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‘Could this get any weirder?’
Mila Kunis asks at one point in Jupiter Ascending. With bees that recognise
royalty, hover shoes that allow the wearer to skate and surf in thin air, and
Channing Tatum wearing pointy prosthetic ears; the answer is definitely no Mila,
it probably bloody couldn’t.
Jupiter Jones (Kunis) is an
ordinary girl from Chicago, born under a night sky with the stars aligned to
spell out her destiny for future greatness. Her reality is cleaning toilets;
day in, day out like a modern day Cinderella. Out of the stars, flies her very
own Prince Charming... or perhaps that should be Prince Channing, with
Tatum playing a hunter who has been sent to Earth to find his princess. He’s a
genetically engineered ex-military hybrid; part man, part dog with gravity defying boots and a keen sense of smell. His mission is to discover
Jupiter who, unbeknownst to her, is actually an intergalactic royal heir and in
line to inherit a fortune that could decide the future of every human on Earth.
The Wachowski siblings have
never really dealt in small ideas. Their debut Bound feels light years away
from this epic space saga which eclipses even The Matrix and Cloud Atlas for
the scope of its ambition. However, Jupiter Ascending is not the masterpiece
that either The Matrix was, or that Cloud Atlas may one day be hailed as. It is
brimming with action, special effects and imagination, but is sadly lacking
when it comes to character and real emotion. This is like The Fifth Element on
steroids; if you liked Luc Besson’s vision of the galaxy, strap in for more
bonkers creatures and OTT villains than you can shake a misplaced Lightsaber
at.
Jupiter Ascending has
Hogwarts extras, Koopa Troopas from The Super Mario Bros movie, henchman dressed like gimps and plenty more crazy aliens for its down to earth heroine to
contend with. It also has Eddie Redmayne on turbo charged uber-villain duties.
As one of a trio of royal siblings that are squabbling over what to do about
the threat that Jupiter poses to them, he chews the huge and extravagantly
designed scenery to pieces. With his creepy features and strained voice, it is
a shame when he resorts to moments of SHOUTING to make sure he tips over
into pantomime.
Jupiter Ascending is a film
filled with chasing and rescuing, but the action scenes go by in a bit of a blur of special effects
and repetitiveness. Kunis gets a few chances to show her charm but spends most
of the film going from outrageous costume to costume and either clinging to
Tatum or chasing Channing (who forgets to put his shirt on for a large section
of the film) for a quick kiss. If Jupiter Ascending isn’t numbing with its
action, it’s getting bogged down with the likes of Sean Bean delivering pages
of exposition. If you just want to know what's in Tatum's genes, you might want to wait for Magic Mike XXL.
Still, if you like big
special effects driven space odysseys more like The Fifth Element than
Interstellar, then Jupiter Ascending might just be the star you’ve been
searching for.
Starting as civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is
being awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, and ending with a small victory on
the way to attempting to secure African American equality, Selma examines only a very short
period in the life of a legend. King’s non-violent activism has
already been established before the film begins and his assassination at the age of 39
is merely a footnote. Selma, as its title suggests, is the story of just one of many
struggles in King’s life. When it becomes clear that African Americans are not
being allowed to vote in many Southern states (despite this being against the law), King and his colleagues head to
Selma, Alabama, a place where ‘whites only’ signs are still visible, and
organises a march from Selma to Montgomery to ensure every black person is
allowed to vote without being refused or intimidated.
Hounded by J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, hindered by
President Johnson, and attacked by outraged white people and Southern law
enforcement, King must overcome divisions within his own movement, and outright
racism from many locals in order to succeed.
Selma is not a traditional biopic, in that most of King’s
life is left out of the film. Don’t expect to learn much about why King
developed his strict code of non-violent protest or what achievements led him
to winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Selma focuses in on one moment in his life
and is all the better for it. There are hints and mentions of what came before
and what will come after, but this is the story of Selma and the people who put
their lives at risk to gain the right to vote. Most notably, Selma enacts the night of the death of one
activist on the streets of Selma in tragically true detail, where Jimmie Lee Jackson was
unarmed and shot by police.
The timing of Selma, and its snub in the Academy Awards acting categories, couldn’t be more pertinent.
This is a film that many might want to ignore. The police brutality, the fear
of African Americans (particularly from those in power and law enforcement) and the desire to
protest their own treatment all feels ripped from recent headlines. For all
King’s sacrifices, victories and righteousness, America still has a lot of work
to do in terms of race relations and Selma shines a light on this by looking
into its recent past.
The decision to concentrate on this pivotal moment is smart;
with King’s life having too much to fit into a single film. It touches on the
troubled relationship with his wife and Malcolm X briefly pops up for a single
scene, but mostly it deals with King, his colleagues and the ordinary people of
Selma. The fantastic Brits in the cast - David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Tom
Wilkinson and Tim Roth - stand out in this none more American tale but as with
so many true life stories, it is the moments where we see real footage that
really hit the hardest.
