Guardians of the Galaxy

Picture the scene: it’s 2012, The Avengers is smashing at the box office and Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige decides to call a meeting. “Alight guys, I think we should do another superhero team-up. Except this time it’s in space. The team members will include a Han Solo/Indiana Jones hybrid, two green-skinned warriors – you know, like the Hulk, just not played by Mark Ruffalo – a talking raccoon and a walking tree. It can’t fail. Whaddya say?” And you thought Thor was a tough pitch.

With its galactic setting and abundant supply of colourful alien life forms, there were enough early signs indicating that Guardians of the Galaxy could’ve ended up as Marvel’s Green Lantern, a similarly-themed blockbuster with zero charm and sporting one of the most inept scripts in recent memory. Luckily, Feige and director James Gunn are aware of the potentially laughable subject matter and smart enough to play to its strengths. But while it’s safe to say that Guardians is an irreverent joyride of a movie, it’s also not the most focused of Marvel’s films to date.

The plot, as is becoming too often the case with summer flicks, could’ve easily been written on a napkin. Or rather, a bunch of napkins scattered across a table. It all revolves around yet another MacGuffin called the orb, which our heroes try to steal, sell and subsequently retrieve by bouncing from planet to planet and encountering all sorts of outlandish characters along the way. Of course, one of them happens to be an ominously-cloaked figure who wants to use said orb for destroying the galaxy (just because), which calls for some urgent guarding and who are you gonna call? Granted, it’s all light-hearted stuff and a very different kind of genre, but after The Winter Soldier’s more layered, intelligent script from earlier this year, it still feels like something of a step-down.

In fact, the worst thing you could say about Guardians of the Galaxy is paradoxically also the best compliment you can pay, i.e. that the flimsy plot is just an excuse to stick five very funny and very entertaining characters on-screen. As previously hinted, Chris Pratt plays Peter Quill as a wiseass rogue who’s just as quick with a quip as he is with a blaster and revels in charming the intergalactic ladies with dated pop culture references (“I want to tell you about the legend of Footloose”). Former WWE champion Dave Bautista could’ve simply let his pecs do the acting for the role as Drax The Destroyer, yet proves to be a better actor than Hulk Hogan ever was by adding some welcome anguish to his character. Zoe Saldana’s high-kicking Gamora is the only player that feels slightly underwritten, although she does get a few good lines in as well.

Predictably, it’s the two CGI (and most merchandise-friendly) characters that steal the show. Despite only being able to repeatedly utter the same sentence – “I am Groot”, delivered by the gravelly-voiced Vin Diesel – the Guardians’ resident “dumb tree” is an intriguing creature to be around and one capable of spearing goons with a branch one moment, before breaking the fourth wall with an endearing smile the next. Rocket Raccoon on the other hand is a gloriously verbose creation. Voiced to great effect by Bradley Cooper, he’s an impulsive little critter who gets all the best lines but also, as evidenced in one scene, might be harbouring a tragic past. It’ll be interesting to see how he’s developed in future instalments.     

All five make for original characters in their own right, but together they’re a winning blend of personalities and certainly a more explosive mix than the more clean-cut Avengers – it’s just a pity they’re short-changed by a screenplay that could’ve had bit more oomph. It’s almost tempting to say that Guardians of the Galaxy works more as a vehicle to introduce us to a new breed of space-hopping heroes, rather than a well-rounded, entirely satisfying film. Still, you’ll have fun watching it and it certainly wins the prize for Most Inspired Soundtrack in a Marvel flick. “Hooked on a Feeling”, “Spirit in the Sky”, “I Want You Back”… it’s a wonderfully nostalgic playlist. And speaking of nostalgia, you’ll never guess who pops up in the end credits sequence…

4/5

Her

In the not too distant future, an emotionally disenfranchised writer falls in love with his mobile operating system. What could’ve easily been a ludicrous concept turns out to be a disarmingly profound film about our hopeless dependence on love and technology, and how the two are becoming increasingly interconnected. Need proof? Online dating websites are no longer the shameful secret they were ten years ago and apps like Tinder have rendered sex pretty much a transactional commodity. Spike Jonze’s script stirs the mind and touches the heart in equal measure and if ever there were an award for Best Disembodied Performance, Scarlett Johansson would be up for it, hands down.

5/5

Boyhood

Back in 2002, indie darling Richard Linklater began production on a movie that would chronicle a six year old boy’s journey through childhood, puberty and end on his first day in college. The kicker? The director felt that, in order to recapture the authenticity of growing up and maturing into an adult, he would have to film his pet project over the course of 12 years using the same child actor surrounded by the same supporting cast, with no replacements along the way.

