Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The Low-Down: Statistically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has achieved a great deal: over 11 years and 21 films, it has introduced dozens of relatively obscure characters into mainstream pop culture. More importantly, however, the franchise has proven that long-form storytelling can work in a cinematic context – as long as you balance plot with heart and humour, prizing character development over spectacle. That’s no small feat, and it’s even more remarkable that a movie with the gargantuan scale and ambition of Avengers: Endgame doesn’t fall apart beneath the weight of an unwieldy script or great expectations. In fact, this is the MCU’s crowning achievement: a heartfelt love letter to the Avengers, their stories, the actors who play them, and to the fans.

The Story: That damn Snap, eh? At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wiped out half of the galaxy’s population with a snap of his Infinity-Stone-enhanced fingers. After bearing witness to teammates and loved ones vanishing in swirls of dust and ash, the remaining Avengers struggle to live with the crippling grief and guilt of surviving the Snap… and of failing to prevent it. Some characters spiral into darkness; others are frozen in place – a few even manage to move on. But hope is rekindled when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) returns from the mysterious Quantum Realm, where the usual laws of physics, space and time do not apply…

The Great: Endgame is a storytelling triumph – not only does it bring together and pay off plots and ideas that were seeded over a decade ago, it builds solid, powerful, heartrendingly emotional narrative arcs for almost all of the original Avengers. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) must grapple with their pasts to figure out their futures, while Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) find themselves literally fighting to save their families. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) might provide much of the film’s comic relief, but both characters are also gifted with grace notes, growth and moments of true peace.

The Super-Great: The ability to juggle and create space for multiple perspectives and storylines in one film has been honed to a fine art by directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. But their narrative strategy feels virtuosic in Endgame, paired as it is with an ingenious plot device that allows the film to truly acknowledge the staggering depth and breadth of its own history. Suddenly, the emotional and narrative stakes are raised, as beloved characters are forced to re-examine their lives, stories and priorities. You might find yourself in tears and in stitches, frequently in the same scene, and this happens throughout the film – a testament to the Russo Brothers’ genius and their skills at anchoring even the most outlandish of storylines in humour and humanity.

The Not-So-Great: This is emphatically not a film for casual viewers – there is no entry point, no easing in, no exposition, to help you understand what the heck is going on if you haven’t watched most of the preceding films in the MCU. There are also a few logical fallacies and plotholes scattered throughout Endgame that will puzzle you the more you think about them – from the wobbly rules governing time travel to the fractured way in which the too-conveniently hyper-powered Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) pops in and out of the story.

Stan Service: This film, above all others in the MCU, feels like a heartfelt tribute to the very concept of Marvel itself, finding numerous ways to reward and delight true-blue fans. Naturally, it includes Stan Lee’s final appearance in the MCU, while folding in a host of other cameos and callbacks that reinforce the interconnectedness of the entire franchise – of all the stories that have been told before, especially the movie that started it all (Iron Man in 2008). There are even a couple of brilliant nods to comics lore, largely centred around the character of Captain America, that feel like the Russo Brothers are deliberately righting a few wrongs where some of Marvel Comics’ more controversial plot twists are concerned. (See: Nick Spencer’s run on Captain America: Steve Rogers.)

Cast-Iron MVP: Casting outside of the box has always been one of the MCU’s core strengths, with Oscar winners/nominees and character actors regularly popping up to play heroes and villains alike. That canny casting strategy pays off in spades in Endgame – especially when certain characters have relatively limited screen time but manage to make it count anyway. The undisputed stars of the movie, however, are the Avengers who started it all. Hemsworth continues to brilliantly dance along the knife-edge between comedy and pathos, while Ruffalo radiates charm and intelligence through ever-improving CGI as Banner and his not-so-mean, green alter ego: The Hulk. Johansson and Renner are given more to do in this film than ever before, and their combined efforts will shred your soul to pieces. Evans brings great warmth and strength to his stoic role, making it perfectly legitimate for you to weep and whoop for a man who’s – somewhat ridiculously – wrapped in an American flag. Above all, this double-whammy of Avengers films belongs, most fittingly, to Downey Jr. He still effortlessly injects Tony with snark and swagger, but also beautifully conveys every shade and layer of his character’s hard-won growth and maturity – giving us all the proof that we have never needed that Tony Stark has a heart.