Despite King's speeches having to be rewritten for the film due to
rights issues, Oyelowo captures the essence of the man beautifully. With so much left of King’s life to cover, we can only hope
that director Ava DuVernay, writer Paul Webb and star David Oyelowo are given
another opportunity to shine a spotlight on this great leader in the future.
When super spy Harry Hart
loses a member of his team in the late 90s, he makes a promise to look out for
the young son of the man who died trying to save him. Seventeen years later,
Eggsy is a wayward teen with a permanently distraught mother and violent
scumbag of a step father. When Eggsy is arrested for stealing a car, Harry Hart
seeks out the troubled youth and offers him the chance to become a part of the
mysterious and super secret spy agency known as the Kingsman. Seeing what Harry
Hart can do, the gadgets he uses, and the class he oozes, Eggsy agrees to sign
up to the competitive training regime that could see him taking on billionaire lisping
megalomaniac Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson).
It is very clear from
watching Kingsman that director Matthew Vaughn is not ready to give up on
directing a Bond film yet. Whether he will ever get the gig in the future on
the back of this film is very questionable. Kingsman is more like the film we
would get if Tarantino ever gets to make a Bond film. It’s self-referential and
smart, has a brilliantly foul mouth and is uber-violent from start to finish. Not
to mention the fact that it takes an outsider’s perspective on Britain and fills
the film with stereotypes of the class system, from the stiff upper lipped
suited gents of the Kingsman to the ‘yeah bruv’ yoof of working class ladland.
Early contender for best scene of the year?
Kingsman takes great pleasure
in pinching from Bond films, while giving tradition a good shake up. Valentine’s
lisp, blade footed hench-woman and mountain lair all feel like they border on
homage and parody, whereas other moments indulge in characters talking
conventions before shockingly subverting what audiences have come to expect in these films.
To take the Tarantino
comparison further, Matthew Vaughn really knows how to revel in the joy of a good
splash of ultra-violence. The scene where Firth’s skilled spy is unleashed on a
church congregation to the sounds of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird is one of the
most excitingly executed, thrillingly shot and edited and funniest massacres in
film history. Nothing in the rest of the film can touch it, but that doesn’t
stop Vaughn from trying.
With its cast including Colin
Firth, Mark Strong, Michael Caine, Samuel L. Jackson and Mark Hamill, it’s a wonder
that Taron Egerton even gets a look in as Eggsy. Doubters may think that he is
a poor man’s substitute for the swagger and savagery of Jack O’ Connell but
Egerton emerges as a winning choice to hold the film together, charming with
his sly grin and convincing with his way with an umbrella.
Though there is a worrying
undercurrent of upper class superiority and even scepticism about those who campaignabout climate change, if you can cast those niggling
fears aside, there surely won’t be a more gleefully violent film than Kingsman this year.
Young, naive JR is sent to
prison for a lowly crime where he quickly becomes the target of some very
dangerous men on the inside. Luckily, the fresh faced JR is also noticed by Brendan
Lynch (Ewan MacGregor), a professional criminal who takes JR under his wing and protects him
while on the inside. Brendan’s help comes at a cost though, and JR is soon
embroiled with a daring prison escape. Once on the outside, JR becomes an
apprentice to Brendan as they plan a major robbery but it soon becomes clear to
JR that he may be just a pawn in a very dangerous world of high stakes
criminality.
Forgetting one of the most ludicrous
prison escapes you will ever see on screen, Son of a Gun is actually a
generally grounded and gritty look at professional criminals in Australia’s
underworld. The film is filled with shady characters with questionable motives
and some seriously seedy crime bosses. JR is lucky he has the brains to keep
up, and perhaps stay one step ahead, of these characters as it looks
increasingly like behind their charm and banter, they are all willing to make JR a
sacrificial lamb.
The father and son dynamic
between JR and Brendan is more interesting than the romance that develops
between JR and Alicia Vikander’s endangered damsel. It’s a shame Vikander does
not get a fully rounded character to show off more than just her striking beauty but instead
Ewan MacGregor seizes his role as an unpredictable psycho and relishes it. He is the ruthless spark at the centre of the story and provides the film with its most interesting and volatile character.
Son of a Gun is hampered by predictable plotting but it still manages some very tense set pieces.
Starting off as a realistic prison drama, it soon emerges into the
Aussie sunlight and develops into something a little more fanciful on its way
to a wonderfully tense heist as the criminals go after a horde of gold. The
double and triple crosses won’t be surprising to many, but decent performances
and some thrilling action keep Son of a Gun from firing too many blanks.
