Movie Update - Ant-man and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

I seem to be going through movies at a fair clip recently. First, the fifth MI movie. Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team, on the verge of being shut down (again), try to expose baddies de jour The Syndicate, lead by Solomon Lane (Sean Harris):

Essentially a series of stunts and CGI held together by a relatively weak plot, the cast try their best make it interesting, but it's a case of diminishing returns by now. Not a bad pizza movie, just not a good one.

The second film is one of Marvel's more peculiar super-heroes. Thief Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), vainly attempting to go straight, gets involved with scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) in his attempt to prevent his shrinking technology from falling into the hands of vilain Darren Cross (Corey Stoll):

Although not brilliant, it does have a unique style of it's own, mainly thanks to Michael Peña as Lang's pal and Ant-mans general charm. Rudd makes the best of the role, with Douglas as the mentor and Stoll chewing the scenary (something that was missing from MI:V). One thing, though. The technology effectively changes the volume ("the distance between atoms", as Pym puts it), but doesn't affect the mass, so Ant-man couldn't ride ants as he'd just crush them under his weight... oh, ok, it is a comic book.

3 Movies - Edge of Tomorrow, Guardians of the Galaxy and Three Days to Kill

The movies I get from Amazon are in threes and I managed to get them all replaced this time around and watched one after the other.

First, Three Days to Kill, a (perhaps unintentional) comedy thriller staring Kevin Costner as an ageing CIA agent trying to reconnect with his estranged family and offered treatment for his terminal illness in return for one last job.

An inferior competitor to the Taken series, even the occasional stabs at comedy don't really work and the whole thing, although workman-like, is a damp squib. Only the action scene's redeem it a little, but even those are run-of-the-mill. Ignore.

Next up, Guardians of the Galaxy, based on the Marvel comics, one of whose authors is one of my favourites, Dan Abnett of the Eisenhorn\Ravenor series. Having been kidnapped by extra-terrestrials as a child, adventurer and thief Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) manages to acquire a metal orb that attracts the attention of villain Ronan (Lee Pace).

Not bad. The plot's pretty good, if relentless; the action well paced and the special effects gob-smacking and original. The characters are a little too cardboard for my taste: Vin Diesel plays Groot who only says the same thing over and over again, "I am Groot", so everyone got their money's worth there. Dave Bautista as Drax the Destroyer is better value, but Bradley Cooper adds little as Rocket. The 70's sound track and Quill's use of it to connect with his past, especially his mother, does add a human touch and stops it all being too alien. A good all-round pizza movie.

By the way, without looking at the credits, see if you can spot Karen Gillan from Doctor Who.

Last, but far from least, there's Edge of Tomorrow, the latest Tom Cruise vehicle. After an alien invasion of near-future Europe, U.S. Army spokesman William Cage (Cruise) gets accidentally caught up in the human counter-attack.

It's like an over-the-top mash-up of Independence Day, Groundhog Day and The Longest Day. The technology (me being geeky) is incredibly well realised with lots of vertical take-off aircraft (similar to the V-22 Osprey currently in service) and hovercraft, as well as the exo-skeletons. The plot's a bit convoluted but its origins as a Japanese short-story might be responsible for that. Cruise and Emily Blunt, as the soldier who's experienced the same time-looping before, do well enough, but there is a sort of forgettable quality about the story (in a similar way to a previous Cruise film, Oblivion). A good enough pizza movie if you ignore all the resurrection undertones.

Here's a thing. There's a school of thought that says that recent movies have a preoccupation with ageing, death, longevity or immortality. The reason for this is that the people who make the movies (star in them, produce or direct them) are the so-called post war baby-boomer generation and mortality is catching up with them. This is expressing itself in the films (Cruise is 52 and Costner 60) so the idea has some merit.

Jack Reacher

From my LoveFilm subscription, this is an adaption of the book One Shot by the British author, Lee Child. Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher (Tom Cruise) is asked to investigate the shooting of five people by a sniper he once investigated of a similar crime.

A fairly run-of-the-mill action thriller with some good martial arts and such a good car chase (not in a Ford Focus) the film could well have been justified in being called Drive. Cruise is hardly stretched (he did his own stunts, though) and Robert Duvall looks happy with the money. What Werner Herzog is doing in the film is a bit baffling, although he does look like the man who threatened to kill Klaus Kinski.

Taken all around, not a bad little pizza movie but not exactly taxing either.

Mission Impossible 4 - Ghost Protocol

Continuing the Summer of Cinema, via my LoveFilm subscription, I watched the latest IMF offering. Ethan Hunt and his IMF team, implicated in bombing the Kremlin, chase after the culprits to prevent nuclear war between Russia and America.

A superior pizza movie, and exciting enough, although Simon Pegg doesn't look the part (he does get to shoot somebody, though) and his humour grates a little, making the film feel like a kind of "Carry On Mission Impossible" at times.

The set pieces are great including Tom Cruise hanging off the worlds tallest building, breaking into The Kremlin (using a sort of portable Ames room: very clever) and a chase in a car storage building in Mumbai. The supporting cast is good as well, including Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton. Michael Nyqvist isn't bad as the villain, but it required someone to chew the scenery a little more, and Léa Seydoux, as an assassin for hire, was grossly underused. Recommended, however.

Tuesday - At The Pictures To See Oblivion

With no shift at the shop, and trying to take a break from college work, I went to see the new Tom Cruise movie, Oblivion, at the Empire on the Bas-Vegas Strip i.e. Festival Park.

After an alien invasion of Earth, and war, two people monitor and maintain drones in preparation for leaving the planet, but all is not as it seems.

Kind of a disaster aftermath movie, the special effects are very good and I especially liked the design, which was all minimalist: the "bubble" aircraft and the drones impressed, but the cool house in the clouds appealed the most. Cruise does a good enough job, but Morgan Freeman acts him off the set easily enough and it's the ladies, especially Andrea Riseborough as his partner (although Olga Kurylenko is pretty good as well), who really shine, as well as being good eye-candy.

The plot is serviceable enough, although a machine intelligence who can't do basic airport security seems a bit implausible, and the depiction of a devastated Earth sends the odd shiver. That's the thing I came away with: the coldness of the movie. From the minimalist architecture and design to the barren wastes of the planet. Worth seeing, though.

Oblivion

Pretty much from out of nowhere, there's this intriguing new film out next month:

Might be pretty awsome in 3D!