Pirates Of The Caribbean - At World’s End

Depp-reciating Returns

Pirates Of The Caribbean
At World’s End
USA 2007 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone B

Wow... this is not a good movie. I’m kinda surprised this one got the box office it did after the second movie was not so great. You’d think it would be a case of once bitten, twice shy but, then again, in order to get good box office, Hollywood relies on repeat viewings of a film from the same audience... I just can’t imagine anyone wanting to watch this thing again after they’ve just had to sit through the interminably long (almost three hours) running time of Pirates Of The Caribbean - At Worlds End.

To be fair, there are one or two good moments in this but they all seem to be front loaded within the first half an hour. The film opens strongly with what can only be described as a musical number set to a hanging. The song a little boy sings before he is executed with various other pirates is a nice opening set piece from Hans Zimmer and it’s quite striking but, the reason for the song and the comments made by onlookers makes absolutely no sense and it’s only briefly touched upon later in the most vague and confusing way. In other words, it’s a completely pointless scene which, honestly, works very well as such but, for some reason, the filmmakers try to justify its inclusion into the narrative space of the film (you wouldn’t catch someone like Fellini trying to rationalise what he wanted to do like this) and this kind of dilutes the effectiveness of the scene to some extent. Throwing in a sense of logic where none is required (film is art and art doesn’t have to mirror reality, people!).

This is followed by another strong sequence of stealth followed by action as the various pirate crew members from the last movie team up with the newly resurrected Captain Barbosa (Geoffrey Rush) and go to Singapore, to the stronghold of infamous pirate villain Sao Feng (played by Asian superstar Chow Yun-Fat) to retrieve a map to a place in the afterlife. This is a pretty promising sequence which, maybe, loses something on home video but I remember it being quite a spectacle at the cinema. And then we get some assorted plot snippets thrown into the mix as Keira Knightley’s Elisabeth Swann and Orlando Bloom’s Will Turner, plus assorted regulars, go off to find Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow in order to bring him back from his own, personal space in Hell.

And, surprisingly, this is where this film suddenly falls flat. I find it ironic that the original, classic Pirates Of The Caribbean movie (reviewed here) only came alive once Johnny Depp made his memorable entrance but this time around, the whole first half an hour of the movie, which is Depp-less, is the strongest part of the film. Things really begin to flag by the time Jack Sparrow is introduced... in a curiously surreal but bewilderingly boring sequence with multiple versions of the character occupying the same space. I don’t know why the film never really recovers from here on out but I understand the script was still incomplete when filming commenced on this one so, yeah, maybe not the most ideal conditions to make a piece of movie art under, for sure.

Once again there are strange creatures at large (most of them seen in the last film, as the Flying Dutchman and its crew return to add drama to the proceedings) and big set pieces with cannons and crossed swords but, without really having any good filler for the calm moments to allow contrast and highlight the ferocity of the action sequences (not to mention the confusing editing in these scenes) the whole swashbuckling yarn seems a bit bland and... well... less swashing and more ‘let’s all go and have a sleep on the sofa until this monstrosity of a movie passes by’ it seemed to me.

The one ray of light in this film comes in the form of Hans Zimmer’s excellent score. Using the same musical language of the previous installments we have some cracking tunes that, while ultimately failing to break through the lethargy of the finished product, does at least support this bloated behemoth appropriately and, to boot, is an enjoyable stand alone listen away from the movie. Of special note, asides from the opening song (which is curiously truncated on the CD soundtrack) we have a stand out piece of score which Zimmer excerpts in his live concerts for the scene where Jack gets everyone to topple his ship upside down, called Up Is Down on the accompanying soundtrack album. It’s moments like this which, at least, had me tapping my feet along to the music while I tried to find something visually interesting on the director’s canvass.

And there you have it. An extremely short review for a movie that, as far as I’m concerned, joins its sequels in proving that the original film was a bit of a fluke in terms of being a truly great movie (although I also liked Verbinski’s The Lone Ranger, against all the odds, which I reviewed here). Honestly, though, I can’t really recommend any of these films to a movie lover barring the first one and, by this third go round, it really did seem like all involved were flogging a dead sea turtle, truth be told.

Pirates Of The Carribbean - Dead Man’s Chest

Kraken Mad

Pirates Of The Carribbean - 
Dead Man’s Chest
USA 2006 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone 2

And so I bravely tread into my rewatch of the second of the movies inspired by the long standing Disneyland ride, Pirates Of The Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest and... you know what... this is not nearly as dreadful as I remember. I recall finding it fairly dull the first (and last) time I saw it, at the cinema back in 2006 and, although that’s probably still an accurate description of it, in all honesty, it’s by no means the complete disaster that I originally perceived this huge, box office burster to be. I think my extra disappointment with the film probably came for the fact that this was, in no way, a worthy sequel to the fantastic debut in the series (reviewed by me here). Yes, that’s true enough, as it is for all the Pirates Of The Caribbean movies but, back then, I actually thought, until I started watching it, that it may give the first film a run for its money. Alas, it’s not nearly an adequate sequel of a movie but, now that enough water has flowed under the hull, I can at least look at it with less expectations than I did on my initial viewing and find that it’s really not that offensive. Bits of it are even watchable.

Okay, so the film opens with a bit of a shock (good... nothing wrong with that to help get the audience interested) as two of the main protagonists of the first film - Elisabeth Swan, played by Keira Knightley and Will Turner, played by Orlando Bloom - are arrested and awaiting execution for their part in the escape of Johnny Depp’s scallywag rogue Captain Jack Sparrow at the end of the last movie. However, a deal is struck for Turner to find Sparrow and bring to the new Governor of... wherever the heck the characters in these films are all living... Jack’s magical compass. He goes off and, when Elisabeth escapes, she also goes after him.

Meanwhile, Johnny Depp’s opening scene is... well it’s not bad actually. A coffin is thrown into the sea and a bird lands on it and starts knocking on it with it’s beak. After a short while of this a shell flies through the wood of the coffin, fired from inside, eradicating said bird in a quick flurry of black feathers. A hand holding a flintlock pistol pokes through the hole left in the wake of its deadly harbinger and looks around as if it were a periscope. The lid is then lifted from inside, revealing Johnny Depp in his Jack Sparrow form as he then uses the leg of the skeletal corpse he is resting on to start rowing his coffin to his destination. And it really isn’t a bad character intro but... don’t try and compare it to the first film, where Depp’s entrance into the picture was a wake up call to great character entrances the world over. It’s a bit of a shame that this moment here isn’t remotely able to compete with that first intro but, like I said, divorce it from your treasured memories of The Curse Of The Black Pearl and... it’s really not a bad entrance, methinks.

And then everything gets really silly with Depp being struck with ‘the black spot’ (fans of Treasure Island should know that reference) and the main villain of the piece, Davy Jones (Hey, hey!), played by Bill Nighy as a Cthulhu-like squid creature, is after Depp with the similarly mutated crew of the famous Flying Dutchman. He will stop at nothing, including unleashing the fabled Kraken of myth, to track down Jack Sparrow to pay his debt of servitude to him unless, in a new deal, Jack can bring him 100 other souls. Meanwhile, Jack wants to find the key to unlock Davy Jones' chest (I'm guessing that would be Davy Jones locker then?) and free himself from his debt by piercing the living, beating heart of the skipper enclosed within.

And that’s as much of the silly plot that I can remember, to be honest... the rest of the film being one set piece after another while Depp tries to show off his tremendous acting talents with, it has to be said, a script not that worthy of him and with lots of chases played for comedic effect. The fight choreography doesn’t seem quite as good as the first one and, although there is an okayish extended swordfight between three main characters towards the end, it’s really not that swashbuckly and, in what is presumably an attempt by the director to try and top his first installment, the simple pleasures of the cutlasses clashing is mostly abandoned as he tries to find bigger set pieces to make everything seem like it’s delivering a lot more when, as it happens, it’s just delivering more a lot less effectively than the previous time around.

Now there are some nice moments, to be sure, with some great little throwaway jokes which look back to the previous adventure, such as when Jack first realises he is back in the company of Elizabeth Swann and, recalling a certain scene, he whispers to a crewman to “hide the rum”. And the actors are all good in this as they try to work hard and perform wonders with a script that is really not delivering on either the comedy or action in the same way as it did before. There also seem to be some huge story jumps between the two films as we find, for example, what became of Jack Davenport’s character Norrington... which doesn’t really help when it comes to echoing the feel of the original. And then there’s those set pieces...

