Today's News: and lots of it

Posting news here naturally took a blow due to recent tragic events that intervened in the general routine of my everyday life. So here's a fair bit of belated news updates I posted on MS: hopefully we won't be seeing this sort of delay more often.

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154889/gwendoline_christie_toegevoegd_aan_hunger_games_mockingjay

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154890/judy_greer_gecast_voor_jurassic_world

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154858/nieuwe_trailer_en_posters_expendables_3

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154859/eerste_trailer_luc_bessons_lucy

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/154822/toby_kebbell_als_nieuwe_dr_doom

I only know Kebbell from his more comedic roles (which weren't particularly funny), so based on that I'd say he's not the right choice for an iconic villain like Dr. Doom. However, judging from his resumé he has played emotionally different types of characters too. For one thing, he will play the abused and scarred chimp Koba in the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and I'm sure there will be no laughs in that capacity. An actor with a versatile background is a good thing, as there's more to Doom than just plain villainy for villainy's sake. I might say Kebbell is too young for the part, but so are the four leads picked to play the FF if you look at it that way. And since it's said this reboot will be based more off the Ultimate Fantastic Four comics - which among other things featured a Johnny Storm who was still in high school - a younger cast is a given, whether we like it or not. I will remain neutral in the usual fan bickering about whether or not Kebbell is the right choice or not. It's not like the previous incarnation of Doom in the 2005 and 2007 FF films was any good. Doom is simply a tough character to do justice, and a definitive take on this masked nemesis has still to be pulled off on the big screen. Kebbell's performance at least can't be much worse than what was seen before.

For those who know their movies, one single word should spring to mind after watching the trailer for Lucy: Limitless. The movie appears based around the same premise of drug induced mind expansion as that particular thriller flick, except this time it afflicts a woman's mind. The scale of expansion that follows suggests female minds are far more complex than males'. I didn't see Bradley Cooper stopping time or physically changing hair styles at will, let alone boggling Morgan Freeman's mind (but then, he wasn't in Limitless). With Luc Besson at the helm, fancier things could be expected where the brain's dormant power is concerned. Not to mention a great deal of explosive action, as is his forte. People who can't get enough of seeing Scar-Jo kicking mens' butts after The Avengers and Cap 2 are sure to get more of such girl power endeavours out of this revenge thriller posing as a Sci-Fi spectacle. Luckily for the bad guys in this film, Scarlett doesn't eat them, though they might lament the fact she might have had sex with them first, as is the case in her other upcoming science fiction thriller, Under the Skin. Better enjoy it while you can; considering her current pregnancy it'll be a while before we see her engage in such shenanigans again.

Folks we will see getting violently physical again soon (predictable segue if ever I wrote one down, I realize that) include Stallone and his crew of aging machos in their third Expandables outing. Bruce Willis has been traded in for quite a number of other (mostly overly muscled) actors, among them the likes of such noted veterans like Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson. The female presence in this film appears minimal, with only one woman pictured among these sixteen (!) character posters. The trailer attached to this bit of news - an element I didn't include in my original post because it hadn't been released just yet when these posters hit the web - shows little of the story other than summing up the names on the posters some more, plus a fair amount of gun fights and explosions to get our anticipations geared up. After two of these films, it's getting as old as these movie stars themselves, but the plot synopsis sounds pretty intriguing for a change, apparently paving the way for a younger generation of Expendables that might carry on fighting the brutal fight in more sequels. Too bad those upstarts aren't nearly as iconic as super stars like Schwarzenegger or Stallone, or even Statham. You think names like Kellan Lutz or Victor Ortiz are gonna leave enough impression next to such screen legends to warrant a sequel of their own without them? Not gonna happen.

