The Cloverfield Paradox (Netflix Originals) - review

It could be fair to say that the biggest surprise of Superbowl LII wasn't that the Philadelphia Eagles upset the New England Patriots but Netflix calling an audible and screened a trailer announcing that The Cloverfield Paradox would be released immediately after the game!
With that Netflix scored an impossible hail mary touchdown and won the Superbowl trailer war, receiving the most chatter on social media and sacking the big hitters like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Mission Impossible: Fallout and the Solo teaser. The only thing they couldn't compete with was #SuperbowlSelfieKid!
The Cloverfield franchise has always managed to surprise. The first Cloverfield stunned audiences with a fantastic trailer that suddenly appeared in cinemas with no advance hype. 10 Cloverfield Lane was announced and released within two months and now this latest stunt.
One can only imagine that Overlord, the fourth Cloverfield movie which has already finished filming, will automatically appear on your computer one day, like a U2 album, whether you want it or not.
While one can applaud the audacity of Netflix's marketing masterstroke (releasing a film during the most watched sporting event of the year), it would only really matter if the film was any good.
The answer? Yes and No.
As a genre B-Movie, The Cloverfield Paradox plays out like a Greatest Hits of science fiction cliches. Or Now That's What I Call A Space Station Sci-Fi Film.

A space craft on a mission which is Earth's last hope but ultimately goes array and cannot be solved by Chris O'Dowd turning it off and on again? Check

A racially and ethnically diverse crew? Check!

A noble captain who will sacrifice themselves for the good of the mission? Check

A shifty, European officer who may or not be out to sabotage the mission? Check

On its own, the film is passable, enjoyable Netflix fare which gains bonus points for having the final hero and villain passing the Bechdel Test. At the same time unfortunately suffers in comparison to 2017's Life as the plot and style is very similar.

This could be why Paramount decided to sell it to Netflix, change its name from God Particle and repackage it as a Cloverfield film.

And this is where the film does fail because it feels like the movie has been retrofitted into the Cloververse.

10 Cloverfield Lane had also started life as a standalone script but it worked as the majority of the film was set in the bunker and you didn't know what was really outside (or who the real monster was). The film only laid its cards on the table in the final five minutes.

Paradox similarly has hints and minor allusions to the other films but it is only at the very end that the audience is given a definitive answer (albeit a very brief one).

While it is a fun final image, it feels like the audience have once again been shortchanged.

One starts to feel that anyone can make a cheap genre film and as long as they tack on a shot of a monster in the final reel, you can banner it under the Cloverfield name.

Let's hope this is not the case and the producers can return to the inventiveness and surprise wow factor that worked so well for the original.

It is certainly the stuff a Cloverfield of Dreams is made of.

3 stars

Superbowl Sunday - Trailer Touchdown

Superbowl Sunday is one of the biggest dates in the sports and entertainment calendar.

Not only is it the biggest sporting event in the US, featuring an epic musical performance during the halftime show but it is the one day of the year that movie fans without an interest in sports will watch a game of American Football.

It's not because they want to see if it bears any resemblance to Al Pacino's wonderful Inch by Inch speech in Any Given Sunday...

No, the film fans are here for the trailers. Superbowl Sunday advertising premiums are the priciest in the world but with a worldwide audience of 111.3 million last year, film distributors spend a lot of money, time and effort trying to ensure that their movie trailer is the one that people are talking about the next day.

In 2017 for example, audiences were treated to teasers for Logan, Ghost In The Shell, Life, John Wick Chapter 2. However most people agreed it was the trailer for Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2., using Fleetwood Mac's The Chain that triumphed into the end zone that year.

So what can we expect from Superbowl LII when the Philadelphia Eagles take on the New England Patriots in a game of football that somehow manages to make 60 minutes last for 4 hours?

Black Panther

With less than two weeks to its release, expect one final action packed clip designed to raise anticipation to fever pitch.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

A trailer is expected to drop on Good Morning America but many feel that we will see the very first footage of the troubled production that saw Lord & Miller replaced by Ron Howard during the big game. This is the one that everyone will have an opinion on one way or the other.

Avengers: Infinity War

Marvel might focus all their attention on Black Panther but there is a slim chance that they could release a version of the trailer that was only glimpsed at Comic-Con.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Life, uh, will find a way to screen some new footage from the sequel to the billion dollar Jurassic World.