Gore Verbinski must really like action sequences when everything is out of control and without the heroes able to do too much with the situations they find themselves in. In fact the action feels very repetitive... especially when we have a scene where Jack’s crew are trying to break out of spherical bone cages which they then proceed to roll around without much control when, later on in the film, we have a watermill which comes off its central axle and the three swordfighting characters... Jack, Will and Norrington... are fighting both inside and on top of it as it rolls around the environment, out of control. I was, at one point, wondering when the next inanimate object would somehow break free and start rolling around and causing our heroes more problems.

I also missed the pirate skeletons of the first film. Sure, the writers tried to deliberately hit that same supernatural undercurrent which made the first film a little fresher but, to be honest, fish/squid/what the heck people, while nicely surreal, kind of detracts from the atmosphere in this one, I reckon and I would have much rather they’d taken the supernatural element out of it altogether on this one rather than what they pushed it to here. It just seems very dull, at times.

That being said, the film isn’t all tedious and it still does entertain enough to keep you watching for what is, it has to be said, a monstrously unnecessarily, ginormous two and a half hour running time. One of the things which makes it so watchable, of course, is Hans Zimmer’s wonderful score for the film. Now, I don’t like this score as much as I liked Klaus Badelt’s original but this is still pretty good and it certainly keeps your toes tapping while the action sequences are playing out (and honestly, without the music, the film really would have been pretty much unwatchable). So a big shout out to Hans for this one and, of course, also to the cast of first rate actors who are able to make some of this dialogue sound half credible. This film wouldn’t be a recommendation from me but, of course, since Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man’s Chest was made back to back with the next installment, you need to see this one before you can make sense of the next... especially since this one leaves it on a bit of a cliffhanger. Although, if memory serves, the next one suffers from having a really strong set of opening scenes followed by more of the 'less-than-exciting' shenanigans which marred this one, to an extent. Of course, I’ll only know that for sure by rewatching it so... you know... watch this space.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

Spell Being

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
2018 UK/USA Directed by David Yates
UK cinema release print.

Once again, I should perhaps take some time to remind my readers that I am not the biggest admirer of Harry Potter. I saw the movies once each at the cinema because my father loves the books and I went with him but, I can’t say I enjoyed them all that much... although some were better than others and they were certainly all very well put together. That being said, I loved the first spin off film from a few years ago, Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (reviewed here) and I was staggered at just how cinematically subtle the handling of the script by author J. K. Rowling was on that one, especially since these Potter prequels are not actually based on any books of hers.

I was going to leave this one until I brought the Blu Ray home to my father later in the year but I figured I might as well go and catch Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald at the cinema before it came out of circulation and, I have to say that this is not nearly as great a movie as the last one. I don’t know what’s happened here but this seems to me to be much more like a Harry Potter movie and much less the more subtle entertainment of the last Fantastic Beasts installment.

Now, in the last film I loved the four main characters played by Eddie Redmayne (Newt Scamander), Dan Fogler (Jacob Kowalski), Katherine Waterston (Tina Goldstein) and Alison Sudol (Queenie Goldstein)... but it has to be said that while they are all reprising their characters here and, mostly, have a chunk or two of screen time, they are not in this movie nearly as much as they perhaps could have been. After a fairly good start, this film seems less about giving these lovely characters the spotlight and more about trying to cram in as much interconnecting back story for future dramatic intrigue as the writer and director are able to shoehorn into the already impressive running time. Which is a shame because, although it does seem more like a regular Harry Potter movie (which obviously isn’t a good thing as far as I’m concerned), it does seem like nothing much happens in this installment and characters do feel like they’ve been badly neglected. Not in terms of character progression, for sure... you get a sense that both Newt Scamander and Queenie Goldstein are moving on in their mindset and that things could get quite dark and treacherous in future movies (of which I think there are roughly another five planned). However, I did feel kind of shortchanged and some sequences, like time spent highlighting certain beasts, felt blessedly less protracted but also like they were only there to remind everyone about the first film... so not too happy on that count either.

The film looks and sounds spectacular and, as usual for the series, there are some not bad, half inventive concepts being thrown around but for me, the spectacle of the thing is just another element that takes away from the true magic of the characters and the way they relate to each other in this case. Also, this film seems very steeped in Harry Potter lore, including the addition of Dumbledore as a younger man played by Jude Law and we even spend some significant time in Hogwarts at certain points in the film. So Muggles like me have no chance when it comes to all the things that might have possibly made me go “Ooh!” at certain points. I did recognise the name LeStrange but that was about it.

Also, some of those big effects sequences seemed, to me, to be a little harder on the eye and more confusing to decode than what I am usually used to dealing with. I did find myself wondering what was going on at certain points but it was still pleasant enough to look at, for the most part. And, Johnny Depp, reprising his role as villain Grindlewald was a pleasure to watch... he’s rarely dull and he tends to hold the eye when he’s on screen.

Another fine element of the film is James Newton Howard’s follow up score to his previous one and it hits the all the right notes it needs to. Once again he teases Hedwig’s Theme from the Harry Potter films before really giving it some welly for certain sequences... which is strange since Hedwig is nowhere in sight. Presumably this means that current and probably future directors are using the melody to denote the magical world itself rather than focusing on a specific character or, in the case of this theme, a specific character’s owl. Either way, it’s a nice score and I’m looking forward to giving the CD I’ve got waiting a spin sometime in the New Year.

Other than that... not much more to say on this one. I’m hoping the direction of this one is just a temporary glitch and that the next installment can get back to the smaller stories on the canvass... namely the romances between the two sets of leading characters. I can’t say I’d recommend Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald to many people unless they are already heavily into the Rowlingverse... it’s certainly not a good jumping on point. I just hope things will become a little clearer in the next movie because, honestly, this one lost me a little.

Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl

Her Cool Pirate

Pirates Of The Caribbean -
The Curse Of The Black Pearl
USA 2003 Directed by Gore Verbinski
Disney Blu Ray Zone 2

Here we go then. It so happens that it’s finally time to watch the Pirates Of The Caribbean films again from the start, since I’ve not really watched these since their cinematic release. My impression of these at the time was similar to what I later thought of Michael Bay’s Transformers movies... that being that the first one in the franchise is a pretty good film and that it’s been followed up with some truly dreadful sequels, none of which has managed to disprove the old adage that, in terms of the quality of both series’ of movies, lightning doesn’t strike twice.

This first one is, in retrospect and as I look at it now, just a little too long in terms of its total running time of almost two and a half hours. That being said there’s very much a case to be made, in my mind, that the movie is made watchable by one particular actor and, coupled with a pretty cool score, he’s the thing which makes this one worth watching at all... although that’s not to dim the light of the other very good performances in this.

The film is based on the 1967 Disneyland attraction of the same name (minus the subtitle). It was the last such attraction to have been steered by Walt Disney himself, although he died a few months before it opened and it’s kind of ironic that, since this film was so financially successful and popularly received, the ride was closed down for a while to make it even more like the movie version... although there are apparently plenty of references to the original ride in this film.

The opening of the movie is a prologue chapter on a ship under the command of a character called Norrington, played by Jack Davenport. Here we see the younger versions of Elisabeth Swan and Will Turner before they grow up, by the next sequence, to be played by Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom. Elisabeth’s father, played by Jonathan Pryce, is quite keen that Elisabeth marry Norrington, even though there are obviously years between them (although Jack Davenport doesn’t seem to age at all in the time between the sequences). Of course, she is in love with the village blacksmith, the aforementioned Will Turner, who she knows to have something to do with piracy from the opening sequence, although she’s doesn’t reveal this information to Will. I remember sitting in the cinema and watching this first ten or so minutes of the film and looking at my watch and thinking... please don’t let the entire film be this dull and boring all the way through. Luckily, it’s just at this moment that we get the opening salvo of shots of Johnny Depp’s entry in the story. The music swells as the camera holds back from an establishing shot and we see Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow in command of his vast ship and the score gives wind to his sails. It’s only then that it’s revealed that Sparrow’s ship is, in fact, a tiny boat with one smallish sail and a reliance on how the camera can change the perspective of a shot and flatten it out. A nice little punchline as the boat is obviously sinking and Jack starts trying to bail it out as he nears port. A follow up shot not so long later sees Jack gliding confidently into port with a pullback to reveal he’s standing on top of the still sinking mast which just manages to get him to port so he can gracefully step off as the boat goes under. Nice stuff and this has got to be one of the best and most elaborately shot entrances for a character in modern Hollywood.

