REVIEW: Mama

A lot of horror films have made use of the monstrous female character. A lot more than I care to list right now. I remember at University when I had a seminar and then had to write an essay all about how characters reject their mother figures in horror films.

The reason why I am bringing this up? I just wish that Mama had been released when I had to write that essay. It would have made it a whooooole lot easier!

Mama follows two young children, Victoria (Morgan McGarry) and Lilly (Maya & Sierra Dawe) as they are kidnapped from their home as their Father, Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has, for unknown reasons, killed his boss and their Mother and is now on the run. When they find an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods, Jeffery is killed by an unseen assailant (who Victoria describes as 'floating') who then looks after Victoria and Lilly in their new cabin home by feeding them cherries. A few years go by and Jeffrey's brother, Lucas (also played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has never given up his search for his two nieces, despite his punk girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) telling him otherwise. Against all odds, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) have grown up to be feral children, devoid of all social skills. However, because Lucas cannot prove that he can provide a stable home for the girls, they are at risk to be taken home by their 'evil' Great Aunt, Jean (Jane Moffat). With the help from Dr Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), Lucas and Annabel move in to a new home under constant surveillance by Dr Dreyfuss and his team. However, when the girls move in, it soon becomes obvious that they are not alone and that someone, or something, has followed them to the house, and it doesn't like when anyone else gets too close to finding out who they are or if anyone gets too close to the girls.

Mama is a horror film that has one of the most interesting setups I have seen in recent horror films. The idea of feral children creating an imaginary (or spiritual) mother figure is captivating and intriguing, as well as seeing how they develop their speech and movements before being allowed back into society. The lack of social interaction and their inability to communicate means they make great sympathetic yet mysterious villainous characters who we just don't know whether to trust or not. As an audience, we know that they are hiding a secret and the film does well in stringing along the characters into slowly finding out what we already suspect.

Another real positive to Mama is the characters themselves and the casting of actors that brought them to life. One of the real standouts are the children themselves and especially the two young actresses who take on the part of Victoria. While Lilly is the one who is more closely connected to their Mama, Victoria is the older sister who is able to communicate with other characters and ultimately show remorse for believing in the spirit of Mama. Young Megan Charpentier does a stand up job in showing the emotional turmoil that the young girl goes through when she starts to realise that Annabel is a much better Mother figure than their Mama will ever be. She almost steals every scene that she is in. However, Jessica Chastain also does a brilliant job in playing the troubled Annabel to life as she goes through the changes of being an immature young girl in a rock band to a mature young woman who has been left to look after two children. Sometimes, her immature rock band character at the beginning of the film was a little hard to swallow, because it was almost too much of a caricature of a rock chick, but thankfully her character doesn't stay that way for long and soon goes on her journey to maturity as she becomes the unlikely protagonist in the film.

In contrast to the strong beginning, Mama's biggest downfall is it's ending - it's just too over-the-top. Firstly, the build up and reveal as to who the Mama character is that the girls have been talking to throughout the film was too much of an anti-climax. Considering the girls had been imagining her and talking to Mama all through the film, the fact that she was just some random figure at the end, with a very small backstory, just felt disjointed and completely out of line with the strong build up at the beginning. Now, I don't want to give too much away, but Mama soon becomes just another cliched Hollywood horror villain who is just out for revenge. In fact, if you can't guess the backstory to the Mama figure when watching the film, then you haven't seen enough Hollywood horror films!

The other downfall with the ending is that the final battle scene is just too... over-the top, obvious and cliched. The Mama figure becomes a cartoon character as the audience see what she looks like in all her glory and it kills any kind of suspense or build up that the film had created before it. Not to mention the fact that the CGI used to create the character of Mama was pointless and just further served to sap out all of the creepiness of the character. Seeing a CGI elongated face in close-up just isn't scary. And I won't mention any more about what happens in the final battle, but lets just say that it left me scratching my head in wonderment about what actually was the point of the entire film and what actually was Mama's motivation. It also didn't provide a full conclusion for all of the characters, so there were a lot of unanswered questions.

So, after an extremely strong build-up at the beginning with a really interesting and original premise for a horror film, Mama manages to undo all of it's good work in a cliched Hollywood final battle scene at the end of the film. It's a shame, because I really was enjoying it right up until that moment...