Mission Impossible: Fallout

This has another trailer that has been confirmed to screen during the Superbowl by Tom Cruise on Twitter so expect footage from the sixth installment, that may or may not include the shot of Cruise breaking his leg and Henry Cavill's moustache that sunk the Justice League movie.

God Particle (Cloverfield)

Nothing is know about the new film from the Cloverfield universe and with a release date of April, it is the perfect time to drop a strange, mysterious trailer on an unsuspecting audience.

Skyscraper

The Rock will fight a building in the promo for the summer's new disaster movie.

Deadpool 2

There is no scenario where Deadpool and/or Ryan Reynolds do not make an appearance with a tongue-in-cheek meta take on sporting's biggest event.

The Shape Of Water - review

The Shape Of Water arrives on our shores riding the crest of a wave, buoyed by two Golden Globes, 12 BAFTA nominations and 13 Oscar nominations. But does the film sink or swim under the high expectations of all that praise?
Thankfully Guillermo Del Toro's film exceeds all expectations and simply put; is one of the most beautiful, stunning, moving fairy tales ever to grace the silver screen and it is deserving of so many superlatives that, just as the lead character, one struggles to find the words to describe how fantastic it truly is.
Del Toro is a filmmaker who has made his career by taking the monstrous and macabre and finding the beauty and humanity that lies beneath the horrific exterior e.g. Pan in Pan's Labyrinth, Hellboy and Jessica Chastain in Crimson Peak.
Often switching between Spanish and English language features (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone to Blade II and Pacific Rim), Del Toro's unique style of visual storytelling can transcend the barriers of language. Pan's Labyrinth remains one of the biggest foreign language films ever to screen in the UK and with The Shape of Water, he proves that the power of language and speech is no barrier to love.
Set in the early 60's, Richard Jenkins's illustrator narrates to the audience a story of a mute woman who falls in love with an aquatic man while working in a top secret government facility.
In some ways, the film feels like it could have been the inspiration for the Creature From The Black Lagoon. In fact, the shadowy government agent played with a menacing relish by Michael Shannon says that they captured it from the Amazon, the same location as the original monster.
The production design of the creature is simply incredible and such a delight to see that it is (practically) all practical effects. Del Toro's lucky charm Doug Jones once again brings the film's beast to life opposite the beauty of Hawkins' Eliza.
The setting of the 60's is no accident, for this adult fairy tale is a story is about love and acceptance.
The four main characters of Eliza, Giles, Zelda and Hoffstetler all have to put up with rejection and persecution due to their disability, sexuality, race and nationality (most often at the hands of the real monster of the piece Shannon's Strickland).  All of them, through their interactions with the creature will ultimately learn to accept who they are and stand up for what they believe in, no matter what the cost.
There is not a single fish out of water when it comes to the performances. Hawkins and Jones have a wonderful chemistry together. Jenkins brings a touching gravitas as only he can to the lovelorn, fatherly figure of Giles and Stuhlbarg makes it a hat trick of Oscar nominated films between this, The Post and Call Me By Your Name.
Just as those two films perfectly captured the era they took place in, Paul Austenberry's production design is simply spectacular. Combined with the cinematography and art direction, it gives the whole thing the look and feel of a Douglas Sirk film or another recent movie about forbidden romance, Carol.
The love story here is just as passionate and sensual as that one and is certainly for adults only. But then what fairy tale, at its heart is not about sexual awakening?
This is one fairy tale that is anything but Grimm and can look forward to a fairy tale ending when it makes a splash at the Oscars.

