Movie Review: The Last Airbender

I’m kind of obstinate about some things in life, one of them being that I am often determined to enjoy a movie that everyone else has panned. That didn’t mean I was excited about going to see ‘The Last Airbender,’ but it did mean that I was willing to at least watch it with an open mind despite the fact that every film critic worth mentioning has panned the movie with savage abandon.

My stubbornness lasted about two minutes. That’s right, only two minutes into the movie and I had already decided those critics were completely and utterly right. This could quite possibly be the worst movie I have ever walked out on. From start to finish it is meaningless, low-quality, b-grade, quasi-spiritual, immature drivel. I know what you are thinking ... stop holding back, tell us what you really think. Well, ok, I will thank you very much, because this movie is so bad, it has left me with a lot of inner frustration that needs some form of catharsis. The plot was light as air, the script was abysmal and the acting was achingly embarrassing. The special effects were ok and the scenery interesting if unoriginal, but the 3-D was tacky and obviously added on as an afterthought to squeeze more money out of innocent paying customers. Look, you may think I am going overboard, but I see it as my duty as a film critic to STOP you watching this movie. Don’t do it, don’t waste your money like I did mine.

Apparently this is based on some children’s cartoon and it involves people being able to control elements like fire, water, air and earth. They all went to war, and the only one who could save them was a mysterious avatar – a figure reincarnated in each generation and more powerful than the rest because he can control all of the elements at once. He can bring peace and unite the various warring tribes if only he can get in touch with enough of his inner chi in time. Seriously.

As you can guess there is a lot of Eastern religion and philosophy wrapped up in this, which really continues director M. Night Shyamalan’s fascination with movies and the spiritual world. He scored one outright success off this concept with ‘The Sixth Sense,’ but seriously, seriously either needs to give up the game entirely or move onto fresh topics. I can’t tell you too much more about the plot since I left soon after I finished my popcorn but I have heard it tries to set itself up for a sequel. I cannot bring myself to believe that any movie production company would be willing to waste more money on this, but hey, stranger things have happened.

Don’t go see this! It is so bad it should be a crime to charge people money to watch it. In my opinion, Ster Kinekor should put up police tape barring entry into all theatres showing it and hire a policeman to stand outside and warn all the nice folk off: “Move along people, nothing to see here.” Because really, there isn’t.

0 out of 5.

Movie Review: Salt

Angelina Jolie in an intelligent(ish) movie? Who would have thought? And what is more, Jolie puts in a credible acting performance in this espionage thriller resulting in a thoroughly enjoyable adrenaline ride punctuated by a constantly, twisting plot.

Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a CIA agent on her way home to enjoy a quiet anniversary with her hubbie when a Russian defector shows up with some controversial globe-impacting information. This information opens up a can of worms and turns Salt’s life completely upside down. Salt is accused of being a secret Russian spy, trained as a child for an assassination mission, and she ends up on the run trying to save her husband and clear her name while being opposed by two other CIA agents, Ted Winter (Live Schreiber) and Peabody (Chiwetel Ejiofor). But is she really trying to clear her name, or is she instead intent on escaping to fulfill a decades old mission?

Playing a role originally written for Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie throws herself body and soul into this movie. She puts in a believable and sincere performance in playing a woman whose motives seem unclear even to herself. Look, this is by no means a perfect movie. Jolie looks china-doll fragile she is so thin, and the sight of her ‘a-salt-ing’ numerous foes is a little difficult to swallow at times. Also, the plot itself has a hole big enough for numerous Angelina Jolie’s to walk through standing shoulder to shoulder. And the action involves many scenes which quite simply defy the laws of physics. Yet, none of this prevents Salt from being good fun! Jolie climbs walls barefoot, drives a cop car with nothing more than a taser gun, uses an elevator shaft in a rather unconventional manner and does a ‘MacGyver’ on a fire extinguisher turning it into a rocket launcher.

I can’t reveal anymore of the plot without inadvertently slipping in a spoiler, but the director, Phillip Noyce artfully keeps the suspense going throughout. Salt concludes with such an open ended scene that it is little ‘in-salt-ing’ to the intelligence (ok, ok, I’ll stop now). Salt is literally begging for a sequel to be made, and I guess this movie has done well enough to warrant one, although I am not convinced it has the necessary weight for a trilogy like Bourne’s. Only time will tell, but it certainly won’t be the worst waste of your time to see this particular movie.

Three and a half stars for Salt. Be warned there is a 16 and over age restriction because of violence and some strong language.

Movie Review: London River

London River is set in the upheaval after the terrorist bombings in London on July 7, 2005. It is an absorbing and compelling drama of two parents from vastly different backgrounds who are united by their search for their missing children.

London River is a French made movie set in England and perhaps because of this is distinctly ‘un-Hollywood’ like. In other words it is gritty and real, a little fudgy at the seams and entirely resistant to wrapping everything up neatly. Also, real actors are chosen over pretty people and watching the two leads in this movie – Brenda Blethyn and Sotigui Kouyate – I wondered how many truly excellent actors are lost in the system simply because they are not good-looking enough. Blethyn plays Elizabeth, a white Anglican churchgoer, who lives in Guernsey but is not able to contact her daughter Jane after the attacks. She boards a ferry to look for her and meets Kouyate’s character – Mr. Ousamane – a Senegalese Muslim who has also travelled to London to find his son who has gone missing in the chaos.

Both actors put in deeply compelling performances that keep you riveted throughout. London River has no car chases or grand CGI effects, and instead relies upon a very real human story portrayed by two exceptional actors who manage to take you on a journey through their own emotional highs and lows with nothing more than subtle voice inflections and changing facial expressions. In fact, it is their very physical imperfections which aid their cause, with Blethyn’s wrinkled face and quavery voice drawing you deeply into the world of a grieving mother despairing the fate of her daughter, and it is Kouyate’s loping walk, lined face and fragile build that brings a certain vulnerability yet stoic dignity and sensitivity to the role of a father fearing the worst about his own son’s role in the terrorist attacks.

As much of the world struggles with a growing ‘Islamophobia,’ London River seeks to confront this prejudice by telling the story of a mother who in searching for her daughter finds that she didn’t know her as well as she thought. To her horror it appears that her daughter has not only fallen in love with a black man (Ousamane’s son), but may have also converted to Islam in the process. Her initial fear and distaste for Ousamane slowly melts as she is confronted by the hard realities of lives and cultures beyond her own and in the process the oddly matched couple find that their grief and fear over a future without their children manages to bond them together. Creating a constant undercurrent of suspense is the fact that the fate of their children is unknown until the final scenes. Perhaps the message here is that even age-old prejudices, reinforced by recent tragic events, can be overcome if we learn to listen to each other’s stories and find some commonality in that.

Clearly, London River went out of its way to dispel Islamphobia, even at the risk of becoming a little unrealistic. The portrayal of North London Muslims without the slightest anger, dissension or mistrust in the aftermath of a cataclysmic religiously-fueled terrorist attack is at the very least too easy, and at the very worst a little dishonest. I do, however, fully support the director’s intent – 99% of Muslims are kind, gracious people and it is both unjust and prejudicial to view an entire culture and religion through ‘terrorism lenses’ as many in the western world are prone to do.

Ultimately, this does not distract in the slightest from a fine movie. London River offers something wholly different and far more enriching that your standard Hollywood fare. It courageously deals with a controversial topic, and uses very real and extremely talented actors to convey its story. You won’t see actors like these in big budget productions, which honestly, is rather sad. London River seeks to change the world for the better in the telling of this story, and at the end of the day you can’t fault that.

Three and a half stars for London River.

Movie Review: The A-Team

What price nostalgia? I have seldom been as determined to enjoy a movie as I was this one. As a boy in the eighties, I grew up eagerly anticipating each new episode of the A-Team. I loved the crafty Hannibal, admired the suave Face, chuckled at the antics of Murdoch and envied the power of B.A. Even the generally poor reception by critics overseas wasn’t enough to dampen my spirits about the movie version. These critics complained of the non-stop and frankly unbelievable action scenes as well as poor character development. Well, for goodness sakes this is the A-Team we are talking about. It’s not meant to be a cultural experience akin to a night at the opera. In fact, the whole point of the A-Team TV series was that it was never meant to be taken too seriously. It was just a whole lot of fun!

If this was your experience of the A-Team, then the movie definitely won’t disappoint you, because it is a whole lot of fun. No, there is not much serious character development asides from B.A.’s flirtation with pacifism (you know that’s not going to last!), and yes, it is pretty much non-stop action, most of it completely unrealistic, but, boy is it fun to watch!

Although this movie version was shot almost a quarter of a century after the TV series ended, it really sets itself up as a prequel. In other words, we find out how the A-Team, a crack squad of elite Army Rangers becomes “convicted for a crime they did not commit”. In an effort to keep pace with the last 25 years, the landscape of their war experience is changed from Vietnam to Iraq, but other than that all the original themes and characters were kept in place. Hannibal (Liam Neeson) is still leading the team; Face (Bradley Cooper) is the hunky con-man; B.A. (ex UFC light-heavyweight champ Quinton Jackson) is the muscle; and Murdock (our own Sharlto Copley) is the kooky pilot. Details which always made the TV series such fun such as the big, bad B.A.’s fear of flying are kept intact, and we even find out how this fear originated.

