Archive Review - EDDIE THE EAGLE (2016)

*Salvaged from some notes found in one of my old notebooks.  These notes would have been made at the latest the day after originally seeing the film.*

High Flyer 

Eddie the Eagle is a biopic released in 2016 and stars Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman.  It is based on the true story of skier Michael Edwards as he strives to represent Great Britain in ski jumping at the 1988 Winter Olympics.

It is a very positive, inspiring film all about how self-belief, perseverance and hard work will help you achieve your dreams.  It's a message audiences have been subjected to many times by now, but thanks to such compelling, mostly fleshed out characters, it is still very engaging and charming.

(The only negatives are rather nit-picky).  Jackman's character Bronson Peary, Eddie's trainer, is a former professional skier, disgraced because - he didn't take the sport seriously enough?  Additionally, he is completely fictional, created solely for the film.

Also, in the film, Eddie stays at a bar whilst at a training camp in Germany.  He is discovered by the bar owner sleeping in a cupboard, with no prior introduction, though she allows him to stay due to her being physically attracted to him.  Questionable reasoning, but at least Eddie had a place to stay.

These criticisms certainly do not detract from it being a very inspirational, feel good film.  Though, as Edwards himself has said himself, much of the film is highly dramatised and "around 20% accurate" to what actually happened.  However, in adaptation, artistic/creative licence must be taken for the sake of entertainment. It is still a great, fun film.     

*Originally given an 8/10 score.* 

   

    

Ranking the Live Action TRANSFORMERS Movies. Worst to Best - Number 3

3. TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (2009)

“Sam Witwicky leaves the Autobots behind for a normal life. But when his mind is filled with cryptic symbols, the Decepticons target him and he is dragged back into the Transformers’ war.”

- IMDB Transformers Revenge Of The Fallen

Revenge of the Fallen is, in the eyes of a lot of people, terrible.  For me though, it is a nostalgic mixed bag and the first Transformers film I was truly hyped for.

For me it has its moments.  The score by Steve Jablonsky is once again beautifully epic, the CGI is incredible and some of the action set pieces, such as the opening Shanghai fight, the forest battle and the final fight in Egypt, are exciting. 

However, it is bogged down with some stupid, unfunny, crass humour and annoying characters (both human and robot).  Leo Spitz, Sam's college roommate, has no character arc at all and should have either been written out of the story after the first hour or gone through some character growth by the end of the film.  As it is, he is there for "comic relief", making a fool of himself in failed slapstick comedy and literally screaming in fear.

Then there is the issue of two of the new Autobots - twins Mudflap and Skids.  Criticised for being racial stereotypes, they bring nothing to the film other than a misjudged attempt at comic relief and two new toys for Hasbro's tie-in toy line.  They were received so poorly in this instalment that they were omitted almost completely from the franchise's third film (almost, since they were included in tie in comics, books, the toy line and can still be seen in their vehicle modes, albeit briefly, in the background of one of the shots early in the film.

The film was in pre-production during the time of the Writers Guild of America strike, so the story and character development definitely suffer for that.  It is a basic plot of the Decepticons searching for a Cybertronian MacGuffin that will end the world and the Autobots, with the help of Sam Witwicky (Shia LaBeouf), have to stop them. Sam's character arc involves him getting to the stage in his relationship with Mikaela (Megan Fox, who has somewhat improved acting-wise since the last film) where he can tell her that he loves her.  His mother and father make a return, with them learning to cope with their son leaving for college, on his way to face the world on his own whilst also being caught up in this alien war..

At the age of fourteen-going-on-fifteen, Revenge of the Fallen was the perfect Summer action blockbuster for me and, at the time, I probably favoured it over the first one.  This is no longer the case, but it is still mindless background noise if you are doing something else, that you can pick and choose to watch your favourite moments.  Also, director Michael Bay still seemed to actually care at this point, so it is far better than Age of Extinction and The Last Knight. 

KNOCK - A Short Horror Film - Directed and written by James Roberts

A teenager is home alone, scrolling through social media when he comes across a chain-mail post that he doesn't share...

This is a short film I made for my University course.  Not everything went to plan, but I'm happy enough with how it turned out. 

If you watch/have watched it, thank you.