*** / *****

REVIEW: A Good Day To Die Hard

Die Hard was a film that kept it simple. One man, his wife trapped in a building with terrorists that had taken it over. Die Hard 2 and Die Hard With A Vengeance tried to do the same thing but slightly bigger scale, whereas Die Hard 4.0 (or Live Free or Die Hard to audiences in America) again made the concept even bigger and had the whole of America under threat by a cyber terrorist.

It seemed that with every Die Hard that tried to make the scenario and the problem bigger and bigger, the quality of the filmmaking got worse and worse. So what does A Good Day to Die Hard do? Well, it makes the big concept even bigger by relocating the danger to Russia. Bad move...

A Good Day to Die Hard (from now on, it will be called AGDTDH) follows John McClane (Bruce Willis) who finds out that his son, Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) is in trouble in Russia and is in danger of being sent to jail or even worse. After being egged on by his daughter, Lucy McClane (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) in the most redundant cameo ever, Bruce soon realises that his son is in much deeper trouble and has been leading a double life all along. When tap dancing, carrot-munching Alik (Rasha Bukvic) and Irina (Yuliya Snigir) take her father, Komarov (Sebastian Koch) hostage, its up to John and Jack to team up together to stop the biggest nuclear weapons heist in history taking place and a brand new war. And, that's about it...

The main problem with AGDTDH is that it feels like half a film, like someone has ripped out the heart that makes it a true Die Hard film and instead has left a soulless paint-by-numbers action flick in it's place that has a very simplistic and underdeveloped plot. There's literally nothing to it. With a couple of plot twists here and there, which could honestly be predicted, the film is mainly John and Jack arguing, shooting guns together and killing a few Russians before they stop the bad guys taking the nuclear weapons. What do they want to do with the nuclear weapons? Start a war of course. Why do they want to start a war? Well, I never really caught onto that really, it was just because, well... they wanted to. Do John and Jack at least provide some family conflict to keep the plot moving? Well, kind of, but they soon get on so well with each other that it soon becomes boring Father/Son banter (with a sickly sweet Father/Son moment thrown in the middle of the guns and fighting.)

Which leads onto the next problem with AGDTDH in the characters. Firstly, the stock Russian villains became so stereotypical that they are probably the most instantly forgettable villains in the entire Die Hard series. The only memorable one being Alik (with the previously mentioned tap dancing scene where he kicks the McClane's guns away with munching on a carrot - a surprisingly quirky character trait) but he barely has any screen time to make him a major player. I don't really want to blame the actors who played the parts for this lack of presence, but more to the editing and studio interference, because I will say it once again, but AGDTDH really felt like it was a film with the majority of it's scenes ripped apart (much like the edited down crappy version of Taken 2.) However, the real problems like with the entire McClane family. While it was nice that Lucy McClane linked this film back to Die Hard 4.0, her cameo was completely pointless, because she becomes a forgettable character who simply waves off her father to Russia and then welcomes him back with her brother. Jack McClane was a younger version of John McClane in name only - he had all the ass-kicking qualities of John McClane, but he just didn't have any of the comedic flair from the earlier Die Hard's.

Then there is the technical side of the filmmaking, which was the final nail in the coffin for AGDTDH. Director, John Moore (Behind Enemy Lines, The Omen 2006) really gives the film a bland and boring feel, which is the complete opposite of what an exciting and mesmerising action film should be. He filmed the film in a 1.85:1 format - something which might seem trivial, but it made the film feel less cinematic and more like a TV episode of Die Hard. And then there was the shaky camera work which made it hard to decipher what was actually happening in most of the fight scenes.

While I can appreciate what AGDTDH was trying to do, nodding back to the original Die Hard with such scenes and shooting out the glass ceiling and introducing insane villains (such as Alik) that were meant to bring this film back to the glory days of Die Hard. However, the lack of a decent plot made the film insanely boring and confusing (I don't care what anyone says, an action film needs explosions and gun fights, but it also needs a decent story behind it.) It got to the point where right at the end of the film, one of the villains decides that because they have ran out of bullets to fire at the McClanes, then they will simply ram the building with the helicopter that they are flying.