Judy Greer is off to Jurassic World, eh? The dinosaurs will have a laugh then. Greer is mostly known for her funny roles, and even in more serious ventures like The Village there was a certain comedic touch to her presence. It's interesting she's only now getting more noticed in Hollywood, despite having built up quite a lengthy resumé in the last fifteen years. Apparently she's on a Sci-Fi roll, not to mention a prehistory roll, doing two dinosaur movies in 2015. Word on what character she'll play is nonexistent as of yet. I do hope Trevorrow can see past her expertise as a comedian and recognize her other qualities as well, though I don't think he's the type of director/screen writer to apply base comic relief characters to his scenarios, if his debut, Safety Not Guaranteed, which carried quite a comedic overtone as well but was equally apt at its more dramatic moments, was any indication. The diversity in Jurassic World's cast remains growing, as Greer could be called a female counterpart to JW star Chris Pratt, with a similar background in comedy under her belt, but also doing the occasional less-funny-more-serious thing. Whether any other relations to Pratt in the case from her character's part will be present time will tell. And for those who don't like Greer (if any), who knows, maybe JW will finally break the unwritten but never broken rule that women can't get killed by dinosaurs.

A female character that is not likely to get either eaten by prehistoric critters or to receive time off to get witty and snappy for laughs, is Commander Lyme, the District 13 leader who leads the uprising against the vicious Capitol in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay (Parts 1 and 2). Lily Rabe, whose body of work I'm totally unfamiliar with but who looks like she can portray a tough cookie is now set to be replaced for the second and final installment in this tetralogy of movies by someone I know full well to be able to play such a butch woman: Gwendoline Christie. Katniss sure will find it immensely helpful to have Brienne of Tarth at her side fighting tyranny. There's a lot of strong women opposing the male dominated Capitol it seems. Julianne Moore had previously been cast as the president of the rebels accordingly. But Moore is more the political, manipulative sort who uses the mind to fight oppression, while Christie has demonstrated her physical prowess to basically beat the shit out of people she doesn't like, thus making a nice addition to this rebellion as a sort of older Katniss. Sucks for Rabe she won't be able to continue playing the role, but scheduling conflicts are an often heard tragedy in the business. Rabe's loss is Christie's gain, as her career, which was rather a short list of projects to her name thus far, will get another boost playing in a major franchise, but this time on the big screen. I guess TV was just too small a medium to fully appreciate or hold Brienne.

Today's News: Liam Neeson Taken once more

Here's a scoop I delivered to MovieScene:

http://www.moviescene.nl/p/148151/liam_neeson_terug_voor_taken_3

Without having seen Taken or Taken 2 (and certainly in the latter case I know I have not missed much) I can quickly deduce this project to be a prime example of a studio doing some cash grabbing. The original Taken in itself was nothing more than a solid action thriller, as is typical for a Luc Besson production. A good cast, compelling action sequences, etc., but nothing more than an average action flick, released just before the 2008 blockbuster season kicked off, which is one of the reasons it did so well since cinemas didn't have that much else to offer. The second one was predictably more of the same, except of lesser quality. But apparently it still did wel enough despite a largely negative critical reception. And now there's Taken 3 in the works, making us wonder just how often one unlucky person can get involved with abductions of his own family without the feeling of the plot forcing the issue. But hey, Besson and co., never did care for plausibility. They do care for money, just as any commercially motivated film studio. And apparently they feel confident enough to hand Liam Neeson the big bucks for gracing the production with his presence, offering him a whopping 20 million dollars. It's an excessively large sum of money for one actor in any action vehicle, even if it's a third installment in a surprisingly successful franchise. Good for Neeson, but it does mean some cuts have to be made to protect the film from running rampant in the budget department. Expect the writing to suffer at least.

Still, 20 million dollars for Neeson isn't nearly as preposterous and insane as 50 million dollars for Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man 3. And we all know how "good" that movie's plot turned out to be...

And yes, I accidentally made a typo in the original news posting on MS. I know it's supposed to be 'rondt', I'm not an idiot.

