Pacific Rim - Danny's review

Firstly, I thought this was a great movie.

Next, I want to immediately address a few obvious criticisms, which I think are all justitified on the basis of making a dramatic film. Of course the Jaeger's are an absolutely ridiculous way of defending Earth. With unlimited resources and the co-operation of all nations I'd just build a series of massive plasma cannons pointing at the breach. But no one really wants to watch a movie of dispassionate drone attacks, so fair enough having some bipedal robots. By the same logic I can also forgive the concession of a robot requiring two pilots, to split the neural load. It's silly, but makes it more fun.

I like the idea of the pilots becoming heroes. In the rapid five minute catch up at the very start you get a glimpse of a world where nothing else matters but the men who are saving the World. The drifting skill is presented a bit like a psychic power, in that you never know who'll be good at it, and so you get unlikely fighting heroes without any athletic prowess. Having said that though they do all seem quite muscly and good at fighting with sticks. And the synchronicity required to co-pilot gets a bit relaxed as the film goes on - to begin with we see twins, then it's father-son and brother-sister and by the end just two people who fancy each other.

When the main guy Raleigh rejoins the program there's only very few Jaegers left, and with Kaiju's coming through the wall more and more it really seems like they're doomed. Only the most streotypical national pilots are left - massive stoic Russians, impassive Chinese, cocky Aussies and heroic Americans. It's such a desperate state of affairs that it feels like there's already been an apocalypse, and these are the only survivors. In fact, the rest of the World is still all there, but they seem to have lost interest a bit and are only building a big crumbly wall. Having just four Jaegers left does crank up the tension though.

The pilot I'm afraid to mention is the Japanese woman, Mako. She is totally rubbish, and the whole story of her not being allowed to co-pilot, then being allowed after all, is tiresome. I wonder if originally the script had Raleigh flying solo or with someone else, then at the last minute they realised there were no women in the film at all so wrote one in. The other subplot, about the black market in dead monster parts, is much more interesting. It's the one diversion outside of the main robot battles.

After Man of Steel I vowed to give up on 3D films, but accidentally went to the wrong performance of Pacific Rim and had to buy another pair of 3D glasses. I'm glad I did, as the 3D was awesome. Worked even better than Life of Pi. It felt like I was already watching the remastered special edition.

In fact most of the film was gripping. Crucially, the aliens looked really good and reptilian. I wanted to know more about their command structure. When the over-excited scientist mind melds with the Kaiju brain I was braced for one of two possible outcomes. Either the aliens were being misunderstood, and might even be good aliens, or they were just super evil and there was even more incentive to kill them. it turned out to be the second option, which is at least simpler. This mind meld was two way, and naturally the aliens have a hive mind so they all knew the human's plan, but I'm not sure if they did anything with this knowledge. Also I baulked slightly at the throwaway line that the aliens invaded before with the dinosaurs, but that didn't work out.

The early battle scenes were better than expected. It was good meaty fighting. But I didn't feel any empathy when the robots got injured. And I never quite worked out how interdependent the two pilots were. Was the talk of left-brains and right-brains just nonsense or did it imply anything? I'm pretty sure that Crimson Typhoon with it's three pilots and three arms makes no sense. The final battle did nothing for me, as it was all underwater and you couldn't tell what was going on once there were multiple robots and aliens.

I'm prepared to forgive a lot though as it looked so good.

Finally here's a list of things that didn't make sense to me. They're fairly minor points, and maybe I'll work it out when I watch this again.

• Mako knew her father was dying (at one point she prompts him to wipe his nose), so why after drifting with her does Raleigh not know about his cancer?
• The last ditch plan is to drop a nuclear bomb into the breach. Why do they believe this has any chance of working, when it's exactly what's been tried and failed before? (This is before they find out about using alien DNA to open up the breach).
• Idris Elba's character Pentecost used to fly with Aussie Dad (which is how Pentecost justifies being able to drift with Aussie son). So how come Aussie Dad wrongly claims to his son that Raleigh is the only one who's ever piloted alone?

Pacific Rim - Jamie's take

I'm a big Del Toro fan. And on the surface, Pacific Rim promises plenty for a big Del Toro fan. Massive monsters, massive robots, and massive-headed Ron Perlman. But it's a kid's movie. And that's what you should know going into the film. It's for kids.