Recommended? In every imaginable way. Endgame sets the bar as high as it can possibly go for superhero epics that balance enormous scale and jaw-dropping ambition with actual substance and genuine emotion. It’s the blockbuster movie event of our lifetimes, for very good reason – and it’s worth every minute you’ve invested in the MCU since 2008.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Over the past decade, Marvel has earned itself the benefit of the doubt. The studio has consistently delivered smart, funny, brave films that both embrace and transcend their comic-book origins. The 18 blockbuster movies produced since Iron Man first blasted off into the stratosphere in 2008 have not only reinvented superhero films as a genre – they’ve helped to legitimise it. Indeed, Marvel’s two most recent films – Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther – have received the kind of accolades usually reserved for edgy arthouse flicks.

And yet, it’s perfectly reasonable to be apprehensive about Avengers: Infinity War. This is a blockbuster film that’s been ten years in the making, its plot hinted at and scattered throughout 18 other movies. It features 30 or so characters, each with their own complex backstories and motivations. And all of them are coming together in a bid to stop a giant purple alien dude from destroying the universe. It sounds ridiculous, and feels impossible.

But that’s precisely what makes the final product such a monumental achievement. Masterfully directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Infinity War is bold, brainy filmmaking at its very best: the kind that will lift your spirits, blow your mind and shatter your soul – occasionally in the same scene. It demonstrates on an epic scale what Marvel has known all along: that special effects and tightly choreographed action are there to serve the story. For all its blockbuster spectacle (and there’s almost too much of that), the film is anchored by the heart, humour and humanity of its characters.

The film’s basic plot is simple: Thanos (played via motion-capture by Josh Brolin), intergalactic purveyor of death and destruction, has long been on the hunt for the six Infinity Stones that will give him complete control over the elemental building blocks of the universe. He dispatches his acolytes to Earth to retrieve the Time Stone, currently in the possession of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and carve the Mind Stone out of the forehead of Vision (Paul Bettany). It’s a literal existential threat so terrifying that all the heroes we’ve come to know and love – from the Avengers to the Guardians of the Galaxy – must put aside their differences and unite against a common foe.

From the outset, it’s immediately clear that neither the film’s directors nor screenwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) are interested in playing it safe. Most other superhero films are bled of high stakes – the hero in the title might suffer untold trauma, but it’s a super-safe bet that he or she will make it to the end alive. There’s no such guarantee here. Within the first ten minutes, we are confronted with the dark, twisted depths to which Thanos and his acolytes in the Black Order will sink in order to achieve their goals. Death, as well as genuine loss and sacrifice, is intrinsic to the narrative drumbeat that drives Infinity War ever forward, and the film is all the better for it.

That’s not to say the movie is a morbid and depressing experience. What’s so impressive about Infinity War is how it expertly juggles its constantly shifting tones and moods. When it’s funny (and it very often is), it’s deeply, truly funny. The film finds maximum joy in flinging characters together with merry abandon, mixing and matching ones you’d never have expected to share scenes or trade banter. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is floored by Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) godly muscles. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is charmed by the wit and intelligence of Shuri (Letitia Wright). And it’d be impossible to not be utterly delighted by Peter Dinklage’s inspired cameo. It’s a blithely tongue-in-cheek sensibility shared by Marvel’s best comic books, which understand that humour can make you care when it really counts.

And, boy, does Infinity War make it count. There are many heartbreakingly human moments threaded throughout the film: from the charming surrogate father-son dynamic shared by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Peter Parker (Tom Holland), to the undeniable love that ties Vision and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) together. In many ways, the film stands as a testament to the human capacity not just to love, but to love fiercely and beyond all logic. It’s right there when the unfailingly noble Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) declares, “We don’t trade lives”, even when giving up one could save billions.