Snake Plissken in space

Lockout: ***/*****, or 7/10

The contemporary major Hollywood studios are not known for their originality. The abundance of sequels, reboots, remakes, reimaginings and the like, all for the purpose of building marketable and easily exploitable franchises, allows little room for any well conceived fresh ideas to swing into full production and hit theaters. New ideas seemingly remain the province of the smaller independent studios circling Hollywood, often praised for their “European” attitude towards intriguing scripts and securing finance for their smaller scaled but emotionally more elaborate set-up. However, in truth the European sensibility isn't much different at all, as proven by the European 'major' Luc Besson, who is well known for producing dynamic motion pictures similar in style and substance to their American counterparts, in typically American genres like action and science fiction. While Besson has skillfully directed a fair amount of superb European genre movies that were also accessible to overseas audiences, like Léon (1994) and The Fifth Element (1997), many of the movie projects he takes under his wing as a producer are less original. So when the credits of Lockout reveal the film was 'based on an original idea by Luc Besson', such a statement has to be taken with a grain of salt, considering the film is a highly derivative product of other movies, chief among them John Carpenter's classic Escape from New York (1981).

'In the not too distant future, a disgraced soldier is charged with a secret mission to retrieve a person of importance from an out-of-control maximum security prison, where utter lawlessness rules as the inmates are in control.' An apt short synopsis for Escape from New York, as easily applicable to Lockout. Main differences being that the prison in the former is located on Manhattan, walled off from the rest of the world, while in the latter it's literally off-world as the prison is located on a giant space station called MS One. The identity of the people in need of rescue from the clutches of the depraved prisoners are also a close match, but not quite identical. In Escape from New York the mission objective is the United States President, who very conveniently ended up in the worst place on Earth, the last place where he would want to find himself in, considering the deplorable prison is ironically the result of his administration. In Lockout, the honor of ending up in the worst place off Earth is reserved for his daughter Emilie (played by Maggie Grace of Lost fame (back when Lost hadn't written itself to death yet in a plethora of extremely convoluted plot twists, which is the exact opposite of Lockout's seemingly lazy writing process)), who chose to go up to MS One on a bleeding heart PR-trip to make sure the inmates are treated nicely. They're not of course, and when all hell breaks loose as they escape their stasis cells, the First Daughter will pay the price for the penitentiary's faults, if the escapees find out her true identity.

The stage is set, the victim is chosen and the battle lines between the angry convicts and the incompetent authorities are drawn. Enter a lone rogue, suckered into saving the government official from certain death with freedom as his reward. In Escape from New York, the rogue dispatched to enter the hell hole was called Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell), a one-eyed ex-special forces agent done with doing government chores, turning to an outlaw life instead so he didn't have to take crap from nobody no more, armed with a general 'fuck you' attitude and whatever guns he can his hands on. It proved to be a singularly badass character, good for a sequel with an all too similar plot, Escape from L.A. (1996). Lockout enters its own anti-hero, recently disgraced CIA operative Snow who is charged with murder and treason, planned to be send to MS One anyway for his alleged crimes (of which he is naturally innocent), until it occurs to his superiors deploying him to save the President's little girl is their best bet, while negotiators try to reason with the unreasonable bad guys for their hostages' lives as a diversion. So off he goes, sneaking into the facility, aiming to get out of the rampaging prisoners' claws himself as he figures out a way to smuggle his objective to safety. Snow, played enthusiastically by Guy Pearce, is a tough and cynical military man with his heart in the right place, despite being framed in an espionage plot. Of course he doesn't give a damn about the mission at first but eventually he establishes a rapport with Emilie, without the situation getting too typically mushy and sentimental (though with a hint of sexual tension due to possible romantic feelings interspersed throughout the whole, without feeling like an in-your-face love relationship, which would have felt contrived and inappropriate). Grace delivers ample witty remarks against Pearce's many rude and sexist comments, often with much needed hilarious effect to keep the film from revolving solely around the ensuing violence. Snow may not look and sound as iconic as Snake (the eye patch is sorely missed), but his relation with Emilie adds a dimension of character levity Snake had to do without. You didn't see him engage in sarcastic dialogue with the President.