A bloody big ruskie robot

The plot is this: in the future, giant monsters have been popping out of an inter-dimensional portal in the sea and attacking our cities. Mankind has built giant robots to wrestle them to death. It takes two people to pilot a robot and they interconnet with one another's minds to do it - called 'drifitng'. The hero and his brother, let's call him Danny, are robot pilots, but while they are battling a monster, Danny dies. Fast forward five years, and some stupids in charge of the world have foolishly closed the robot programme because they think building a big wall along the coast is a better way to defend against the monsters. Turns out it isn't. There are only a few robots left, but suddenly more and bigger monsters have started coming through the portal. So robot programme boss Idris Elba calls the hero out of retirement to join humanity's last-gasp attack. At the training base the hero becomes friends with a Japanese woman and argues with an Australian pilot who's mean and who drives one of the other robots with his dad. Then they all pull it together and fight some damn monsters. The hero's played by Charlie Hunnam and he wears a carefully weathered woolly jumper (like the Matrix, everyone seems to have picked their clothes from the H&M derelicte collection).

Unfortunately the dialogue and the characters are so basic it's basically a mime. For toddlers. For adults it is painful. Ron Perlman, who plays a flamboyant, mercenary smuggler of dead monster parts, is great. It must be down to him being a fantastic actor, because it's unlikely the script was a lot better just for his bits. And Idris Elba is fine, playing a stoic God of a man. Despite some awful lines. But... But some of the others. Jeez. Mainly, the Japanese heroine. She is so bad at acting my audience (an audience of uber-fan geeks predisposed to love this film, who all piled in to the BFI Imax 3D for the first public screening in the UK) were coughing laughter at her emoting attempts.

The other problem is scale. As soon as the giant monsters are seen at sea, which is a lot of the time, they stop being giant monsters because there's nothing against which to compare them. Without buildings or people around, we could be watching 10mm-tall robots fighting flea monsters. I stress, I am not a child and hopefully kids will love it. But as a 32 year old, on first viewing at least, I came out craving Cloverfield. The monster in that film is viewed from a human eye-level perspective in built human environments, which gives a context for the scale that makes you really feel there is a giant monster stomping around. Plus it boasts more realistic dialogue and, ironically, more 3D humans. All creating a more scary and transporting experience.

Maybe I'm just too old for this sh*t. A robot hitting a monster in the face with an oil tanker might have got the ten-year-old me giddy. But even for kids, I don't know. This doesn't feel like it could have the impact of Jurassic Park. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't have kids and I wasn't drifting with any when I watched this.

But as a grown-up, even a childish one, I wanted something more sophisticated. Just the level of Del Toro's unabashedly pulpy seam - the Hellboys and Blade 2 - would have been fine. Pacific Rim felt like Mr Bean. Made for a lowest common denominator international audience.

I think it will get a pass from a lot of geek critics because, quite rightly, they love what Del Toro usually brings to the table - sparky myth, amazing monsters and a big dose of originality. I hate to diss Pacific Rim, because I love Del Toro. Hollywood should still give him $250 million every 3 years to make what he wants. Unfortunately this film would get panned if it was directed by Roland Emmerich.

Behind the Candleabra: Danny's Take

This is a biopic of someone I've hardly heard of, but that doesn't matter. Liberace is a crazy character, and that's what makes the film fun, and what made Lincoln boring. Lincoln's idea of humour is a lengthy story about a portrait of George Washington. But Michael Douglas plays Liberace in a free and wild way, and you can't take your eyes off him.

My favourite bit is when Liberace and Matt Damon, both dressed in glitzy suits and enormous white fur coats, take the limousine to a seedy gay porn shop. They're stoned out their minds, and Matt Damon collapses in a hallway. After a second Liberace pops his head up from behind a door, and spots his friend lying there. In a camp and childish sing-song voice he asks innocently "Hey, what you doooo-ing?" He's absolutely mad.

The story starts with Matt Damon playing Scott, a country bumpkin, who gets lured into Liberace's Vegas lifestyle. There's some rather uncomfortable moments when Liberace is looking him over like a sexual predator, and soon enough Scott becomes his latest live-in lover. Surprisingly, it turns out that Liberace is actually fairly well grounded, and knows what he wants in life. It's Scott who gets addicted to Rob Lowe's prescription drugs and goes off the rails.

It's fascinating to watch the relationship unfold on the big screen. Although of course the official message was that Liberace wasn't gay, and was just "waiting for that special woman", we get to see everything in his private life. There's a thrill of voyeurism, seeing into his dressing room and bedroom. You even get to see the plastic surgery, which is pretty unpleasant and I had to look away. It's a smart idea inviting us to stare, acknowledging that celebrities really do get work done to their faces.

The asymmetry of Scott and Liberace's relationship proves too much in the end, and Scott goes the way of the others and gets kicked out the big house. There's a slight lull when you think the movie might be over now, but then a decent epilogue when Scott sues Liberace, then gets a minimum wage job and a haircut. Years later Liberace calls him up from his deathbed to say that of all the men in his life, Scott was the best one. I'm not sure if I like this - I prefer to think of Scott being just another guy who gets sucked in by Liberace's charisma. I expect this scene about how special Scott is was invented either by Scott himself, on whose memoirs this might be based, or by the film-makers.

There's a lot of sympathy for Liberace, and I'm glad that his demise is from dying, rather than just fading into obscurity. It's what he would have wanted. It's a bit like William Shatner, desperate to keep working and stay famous for as long as possible, and people loving him for it.

Man of Steel: by SuperDanny

This looked pretty good in the trailers, and I was excited.

I liked the start on Krypton, with Russell Crowe as Jor-El. It's a pretty strange, almost incomprehensible place, and looked great on the big screen. But the super-advanced citizens have been extremely irresponsible in letting their planet go to waste. They've clearly not watched enough Steven Seagal eco-thrillers. In fact they've been so stupid that even though everyone knows the planet is about to explode, only one baby is able to leave, along with some criminals who are 'sentenced' to a space ship outside the blast radius. They must be laughing on the inside.

When Superbaby gets to Earth he has the excellent fortune to be adopted by Kevin Costner. At this point the person next to me in the cinema leant over and informed me that this was Kal-el's second Robin Hood father, an excellent point. The best scenes in the film are the ones with the two Robin Hoods. I think that's because you get lots of juicy revelations about the history and back story, and that's what's interesting. Superboy has a tough time not revealing his powers, as he gets into a surprising amount of tricky situations (I've not seen Smallville, but imagine it happens a lot there too). It's not very convincing though when Jor-El bangs on about how important humans are, and that they must be saved. We all know he only decided to sent the baby to Earth two minutes before he went. For all he knew, it could have been a planet inhabited by two foot tall people.

I enjoyed Superteen's roaming around Alaska, like Christian Bale in Batman Begins. There was a great moment when he's humbly working in a bar and someone insults him, but he decides not to reveal his superpowers and just stands there getting beer thrown at him. He walks away with dignity, a true hero. Unfortunately this is all undone when outside the bar we see he's pushed ten trees through the guy's truck. This destroyed the point of the scene, just for a cheap laugh at the bad guy's expense - criminal. I like to think this addition was the doing of an evil Hollywood executive, who insisted on putting in some lighter moments, and the Director had no choice but to agree.

I liked Lois Lane, and her interplay with Superman was good. She would do anything for a story, including leaking it to Julian Assange, but once she heard about Superman's story she decided not to tell anyone. This was nicely established but not overdone, and there were actually not many scenes of them together. When Lois was in the Arctic two things occurred to me that need explanations, can you help? Firstly, is it just coincidence that Clark Kent is working on the site where the Scout Ship, which has been there for 20,000 years, is finally found? And why does the Scout Ship contain a Superman outfit?

As for General Zod - he's OK. A very serious man, who often looks more sad than angry. I enjoyed it when he whimsically recounted his journey's round the Universe: "once, we even discovered an Earth Engine...", he says nostalgically. There's room for a good spin-off series there. By the end you actually feel a bit sorry for him.

In summary then, the first half was good. The big problem is in the second half, when Zod gets to Earth. His henchman are faithful to the original (Superman 2), with an Eastern European woman and a massive guy. The woman here is rubbish though, and seems to be in a totally different film (a Steven Seagal film). She claims she has no morals, and screams that "Evolution always wins!".

Zod's plan to attack Earth is ridiculous, but that's to be expected. I wish it was a smaller plan though, that didn't involve such huge special effects generating machines. This film was partly written by Christopher Nolan, I thought he was against CGI? By the end so many huge buildings have been toppled with big crunches you're just waiting for the tiresome fight scenes to be over so the story can move on. It's like Transformers 2 mixed with The Incredible Hulk. Everyone knows that bullets don't harm Superman, and that he fights really hard. So I can do without seeing that twenty times. In fact, if we got rid of all the scenes involving the army, and Zod's henchmen, you'd get a much tighter drama between the big actors.

The Earth scientist eagerly keeps up with the alien technology, and is soon able to inform us about countering the threat by combining two mega-devices into a Black Hole. He puts his plan to the army commander, who clearly has no idea what's going on, but nods approval. The only relief in the ensuing action-fest is seeing Laurence Fishburne running. After Zod's ship is destroyed I had no appetite for the final showdown with Zod himself, but got it anyway. I was only curious how they would show that a super-being had died, and was impressed Superman went for a simple neck-breaker. Afterwards he's pretty sad, as he's wiped out the last of his people. Although given the magic codex, and the necessity of a sequel to this remake, I bet he wasn't really the last.

Behind the Candelabra - Jamie's review

It’s a sad indictment of US movie studios that none of them would pick up the story of Liberace’s love affair with his chauffeur Scott (played by Matt Damon), so the film had to appear on HBO in America, not the cinema where it belongs.

