Review #1,220: 'Kong: Skull Island' (2017)

The title of this latest movie to feature cinema's most famous giant ape, King Kong, refers to the beast's misty and unexplored home in Indonesia, or the Pacific Ocean, or the Indian Ocean, depending on which incarnation you happen to be watching. It's a world known to movie fans to be full of prehistoric or unnaturally gigantic monsters, and things are very much the same in Jordan Vogt-Roberts' entertaining big-budget update. Anyone fearing a retread of the story told back in 1933 and never bettered since can relax, as Kong: Skull Island is less interested in exploring the incredibly fragile relationship between man and nature than it is with smashing helicopters to pieces in front of a gorgeous sunset.

Both a follow-up to 2014's Godzilla and a build-up to the upcoming smack-down cross-over between two of the big screen's most famous abominations, Kong carries on the tone by making its human characters infinitely less interesting than the big guy we all came to see. Early trailers and posters before the film's release teased a tone akin to the great Vietnam War movies, especially Apocalypse Now, but there are little similarities other than the famous shot from Coppola's movie of helicopters flying by a setting sun and the 1973 setting. This is big, dumb fun, and little more, but that is by no means a bad thing. Peter Jackson tried earnestly back in 2005 to tell the traditional story with a mixture of heart and spectacle, with mixed results. It climaxed with the ape's relocation to the mainland and his tragic end at the top of the Empire State Building, but here, once government agents/scientists Bill Randa (John Goodman) and Houston Brooks (Corey Hawkins) seal the required funds and hit the island, we never leave.

At just shy of 2 hours, Skull Island struggles to handle the unnecessarily expansive cast of characters, and boy are they bland. Tom Hiddleston's British Special Forces captain James Conrad (an obvious nod to Heart of Darkness author Joseph Conrad) is the closest thing we have to a lead, but this is only because he is handsome and warns the others of danger. They are escorted by Samuel L. Jackson's Preston Packard, a Lieutenant Colonel in charge of a helicopter squadron called the Sky Devils whose idea of scientific study is to bomb the shit out of the island upon arrival. Among the rag-tag bunch of monkey-food soldiers are the grizzled Cole (Shea Whigham), and Jack Chapman (Toby Kebbell, who also performs the motion-capture for Kong), an eager-to-please young buck with a questionable American accent. In a somewhat baffling move, they also invite photojournalist Mason Weaver (Brie Larson) on a mission you would expect the Army to want to keep quiet.

At one point, I counted three concurrent storylines. Supporting characters such as John Ortiz's Nieves and Tian Jing's San are played by familiar faces but serve absolutely no purpose, and only John C. Reilly's stranded World War II veteran Hank Marlow brings any heart and soul to the story. Yet, Roberts knows how to make carnage look incredibly cool, and this is the meanest, leanest and biggest Kong to date. Helicopters are torn to shreds, a giant octopus (living in fresh water?) is brutally devoured, and soldiers are swallowed whole - Kong doesn't have time to share a tender moment with a beautiful woman lying in his palm. When the action shifts away from the puny humans and to the titular powerhouse, the film is so damn exciting that you can, for a short time, forgive the film's many misgivings and cliches. It's unlikely that the 1933 original will ever be topped, so it's pleasing that Kong: Skull Island at least makes an attempt to try something a little different. For a B-movie dressed up as an A-movie with only one memorable character who isn't simian, it certainly entertains.


Directed by: Jordan Vogt-Roberts
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, Brie Larson, John C. Reilly, John Goodman, Corey Hawkins, Toby Kebbell, Shea Whigham
Country: USA/China/Australia/Canada

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,198: 'A Monster Calls' (2016)

The idea of a protagonist delving head-first into a realm of fantasy to escape the traumas of the real world is one that is employed by film-makers frequently, enabling them to inject an independent spirit into what could appear to some as a big-budget crowd-pleaser. Although these kinds of movies seem to pop up every year, the fantasy angle remains an incredibly effective tool, and occasionally a bona fide masterpiece will emerge such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (2006). While del Toro's film saw its central character enter the titular labyrinth to escape a fascistic stepfather and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War, J.A. Bayona's A Monster Calls, based on the novel of the same name by Patrick Ness, sets its focus on a more personal and relatable tragedy. Young Conor O'Malley (Lewis MacDougall) is struggling to deal with bullies, a strict grandmother and his mother's terminal cancer.

