Film Review: Rampage (2018)

Do you really need a tagline for this?

Rampage (12A)

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Director: Brad Peyton

The Plot: Dastardly genetics company Energyne has been performing secret experiments in space on a pathogen that mutates animals, causing them to grow to gigantic sizes and enhancing their aggression. When the experiments go wrong, three samples of the pathogen crash-land on earth: one in Florida where it's consumed by a crocodile, one in Wyoming where it affects a wolf, and one in an animal sanctuary in San Diego where it's found by George, an albino gorilla that understands sign language. Primatologist and former special forces solider Davis Okoye (Johnson), George's carer, tries to stop the military from taking his rapidly growing friend but soon realises there's an even bigger threat - Energyne is sending out a signal summoning the animals to their building in Chicago, and the military is powerless to stop them. Okoye must team up with former Energyne scientist Kate Caldwell (Harris) to find an antidote at their building, before the animals destroy the city . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

 

Review: I'll give you a moment to recover from my description of the plot and the trailer, if you watched it. Yes, this is a film about The Rock trying to stop giant mutant animals from destroying a city - this should tell you enough about what kind of film this is and its intended audience. It's very loosely based on the 1986 arcade video game Rampage where players controlled three giant mutant animals (called George, Ralph and Lizzie) and attempted to gain the highest score by destroying cities and eating humans. Warner Bros acquired the rights to it back in 2011, but it wasn't until The Rock came on board in 2015 with his production company 7 Bucks that the project gained any steam - the script was written, director Brad Peyton (who directed Rock in Journey 2: The Mysterious Island and San Andreas, and will direct him in forthcoming sequel San Andreas 2) was recruited and shooting took place last year. The result is exactly what you'd expect - big, silly and lots of fun. I really enjoyed it.

  

The Rock (I can't refer to him as Johnson, he was and always will be The Rock to me) is box office gold these days. The charisma that electrified pro wrestling audiences has carried over to his film career and by now he's proved that attaching Rock to a project, no matter how silly it is, virtually guarantees success - he's reached the level where people will go to watch a film simply because he's in it. Rampage benefits from this and it's fair to say that it wouldn't work as well as it does without him being there to carry the film from each action set piece to the next. His character doesn't have much of an arc - it's established quickly that Davis prefers the company of animals to people, hates poachers, and this doesn't change - but it doesn't matter in a film like this. He's likeable and charismatic enough to make you accept that a hulking great special forces soldier can also be an expert primatologist and teach sign language to a gorilla. He and George even exchange a bro fist, after the gorilla first flips him the bird. That's the kind of film this is.

The film makes no apologies for what it is - it's a big, silly popcorn film that invites you to leave your brain at the door and enjoy the action. As such it excels where you'd expect it to, namely the visuals and the big action sequences, and also falls flat where you'd expect it to as well, in the quality of the plot and the acting. But do you really care about how stupid the plot is in a film like this? Do you care that the talented Naomie Harris is wasted on a role like this, when she sparks well with The Rock? Do you care that Malin Akerman (as Claire Wyden, CEO of Energyne) plays the most stereotypical villain ever? The answer is no, you don't - these things aren't important, and don't effect your enjoyment at all. You're here to watch large monsters fuck some shit up (within 12A limits), and you won't be disappointed in that regard.

The action and spectacle are where the film really delivers. The CGI is, mostly, very good and does a really good job of conveying the scale of how large the animals have become, particularly the crocodile. Following George's initial escape and another in which he wreaks havoc aboard a plane, there's an exciting sequence where a team of military contractors are sent by Energyne to put down the wolf and get wiped out. This is all building to the film's grand third act where all three of the animals, driven by the signal being sent out to them, arrive in Chicago and chaos ensues. The action on display here rivals any disaster movie as whole buildings get levelled and the military is wiped out by the beasts in an orgy of destruction, and then goes one further when George (in a plot thread you saw coming from the film poster) is cured of his rage via the antidote and teams up with The Rock to take the other animals down. This is exactly what you came to see and it delivers. To the films credit as well it doesn't try to make Rock appear superhuman - while he's a dab hand with a helicopter and a grenade launcher, he isn't taking the animals on hand-to-hand and it's George who puts in most of the work.

Oh yeah, and the wolf can fly. Because why not?

The film turned exactly as I predicted it would when I first saw the trailer several months ago. It's big on action and spectacle, it's funny in places, and it's a vehicle for The Rock, which isn't a bad thing. Bonus points for Jeffrey Dean Morgan and his drawling OGA ("Other Government Agency") spook who does the world's most obvious character turn. You don't come to a film like this for the quality of the script, or the acting, or the direction. You come for a visual thrill-ride and that's exactly what you get - it would be unfair to penalise it for its obvious flaws. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and you will too.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Exactly what you'd want a film like this to be - big, dumb, and high on spectacle. The Rock is entertaining as usual, it's funny in places, and the visuals are terrific. Leave your brain firmly at the door and escape for an hour and three-quarters.