Yeah, because that really made any sense (much like the film lacking a plot then...) It's almost like the screenwriters (Skip Woods and Roderick Thorp) just needed a way for the villain to go out in some kind of style.

It's a shame, because I was really looking forward to AGDTDH. While Die Hard 4.0 wasn't a masterpiece, I thought it did a decent enough job of dragging John McClane into the 21st Century. However, AGDTDH simply feels like a filler film - another film that brings one of the McClane family back before they can convince Holly Gennaro McClane (Bonnie Bedelia) to make an appearance and complete the family once more!

So, if you like a simplistic (to almost non-existent) plot with a heavily edited adult film down to a more family friendly action flick, then AGDTDH will be spot on. However, if you actually want a gritty Die Hard, like the earlier entries, then AGDTDH will be a serious disappointment.

* / *****

REVIEW: Wreck-It Ralph

Everybody loves an underdog. It's film writing 101 and quite an easy character to write. It's also a staple to most Disney films, and Wreck-It Ralph is no exception to the rule.

Why should we like a character that has it all and has no struggles? Surely we like people who deserve their fame and good fortune?

Wreck-It Ralph follows the titular Ralph (John C. Reilly) who is disliked by the rest of the people in his game, including Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer), because he is the villain. However, Ralph is only a villain by name, because deep down he wants to be seen as the hero. When the arcade shuts down for the night, all the video game characters get to travel between games through Game Central Station (the multi-plug sockets), in a move which makes Wreck-It Ralph slightly similar to Toy Story (but the similarities end there really). When Ralph leaves his game to earn a medal and prove that he is a hero, he releases a dangerous bug from Calhoun's (Jane Lynch) shoot-em-up game and puts Candy Rush and Vanellope (Sarah Silverman) in serious danger. Can Ralph save the day and prove he is a hero? Of course he can...

The major strength of Wreck-It Ralph is that it follows previous successes (such as Toy Story) but still manages to be different enough so it feels like a fresh and new story. While the game characters take their positions in their respective games when the children are present, as soon as the doors to the arcade are locked, that's when they come to life. There is also the moral story behind the film, ready to inspire and educate the young 'uns - in this case, you shouldn't judge people by what they look like. And of course, the bright garish colours - expecially in Candy Rush - that should capture the really young 'un's imagination. For a kids film, it's pretty much all there and paint by the numbers. But, for some reason, it doesn't feel like a bad thing at all.

For the most part, it's all down to the sheer love and affection for video games that you can feel the filmmakers had when making Wreck-It Ralph. The simple game graphics of Wreck-It Ralph (considering it's one of the oldest games in the arcade) compared to the gloriously lavish world in the brand new first-person shooter game where Ralph encounters Sergeant Calhoun. Then there's the simplistic moves that the characters only can do in Ralph's game and then Ralph encountering Vanellope the 'glitch' in Candy Rush. It's all there for game lovers and it's a serious love letter to all arcade aficionados.

The only real major downfall for Wreck-It Ralph is that certain scenes seem to drag, especially when Ralph gets to Candy Rush. The film feels like it gets stuck to a certain extent focussing heavily on the budding relationship between Ralph and Vanellope and almost forgetting about Felix and Calhoun, the impending doom from the bug and the trouble that Ralph left the rest of his own game in (he leaves it with an 'Out of Order' sign and a threat that it will be removed from the arcade. The film almost drains all the tension it has built up and loses any urgency.

However, it's not drastically bad as the characters of Ralph and Vanellope are certainly engaging enough for us to have a fun time watching them and wanting them to succeed. I find Wreck-It Ralph one of the most difficult films that I have had to review so far, because it does well in being a children's film, but not a lot more. It doesn't do a lot for the adults who are going to be dragged along to see it, but it's not too schmaltzy and child-like either.

Let's just leave it at saying that it's a pretty solid effort by Disney...

***½ / *****

REVIEW: Flight

As an audience, we need someone to root for, someone that we want to overcome all odds and face their demons/foes and succeed. It's the basics in storytelling, to get your protagonist the right side of sympathetic without becoming annoying or a wimp.

Flight decides to take this to the extreme and present us with a protagonist that is so flawed, sometimes it is hard to see when he is actually going to pull through and show us the light at the end of the very long tunnel.