His young mother, played with incredible warmth by Felicity Jones, spends most of her time in bed as her body becomes exhausted from multiple hospital treatments. Conor watches her become weaker and weaker as his grandmother (Sigourney Weaver) tends to her, and spends his hours in school terrified of bully Harry (James Melville). Struggling to sleep, he spends most of his nights drawing, finding refuge in his art. One night, he watches as the yew tree on the hill in the distance grows limbs and pulls itself from the ground, bounding towards Conor's bedroom window with fiery eyes. Voiced by a gravelly Liam Neeson, the Monster promises to tell Conor three stories, and insists that the boy tell him the fourth in return. The stories, which tell of good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things, seem nonsensical to Conor, but he gradually learns of the complexity of being human and dealing with grief and trauma.

With a reported budget of only $43 million, the special effects are incredibly effective in bringing the monster to life. He is not your usual kid's cuddly best friend, but an intimidating mass of branches and roots with a fondness for demolition who takes out most of Conor's bedroom when we first meet him. Yet spectacle is the last thing on Bayona's mind. The film's title and trailer may suggest a film to take your kids too, but A Monster Calls is a grounded and subdued drama similar to Bayona's breakthrough, the elegant and genuinely scary horror film The Orphanage (2007). While the emotional moments tread familiar ground and with this comes a sense of manipulation, there is a honesty to the performances, especially by the sad-eyed MacDougall, that help make this a lip-quivering experience. It didn't receive much attention during awards season and will no doubt pass most people by, but A Monster Calls is compelling study of a young boy struggling to understand his feelings and the events going on in the grown-up world around him.


Directed by: J.A. Bayona
Starring: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson, Toby Kebbell
Country: UK/Spain/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #1,076: 'Warcraft: The Beginning' (2016)

It was only a matter of time before the massive online role-playing game World of Warcraft was adapted for the big screen. With high fantasy still hugely popular thanks to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and HBO's Game of Thrones, now seemed the ideal time to bring Warcraft's world of orcs, mages, trolls and elves to the cinema-going audience. Yet even with a talented director at the helm, Duncan Jones, Warcraft flopped hard domestically, but proved such a smash-hit in China that there's now talk of a sequel tailored solely for the Chinese market. That little factoid, symbolic of the increasing importance of overseas box-office to U.S. productions, is probably the only interesting thing to emerge from the film.

Somewhere in this tale of giant green orcs, giant grey orcs, magical portals, hairy men, hairier mages, grumpy dwarves and huge CGI battles, there's the faint whiff of a plot that focuses on both sides of a war between the peaceful humans and a brutal hoard of orcs. In order to cater for us noobs - those of us who have never spent days slurping energy drinks and munching on Doritos in front of our computer playing the game - writers Jones and Charles Leavitt spend most of the film explaining this world to us and the many factions that operate within it. The main focus on both sides of the battle is Durotan (Toby Kebbell), an orc chieftain with a pregnant partner, and Anduin Lothar (Travis Fimmel), a stock warrior-type with a charisma vacuum.

Durotan is under the command of warlock Gul'dan (Daniel Wu), who has already sucked the life out of one world using a dangerous magic called 'fel' and has used sorcery to open a portal into the next world, Azeroth. Lothar, observing the devastation caused by one of their attacks, comes across mage Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer), who wants to bring the traces of fel to the attention of Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster) and the king Llane Wrynn (Dominic Cooper). When an orc scouting party are beaten by Lothar and his fellow humans, they capture half-orc slave Garona (Paula Patton) and send Durotan back to the hoard defeated. However, seeing the devastation Gul'dan is causing to the land and his dismissal of honourable orc tradition, Durotan secretly plans to team up with the humans to defeat the evil tyrant and free his people.