Blog Update #1

Rediscovering Old Review Notes

Recently I decided to empty out an old backpack of mine.  Inside I found some small, crumpled pieces of paper that had been torn out of a notebook.  I opened them up to discover that they were short film reviews from a number of years ago that I wrote during my breaks in college.  Therefore, I have decided to type up these reviews with the aim of (eventually) uploading them to this blog in the near future. 

Also, expect the next update of my Transformers Film Ranking soon.

Ranking the Live Action TRANSFORMERS Movies. Worst to Best - Number 4

Ranking the Live Action TRANSFORMERS Movies (Continued).

Continuing with my ranking of the live action Transformers films, from my least to most favourite.  Here is number four.

4. TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (2014)

“Autobots must escape sight from a bounty hunter who has taken control of the human serendipity. Unexpectedly, Optimus Prime and his remaining gang turn to a mechanic, his daughter and her back street racing boyfriend for help”

- IMDB Transformers Age Of Extinction

The fourth film was a soft reboot for the franchise. It featured all new human characters and robot redesigns but retained the continuity set up in the original trilogy.  I saw Age of Extinction  twice in cinemas, convincing myself that I liked it each time. It wasn't until I re-watched it at home on Blu-ray, away from the spectacle of the experience of the cinema, that I realised that it is just long, boring and also exhausting.

Jablonsky's score is the strongest point of this instalment and his collaboration with Rock band Imagine Dragons gives this score a more unique feel than the others.
I also really like Frank Welker providing the voice of Galvatron, Megatron revived in a new body.
Mark Wahlberg makes his franchise debut as Cade Yeager, bringing a new dynamic to the series as a struggling father trying to provide for his teenage daughter Tessa.  He is not quite as annoying in this film though, compared to the next one.

However, I could have done without at least two characters.  Firstly, Shane.  Aside from rescuing the Yeager's at their farm from the evil human task force Cemetery Wind in a car chase,  he does nothing, bringing nothing whatsoever to the story other than antagonising Cade about how he is sleeping with his underage daughter.  The other character is T. J. Miller's Lucas, a character I almost forgot about until I proofread this article before posting.  He is arguably the most annoying character in the franchise and only appears in the first forty-five minutes before (SPOILER ALERT) he gets killed off.  However, odds are you will not grieve, you will rejoice.

The Autobots, some that we know from the previous films and some new faces, being hunted down and killed by Lockdown, a Cybertronian bounty hunter, could have been an interesting plot point, posing a slightly different threat for our heroes than continuing the war with the Decepticons, 

I do not have as much to say about this one, it was simply "meh".  All in all, Transformers Age Of Extinction is a boring film filled with visual noise and annoying characters.  It is not the worst but it is a far cry away from how I view the remaining three instalments. 

Ranking the Live Action TRANSFORMERS Movies. Worst to Best - Number 5

Ranking The Live Action TRANSFORMERS Movies

A while ago I published a review of the first live action Transformers movie, where I wrote about how much I like it and what it means to me.  At the end of it, I teased my opinions on the sequels, writing that I would save them for another review. 

With hype starting to build for the latest in the series, soft-reboot/prequel Bumblebee, directed by Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) and releasing this December, I felt that now would be a good time to give my opinions on the Michael Bay directed films.

Moving from worst to best, here is my personal ranking of the five live action Transformers films.

(Reminder: All my personal opinion.)

5. TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT (2017)

“Autobots and Decepticons are at war, with humans on the sidelines.  Optimus Prime is gone.  The key to saving our future lies buried in the secrets of the past, in the hidden history of the Transformers on Earth.”

- IMDB Transformers The Last Knight

The absolute worst in the franchise.  I had a bad feeling about it from the trailers, which for the first time in this franchise did nothing to excite me.

The film was noisy, incoherent and hollow and I hated nearly everything about it. The only things I did like were the return of Decepticon Barricade (who funnily enough only appears in odd-numbered instalments up to this point), the design of Megatron (with original actor Frank Welker providing his voice), and Steve Jablonsky's score.

As soon as my brother and I arrived home after seeing this film, we ranted so much that we compiled a lengthy list pertaining everything we disliked about it.  Unfortunately, this list has since been lost after he changed his smart phone, which is a shame as I would have loved to read through it before writing this..

A lot of the characters annoyed me. All Mark Wahlberg did, returning as Cade Yeager from the fourth film, was shout and look bewildered and his romance with Laura Haddock's Vivian Wembley, though telegraphed through some forced, awkward dialogue about why no one will go out with her and how long it has been since he last had sex, was very unbelievable and unearned.  Then there is the issue of Izzy (Isabella Moner), a preteen tough girl who seems like she's going to be important due to her introduction at the start of the film, but then completely disappears from the story in the second act, only showing up again at the end.

In fact, for the sake of the story, two characters could easily have been merged into one.  Izzy and Wembley should have been the same person.  One underdeveloped moment should have been turned into character development. Cade is a fugitive in this story for helping the Autobots in Transformers 4, so he is not allowed to see his daughter, who is away in college.  Enter Izzy, a street savvy orphan who crosses paths with Cade and the Autobots and gets involved in the battle against the Decepticons.  There are scenes where the two begin to bond; asking about what happened to their families and attempting to fix Bumblebee's voice box.  These end up going nowhere.  There should have been more of these moments threaded throughout the film where they bond as surrogate father and daughter, assisting and supporting each other.  At least this way, her character would have served more of a purpose than "our movie has a tough young girl in it, appealing to a wider demographic" and we would not have to suffer through the poorly written "love story".

There are also so many continuity issues that are introduced by the film's insistence that the Transformers characters we see arrive on Earth in the first film had actually been on the planet for decades longer than that, through old paintings featuring Ironhide and statues showing off Optimus Prime in his design that he only acquired in Transformers Age of Extinction in "present day".

There are so many more issues I have with this sorry attempt at a Transformers film that were on the aforementioned lost list.  If I remember them in future, I will update this post on The Last Shite.


Coming Soon: Ranking Number 4.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) Review

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

After the success of Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014, it was no surprise that a sequel would soon follow.  Director Matthew Vaughn returns for Kingsman: The Golden Circle, as do stars Taron Egerton, Mark Strong and Colin Firth, reprising their roles from the previous film. 

With Kingsman all but destroyed, Eggsy (Egerton) and Merlin (Strong) must journey stateside to seek the help of their American cousins, Statesman, in order to take down sadistic drug lord Poppy (Julianne Moore), who is holding the world ransom.

I was certainly entertained by Kingsman: The Golden Circle.  Action heavy and funny, it continued where its predecessor left off in parodying the Roger Moore era of the James Bond film franchise. There are a number of call-backs and references to the first film that provide nice continuity. However, it does fall victim to sequelitis, a trap many sequels fall into where filmmakers believe the only logical next step is to go bigger and louder with more explosions, with the majority of big action set pieces in this film certainly fitting this description.  The first film’s well edited, cleverly choreographed, fast paced fight scenes return in droves for The Golden Circle and are for the most part exciting, although it does feel similar to the final level of a videogame by the end, with the hero taking on waves of enemies before finally reaching the big boss fight.

The Secret Service did a really good job at developing its characters, particularly Eggsy.  We empathised with him as we learned about his personality, motivations and family life.  We saw him shift from goalless chav to gentleman spy over the course of two hours.  However, in The Golden Circle, there is no such character arc; he is as he was at the end of the last film. While I certainly didn’t want him to regress in any way, other than the fact he has a new enemy to take on, there is no new skill or lesson he has to learn.  There is another character though that needed more character development than they received.  If this character had been written better and developed more, it would have made a particular scene a lot better. As it is, with only a line or two of expositional dialogue, what happens with him just comes out of the blue.

Despite being a comedy, I didn’t find myself laughing out loud all too often during the film.  That’s not to say that I didn’t find it funny, because as I’ve already mentioned I did, but rather I didn’t find it funny enough to do anything more than chuckle most of the time.  There is a recurring cameo role from a celebrity (whose identity I won’t spoil for you in case you have not yet seen it) that is played for laughs, but eventually he overstays his welcome and becomes tedious at times.  Also, look out for some clear, amusing satire with the President of the United States.

Composer Henry Jackman returns for his fourth collaboration with director Matthew Vaughn and creates a fitting score.  His return to score the film not only helps accompany the action and emotions on screen but also provides continuity between films with leitmotifs.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a fun, action packed sequel that doesn’t quite live up to its predecessor.  Its likeable characters and creative set pieces make this sequel enjoyable enough, though it is hindered by some underdeveloped newcomers and a somewhat predictable plot.