Mad Max: Fury Road - Danny's Review

Whenever there's a remake/sequel of an older film it's a trade off. You're expecting something bigger and brighter and possibly full of CGI, but without the originality and excitement of the first one. The success of Mad Max: Fury Road is that it captures the mad spirit of the originals. It's like a beefed up remake of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. This is not surprising, as it's also directed by maverick George Miller, and according to reports he was able to make the film that he wanted.

Right from the start vehicles are set in motion and the chase is on. Max himself takes a slightly peripheral role, and has his face covered for the first hour. Even when he files away his iron mask there's no sudden change, and he's far outshone by Charlize Theron as the Imperator Furiosa. You get the feeling this is the way Max would have wanted it. He drifts in and out of other people's stories, saving their post-apocalyptic communities then disappearing into the crowd, with barely a nod of recognition. It reminds me what a great (and underrated) film Waterworld is. Mad Max is a really dusty Waterworld.

My favourite parts of the movie are the crazy touches that are added but never explained. That simply wouldn't happen in a big studio picture. The big boss and all his cronies are strangely deformed (inbred?) and are supported by a warrior caste of bald and painted maniacs. These warriors are religious fanatics believe when they die they'll be born again in Valhalla, and when they think they;re about to die spray their faces with metallic paint. This doesn't actually do anything except further excite them. The landscapes are incredibly barren, and at their best reminiscent of Conan the Barbarian (the original, certainly not the remake). At one point the big-rig, having temporarily outrun their pursuers, is travelling through the night and the weary passengers are slipping in and out of sleep. They drift through a marshy land with camouflaged men on stilts wading along the water. It looks great.

When I came out of this movie (at 3pm) my head was spinning and the lights seemed far too bright. It's a crazy thrill ride.

Fast and Furious 7 - Danny's Review

I was unexpectedly called in to work this morning, and had to rush across town for the 10:45 am showing of Furious 7. I popped my Volskswagen Fox through the gears and raced along the motorway, overtaking a bus and swerving into the car park. Screech! I made it just in time, thanks to the 29 minutes of adverts at Cineworld Glasgow.

Being the seventh in the series (including the non-canon ones) there's a whole lotta history, and this is acknowledged. There's especial poignancy as Paul Walker is dead (more of this later). In the very first line villainous Jason Statham claims that "They say if you want to glimpse the future, just look behind you" although I've never heard anyone say that. Then it pans out to reveal he's killed all the special forces people protecting his kid-brother, who presumably was the conquered villain in a previous film (I've not seen them all - who has?). Statham is now out for revenge, and that's his character sorted.

Cut to Vin Diesel driving along. "They say the open road helps you think" he muses and so it goes on. They race through a few locations, and in every one there are rows of shiny cars, young people cheering and women in bikinis jumping up and down. What was I doing here?

For their part the team are out to get Statham, but get heavily sidetracked by the surprising appearance of Kurt Russell. He tells them about a hacker, who is identified merely by 'Ramsey' and a blank photo (so it's clearly a woman). She's invented the God's Eye that can hack into all cameras and find anyone. Kurt Russell says that if they find it he'll let them use it to find Statham. While they are looking for the God's Eye they come across Statham several times, but seem to forget that finding him is their ultimate objective. Then in an extremely fanciful setup the device is inexplicably hidden inside, you guessed it, another sports car, which they obviously end up stealing and driving.

There are a few good moments. Early on Paul Walker revs up a car, only for it to be revealed that it's a mini-van, and he's now a family man. In the very same scene there's a second visual gag where a car speeds round but it's a toy car and the kid then throws it on the ground. "Cars don't fly" says Walker, prophetically, as later in the movie cars do fly. He gives a a strangely muted performance. He seems genuinely morose to be shackled by his family, but then when his loving wife absolutely insists that he abandon their family and go on another reckless (and pointless) mission he still seems rather morose. The only time he perks up is when delivering a touche comeback to his kung-fu nemesis he's just sent hurtling down a big hole. "Too slow!" he says with childish glee, though that sort of bad-ass line would be much better deadpan. During filming Walker was a passenger in a car that hit a lamppost, killing him. The film was finished with the help of his similar looking brothers.

He does get the best moment in the film, which you may have already seen in the trailer. It's when he's running up a bus which is falling off a cliff. He also gets a rather odd tribute at the end of the film, when Vin Diesel goes on and on about what a brother he's been and there's flashbacks to a young curly-haired Paul Walker grinning in front of some more sports cars. The spiritualism runs deep in Fast and Furious 7. When The Rock decides the hospital can't hold him any more he doesn't cut himself out of the plaster cast, he simply grimaces and his arm bursts out. When Vin Diesel's heart stops, following his final stunt attacking a helicopter with his car, the CPR has no effect, but an emotional appeal from his amnesiac girlfriend brings him back with a gruff one-liner.

