Gods Of Egypt

‘Bigs’ by the ‘Bek’

Gods Of Egypt
2016 USA Directed by Alex Proyas
UK cinema release print.

Back in 1973, when I was five years old, my parents took me into London to see The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, starring John Philip Law, Tom Baker (before he had won his most famous role) and the ‘truly wonderful’ Caroline Munro. It was another in a small but growing list of films, containing magical beasts devised and animated by Ray Harryhausen, that I’d seen so far on television but this was the first time I’d seen one of Harryhausen's works at the cinema. So, in addition to the charms of Caroline Munro (I was even enchanted by her as a five year old), there was an absolutely jaw dropping scene where a large statue of the Goddess Kali came to life and fought Sinbad, swords in all six of her hands. It was absolutely fantastic to this young ‘un watching in wide eyed wonder as hero fought statue to the strains of Miklos Rozsa’s wonderful score. It wasn’t until a couple of decades later that I got to fight that statue myself in my sometimes guise as Lara Croft, when I took the controls of my old Playstation console in a level of one of the Tomb Raider games which was obviously inspired by the 1973 movie. It was still a great look back to that sense of wonder I had as a child.

So I have to ask, 43 years later.. where has all the thirst for magic and wonder gone that people can vastly ignore a movie like Gods Of Egypt in their droves. This movie is filled with exactly the kind of humour, spectacle and sense of fun that all those films that Harryhausen used to crank out would aspire to and, more often than not, succeed in delivering in spades. I must admit the promise of Gerard Butler in another mythical period piece kinda gave me pause for thought... just before the bad reviews, incredibly bad box office and delayed release date in this country (by almost four months) put me off going to see it. That being said, when I finally saw the trailer a few weeks ago, I realised that this film did at least have the potential to be a modern Harryhausen type fantasy and was helmed a director whose films I actually quite like, in the form of Alex Proyas who directed such great movies as Dark City, I Robot and Knowing. And then, of course, the final decider for me was that I heard some of the samples of Marco Beltrami’s score for the movie, which I promptly ordered on CD and, thanks to the old school style delayed release date, was able to listen to before seeing the film in the cinema.

So I went. And all I can say is, this film certainly doesn’t deserve the terrible reputation it seems to have garnered. I went to see this thing on the only IMAX screen in Enfield Town on a Sunday afternoon and, believe it or not, I was one of only five people in the audience. Such a big screening room to find itself unfilled. And a great shame too because, in terms of sheer 1970s style escapism, it’s a great little movie.

The film is filled with a load of actors, most of whom I had seen before but, also, nearly none of whom I could identify by name or in what movie I’d seen them. It starts of with an enthralling depiction of life in Ancient Egypt when the Gods walked the Earth with mortal men (an Earth which is depicted as flat at one point, which was a nice little touch). The Gods take the form of man only they’re much bigger... so if you think of the style of the reduction of the Hobbits in the Lord Of The Rings films, the mortal heroes are all quite little and the God heroes dwarf them in scale, to a certain extent. At will, however, the Gods can transform themselves into big, Egyptian beasts the likes of which you only see on hieroglyphics.

Gerard Butler is the main villain in this one, playing Set, who wrests the future king's crown for himself on the day of Horus’ scheduled coronation, killing his father and taking ownership of Egypt so he can rule with an iron fist. He rips Horus’ all seeing eyes out from him and Horus, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, fleas and hides where he hopes Horus can’t find him. Set takes Horus’ future queen Hathor, played wonderfully intoxicatingly by Elodie Yung, for himself and starts hunting down all the Gods so he can take their individual, speciality God-bits, and turn himself into some kind of super-God.

Yes, it’s all about 'the joy of Set' but, luckily for Horus, there’s a young thief called Bek, played by Brenton Thwaites, who is in love with a girl called Zaya, played by Courtney Eaton, who tells him how to get into Set’s treasury. So he breaks in, all Indiana Jones-like, avoiding various clever traps, and steals back one of Horus’ eyes. Alas, when he is en route with Zara to reunite it with Horus, Zara is killed and, after a fight scene where Bek and the blind Horus are arguing the stakes, Horus delivers her to Anubis who takes her on the first part of the journey to the afterlife. I won’t go into the whole thing here but Horus promises Bek that he can bring her back once he is made King of Egypt. So, reunited with his right eye and looking a lot, for most of the rest of the movie, like he just escaped from New York, Horus forms an unlikely and argumentative alliance with Bek as they go on a quest to meet various deities and arm themselves with the tools and wisdom to defeat Set. It’s a twisty turny road but, even though the plot is simplistic, it’s actually a little more layered than those old Harryhausen movies, giving it a little weight in places where it's not strictly necessary but it certainly doesn’t detract from the sense of fun in the movie... actually giving it the kind of depth modern cinema-goers might feel they need mixed in with their escapism these days.

I’ve always, for some reason, had a passion for Ancient Egyptian iconography. Never really studied their culture much but always loved going to the British Museum and hanging out with the mummies and definitely enjoyed movies or TV shows that plundered this culture for their settings. This film uses it and takes it to levels we’ve not seen before. The Gods themselves, who bleed gold and who, when they change into their big golden CGI counterparts, are a little like watching a Transformers movie, are very impressive and the film is all about the spectacle of these Gods. There are some cool compositions and landscapes to take in and I found myself really enjoying this movie as every new plot twist and beast was revealed throughout the course of the running time.

Some of the editing is interesting too. There’s a particular battle scene where Horus is battling five, um... I guess they’re ‘cow-gods’... where the shots don’t necessarily follow on from each other. Normally I'd find this confusing but in the case of this sequence, it’s like a visual shorthand for only showing the audience the key points of the battle and I was quite impressed by this fight, actually. It’s not exactly the splashiest of the sequences in the movie but the way in which the length and choice of each shot in this minor skirmish was put together to form a credible whole was something I was conscious enough to notice as it was happening... which makes for an interesting viewing experience.

The film is full of great action, impressive set design, wonderful costumes, great actors (who also include Geoffrey Rush as Ra and the new Black Panther, Chadwick Boseman, as Thoth, in their number), some interesting but surprisingly rewarding editing choices and a kick-ass score by the aforementioned Marco Beltrami. On the score front I think he maybe could have used a little more of the silver screen’s legacy of the pseudo-Egyptian tint that composers like Dimitri Tiomkin invented for Land Of The Pharaohs but, even so, it’s appropriate support for the picture and great as a stand alone listen too, if you’re of the mind.

My one small criticism of the movie was that I was left a little unimpressed by the visualisation of the personification of the Sphinx here. I think it could have been maybe a little more like the ruins of the one we now know and I do think that was the idea... I just didn't think it worked so well. However, it’s a very minor grumble and he still got a big smile from me when he utters the line “Oh, bother.” at one point.

All in all, this is a great movie for lovers of fantastic cinema. I said it when I first saw the movie The Big Liebowski and I’ll say it again for this movie too... this is exactly the kind of film that cinema was invented to show. Big, larger than life visions made celluloid flesh (alas, now poorer quality digital flesh) and projected onto a big screen. If you loved all those old movies like The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad or Jason And The Argonauts then Gods Of Egypt is the very successful, at least in my book, modernisation of these kinds of things. So don’t miss out just because of bad reviews and poor box office... this is a really great homage to those clashes of titans from yesteryear. So when you see those bad reviews... just tut and come in, anyway.

Oblivion

Obli-Vi, Obli-Va

Oblivion
USA 2013
Directed by Joseph Kosinski
Playing at cinemas now.

I’ve said it before about a gazillion times on this blog and I’ll say it again now because it’s still just as relevant to this movie as it is to loads of other big-budget Hollywood blockbusters over the last 10 years or more. It’s like the people behind the production and release of these films have discovered a stash of old 1950s/1960s short story collections by the likes of Philip K. DIck and Robert A. Heinlein and are intent on regurgitating every single one of them as large scale productions for a mass, modern audience.

I guess this works for you if you’ve never had any exposure to the golden age of science fiction and the conceptual goldmines found therein, but what it means if you’re even just a little older than a teen is that it’s unlikely any of the premises being touted in these movies will come as a surprise to you or take you unawares. Of course, there’s something to be said for doing these kinds of stories on screen right now... the use of various forms of special effects make them a hell of a lot easier to render credibly on the collective imagination than they would have been 30 or so years ago. But that’ s about it and, honestly, that’s exactly what you get here.

Oblivion is a well made film which is absolutely beautifully designed but it has one big major flaw which the publicity machine for the film is as much responsible for as the final product itself. The trouble with the brilliantly cut and intriguing series of trailers we got for his movie is that they set up the expectation of some kind of heavy twist... so you know there’s going to be one before you go in. We have the enigma of the woman in the dreams/memories of one of the last two guardians of the earth turning up in a pod which lands on our ruined, post alien apocalypse planet from out of the past. There’s a mystery to be solved and, to be fair, the trailer does its job well.

