GeekReads

No number.

I thought there were two separate Tom Cruise movies at first – the Mission:Impossible sequel and Ghost Protocol, because there are now so many sequels in the franchise that they’ve started to dispense with the numbering for fear of putting people off.

The franchise is showing signs of becoming long in the tooth, but Ghost Protocol is still the best of the sequels. Director Brad Bird (yes, he of The Iron Giant and Pixar fame) put a stop to trying to be a James Bond wannabe and delivered a fast and frenetic action flick that doesn’t take the super agent/secret spy thing too seriously.

The premise: a misanthropic idealist nutter Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist) thinks that blowing up the entire world with the stockpiles of nuclear weapons accumulated by the Americans and Russians will rid the Earth of the scourge of humanity, allowing the planet to start anew. (Nevermind that the radioactive half-life will basically make the planet uninhabitable for thousands, if not millions of years.)

Meanwhile an IMF team are attempting to track down and identify a mysterious terrorist codenamed “Cobalt”. After the assassination of one of their agents, they extract Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) from a Russian jail to help. He leads them in an audacious raid on the Kremlin for information, but things go awry and the good guys are implicated in a simultaneous terrorist attack on the building by Hendricks, which causes the Russians to assume that the Americans have declared war and forcing the United States government to put the eponymous Ghost Protocol into effect, disavowing any knowledge of the IMF and cutting off support.

I found it strange that the scriptwriters found it necessary to spell out to the audience exactly why the odds are stacked against Hunt and co. at this point, because you know there’s no chance of them failing. The ideal of an M:I story should be more about showing a situation where we gasp and think to ourselves “how the hell are they going to get out of this?!” instead of being told right from the beginning “it’s impossible, but if you fail the world will end OMFGBBQ!” It takes all tension out of the overarching plot, and relies purely on the visceral thrills to deliver.

Speaking of thrills, there wasn’t much “Impossible” in the movie – all of the gadgets and gizmos showcased are pretty old hat (or at least would be if you stay abreast of science and technology news like me):

• Microsoft Surface
• Gecko Gloves
• Hi-res 3D screens with eye tracking
• Passenger avoidance HUD
• etc.

All of these have been talked about in scientific journals and technology news sites for a while now, so I found myself feeling very “meh” rather than amazed about the whole thing.

But those criticisms aside, the movie feels “comfortable”. It could very well be the rehashing of the old Cold War trope of Russians vs. Americans (has the Middle-East-as-bad-guy finally fallen out of favour?) and the spectre of nuclear war, bringing the M:I back to the era where it originated from. And at the end of the day that’s the point of a franchise, isn’t it?

They had to use a camera trick to make Vin Diesel look like the big man... The Rock is probably 10 meters back in that picture in order for it to be in scale

There’s really no getting around the fact that this movie is basically Ocean’s Eleven set in Brazil, with cars. That’s not a bad thing, since it means a token nod at trying to put together a coherent plot, although in doing so the writers have sacrificed car scenes for heist scenes. There’s still plenty of hot rods and hot bods for the young male target audience.

Playing antagonist in this one is Dwayne Johnson in nasty mode, and as far as I know this is the first time he’s playing a serious role and he’s genuinely scary. Vin Diesel is not a small man by any reckoning, but mein gott, compared to The Rock he looks puny. It may sound odd, but I think his physical bulk is what gives the otherwise terrible script some much needed momentum (moreso considering the reduced vehicular action).

I’m kinda ambivalent about this one. Everything was merely interesting, not exciting. That includes the cars, the girls, the set pieces and the story. For a franchise that sells itself on being “fast” it wasn’t able to get my heart pumping. Maybe they need to bring back “the furious” for the next one (yes, there will be a next one – there’s a sequel-tastic scene early in the credits, as if they couldn’t trust the audience to wait until the end of the credits for the stinger).

This could be anywhere really, couldn't it?

This review is a continuation of Tomorrow, When The War Began (Part 1: the book).

Tomorrow, When The War Began is a welcome change in direction for Australian movies. After the glory days of Australian cinema with iconic titles such as Mad Max, Crocodile Dundee, and Picnic At Hanging Rock, the industry seemed to spiral into a mire of navel gazing, self-indulgent, and boring films (with the rare exception, such as Kenny) This led to a palpable tension between film makers, who were fighting for their integrity in trying to tell uniquely Australian stories, vs. the critics who were arguing that audiences were becoming disillusioned with local movies that may have artistic merit but aren’t popular and bomb at the box office. Hence the hope is that this big budget production (purportedly $20 million) heralds the beginning of a renaissance in locally-produced cinema.

For that reason, Tomorrow has a very clean, “Hollywood” feel to it; the actors look shiny (glossy, even) and glamorous, and besides Chris’s long drawl during his little monologue, the cast’s accents are fairly neutral (at least to my Aussie-tuned ears anyway – international audiences may very well feel strongly otherwise). Ellie, Homer, Corrie, Kevin, Lee, Fi, Robyn and Chris are all competently rendered by their aptly chosen actors, but what I found disappointing – in spite of what I said above – was that the most important character of all was missing: Australia. The story could almost have been set in a small rural town of any country. Because the script attempted to cram as much of the book’s action into the 103 minute running time as possible, there was precious little time for lingering shots of the beautiful Australian outback, or scenes showing the laid-back, rustic lifestyle of the residents of Wirrawee.

