SquidFlicks

Tag: fantasy

  • Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

    Nobody was going to give this movie a chance because we (America) aren’t familiar with the source material that this Sci-Fi Epic is based on. Valerian is a long-running series of Sci-Fi comics in France from 1967 to 2010. Writer-Director Luc Besson took this cinematic endeavor under his wings because he grew up reading the comics and was a huge fan of the franchise, which is popular in Europe but never quite took hold across the ocean.

    Luc Besson is perhaps best known for giving us The Fifth Element, which also was considered a commercial flop in theaters until it grew legs upon release to home video, and is now widely considered to be a classic. Valerian may be destined to the same fate, although it certainly lacks some of the charms that Besson’s previous hit held. Perhaps it’s just the difference in the late 90s grungy CG vs today’s high-level effects, but I think it comes down more to differences in casting and acting performance.

    The movie is set in a late stage of the comic series – an intentional move after a lot of backstories has already been created to create a compelling action-filled film for audiences unfamiliar with the Valerian saga (think Star Wars dropping us in at Episode 4 instead of going in chronological order). Set in the 28th century, Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and Laureline (Cara Delevingne) are a duo of special operatives tasked with keeping human affairs and relations intact alongside the multitude of other sentient beings that co-exist across the galaxy. The mission takes them to Alpha, a conglomerate space station that has grown exponentially to serve as a galactic ‘united nations’ over centuries, nicknamed “The City of A Thousand Planets”. A sacred, world-building device has gone missing and must be recovered before it falls into the wrong hands. Throughout the chase to regain possession of the ‘pearl’, the duo stumbles through the underworld of the station, meeting new friends, making new enemies, and revealing deep-seated rifts of bigotry and mistrust between humankind and other species. It turns out that the sides aren’t quite as cut and dry as they were made out to be in the beginning – Valerian and Laureline will have to choose between duty and honor.

    Visually, this movie was incredible. Beautiful vistas, realistic technologies, fantastic alien designs, and concepts. The entire setting had a distinct “lived-in but still futuristic” feel. Luc Besson created a fun, colorful, and frantic future fraught with danger but also full of whimsy that helps drive the story and emphasize the wondrous properties of the ‘Alpha’ station and its many diverse inhabitants.

    Where Valerian fell short was in the acting and storytelling departments respectively. I personally didn’t hate the acting, but Cara Delevingne & Dane DeHaan are relatively new actors and haven’t really found an audience in Hollywood yet. They are paired as Major Valerian and Sergeant Laureline, both partners in fighting crime and corruption for the Human Federation as well as love. Rhianna has a gem of a role as the shapeshifting and seductive alien, Bubble. The movie is playful and silly but lacks some teeth when it comes to making a statement. There are a lot of good veins to tap in the story – government corruption, the covering up of genocide and collateral damage of galactic warfare, the need for empathy and understanding, a strained dynamic between serial dater Valerian and Laureline’s desire to be something more than his latest ‘girl’ – but somehow the film just doesn’t seem to cash in on some emotional checks it writes.

    It’s a stunning visual experience, with some holes in the story and some soft acting from the lead roles. I would love to see more from the franchise, but thanks to the lackluster response from audiences, this story is all but over – which is a shame.

    Trailer:

  • The Dark Tower

    One of the largest-scale works in Stephen King’s massive catalog has received a proper, feature length film treatment with real star power – but is it enough to win over franchise fans and create new ones in the process? The results are mixed.

    “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

    Unfortunately, the writers and production staff weren’t paying attention.

    I am a Dark Tower and King fan. I do need to refresh my knowledge of the series as it has been some time since my initial read through of the source material, so I am by no means an expert on the ‘Tower Universe’ but I will say that I know more background than the average theater-goer will have about The Dark Tower.

    On paper, this was going to be a tough one to sell to audiences. I think it was cast phenomenally well, with Matthew McConaughey as the antagonist ‘Man in Black’ and Idris Elba as his rival and only true match, the protagonist ‘Gunslinger’

    The premise of the books pits the Man in Black, an evil sorcerer who is trying to acquire enough ‘shine’ to break through the supernatural barrier that keeps inter-dimensional evil out of the plane of the living. The books underpin the dimensions that connect a lot of King’s other works in a complete universe. The problem with this movie is that it faced a tough choice – adapt from a set of dense, mythology-heavy novels that would almost certainly be an incoherent mess, or attempt to create a new story for the screen based on the events and characters from the books. Unfortunately, the attempt fell flat, and the series probably cannot be recovered.

    In summation, there are seven novels in the Dark Tower saga, and this movie managed to skip a lot of great material. It cut out so much in order to create so many convenient shortcuts that it crippled the potential stories that could be told in future movies. I think this hampers the audience’s ability to appreciate how truly impossible the task that the Gunslinger faces to protect all realms from the evil of the Man in Black and his boss, the Crimson King. The movie focuses and combines elements from the second and last three novels, essentially lifting the climax of the saga out of the source material and re-configuring the plot to make it fit in a linear fashion.

    I really wanted to like this, and there was a lot that I did enjoy – particularly the casting. I think Elba and McConaughey are perfect opposing forces in this fantasy epic. The series is just so difficult to translate from novel to screen, and that’s nobody’s fault. It is a thankless and nearly impossible task for writers, and they get disparaged more often than praised. I don’t want to come off as jaded toward their efforts because of the nature of this story doesn’t lend itself well to brevity, and that usually means it wont translate well to the screen. With the resounding commercial failure of this jumping off point, we aren’t likely to see another attempt with this universe for some time. I’m hoping they find a way to salvage this story, because a lot of King’s works have made incredible moves on to film – IT (both the original TV movie (1990) and 2017’s smash-hit R-rated reboot), The Shining, Cat’s Eye – just to name a few.