I actually quite enjoyed the opening 30 minutes of Warcraft. Unhappy with portraying yet another man vs. evil orcs story, Jones' decision to give them both a voice is a breathe of fresh air. But this thoughtful approach quickly gives away to a textbook of cliches, from the humble warrior with a great destiny to the annoying young sidekick who just may be the one to save them all. And don't expect a complete film, as the 'Beginning' in the title means exactly that. Clearly the film-makers were banking on squeezing a trilogy out of this, and don't bother to give us an actual conclusion that would make us want to see a next instalment. With daft names that anyone unfamiliar with the world of Azeroth won't remember, you'll be too busy trying to figure out what's going on to care about many of the characters, with only Kebbell - delivering another impressive motion-capture performance - and Foster getting through it with their reputation in tact. And so the search for a decent video game adaptation goes on.


Directed by: Duncan Jones
Starring: Travis Fimmel, Paula Patton, Ben Foster, Dominic Cooper, Toby Kebbell, Ben Schnetzer, Daniel Wu, Ruth Negga
Country: China/Canada/Japan/USA

Rating: **

Tom Gillespie

Review #945: 'Fantastic Four' (2015)

Unless you have been living under a rock these past few months or pay little attention to online chatter, Fantastic Four arrived with the heavy stigma of delays, on-set bust-ups, last minute re-shoots, and overwhelmingly negative reviews from both critics and the few people that actually paid to see it. Sadly, the film is every bit as bad as you've heard. The Fantastic Four have had a troublesome history, with Roger Corman's infamous 1994 film never being released at all and Tim Story's colourful but soulless 2005 effort getting a panning from the critics, and Josh Trank's follow-up to the excellent anti-superhero flick Chronicle (2012) carries on this trend, getting lost amidst a forced darkness and a tug-of-war of control between director and producers.

The ambitious Reed Richards (Miles Teller) struggles to get backing for his new teleportation device despite the assistance of his dim but loyal best friend Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell). At a science fair, he is finally noticed by Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) and his adopted daughter Sue (Kate Mara), who are also working on a similar device but are struggling to perfect it. Teaming up with rebellious technician Johnny Storm (Michael B. Jordan) and morbid hacker Victor von Doom (Toby Kebbell), Reed and his crew set out to develop a 'Quantum Gate' which will transport them to another dimension. Fearing their limelight will be stolen by NASA, Reed, Johnny, Ben and Victor suit up and are travel to a mysterious planet covered by a strange energy source. When they return, they are transformed forever.

The young cast do their very best with their often cringe-worthy material, with Teller and Jordan in particular proving charismatic stand-outs. But they are kept apart for the majority of the film and given very little time to bond as a group both before and after the accident that turns them into superheroes. Instead, we get a lot of lonesome brooding and superficial angst during a frustratingly drawn-out build-up, with Mara and Bell given little attention at all. Then the film decides to skip over what is usually the most part of a superhero origin flick - the heroes learning to use their powers - as Reed escapes the compound now controlled by shady supervisor Dr. Allen (Tim Blake Nelson) and the team spending an extended period trying to track him down. After all the procrastinating, the foursome struggle to generate any chemistry at all.

The producers were apparently unsatisfied by Trank's final cut and ordered heavy re-shoots for the film's climax. Never has behind-the-scenes tampering been so obvious in a finished product, as we are given a rushed and confused final set-piece and a film that feels somehow overlong despite a slim 90 minute running time. In a hastily deleted tweet, Twank informed fans that there was a final cut that would have garnered good reviews and improved its terrible box-office return, but we will never know if this is true or not. What we are left with is a limping and unnecessarily grim experience that will hopefully allow the film rights to be passed back to Marvel, who seem to be the only company capable of doing their characters justice. Fantastic Four will no doubt be a irremovable stain on the careers of its talented cast and director.