There’s even a chilling echo of it in Thanos himself. A lesser film would have turned Thanos into a one-dimensional villain, much the way he’s all monster and maniac in the comic books. In Infinity War, however, Thanos’ end goal is surprisingly relevant when it comes to thinking and talking about the staggeringly overpopulated world in which we live today. There is, as it turns out, method to Thanos’ madness. It makes the tragic twists and turns in his relationships with his estranged adopted daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan), all the more unsettling.

For the most part, Infinity War does justice, too, to the many heroes who have been assembled for the film. The Russo brothers displayed great skill at interweaving multiple perspectives and character trajectories in Captain America: Civil War, and they do so again here, with twice as many characters. Even the most minor of supporting players, like Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes/War Machine, are given story beats that land. It helps that Marvel has always taken care to cast genuinely good actors in roles that might otherwise come off as silly and slight.

Even so, there are a few standouts amongst this enormous and enormously talented cast. Emotionally speaking, this is Downey’s film. He plays every note of Tony’s reluctant courage and bone-deep trauma, as he embarks on what he’s convinced is a suicide mission. He’s ably matched by Cumberbatch, who finds vulnerability even in his character’s most cunning and calculative move. Hemsworth, meanwhile, is given free rein to import the big-hearted comedic swagger of Thor: Ragnarok into this film – while also layering it with a deeply-felt, jagged grief for the losses he has suffered at the hands of Thanos and the universe.

In a film with so many moving parts, some elements don’t work quite as well. A couple of characters that you might have expected to be right at the forefront – including an original Avenger or two – fade into the background. The film tumbles from dizzying fight scene to dizzying fight scene, and while most of them are fantastically choreographed, there are some purely dumb moments that literally revolve around attempts to prevent Thanos from clenching his fist. In effect, this is a superhero mêlée that’s part over-the-top and part overkill, and might prove too much for those who don’t already care for this franchise and the characters in it.

Minor quibbles aside, though, Infinity War is yet another step in the right direction for Marvel. It continues the studio’s tradition of placing a premium on rich, complex storytelling that respects both its characters and its audiences. But it also refuses to make things easy for itself. The film ends even more bravely than it began, with a final ten minutes that will haunt and horrify you in equal measure. It’s a stroke of bold, brilliant genius – a narrative risk so audacious that you’ll want to follow Marvel wherever it goes next.

Basically: This movie will blow your mind and break your heart – and make you desperate to go back for more. Brave, brilliant and better than it has any right to be.

 

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

In some alternate reality, a movie bearing the title of Thor: Ragnarok has taken itself very seriously indeed: full of literal doom and gloom, it’s an apocalyptic drama about the End of Days, as prophesied by Norse mythology. Since that pretty much describes the world in which we currently live, it’s actually rather fitting that Marvel’s 17th studio film is something else entirely. In our reality, Thor: Ragnarok is a wild, wacky and very welcome blast of pure joy – a raucous comedy that fuses an intergalactic road trip with buddy comedy, brotherly rivalry and battle domes. Thank Thor (and director Taika Waititi) for that!

We reunite with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) – still free of new Infinity Stones, freshly confident that he’s once again warded off the fabled Ragnarok – just as he discovers that something is rotten in the state of Asgard. As teased at the end of Thor: The Dark World, Loki (Tom Hiddleston), his shape-shifting trickster brother, has been impersonating their ailing dad, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). When Odin’s strength finally fails, the dark secret he’s been keeping at bay storms into the lives of his sons: Hela (Cate Blanchett), their bloodthirsty older sister, is back to claim the throne she believes is rightfully hers.

For (largely) better or (occasionally) worse, Thor: Ragnarok doesn’t dwell as much on the royal family drama as its predecessors did. Instead, its second act plays out on the candy-coated, death-dealing planet of Sakaar. Ruled by the whims and fancies of the Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum, dialled to 11), Sakaar’s people are relentlessly entertained in their very own battle dome. (Think the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome, with holographic screens and super-powered alien beings.) Following an initial devastating confrontation with Hela, Thor is stranded on Sakaar, and brought in by the mercenary Valkyrie (Tessa Thompson) to stand against the raging primal force of the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) – not quite the “friend from work” Thor remembers.

If that all sounds like serious business, rest assured it’s very much not. There’s a gentle wit threaded through every frame of this film – a glorious, big-hearted (and largely improvised) silliness that fans of Taika Waititi will remember (and treasure) from such indie comedy gems as What We Did In The Shadows and Hunt For The Wilderpeople. Miraculously, Waititi has managed to infuse this gargantuan, green-screened epic with his trademark offbeat vibe, best exemplified in the way key plot points are revealed (via sardonic monologue or ironic stage play) and the character he plays (Korg, a chirpy rock monster who befriends Thor before our hero heads into the arena).

Waititi’s involvement is a blessing for pretty much everyone involved in the film, but especially for Hemsworth. It’s not that he hasn’t been good in his previous appearances as the God of Thunder throughout the franchise – he was suavely charming in Thor and resolutely grim in The Dark World. But he’s so remarkably good here, switching effortlessly between bright-eyed puppy and care-worn leader, that it feels like he’s finally come home. Hemsworth’s performance in this film is a fantastic balance of sunshine, silliness and subversiveness, and it’s a joy to behold.

It’s clear, too, that everyone in the cast – including respected veterans like Hopkins and Blanchett – were delighted to partake in the film’s mirth and mayhem. Ruffalo continues to play the dual aspects of Bruce Banner – looming brute and mild-mannered professor – with so much winning charm that you want him to get his own Hulk movie, stat. Hiddleston is totally game for playing up the odd-couple comedy of Loki’s rivalry with Thor, while shading unexpected complexity into his character’s machinations. Thompson swaggers off with practically every scene she’s in, finding the heart, humour and heroism in an Asgardian warrior who’s lost her way.

Perhaps more impressively, Waititi handles every Marvel blockbuster’s requisite action scenes with more clarity and flair than you’d expect from an indie director. He manages to find character and comedy beats even in swooping spaceship chases and bruising hand-to-hand combat. There’s a thrilling fluidity to the action sequences – whether it’s Thor soaring towards his enemies like lightning made flesh, or Hela unleashing her multiple projectiles of death with a dark, graceful beauty.

That’s not to say Thor: Ragnarok is perfect. As it turns out, the film’s greatest strength – apocalypse as afterthought – is also its biggest flaw. Waititi just about manages to find the emotional weight in Thor coming to terms with his power and leadership (a driving theme for this character), but it does get a little lost in all the knockabout comedy. Thanks to Blanchett, Hela is never less than terrifying: she oozes gleeful malevolence in her wake, forcing Thor to confront his own gold-tinted ideas of himself, his family and his history. Alas, she’s also one of that peculiar breed of antagonist who’s immeasurably powerful and strangely ineffective, all at the same time.

For years, Marvel has been making brave choices in terms of the directors to whom it has entrusted its stories and characters. This strategy has yielded films that are, for the most part, creatively diverse, ranging in quality from decent to excellent. Even so, handing the reins of the Thor franchise to a director with such a unique voice as Waititi might have been its biggest gamble yet. Fortunately, it pays off in spades. Smart, silly and self-aware, Thor: Ragnarok is a blockbuster that feels like it snuck into cinemas by way of the arthouse. It’s also that rare threequel which isn’t just as good as its predecessors – it’s easily the best of the lot.

Basically: Get ready to Ragnarok & Roll – this film is the most fun you’ll have in a cinema all year!

