Pitch Perfect 2 - Review

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Amongst my particular age bracket, 2012’s Pitch Perfect was easily one of the most popular films in years and perhaps the best received ‘teen’ film since Mean Girls in 2004. Anna Kendrick’s Cups became a viral sensation and the film won most of its audience thanks to its many laughs and catchy songs. Making a sequel to a comedy like Pitch Perfect is risky and often all it dishes up is more of the same but usually in a less appealing manner (Think The Hangover Part II). Other times it pays off and we get a film as good if not better than the first one (Think last year’s 22 Jump Street). Thankfully, Pitch Perfect 2 mostly fits into the latter category.

First time director, Elizabeth Banks delivers solid work in the role, directing the many musical numbers with aplomb – particularly the Car Show number by DSM -  and musically, the numbers themselves are as good as the first films, if not a little less crowd-pleasing. The sequel delivers many great laughs, particularly through Banks and John Michael Higgins who return as acapella commentators and the first film’s breakout star Rebel Wilson. However, some jokes feel fairly uncomfortably offensive (for example: any line from Chrissie Fit’s Flo, whose character begins and ends with ‘immigrant who can do backflips’), others fall flat (most notably, Snoop Dogg’s cameo) and the good ones don’t seem quite as uproarious as some from the first.

With regards to plot, its three years on from the first film and the Barden Bellas crash back to the bottom of the acapella group ladder after Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) suffers a wardrobe malfunction in a performance in front of the President. This accident gets them banned from competing on a national level and so to get this ban revoked, they seek to win the World Acapella Championships. This forms the main backbone of the film and more or less follows the same trajectory as the first film.

Where Pitch Perfect 2 branches out is everywhere else, where the group of girls are all facing graduation and some are dealing with the uncertainty of their future better than others. Beca (Anna Kendrick) is attempting to pursue her music producing dreams but faces trouble along the way, Chloe (Brittany Snow) seems to be in denial about the whole concept (after all she is a four-year senior)  and Fat Amy is running from commitment when her on-off lover Bumper (Adam DeVine) suggests they enter a real relationship. Meanwhile, aspiring songwriter Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) joins the group, seeking to gain the Bella experience her mother did.  Screenwriter, Kay Cannon mostly succeeds with developing these characters using these subplots, particularly with Becas which provides a really great and natural progression for the character. As a result, Pitch Perfect 2 is far less formulaic and more character driven than its predecessor, a welcome and pleasing development.

The rest of the girls remain the one-dimensional stock characters they were in the first film and perhaps have even less time than they did in the first film, likely to make room for Wilson’s increased role as well as Steinfeld’s character, which is a shame considering the talent amongst them. Beca’s love interest, Jesse (Skylar Astin) and their former rivals, the Treblemakers also have significantly reduced roles, allowing the awesome European champions, Das Sound Machine to fill the screen, who contribute several outstanding musical numbers to the film.

Overall, Pitch Perfect 2 is a blast from start to finish and is in many ways better than its predecessor through its better development of characters and slightly less clichéd plot. Its humour and musical numbers don’t hit quite as many highs as the first one, but they are still good enough to guarantee a thoroughly enjoyable musical experience. Finally, its just very refreshing to see a female-led and female-directed film promoting friendship and success from females in the mainstream film industry and being such a huge success!

★★★½

Glee: The Top 10 Episodes

The pop-culture phenomenon Glee takes its curtain call tonight, after 121 episodes and over 700 performances over the course of its six year run. It's no question that Glee was never as good as it was in its first season, and the show began to increasingly create and drop important plots in an episode, write characters in entirely different personalities on a weekly basis and use countless songs purely for iTunes sales, rather than to advance the plot. But for a while at least, Glee was really something special, so in celebration of its finale I decided to create a list of its top 10 best episodes (in my opinion of course).

Four Films in a Day - Part Two (Jupiter Ascending + Shaun the Sheep Movie)

Here is part two! Go read Part One before this if you haven't already!

In celebration of finishing our mock exams, my friend & I indulged a ‘full movie day’ at our local cinema and saw 4 films in a day (basically for free may I add – bless you Cineworld Unlimited!). So here is a review for the last two films I saw that day:

JUPITER ASCENDING

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Jupiter Ascending is the kind of batshit insane, big-budget epic that you cannot believe was greenlit and funded in this day and age. The Wachowskis’ populate their vast worlds with rat, elephant, mole and lizard people, twinky robot lawyers, dragon bodyguards and shapeshifting ‘gollums’ and create truly magnificent space environments for Channing Tatum as a wolf-soldier with gravity boots to run around with Mila Kunis in. The convoluted plot involves a powerful family of technologically advanced humans who ‘harvest’ planets to maintain their youth and are seeking to hunt down a girl (Kunis) whose genetic signature matches their deceased mothers, giving her a valuable inheritance that they all want. And that is the abbreviated version. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you can’t deny that it’s awesome that a wildly ambitious epic like this can still be made.

