Today's Review: Virgin Mountain

This week's third and final review:

Virgin Mountain - recensie

Best of the three for sure. A laugh and a tear. A light drama with ample humour. But not a movie with a very innovative or inspired plot. Save for the ending which does break with the traditions of this type of film. Solitary fat man, a disappointment to his mother and the butt of jokes to his coworkers, lightens up when meeting a charming woman. Despite her mental problems, they are obviously made for each other. You get the gist of things.

It's not the plot that makes it a decent watch, it's the acting for one. Icelandic force of nature Gunnar Jonsson is literally made for this movie (or rather, the movie was tailored around him) and it shows. For another thing, it's the fine balance between being a funny piece and being a heavy drama that director Dagur Kari carefully treads, without slipping to one side to such an extent that it hurts the film as a whole. That's a tough call for a film like this, especially considering, again, the ending, which likely isn't what people would want to see, but feels like it fits regardless. And thus, Virgin Mountain gets away with it admirably.

Today's Mini(?)-Review: Frozen

Frozen: ****/*****, or 8/10

Say what you will about conservative Disney, there is some form of modernization in progress in that studio. You might even label it a feminist wave of sorts. Frozen marks Disney's first feature length animated film (co-)directed by a woman and only the second whose screenplay was written by such a creature. Not counting Pixar, since then it would have to contend with Brave, a movie where the girl power backfired, as did the quality of the piece as a whole. And while Frozen largely stays within the trite-and-true boundaries we've come to expect from Disney's fairy tale movies, including princesses, charming princes, faraway lands, comedic (animal) sidekicks and plenty of catchy songs, enough of such regularly exploited material is directionally changed to make the film feel as fresh and cool as the imagery the title inspires. Jennifer Lee's directorial debut introduces not one, but two beautiful young princesses, Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) and her younger sister Anna (Kristen Bell), heirs to the kingdom of Arendelle. Both are kind, independent and energetic spirits, but the older girl carries a terrible secret: she's basically a mutant with the power to control ice and snow, except she doesn't control it at all, since her fear to wield it controls her instead. She has cause to be afraid of her powers, as she nearly killed Anna at play as a child. Her parents tried to keep her out of harm's way by largely keeping her confined to her chambers, much to the dismay of her sister, who had her injury and memory of the incident erased by a nice wizard troll (this is a work of fantasy, need I say more?). After the death of their parents and the coming-of-age of the elder sister, a coronation takes place where Elsa is crowned queen and where Anna – hilariously – meets her apparent groom-to-be, the latter event uterly disrupting the former as Elsa unwittingly gets pushed so far she sparks an endless winter that covers the entire kingdom in frost. Fleeing the palace to built her own on a high mountain precipice where she finally starts to accept her powers in her moments of isolation, Anna is determined to bring back her sister and get her to undo her unintentional damage to the realm, which leaves her land vulnerable to the shady ambition of certain visiting foreign dignitaries. Accompanied by a simple but reliable young backwoods man named Kristoff, his carrot obsessed reindeer Sven and a wacky living snowman named Olaf, Anna sets out on a tough voyage to reunite with her wayward sister and bring summer back to Arendelle. And, in typical Disney fashion, to discover True Love in the process. But not in the usual sense of old.

Frozen proves a worthy successor to the similarly themed, equally wonderful Tangled (2010), which also re-established Disney's formidable talent to craft charming, adventurous and romantic fantasy films for all ages after over a decade of creative drought, as well as updating its female characters to the 21^st century, a time in which the main focus of a woman is no longer a man to marry (but also not excluding the possibility as not to upset the traditionalists in the audience). Frozen introduces two solid female characters who care first and foremost about eachother, though one of them does not allow herself to show said fact. Both women are sizzling with recognizable character flaws and strengths, familiar emotional family conflict and the talent to burst into song, so despite their ultimately antagonistic nature (though the traditional 'good versus bad' set-up is carefully avoided in their strained relationship), you root for them and their sibling affection both to survive against all odds. Simultaneously, while the sterotypical good looking prince to wed is not an image to be discarded, it develops into quite another direction than is usual, and the expected notion of cheesy True Love messages doesn't end up covering the usual sexual connection between boy and girl. The voice cast delivers impeccable acting and shares an audible chemistry, standout performances including a hilarious Scandinavian tradesman (jå!) and Olaf, the token sidekick, who is not nearly as irritating as he could have been and actually warms everybody's heart with his simple but unattainable desire. Similarly enjoyable are the clan of stone trolls, Kristoff's surrogate family, a group of Smurfesque creatures with the ability to succesfully camouflage themselves as rocks, and who unfortunately don't nearly have as much screen time or background exploration as we would have liked. And if you're afraid the reindeer talks (since animals with the ability to speak are an oft dreaded Disney staple still), fear not: his master does so for him to witty, almost self-reflective results. The songs are a welcome return to tradition; though for a moment at the start of the film they seem to comprise most of the dialogue, better balance to the music is applied later on. Apart from pleasing the aural senses, Frozen offers a delightful visual feast as well with its wondrous winter landscapes and ever present snow motifs, but considering the darkness of many scenes coupled with the obligatory 3D effect, not all the imagery ends up looking as amazing as it could have been. However, many of the 3D shots in the lighter scenes hit their mark, especially those involving snow and icicles, so seeing the 2D version instead isn't wholly recommended either.

In a time where Pixar is increasingly going down the drain creatively because of its lack of inspiration and its current focus on prequels and sequels, a thoroughly wonderful and ideologically original pure Disney film like Frozen is a welcome sight. Even the coolest minds and the coldest hearts will find it hard not to melt due to this film's built-in warmth, and with the dominant motif of snow and ice, Frozen proves to be a perfect Holiday movie for old and young alike.

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/