Michael Douglas is always worth watching. Even in The Sentinel. No wonder Soderbergh forced him to wait a year after he got the cancer all-clear before shooting this film. Liberace is the role of his lifetime, and requires, well, a lot of life. Douglas does it justice. By turns creepy and guileless, loving and cruel, funny and egotistical, blind and self-aware, his Liberace is brilliant. He should get an Oscar just for the bit in a porn shop where he pops his head above a video booth door, simultaneously high, demonic and angelic, his eyes ablaze with virility and joie de vivre, and laughs at his far-younger lover who has passed out on the floor, out-paced and out-sexed by a buzzing pensioner.

Though there are plenty of scenes where Douglas looks just fabulous, there are many more requiring him to leave vanity at the door. It's a breathtaking moment when he presents a sagging, wattled body and balding pate for the camera’s scrutiny, stripped of costume and wig.

Energy suffuses the film, driving it headlong from the dizzying introduction of rural Scott to Liberace’s gilded world (full of male “helpers” who are well aware that Scott is about to replace them, as they replaced the young men who came before them), to the pianist's death from an AIDS-related illness.

And it is always funny, even when he dies. There’s a shocking sequence where Liberace persuades Scott to have plastic surgery to look more like him. It could have been played, with some justification, to make Liberace look like a monster. Instead, yes, it is gross, but also very funny.

Even Rob Lowe, given a stretched face with tiny, watery eye-slits to play Liberace’s unscrupulous plastic surgeon, is too fun to hate, despite readily agreeing to cut naïve Scott, and happily getting him addicted to drugs.

The ageing and de-aging effects look seamless (except when the seams are meant to show) as Scott and Liberace get older, younger, fatter, thinner, ill. But behind the amazing make-up, and the costumes and the camp, is a grown-up love story. Neither is innocent, though both are innocents. Scott absolutely, in the beginning, and Liberace always, in his way, clumsily wielding his material wealth and affections, addicted to love but allergic to constancy. We're used to the clichéd rise and fall, but Liberace (unexpectedly considering), offers something less superficial, and more subtle, an undulating depiction of a relationship, full of rhinestone peaks and buttock-shaped valleys.

Plus it features Dan Ackroyd, Scott Bakula and Carter Burke from Aliens. Can’t argue with that.

The Stone Roses: Made of Stone: by Danny

I didn't mean to watch this film. I thought I was going to see Byzantium, but walked into the wrong screen. I should have known something was up, as there were only ten other people in there, all middle aged men in big coats sitting on their own. I joined them, and ate a sandwich before the film started (it was lunch time). We all looked quite shifty.

I'm not a Stone Roses fan, and would never have watched this film deliberately. I know all of their songs though, and quite enjoyed it. Here's a brief history of the band: In the 1980s they were mad kids who went round on scooters. They got really popular in Manchester, a few of them left, and they released a massive album. Then they had a six year legal wrangle, released an acrimonious second album, and split up for twenty years.

The director, Shane Meadows, is obviously a massive fan, and it was more of a tribute than a documentary. The sort of thing that might be released if they all died. I liked that he put himself into the film, and we got to see his face, rather than pretending we were magically behind the scenes without any cameras present. In fact, I think Shane is the main interviewee, as the band never talk to him.

The best bit is the build up to a special free comeback gig in Warrington. They give away free tickers if you bring along old merchandise, and loads of the fans are interviewed being really excited. Inside the gig the atmosphere is brilliant, and rather than clips we get complete songs, which sound great.

After this high the other gigs, on the European tour, look like hard work. There's one bit of drama when the comeback stalls in Amsterdam, when the drummer decides to go home. Instead of talking to the band Mr Meadows just interviews himself, saying that he really hopes they get back together (again), which they do.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: By Danny

I saw this a while ago, just after reading the book. The book's only got about ten pages, but this movie was three hours long and is only the first one of a trilogy, so ought to feel epic. Sadly though, it doesn't. There's nothing like the sense of foreboding that you get in the proper Lord of the Rings films. The villain here is some sort of misshapen orc, who just grunts and looks very ugly.

The band of dwarves are not especially amusing, and could do with a heavy editing. They're from various parts of the British Isles, and the people I watched it with (in Belfast) were upset the only good looking one was English. There's a few Middle Earth stalwarts popping up - in one strange scene Elrond, Gladriel and Saruman (an impossibly old Christopher Lee) gather in Rivendell for no good reason. Ian McKellen as Gandalf is good, but seems to be doing a lot of work to hold it together.

My highlight was the Goblin King's song, which was mad. But I also hold him responsible for the low point in the film - the tremendously tiresome underground chase. I watched the film in 2D, maybe action scenes like that would have been great in 3D?

Overall then, I'm saying the film was a failure. But I still enjoyed it at the time. It's a big lavish production, with lots of good actors, and it moves along fairly well. I like fantasy films, and in fact I could take hours and hours of this kind of thing before I got bored. Wouldn't even mind watching it again.