And then the writers throw a plot and some action at everything of varying quality but the film is, frankly, completely reliant on Johnny Depp’s exaggerated performance of Captain Jack Sparrow as the very heart and soul of the entertainment. Without Depp, in this case, the film would be nothing but here he really adds the ingredients so sorely missing from the sequences which find themselves "Deppless" and some nice concoctions of skeletal pirates, blood sacrifices to Aztec gold, coupled with some great swordplay and chase choreography make the film a pleasure to behold. Admittedly, it’s a slow trundling pleasure but there are some nice little movie references too, to keep the weary audience afloat and there are a lot more doubloons than duds in this one... something which sadly can’t be said for the other films in the series, if memory serves.

There’s a nice moment, for instance, where Jack Sparrow and Will Turner decide to team up and use an overturned rowing boat to walk beneath the surface of the sea, like a miniature submarine, using the naturally formed pocket of air left in the top of the boat to breathe. This is, of course, a nice little shout out to the exact same submersible solution created by James Hayter in The Crimson Pirate, as he uses the idea to transport himself, Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat out of trouble (if you’ve never seen this marvellous movie, make a point of doing so... not only does Hayter’s character invent this submersible when called for... he also invents gun powder and the hot air ballon throughout the course of the story). Similarly, a well choreographed bit of ‘rescue nonsense’ at the end of the movie where Turner tries to get Jack Sparrow away from his impending execution is similarly choreographed almost like a dance routine and recalls the acrobatic antics of Lancaster and Cravat in certain scenes in The Crimson Pirate.

And then there’s the score. Although it’s composed and credited to Klaus Badelt (who also did a marvellous score for the reboot of The Time Machine), he also had a lot of help, primarily from Hans Zimmer who wrote the themes and, according to the original soundtrack album credits, ‘over produced’ the CD release. When you start digging deeper, however, you start to realise that there were a few composers working on the movie but, be that as it may, it’s a great score. There have been some marvellous scores over the years for pirate movies... the as yet unreleased score for The Crimson Pirate by William Alwyn and the much re-issued John Debney score to Cutthroat Island, to name but two... and The Curse Of The Black Pearl certainly joins them in having a rousing and much loved score. It does the job admirably and the strong Jack Sparrow action theme, albeit somewhat similar to something which originally appeared in Zimmer’s score for Gladiator, is one of those cues which people will be humming through the ages. It’s mixed quite heavily into the foreground in this movie and, frankly, it’s all the better for it. More movies these days, where the sound designers are in love with their own miasma of audio bombast and submersion, should give the music greater room to breathe, in my opinion. The films would certainly reap the benefits.

So there you have it. Well before Pirates Of The Caribbean came out, I was an admirer of Johnny Depp as a great actor and on screen personality and, although I’ve learnt in recent years that a good Johnny Depp performance isn’t always enough to save the day (Secret Window, The Tourist, Mortdecai etc.) this is definitely a film where he shines enough to carry the action and weight of the movie on himself and turn it into something quite watchable. There’s much buckling of swashes to be had in this first installment of Pirates Of The Caribbean - The Curse Of The Black Pearl and, though I couldn’t watch it every decade, I feel like there’s still a few viewings of this one left for me. If you like big adventure movies and you’ve never seen this one before... you’re in for a good time.

Pirates of the Caribbean 5

Straits N’ Sparrow

Pirates of the Caribbean:
Salazar’s Revenge/Dead Men Tell No Tales
2017 USA Directed by  Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg   
UK cinema release print.

Okay then. So here we are again with another continuation of a tired and bloated series of Hollywoodland franchise pictures which we all really needed in our lives. This one’s called Dead Men Tell No Tales in the US but, over here in the UK and a lot of other European countries, from what I can tell, it’s called Salazar’s Revenge. I don’t know why the name change but it’s been speculated that the phrase ‘Dead Men Tell No Tales’ is harder to secure exclusive copyright on in certain countries so... there you go.

The first ten minutes of the very first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie, The Curse Of The Black Pearl, when I saw it first in the cinema, was pretty dull. I remember sitting there and contemplating how much longer I would have to endure the running time. Then Johnny Depp, an actor I already liked in a lot of stuff but who had never really made it into the main stream (until that film secured him that honour) had his big entrance and I was smiling and laughing throughout the rest of that first movie. It was a fantastic trip. However, the three sequels Dead Man’s Chest, At Worlds End and On Stranger Tides (reviewed by me here) were all pretty much terrible and it was a shame to see a film series deliver none of the things that made the first so memorable and much loved in the first place (which is exactly the same way I feel about the Transformers franchise, by the way). However, I thought I'd take a peak at this new one, whichever title you want to call it, because there’s always a chance that a different director might give the film a much needed kick and get it back to something like its early days. Alas, that’s not the case with Salazar’s Revenge/Dead Men Tell No Tales.

That being said, I think the film is certainly better than the last three sequels and there are some nice moments in it.

The first half to three quarters of an hour are actually pretty watchable, for the most part. Following on from a bit of back story which takes place sometime between the third movie and this fifth one, we jump nine years to the current timeline and witness the exploits of Will Turner’s (Orlando Bloom) son Henry, played by Brenton Thwaites (who was so good in the much underrated Gods Of Egypt - reviewed here) and Kaya Scodelario, who plays a character related to another regular in the series and, I won’t spoil it here by saying who but you’ll probably figure it all out in the first half an hour of the film anyway, to be honest. These two share a joint quest, for different reasons, to find the ‘Trident of Neptune’. They are ‘joined’ by Jack Sparrow who will need to get his hands on the trident if he’s to fend of the ‘revenge’ of the spanish pirate hunter Salazar (played by Javier Bardem) who, with his crew, were tricked into a fate worse than death by Jack in his youth and who are all ghost creatures not able to set foot on land. We also have Geoffrey Rush reprising his role as Barbosa and a few other regulars like the always watchable Kevin McNally along for the ride.

The film starts off well, as I said, with various characters being pursued for different reasons and there’s a nice sequence following the ‘all too obvious’ first appearance of Johnny Depp’s iconic Jack Sparrow character which involves a moving building being chased through the streets and involving lots of nice stunts and ‘almost funny’ moments. There’s a similarly nice sequence, after a brief cameo by Paul McCartney who you also hear performing a quick rendition of The Beatles version of Maggie May, which brings all three lead characters together and features a very nice but overplayed visual gag with a revolving guillotine.

After that it’s business as usual and, unfortunately, there’s the inevitable, threadbare supernatural shenanigans involving some nice zombie sharks and lots of elements too quick to follow, possibly because the visual logic of what’s happening in some sequences doesn’t always match the actual internal logic of the plot line (something which I think plagued all the films in this franchise on some level)... and lots of shouting and fighting. The film rapidly deteriorates, in my opinion, about halfway through and I can never quite figure out why the characters who are the allies in the Pirates Of The Caribbean films are never realising that fact until it’s almost too late and are quite happy to hold each other captive or sacrifice one another until the end scenario.

There are a few nice comic moments like the ‘horologist’ scene... which I’d already seen as an internet preview sometime last year and... um... I’m sure there must have been some other moments which made me crack a smile at some point. Not very memorable ones, obviously, or I would be able to relate them here. For the most part though... and this is common with all of the Pirates Of The Caribbean sequels... the humour falls flat most of the time. I feel if they could write some better one liners and jokes in these things and maybe strip out some of the many and varied supernatural elements and streamline these things so they didn’t need so many special effects... they might be a lot better, more watchable films. And once again, Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow is hardly ever pro-active and mostly tends to just have stuff happen to him before being rescued by a bizarre twist of fate every time... which gets kind of wearing after a while. This character could be so better written... especially when you have an acting genius like Depp in the role. Such a shame.