Thor: The Dark World (2013)

Truth be told, Marvel could have slapped together a series of mediocre follow-up movies in the wake of The Avengers, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Nerds would have turned out no matter what, and a billion dollars’ worth of average movie-goer would be curious and interested enough to check out future installments in the franchise regardless of their quality. But, reflecting the studio’s canny business sense and genuine enthusiasm for its subject matter, Phase Two – in Marvel’s own lingo – has been excellent thus far. Iron Man 3 was arguably the finest of Tony Stark’s standalone adventures, and the gritty, witty Thor: The Dark World stands proudly as proof that there’s still depth and humour to be mined from the ongoing (mis)adventures of a Norse god and his trickster brother.

After the cataclysmic battle of New York, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) has returned to Asgard, leaving his human sweetheart Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) quite unaware of his whereabouts. It’s crunch-time for the Asgardians: their world and the nine realms associated with it, including Earth (Midgard to you comic book purists), are being threatened by the return of the Dark Elves, who – as their cheery name suggests – are hellbent on exchanging the light of the universe for primordial darkness. With Jane and his family drawn inexorably into the ensuing mêlée, Thor must seek help from the most unlikely of sources: his disgraced brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston).

Anyone who complained that Thor has hitherto been rather too earth-bound for a Norse god from outer space should be satisfied by The Dark World. It’s packed to the brim with sci-fi elements, ranging across a greyer, battered Asgard and the stark, sand-beaten alien vista of the Dark Elves’ homeworld. The ideas are huge, the battles written in cosmically personal terms: Thor’s battle to safeguard the people he loves is synonymous with his responsibility to Asgard and the worlds beyond it. Director Alan Taylor – fresh off the ground-breaking television series Game Of Thrones – proves a good choice to take the reins from Kenneth Branagh: he brings a dark, sombre realism to proceedings that feels apt for a film of this scale and ambition.

Never fear though – there’s a rich, welcome vein of humour that runs cheerfully throughout the film as well, a light-hearted touch that films set in the D.C. comic book universe would be well-advised to take on board. Dark, angst-ridden broodiness worked for the Dark Knight trilogy, more or less, but Man Of Steel suffered from its own unmitigated earnestness. There’s no such problem in The Dark World, which takes a while to dig itself out of the gravity of its situation, but pretty much gets there once the enormously appealing Loki becomes more firmly a part of the film’s narrative trajectory.

It’s no wonder, by the way, why Hiddleston has become a worldwide sensation for his utterly winning performance as Loki. Loki is, in effect, the personification of that problem many of us have with family members whom we have no choice but to love even if they make things difficult for us (or, you know, become supervillains). He exudes so much charm, vulnerability and complexity that the comparatively well-adjusted Thor is sometimes sidelined in his own movie. Loki’s machinations in this film, covering his usual gamut of vengeance, deception and trickery, add fire and heart to Thor’s story.

Everyone else is in fine, if varyingly overshadowed, form. Thor’s story is broadly the same as in the first film – his goal then was to prove himself worthy of kingship; here, he must prove himself worthy of being a leader (and recognising that this does not necessarily equate to sovereign power). Hemsworth sells that emotional arc very well. Portman could easily have been rendered a damsel in distress, but is actually given a little more to do as Jane, which allows her to encounter her potential parents-in-law to amusing and emotional effect. Hopkins, as always, is reliably great and Christopher Eccleston – buried beneath several layers of make-up – makes for a suitably sinister villain as Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves.

On a few occasions, The Dark World threatens to strain the credulity or patience of its viewers – the first half is slow-moving, and the final action-packed face-off in Greenwich charges ahead with more energy than logic. Nevertheless, Taylor’s film is a worthy addition to Marvel’s canon. It’s laced through with a deep, genuine affection for its other-worldly protagonists, and knows just when to take itself less seriously and when to reward its fanbase. (There’s a cameo in the middle of the film that’s worth the price of admission, and two credits stings – one in the middle and one at the end – that audiences should definitely stick around for.) Plus, it’s enormously entertaining. What more could anyone want?

Basically: Thor: The Dark World continues Marvel’s winning streak. Take notes, Zack Snyder.

