mikkelsen and his partner can easily be seen to be the perpetrators of.

Charging off in search of Rachel Wood, he finds her talking to Mikkelsen, who attacks LaBeouf viciously, when he unwisely reveals knowledge of the tape's existence, despite Rachel Wood's own blank denials.

Lucky to survive, LaBeouf is taken into custody, after Mikkelsen flees, before Rachel Wood's orchestra leader bribes police to run LaBeouf out of town.

But on discovering the hostel from where he is collecting his belongings, swarming with gangsters, LaBeouf makes a break for it, and despite losing his perusers in the subway, runs into them again, waiting for him at Rachel Wood's father's house, where he finds the video player empty.

Threatening the lives of LaBeouf and his hostaged room-mates, Mikkelsen's gangster associate is interrupted by a call from Rachel Wood, who bargains for their release, in exchange for the tape.

However, when LaBeouf meets up with her and Mikkelsen, and Rachel Wood explains her destiny lies with Mikkelsen and not LaBeouf, experiencing another vision of his dead mother, LaBeouf rashly decides he must risk all for love, and save her from her ex-husband, which just gets him into further trouble, as Mikkelsen easily subdues him, and LaBeouf ends up dangling head-first from the end of a rope, beside a gigantic set of sluice-gates.

Offering Rachel Wood the chance to demonstrate her renewed commitment to him, Mikkelsen hands her the revolver, with which to shoot LaBeouf. But she deliberately misses, just as police arrive at the scene, shooting Mikkelsen dead, when he pretends to pull a gun on them, allowing everyone to live happily, ever after, or thereabouts.

There are some movie plot lines that progress effortlessly towards a conclusion, and others that lurch along so clunkily, that they give the impression that the director was making it up as they went along. In this case, that might have been due to cuts forced on the production in the edit. Or it might simply have been the result of tossing a bunch of intriguing character and scenario ideas into the air and seeing where they fell.

Whatever the cause, the resulting mess is hard to enjoy as entertainment, although the stonking soundtrack from Buffy the Vampire Slayer stalwart, Christophe Beck, does drive the experience of it along with terrific energy. It's just a shame that the considerable on-screen talent, who are often required to perform sanity-defying volte-faces of emotion and motivation, couldn't have been put to more productive use.

Unless you have a particular thing for former ginger wizards, and the unedifying prospect of a maniacally high Rupert Grint leering over a bar full of fantasized naked women, or getting his infeasibly large chemically induced trouser-schnitzel ground on by a bevy of strip-club dancers really appeals, I suggest we draw a veil over proceeding, and agree to never speak of it, again.

[If this is, in fact, the reason LaBeouf passed on the role Daniel Radcliffe took up in Horns (2013) then he might very well need to have a serious talk with his own representation.

Top marks, though, to Rachel Wood for achieving a very convincing and fetching Ziggy Stardust look.]

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Countryman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_the_Vampire_Slayer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggy_Stardust

This Is Where I Leave You (2014)

(SPOILER ALERT: DO NOT READ THIS POST IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHETHER ONLY THOSE IN MID-LIFE SUFFER MID-LIFE CRISES?)

[After reading this bust, you may be wondering how such a star-packed piece could turn out the way it does? Let's face it, they should all have known better. The fact the the screenplay was written by the author of the book on which the movie is based, may prove to be significant. Consider this a warning.]

This Is Where I Leave You (2014) is an American comedy-drama film directed by Shawn Levy, starring Jason Bateman, Tina Fey, Adam Driver, Rose Byrne, Corey Stoll, Kathryn Hahn, Connie Britton, Timothy Olyphant, Dax Shepard, and Jane Fonda.

In the end, separated 40-something, unemployed radio producer, father-to-be, Jason Bateman is talked into abandoning his even-keeled life, to date, and into joining in with the mid-life crises being experienced by his friends and family.

Coerced, along with his two brothers and sister, by their mother, Jane Fonda, into a traditional seven day period of contemplative mourning for their deceased father, confined within the family home, Bateman initially attempts to conceal the recent breakup of his marriage and loss of job, after catching his boorish, blank-shooting, shock-jock boss, Dax Shepard, in bed with his wife, excusing her absence from the wake on concocted health grounds.

Under constant needling from his sister, Tina Fey, whose own marriage has hit the buffers due to the regret she feels for abandoning her true love, Timothy Olyphant, the son of a family friend and neighbour, after he sustained a brain injury as the result of a past car accident that Fey was involved in, Bateman reveals all.

His separation is thrown into doubt, however, when his wife shows up unexpectedly, with the news that she is pregnant by him, prompting wife of his older brother and ex-girlfriend, Kathryn Hahn, to throw herself at Bateman in the hope that he, too, can get her pregnant, something his brother, Corey Stoll, has so far failed to do, despite Hahn enduring prolonged fertility treatments.

Persuaded by Fey that the way to get over his wife's infidelity, so that they can get back together, is for Bateman to be briefly unfaithful with local girl Rose Byrne, who he keeps running into and who still has a crush on him, no sooner has Bateman done the deed, than he has to rush to his wife's side, after she develops a complication with the pregnancy.

Despite realising, after Shepard shows up at his wife's hospital bed with the sole intention of handing her back to him, that he is going to have to have some sort of relationship with his wife, for the sake of their baby, Bateman nevertheless wants his romance with Byrne to be more than a one-time thing.

Suddenly overcome with jealously and frustration on discovering his, still not pregnant wife being consoled by Bateman, Stoll chases his brother out of the house and proceeds to pummel him, in front of a growing crowd of onlookers, until Fonda distracts everyone's attention by engaging in a prolonged lesbian kiss with their neighbour, Olyphant's mother, her secret lover.

In the aftermath of their mother's stunning revelation, Bateman resolves the brothers' long-standing dispute over the future of their father's sporting goods store, by persuading Stoll to take on their younger brother, recovered addict and reformed drug grower, Adam Driver, whose wayward promiscuity has just lost him the financial safety net he had found in older woman, Connie Britton, his therapist.

With his sister resigned to rejoining her husband, despite her continuing feelings for Olyphant, after assuring Byrne that he intends to continue their fledgling relationship, once he has sorted out the mess of his own, Bateman steals Driver's two-seater sports car, left to him by Britton, and heads north to Maine, an emblematic destination he had often contemplated, but never before had the nerve to seek.


Oy vey, this family likes to talk! The whole movie is basically exposition, peppered with one-liners, of decidedly variable quality, mostly referring to Fonda's recent extreme breast enhancement, her embarrassing candour over her married sex-life, and their evangelical rabbi's erection-related childhood nickname.

I never got a good enough look at the deceased to be sure of the gene pool the siblings issued from. But it wouldn't have surprised me if the father had turned out to be Larry David. They talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. And then they all talk some more.

They talked so much, in fact, that by the time Bateman got to deliver his climactic speech, the part of my brain that processes language had switched off. Very fortunately, the person he was delivering the speech to, thought it so good, that she handily summarised it, immediately after he stopped talking, for me and all the other people in the audience, who had similarly tuned out. Phew! And then he started talking, again. Argh!

Unless your idea of a good time is attending a Therapy Addicts Anonymous meeting, this is where you should probably leave this movie.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Is_Where_I_Leave_You