I was primarily in the cinema to listen to the music, however. I, like many, loved Klaus Badelt’s original score, with the pirate theme which seemed to be cribbed somewhat from one of Hans Zimmer’s themes in the Gladiator score. Zimmer produced the first score and composed the next three, only referencing that pirate theme barely in the third and fourth films... but he at least kept the orchestration and ‘feel’ of those sequels in the same melodic soundscape as the first film. That’s an important element that many big budget studio franchises seem to foolishly undervalue and dispense with, it seems to me, throwing away the musical identity of their franchise and diluting it in the most terrible way. Franchises like the Alien films, the current Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Resident Evil series are all guilty of this and it really is noticeable and jarring, from film to film, when they don’t follow through on the musical content. For this one, we have composer Geoff Zanelli and I’m thankful to say that he seems more than happy to maintain exactly the same sound from the previous films and he’s also not afraid to quote Badelt and Zimmer’s themes in large dollops for the good of the score and the franchise. So the one thing this film really gets right, I’m glad to say, is the music. Well done to Zanelli for sorting that out so well and I look forward to hearing the results away from the movie on CD at some point in the very near future.

And there you go... I’m done with this franchise now, I suspect. A major, recurring character of the series dies although, I’m not going to tell you which one and the death of this character is much more moving than you might expect if I named the person involved. That being said, while this is billed as the ‘final’ film in the series, I might remind everyone that this is exactly how they marketed the third one too... so stay after the end credits of this one if you want to see where a possible sequel might go. Although, given the two actors involved in this last, 'after credits stinger', I suspect we definitely won’t be seeing these two return to the series anymore. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge/Dead Men Tell No Tales is probably going to be well liked for anybody who loved the three sequels to the original movie, for sure. People who are tired of these big Hollywood, summer tent pole movies, however, might be best served staying away and trying something else out instead. This film is not terrible but... it’s certainly not great, either.

The Tourist

Venice Wailer

The Tourist
USA/France/Italy 2010
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Optimum Blu Ray Zone B 

I got really annoyed when I missed this movie on its cinema release back in 2010. I’d seen the trailer for The Tourist about three weeks before it opened and the way it was cut together made it look just like a kind of modern remake of something like Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, with the lead actors Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie standing in for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint. Alas, the movie only stayed for a week at the cinema and it coincided with a point in my life where I was obviously unable to free up the time to see it then. However, it never went out of my mind that I should get around to seeing this one day, despite the less than mixed and mostly negative reviews it got at the time.

Flash forward to late last year when I found a Blu Ray copy in my local Computer Exchange shop going for the princely sum of £1.50. I figured, with two such prestigious actors in it, I really ought to give it a go... especially at a price like this. Due to some technical difficulties at home, I ended up screening this on the same day I bought it and, I have to say, that the movie wasn’t what I was either hoping for, nor expecting.

The plot is, it has to be said, straight out of one of those old Hitchcock style thrillers, with Jolie being constantly watched by the police in case her lover, Alex, who escaped with millions of pounds belonging to a Russian mafia boss, tries to contact her. The catch is, since he’s had reconstructive surgery, neither she or the police no longer know what he looks like. If you’re sensing an end of movie twist coming this early on in the film, by the way, even from this quick summary... yeah, you’d be right. When he does send her a contact note, she is told by him to take a certain train and to pick up some guy of the same height and build to use to throw the police off their guard. However, the burnt letter used to contact her is reconstructed by the police, which is something he didn’t see coming. Or did he?

The police, led by Paul Bettany and his boss, Timothy Dalton,  are onto the fact that, when Angelina Jolie as Elise picks up Johnny Depp’s character Frank, he’s not the real deal. What nobody counts on, including Alex, is that the Russian mafia boss Reginald, played by Steven Berkoff, is also out to get Alex and, unlike the police, they believe this is the real Alex and they want their revenge... plus, you know, the money back. It’s down to Frank and Elise to charm and flirt their way around against all odds until the finale of the picture, in a twist so obvious you will see it coming from very early on in the film.

And the film is charming to an extent. The dialogue writing wouldn’t look out of place in those old 1950s romantic thrillers this movie is presumably trying so hard to invoke. Alas, the plot itself is a little too simplistic and, in all honestly, the pacing is far more sluggish than you might expect from one of these kinds of films. Also, some of the acting just seems a bit off, to be honest. Both Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie both seem to be suffering from a distinct lack of chemistry with each other in this one which is odd, considering they’re usually both pretty amazing. Jolie is playing quite a sophisticated, intelligent femme fatale (with her own twist, as it happens) but her laid back approach to the line delivery in this seems to leave the performance just a little ‘flat’ in places. One also has to wonder just how super intelligent she is, by the way, when after being told to pick out someone of the same height and build as Alex, she manages to pick up Johnny Depp’s character when he’s not even standing up... so she is highly unlikely to know just how good a match he is, methinks.

Depp himself is oddly lacking the charisma one might associate with such a great acting legend. One wonders if he isn’t so into the idea of making his ‘mild mannered Maths teacher’ so different from Elise’s former lover that he is deliberately playing the character as a sort of ‘drab’ and uninteresting person. Either way, that’s how he seems to come across in this movie... which isn’t a good thing.

The other problem with this movie is that the there’s relatively little action in it. Sure, there’s a scene where Johnny Depp is running chaotically across rooftops, avoiding the bullets of the Russian mafia and, yes, there is a high speed boat chase through the canals of Venice at night but... these action sequences are both a bit far and few between and, ultimately, quite dull when compared to some of the stuff we have seen in various action thrillers over the last couple of decades. It all seems very lethargic and you would think a strong cast like this would deserve a little more imagination put into the writing and the way in which the film has been structured, to be honest.

James Newton Howard’s score is appropriate but not one of his best, as far as I’m concerned. I’d like to hear it away from the context of the movie (and I may well have a look at sourcing a cheap copy on CD at some point in the near future) but it’s ultimately very reflective of the type of movie that this film is trying to be... which is a shame because I think JNH has written some great scores in the past and he deserves a little more recognition but... yeah, I don’t think this one will do that.

And that’s about everything I’ve got to say about The Tourist  right now. The end twist is something which, as I’ve said, most audience members will see coming extremely early in the picture and, although there’s nothing really terrible about this movie, it’s not got anything remarkable going for it either, that’s for sure. I read somewhere that this had a very troubled pre-production history with various actors and directors dropping out at certain stages. I also read it was a very quick shoot and neither of these pieces of information surprise me, to be honest. The fact that people have had a tough time describing it as either a comedy, a thriller or something in between probably says it all about this brave but ultimately lacklustre movie. Not a film I could recommend to anybody but, I do appreciate the various people involved trying to cobble together a movie which focuses on old style glamour shenanigans, rather than some of the ‘played out’ stuff we’ve been seeing at the cinema just recently. The problem is, it just doesn’t work here and so, ultimately, it’s just a bit of a dull movie. Which is a great shame.

Alice Through The Looking Glass 3D

Hatterstician

Alice Through The Looking Glass
2016 USA Directed by James Bobin
UK cinema release print.

Hmmm. Okay... I didn’t like the Tim Burton version of Alice In Wonderland much. I didn’t review it at the time (I think it just missed the birth of my blog by a whisker) but I did do a short review of Danny Elfman’s score when I was trying to write about music (which you can read here). The score was a triumphant masterpiece, as far as I was concerned. The movie, however, was overdone, emotionally inappropriate in the wrong places and just seemed to me like a Hollywood contrivance which the audience ‘better like, or else’... if you know what I mean. So why, you may ask, did I go and see this sequel?

Well, as much as I love most of the actresses and actors in these two movies, it wasn’t their presence that got me back into the cinema for this one. Neither was it the director... not Burton this time, although he did produce this one. No... the blame for me having to endure this slightly better but, in no way any good, sequel has to be placed fairly in the lap of the aforementioned Danny Elfman. He’s back to score this one and I really just wanted to see what he did with the musical follow through.

Now, I can’t remember if I ever read Lewis Carrol’s Alice In Wonderland sequel, Through The Looking Glass, as a kid but what I can tell you, and you can work this one out for yourselves just by watching the trailer, is that this one has almost nothing at all to do with the original source material. Other than the same characters are back and there is, actually, a looking glass that transports the movie’s title character back to Wonderland. If I further told you that this movie starts off with Alice in the real world performing large scale stunts with her ship and her crew to evade the chasing pirates... you might realise how far afield this is from what you might reasonably expect... although this opening sequence is quite strong, to be honest.