5 stars

Bright (Netflix Originals) - review

In my first big change for review writing for 2018, it is time to recognise streaming services original content as part of the film release calendar and review them accordingly.
After all last year brought the likes of the excellent Gerald's Game, Cannes Film Festival competitor Okja and Amazon Studios Oscar-winning Manchester By The Sea.
Following on from the Oscar-nominated Mudbound, December brought Netflix's most expensive original production Bright, at a cool $90 million. Although this has now been surpassed by Scorsese's The Irishman at a budget of $100 million.
It wouldn't have been a Netflix original release with a little bit of controversy and Bright dutifully supplied it. Many critics called it one of the worst films of 2017 and Netflix fired back claiming it was their most popular original release with 11 million views in its first three days.
While its true that 11 million views on Netflix, which is a paid subscription, is not equal to 11 million people paying $15 to watch a film in a cinema during its opening weekend, it was certainly enough for Netflix to greenlight a sequel. Clearly they are banking on a large percentage of those views being people who enjoyed it and not just clicking on it to see if it was as bad as the reviews made out.
This reviewer was certainly in the latter category to begin with but it is not anywhere near as bad as 2017 films such as Transformers: The Last Knight and The Snowman.
Just like Ayer's Suicide Squad, this is a case of poor execution and wasted potential. For there is something at the heart of Bright that could have made for a great limited series with a new spin on the procedural detective/mismatched buddy cop drama.
Instead the result is an End of Watch retread with two police partners forced to work through their own issues with each other whilst trying to stop the end of the world... Oh, that's right, Bright is set in a world where Humans, Orcs and Elves live side by side.
Imagine if Lord Of The Rings had ended with Sauron being destroyed and all the different armies called an uneasy truce until the modern day.
The film begins with very little in the way of world building, instead focusing on Will Smith's police officer returning to duty after being shot while on duty with the very first Orc police officer Nick Jacoby (played with humour and pathos by Joel Edgerton). The rest of the department want Jacoby gone because he doesn't fit in, and before you say it, yes it does feel very similar to the plot of Zootropolis at this point.
There are bigoted fellow cops and underhanded schemes to frame the Orc but before you can say Internal Affairs, the two partners are called to a disturbance where they discover the one ring that will rule them all... wait, no, they find a magic wand which is wanted by every single criminal in the city and it turns into a fight to survive the night.
From here it is a very generic, straight up action film that lacks the wit and charm needed to sell the more ridiculous aspects of the story. For example, at no point does Will Smith witness something crazy and shout "Awwww hell no!". Missed opportunities!
There remains untapped potential that could turn the sequel into something special but Bright is sadly a dim and dull affair with the risk that as it is on Netflix, audiences may not get to the end of their watch.

2 stars

Mudbound (Netflix Originals) - review

2017 was quite the year for Netflix. Not only was it the year that it broke through with its original film programming, it was the year I finally discovered that "Netflix and Chill" was not just about watching movies on the sofa!
They had quality genre hits such as The Babysitter and the excellent Gerald's Game that caused several people, including me, to do this...

But 2017 was the year that Netflix decided that they wanted to compete with the big boys and be taken seriously. Could they do it? "Yes we Cannes!" and Netflix went to France to compete in the Cannes Film Festival with Book Jong-Ho's Okja and Noah Baumbach's The Meyerowitz Stories.
Did it go as planned? Not quite. The French in particular were against the idea of films playing in competition that would not receive a cinematic release, head judge Pedro Almodovar said that the films would never win a prize and the controversy overshadowed two good films and a very rare thing... a great Adam Sandler performance.
Netflix decided they were not going to let that stop them and have doubled down on their original programming; organising a deal with Curzon for limited runs of the films to appear on their screens, financing $100 million for Martin Scorsese's The Irishman starring DeNiro, Pacino and Pesci and now they have gone legit are entered the Oscar race with Mudbound.
Amazon Studios were the first to the podium last year with Manchester By The Sea but Mudbound is the sole streaming film in the race this year and received 4 Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress, Best Song, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography.
The cinematography nomination is well deserved, and history making as Rachel Morrison became the first female cinematographer to be ever receive one. The film looks stunning and every shot captures the feeling of the Deep South in Forties America.
Mudbound tells the story of two families, the Macallan's and the Jackson's. Linked by land, the film explores their relationships defined by race, class and the fall out of WWII with both families giving their men to the war but find they are treated differently upon their return.
Performances across the board are as strong as the liquor and tensions that brewed in Mississippi, with particular standouts being Garret Hedlund, Jason Mitchell and Jonathan Banks as the deeply racist Pappy.
The film really comes into its own once the war is over and it explores the friendship between Hedlund's Jamie and Mitchell's Ronzell, which will ultimately come to define both families.
The main issue with the storytelling is the decision of director Dee Rees and screenwriter Virgil Williams is the over-reliance on voice-over narration.
Given it is adapted from a novel and this was the structure of the book, it is understandable however as Robert McKee in Adaptation would scream "...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character."
So not only does the audience get one voice-over, it gets six different characters narrating their own parts of the story and at times, the narrative becomes as clear as mud.
Thankfully the narration does not overshadow the performances and the result is a film that shows that if the commissioning team at Netflix continue to fund films and stories like this, they are Bound for glory.