    The problem with The Dark Tower is that they tried to reformulate and truncate a compelling and deep source material. While the casting was strong, the effects were excellent and the movie is watchable, you aren’t left on the edge of your seat waiting for more, and for someone who knows how far the Gunslinger’s story goes, it’s disappointing. There’s an excellent article on i09 that describes the changes in greater detail for those who are inclined – spoilers within.

    It would seem that the folks in charge have forgotten the faces of their fathers, to borrow a phrase from Roland, the lone gunslinger. Objectively the movie is passable but as a fan I am not pleased.

    3/5
    Squid Rating
    A missed opportunity but watchable epic

    Trailer:

  • Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

    As a 90’s baby, I grew up in the original Jumanji (1995) craze, a movie which really should not have existed considering the brevity of its source material, a children’s book of the same name by Chris Van Allsburg. I absolutely wore out my VHS copy of the film, watching it dozens of times to the point that I can to this day recite the movie largely line by line.

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  • Pans Labyrinth

    I am personally embarrassed that SquidFlicks has existed for a decade and has never given Guillermo Del Toro’s masterpiece it’s proper due review. That changes now. This is the quintessential primer to understand Del Toro’s fascination and talent at telling the ‘monster’ story through all his cinematic endeavors.

    Set during the viciously violent (and often overlooked as a footnote during World War II) Francoist era in the years after the Spanish Civil War (1944), a young girl, Ofelia, along with her mother and unborn baby brother are escorted to a chateau in the dense forest of the Spanish countryside to bunker down with an enclave of fascist forces led by her adopted father, Captain Vidal.

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  • The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

    The second in the three part film adaptation of JRR Tolkien's "The Hobbit"
    The second in the three part film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s “The Hobbit”

    This was a guest review submitted by William Derbyshire. Thanks William! You can submit your own reviews to SquidFlicks here.

    A year since An Unexpected Journey happened for Bilbo…now what? Well, the journey goes on, of course even if Peter Jackson may be stretching the material a little too far…or so a lot of us think.

    The first chapter in his Hobbit “saga” (a small children’s book compared to Rings, we know) started everyone, Bilbo, Gandalf, the Dwarves et al on their adventure. This was An Unexpected Journey, a worthy prequel that thankfully didn’t desecrate on any of the Lord of the Rings movies, despite the many ideas that Jackson had on how to present this story.
    There were problems with it though: the introduction of the Dwarves dragged on and on and the new “revolutionary” 48-frames-per-second filming technique Jackson used for it barely showed any difference on how the many other 24-frame live-action films in the last 100 years or so have been made.

    Happily though, Jackson seems to have fixed these problems (okay, he’s still continuing the whole 48-frames thing, but that doesn’t matter a jot) as The Desolation of Smaug moves swiftly along and doesn’t pause for breath or needlessly detail every last aspect of each new character one by one. It’s also worth mentioning that no reminders are given to the audience which is rather refreshing in a way, given that some of us had to suffer through each one before each Rings chapter kicked off, even if we had seen each film many a time at the pictures or on DVD.

    The Desolation of Smaug isn’t perfect, the plot does strain at times, but it’s certainly Peter Jackson’s most wildly entertaining, staggering and strangely enough, absolutely terrifying film so far.

    The frightening moments come in the form of Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt), a Skin-Changer who may be a little too much to “bear” for the small ones, but he’s nothing compared to the – somewhat recycled – creepy Spiders from the Rings films that will leave arachnophobes, new and old, squirming in their seats. There’s another one…believe me, there IS another one…but we’ll get to it later.

    As far as action goes, this Hobbit chapter delivers in astounding quantities with plenty of arrows flying and fist and sword fight sequences, something the first one lacked. Jackson also makes up for it with a stunningly executed barrel chase down a river that’s up there with Indiana Jones either trying to dodge a boulder or being pursued on mine-cart. Even if some of it is a little on the unbelievable side, so what? In 3-D, the final scenes in a treasure-laden cave have gold coins and jewels flying towards you and you’ll want to grab some of them yourself. But whatever dimension you see this film in, whether it’s the battles or the gorgeous-looking Middle Earth sets; it will still grab your attention.

    Martin Freeman reprises Bilbo and continues to feel at ease with his role, the same for the Dwarves, Ian McKellan as Gandolf…need I say more? Rings fans will be pleased to know Legolas is back, played once again by Orlando Bloom, and he, like all the other Rings characters and actors portraying them, hasn’t changed a bit. New cast members include a terrific Stephen Fry as the Master of Lake-Town and Evangeline Lilly playing female Elf Tauriel. Her character, however, is a bit of a disappointment. When she’s in action, she shines but when she’s speaking, she seems bland and lacks the spirit and fieriness of movie heroines like The Cat from The Dark Knight Rises and Avatar’s Neytiri.

    But the star turn is Benedict Cumberbatch providing motion-capture and a voice like Scar from The Lion King on an amplifier for the most startling movie monster since Jurassic Park’s T-Rex…Smaug the Dragon. Forget Gollum, this dude’s the real deal. He practically scared the living (insert your own expletive here) out of me. The third dimension also makes him all the more petrifying. He will leave cinema-goers having nightmares for weeks and would even make Spielberg soil himself. God only knows what lies in store for us once the last instalment arrives. Until then, this beastie boy needs to be in the Rogues Gallery along with Kong and Godzilla and Cumberbatch needs some kind of recognition for his work here, perhaps an award.

    All in all, The Desolation of Smaug improves on An Unexpected Journey in every way possible. Yes, the Tolkien purists may be ticked off by the many diversions from the original Hobbit book but in this case, they’re moaning about nothing. What’s more, once the film starts and they’re stunned by this true spectacle, only then will they shut up.