If I further told you that the main plot involved Mia Wasikowska’s Alice stealing a time travelling device from Time (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) and then using it to travel through the past in Wonderland to solve the mystery of the Mad Hatter’s missing, presumed dead, family and defeating and resolving the childhood issues of the Queen of Hearts... then you have certainly been fairly warned that this movie is not for anyone who is expecting a half decent adaptation of the original classic. However, I can’t place the blame for this entirely at the fault of the writer and director since, if memory serves, a lot of the core of the original novel was already sourced and twistedly used in Tim Burton’s prior movie... so I’m guessing there wasn’t really a lot left to play with, to be honest.

What I do know is that, as good as actors like Mia Wasikowska, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway and Johnny Depp are... they really can’t do much to save this movie and its unfortunate inheritance by way of the last installment. Alas, Depp once more portrays the Hatter as an emotionally involved and sympathetic character... putting on meat where there was originally nothing but bone and continuing to do something completely different with a character that was probably not meant to be given any depth, anyway, to speak of. He plays an interesting character well, once again, but this really isn’t the Mad Hatter (I’d like to see him try his hand at The Joker in a Batman movie sometime, though).

The spectacle of the thing, however, is truly great and the special effects team, concept artists and everyone else involved should be congratulated on a really splendid vision making its way to the screen. Unfortunately, this only goes to prove that you can marvel at something but still feel empty because it’s not supported by an entertaining or especially well written story. It makes things bearable but that’s really no substitute for a tale that pulls you in tight, hugs you to its bosom and doesn’t let go until the final credits begin to roll. I feel bad about the cast and crew going to all that effort to pull this one off because, frankly, as splendid as it looks it really doesn’t do much to stir the blood... which is always a shame after everyone has obviously tried so hard to make it work.

The only real take home, again... and it is something I will literally ‘take home’ because I’ll order the CD... is Danny Elfman’s amazing score. Once again he weaves his brilliant Alice theme into the texture of the score and, once again, comes out with something both appropriate and pleasing to the ear in support of both the movie itself and, I strongly suspect, as a stand alone listen. Fans of the lyrics of the song, however, are forewarned that only one word, from what I could tell, of the lyrics makes its way into the score and then, only right at the end. I’m guessing you can probably work out which word that is already, though, if you’re a fan of the song. I won’t confirm that here.

At the end of the day, Alice Through The Looking Glass is a surrealistic ‘romp’ through time as our heroine strives to find the solution to the Hatter’s problem and also, as you would expect, gains strength from her adventures when she’s away from her fantasy realm. As far as I’m concerned, though, it really left me cold and in no mood to see any further additions to the story. Hopefully this one won’t become a franchise and the cast and crew can direct their obvious talents to something more interesting and captivating. Alas for Alice... this wasn’t it.

Mortdecai

Depp-reciation

Mortdecai
2015  US
Directed by David Koepp 
UK cinema release print.

Okay... I feel I need to do two things here right off the bat. One is to explain my reasons for actually voluntarily going to the cinema to see this tragic misfire of a movie and the other is to point out that there were actually one or two good things to be found in it... just not enough to save the picture, I think.

Also, let me point out straight away, in case you were in any doubt, I really hate trashing a movie where a lot of obviously talented people have worked a long time on something. It’s not the best thing to do... just the most truthful. I said something along the lines of my personal stakes in being honest on the last review I posted (see my review of Ex Machina here) and so I have to be as straight with my readers as I can. Sometimes that means saying things which might hurt some people’s feelings so... I apologise for that now.

Shooting from the hip then, I should perhaps share the story of how I once used to say that Johnny Depp was such a talented actor (and he certainly is a genius of the profession) and builder of characters that there was pretty much no movie he couldn’t save just by being in it. Look at the three sequels to the original Pirates Of The Caribbean movie if you need proof of that. Awful films but still fairly watchable because Depp is such a pleasure to observe. All that changed when I saw a movie he was in back in 2004 called Secret Window, an adaptation of a Stephen King novel he was top lining. All I can say is... not even Johnny Depp could save that movie. It was just awful.

Flash forward to the screening of Depp’s new film Mortdecai and I am once again shown that, even though Depp is obviously doing his best and probably loving it, by the looks of it, he and his fellow talented actors and actresses are unable to pull this through and make it anything more than... hard to watch without constantly checking the nearest time piece. Imagine my surprise, then, when I later discovered that David Keopp, the film’s director, had actually also directed Secret Window back in 2004. I dunno... maybe it’s just Keopp’s movies that Johnny Depp can’t save, who knows? Although some of Depp’s more recent stints for Tim Burton have been hovering into that category, methinks.

Now one of the reasons for me going to see this movie was because the trailer showed a variety of well known actors in a promotion which was, honestly, absolutely terrible looking... but that’s not always a problem. You see, I remember seeing the trailer for the Terry Gilliam remake of The Adventures Of Baron Munchhausen back in the late 1980s and it being an absolutely abysmal advert for the film. I certainly didn’t want to go and see it but, after being almost pressured into it by a bunch of friends who wanted me to go with them, it turned out to be an absolutely marvellous movie and nothing like the terrible trailer, presumably put together by people who just didn’t know how to market this kind of stuff, had made it out to be. I thought this might well be the case with Mortdecai since so many great actors such as Johnny Depp, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and Paul Bettany were all involved. After all, why would such people lend thier time and talent to something if they didn’t have a heck of a lot of faith in the product... they’d obviously read the script hadn’t they?

Alas, it’s an old cliché about film making at best but, like a few films before it in the history of cinema, Mortdecai appears to be a classic case of the movie makers actually having a much better time filming this half-baked monstrosity than the potential audience would ever have watching it. The script seems to be the main problem here too, in my opinion, having not read Kyril Bonfiglioli’s novel Don’t Point That Thing At Me on which this movie is purported to be based. The cast are all absolutely marvellous and invested in these neat little characters they’ve all obviously had fun putting together but the problem with the script is that... well, for the most part it’s just not even remotely funny. Or at least it’s not funny during the crucial first half an hour or so to help elevate the audience into a lighter mood. Indeed, a fair few of the audience actually started talking to each other after a while, in their restlessness, and continued on throughout the course of the movie. I’ve rarely seen such a talkative audience behaving this badly in a cinema except for once that I can recall, back in 2004. I wonder what that film was called? Hint: I mention it by title in the third and fourth paragraphs here?

The other problem I have with the script is that there are hardly any likeable or redeemable (to a point) characters in this. I can’t relate to any of these super rich, cowardly fops and I think it proves that point when I say that the only one I was really invested in throughout the movie was Paul Bettany’s character Jock Strap (yeah, this movie really is pitching at that level, folks) in that he seemed to be the only character in the film with his head half screwed on the right way round, to be honest.

There are, as I said, two really decent things about the movie, asides from the talented but mostly wasted acting abilities of a number of amazing people, and I’m not forgetting that...

The first thing is the transition sequences from country to country. Mortdecai is an art dealer on a globe hopping, secret agent style mission and the film makers have really done a terrific update on the travel sequences, harkening back to the times in old movies (and films like the Indiana Jones franchise, which were also looking back with nostalgia to those same old movies) of the plane graphic travelling over the map of the world. This time the plane is three quarters on and jetting through easily identifiable and zoomed in landmarks of the various countries including large, two dimensional letterforms standing up in three dimensional space. The various planes swoop past or through the letters of the country to get to their destination, in one memorable moment smashing through the typography for Los Angeles. This is all very nice.

The other pretty good thing about the movie is the score by Mark Ronson and Geoff Zanelli. It’s mixed well into the foreground and sounds like a funky, mid sixties spy movie on acid in certain sections which, to be fair, is not quite appropriate to the visuals but I think that’s not the issue here. I think what’s happening here is that the producers kinda guessed they had a dud on their hands and were looking to the score to save the movie somehow (I’d heard a few tracks from the score before the film opened and that was another reason I’d allowed myself to be lured into the cinema to see it). My suspicion is that the composers were scoring the film that the crew wanted to make, rather than come up with something appropriate to reflect the final product. Either way, whether they were instructed to try and save the movie in this way or not, the score pretty much rocks and if the planned CD release still goes ahead in February, I’ll probably pick this one up, I think.

Not so, the film though, which I’ll hopefully never have to sit down to watch again in my life. From the terrible Temple Of Doom parody at the start of the movie and right on through to the end credits, Mortdecai proved to be a well played, well crafted but terribly written and unfunny attempt at an adventure flavoured comedy. Very young children might, perhaps, quite like it but for anybody with a better developed sense of fun, well... even big kids like myself will probably find it less than enjoyable. A bit of a cinematic disaster, I’m afraid, would be my sad conclusion.