Flight is a film of two halves. It starts off presenting us with a very flawed protagonist, Whip Whitikar (Denzel Washington) a flight captain who likes to smoke, drink and take drugs in excess. He is also having an affair with one of the flight crew, Katerina Marquez (Nadine Velaquez) right under the nose of his good friend, flight crew member Margaret Thomason (Tamara Tunie). On a routine flight, Whip is roughly awoken from his nap when the auto pilot controls on the plane fail. What follows is an extremely tense emergency landing where the quick thinking (while intoxicated) from Whip helps save the lives of the majority of people on board. However, the second half of the film follows Whip as he is accused of being intoxicated while flying and putting everyone on board the plane in danger, despite the fact that he saved many people's lives. He is joined by lawyer Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) and Harling Mays (John Goodman) who try and help prove that Whip was innocent against all odds. However, when Whip meets a fellow recovering addict, Nicole (Kelly Reilly) it makes him see some home truths and second guess himself - does he really want to get away with everything that he has done?

The advertising for Flight has really heavily relied on promoting the thrilling plane crash at the beginning of the film. While this is a brilliantly tense set piece in the film, it really is only half of the story. Unfortunately for the film, it's certainly the most exciting half of the film too. If you've seen the trailers, then you will have pretty much seen how Whip manages to crash land the plane. The fact that you know the plane is going to crash just makes the build up to it even more tense. However, Director Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Polar Express) doesn't simply rely on this audience expectation as he continues to ramp up the tension in the flight itself. First, there's Whip addressing the cabin full of passengers while he sneakily pours himself a double vodka into his orange juice out of sight, then there's a good old storm which provides a tense take-off and when Whip falls asleep as the plane is on auto-pilot, it's just another nail in the coffin for our protagonist. How will he ever get through the court case scott free?!

The following court case after the crash landing is by no means boring, but it's a massive shift in narrative for the film, going from a traditional action film territory (think the old Airport films) to a drama piece. Writer, John Gatins, takes the focus away from the dramas of the court room and the victims of the plane crash (which could have been very interesting) and instead decides to focus completely on Whip battling his inner demons and trying to nurse a damaged Nicole back to glory at the same time (or, is it her that is trying to nurse him back to health?) It's makes for an interesting drama piece, but I can't help but think that an interweaving narrative between Whip and the courtroom dramas of the victims families could have made the second half of the film as thrilling as the first half.

The fact that Flight is essentially a drama piece means that the characters needed to be spot on. For the most part, it does get it right. Washington, who plays Whip was given a very difficult character to play, for Whip is a man who challenges the audience to keep rooting for him because he does nothing in the film to help himself. He's a needy character, someone who thinks he can look after himself and help others as well, but actually is completely dependent on all those around him. When he is pouring himself a double vodka on the plane it's kind of funny, then when he continues to drink later in the film it becomes annoying, then when he decides to get complete smashed before the integral court case which could prove him innocent or guilty, it's confusing and annoying - at that part in the film I was asking myself whether Whip was still the protagonist or the antagonist. I suppose it's what makes the film interesting, given that the protagonist blurs the lines so much between good and bad, but sometimes the film just pushes the boundaries a little too far. Also, sometimes Washington came across as a little cartoony in his portrayal of being addicted to alcohol - I'm not sure that he needed to drink from a massive bottle of vodka to prove to us that he was an alcoholic.

However, on the other side of the spectrum, Nicole was portrayed just right as the damaged drug addict who is desperate to get away from her old life. We see how desperate she is at the beginning (going to a friend in the porn industry for more drugs) but it's when she meets Whip when she takes a turn for the better and ends up leaving her old life behind her for good (is she the true protagonist in the film?!) The only thing that the film felt like it was missing was a true antagonist for the characters and the audience to fear. While it was hinted at that Ellen Block (Melissa Leo), the lead NTSB investigator was someone who wanted to pin all he blame on Whip, she only appears in the court room scenes right at the end of the film so her character is never properly fleshed out into a true villain. Again, I hate to keep banging on about it, but more scenes with the victims families and Ellen Block could have solved this problem.

So, while Flight isn't a complete plane crash of a film, it certainly could have done with a few improvements to help balance out the two halves of the film. After the first thrilling half of the film, it just felt like the second half dragged a little bit.

**½ / *****