Rush (2013)

For anyone who isn’t an F1 enthusiast, the sport seems somewhat baffling. Why sit for hours just to watch racers zip by in a blur of colour and noise, faster than the human eye can register? The human element of the sport is wrapped up in a hulking piece of metal – a feat of engineering rather than emotion. Director Ron Howard’s very human Rush scrapes away that metallic veneer to explore the lives – and bitter rivalry – of two of the most legendary figures to have ever torn through an F1 circuit.

Howard takes us back to the 1970s to meet a pair of race car drivers who couldn’t be more different. James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth) is suave, cocky and British, living life and driving cars with reckless abandon. Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl) is arrogant, cold and Austrian, refusing to placate or charm his way past anything or anyone. Their fierce competition comes to a head in the 1976 F1 World Championship, one filled with drama, tension, rage, speed and near-fatal explosions. 

Ironically for a film so very much about super-fast cars, that’s actually the least compelling aspect of Rush. Howard has spoken at length about the hard work and innovative camera techniques that went into capturing the racing sequences. Perhaps to an F1 fan, the resulting scenes in the film might prove revelatory. To the uneducated, however, they work well enough but don’t really hum with the electric charge or lightning rhythm one suspects Howard was going for. In fact, the film as a whole doesn’t really kick into hyperdrive until the drivers take to the notoriously treacherous Nürburgring ring in Germany – one that will drag Lauda to hell and back, with Hunt still hot on his heels.

What Rush does very well is develop its two main characters. It would have been easy to filter the two men into the archetypes of hero and villain, a temptation screenwriter Peter Morgan avoids. Instead, Hunt is portrayed as a beautiful, flirtatious mess, a man who attracts beautiful women like his wife Suzy (Olivia Wilde) as easily as he will eventually repel them. Lauda’s character isn’t softened either – a feat all the more impressive since the real-life Lauda acted as a consultant on the film. Here, he comes off more often than not as an antagonistic jerk, tough to like, possibly harder to love, and yet human and vulnerable enough so that his relationship with his wife-to-be Marlene (Alexandra Maria Lara) becomes the unexpected love story at the heart of the film.

Howard is aided immeasurably by his cast. Hemsworth sheds vanity and godly muscle to play the utterly charming, vaguely degenerate Hunt. His performance – one of his best to date – proves that he’s quite capable of subverting his sun-kissed good looks in roles that carry an undertone of darkness and depth. Brühl, too, is tremendous in the part: his Lauda is, at times, fiercely unlikeable, but remains fascinating and oddly sympathetic throughout.

If Rush is less effective on the racing track, at least it works a treat as a character study. It provides movie-goers with not just one, but two, wonderfully-developed, fully-realised characters. The real thrill of the film is derived from neither adrenaline nor speed, but from a healthy helping of heart and emotion. It comes from watching the two men – neither one the hero or the villain of the piece – bring out the best and worst in each other, even as they both grapple with careers in which they have to drive as if they might die at any minute.

Basically: Don’t expect a huge adrenaline rush; this is more about heart than speed.

Red Dawn (2012)

Red Dawn is being released in cinemas almost as an afterthought. The film was actually completed and set for release in November 2010, long before two of its top-billed stars – Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson – wound up hitting the big time via other far more reputable projects. But, because of parent company MGM’s financial woes, the film was stuck in limbo for ages… during which time it racked up its own fair share of controversy when China’s media became aware that the bogeyman in this high-school war movie was its People’s Liberation Army. Now, two years later, Red Dawn limps into theatres on the combined fame of Thor and Peeta Mellark, with references to China digitally replaced by handy butt-of-all-communist-jokes, North Korea.

The plot of the film is pretty slight. Hemsworth plays Jed, a Marine back on shore leave to visit his dad Tom (Brett Cullen) and younger brother Matt (Josh Peck). The two brothers have barely had time to sort out their issues with each other before disaster quite literally strikes. Planes start raining down hellfire and bombs upon the world they knew, and soon the boys and their friends are on the run from the remarkably successful invading forces, led in their town by the villainous Captain Lo (Will Yun Lee). Jed trains the ragtag bunch of survivors, including the gentle Robert (Hutcherson) and mayor’s son Daryl (Connor Cruise), and they soon start making a name for themselves as the Wolverines, a counter-insurgency force bent on standing up to the invaders.

If all this sounds faintly ridiculous, that’s because it is. Red Dawn is a remake of a 1984 film that was made when America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies was still raging across Europe. High-school characters aside, it presented a very real fear at the time of a literal red dawn – when Americans would wake to find themselves overrun by communists. There is no such fear now, which makes the film feel somewhat pointless. The newsreel footage that kicks off proceedings tries its best to lend credibility to the notion of North Korea being able to overwhelm (even parts of) the United States. But it’s not particularly successful and is only compounded by Red Dawn‘s troubling portrayal of the invading forces, which is jingoistic and one-dimensional in the extreme. These are stock cartoon villains who might as well have moustaches to twirl evilly – small wonder that the Chinese were unhappy when parts of the script were leaked online.

Red Dawn is also the kind of movie that dumps loads of corny, chest-thumping mumbo-jumbo into its characters’ mouths: pity Hemsworth in particular, who has to deliver more than one of these supposedly inspirational speeches with the minimum of irony. Any qualms on the part of these high-school kids about blowing stuff up and shooting people dead is handled in a pretty ham-fisted way: they joke nervously about video games coming to life, while the training sequences are shoved into a convenient montage. Some scenes are deliberately engineered to get the audience thinking about the sacrifices of war for kids who should be too young to bear such costs – but, amidst the hormonally-charged budding romances that litter the plot, only Daryl’s plight is genuinely affecting.

It doesn’t help that the cast isn’t quite strong enough to carry the entire film. Hemsworth and Hutcherson are okay in their parts, but neither really displays the charisma that they’ve since shown themselves capable of radiating in meatier, better-written roles. In any case, the real lead character of the film is Matt, who’s been sidelined in the poster and publicity campaign in favour of his more famous co-stars – probably for good reason. Peck is frustratingly one-note in his part, his face perpetually frozen in a hangdog expression of slack-jawed surprise. (Forgive this reviewer for saying so, but he looks like Christopher Mintz-Plasse crossed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s prosthetics-enhanced features in Looper, which is disconcerting to say the least.)

The film’s saving grace is the fact that it doesn’t always take itself seriously. In fact, there are some great, crowd-pleasing moments that are deliberately silly and fun, many of which occur after the Wolverines are joined by a group of real soldiers led by Lieutenant-Colonel Andy Tanner (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). At these points, Red Dawncomes close to being what it really ought to be: a razor-sharp satire of war, politics and the easy, nonchalant ways in which kids bred on a diet of action movies and videogames are likely to take to warfare. However, instead of sustaining this level of quality throughout the film, such moments are few and far between… and the rest of the film isn’t quite good enough to make up for their absence.

Basically: Lurches uncomfortably between silly and serious.

 

 

Written for F*** Magazine

The Cabin In The Woods (2012)

I don’t do horror movies – it’s just not a genre I particularly enjoy, probably due to a traumatic weekend or twenty in my childhood when my elder brother (an afficionado of horror movies, the schlockier the better) used to lock us both into the television room as he gleefully rewatched his favourite slasher movies on a loop. So, as a rule, I never really seek out movies involving zombies, creepy basements, living dolls, dream monsters and the like, in which – as one of the hapless hunted – you survive longer the less blonde and more chaste you are. I do, however, make an effort to catch horror movies if it seems like they have something more to say than the typical slash-burn-crash-and-die gore-fest – I steeled myself to watch Let The Right One In (both versions!), for instance, and was duly rewarded for my bravery.

The same goes for The Cabin In The Woods – if it had been written by anyone except genre maestro Joss Whedon, most people (myself included) would have dismissed it out-of-hand as yet another movie soaked in blood, gore and a not-at-all-surprising lack of wit and intelligence. But because it was co-written by Whedon and Drew Goddard, his erstwhile collaborator on Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, I took notice – as did a lot of critics who fell over themselves to praise Cabin as one of the smartest, worthiest examples of the genre to date. Allow me now to add myself to that host of unabashed fans of the film. I missed it in cinemas but finally caught it over the weekend, at the behest of all my siblings (who had each seen the movie at least twice), and I’m so glad I did.

Story-wise, every single review I’ve read has warned people to avoid spoilers as far as humanly possible before you watch the movie. On that count, I will heartily agree – the less you know about Cabin going in, the better. Suffice it to say that the film is populated with the bog-standard set of characters in any horror movie who live only to die, in as horrifying and blood-soaked a fashion as possible. So we meet ditzy blonde Jules (Anna Hutchinson), her jock boyfriend Curt (a pre-Thor Chris Hemsworth), and their friends – egghead Holden (Jesse Williams), pothead Marty (Fran Kranz) and good girl Dana (Kristen Connolly)… all of whom are heading up to Curt’s uncle’s titular cabin in the woods for a weekend of rest, relaxation… and oops, mayhem.

So far, so standard horror movie, right? Well, no, not really. The twist that serves double-duty as the premise of Cabin is ingenious, and you’ll find yourself impressed and entertained in a way you could never have expected from a mere slasher flick. As anyone who has followed Whedon and Goddard’s work on Buffy would know, you’re in for a great time as the writers cheerfully subvert and celebrate in equal measure the genre in which they’re operating. Yes, of course terrible, horrible, very bad things happen to the protagonists – they always do in movies of this kind – but I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that this film takes a far deeper, more insightful look at why these bad things happen, more so than any horror movie to date that has tried to explain the dark motives of its antagonist(s). The story is absolutely littered with tropes of the genre – gang heads into the dark cellar (NO! WHY!?), blonde girl traipses out into the woods to sex it up with her boyfriend (NO! WHY!?), the pothead character is the only one who seems to know what’s going on… it’s all been done before, but it’s never been done better.

Even if you guess the twist at the heart of Cabin fairly early on (and it actually comes clear pretty early in the film’s running time), the movie still has a great deal more to say. Most horror movies these days practically come with a guarantee that you’ll enjoy yourself as long as you check your brain and good taste at the door – well, Cabin encourages you to do the exact opposite. If the movie works for you as it did for me, you’ll find yourself asking questions about why the genre has continued to flourish as it has. It lends weight to the genre and, if you buy into its mythos, does the same for all the horror movies that have come before and will come after it. It even manages to sneak some religious symbolism in the back door when it waltzes cheekily by the choices the characters make and show us in appropriately gruesome fashion what fates they have thereby brought upon themselves.

If this entire review thus far has turned you off Cabin for, ironically, being too smart and cerebral for a horror movie, rest assured that Whedon and Goddard still cook up enough scares so you’ll find yourself watching the movie from behind your fingers or anything handy nearby, like a box of popcorn or a cushion. For a movie that so relentlessly unpicks and mocks the conventions to which it slavishly adheres, Cabin is packed with nasty jolts as effective as those you’ll get in any other fright-fest of a movie on release now.

My only criticism of the entire enterprise is that the gory, blood-soaked climax comes almost too easily and too conveniently – there wasn’t any other way, really, to achieve the outcome the writers needed to conclude their story, but it does deflate the story somewhat even as the film veers happily into nightmare territory. Nevertheless, I would contend that this is a small enough flaw as to be almost negligible. When it comes down to it, Cabin is an intelligent, quippy horror movie, functioning both as a creepy slasher flick and its smarter, self-deconstructing cousin. If for nothing else, the terrified child inside me will always be grateful for Cabin because it means I’ll never have to watch another horror movie again – it’s hard to imagine that anyone else will be able to top the audacity and brilliance of this one.

Basically: Game over. Whedon and Goddard have won, and the genre is unlikely to be this smart or self-reflexive ever again.