However, the film just doesn’t have quite enough going for it to pull off a totally unexpected endgame and take the audience unawares. Most people will have, from fairly early on I believe, more than just an inkling about what is really going on and I know damn well that the full visual confirmation and impact of “what is really happening” on Tom Cruises’ main protagonist Jack Harper was no surprise to most people I know who saw the movie on opening night (although I’m not going to tell you what that particular reality is here) and most people have figured that stuff out just by the implication of the character’s main set-up for the audience, especially regarding the “company line” on the memories of their people. However, even if it did still remain a mystery until the trick revelation when Tom Cruise, in one of a few little homages to the Planet Of The Apes series of movies, penetrates the “radiated zone”, the way the camera work chooses to continue to shadow certain details of some of the shots is a dead giveaway. But like I said, I won’t spoil it here.

With that particular story weakness aside, the film is quite triumphant in everything else it tries to do... although a little judicious pruning of the running time by 20 mins or so may have been advisable, I think.

The design of the world our two main protagonists and antagonists live in is very cleanly realised and the sleek curves of the little flyer Jack pilots in his job to maintain the, quite lethal, flying drones is just one of many visual (and indeed aural) pleasures on show in the film. And when I mention those drones as lethal, I mean exactly that. They are set up quite quickly in the story as something to develop later on during the course of the film and you see just how deadly they are, dealing out swift annihilation to anything which isn’t supposed to be present on the planet. This helps somewhat later in the narrative when, inevitably, as you know they will, Jack and several other characters have to try to deal with these things... you certainly realise how real a threat they are.

That’s another thing the movie does well, actually. Racks up the tension.

There’s a fraught and quite intense suspense sequence fairly early on in the movie when Cruise explores a sink hole to fix a second, downed drone and instead finds himself in a trap. This will, most likely, have a certain percentage of cinema goers balancing precariously on the edge of their coca cola stained seats and the denouement of the sequence is quite a relief when it comes. And it’s this same sequence, too, which also helps set up the “danger-Will-Robinson-danger” aspect of the drones which serves it so well in the last third of the picture. Although, having remembered that sequence now, there’s another flaw in this picture in that the way that Cruise is rescued here from his potentially deadly fate, as a quick reveal at the moment before certain death, is used at least twice more in the movie to get various people out of a hole. No worries, they work fine, but it would have been nice to find a less repetitive solution to those kinds of sequences.

However, the special effects (for once) are really amazing and serve the environment of the story in a much more supportive and believable manner than they have done in many science fiction movies and the acting by Cruise, Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, Andrea Riseborough and even Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who I last saw in the Swedish thriller Headhunters - reviewed here) is all beyond exemplary and the way in which these people inhabit their environments gives the credibility to the story telling that all good science fiction needs.

And Oblivion is good science fiction.

Obvious, it’s true, but if you can get over the inherent weaknesses of the storyline it’s definitely got that "classics of science fiction" vibe to it... which given my opening statements, kind of figures. The story may work better as the graphic novel it was originally intended to be (the publication of which was delayed until this film adaptation of it was released) but I’m not sure I could now divorce that experience sufficiently from the film to be able to appreciate it on its own terms, I suspect.

It’s also got a score which supports the movie well and should be good as a future listen on the CD release, blending orchestral style scoring (possibly done on synthesisers, I couldn’t tell from the mix in the movie) with electronic back beat sweeteners during certain of the action scenes. Coupled with an array of sounds which almost make up a leitmotif on their own, such as the beeps of the drones, it makes an awesome assault on your eardrums and really helps you get into the film and behind the emotions of the characters very quickly.

And the characters are quite interesting characters (even the deliberate cyphers) it has to be said. Another plus point for the film.

Oblivion, then, is not a bad movie. Not a great one, to be sure, but certainly enough to keep most lovers of the science fiction genre satisfied until the next big thing comes around. It’s certainly not as entertaining as many of the films with which it seems to share the same aesthetic palette - Minority Report, I Robot or the Burton remake of Planet Of The Apes - to be sure... but it does have its own thing going for it and it shouldn’t annoy too many people with the obvious nature of the main storyline... even if it does beg, borrow and steal from a lot of the classics. Definitely worth checking out if science fiction is your thing.

Mama

Mama - M.I.A.

Mama
Spain/Canada 2013
Directed by Andrés Muschietti
Playing at cinemas now.

Mama is a movie written by Andrés Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Neil Cross. A Spanish/Canadian production shot in English, I’m guessing it’s inspired by a three minute short the same director did a few years back, of the same title (although I haven’t actually seen the short myself). It’s also just about as good a modern era ghost story/horror film as you’re likely to see these days.

The film starts off in tragedy as a man who has just rampaged and murdered his wife, takes his two very young daughters far away into some snow covered woods to kill both them and, presumably, himself. They stumble into a deserted cabin and then... something happens to the man.

After 5 years of spending all his money on looking for the man and his two daughters, the man’s brother Lucas (played by the same actor, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) finds the two young girls who have, by now, gone almost totally feral. However, if you were following the opening titles sequence of children’s drawings with the attention you should have been paying, you’ll know there’s more to the story than that. As Lucas and his sexy ass, rock-chick galfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) strike a deal with a therapist working with the children to win custody of the children on the condition that they move into a very specific house the therapist chooses, things start to get decidedly spooky and, oh heck, drop dead scary as the film ticks away at a very even pace, designed to chip away at any resistance you have to the regular scares of the horror movie environment.

While this movie does have plenty of “jump shock” moments in it, it’s the slow, lurking sense of dread that keeps your delicate, viewers psyche on the edge of its fear precipice. The storyline is pretty much a retread of dozens of other ghost tales from the past but, fortunately for all involved (and especially fortunate for the jaded, modern horror movie audience), the film is stylishly put together and, although there’s a lot of CGI involved, it’s much more creatively used and is actually quite good for a change. When the ghost is finally, properly seen, in one of it’s many unique manifestations, the director has no qualms about showing it off properly and the special effects are much more reminiscent of the dark CGI fantasy work featured in the films of Guillermo del Toro, who is credited as executive producer. I’d say that I would recognise his hallmark stamp a little on the film but, then again, I’m just not too confident in exactly how much direct contact and impact on the final product the executive producer on these things has these days... so I don’t think it’s necessarily his doing.

Whoever’s fault it is, though, it’s all a good thing for the film and the way certain parts of the story are visually expressed by the “DNA” of the title creature are a great help in moving the story along too... and not just used as an “illustrative element”. I don’t want to explain that visual element too much, however, because I’m trying to keep this review pretty spoiler free.

One of the other things that keeps the film from ever slipping into the realm of the dull or the humdrum is the four or five notable performances in the film, especially those of the two sisters who really sell it right from the start. This is a real collaborative effort and a great outpouring of combined creative energy which covers all the production aspects of the film, including some great sound design and a nice little score I’ll need to keep an ear out for too.

It all makes for a film which will continue to play out in your mind for a day or two and that’s one thing I am grateful for. The other thing I’m equally grateful for is my inadvertent delay in writing this review because it let the film do its work in my head and I suddenly had a bit of an epiphany on the bus coming home tonight, because I’d let the film take possession of my soul and haunt me when I was least expecting it...

Essentially, there's a neat little twist towards the end of this movie and, normally, just my pre-knowledge of that fact (which I did have, actually) is enough to allow me to figure it out within the first 5 or 10 minutes of a film. This time, however, I hadn’t even perceived that there was a twist when I actually saw it... I just let the hypnotically beautiful visuals wash over me and missed it completely, I guess. There was something the director took time to carefully highlight a few times before the end of the film (aka visually bash me over the head with) but, unusually for me, I just didn’t pick up on it at all and, whereas that should have ensured I was even more surprised at the finale, all it meant was I just didn’t even perceive that there was anything more to the ending than what I saw on the surface.

In this particular instance, it was probably me just being stupid but all I will say to those of you who have not gone out to see this one yet, is that you should really watch those opening credits very closely... and if you do you will be rewarded. I’m now definitely picking up the blu-ray of this thing when it comes out because I want to watch it again and go in knowing what I know about the ending now... it will be a much more rewarding experience because of it, I suspect.

So there you go... mostly traditional ghost story but with a slight twist, well written, beautiful CGI on the “Mama ghost creature” who is a character in her own right, a cool dream/nightmare sequence (I didn’t mention this before but the Mama back story dream sequence is amazingly well presented), brilliant performances from the actors and actresses involved, a sexy rock chic (okay, so I might be a bit biased on that count) and some truly stunning visuals.

Oh... and it’s scary, which is something maybe a lot more modern horror movies should try to remember to be these days. If you’re a fan of ghostly apparitions with a beautiful, dark fantasy world element, then Mama is right up your street... and if you’re not careful she may just haunt you on a bus a few days later.