Review Category: Movie

HOME

MOVIE REVIEW: HOME / CERT: U / DIRECTOR: TIM JOHNSON / SCREENPLAY: TOM J. ASTLE, MATT EMBER / STARRING: JIM PARSONS, RIHANNA, STEVE MARTIN, JENNIFER LOPEZ / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 20TH

Big Bang theorists will get a kick out of hearing Sheldon voicing an alien invader, while kids will get a sugar rush off Rihanna songs and visuals that are positively bursting with bright colours in Dreamworks’ latest animation, Home. Genetically engineered to be a success, Home feels designed to sell merchandise and Rihanna records to excitable children waiting not very patiently for the Minions movie to arrive.

The Boovs are a race of small purple aliens who spend their existence following their cowardly leader from planet to planet. The Boovs know only how to run away from danger and, as a superior race of aliens known as the Gorg keep coming to destroy them, the Boovs are forced to continually flee, each time finding a new home planet. When they set up shop on Earth, unpopular Boov Oh (Parsons) becomes public enemy number one amongst his species as he reveals the location of their new home to their sworn enemies. Forced to flee the Boov authorities, Oh teams up with feisty little girl Tip (Rihanna), who has lost her mother when the Boov invaded. Can Oh help Tip to find her mother, but more importantly can the pair overcome their differences to save the planet from annihilation?

The familiar nerdy vocal tones of The Big Bang Theory‘s Jim Parsons will thrill children as he makes Oh a loveable character, especially when compelled to involuntary break into dance to those nailed-in Rihanna singles. He may look like a purple minion, but with Parsons providing vocals Oh really comes to life as a surprisingly warm character. It’s also a joy to see a character with the beautiful skin tone of Tip, spiritedly voiced by Rihanna, and the script sometimes subtly touches on ideas of acceptance and the difficulties of fitting in when moving to a new home.

What is less welcome is the frequent interruption of the singer’s own songs on the soundtrack. It would have made more sense if Home was a musical and Tip burst into song with the voice of the pop sensation. As is, the songs often feel hammered home and you can almost hear Rihanna’s record label rubbing their hands as they squeeze the songs in anywhere they can. At some points, rather than letting Rihanna do any of the emoting as Tip, the songs take over on the soundtrack, injecting a bit of much needed emotion into what could have been pretty stale proceedings.

Despite this cramming of singles onto the soundtrack, Home is also bursting with imagination and colour. The story is so swiftly set up to keep kids from fidgeting in their seats, that there isn’t much time to dwell on the Boov’s backstory. Neither is the takeover of Earth a particularly well thought-out or memorable set piece. Nevertheless, once Oh and Tip meet, the story starts to fizzle as Oh brings vitality and colour while Tip brings the sass. Transforming Tip’s car into a colourful slushy spewing flying vehicle, the slapstick will no doubt impress children while the heart put into their mismatched buddy relationship will inevitably tug at the heartstrings.

Some of the running jokes are fun, with Steve Martin’s fearful leader of the Boovs getting the most laughs while finding new uses for a range of ordinary Earth objects from tyres to vacuum cleaners. Jennifer Lopez barely gets a look in as Tip’s mum, and the inclusion of Tip’s cat will no doubt just help to sell a few more toys.

Still, it’s Jim Parsons that really makes Home worth a visit. He brings real personality and warmth to what could have been an annoying and completely forgettable character. The animators also do their best to keep the Boovs kiddy friendly; both very odd in design but also huggable in their minion-like slapstick antics. With a story that takes in outer space, America, Paris and Australia, Home certainly never settles too long and will keep kids gripped throughout its snappy run time. Most surprisingly and satisfyingly, Home manages to sneak in a winning subtext about cultural imperialism. Just don’t be surprised if the little tykes that watch it have been programmed to listen to even more of Rihanna’s records on repeat on the way home from the cinema. On the bright side, it might be a welcome break from Let It Go.

Expected Rating: 5 out of 10

Actual Rating:

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DARK SUMMER

MOVIE REVIEW: DARK SUMMER / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: PAUL SOLET / SCREENPLAY: MIKE LE / STARRING: PETER STORMARE, GRACE PHIPPS, KEIR GILCHRIST, STELLA MAEVE, MAESTRO HARRELL / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 20TH

When 17-year-old Daniel (Gilchrist) is placed under house arrest for cyber stalking a schoolmate he thinks his already isolated life has hit rock bottom. With an absent mother and forbidden from using any form of technology surely things cannot get any worse. Until that is, he does find a way back online with the help of best friends Abby (Maeve) and Kevin (Harrell). When the victim of his crimes Mona (Phipps) commits suicide while Skyping with him, Daniel is plunged into a nightmare as his newly deceased victim somehow seems to be haunting him, much to the weary disbelief of his accomplices.

Dark Summer is laced with a creepy intensity that is noticeably lacking in many similarly themed supernatural thrillers. Director Paul Solet has generated an atmosphere of suffocating malevolence that seems to permeate your soul, that while watching instils a sense of constant dread of what might be about to happen. And this feeling simply does not let go. The minimalist, almost invasive direction intentionally meanders throughout, inserting you reluctantly right into the middle of Daniel’s slowly escalating terror. His is a form of psychological suffering that renders him deeply paranoid, jumping at shadows and reluctantly questioning his own sanity.

Much in the same way that one of last year’s great surprises The Babadook from Jennifer Kent created a brooding discomfort that irresistibly takes hold without overreliance on jump scares, Dark Summer expertly unsettles the viewer. There are some scares, of course there are, and there is a slight, perhaps unavoidable, predictability to some of them but instead of detracting from the main plotline, they strangely add to the tension, allowing the audience a chance to take a deep breath and subsequently fall into the misconception of thinking they had recovered their composure.

For his part Gilchrist is superb as the haunted Daniel, delivering a withering, darkly engaging performance around which the main plot of the film can circulate mysteriously. Given the strength of his performance it would be easy, almost understandable for the small supporting cast to become lost but Maeve and Harrell excel in their roles, managing to balance awkward acceptance of the situation without resorting to hammy histrionics or exposition. With the legendary Peter Stormare adding his experienced presence to the film this is an ensemble cast that delivers on all fronts.

Simply put, Dark Summer is without doubt one of the superior thrillers you will be lucky enough to see in 2015. The deliberately low-key production teases the viewer and the erratic switches between uncomfortable silences and the pervasive, intrusively pulsing soundtrack demands an aura of discomfort from its audience. This is a chillingly effective film, and one that is never quite what you expect it to be. It is an experience that may not be enjoyed by everyone, but is certainly one to be remembered; and for all the right reasons.

PROJECT ALMANAC

DVD REVIEW: PROJECT ALMANAC / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: DEAN ISRAELITE / SCREENPLAY: JASON HARRY PAGAN, ANDREW DEUTSCHMAN / STARRING: JONNY WESTON, SOFIA BLACK-D’ELIA, SAM LERNER, ALLEN EVANGELISTA, VIRGINIA GARDNER / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

If we had a time machine here at STARBURST Towers (which is not an admission that we don’t, merely an intimation that if we have we’ll most likely be using it for suitably philanthropic purposes) we might, after a full discussion and a fair vote, decide to nip back in time, find the person who invented the concept of ‘found footage’ movies and give him a damned good talking to. And maybe even a bit of a kicking. True, we’d be denying ourselves the odd gem such as Cloverfield and Chronicle, but generally we can’t help thinking the world would be a better place without two thousand no-budget movie monstrosities full of shrieking teenagers on an ill-advised quest to find Bigfoot, equipped only with a camcorder they won’t let go of under any circumstances. Project Almanac would probably disappear too which would be rather fitting considering it’s a time travel movie all about what happens when some whiskerless kids discover the means to nip back into their own timeline and tinker with the course of history. Never a good idea…

Project Almanac is a big noisy thing, deeply unsubtle and cursed with all the inanities and illogicalities of its now-exhausted shaky cam genre. But there are a few half-decent ideas lurking somewhere in amidst the clichés in a time travel yarn which is all about consequences and responsibility. Seventeen-year-old David (Weston) is delighted when his application to join MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is accepted, but not so pleased when he discovers he’ll have to fund his attendance himself. David, like his long-deceased Dad, is a bit of a science geek and he roots about in the family attic in search of some forgotten scientific gizmo his father might have been working on which he can use to fund his studies. He finds instead a camcorder on which has been recorded footage of his own seventh birthday party; lurking in the deep background is David himself – aged seventeen. How is this possible? Danny and his chums find a machine buried in the cellar; it’s called Project Almanac and, with a bit of unlikely tinkering, they manage to get it working and create the world’s first time machine. Not unnaturally, they use it to pop back into their recent past to make themselves popular, to win the lottery and… er… to attend a Lollapalooza rock concert (well, this is an MTV Film) where David fumbles a play for the girl he has a crush on.

Not content with travelling back in time and having fun with his friends, David can’t resist popping back alone once or twice to make a few odd adjustments here and there. But he’s forgotten about the ripple effect and his actions are to have terrible repercussions when he returns to his normal timeline. In many ways this is fairly standard time travel stuff but it’s done with a degree of pace and energy – and a bit too much made-up technobabble as the gang try to get the time machine working. But the paradoxes and time distortions are well-reasoned, the effects are efficient and the relentlessness of the ‘quick, grab the camera’ trope in even the direst situation soon gets wearing. Frustratingly, the film would have been a better bet if it had just been a proper movie with a proper narrative as the ‘found footage’ format does it no favours whatsoever. Project Almanac is a harmless and lively enough effort for teens unfamiliar with the history of time travel movies but with absolutely nothing new to offer experienced aficionados and ultimately it’s a movie that’s likely to vanish quickly from our memory, whether we use that time machine we might or might not have or not.

Expected Rating: 5 out of 10

Actual Rating:

CHAPPiE

MOVIE REVIEW: CHAPPiE / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: NEILL BLOMKAMP / SCREENPLAY: NEILL BLOMKAMP, TERRI TATCHELL / STARRING: SHARLTO COPLEY, DEV PATEL, HUGH JACKMAN, NINJA, ¥O-LANDI / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 6TH

After a detour to Los Angeles 2154 for Elysium, Neill Blomkamp returns to his native Johannesburg to tell the story of Die Antwoord, a South African band of rappers/criminals who manage to get their hands on a sentient robot, in order to pull off a heist and save themselves from a local gang lord. Seriously, the South African rap-rave group members NINJA and ¥O-LANDI, playing versions of their own on-stage personas, are on-screen as much, if not more, than the titular CHAPPiE, who gains sentience through a slightly contrived series of circumstances.

Once CHAPPiE does gain sentience, he starts to learn about the world around him, and soon becomes torn between the criminal aspirations of his “daddy”, NINJA, the more nurturing inclinations of his “mummy”, ¥O-LANDI, and the dreams of his absentee maker, Deon (Dev Patel). Time is short, though, as NINJA & ¥O-LANDI have a tight deadline to pay off a serious debt and one of Deon’s obsessed colleagues, Vincent Moore (Hugh Jackman), has been sniffing around. If word about CHAPPiE gets out, it will cause problems for everyone.

Needless to say, a clash does occur in the third act, and the action scenes are some of the best scenes in the film, Blomkamp having lost none of his skill staging action, but these are joined by enjoyable scenes of CHAPPiE learning, mimicking NINJA’s rap gangster mannerisms while acting more like a child around ¥O-LANDI. Apparently, Sharlto Copley performed the title role in the same manner Andy Serkis did for Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, acting on-set with the other actors and then being digitally painted over later, and the work here is seamless.

The real star of the show, though, is NINJA. Despite his cartoonish appearance and gangster attitude, he has some of the most difficult parts of the film, incurring the audience’s loathing for tricking CHAPPiE into doing things he clearly doesn’t want to, even abusing him sometimes, but then managing to inspire sympathy later in the film.

Once the focus moves beyond the central trinity, things get bit more troublesome. Hugh Jackman’s Vincent Moore is a cartoonish psychopath from the off, lurking menacingly in his office cubicle in his short shorts with a gun at his side. Sigourney Weaver’s role has gained much attention thanks to Blomkamp’s recently announced Alien movie, but she gets very little to do here, easily manipulating Patel’s Deon only to be just as easily manipulated by Jackman later on. Considering Blomkamp’s recent comments on the script and story problems with Elysium, it’s strange that similar criticisms can be levelled here. There’s no real examination of what AI really is – Deon just creates it after a particularly long Red Bull-fuelled coding session – and the circumstances that lead to CHAPPiE’s creation rely on a number of coincidences that feel manufactured.

When the film hits its stride these issues fall away and those heartfelt and touching moments are contrasted nicely with the massive ultra-violence once Moore’s remote-piloted weapon platform is released. “The Moose” is Moore’s obsession, a distant cousin to Robocop’s ED-209 and one that has all the kinks worked out – like how to handle stairs (answer: fly!)