Directed by: Josh Trank
Starring: Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Toby Kebbell, Reg E. Cathey, Tim Blake Nelson
Country: USA/Germany/UK/Canada

Rating: *

Tom Gillespie

Review #853: 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time' (2010)

Super Mario Bros. (1993). Street Fighter (1994). Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). Resident Evil (2002). The list of movies adapted from video games that make you want to tear the skin from your own face goes on and on. Still, without a notable exception to the rule, producers keep greenlighting these films, and stars still line up to appear in them. If any producer was capable of bucking the trend, it's action connoisseur Jerry Bruckheimer, who somehow managed to turn a theme park ride that centred around cinema's most floppable subject (pirates), and turned it into a billion-dollar, Oscar-nominated franchise.

While Prince of Persia underperformed commercially and didn't end up on any critics' annual top 10 lists, it's the best video game adaptation I've seen (although that isn't saying much). The plot centres around prince Dastan (a six-packed Jake Gyllenhaal), who after being plucked from the street as a child after the King (Ronald Pickup) was impressed by his moxie, now fights and laughs alongside his adopted father's blood sons, Tus (Richard Coyle) and Garsiv (Toby Kebbell). He is at the front of an attack on Alamut, who Dastan's uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) has accused of selling weapons to their enemies. After taking the city, he meets the beautiful princess Tamina (Gemma Arterton), but soon finds himself on the run, wrongly accused of his father's murder and in possession of a magic dagger able to control time.

Director Mike Newell is quite the opposite of what you would call an auteur. He's a sort of jack-of-all-trades, directing movies of all genres and of varying quality, from the awful, foppish comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), to the impressive gangster flick Donnie Brasco (1997), and he even had a dabble in the most successful film series of all time with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005), one of the best of the franchise. His erratic's rub off on Prince of Persia. Writers Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro and Carlo Bernard are wise enough to deliver an actual story rather than simply trying to replicate the charms of the video game, and the chest-pumping antics of the brothers' strained relationship keep things intriguing enough, even though we're stuck with the drippy (but undeniably sexy) Tamina for the most part.

It suffers when trying to deliver a breakneck, or even fathomable, action scene. Though Gyllenhaal nails the part - he brings a cocky, Errol Flynn-esque charm to the role - his dust-up's are confusing and messy. The sandy streets of Persia and the scorched deserts surrounding it are lavish, and touches of CGI can make the screen light up. It sometimes it achieves this, but overuses it to the point where the visuals become bloated and unreal. I've only seen the game played once or twice, but I could see why the series is so popular, and while the film certainly catches the look of the game and provides a few wink-wink in-jokes for the gamers, it lacks the games breathlessness. Things picks up slightly when comic relief Alfred Molina and his racing ostrich's show up, and it often feels swashbuckling in the old-fashioned sense, but this is formulaic, instantly forgettable stuff.


Directed by: Mike Newell
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina, Steve Toussaint, Richard Coyle, Toby Kebbell
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie

Review #807: 'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' (2014)

Very few expected 2011's reboot of a franchise - so clinically killed off by Tim Burton and his failure to grasp the idea of narrative sense - to be any good at all. Yet Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes was not only excellent as a thrilling action movie, but also carefully laid-out and thoughtful in it's scientific approach to the disease that ultimately led to apes conquering Earth and replacing humans as the planet's alpha species. Such a surprising success naturally leads to sequels, and when a director so acclaimed in his delivery of the first instalment fails to re-sign on, disaster is expected. But the apes have done it again, and not only does Dawn stay faithful to it's predecessor's code of story over cheap thrills, but it surpasses it in quality, gradually evolving into a serious study of war.

Ten years after the events of the first film, most of humanity has been wiped out by ALZ-113 virus. The escaped apes from the first movie, namely chimpanzee Caesar (Andy Serkis), bonobo Koba (Toby Kebbell, replacing Christopher Gordon), and orangutan Maurice (Karin Konoval), are living peacefully in the woods believing the human race to be extinct. They communicate using sign language, though a few of them have learnt some words, and exist peacefully as a multi-ethical community. Caesar has two sons by Cornelia (Judy Greer) - Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) and a newborn - and is the alpha with the facially and emotionally scarred Koba as his second-in-command.