Transcendence

WiFi Art Thou?

Transcendence
2014 UK/Chine/USA
Directed by Wally Pfister
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Some slight spoilers here... 
most of which are in the trailer anyway, to be honest.

It strange the way things work out sometimes.

I saw the trailer for Transcendence a fair number of times at the cinema, for at least a month before its release over here. My desire to see one of the better actors of our time, Johnny Depp, in something that looked like a film rooted in fairly hard science fiction concepts, albeit probably recycled via 1950s and 1960s short stories, was so tempered by the fact that the trailer made the film look about as exciting and as intriguing as an unused tea bag, that I’d pretty much decided to just give the movie a miss. Or at least, ignore it for long enough so that the choice of whether I really had to go and see this thing or not was taken away from me by default.

However, since my internet connection at home had been out for something like a month, which is ironic given the subject matter of this film, and since it was a Sunday afternoon and the sun wasn’t completely covered up by black clouds, I found myself bored enough that I decided a walk down to my local Cineworld wouldn’t be too terrible a waste of my time. And so I went and saw it anyway... and I’m rather glad I did.

Transcendence is a movie that has a celluloid heritage which is perhaps best identified as it being a descendant of various “computer consciousness takes over” sci-fi films of the early 1970s such as The Forbin Project and Demon Seed. While it would certainly be true to say that it is, as I’d suspected, one of those modern 50s/60s recycled concept movies we’ve been getting so much of lately, it has to also be said that this movie carries off its recycling with a certain amount of panache and technical competency from all the cast and crew.

Johnny Depp plays a clever science type, called Will Caster, who has ben experimenting with computers to the point that he now has what he’s pretty sure is a self aware machine. He dreams of ultimately finding a way to transcend the human creatures populating the planet and upgrade them as a next stage of human evolution... conquering death in a brief nod to Frankenstein, perhaps. At a conference with his equally clever science type wife, Evelyn, played by Rebecca Hall (who I’ve loved since I saw her as the lead protagonist in The Awakening, reviewed here) and his friend Max, played by Paul Bettany, Will gets shot by a member of a group of anti-AI nutters... although he initially survives the shooting. As an FBI agent played by Cillian Murphy tells him, various of his science buddy colleagues aren’t so lucky with, in one particular set of offices, a professor played by Morgan Freeman being the only survivor... due to blind luck more than anything else.

However, it turns out Will isn’t as lucky as he thought, as the bullet he was shot with was laced with a radioactive chemical which will slowly kill him over the course of the month. Before that happens, however, Evelyn turns him and Paul Bettany’s character Max onto the idea of uploading Will's consciousness into an AI.

Now you all know this is obviously going to work otherwise you wouldn't have a movie and the film soon becomes a cat and mouse game between Will’s enhanced consciousness, which has been downloaded into the internet and controls the entire world, and the group of ludites who shot him in the first place and who recruit various of the characters to their cause. As the situation seems both threatening and also wonderful simultaneously, the stakes are raised and pretty soon Will is enhancing humans into super beings and even, at one point (and this is in the trailer so I’m hopefully not giving anything away here... although if you don’t see this one coming you must be very young), building a new body identical in looks and feel to his old one for himself.

By the last part of the film, where all out war between the AI and our brave cell of misguided and not so misguided idiots is reaching some explosive moments, the film turns out to be a film about love and sacrifice... but with Will anticipating every move made against him, just who is going to be doing the sacrificing?

Like all good sci-fi, even the warmed up leftovers from decades gone by, Transcendence explores concepts such as “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” and also gets into the old chestnut of “What is a human soul?” and "How does one define the state of self awareness?". Questions which can’t be answered, perhaps, in the real world but, to this movie’s credit above other stories of a similar nature, one of these questions does get answered in terms of the main protagonists in this movie and I was really pleased with the ending of this one, which turns out to be not the one you’re necessarily expecting. Thank goodness.

It’s not a perfect movie by any means. Some of the sequences seem a bit wrong in terms of their placement in the movie. For instance, only a couple of hours after being shot in the torso, Johnny Depp is out and about and talking to his friends, and the FBI, in his office, while showing off his AI programme. Similarly, a cut from a perceived danger to one of the protagonists is suddenly shown to be something the character in question is expecting and able to act on straight away with no questions asked... which could be explained within the context of the story just about, if you want to make excuses for it, but which ultimately is not something the audience has any knowledge of and which kinda grates when you see it happen. Similarly, a series of sequences which you assume to take place over a number of months given the amount of screen time allocated, are followed at one point by a scene which takes place only two days after the start of the events in one of the sections of the film... which doesn’t make sense and which I suspect has been re-edited to the place where it ended up to remind audiences of the FBI character... rather than have it play out as a slow build, which would have been preferable. I don’t mind a movie about artifical intelligence as long as it doesn’t try to insult what little intelligence I myself possess, is my feelings about that.

The last 20 or so minutes, truth be told, feel a little dragged out, basically in terms of the story of the two main leads, the husband and wife, of the film... but it doesn’t ruin it and it does have a certain sense of beauty and melancholy about it which is worth the wait. Also, the film is bookended at start and finish by a sequence showing the aftermath of the event in the main body of the movie. Personally, although there is a twinge of possibility in the last shot, I would have preferred to go into the epilogue without seeing the set up at the start of the film because, basically, it tells you something of the outcome of the story before it’s even properly been started.

However, the cast are all amazing, there are some lovely shots, it has an incredibly fine score by composer Mychael Danna (the US Amazon CD-R is hopefully in the post to me soon) and, all in all, I was impressed at how a movie with such a tired old concept could be told so well, shot and edited so beautifully and, also, take me to a place where I wasn’t quite expecting the ending to go. It was always an option but it’s a bold writer, in this day and age, to outright tackle the issue of the soul of a man in a computer in such a definite and conclusive manner. So yeah, this one is, frankly, a well made and nice little sci-fi thriller with a little more action than I was expecting and which is certainly not the boring yawn-fest the trailer made it out to be. If you like computer oriented science fiction stories, then this one is definitely something worth checking out. I’ll be catching up with this again on blu-ray, no doubt.

The Lone Ranger

Hard Mask-Tasker

The Lone Ranger
2012 USA
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Playing at UK cinemas now.

The Lone Ranger started out his life in a radio series in 1933. He then rode into novels and a couple of serials (now sadly lost, at least in their original serial format) and then the famous Clayton Moore TV show... followed by a few mis-fires of movies along the way. The latest mis-fire of a movie is by Gore Verbinski and it’s simply called... The Lone Ranger.

I wasn’t the biggest Lone Ranger fan as a kid, but I did quite like watching episodes of that old Clayton Moore show and I also had those brilliant Lone Ranger action men which weren’t quite as big as a regular action man but were certainly about 10 inches tall. They even had a flexible grip on them to hold their six shooters if memory serves me correctly. For the record, I had the three basic figures they released... The Lone Ranger, Tonto and Bush Cavendish. I didn’t have Silver... that would have been too extravagant. Bush Cavendish was, of course, modelled after the actor who played him in multiple episodes in the TV show, Glenn Strange, who had played the Frankenstein monster for Universal three times in House Of Frankenstein, House Of Dracula and Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein. I didn’t know that as a kid though and I was probably unlikely to make the connection... my Frankenstein monster action figure was firmly modelled on the Karloff portrayal so there was really no resemblance between that and my Butch Cavendish toy.

Most people seem to forget the lineage of The Lone Ranger character in terms of his relationship with another radio, film and TV sensation who was created by the same writers... The Green Hornet. Because of rights issues with various companies exploiting the two properties, it’s rarely if ever referenced except on the Radio shows but The Lone Ranger’s secret identity is John Reid and he is the great uncle of Britt Reid. It’s the silver mine that The Lone Ranger uses to make his silver bullets from that ensures the wealth of Britt Reid’s family in The Green Hornet but, like I said, it’s more of a family secret now due to legal obstructions.

Now I’m not the biggest Gore Verbinski fan, I have to say. I loved the first Pirates Of The Caribbean movie but that was about it. I think they all went downhill from there and you can see how unmoved I was by Rango right here. The Lone Ranger is a film that has had really bad word of mouth and is being hailed as this year’s John Carter in terms of the capacity to lose money... although I have to say that, asides from a few problems I had with the writing of the titular character in John Carter and the penchant to give a rational scientific spin to the supernatural aspect of the main protagonist finding himself a stranger in a strange land, I actually thought quite a lot of that particular movie. So I wasn’t completely convinced by the bad word of mouth on The Lone Ranger and just see it as a symptom of the lack of willingness in modern audiences to embrace the old fashioned pulp heroes that I love. So I went in with a fairly open mind I have to say and the early signs, once the film began to play out the first few scenes, were encouraging.

Yeah, that’s right. The new version of The Lone Ranger has a perfect set up. An unexpected time period setting with an elderly Tonto to relate the story of the film to a young masked boy in a cowboy suit, followed by the collision of the two main characters in a heady action sequence which immediately brings their chemistry out and makes for some thrilling and humorous watching. Unfortunately, and quite surprisingly after this strong an opening, I have to say, the film begins to falter and spiral down the more it plays out after this initial set up.

It doesn’t immediately fizzle and the characters are written and played with a certain amount of wit, which certainly keeps things bobbing along (just to confirm, Johnny Depp is excellent as always), it just doesn’t really seem to pick up the pace for any great length of time as things continue and there’s very little action to speak of in the rest of the movie until you get to the end sequence. It doesn’t get boring exactly... it just gets, kinda, less than it could have been as opposed to ones expectations... or mine at any rate. Which is a shame, really. I think a few more action scenes, or at least extensions to the smattering of “almost but not quite going for it” action throughout the rest of the movie (up until the end sequence, which it gets back to its hell bent for leather pacing) would have served to punctuate the movie with more emotional investment in the characters and might have made it a great film.

As it is, it doesn’t quite make good, let alone great. And that’s not what I was hoping to be writing today.

On the other hand, it is full of some great things. Armie Hammer’s portrayal of the title character is, perhaps, written a little too pure for an adult but he does it well and Depp has a ball with Tonto and, helpfully, the two actors bounce off each other well. Ditto to William Fichtner’s turn as a rather more disturbing Butch Cavendish than I remember and more shout outs for Tom Wilkinson and Helena Bonham Carter, who is maybe a bit larger than life in the role of the madam of a brothel but certainly fits the mood and shines whenever her and her “special leg” are on screen. Extra special praise to Ruth Wilson as Rebecca Reid, who actually manages to add a real touch of down-to-earth emotion to her character in direct contrast to the hammy but enjoyable theatrics around her, without clashing with the style of the picture. I was really impressed with her in this and next to Johnny Depp, she was the best thing in it.

At least in acting terms. The rolling western scenery and beautiful cinematography also get a big hug from me. Many references to locations used by Sergio Leone (which I’m sure were probably all postmodern references to John Ford anyway) are included which provide the... “that was where Harmonica in Once Upon A Time In The West was made to...” moments in the movie. There are a fair few of these.

The score is fantastic in many ways, too. I find Zimmer a bit hit and miss still but I have preferred his last five years or so to most anything in his earlier back catalogue. I did get annoyed at the obvious references to the Leone film I just mentioned, though. In the third Pirates Of The Caribbean movie there’s a cue called Parlay, and it’s a dead rip off in structure and orchestration to The Grand Massacre scene from Morricone’s Once Upon A Time In The West score... well there’s nothing quite so drastic in The Lone Ranger but there is certainly a lot of music which takes its tone from this cue and it did keep popping me out of the movie at frequent intervals, I have to say. However, it’s a great score and though Zimmer hits you with The Lone Ranger’s key signature music, The William Tell Overture by Rossini, which has been accompanying the character in most of his adventures starting with his original radio appearances, he only plays it for a minute or two near the start of the movie. What he does is cleverly hold back on galloping into the full overture until the spectacular end action sequence, where he plays it to death and throws his own variations in on it too in a stunning, musical tour de force which should make the hair of most fans of this well worn character stand on end.

What the music can’t do, unfortunately, is make the final train chase sequence make more sense when it’s all edited together. I just got lost very quickly and found it harder to follow than I was comfortable with. I think it’s because the sequence is a little more complex than usual as opposed to bad editing. Which is a shame because the music really whipped up the mood for this final hoorah of the movie.

And that’s really all I’ve got to say at this stage, I think. The Lone Ranger is not a terrible movie and I liked bits of it so much that I’ll probably grab the BluRay of this when it hits the sales for a repeat watch. If you are into westerns, and this character especially, then you will probably want to see this take on it. It brings some nice originality to certain parts of “the legend” that are interesting tweaks.

If you’re going for Johnny Depp... he, too, is a good reason to see this. His turn as the older version of Tonto was so good it took me a while to even work out it was him... although the younger version of him seen in the majority of the movie is definitely easy to spot as Depp and, dare I say it, there are definitely some sly nods to his Jack Sparrow persona in a couple of sequences.

If, on the other hand, you’re not a fan of westerns and don’t know your Lone Ranger from... well... from your Green Hornet, then this is probably not going to be a good movie for you. It does lack a certain oomph in some places and even with some decidedly vicious, cannibalistic bunnies and a certain uneasy lack of balance about whether it’s trying to be a family film or something more horrific, it probably won’t do much for you. A sequel might be a nice idea but I suspect it stands little chance of getting one now. Oh well. Hey ho, Silver.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Bough’s N’ Sparrows

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides US 2011

Directed by Rob Marshall

Playing at cinemas now.

Ahoy there me hearties. There be slight spoilers among these waters. Steer clear if ye want to live true...

I’ve had something of a chequered history when it comes to my appreciation of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. I’ve never been to Disneyland myself but I had a Donald Duck book which made mention of it and the Pirates of the Caribbean ride when I was a kid... a book which gets handed down through the family when a new toddler is born... this one was written in the 50s I believe. Occasional cultural references plagued me my entire life and then even Jeff Goldblum got in on the act when I went to the cinema to see Jurassic Park... I’d had enough.

By the time the first movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, arrived on our screens... I was far from chomping at the bit to see it. That being said, Johnny Depp was in it and he usually has something special to bring to the acting table so I spliced my mainbrace and got in line to see it and was genuinely and pleasantly surprised at what an entertaining movie this was... and a mainstream movie at that. Didn’t see that one coming.

After seeing a return of many gold pieces at the box office, however, the producers, crew and actors all returned to make the second and third installments in the newly launched “franchise” back-to-back so we could all be entertained some more while throwing our hard earned cash into their corporate coffers with Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End... or to put it another way, after I’d gone to see them... the producers, crew and actors all returned to make two movies which were absolutely bloated travesties of all that was good about the first movie and flog the proverbial dead horse into the ground by squeezing out anything that was charming and entertaining about the original work... a work which they’d all helped to create in the first place. Literally, the only thing about the second and third installments (apart from comparable but by no means “as good” musical scores) was the superb acting of Johnny Depp which managed to lift these two carcasses of sequels and elevate them to that sad but common status... “yeah, it was watchable but I wouldn’t want to be forced to look at it again.”

So pardon me if I didn’t get excited at the prospect of another Pirates of the Caribbean movie sailing on course for our shores... especially since said saucy plunder would be “enhanced” (aka have the extra irritation factor) by being in 3-D. However, Johnny Depp is almost always able to carry a movie on his back (the one exception being, in my humble opinion, Secret Window... where he proved that even his fantastic acting skills are not quite able to be a saving grace in a movie quite that bad), the initial teaser trailer (from last year) was quite cute and... well it had one new asset which I always have a weakness for (or should that be two?)... Penelope Cruz was in it and, if the trailers were anything to go by... yeah, she was bringing her cleavage to the party. Arrrr! In 3-D... arrrr harrrrrr arrrrr!

So, for the absolute best reasons for going to see a modern Hollywoodland movie that I could think of, I set sail for my local cinema to take a gander at the latest installment in the franchise, On Stranger Tides, which thankfully had nothing to do with the last two installments... throughout which I was thoroughly confused as to what was going on with the story at any given time and still am to this day.

Well... what can I say about the newest monstrosity in this series? Um... okay... lets have a think. Was it any good? Gut reaction? No, it was mostly pretty awful, although I have to say that it was certainly a lot better than the last two installments... it’s just not an eye-patch on the first movie and that’s really a shame. Disney are really having a hard time trying to get lightning to strike twice in the same spot... at least critical and artistic lightning. The films are pretty much built in box office cash whales so they really aren’t going to be worried that people like myself are finding the sequels less than inspiring. There’s gold in that thar Jack Sparrow and Depp seems to enjoy playing the role so no worries there for securing his services for another couple of movies in the series methinks. It’s a shame though because that first movie they did was really something special.

