10 Fittest Men in Film, 2015.

Happy Hump Day! I realised that I enjoy making these shallow lists (and going search for gifs and pngs of evidence of Hollywood stars' gorgeousness) that I will make it a Wednesday Hump Day tradition. A list every week. 2015's ladies list, and 2016's men and women, for those who care to peruse.

The only constraint on the list is that I have to have actually watched the performance which I'm listing.

10. Domhnall Gleeson, Ex Machina

Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation review

On the hunt for the elusive ‘Syndicate’ in London, Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise, admirably unfatigued) realises that they’re onto him, and not only that, they’re three steps ahead of him at his own game. At the same time, the C.I.A. (led by Alec Baldwin, terrifically uptight) have reached the end of their tether with the unorthodox methods and messy results of the IMF, leading them to shut them down. Which leaves Ethan with no support, hunted, and seeking the head of the terrorist organisation, hoping to shut them down before they shut him down. Mission Impossible, indeed.

I’ve seen the first three of the Mission: Impossible movies but not the critically acclaimed Ghost Protocol, which is a shame because I love me some Jeremy Renner and Simon Pegg. Fortunately, they reprise their roles in Rogue Nation, and with some aplomb. Renner is the king of finely walking that thin line between surly and charismatic (and look how pretty!!!), and Simon Pegg, whilst he appears in a few too unfunny ‘comedies’ for my liking, was born to play the comedy sidekick that he does here, and the bromance between him and Cruise carries extremely well on screen. In another Summer action blockbuster I watched a few weeks ago, Ant-Man, Michael Peña served a similar role, and he, too, lit up the screen whenever he was on. It’s no coincidence that I was amused and entertained by M:I5 and Ant-man throughout.

The story is, as with Fast and Furious 7, flimsier than a Victoria Secret bikini and a barely-veiled excuse to line up noisy action sequence upon action sequence. But, as with F&F7, the action sequences themselves are so thrilling, and so textured, so bombastic, that as soon as the film started and we were launched into Cruise jumping onto a moving plane, I was just hooked. 

The introduction of Rebecca Ferguson as a British undercover spy who Hunt may or may not be able to trust, was an inspired piece of casting: at 31, she’s still great to look at (dat lime green dress at the opera), but she’s considerably more experienced than the naïve ingénue, and as such, much more believable in her kick-ass role. The fight scenes where she and Cruise collaborated to beat up the baddies were incredibly satisfying. A cameo by Tom Hollander as the Prime Minister also made for a diverting watch.

Overall, Mission: Impossible -  Rogue Nation raised the bar for action films; I wasn’t able to keep my eyes off the screen. Excitement buzzed in every frame, from an adrenaline-pumping motorcycle chase, to Cruise jumping into a security system immersed deep underwater with only 3 minutes worth of oxygen and an extremely tense finale sat around a London cafe. Furthermore, whilst in the three M:I movies I’ve seen, I definitely didn’t doubt Hunt’s dedication to the cause for defending his country, a pleasant addition in Rogue Nation was the lengths he went to to protect his friend Benji. 

I know I’ve already used the word ‘bromance’ in this review, but the bickering and banter between Cruise and Pegg was a delight to watch, and added some much-needed levity between all the life-risking.

I’ve namedropped a few 2015 action movies in this review, so one more can’t hurt. Sam Mendes’ follow-up to his last James Bond movie, Spectre, is out in October, and the trailer has me salivating, not least because the movie boasts the rather beautiful Léa Seydoux playing a doctor. If that lives up to the previews, then 2015 is going to be the most illustrious year for action movies since… I don’t even know when. Thrilling stuff!

8/10

The Bourne Legacy (Tony Gilroy, 2012)

In summarising the plot of The Bourne Legacy, I may fail somewhat, as I was more than a bit lost throughout my viewing of the film (a free advanced screening at a rather plush Vue cinema in Finchley Road, if I may say so).  

To the best of my understanding, what it involves is a group of people who were involved in “Outcome”, a different strand of the project Jason Bourne was involved, but the difference here being science is used to doctor their mental and physical capacity. A glitch in the set-up of the plan involving a YouTube leak of the connections between the people involved occurs and the film documents the lengths the creators take to avoid the catastrophic results of the Bourne saga. 