Unbeknownst to the apes, a small group of humans still dwell in the city, running out of the power supply that is keeping them alive. Led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) and Malcolm (Jason Clarke), the pack is living together in a huge building amongst the decaying city outside. A small expedition into the woods leads to trigger-happy member Carver (Oz's Kirk Acevedo) shooting an ape in the head in fear. Caesar and his extended army confront them, but Caesar's sympathetic view of humans leads to him allowing them to return to the city, demanding they leave in human speech. Malcolm is astonished at the ape's intelligence and charisma, and returns with his girlfriend (Keri Russell) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to treat with him.

The cinematography and set design are astonishing, The movie doesn't just give us a plastic apocalyptic world full of CGI-laden establishing shots, but a world that feels real and lived-in. And interacting in this world are some of the greatest special effects in the history of cinema. WETA have outdone themselves here, not only managing to blend motion-capture in an exterior environment seamlessly, but also allowing the actors behind the effects to act. A lot has been written about Serkis's portrayal of Caesar, and it is the actor's best performance to date, but Kebbell too manages to bring emotion and devastation to Koba's face, bringing an astonishing complexity to what could have been a stock antagonist. When the two interact, it feels real. You tend not to gasp at the effects because it simply feels like there aren't any.

When the inevitable smack-down ensues, it's after some spellbinding drama. There's no cut-and-dry good and bad guys, just the inevitable roll towards blood-shed. There's blame on both sides in equal measure, and it comments heavily on both species' natural inclination to go to war. They live peacefully apart, but once they discover each other things start to fall apart out of desire, greed and most of all, fear. The action is utterly thrilling, and although it offers such treats as the sight of an ape firing two machine gun's whilst riding a horse, it's mainly because we are so engrossed in the character's stories. Serkis and Kebbell deserve Oscar recognition, but probably won't get it. Tim Burton's ghastly 2001 effort has been near-enough wiped from memory, and this new franchise will surely go from strength to strength.


Directed by: Matt Reeves
Starring: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Toby Kebbell, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Country: USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie

Review #783: 'Dead Man's Shoes' (2004)

The revenge thriller is a rather tired old goat. Man is wronged, man changes, man gets revenge. That's how it usually plays out. But every now and then a film will come out of the blue, subverting or at least twisting our premature expectations, while still delivering the same thrills we know from the very best of the genre. Positioned somewhere between revenge horror and kitchen-sink drama, Shane Meadows' Dead Man's Shoes is a dark, violent, yet often very funny story of an ex-soldier out to get the group of low-lives who bullied his mentally retarded brother, anchored by two outstanding performances from Paddy Considine and Toby Kebbell.

Richard (Considine) is not a traditional hero. His intentions aren't to use stealth and mystery to confuse and take down his targets; the gang, headed by drug-dealer Sonny (Gary Stretch), figure out who he is straight away, and don't take long to cross his path. Richard tells them to watch out and that he's coming for them, and tells them where to find him. His aggression, combined with Considine's imposing performance, makes for a terrifying character. Richard has shacked up in a nearby farm with his brother Anthony (Kebbell), the victim of Sonny and the gang's cruel sadism. Most of the action stays away from Richard, and we spend most of the time with Herbie (Stuart Wolfenden), Soz (Neil Bell) and Tuff (Paul Sadot), Sonny's low-level drug dealers.

It's in these scenes where Meadows' skill for dialogue and working realism into his actors performances really shines. The gang, with the exception of Sonny, become rather likeable, their idiocy and incompetence making for several laugh-out-loud moments, causing Richard's evolution into the beast of the story more convincing and effective. The rural town in the Peak District in which the film is set plays like a character in itself. At first glance it's an idyllic retreat, a perfect setting for a show like Midsomer Murders, but the film opens it up and reveals it's underlying ugliness, much like the monster surfacing from it's protagonist. It has it's flaws - often the film's budgetary constraints lead to unconvincing moments - but Dead Man's Shoes is raw, unflinching. sad, and, in the end, shocking.


Directed by: Shane Meadows
Starring: Paddy Considine , Gary Stretch, Toby Kebbell, Stuart Wolfenden, Neil Bell, Paul Sadot
Country: UK

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie