Powers, Lucy and Grand Budapest Hotel

Over the Easter break I've been watching a few films. First up, a sci-fi film from Luc Besson starring Scarlett Johansson.

Lucy

Lucy (Johansson), while being forced to smuggle a designer drug, accidentally takes a massive overdose.

Based on the joke that only 10% of the brain is used by the average human (in Chelmsford it's a lot less), imagine that someone had re-written Johnny Depp's film Transcendence, but had thought "throw out all the existential stuff, put Scarlett Johansson in it as a drug-enhanced psychic Ninja and a load of Chinese gangsters shooting things up with French police. And keep Morgan Freeman in it." It makes District 13 look like it had been written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Even a pizza movie has some standards, but if you only want to use 10% of your brain, one way would be to watch this.

The Grand Budapest Hotel

An author reflects on his stay at an odd hotel in a fictional eastern bloc country during it's communist days and his encounter with the owner.

Wes Andersen specialises in making odd films, (The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Royal Tenenbaums), and this is no less weird. It's a story within a story within a story, the main one being of the Concierge of the Hotel (Ralph Fiennes) back in the 1930's, being framed for the murder of one of his aged "clients", an unrecognisable Tilda Swinton. It's not a bad yarn and the supporting cast is stuffed with A-Listers, most of whom have been in Andersens films before. It got a few Oscars and Bafta's, but you can see that the oddness would be a bit too much for a jury's taste. I liked it, but I can't actually figure out why.

Powers

To finish off, I thought I'd mention a comic book TV adaption, available only through your Sony PlayStation, if you have one.

Former super-hero Christian Walker a.k.a. Diamond (Sharlto Copley) is now a detective with the L.A.P.D. Powers Division.

It's a variation of the "if people really did have super-powers, who would police them?" idea (like The Boys). I've not read the comics, although I've heard good things, and anything where Eddy Izzard plays Hannibal Lecter with super-powers can't be all bad. Worth a watch, although not enough to get you to actually buy a PlayStation.

Movie Catchup: "If It Bleeds, It Leads"

It's been a while since I wrote about the films I've been watching, so here goes. First up, a comment on modern news media.

Nightcrawler

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal), a petty thief and hustler in Los Angeles, encounters a freelance news crew at the scene of an accident.

An update of Network with a central character that makes Tony Curtis's Sidney Falco look compassionate and altruistic, Gyllenhaal gives a strange and chilling performance as the amoral anti-hero Bloom. The plot and direction are excellent, and he's ably supported by Rene Russo, as the news director who encourages him, and Riz Ahmed, as his gullible assistant. Both the movie and Gyllenhaal's performance are Oscar material, in my view, and the film is highly recommended.

The Equaliser

Next, a remake of the 80's TV series with Denzel Washington. Working in a hardware super-store, Robert McCall (Washington) lives a quiet, unassuming life until he tries to help a young prostitute.

Although it nods to the original TV series, this film is really a copy of an earlier Denzel movie, Man on Fire. Washington adds class to what would otherwise be another addition to the vigilante genre (Taken, Three Days, etc.), and there's been a bit more thought put into the plot and characters than normal, Marton Csokas as his Russian nemesis is particularly sinister. It is just a pizza movie at heart, however, just not a bad one.

Transcendence

This is Johnny Depp's attempt to make a serious science fiction movie. After being assassinated by an anti-technology terrorist group, Dr. Will Caster (Depp), an A.I. expert, has his consciousness uploaded into a computer.

Although the special effects are good, the film is let down by the plot, which lacks pace and energy at critical points. This is probably because it's trying to deal with philosophical issues (human identity and the singularity) in a medium that doesn't easily support their discussion. The acting is okay, if a bit pedestrian, which reflects the dull dialogue, and there's a few A-Listers to fill in, but overall I felt that it was just a little too slow.

A Walk Among The Tombstones

The latest vehicle for Liam Neeson, he plays a retired policeman hired by a drug dealer to investigate the disappearance his girlfriend.

From a novel by Lawrence Block, Neeson does well as the recovering alcoholic Matt Scudder (the start of a possible series). The plot is well conceived and translates well onto the screen, although Scudder's teenage sidekick T.J. (Brian Bradley) could have done with being older. After seeing Neeson in worse films, it was nice to see him in something decent. This was also the second film with David Harbour in a supporting role (he played a crooked cop in The Equalizer)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit

Yup, Tom Clancy's hero gets a reboot. After recovering from his injuries in Afghanistan, former marine Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) becomes a financial analyst working secretly for the C.I.A. when he comes across a plot by Russian intelligence to collapse the American economy.

Directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also plays Ryan's nemesis, the plot is reasonably good, if a bit cartoon, and the acting more than adequate, given that Pine is supported by Kevin Costner (much better cast than in the previous movie), as his boss, and Keira Knightley as his wife. Not a bad pizza movie, if a bit predictable.

The Naked City

A classic not-quite-noire from the 1940's, New York police detectives Lt. Dan Muldoon (Barry Fitzgerald) and James Halloran (Don Taylor) investigate the murder of a good-time girl.

The acting is a bit wooden and there's not a bad cop in sight, but the real gem is seeing New York, New York in the 1940's (some of the sound is bad because they were filming in people's apartments and houses). The director, Jules Dassin, was one of the more adventurous in America, but was eventually blacklisted for his communist sympathies and moved to Europe. There are a thousand stories in the Naked City, and this was one of them.