Eric Byer (played by Edward Norton), is the man trying to “shut down” the people involved, and whilst the majority are done so with ease (they are given a “new pill” to take which they believe will make them stronger but in fact sends them into cardiac arrest), Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) is the last man standing, who refuses to go without a fight.

I think the main problem with The Bourne Legacy is that they tried to tie it in with Robert Ludlum’s initial creation, and the Matt Damon films, when in fact everything that happened in the preceding films is very much in the background here. 

Had The Bourne Legacy been a different film, the character of Jason Bourne just been something of a prelude and the characters been given new names and companies, then I would have found The Bourne Legacy a lot less confusing. 

The continual attempts to try and tie the events of this film in with the third movie (the two storylines are supposed to be running parallel) definitely over-complicates matters. The story-line is more than cerebral enough to hold its own, and, as mentioned, the attempt to try and make this a spin-off of the Bourne movies is its ultimate downfall.

That being said, there’s a lot of good stuff here. The script is somewhat too clever for its own good in regards to the plotting, and there is little left in terms of characterization, but Renner, Weisz (playing Marta, a scientist working for a company who does the legwork of Outcome) and Norton all give strong performances. 

Norton in particular is very strong, as his character is far removed from the archetypal villain in that he is doing what he thinks he is doing for the greater good. He gives a brooding, tense performance and it is possible to imagine what it’s like for his character. Jeremy Renner has never been one of my favourites with his individual AVBesque brand of surliness, but I don’t find him as annoying her as I have found him in other movies, namely Mission Impossible III and The Town. And Rachel Weisz, though unfortunate in that the script makes her out to be some kind of hysterical bint, acts very well indeed to make us sympathise for her character when the script was practically calling out for histrionics, as well as giving depth to Dr Marta Shearing in her facial expressions that is painfully remiss in the screenplay.

As with all the Bourne movies, the action sequences are a thrill to watch, and a chase sequence through the streets of Manila certainly doesn’t skimp on crashes, explosions and various other calamities. 

Slickly edited with some wonderfully glamourous locations spanning London to the Philippines, and featuring some genuinely tense moments (a showdown at Marta’s house when she is required to draw on her wiles in order to survive), it is, on the whole, an interesting watch, but not one that I was altogether satisfied by.

Grade: C

It’s Only Real when you’re not around (Screening log 10/01/11-16/10/11)

I watched three films this week, all 2010 releases, two set in Boston, one set in between a rock.

127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2010)

You’ve seen the trailer, you’ve heard the hype, you know what it’s about. And, not that I take IMDb ratings as a messiah, but, it received a pretty high rating on IMDb, and truth be told, I expected more. Instead, I found 127 Hours to be fairly boring at points; quite clearly what we have here is about 60 minutes of material dragged out into a cinema release with the help of some fancy effects on the computer. But on the bright side, James Franco is excellent; he almost makes the film worth watching and although his character seems fairly everyday and I found it hard to care about his “flashbacks” to mistakes he’d made, his survival strategies when stuck made for compelling watching. Needless to say, I was more than a little grossed out by THAT infamous arm amputation scene, but I thought Franco’s dedication to the role and all-round performance was brill. He, and he alone, ensures that this film was not a total bust. Must try harder Danny Boyle; Slumdog Millionaire and Sunshine this most certainly ain’t.

The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

Two years ago, two of the five (remember when the Oscars only nominated five films for Best Picture? Those were the days) Oscar nominated films for Best Picture were Slumdog Millionaire, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, directed by Danny Boyle, and David Fincher, respectively. In the case of those two films, I loved the former, didn’t mind the latter. Now the tables are turned, though not totally; I think 127 Hours is “alright”, and The Social Network is “very good”, though the intensity of my feelings toward it aren’t anywhere near as strong as they are towards Slumdog (do you remember when I first saw it, how hard I bummed it on my blog , in a manner that I save for bumming films I only truly really adore a film, as I did with Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain and Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds). Random bout of nostalgia is random, I know, but my point is, I find it quite sad that as of yet, no film in 2010 has really blown me away. I really like Toy Story 3, but I like it less than I liked Up, Inglourious Basterds and Fish Tank, my top 3 from 2009, and less than I like Slumdog Millionaire and WALL-E, my top 2 from 2008, and less than The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Atonement from 2007. Every year there’s one or two films that really blow me away. I need a film from 2010 to make me go “woah”, and to quote that whiny do-gooder Bono, "I still haven't found what I'm looking for."