Boyhood sounds like the kind of bold indie experiment that can’t be pulled off. A film production spanning 12 years? What if some of the cast members lose interest before completion? And won’t the end result be patchy and unfocused? Both justified questions and legitimate concerns, but this is Linklater we’re talking about, the very same filmmaker who successfully pulled off real-time sequels with the beloved Before… trilogy, in which we revisit Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke’s characters after 9 year intervals. With this in mind, Boyhood feels like the next logical step in Linklater’s progression as an auteur.

As with the Before… films and especially Slacker, there’s no real plot to speak of. In fact, those who prefer a their movies with a defined narrative are likely to be put off by Boyhood’s seemingly random structure, but that would be missing the point. This is a viewing experience more akin to flicking through a series of family photo albums or, to adopt Ethan Hawke’s more eloquent spin, “like witnessing timelapse photography of a human being”. Throughout the film we see our protagonist Mason (Ellar Coltrane) struggle with his absent father, witness his mother get domestically abused by an authoritarian husband and deal with heartbreak after being dumped by high school sweetheart, but rarely are these events followed by the catharsis you’d get in mainstream cinema. As we all know, life is often little more than a succession of events void of meaning or interconnection and for this reason, there’s an authenticity to Boyhood that feels immensely refreshing.

Of course, the film rests on the very delicate shoulders of Ellar Coltrane, who we watch grow from a 6 year old youngster to an 18 year old young man in the space of two and a half hours. Luckily for us, he is a joy to be around. There’s none of the wide-eyed staring we’d typically get from a pre-pubescent Daniel Radcliffe, nor the swagger and sardonic wit synonymous with a teenage Zac Efron or Shia LaBeouf – because of his lack of exposure to the film industry, Coltrane never comes across as a performer, but as an average kid who just happens to be caught on camera. When Mason bickers with his sister Samantha (Linklater’s daughter, Lorelei), it’s like watching memories of your own fights with your sibling; when he reaches the age when girls start flirting with him, his discomfort and embarrassment feel genuine. Admittedly, his penchant for putting an existential spin on everyday life in the latter stages of the film is a little too reminiscent of Jesse in Before Sunrise, but then again, didn’t we all fancy ourselves as philosophers of life when we were eighteen?

While Coltrane does a solid job as Mason, it would be a big mistake not to acknowledge Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette’s efforts as his on-screen parents, who both also do a fair amount of maturing over the course of 12 years. She’s goes from being a fragile single mother constantly falling for the wrong men, to becoming a strong, independent woman who also eventually finds professional fulfillment. He on the other hand starts off as an irresponsible parent who refuses to grow up, before eventually settling down with a new family while also finding the time to be the wiser father figure that Mason so clearly needs. Despite both having forged careers in the film industry, Hawke and Arquette deliver poignant and believable turns that you’d struggle to get out of, say, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Adding further to the whole mix is Linklater’s reluctance to use intertitles and instead relies on music (The Hives and Coldplay lead to Arcade Fire and Family of the Year) and justifiable product placement (CD players are swiftly replaced with iPods) to signal the passing of the years. It’s in those moments that you realise Boyhood is not just the story of a boy becoming a man, it is also the most nostalgic portrayal of the 2000s to date. There's no denying it, Linklater’s lovely little masterpiece already feels like a classic.

5/5

Begin Again

There are people who direct musicals and people like John Carney, who direct films about why we love music so damn much. The Irish filmmaker’s Once charmed the socks off cinemagoers back in 2006 and now he’s repeated a similar trick with Begin Again, which sees a dwindling producer (Mark Ruffalo) and an aspiring songwriter (Keira Knightley) record an album on the streets of New York with the help of friends, family and curious onlookers. The tunes are ace, the tone is just the right side of feel good and the central pairing offers further proof that the best on-screen romances truly are the ones left unspoken and unresolved. 

4/5

Capturing the Friedmans

Anyone still wondering what all the fuss is about with documentaries should take a look at Capturing the Friedmans. What starts off seemingly as a heartwarming account of a suburban family that enjoys capturing their quirky day-to-day lives on film soon reveals itself to be an unsettling exposé on paterfamilias Arnold Friedman, who may or may not have molested dozens of his pupils in the 80s with the aid of his son Jesse. Making the whole experience all the more disconcerting are the inconsistent accounts put forward by police officers and alleged rape victims, as well as the unexpected revelations that emerge throughout the court trials. Less a documentary about abuse, more about how obscure a concept the truth really is.