Film Review: Thoroughbreds (2018)

And we're off . . .

Thoroughbreds (15)

Starring: Olivia Cooke, Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin

Director: Cory Finley

The Plot: After several years apart, two upper-class former friends are reunited: blunt and to-the-point Amanda (Cooke) suffers from an emotional disorder where she feels nothing, having undergone years of therapy after harming a horse, while the submissive Lily (Taylor-Joy) is desperately unhappy living under the oppressive rule of her wealthy step-father. With Amanda's encouragement, Lily embraces her feelings of hatred and hatches a plan to get rid of her step-father by hiring a local drug dealer (Yelchin) to murder him, but the girls soon discover that they may need to get their own hands dirty . . .

Check out the trailer for the film below:

Review: This darkly funny, psychological thriller has taken some time to make it to cinema screens here in the UK, and it's also sadly the final film that Anton Yelchin completed before his tragic death in 2016 at the age of 27. It's been worth the wait though, as this is a fantastic, performance-driven tale of how emotion (or the lack thereof) can drive people to dark places.

The film was originally intended to be a play, and this is very much apparent: the film is driven by the performance of the two leads, with most of the scenes only featuring them and featuring a lot of dialogue, and very little use of score or incidental music (although where these do feature, they're effective). It has a short run-time of 92 minutes that's split into four "chapters", and the majority of it takes place in one location: the sprawling, lavish mansion that's home to Lily. For the type of story this is, which focuses on these two characters, on their reunion and developing friendship and the effect they have on the mental state of each other, it works. The rest of the cast are minimal by design, with only Lily's mother and step-father getting any significant screen time apart from Yelchin's character Tim, and this is deliberate.

This isn't a horror by any means, but it is a very dark film in tone and there are some quite clear echoes of The Shining going on in the framing of this film and its centralised location of Lily's home. The house itself is a monument to decadence - a vast, lavish complex that's eerily silent, devoid of life except for the scurrying servants and serving more as some kind of trophy cabinet for the trappings of wealth. I loved the camerawork in this film - its use of framing, close-ups and focus pulls is very clever and draws your attention to and from Amanda and Lily at just the right moments. There's rarely a shot where one or the other of them isn't present, and for good reason.

As it leans so heavily on them, the film wouldn't work without strong performances for Amanda and Lily. Thankfully, both Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are fantastic here and have been given two very interesting characters to explore. I was talking about Cooke only last week in my review of Ready Player One where she's great as Art3mis - I've been a fan of her since seeing her brilliant performance in 2015's Me and Earl and the Dying Girl. In Thoroughbreds as Amanda, she has the challenging prospect of playing a character who, by her own admission, doesn't feel any emotion, and she absolutely nails it. She manages to portray Amanda as flat and emotionless but without being monotonous, and the moments where she "switches on" brief moments of emotion (such as the scene where she explains "The technique" to Lily for faking crying) are exceptional. A lot of the film's dark humour comes from Amanda, who says what she thinks without any filter, and she's also the more disturbing of the two girls - her lack of emotion makes her unable to see why certain actions would make people uncomfortable or are just plain wrong, and the scene in which she recounts how and why she harmed the horse is chilling.

Anya Taylor-Joy is another actress I'm a fan of, having been introduced to her in 2016's Split (for which she'll return in its sort-of sequel Glass next year) and then subsequently the odd sci-fi Morgan in which her performance was the standout. Compared to Amanda, Lily undergoes a big transformation over the course of the film which Taylor-Joy nails. When the film begins she's nervous and submissive, having grown used to hiding her true feelings lest she draw the unwanted attention of her step-father Mark (who is a grade A prick). Through Amanda's influence though, Lily begins to embrace her hidden emotions and speak her mind, and her true hatred of Mark is revealed. It's Amanda who first suggests the murder ("You ever think about just killing him?") but Lily is the one who agrees to it and, later, has to be physically restrained by Amanda from doing it herself. Lily's character shifts dramatically over the course of the story and Taylor-Joy is excellent throughout.

Anton Yelchin's role is a small one, but one that he does well with. Tim is a low-level drug-dealer who has grand dreams of being a big-time player but is ultimately all show: he does his best to try and intimidate the two girls when they approach him with the offer to murder Lily's step-father, but his cowardice is soon revealed and allows for a funny scene where, after being hit over the head with a vase by Amanda, he laments about how he's going to explain his injury to his father. The performance certainly wasn't a stretch for Yelchin, but it will prove to be a sad reminder of the talented actor that's been lost. 

The dynamic between Amanda and Lily is what remains the most interesting part of the film, more so than the plot and eventual murder itself. Amanda, for all her lack of emotion, is clearly incredibly lonely and the renewal of their friendship is more important to her than she's willing or able to express until the finale. Lily is both fascinated by and wary of Amanda, in awe of her matter-of-factness and willingness to say what she thinks but also unnerved by her past actions and the emotionless way in which she views things. This shifting dynamic makes it hard to predict where the story is headed and ultimately makes it more interesting.

I thought that this was an excellent film. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy are both fantastic, and it's darkly funny, tense, chilling and uncomfortable in equal measure. It won't be to everyones taste (particularly the ending), but I loved it.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

An excellent psychological thriller that features some dark humour and two brilliant performances from Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor-Joy. As writer/director Cory Finley's debut this is a promising start for him that explores the dark places that emotions can drive us to. Highly recommended.

Film Review: Ready Player One (2018)

Game on!

Ready Player One (12A)

Starring: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Mark Rylance

Director: Steven Spielberg

The Plot: It's 2045, and the world has become a harsh, overcrowded place. Humanity finds escape in the Oasis - an immersive virtual reality haven where players can do anything and wear the avatar of any character they choose, in a world dominated by the pop culture its creator James Halliday (Rylance) loved. Wade Watts (Sheridan), who goes by the name Parzival in-game, is a "Gunter" - players who are seeking a hidden Easter egg within the game, left by Halliday - this Easter egg takes the form of three incredibly difficult challenges, and the first player to locate and beat all three will win ownership of the Oasis. Parzival teams up with fellow top player Art3mis (Cooke) in a race to win the challenge before Nolan Sorrento (Mendelsohn) - a crooked CEO of a powerful company that wants to claim the Oasis for its own, and isn't afraid to attack them in the real world to do it . . .

Check out the trailer for the film here.

Review: Before I really dive in I need to make two things clear: the first is that I haven't read the novel Ready Player One that the film is based on. Written by Ernest Cline and released in 2011, the book became a cult favourite but for some reason it didn't cross my radar, so as such I can't make any kind of comment as to how faithful an adaptation this film is or anything like that. From what I can tell, a lot of changes have been made for the film - including pretty much all references to Spielberg's films being removed, at the director's request - but Cline himself co-wrote the screenplay, so any die hard fans of the novel should be happy knowing that the author is involved. Secondly, I hold my hands up and say that I am, without a doubt, the target audience for this film, so it was a given that I was going to like it - I mean, come on, it's called Ready Player One, one of the most iconic phrases in video game history. What this film is, is a pure, exciting rush of nostalgia and geekery, a thrill-ride unlike any other that I've seen that, while flawed, is an incredible achievement.

The most obvious thing to talk about first is the references. Oh boy. The world of the Oasis is one that is shaped by video games, movies, television, music and pop culture from the 80s all the way to the present day, with particular emphasis on the 80s and 90s, modelled as it was by its creator Halliday on all the things he loved and gleefully embraced by its inhabitants who can take on the avatar of any fictional character from any film or video game that they want. As such, the number of different visual and audio references to other films, video games, television, music and general pop-culture is simply astonishing and I cannot do any justice with words to just how much is going on here. There are interactions, mash-ups and battles between characters from all kinds of franchises that are the stuff of a geek's wet dream, in what can only be described as a love letter to this particular period of time. I know for a fact that I didn't catch everything, so crowded are many of the shots with so many difference characters, but just some of the things I saw and recognised references from are:

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Battletoads
• The Dark Crystal
• Hello Kitty
• Ryu, Chun-Li and Blanka from Street Fighter and Goro from Mortal Kombat
  
• Batman, Batgirl and Harley Quinn
• Spider-Man and Wolverine
• Multiple references to John Hughes movies
• The Holy Hand Grenade
• Spartans from Halo, Lara Croft, Dante from Devil May Cry and Duke Nukem
• Starships from Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Alien
• Tracer and Reaper from Overwatch
• Robocop, Freddy Krueger and Chucky
• Duran Duran, and the "Pure Imagination" song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
• Wil Wheaton on a poster next to the election poster of the mayor from Back to the Future, whose director Robert Zemeckis is named-checked with The Zemeckis Cube
• The magic spell used to activate Sorrento's barrier is "The Charm of Making" from Excalibur

And that's just scratching the surface! This is without a doubt a very visual film, with the vast majority of it taking place within the Oasis (I'd say about 70% of it) so CGI is king, and thankfully it's up to the task - this is an incredibly beautiful film, filled with brilliant visual effects and music. It makes the scenes with all of these recognisable faces all the more effective, and the film wouldn't have worked if it wasn't up to scratch in this area.

Where the flaws are to be found, however, are in the script. There's no getting away from it - this is a remarkably cheesy story, that isn't helped by some downright terrible dialogue. The hero goes through three tough challenges, defeats the bad guy and then gets the girl. It's something out of any old video game, or movie . . . but that's kind of the point, isn't it? The film makes no pretences about what it is - it's a huge blockbuster that you come to for the visual thrill-ride and the hearkening back to a nostalgic time period, and as such the story and character development take a back seat. Personally I'm fine with this when the rest of the film is so exciting, but I'm sure that some viewers will be bothered by this a lot more and find more detailed flaws to pick out. I personally would liked to have seen more time given to Parzival and Art3mis's relationship developing and a bit more to flesh out the state of the real world they live in.

The story as it is though, taking in their journey to find and complete Halliday's three challenges, does make for some spectacular set-pieces that are the high points of the film and really allows those terrific visual effects to shine. The films most incredible moments include:

• The first challenge, which takes the form of a high-speed race through a twisting version of New York City. Parzival drives the DeLorean from Back to the Future, Art3mis rides Kaneda's motorcycle from Akira, and the other competitors drive vehicles including the Bigfoot monster truck, the 66' Batmobile, the Mach 5 from Speed Racer, Mad Max's Ford Falcon, the A-Team van and the possessed Plymouth Fury from Christine. And did I mention the racers get attacked by the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and Kong himself from King Kong?
• A beautiful scene where Parzival (dressed as Buckaroo Banzai) meets Art3mis at a night-club and the two dance in zero-gravity to the Bee Gee's Stayin' Alive, in an homage to Saturday Night Fever
  
• The second challenge, which features an astonishing recreation of The Shining where the characters visit the Overlook hotel, complete with creepy twins, naked bathtub lady and elevators of blood
• The final battle, where Parzival rallies the inhabitants of the Oasis (using the boom box from Say Anything) to take on Sorrento's forces who are guarding the citadel that holds the third challenge. The sheer number of different characters that go to battle alongside each other is mind blowing, and culminates in a scene where one player jumps out of the starship Serenity from Firefly, turns into a Gundam mecha, and then teams up with The Iron Giant to take on MechaGodzilla. I mean . . . come on!

The performances are a bit hit-and-miss, but seeing as the leads had to spend a great deal of time wearing motion capture suits I'm inclined to be more lenient. Tye Sheridan is fine as Perzival/Wade, who at least isn't shown to be the perfect hero from the get-go and has to learn how to be the leader that the Oasis needs and also to be the kind of guy that Art3mis wants. I'm a big fan of Olivia Cooke, who was excellent in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, and as Art3mis/Samantha she's extremely likable, getting some of the best lines and proving to be as good as (in some cases better) a player than Parzival, and she does well with the real-life scenes that tell her back story. She and Sheridan both would have benefited from more time to flesh out these scenes and their characters developing relationship. Ben Mendelsohn is your typical villain as Sorrento, not being stretched by any means of the imagination, but Spielberg favourite Mark Rylance gets more to work with as the Oasis's creator Halliday, a socially awkward individual who has constructed the three hidden challenges around the biggest regrets of his life. It's always a pleasure to see Simon Pegg, who pops up here as Halliday's ousted partner Ogden Morrow, and I also liked Lena Waithe as Parzival's friend Aech, a girl who hides behind a huge male avatar to cover her insecurities about her own appearance.

As an avid gamer, film fan and child of the 80s and 90s this film connected with me in a deep way, but if you aren't in any of those categories then you won't get as much out of this film as others will. It's flawed, to be sure, and I honestly can't call it perfect, but this is such an exciting rush of nostalgia that it more than makes up for its faults. It's an open love letter to all things pop culture, and if you've ever dreamt of driving the DeLorean or fighting as your favourite video game character then this is something you really need to experience. Spielberg magic at its finest.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
An astonishing visual spectacle that takes viewers on an exciting trip through more films, video games, music and pop culture references than you could possibly imagine. The story is incredibly cheesy, the dialogue terrible in places and the performances mixed, but when you have the sheer amount of nostalgia and fantasy on display those issues fall to the wayside. This is absolute heaven for geeks, film fans, gamers and anyone who grew up from the 80s onward - a must see.

A little treat to finish - as part of the marketing for Ready Player One, loads of iconic film posters from the 80s and 90s were remade using the characters from the film. Some of them are incredibly clever, and all of them are awesome. Check out a selection of them below!