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I enjoyed The Social Network a fair bit. I didn’t think the story of how the smug anti-social nerd who invented Facebook would be of interest to me, but I got extremely engrossed in it and, lamentably, recognised myself in him. Obviously I’m never going to be a billionaire, of course not, but what I recognised in him was how he came home from a bust date and went straight on livejournal to whine about it. Now that, is familiar behaviour, haha. I think Jesse Eisenberg did a very good job in the lead role, making his hard-to-like character at least compelling to watch, and his on-screen chemistry with wingman Andrew Garfield was nicely done. I LOVED Andrew Garfield in it (surprise, surprise), his “you’d better lawyer up, asshole” speech was mega, and his character gives the film sound grounding. Justin Timberlake was an embarrassment, I can only imagine Fincher bunged him in the film to get teenage girls to watch (a similar strategy that is employed by Ben Affleck with Blake Lively in The Town, more on that debacle later) and there were various other supporting actors who didn’t cut it for me. But overall, I found the story of the origins of Facebook just about justified a two-hour screentime, with some moments of comic relief coming from these two twins and Max Minghella’s character. Also, I’m not purposely being a philistine here, but I did detect tones of Citizen Kane throughout, especially in the ending, when Zuckerberg, having made his dynasty and lost some money in the settlement (but what’s a few million for the creator of Facebook?) just sits there and refreshes the page constantly after adding his ex-girlfriend on Facebook. The message could not be more clear; he wanted to be a billionaire, so frigging bad. But it couldn’t buy one thing, no matter how he tried. That, right there, is Mark Zuckerberg’s very own Rosebud moment.

The Town (Ben Affleck, 2010)

From the trailers, I was all over this film, and was deeply disappointed when I couldn’t go see it with my housemates, time constraints non-permitting. However, I managed to watch it on a sleepless night this week, and I’m… still in two minds about the film. On one hand, you’ve got a perfectly interesting heist movie with a glittering A-list cast and some tense, gripping scenes (Jem surprising Doug when Doug is on a date with Claire, the woman they took hostage when carrying out the first bank robbery). On the other, it just… didn’t really do it for me. One of my main problems with The Town was Blake Lively’s acting (or lack thereof); obviously as a non-Bostonian I can’t rip her too hard for the accent, but from the likes of Gone Baby Gone and Mystic River, I have a vague idea about how it’s supposed to sound, and I think she got that, and turned it up to 20. Her acting was also just terribly over the top and all-round cringe inducing; I totally get that her character is clutching at the straws and realising that the one thing she has – her beauty – isn’t enough in this day and age, and that’s a terribly sad revelation, but instead of making Christa a tragic icon, she was just, well hilarious, with her half-drunk stagger and mumble mouth. Ben Affleck was tolerable, John Hamm has the blandest of characters but does well with him, and I’m undecided about whether Jeremy Renner’s surly, borderline psychopathic turn as Jem was genius or ridiculous. Pete Postlethwaite, in his second-to-last performance, is fairly terrifying. But the one standout performance from the film comes from Rebecca Hall, and oh how she lights every scene she’s in. It’s her and her alone that makes The Town worth watching; Claire is just about the only character I didn’t find totally deplorable (apart from the police) and we, like Affleck, find ourselves falling in love with her. And, whilst the whole “bad-guy-gone-good due to his love for a beautiful woman” isn’t exactly new, I did like the romantic strand of The Town, and I found myself half-rooting for the Affleck/Hall romance, half wanting Rebecca Hall to get with John Hamm for some reason. Lol. Oh, and the score irked me, scored by David Buckley and Harry Gregson-Williams, it was clearly a case of “too many cooks … decided to plagiarize Thomas Newman”, because I heard shades of the Cinderella Man and Shawshank Redemption scores throughout. Furthermore, the ending, that was all a bit Shawshank-y, but, unlike Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption, I didn’t find myself ever wanting Ben Affleck to have a happy ending. Plus, I don't take too well to having my favourite film plagiarized, funny that. Thus, I have very mixed feelings towards this film. If there were any justice in the world, Rebecca Hall ought to be garnishing awards buzz for her turn. The rest of the movie? I can live without it, truth be told.

As for TV, this week I've been watching Come Fly with Me and Not Going Out, both which make me chuckle. The banter is strong in the latter! Oh, and Hollyoaks! The lulz.