5/5  

22 Jump Street

Much like its two protagonists, 21 Jump Street was a buddy cop movie that posed as a hilarious high school comedy. While 22 Jump Street doesn’t quite manage the same hat trick with the college scenario, it does however succeed as a parody of blockbuster sequels that is not afraid to poke fun at itself. As one character notes, nobody gave a shit about the Jump Street reboot to begin with, but after its unexpected success a lot of money has been invested to make sure this program keeps going (wink wink). The movie is made all the more enjoyable by Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum’s side-splitting and occasionally touching bromance.

3/5   

X-Men: Days of Future Past

You’d think that, seven movies in, the X-Men franchise would start to show signs of fatigue. And while there have been a few missteps over the past 14 years ranging from the awkward (X-Men: The Last Stand) to the outright embarrassing (X-Men Origins: Wolverine), the balance was recently readdressed with the appropriately titled First Class, a film that thrilled and entertained in a way that prequels usually don’t.

But reenergising a series is one thing. Bridging together two existing ones is a rather less enviable task. And before you point out that Joss Whedon managed to pull off the triumphant feat of tying in four separate titles with The Avengers, he did not have to contend with the time-travelling loop holes that Bryan Singer is burdened with in Days of Future Past, not to mention an ensemble of characters that spans across two separate timelines. As a result, this makes DOFP effectively an “inbetweenquel” and arguably the most ambitious comic book adaptation to date.

The set-up alone requires some serious mental gymnastics. In a post-apocalyptic future, mutantkind is being systematically decimated by a legion of unstoppable killer robots called the Sentinels. Realising that the introduction of these systems stems from the 1973 assassination of a public figure at the hands of shape-shifting mutant Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the X-Men decide to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back in time in order to persuade the younger versions of Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy) to team up and prevent the murder from happening.

As you can deduce from the above premise, this is one film where a toilet break could prove fatal to your grasp on what’s going on. If DOFP had an overarching flaw it’s that, with so much going on both in the past and future storylines, it demands a lot from viewers’ attention spans. Also, because it does its best to reference events from all of the X-Men movies to date (yes, ALL of them) and tie up loose ends left hanging throughout the franchise, the movie is virtually impenetrable to newcomers.

The fact that the quality of the film does not suffer from the convoluted narrative structure is a testament to Singer as a filmmaker. While he certainly possesses a keen visual sense – the filming of one scene through the lens of an 8mm camera manages to single-handedly nail the 70s aesthetic – he is more importantly a director with a natural talent for handling large ensembles, and one astute enough to understand that it’s not his mutants’ powers that make them colourful, but their personalities. Stick two characters with polar opposite moral/political views in a tentative game of chess and you know you’re going to get an electrifying scene without the need of a CGI-fuelled bust-up.

Adding more intrigue to the proceedings is witnessing just how different the younger incarnations of Magneto and Professor X are to their older, much wiser counterparts. Fassbender easily channels Ian McKellen’s gravitas and even manages to outdo him in the bastard stakes, making this Magneto’s most threatening on-screen portrayal to date, yet there is no arguing that this is James McAvoy’s show. Bitter, boozing and with the shaggy long hair to match the tortured soul, this is Charles Xavier like we’ve never seen him before – less Professor X, more Lieutenant Dan. It’s his emotional journey of redemption we’re invited on, and it is the stuff of compelling drama. Despite remaining cool and reliably charismatic, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine definitely takes a backseat to these two characters, not to mention Jennifer Lawrence’s more fleshed-out Mystique.

The X-Men that don’t get as much screen time certainly make up for their lack of depth and lines in the action sequences. Nicholas Hoult’s Beast sadly does not get to do as much as he did in First Class, but enjoys a game of tag team (stop snickering) with Logan in the final showdown. Evan Peters’ Quicksilver is a hoot in the film’s most memorable set piece and makes a serious case for sonic speed as the coolest superpower ever. And the future mutants make sure the Sentinels realise they won’t be going down without a fight, in a series of visually inventive battles that are sure to have kids (and adults) re-enacting them in the playground for weeks to come.

Factor in a perfectly executed finale and a couple of surprising twists and what you have is the best X-Men movie to date. Plus, if the tantalising post-credits sequence is anything to go by, we’re possibly in for an even bigger movie in two years’ time. Who knows? In Bryan Singer’s hands, the Apocalypse might just be something worldwide audiences will want to eagerly sit through in 2016.

4/5