The film greatest asset is its frankly stunning visuals, not just with CGI of the vast space environments but with the beautifully detailed backgrounds, costumes and character designs that fill the film and make it a treat for the eyes. The universe-building by the Wachowskis in this film deserves more credit than it has been given and this kind of ambition and flair in a big-budget action/sci-fi flick is something I wish was used more often in blockbusters. 

However, the film suffers from a story that is often repetitive and drills through a few too plots in its running time. The characters are fairly thin and unremarkable and the actors don’t do much to help elevate them, though are generally decent (with the exception of a gleefully awful Eddie Redmayne as the film’s primary antagonist whose obscene scene-chewing is just so much fun to watch). Moreover, Kunis’ Jupiter is too often relegated to a ‘damsel-in-distress’ role, while her romance with Tatum seems to come out of nowhere and is pretty groan-worthy.

While these negatives may seem quite significant, the mad ambition and originality of Jupiter Ascending help to elevate it to a level where it is a firmly enjoyable space opera that I wish weren’t tanking so hard at the box office.

★★★

SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE

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It was a bold move from Aardman to take Shaun the Sheep and his gang from the titular TV series and stretch out the usual 7-minute episodes to an 80-minute feature film. It features no dialogue at all (aside from ineligible grunts by the Farmer) and while it widens the usual scale of the TV series, there are none of the large, action set-pieces that populate many recent family films. However, the Shaun the Sheep Movie succeeds tremendously on its own merits, never having any issue in conveying its surprisingly dense plot and creating some excellent physical comedy.

Aardman (known for creating Wallace and Gromit, amongst films such as Chicken Run) continues to prove stop-motion animation as a format that can be as visually sharp as the computer-animated films that make up most of the mainstream animation industry, but with twice the personality. Their use of humour and quirkiness always make their efforts feel more authentic and charismatic than most other animations and Shaun the Sheep Movie is no exception to this. It transcends its very young target audience with some great gags – including a hilarious commentary on the vapidity of celebrity – and provides a lot of fun for people of all ages. It would be great to see more animation studios that take it down a notch and really focus on telling a great story as Aardman have in this film. 

★★★★

Please leave a comment telling me your own thoughts on these films, and on my reviews of them! 

Four Films in a Day - Part One (Big Hero 6 + Paddington)

In celebration of finishing our mock exams, my friend & I indulged a ‘full movie day’ at our local cinema and saw 4 films in a day (basically for free may I add – bless you Cineworld Unlimited!). So here is a review for the first two of the films I saw that day:

BIG HERO 6

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After the blockbuster success of Frozen, Walt Disney Animation Studios had a lot to live up to with their next release Big Hero 6, an adaptation of a lesser known Marvel Comics title. Luckily, this animated superhero romp is a real treat that stands among Disney’s strong films. Directors, Don Hall and Chris Williams fill the film with excellent action sequences, great humour and colourful & memorable characters.

The plot shines when focusing on the heartfelt relationship between protagonist, Hiro and the huggable healthcare droid Baymax, invented by his deceased brother, Tadashi, finding real poignancy in Hiro’s status as Baymax’s “patient”. His belief that going on adventures and spending time with his friends will help Hiro deal with his unresolved grief offers an unsentimental look into mortality and how it can affect young people, proving Disney’s readiness to tackle serious issues in their blockbusters. However in the film’s third act, this heart is lost slightly due to a descent into the more formulaic waters of a typical ‘team-up’ superhero movie with a fairly unremarkable villain and large action set-piece. It’s a shame but luckily doesn’t take away the impact of the film’s earlier themes.

Overall, Big Hero 6 is a fun and well delivered family film. The city of San Fransokyo is gorgeously animated and designed to combine elements of Japanese and American culture while the central friendship of Hiro and Baymax provides a genuinely heartfelt backbone to the film that is unfortunately diminished by the slightly more lacklustre and unoriginal final act. 

★★★½

PADDINGTON

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Out-of-nowhere, Paddington has become one of the highest grossing and best received films of 2014 in the UK and after finally seeing it, it’s not hard to see why. Adapted from the classic Paddington Bear stories, this is an effortlessly charming and delightful family film, filled with wit and fun that while targeted towards a younger audience, is sprinkled with knowing gags for adult audiences that truly make it a film ‘for the whole family’.

Director, Paul King (of The Mighty Boosh) and co-writer, Hamish McColl update the original stories into a modern London setting, with mild satiric undertones critiquing the xenophobia and anti-immigrant beliefs that are all too common in British society. King’s imagining of London somewhat resembles Wes Anderson’s quirky style and creates a lovely – though sadly monocultural – depiction of the city, while the film’s cast of great British character actors - including the likes of Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins as the Brown parents, with Peter Capaldi and Julie Walters in supporting roles – are great fun in their roles.

In conclusion, Paddington is simply a family treat. It may not be pushing many boundaries with its plot but its charm and good-hearted nature has deservedly won audiences over.

★★★★

'Part Two' will be up tomorrow, featuring reviews of Jupiter Ascending and Shaun the Sheep Movie! Also, please leave a comment telling me your own thoughts on these films, and on my reviews of them! 

The Fault in Our Stars - Review

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At the beginning of the film, the narrator Hazel tells us that this tale is the real 'truth' - no sugarcoating and no bad situation that can simply 'be fixed by a Peter Gabriel song'. However, The Fault in Our Stars (based on the best-selling novel by John Green) fails to back this claim up as it often falls victims to the tropes it attempts to set itself apart from. There are still the 'long gazes at each other from the across the room'. The 'dazzling first kiss' in a public area (that for some reason gains applause - am I the only one who would roll my eyes and awkwardly move away?). The 'constant waiting for him/her to call them'. Luckily, the film does deploys enough of the wit and genuine emotion of the source material to avoid sinking too far into being a generic teen romance and is strengthed further by its generally stellar cast.

X-Men: Days of Future Past - Review

The 'X-Men' film franchise is one of the longest-running series in recent cinema history, clocking in 7 films (including 2 solo Wolverine films) over 14 years. This is rather impressive considering how it has often been overshadowed by the likes of the Spider Man series, Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and the growing Marvel Cinematic Universe (including The Avengers). However this long run comes with a price as most would consider a series like this to be settling into 'franchise fatigue' with tepid quality and dropping value at the box office as viewers tire of the characters and plots. For a while, that belief may have been correct (I'm looking at you The Last Stand and Origins).

Luckily 'X-Men' has proved this wrong with the new sensational entry to the series, 'Days of Future Past', which is set to become the best grossing film in the series as well as the best received and not without credit either. 'Days of Future Past' focuses round a dystopian future where the characters of the original trilogy are fighting for survival at the hands of the mutant-killing Sentinel robots. Wolverine (played again by Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time in order to change the past so that this terrible future is prevented from ever happening, by teaming up with the younger Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) to prevent the assassination of the Sentinel creator, Bolivar Trask (Game of Thrones' Peter Dinklage) at the hands of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence).

The film is set the difficult task of weaving the two running timelines of the series (from the original trilogy and X-Men: First Class) together using a time-travel plot device whilst still forming a cohesive narrative. Thankfully, director, Bryan Singer & screenwriter, Simon Kinberg do so with aplomb, creating a well-paced and thrilling installment that balances creative action sequences (including the utterly inspired 'prison break' at the Pentagon sequence, featuring Quicksilver [Evan Peters]) with satisfying character arcs and emotional beats very well.

The stars of the film with the most screentime are undoubtedly Jackman, McAvoy, Fassbender and Lawrence, who inhabit their characters vividly and give terrific performances in their roles, adding new layers and development to the characters they had previously played (particularly McAvoy, whose wounded and weary take of Xavier is powerful and greatly affecting). The rest of the cast aren't given much to do, which is a shame considering the pedigree of some of the actors (Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Ellen Page amongst others) though they make the most of the material they have and it is a delight to see them on screen again.

Overall, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a triumph for the X-Men series, and for superhero films in general, bringing the beloved comic book story to the big screen with justice though with several plot inconsistencies (that is almost to be expected with the series at this point). It also reinforces my belief that the real strength that comes with this series is the depth it brings to its universe and characters, like not many other superhero films do and hopefully means that the X-Men will be sticking around for many years to come.

4.5/5 Stars (haven't found the appropriate star symbol yet)

Ramblings:

• Hallelujah to see a superhero movie that isn't loaded with explosions and things falling out the sky. Yay for actual stakes and motives that aren't 'take over the world'!
• While Quicksilver is regularly being cited as the breakout character of the film (and rightly so), I would like to talk about how incredible Blink was. Her powers were depicted just amazingly and I need to see her return in future films.
• Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde was also a stand-out in the supporting cast, adding great humility to Kitty in her scenes that enhanced the urgency and trauma that this future brought to the characters.
• It's a shame Rogue's subplot got cut, if only because I wanted to see Stewart and McKellen doing more in the film (Makes me eager for the blu-ray release). 
• Tears were brimming in my eyes during the final sequence. I won't spoil, but it's really great.
• The post-credits scene featuring (SPOILERS) Apocalypse has made me really pumped for the next X-Men in 2016. Hopefully we'll get a lot more Quicksilver and Cherik ;)

(Also, please give feedback so I know what to improve on and stuff. Hope you enjoyed and byeee!)