So what went wrong with this one then... well a bit hard to pin-point really. Just a bit uninspiring and hum drum I think... that’s the worst that could be said about it. Maybe lazy writing “in committee” to make sure all the boxes are ticked on what makes a fun movie? Almost as though it’s been written by a galleon full of piratey script-doctors... although I’m sure that’s not the case.

There are certainly some plus points. Hanz Zimmer’s score made a little better use of the main Jack Sparrow action statement from Klaus Badelt’s score from the first movie... that’d be the one which Badelt seemed to “acquire” from the action sequences in Zimmer’s score for Gladiator (the parts of that Gladiator battle music which weren’t an... um... cough, cough... “homage” to Gustav Holst’s Mars: Bringer of War that is)... and a whole load of Zimmer’s own themes from the initial trilogy have been pitted against each other in a musical stew which isn’t a far cry from the tone of the first three movies.

Then there’s the more than competent Penelope Cruz herself (with piratey bosom in tow), coming off of the starboard bough and initially introduced masquerading as Jack Sparrow himself (gosh... I’m so relieved I got that sentence in there... now my review title pun works!) and delivering a performance that is a pleasure to behold. She could have done with a little more exposure in the movie perhaps (and so could her... oh, alright, I’ll stop it now) but the chemistry with both Depp and Ian McShane was pretty good and having her in it made for some good risqué humour which you wouldn’t expect to find in a Disney movie aimed at a family audience (comments about missionary positions and such like).

And what about Ian McShane in this one, eh? Geoffrey Rush is back as Barbossa but Disney picked the wrong villain to kill off because McShane’s Blackbeard is truly a pleasure to behold. He plays it really well and to the hilt!

But there are some huge minuses on this one. While Johnny Depp's opening stunt scenes are fairly okay... they really are just okay. They are not hilarious or particularly exciting to watch and I was reminded at one point of a similar set-piece in the much maligned and frankly underrated Cutthroat Island, which did it all so much better (although, the greatest pirate film ever is obviously... The Crimson Pirate!) and this film failed to deliver very big on the action sequences and even the less showy scenes of swordplay could not capture the original charm of, say, Jack Sparrow’s initial duel with Will Turner in the first movie. Which is a shame.

And Jack Sparrow himself seems to be a bit of a changed person in this one too, it has to be said. The performance seems to be quite a bit toned down with Depp hardly acting as drunk as the Jack we knew from the first three films (maybe he’s holding back on that stuff so he can re-use it to good effect in his new version of The Thin Man, which I understand he’ll be remaking soon) and, even worse, the witty dialogue seems a bit less sharp and a little forced. Maybe it’s just me but... although his performance was still absolutely excellent... it didn’t really seem to gel for me with the Jack Sparrow of old.

The film has some nice ideas including a romance with a mermaid... one of many vampiric mermaids... but the film is so long and somewhat busy that it really does feel its two and a bit hours in length. They tend to take their toll on the old bones if ye be as old as me shipmates. But I know it wasn’t just me because kids in the audience were starting to get bored too.

And as for stranger tides? Well, believe me... there was nothing nearly as strange in this movie as there were in any of the other three. Think the marketing people got a bit carried away with themselves again on this one. First rule of advertising mates... don’t advertise the qualities of a specific product when it turns out you don’t actually have a product which would live up to your claims. On Stranger Tides my shiny doubloon!

At the end of the day I’d have to turn in my verdict and say that this fourth venture into the world of Jack Sparrow was an okay watch and nothing more. Not completely disappointing but not the film I’d have liked to have seen either. I’d really like them to make another in the hopes that we can get something as good as the original movie again but I think they’re missing a trick or two when it comes to analysing just why that original movie worked. As it is though, this one’s not that great and I doubt I’ll watch it again anytime soon. Which is a pity but that’s the way the grog grumbles!

Home, Home on the Rango

Rango 2011 USA

Directed by Gore Verbinski

Now playing

at UK cinemas.

Warning! Yeah... there are probably spoilers in here. If you haven’t seen it by now though you needn’t bother, I reckon.

Unwarning! Ooh, no. You’re okay. Just re-read it and it’s curiously spoiler free. Drive through at your leisure.

Ok... so as I type these words it’s a little under one week since I saw Rango at the cinema (by the time this goes up on my blog it will probably be closer to two because I have a bit of a backlog here at the moment... normal service will be resumed as soon as probable). Now my friend who I went with was laughing away at it and having hysterics but I’m sad to say that it didn’t have anywhere near the same reaction with me (I honestly don’t remember cracking a smile... but then again, I rarely do these days) and the really worrying thing for me, having to write up the film one week later, is that I couldn’t remember anything about it and I just had to watch the two trailers to kinda jog my memory... oh, yeah. It was that one.

Now I don’t see a whole lot of animated fayre these days... I’m more an old school Tom & Jerry or Bugs Bunny kinda person if truth be told (can someone please tell me if my suspicions that carrot chomping Bugs Bunny was based on cigar smoking Grouch Marx are correct?) but I have seen a few and I don’t dislike all of them. I quite liked the first two Toy Story films and I also quite liked the first and third Shrek movies (havent seen number 4 yet). And I absolutely loved Monsters Vs Aliens so, since the movie in question is called Rango... well, I was already to see a brilliant parody of the Django films. Since I knew this was a Western remake of Chinatown starring Johnny Depp as a chameleon lizard, I was waiting to see him drag a coffin around in cavalry uniform and do all sorts of Django-like things.

Sadly, this was not to be. Even though Rango director Gore Verbinski and composer Hans Zimmer both collaborated in a sequence in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie that parodied the Spaghetti Western quite blatantly and which was, musically speaking, just a little too close to comfort to Ennio Morricone’s scoring for Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. Seriously people... I know temp-trackitus is a modern and seemingly incurable disease but I’m surprised Morricone didn’t sue their asses, the music is that close in structure. Have a listen to “As A Judgement” on any of the Once Upon A Time In The West albums and then listen to “Parlay” on the album release for Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End if you don’t believe me. Astonishing! Did money change hands here?

Anyway... back to my review proper. You’d think Verbinski and Zimmer would do a more than passable parody of those same Western shadings in Rango but, while the tropes and genre markers of various American and Italian Westerns are all present and correct, the film doesn’t quite fall into the usual postmodern trap of eclectic appropriation for the sake of hitting the mark for a certain kind of audience (probably people like me, I’m ashamed to admit) and, while it is to be applauded that story and characterisation are pushed to the fore (as they should be) I personally found myself missing the blatant and, more specific, style of parody which the cinema going audience has become accustomed to in the last twenty or so years.

Now for anyone else these strong points of the movie, and there are many strong points on offer here, would be a sign of how good this movie is... and it is a good movie, whether I liked it or not. A solid piece of movie-making which, if the reaction of my friend and the judgement of other reviewers are anything to go by, is also fortunate enough to be a popular cinema movie and, therefore, a money spinner.

Let’s check the boxes then... Great animation. Check. A microcosmos of a world created for these characters that holds itself together by its own logic and doesn’t fall over when you tug at the strings. Check. A good selection of voice performances. Yes, it has that too. An actual story. Surprisingly another affirmative... so yeah, there’s obviously a lot of good things on offer here. And I obviously should have been really happy with this movie... but I wasn’t. And I can’t quite figure out why, to be honest.

Maybe it’s that I saw it as a movie with an over-reliance on slapstick humour that’s possibly the problem (Ooh. Look at the funny lizard running all over the place arms akimbo and making funny noises!). Or maybe it’s the fact that I found the whole thing emotionally cold and a turn off to the point that... even after the brilliant emotional set-up of the opening sequence with Rango and his, err, companions... I still didn’t care about what happened to any of the characters in this movie. I know... I’m being harsh.

Ok... so I’m going to try and play it fair here. If you want a recommendation from me to go see Rango then you’re not going to get it. But... well this movie seems so well loved by people that I’m going to do something I’ve only ever done here once before and point you in the direction of somebody else’s review so you can see the flip side of my scarred face of the Rango coin. Check out @SquidyUK’s review of Rango here if you want a more enthusiastic and more in-depth look about the various strong points of this movie. Because you won’t find me taking a second look at this movie again on here.