From left: Lee, Fi, Homer, Ellie, Corrie, Kevin and Robyn

The script is an exacting adaptation of the novel, never quite rising to the level of its source material, and not bold enough to take more than the most trivial liberties to make the story better fit the medium. There’s even a line in the movie where Ellie says that movies are never as good as the book, which didn’t really seem like a joke so much as the writers’ self awareness of the quality of their effort. One particularly low point was a cringe-inducing moment between Ellie and Lee at Chris’s house: the pair are sitting at the window, and Ellie has these few strands of hair in front of her face that she inexplicably neglects, allowing Lee to come in with the stinker “I always used to look forward to geography class” before brushing it aside and kissing her.

Because the script followed the book oh-so-faithfully, there was zero tension for me as I knew exactly what was going to happen next. Jenny quite enjoyed it though, and constantly joined in with the cinema’s refrain of gasps during the pivotal scenes. Maybe if I had watched it with fresh eyes like her I would have enjoyed it much more. Hopefully it does well and brings about a revival of great Aussie movie productions.

Kratos is one angry dude...

A quickie review of God of War 3 to finish off the week. This game probably deserves slightly more verbiage than I’m willing to dedicate to it, but suffice to say that there are many ardent supporters of this ground-breaking series (often literally) that blends together 3D action platform gaming, excessive violence and Greek mythology.

The game borrows heavily, but largely successfully, from other genres: there are bits of Shadow of the Collossus, Street Fighter, and even bits of Echochrome, all seamlessly integrated into the overall narrative structure. This game closes off the the storyline from the previous games, which sees the “Ghost of Sparta” exacting revenge on the Olympian gods for causing him to accidentally kill his own family.

The plot is driven along by crappy, but mercifully sparse, dialogue and finishes with a climax that leans quite heavily on existentialist claptrap. But the point of the God of War series was never the story; it’s about dishing out retribution with extreme prejudice, and in that sense the game delivers in spades. In this final instalment Kratos is not content with  taking down monsters and gods, but also Titans of such immense proportions that they form entire game levels by themselves.

By the way, was it just me, or did the lyrics for the Ominous Latin Chanting in the final battle sound a lot like “Kratos, Kratos, Kratos, ha ha ha…”?

This is similar to the poster that I saw. I would have expected a much different movie...

Talk about going in there with no expectations: last night my wife suggested we go watch a movie, and although I generally keep to the big blockbusters, I didn’t really feel like How to train your dragon or Alice in Wonderland (not to mention baulking at the thought of having to pay the 3D tax). Jenny said that she’d heard good things about Date Night, starring Steve Carell and Tina Fey so we decided to watch that.

Now, the only thing – the one, single lonesome thing – that I’d seen, heard or read about date night was a big cardboard cutout at the cinema, showing Carell and Fey looking… slightly dishevelled. Therefore I assumed that it was going to be your usual rom-com fare. Boy was I wrong.

... if I had seen this poster instead.

The first few scenes setting up the Foster family were as expected: the couple about to be bored to death by their marriage, their friends supposedly finding freedom by breaking up leading to a lot of introspective navel gazing, couple starts to do wild and wacky things to compensate, culminating in an epic battle of the sexes. Ha ha. Except that’s not what happened at all. Instead, at about 10 minutes in, the script took a sharp turn, stepped hard on the accelerator, and sent the couple on a wild ride (both literally and metaphorically) through the seedy parts of New York.

Date Night is still identifiably a product of Hollywood – glaring product placements, characters cut out from blatantly clichéd ethnic, socio-economic and cultural stereotypes – and yet it manages to hit all the right notes. Carrell and Fey were absolutely brilliant in their roles as Phil and Clara Foster, with just the right look and demeanour to pull off the “ordinary folk stuck in an extraordinary situation” schtick. Shawn Levy, the director, is the very model of restraint – a quality which is sadly becoming quite rare in this genre – pulling back on the throttle at just the right moment before a joke goes from hilarious to cringey. Overall, the movie couldn’t be further from the “slices of bread holding together a shit sandwich” that “I Watch Stuff” predicted it would be when the movie was first announced.

I also liked that Date Night was completely lacking in cynicism. The conservative in me rejoices that every relationship (bar the one that triggered the plot in the first place) has a happy resolution: people are generally portrayed as being worthy human beings, if maybe a bit quirky or eccentric; the Fosters work through their marriage troubles in a positive and constructive way, instead of being narky to each other and having to come to an emotional stalemate in order to get through the trials, only to have their differences and problems magically disappear by the end of the movie; and the bad guys get their comeuppance in ways that don’t involve moral compromise, wanton death and destruction, or wilful negligence.

Maybe it was just the novelty – for once – of not knowing, but I doubt that I could be this entertained by every movie for which I have zero expectation. If you’ve already seen Date Night, did you know anything about it beforehand, and if so what did you think?