All the actors put in strong performances and obviously have a whole lot of fun making this movie. Without exception they are all better actors than the originals, although that probably isn’t saying much. I was pleasantly surprised with the two unknowns in Quinton Jackson and Sharlto Copley. I expected Jackson to be awful, much like many sports stars turned actors are, but he wasn’t bad at all. Sharlto Copley you will remember as Wikus vd Merwe from District 9, and he was probably the movies highlight. He does a number of accents throughout, and the brief scene where he ‘does’ a South African accent is a classic.

As I have mentioned, the action is a roller-coaster ride of non-stop adrenaline rushes and at the same time is utterly, utterly unbelievable. Still, they do kill people in this A-Team which wasn’t allowed in the 80’s prime-time TV show were bullets would erupt out of flame-spewing guns and not a soul would be harmed. If you go in expecting a decent plot, you will be sorely disappointed. This is nothing more than formulaic action movie stuff, built around concepts like injustice and revenge. I won’t even bother explaining the plot since you probably have seen something similar a million times before. It’s not like anyone going to see the A-Team is anticipating an original storyline anyway.

There is no doubt about it but The A-Team is pure candyfloss. But what enjoyable candyfloss it is! So what price nostalgia? Well, at least half a star. The A-Team really is worth no more than a good, solid three stars but just because it is The A-Team, I award it three and a half! (Yes, I can do that).

Be warned that there is violence and very strong language throughout.

Movie Review: Peepli Live

Peepli Live is a fantastic first-time effort by Indian filmmaker Anusha Rizvi who takes a serious social problem and subjects it to satirical scrutiny. In this way, Rizvi popularises a topic to much greater effect than might have been achieved through a normal documentary.

Peepli Live is fascinating, funny and yet also very sobering. India has an incredibly interesting culture that much like South Africa is caught between two vastly different worlds – one of wealth and comfort and the other of life-threatening poverty. As India moves rapidly to an industrialised economy, farmers are being sidelined to quite devastating effects. Whole families are losing their land, and many farmers are either abandoning their work, or worse, committing suicide in sheer desperation.

Farmer suicide is such a common problem in India that it has hit the headlines numerous times before. In this movie Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) is callously advised by an uncaring local politician to commit suicide as a way of saving his land and family. His laughably craven and conniving brother Budhia (Raghubir Yadav) takes advantage of his brother’s obvious simplicity and eggs him on (he would benefit to the tune of 100,000 Rupees from a government grant). A local reporter desperate to hit the big-time Rakesh (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) overhears the brothers conversing and turns it into a news story. The story is picked up by a famous and glamorous TV personality (Malaika Shenoy) who rushes to the scene closely followed by other newshounds snapping at her heels. The result is that the whole affair is hugely sensationalised and soon the entire country is caught up in the saga of the simple farmer who vows to kill himself.

Lending even more hype to the story is that it is election time, and various politicians find their campaigns thrown into jeopardy by Nathi’s vow. Both the TV stations who sensationalise stories at the expense of the real people caught up in the tragedy of it all, and the politicians who seemingly care for little more than their own re-election, are lampooned with zest and energy. The best satires make political and social commentary behind a veil of laughter that is both ‘ha ha’ funny and also ‘ouch that’s true’ funny, and in this regard Peepli Live excels. I found some of the sniping battles between the mother-in-law and Nathi’s put-upon wife a little clichéd, but particularly enjoyed various scenes of the reporters encamped in Nathi’s village of Peepli. Some of them became so desperate to keep the story rolling that they even resorted to discussing the state of his faeces (which is um, funnier than it sounds here).

The local reporter, Rakesh, is the film’s moral barometer and we find ourselves anchored to his own slow disillusionment in the face of the big-time reporter’s predatory tactics, and the politician’s total lack of compassion. While I don’t think Peepli Live is a serious contender for Best Foreign Film, at the same time it is an absorbing comic gem. The satire works perfectly, and manages to focus your attention upon the terribly desperate plight of the real men, women and children caught up in endless cycles of destructive and dehumanising poverty. This movie will not only make you laugh, but also get you seriously thinking about life which is obviously the point.

Four stars out of five for Peepli Live. Be aware that it is a foreign language film and does have some strong language throughout.

Movie Review: Mao's Last Dancer

Mao’s Last Dancer is a beautiful tale filled with sumptuous costumes and sublime dancing. This is a story of freedom and learning to fly, and although it has a few inevitable clichés, the movie as a whole manages to gracefully pirouette away from being overly corny.

Mao’s Last Dancer is based on a true story, and centres on Li Cunxin who is the sixth son of a peasant family living in a poverty-stricken Chinese village. It is 1972, in the midst of the infamous Cultural Revolution and Li (played as a child by Huang Wen Bin) is plucked from his home and sent to Madame Mao’s Beijing Dance Academy. Li is pushed to the limits in his dance training while being simultaneously educated with Maoist Communist doctrine. However, much like Baryshnikov, Li Cunxin was too talented to be hidden behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ for long, and is spotted by Houston Ballet director Ben Stevenson (Bruce Greenwood).

The adult Li (played by Birmingham Royal Ballet principal Chi Chao) is seconded to America where he learns that the West is not as awful as he had been taught. Most importantly, Li is set free to dance traditional ballet and is no longer forced to participate in propagandist military-style Chinese ballet. The real struggle in this movie is not so much Li seeking freedom from a totalitarian state, but of the struggle he faces for his own artistic soul. Li also falls in love with an American dancer named Liz (Amanda Shull), and begins plotting a way to stay in America with the assistance of some friends and immigration lawyer Charles Foster (Kyle MacLachlan). He is agonisingly aware that his decisions may negatively impact on the fate of his family back home, and has to learn to live with the fact that he may never see them again.

Although nearing the end of his directing shelf-life, Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) does an excellent job with this movie. He was allowed unprecedented access to Chinese locations and these scenes in particular are exquisitely shot. More than that, he manages to steer away from typical anti-Communist and America-is-great stereotypes, and in this Beresford manages to draw strong performances from all his key role players. Key to this is that that even the Communist leaders who attempted to prevent Li’s bid for freedom were portrayed as being both human and somewhat fragile. By concentrating on the human stories behind the story, rather than his own version of political propaganda, Beresford has produced a movie that is hauntingly beautiful from beginning to end. The ballet scenes are worth the entry price alone as we are shown dancing that quite literally takes your breath away with its heady mix of balanced strength and mesmerising grace. Even if ballet is not exactly your cup of tea, you will struggle not to be affected by the sheer artistry of some of the scenes.

In summary, this is a story about how beautiful humanity can be when we give of the best of ourselves. It reminds us of what we can achieve and that at the end of the day, the human beings and relationships behind all the dancing, politics and ideologies are most important.

Mao’s Last Dancer is full value for its four stars out of five.

Movie Review: Inception

Say one thing about Leonardo DiCaprio; say he knows how to choose himself a movie role! There are a lot of good looking individuals around who can act a little, but the Titanic star sets himself above the rest by consistently choosing great movies to strut his stuff in. Of course, it can’t hurt to be Christopher Nolan’s first choice either, since Nolan is probably the hottest movie maker in Hollywood today, with recent hits like Memento and The Dark Knight. Nolan both wrote and directed Inception, and he and DiCaprio are surely onto another massive hit with this sci-fi thriller.

Inception is not a perfect film, but it gets pretty close in my opinion. Its two and a half hours literally fly because of the fantastic mix of fast-paced action, stunning visuals, mind-blowing plot and strong acting. Inception plays around with one central paradox: What is reality and what is dreaming? Which of the two is most real? Keep in mind that with this theme, Inception WANTS to disorientate you as part of an overall plot device and so it has layers and layers of differing perspectives, shifting scenes, and surprising character development. Yes, you will have to concentrate to keep up but that is a major part of the fun!

DiCaprio plays Cobb, an espionage agent who specialises in stealing ideas from other people’s heads. He enters their dream states to source their greatest secrets. Cobb’s own subconscious is plagued by the horrific death of his wife, and the fact that he has been blamed for her murder. As a result he cannot enter the States and is prevented from seeing his children. His desperation to be there for his kids means he takes on a job no one believes can be done involving the task of not stealing an idea, but instead of planting one inside the mind of a billionaire on behalf of a rival corporation.

Cobb’s reward will see all charges dropped and so in the best tradition of great heist movies, he sets about setting up a crack team with differing talents. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is his long-time partner; Eames (Tom Hardy) is a con-artist and master at deception; Yusuf (Dileep Rao) is a master chemist. And there is a new recruit, Ariadne (Ellen Page), a brilliant young architect who is brought in to build the actual dream world – something that Cobb can no longer do since his subconscious is so fraught with guilt and pain over his broken family.

Cobb's team are hired to enter the dream world of Robert Fischer Jr. (Cillian Murphy), a billionaire with severe father issues. The problem is that Fischer’s mind has been trained to deal with dream infiltration agents, so they have to deal with all sorts of gun-toting ‘mindguards’ – mental projections that exist to protect him at this level. I won’t give away too much more of the plot suffice to say that there are plenty of layers and endless depths to plumb. Despite the inevitable confusion, you are kept in the story by its visual and emotional rollercoaster style. There may be plot holes in Inception, but I didn’t notice any, and at the end of the day what most captivated me was that the emotional connection matched the intellectual challenge. I found myself really caring about Cobb and his team, and rooting for him to get back to his children despite the illegal means he was using to get there.

Inception is well worth seeing and fully earns its four and a half stars out of five. Be aware that there is some strong language and violence throughout.