300
Zack Snyder
300 is the story of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C., when 300 Spartans, led by King Leonidas, resisted the huge Persian army of Xerxes for three bloody days. As expected, this is a complete gore-fest with endless slow-mo shots of feeble Persians spinning in the air with some limb or other being sliced off, complete with squelching sound effects. Wave after wave of increasingly bizarre looking invaders are repelled with minimal losses among the heroic Spartans. I’m glad I wasn’t in the front row, I’d have been drenched. It’s like Jackie Chan with lots of blood and very tight leather pants.
It is based on a graphic novel by Frank Miller and the whole film has an almost animated sheen. It is also exhausting, there is only so much death and mayhem you can watch and eventually one becomes a bit bored of the sight of yet another poor chap kebabed on three Spartan spears. The sub plots involving betrayal and treachery are very much more interesting but distinctly secondary to the scenes of slaughter. The Spartans look great though, there were obviously some hours put in on the Hellenic treadmills before this was made. The Persians, in contrast, are portrayed as decidedly sinister, led by the distinctly camp Xerxes. Historically accurate or some cheap allegory on the modern conflict? Dunno, was too busy wiping blood spatters from my shirt.
Gerard Butler is fine as the Spartan King, apart from the fact that some of the pre-battle scenes are dangerously reminiscent of Braveheart and I’m sure I heard him say “Shparta” at one point. Maybe I just wished that.
If leather and spears and rippling thigh muscles are your thing, go see.
Our rating: 3
by Andy Plumb on Friday, June 22 2007
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Spiderman 3
Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst et al
Spiderman rules. Spiderman was a great film. Spiderman 2 was even better. Spiderman 3 stinks.
It's as if director Raimi's just taken his eye off the ball and the whole thing consequently sinks into mediocrity. In many ways it shows just how good the first two films were, that he managed to raise them above all action guffness. But this is too long, too many lazy plot devices, too much romantic stuff to no end really, too many villains (the Sandman is completely unnecessary, a waste of Thomas Haden Church and surely the fire brigade could just turn a hose on him at the end and that'd be that for him?), too much homespun wisdom from Aunt May (as she gets older she seems to only speak in Chinese proverbs).
On the plus side the final set piece is eye-popping and all consuming in a way I haven't felt at the cinema for a very long time but you have to get through 2 hours of very patchy stuff to get there.
All in all a great disappointment and I'd recommend saving your money and staying at home.
Our rating: 1
by The Assassin Prince on Tuesday, May 8 2007
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Arthur and the Invisibles
Luc Besson
On the simple premise that Luc Besson is bonkers and every single review of this film I read beforehand was completely condemnatory, I was quite looking forward to Arthur and the Invisibles. As a general rule, I no longer have the opportunity of watching what might be called grown-up films so I tend to cast a somewhat critical eye over a lot of child-centric fare. A lot of parents go to see these films with their kids (obviously) and film-makers know this (obviously). So said film-makers have a tendency to pepper said children's films with parent-bound humour which annoys me on two levels. One - I do not like being patronised. And two - I do not like my kids being patronised - that's my job. So I approached Arthur and the Invisibles prepared to be annoyed.
And I was slightly disappointed. While the film does contain the accasional adult reference, it is suitably tangential to make it almost irrelevant. At one point, for example, a sword needs to be pulled from a stone and considering that our hero is a boy called Arthur I feared the worst, particularly as he was the only one who could pull the damned thing out. Sword was pulled. Arthur duly hands sword over to female character and that's the end of it. Well, it worked ok for me.
Anyway, to the plot. Arthur and the Invisibles is the story of a small obnoxious boy (Freddie Highmore) who lives in the country with his once sexy granny while his dullard parents have shot off to the big city to try and make a better life for all of them. Granny (Mia Farrow) has been all alone since her mad old husband disappeared in search of some legendary rubies given to him by giant African tribesmen as thanks for installing an irrigation system for them.
Unfortunately, since the disappearance of the mad grandad, property developers have moved in on granny and are forcing her to sell up. She only has 48 hours to come up with some readies or it's eviction time. Small obnoxious boy to the rescue. Young Arthur (that's his name), discovers that the mad old grandad is perhaps not as mad as others may think. After some clue-following, late night fol-de-rol and mumbo-jumbo, he finds himself transmogrified from live-action boy into CGI Minimoy (think James and the Giant Peach) and transported into an underground fantasy kingdom. Game on. The Minimoy are a tribe of tiny people who used to live in perfect harmony with their giant neighbours (the same ones who gave mad grandad the rubies) in a yin and yang kind of way in Africa. They look like the bastard offspring of Princess Sarah from Final Fantasy and one of those orange spiky-haired gonk things you used to win at the fair. Imagine what Charlotte Church's kid is going to look like and you'll get the general picture.
Inexplicably (there's quite a lot in the film that goes unexplained), the Minimoy have found themselves transported from their African homeland to the space beneath Arthur's granny's house. And if Arthur's granny's house is about to go west then so is Minimoy kingdom. Arthur wins the hearts and minds of the Minimoy and generally saves the day. He bests the live-action baddies and CGI villains alike and learns a few lessons about balance in life and nature along the way.
The CGI action is unremarkable although it clearly used up a large chunk of the budget and there are some trademark Luc Besson moments - like the scene in the bizarre reggae club and the mosquito chase that's right out of the Fifth Element. Probably the most remarkable thing about the film is the array of top talent contributing its collective voice skills to the ensemble. In the English version - it's a French film originally entitled Arthur et les Minimoys - we find Madonna, Robert de Niro, Snoop Dogg, Harvey Keitel and Emilio Estevez amongst others oiling their tonsils. Best voice perofrmance probably comes from David Bowie as the evilly-deranged and mutated insect villain Maltazard. Strangest thing is the CGI evil insect creature actually looks like what David Bowie would be like if you mutated him into an evilly-deranged insect. Not much makeup used there, I fear.
Besson says it's the last film he will direct, which is a pity as there are two or three sequels planned and I guess they will be rubbish. My 4 yr old loved it and so did I. It's not the greatest kids film I've ever seen but its' far from the worst and undeserving of the blanket criticism it has received. And, most importantly, it wasn't knowingly smirky.
Our rating: 3
by The Plumbing Wizard on Wednesday, March 7 2007
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