Near the end, the film takes a hard right turn narratively, delving into a very quick examination of the nature of consciousness before heading off into what could be a prelude to the singularity. It’s unexpected, but doesn’t feel out of place in this wildly uneven yet enjoyable film.

Blomkamp still hasn’t quite reached the heights he scaled in his first film District 9, but CHAPPiE quite happily sits alongside it and shows he is still a director with a very unique visual sense. Perhaps the next Alien film will prove to be his masterpiece.

Take one point off the rating if major plot points built around coincidences annoy you, and another if you had trouble understanding the South African accents in District 9.

Expected Rating: 9 out of 10
Actual Rating:

THE VOICES

MOVIE REVIEW: THE VOICES / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MARJANE SATRAPI / SCREENPLAY: MICHAEL R. PERRY / STARRING: RYAN REYNOLDS, GEMMA ARTERTON, ANNA KENDRICK, JACKI WEAVER / RELEASE DATE: MARCH 20TH

In its simplest form, The Voices is a black comedy centred on Jerry (Reynolds), a happy-go-lucky factory worker who happens to have conversations with his evil cat and his far-less-sinister, docile dog. When a date with a co-worker doesn’t go to plan, things take a murderous turn and the darker side of Jerry starts to come to the fore as he struggles with his past and with holding back his bleak thoughts.

Despite starting with quite the humourous edge, as The Voices goes on then the more sinister side of the film starts to become more prominent as the bodies (or heads even) start to mount up. With his cat essentially the devil on one shoulder and his dog an angel on the other shoulder, poor Jerry’s journey suffers a huge switch in tone as he struggles with the situation he finds himself in.

Satrapi’s film is most certainly surreal, with almost a sense of Don Coscarelli’s Bubba Ho-Tep or John Dies at the End to it and with moments that wouldn’t feel out of place in something like Flight of the Conchords or Eagle vs. Shark when it comes to the character of Jerry. Then there’s a darker element at play with a twisted Doctor Dolittle or even Norman Bates vibe to it. And throughout The Voices duration, it still maintains an almost innocence and naivety to the central Jerry.

There are some fine supporting turns here, if not sometimes a little tongue-in-cheek, but its most certainly Ryan Reynolds’ film. Regardless of what actions are going on, you always still can’t help but feel sorry for Jerry, and Reynolds is truly brilliant in how he delivers the character. As well as Jerry, Reynolds also lends his vocals to Mr. Whiskers (his cat) and Bosco (his dog), not to mention a few other characters that only add further to the psyche of the troubled central character of The Voices.

This is a film that sometimes may feel like its struggling to get settled into what it’s really looking to achieve, although that could well be by design as it does add a frantic, impulsive edge to the film much in the way that its central character struggles to find peace.

The Voices is a film that most definitely flips its tone at a moment’s notice; at times it can be simply brutal and even quite gory, yet there are also plenty of genuinely funny moments that will bring a chuckle to the most downbeat of faces. And as such, because of the more humourous moments, this only makes the darker moments more impactful and hard hitting, particularly when we get to take a glimpse into Jerry’s tragic backstory. All of this is even further added to by an expertly-picked soundtrack that is subtle yet manages to intertwine beautifully with the on-screen happenings.

Expected Rating: 6

Actual Rating:

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SEVENTH SON

MOVIE REVIEW: SEVENTH SON / CERT: 12A / DIRECTOR: SERGEY BODROV / SCREENPLAY: CHARLES LEAVITT, STEVEN KNIGHT / STARRING: JULIANNE MOORE, JEFF BRIDGES, BEN BARNES, ALICIA VIKANDER, DJIMON HOUNSOU, OLIVIA WILLIAMS, ANTJE TRAUE / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

In a strange medieval world where witches can turn into dreadlocked dragons, (not a spoiler, it happens in the film’s early moments) and are kept in check by “Spooks” – an order of seventh sons of seventh sons, supposedly gifted with great strength and an almost scientific method of combating magic – the one thing that’s the most hard to believe is that anyone can understand Jeff Bridge’s Gregory when he speaks! Bridges riffs his Rooster Cockburn character from True Grit but with a cod-English accent, growling and snarling his lines as if his mouth were filled with a whole quarry of pebbles.

Forced to find a new apprentice by the reappearance of Julianne Moore’s Mother Malkin, Queen of the witches, Gregory seeks out and buys Ben Barnes’ Tom Ward from his supposedly loving family and sets about preparing him to assist in confronting Malkin. Gregory needs the help as the Blood Moon is rapidly approaching, when her powers will be at their peak and she will wreak terrible vengeance on mankind for the persecution of her people. Along the way young Tom will need to learn about the world of witches, “ghasts” and the appropriate herb or potion to combat them, encounter a young half-witch and decide for himself if the only good witch is a dead witch.

The weird introduction of a hint of slavery into this fantasy story and its subsequent avoidance is only one of the many puzzling decisions made by the filmmakers. Bridges’ accent is another, no one else talks like him in the film and the actual “science” used in combating witches, which seems to mostly consist of throwing silver at them, which could have been an interesting hook for the film, remains underdeveloped. Tom learns the ropes of being a “Spook” somewhat reluctantly, despite yearning for adventure at the tale’s beginning, and it’s only after an encounter with a CGI Boggart that he has an unearned change of heart to embrace his destiny. Gregory, too, prefers to capture not kill his quarry right up until the moment he decides that he now prefers to kill.

While the film takes its inspiration from Joseph Delany’s The Spook’s Apprentice book, a cursory glance at the book’s Wikipedia page reveals that much has been changed, including changing one of Malkin’s henchmen into a slightly comedic sidekick of the Spook for no real purpose except to show that some monsters are okay, except for the ones that aren’t?

You can understand why the filmmakers changed the title too, as while the honorific of “Spook” may work on the printed page, it becomes somewhat ridiculous once uttered a few dozen times by the cast.

The film also features a hugely distracting production design with a mishmash of cultures and styles thrown into the mix intentionally, according to production designer Dante Ferretti, but that comes off as looking like someone just randomly raided the costume closet. This visually off-putting smorgasbord also applies to the locations, with the Spook’s house in lush wooded lake land apparently only a bell’s peal from a walled city in a desert landscape that looks like something straight out of John Carter.

Bridges and Moore have some fun in their roles, Moore slinking about it up in a succession of taloned, spined evening wear, but an almost complete lack of much needed humour prevents the audience having the same enjoyment, although God of War fans may get a kick out of seeing Djimon Hounsou throwing around a set of chained blades similar to Kratos’ signature weaponry.

Expected Rating: 6 out of 10

Actual Rating:

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HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2

MOVIE REVIEW: HOT TUB TIME MACHINE 2 / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: STEVE PINK / SCREENPLAY: JOSH HEALD / STARRING: ROB CORDDRY, CRAIG ROBINSON, CLARK DUKE, ADAM SCOTT / RELEASE DATE: APRIL 10TH

There’ s no beating around the bush: this is one of the worst sequels ever made.

It’s almost as though Paramount and MGM farmed out the project to Syfy kings The Asylum to write and produce.

Everyone is back from the first film (sans John Cusack, unsurprisingly. The stories going around are he didn’t want to do the sequel because it was a bad script, or he simply wasn’t asked. Either way, we’d consider it a wise choice). Using their knowledge of the future, Lou (Corddry) has become a rock star with his group ‘Motley Lou’ and billionaire having invented his own version of Google, aptly named ‘Lougle’. Nick (Robinson) is now also a famous recording artist, having stolen popular songs from musicians in the future, while Jacob (Duke) is Lou’s butler and Adam Jr. (Scott) turns up as the illegitimate son of Cusack’s character from the first film.

However, when an unknown assailant kills Lou at one of his parties, the team takes to their trusty hot tub to travel through time in an attempt to find his murderer. They find themselves in 2025, and then spend more time travelling back and forth trying to fix the things they caused improving their lot in life

There are a few minor, funny moments and sight gags involving the aged time travelers in the future; it has lots of shameless, gutter humor involving testicles, and a homoerotic contest called Choosy Doozy. There’s some customary cameos popping up within the film, including a blink-and-you-miss him one involving Chevy Chase as the hot tub repairman.

Einstein would have a brain hemorrhage trying to figure out the illogical time travel paradoxes seen here, many that seemed to be borrowed from Back to the Future 2. Then again, any normal person could risk that problem too watching this dreck.
Expected Rating: 7 out of 10
Actual Rating:

CITIZENFOUR

MOVIE REVIEW: CITIZENFOUR / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: LAURA POITRAS / SCREENPLAY: N/A / STARRING: EDWARD SNOWDEN, GLENN GREENWALD, WILLIAM BINNEY, JACOB APPELBAUM, EDWARD MACASKILL / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW

Directed by Laura Poitras and executive produced by Steven Soderbergh, Citizenfour is the story of Edward Snowden and his whistleblowing revelations about US surveillance, which broke headlines in 2013. The documentary was made under extraordinary amounts of secrecy and consisted largely of Snowden, Poitras, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill together in the Mira Hotel in Hong Kong during the period when all the revelations broke out. The trailer for the film sells it as a chilling thriller in the mould of something like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and frankly, it’s not a million miles off.

The film does a very good job of telling the story of this man who was once an NSA contractor that became very disenchanted that he was essentially working on technology that he believed was part of a repressive state of technology and decided to go public with this information, only to end up finding himself in a position he found very threatening. Snowden then got in touch with Poitras, who impressed greatly with My Country, My Country and The Oath.

The whole film plays out almost like a spy thriller with encrypted emails being passed, arrangements to meet in foreign locales where there will be codewords and phrases being exchanged, and the bulk of the film takes place in this hotel room during the eight days when the revelations start going public and everything becomes incredibly frenzied. The most impressive thing about the film is that, firstly, it manages to make a very complicated story of surveillance technology fairly understandable to a mainstream audience.

Secondly, it manages to make the most of its confines, and even though it mostly takes place in a hotel room with people at laptops, it still manages to be very intriguing and fascinating. The reason is that there is this oppressive state of paranoia seeded throughout and there is a moment when Snowden points out that any type of phone can be used as a bug, and as a result, you become as paranoid as the people in the film.

Also, if you look back at the films that were made about Julian Assange (We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks and The Fifth Estate), they attempted to pick apart Assange’s personality on the one hand, rather than what he did, because Assange’s personality is completely overbearing and egomaniacal. In the case of Snowden, he’s completely the opposite. He’s almost a secretive person, somewhat camera-shy and doesn’t want the whole story to be solely about him.

The low-key, haunting symphonic soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross brilliantly blurs the line between reality and artificial, and the end of the movie does convince you that the surveillance industry has gone out of control. Even though the film was made under difficult circumstances and proposes risks to the participants involved, Citizenfour is an important historical event that is well told in proper dramatic fashion, and if you want a riveting spy thriller that even John le Carré couldn’t have dreamt of, then this will satisfy you. It’s a solid piece of cinema that offers a fascinating portrait of a man who appears to be doing something for honourable reasons, yet is caught in a circumstance in which he’s accounted for despite not wanting to be the centre of the story.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10

Actual Rating:

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BLACKHAT

MOVIE REVIEW: BLACKHAT / CERT: 15 / DIRECTOR: MICHAEL MANN / SCREENPLAY: MORGAN DAVIS FOEHL / STARRING: CHRIS HEMSWORTH, WEI TANG, LEEHOM WANG, VIOLA DAVIS / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 20TH

With a back catalogue that includes Miami Vice (both the TV and movie versions), Heat, The Last of the Mohicans and Collateral, any new film from director Michael Mann is to be looked forward to. Never mind one that deals with the fertile world of computer hacking, a genre that hasn’t been particularly well served on screen since 1995’s Hackers and 1992’s Sneakers, (Swordfish barely counts!)

Blackhat starts with a visualisation of what a hack physically looks like, similar to the way it was shown in Hackers, only this time zooming in on electronic circuits to the nth degree, until the binary 1’s and 0’s can be seen as pulses of light pulses rippling though the system. The micro is soon abandoned for the macro, however as its revealed that a “Blackhat” hacker has hacked the control room of a Chinese nuclear power plant using a remote access tool (RAT) causing a massive accident. In the ensuing investigation, lead investigator Chen Dawai (Leehom Wang) discovers that the RAT the hacker used just happens to have been based upon one written by his former college roommate. Said roommate, Nick Hathaway (Hemsworth), now resides in prison in the US for his own Blackhat hacking activities, but it’s not long before Chen and his sister Lien (Wei Tang) arrange for Hathaway’s temporary release to help trace the hacker and they go gallivanting around South East Asia chasing leads along with Hathaway’s two FBI chaperones, as played by Viola Davis (who delivers almost all the humour in the film) and Holt McCallany.

The handheld digital video style that has become Mann’s signature in recent years causes problems for Blackhat from the off as the first half of the film very slowly introduces our characters amidst a mess of choppy editing and shaky-cam, only settling down once the much more impressive action scenes kick in. The focus and intent shown in those action scenes, in a brutal restaurant fistfight, a shootout amongst shipping containers and another at a roadside, make it appear as if they are from a completely different director than the messy start of the film. While elements of these action scenes are very impressive – the nastiness of the injuries Hathaway inflicts in the restaurant, the aural assault from the later gunfights – there’s nothing here that even tries to match the bank heist sequence from Heat.

When the film does finally settle down it’s into an almost Bond-style thriller with Hathaway and co. chasing traces of the mysterious hacker and his goons from country to country, but when his identity is finally revealed, it’s with a resounding feeling of ‘Who’s that?’ While stunt casting can back fire, this is the director who put Pacino and De Niro at odds across a coffee table and cast Tom Cruise as a villain, so going with a relative unknown for the part turns the reveal into somewhat of a damp squib.

From this point on, the hacker’s plan is shown to be relatively small potatoes in comparison to the first act’s destabilisation of a nuclear power plant, there’s a middling final confrontation with a hint of an ultra-violent McGuyver to it, before a very unsatisfying non-ending. Blackhat may get the technical aspects of hacking mostly right, soon abandoning those fancy visualisations of the computer world in favour of PCs and coffee, and eschewing the flash of Swordfish. But the lack of engaging characters, a weak love story and that messy first half, mean that there is still plenty of room out there for a great modern hacking movie.

Expected Rating: 8 out of 10
Actual Rating:

PERNICIOUS

MOVIE REVIEW: PERNICIOUS / CERT: TBC / DIRECTOR: JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK / SCREENPLAY: JAMES CULLEN BRESSACK, TARYN HILLIN / STARRING: CIARA HANNA, EMILY O’BRIEN, JACKIE MOORE, BRYON GIBSON, RUSSELL GEOFFREY BANKS / RELEASE DATE: JUNE 19TH

A trio of American friends head over to Thailand to work as English teachers for the summer, staying a large house that’s full of old furniture, the centrepiece being a gold statue of a young girl. It’s not creepy enough to stop them going out to let their hair down in the local club. It’s here they meet three English chaps – who don’t at all look like they’re up to no good – and unwisely take them back to their place. Annoyed that the girls have no booze, one of them pops out a hipflask, and offers it around. As the room spins, it appears things get well and truly out of control. When they awake in the morning, the men – and most of the valuables from the house, including the statue – have gone. But what’s really freaky is each of the girls had a nightmare that they were in fact torturing the guys!

Although they lost their possessions, they become really worried about the statue, as it was clearly valuable and they don’t want to be accountable for its disappearance. As they try to find out where it came from, and hopefully track it down again, they uncover some horrific truths about the origin of the figure, and the strange old man living opposite who seems to be constantly watching them.

Writer/director James Cullen Bressack’s back catalogue has been a mixed bag of gritty, low budget indies to films for The Asylum, but he’s consistently shown a flair for his visuals and storytelling. Pernicious is arguably his most ambitious work, telling a quite tradition story, but infused with a style influenced in places from Korean and Chinese cinema (including several jump shocks that are directly lifted from some familiar classics). Which is not to say that it is derivative, as the atmosphere is built so well, that even though the shocks are clearly signposted, they still deliver the desired jumps. This is aided by the effective score by Steven Bernstein (probably best known for his work on cartoon such as Taz-Mania), who manages to underpin the tension perfectly.

The female leads are great, even when making clearly ridiculous decisions (where would horror cinema be without that, though?), and although it takes a while to warm to the characters, there is enough investment to when them to actually survive, which makes a nice change. As the title might suggest, the descent into violence is a gradual one, but manages to be all the more disturbing for it.

The film’s effects are, for the most part, of the practical variety, at least when it comes to the gore – which there’s plenty of, with some being particularly eye-popping, and squirm-inducing moments. However, it’s shot so well that even when CGI is used it isn’t laughably jarring as in some films.

Unfortunately, it’s perhaps not a ‘big’ enough picture to find a mainstream audience, which is a shame as it’s a lot more entertaining than some of the dross which fills the multiplexes, but it’s well worth tracking down when it’s finally released on VOD in the UK.

Expected Rating: 7 out of 10
Actual Rating: