Tag: film reviews

Film Review: Tomb Raider

By on 6th April 2018in Entertainment, Film & TV
Tomb Raider

Rating: ***

The new Tomb Raider film – starring, of course, young archaeologist Lara Croft – could have seemed (ahem) entombed to failure. This game-to-cinema franchise hasn’t been dug up (see what we did there?) for a while, and understandably so, considering how the only two other instalments shaped up. The Angelina Jolie films of the Noughties were basically all hype and no trousers, skimpy or otherwise. It wasn’t long before HMV bargain bins across the country hoovered up DVD copies of both films like quicksand that their lead character would usually be eager to jump straight across.

With the 21st century having seen Christopher Nolan and Daniel Craig help to modernise respectively the previously campy Batman and Bond franchises with more grit, the time did seem ripe for Tomb Raider to get the same treatment. This film’s Lara isn’t the same as the one that adorned bottles of Lucozade in the 1990s; it’s the more intellectually stimulating Croft of the critically acclaimed 2013 reboot of the game series. Presumably in line with this more down-to-earth approach, the filmmakers have jettisoned Brad Pitt’s ex in favour of young Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander.

As you would expect from an Oscar winner, the Swedish actress certainly shows her acting chops in portraying an in-depth personality for Lara. In a Batman Begins-style origin story, Lara is scrimping and saving in London while struggling to believe the news that her archaeologist father Lord Richard Croft, played in flashbacks with charming paternal affection by The Wire’s Dominic West, has supposedly died during an adventure abroad. Lara’s disbelief leads her to head off to try to find him.

There’s no doubt that Vikander has physically thrown herself into the role. Some of the more intense action set-pieces, including Lara’s near-death escapes from first a rollicking boat and then a discarded and disintegrating plane, feel like Terminator action scenes seamlessly transplanted into a jungle realm. Norwegian director Roar Uthaug also throws in some light relief courtesy of Nick Frost as a wisecracking pawn shop owner. Walton Goggins’ villain – Mathias Vogel, an archaeologist rival of Lara’s father – is one of the less effective characters, being something of a charisma vacuum.

Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to see so many elements that firmly ground the story in reality. You shouldn’t expect the excessive silliness that plagued the National Treasure films – and, unlike them, this Tomb Raider outing gets a more immediately likeable lead than a wooden Nicolas Cage. This particular film probably still isn’t original enough to warrant the sequel it blatantly teases; however, given that the archaeologist adventure genre can feel old like the relics for which Lara hunts, it remains perhaps as solid a cinematic Tomb Raider reboot as we are likely to get right now.

 

Film review: Black Panther

By on 22nd March 2018in Film & TV

Rating: *****

As you might have gathered from much of the fervoured press chatter, the 18th film from Marvel Studios – described in turn as “a self-contained marvel”, “a superhero movie with serious muscle and style” and “a superb genre film – and quite a bit more” – is, well, not just about finally giving a black comic-book star a film of his own.

In any case, the latter titbit is far from true, that honour having long gone to 1997’s Spawn, a year ahead of Wesley Snipes’ Blade. Indeed, Snipes himself signalled as far back as 1992 his intention to work on a Black Panther film, only for the momentum behind such a project to not start gathering steam until the mid-2000s.

In the meantime, the Afrofuturism into which Black Panther heavily leans – which can be very roughly defined as an approach to science fiction and fantasy grounded in African cultures and the black experience – has continued to thrive in music through such acts as Janelle Monae, Willow Smith and Kanye West.

Now, film finally has its big-blockbuster Afrofuturist standard-holder – and many observers are wondering why it took so long for a studio to take on the task.

A convention-buckling Coogler epic

There are many more descriptors that one can apply to Black Panther – family saga, espionage thriller or simply another classic in the pantheon of Marvel superhero movies that will giddily excite overgrown and actual 10-year-olds alike. So much of this is attributable to director Ryan Coogler’s already well-honed instinct for the ambitious, audacious and pyrotechnically spellbinding, despite this being only his third film.

For the benefit of those of you who aren’t Marvel dweebs, it all centres on the tale of Black Panther himself – real name T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) – who is officially crowned as the king and super-powered protector of the secretive techtropolis of Wakanda after his father’s death.

Boseman is joined in a predominantly black ensemble by such talent as Michael B. Jordan – who plays the improbably buff challenger for T’Challa’s throne, Erik “Killmonger” Stevens – and Lupita Nyong’o, whose turn as T’Challa’s former lover and an undercover spy for Wakanda undertaking missions in other countries sees her treated to some of the film’s wittiest lines.

Another major threat to the kingdom comes in the form of the brawny arms dealer speaking in a spicy Afrikaner bark, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), who has his sights trained on Wakanda’s vast deposits of an indestructible metal known as vibranium.

Not just another Marvel juggernaut

Of course, for all of its cultural significance and political nuances, Black Panther remains a big-budget Marvel film, with almost everything that entails – but not quite.

Yes, the third act couldn’t be more Marvel at its heart if it tried – a big, noisy CGI climax. But the moral and political questions that Black Panther contemplates aren’t touched on in the haphazard or peripheral manner that seems the case even with the Dark Knight trilogy or the X-Men franchise.

Instead, they are very much central to its architecture, providing a thought-provoking narrative seam from the first scene to the last – even if you may also simply be having too much fun to notice.

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