3 stars

Early Man - review

One minute into Nick Park's new Aardman animation Early Man, a meteor hits the Earth killing off the dinosaurs yet leaving cavemen alive and miraculously unharmed with a football shaped meteorite to covet and play games with.
Not only does that meteor wipe out two dinosaurs (revealed in the end credits to be called Ray and Harry, in one of the film's few deft touches) but any chances of a fish-out-of-water storyline where a Stone Age Caveman must struggle to interact with the dawning of a new Bronze Age are also gone in sixty seconds.
For Early Man is actually nothing more than a prehistoric tribute to the Beautiful Game. It's no coincidence that the film lasts 90 minutes, the same length as a match.
Even if the takeaway from the first couple of minutes could be that the only people interested in football are neanderthals, it is clear that Park has an affection for football. One can even deduce his favourite team is probably Arsenal given that the characters who is the most proficient at the sport is called Goona.
There was certainly huge potential here. The primitive Stone Age vs the wealth of the Bronze Age in a match for the valley? It's an underdog story as strong as Leicester City's in the Premiership.
An early scene in the Bronze Age market with shops like Flint Eastwood and food stalls like Jurassic Pork showcased gags are sharp as flint and potential for jokes about the early men adapting to this new age but they are shown the red card in a game of two halves in favour of tropes such as training montages and bad sports puns as tired and old as the savages playing the game.
Talented voices like Tom Hiddleston (doing his best French Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail) give it their best shot but they are in a league of their own and let down by a script that is second division at best.
Aardman had a open goal in front of them. Instead Early Man is sent for an early bath!

1 star

Downsizing - review

There is a great movie somewhere in Downsizing. You just have to go looking for it... with a magnifying glass because it is buried deep in the heart of it and it does get overwhelmed and lost by the magnitude of the film's sci-fi proposition.
Downsizing does start very strongly indeed, with very big ideas as scientists discovering the technological process to reduce organic matter is size, with an eye to solving the problem of the world's overpopulation and consumption of natural resources.
Miniaturised colonies start springing up all over the world with humans "downsizing" to live a higher quality of life, as their money goes a lot further down there.
Matt Damon & Kristen Wiig play an a-typical American mid-western couple, struggling to get on the housing ladder in the "real" world. After visiting a high school reunion, they meet a couple of friends who made the move and discover they can live like millionaires and retire in LeisureLand: a Disneyland-style version of the perfect life. It IS a Small World after all!
The film is at its best during the first half of the movie as it deals with Damon and Wiig making the decision to change their lives (and bodies) forever.
There is a great deal of mileage to be run out of the social and economic satire provided by the scenario. The salespeople paint the image of a perfect lifestyle that helps the environment and doing their part to save the world but on the flip side, blue collar Americans chastise them for not providing enough to the US economy and should they retain the same rights if they are only 5 inches tall?
So it is disappointing that following a plot development at the mid-way point (sadly given away in the trailers) that could have provided the drive for the second half of the movie is forgotten in favour for staying in the downsized world.
Think about it. All of the great movies that have featured miniaturised people; Honey I Shrunk The Kids, Innerspace, Ant-Man, etc. The most memorable and exciting parts of the films have been seeing the tiny people interacting with the oversized environment around them.
It is admirable that Payne wanted to do something different, but it ultimately becomes another story about a man trying to find his place in the world and discovering that that brave new world is just like the real one. There is love, pain and despite the brochures painting the idyllic existence, the rich life the high life while the help live in poverty on the other side of a very tall wall (did Trump build Leisureland?).
Damon is nicely understated as everyman Paul Safranek to balance out Hong Chau's bold, brash Vietnamese refugee and the larger-than-life performance of Christoph Waltz as his new neighbour who introduces them to the hedonistic lifestyle afforded to them.
The final third of the film takes a drastic shift in plot and tone that while is somewhat in keeping with the big ideas set out at the beginning of the concept, it does little to advance the characters.
Ultimately the film is very much like the Downsizing procedure. Big on ideas and potential but the end product comes up short.

2 stars