Equally entertaining to behold is the ensemble of crazed psychopaths catching the brunt of Snow's wrath as he struggles for his life and Emilie's. Amongst the assorted rapists and serial killers are nightmarish men – the prisoners are all male, unfortunately: it might have been thoroughly entertaining to see what screwed up female convicts Besson and his directors could have concocted – you would only expect in extra-terrestrial prisons, devoid of any humanity, only out to ruthlessly maul people, including their fellow inmates. Most noteworthy is the original escapee, a true psycho named Hydell (Joseph Gilgun), sporting an emaciated physique, a dead eye and a bunch of creepy tattoos to go along with his already freaky stature perfectly. Emilie made the mistake of interviewing Hydell on MS One's living conditions first, resulting in the obsessive criminal spending the rest of the film trying to get his hands on her in order to perform whatever ungodly unspeakable obscenities on her if he gets the chance, while at the same time releasing the rest of the detainees. Equally menacing is his older brother Alex (Vincent Regan), who may lack Hydell's degenerate bodily qualities but makes up for it in full by being the hardest yet the most intelligent man on the station and as such the de facto leader of the villainous gang of thugs, killing everybody who would challenge his merciless rule while managing to keep his monstrous brother in check for a while longer. Alex and Hydell rule their conquered prize with an iron fist, the latter terrorizing the staff and their fellow prisoners while the former conceives a plan to get off the station alive, with poor Emilie at the heart of it, much to her dismay. All the while, Snow has to make his way through scores of similarly fucked up bad guys, one more vile and subhuman than the other, to ensure the pair of them get out in one piece. While Snow and Emilie drive the plot, it's the inhuman prisoners that supply the fun and the actors behind them that are shown to be the most capable performers in the piece. Snake Plissken apparently had it easy: most of the criminals he encountered weren't half as repulsive or unstable as the villains Snow has to face.

The one element Lockout cannot do without as much as Escape from New York couldn't, is action. Though Besson handed over the director's chair to a pair of newcomers to directing, James Mather and Stephen St. Leger, it's clear they studied their producer's flair for adrenaline packed stunts and fireworks intensively, adding yet another high voltage action flick to Besson's already explosive oeuvre, and of course to their own. Where action is concerned, the movie definitely should not had have to rely on visual effects work alone, since in many cases the CGI is of rather poor quality (still an often heard complaint in European films of a bigger budget). Though the establishing shots of the MS One space station look decent enough, the same cannot be said for a highway chase scene in the beginning of the movie, nor in a space battle between the penitentiary's defensive guns and a small fleet of fighter ships later on. The effects of both scenes are painfully reminiscent of any poorly rendered video game of the last few years and only show European effects departments still have a long way to go before they're on par with their American counterparts. On the action front, it's the close quarters fisticuffs that form the film's strength, pitching poor Pearce against an array of angry convicts, resulting in many a gun battle as well as hand to hand fights employing knifes, tools and bare hands as both parties try to viciously take each other out as gruesomely (and for the audience, desirably) as possible. Compared to visual effects in general this may look like crude technique, but it looks a whole lot more realistic than anything the computers contributed to Lockout and is sure an awful lot more fun to watch.

Overall, whatever Lockout's end credits claim, original this movie is not. In fact, a few minor dissimilarities with Escape from New York aside, it's as close to movie plot theft as you can get, apparently driven by the desire to make a few bucks off the story of an established cult classic that just won't get remade instead. However, it is all kinds of fun, both as a guilty pleasure for those aware of John Carpenter's previous addition to the genre and as a decent action flick for those who are not. Though Guy Pearce is no Kurt Russell and his agent Snow would never be a fair match for Snake, he carries the film with enough rude bravura and physical prowess as an action (anti-)hero to make us run along with him, while Maggie Grace adds an enjoyable new element to the mix as the damsel in distress who in the end takes to the fight herself as much as necessary in order to show there has been some progression on the gender front in the action genre in the last thirty years. Rookie directors Mather and Leger accomplish an excellent feat by accepting the thankless job of directing what's basically an Escape from New York rip-off but making it feel slick and adrenaline packed to such an extent the general audience won't notice and the film buffs won't care about their near sacrilegious undertaking all that much. However, Besson had better spend some time developing a truly original story for his future projects, instead of aiming to copy+paste Carpenter's sequel Escape from L.A. next. After all, you can only plagiarize so many movie plots before public opinion turns against you and you're send off to prison yourself.

And watch the trailer here:

http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/lockout/