I think the appeal of the film is the sense of camaraderie between Vin's team, and they act as a high functioning gang of delinquents. That's probably the appeal of the whole series. I'm partly tempted to go back and watch all the rest now.

John Wick - Jamie's Review

With John Wick, Keanu secures his legacy as a film star for the Taken generation (being Hollywood actors in their 50s and 60s who want to play taciturn hardmen). Reeves isn't a natural fit in that bracket, despite being 50. Unlike king-of-the-genre Liam Neeson and upstarts Sean Penn and Kevin Costner, he still looks 24.

But I think unlike those guys, Reeves picks projects out of love. He's a geek who isn't just after a box office rocket but a story that sparks his interest (how else would you explain Johnny Mnemonic?). So whereas Neeson et al go through the motions double-tapping Albanians muttering "is this what the kids want, ok then", Reeves is invested. And it shows. He often picks projects which have a risky dose of weird in them, and he's done it again here. The result is a good, dirty little film which hits almost all the B-movie beats you want in a story about a retired assassin forced to saddle up to avenge the death of his dog, but is also unexpectedly elevated by the reveal that this isn't happening in the world we know.

The dog really is cute. You don't want it to die. Keanu seems a lot happier after his wife's death because of it. You understand why he takes up arms when a punk (Reek from Game of Tits & Dragons) shoots it in the head. I'm a cat person, and even I was upset on Keanu's behalf.

With a grizzled aspect and a cold manner which suits him, because Keanu emoting is a bit gruesome (exhibit #1, Bram Stoker's Dracula), he kills acres of goons to get to his man.

One of the best things about the film is the spin it puts on the action movie convention of baddies underestimating the hero, Usually they think he's laughable, and don't even really worry about him when they discover that he won a silver star in 'Nam, is an expert in black ops and only took the job as the nuclear submarine's cleaner because he killed so many of the world's terrorists he made himself redundant. Not so in Wick, where the big bad immediately shits his pants when he hears whose dog his son popped. Over a punchy meeting with his entitled spawn, he explains that Wick once murdered three hard cases with a pencil. Even though they far outnumber Wick, the army of bad guys reckon he has a pretty good chance of killing them all, whatever they do. Almost all his enemies approach him with grim-faced expectations of death, which in every case he satisfies (the ones who are cocky or dismissive of his reputation also die).

Oddities like this make John Wick stand out. Oddest of all is its setting. Wick takes place in an underworld where everyone hangs out at a hotel for villains, where the currency is special gold coins. It's weird, this break with reality, and it could have flopped. But instead it injects a welcome novelty into the familiar, heartwarming trope of revenge killing.

It helps hugely that every supporting role is cast with a top-drawer character actor - Willem Dafoe, Lovejoy, Reek, Lester Freamon from The Wire, but Keanu's also solid. I say he's embarrassing when he expresses himself, but there's one bit where he shouts which is quite powerful, though even then I can hear him bursting to say "dude" at the end of the sentence. He just has that kind of voice.

And so he can add John Wick to his list of Good Movies Starring Me, under Point Break, Speed, Bill & Ted, The Matrix, Devil's Advocate and, yes, Constantine. Dracula is also very good, though that's in spite of Reeves, whose dudeiness nearly derails it completely.

Wick is a much better fit.

Far from the Madding Crowd - Danny's review

This is a very relaxing movie. It's a bit like going to an art gallery. The majority of the film is a series of beautiful landscape shots reflecting different moods, mixed in with some farming and a good love story.

The first scene is the only one with a voiceover, with Carey Mulligan explaining why she's called Bathsheba (she doesn't know) and saying how independent she is. This is underlined by her lewdly riding a horse normally (not side-saddle) and charging around on her own. Then she meets a rugged farmhand, gets an inheritance and meets a few other suitors. It culminates in the best love dilemma since Twilight, and that includes The Hunger Games.

There are some excellent farming scenes, with Bathsheba mucking in. It actually looks quite fun, but would probably be crushingly hard work if you had to do it all year round. The grubbier it is, the more lavishly it's shot, so it all seems quite nice.

I enjoyed the stately pace of the film, and for Sunday afternoon it was perfect.

Director Thomas Vinterberg, Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts