Ted

Ted is the theatrical writing and directing debut of Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy and American Dad.

Starring Mark Walberg and Mila Kunis, Ted follows the story of John, an 8 year old boy who wishes his Christmas teddy bear would come to life. By magic the wish comes true, and now the 35 year old John is at a pivotal point with his long-time girlfriend Lori. Rather than properly committing, John finds himself pulled back by the distraction of Ted and his crazy antics.

McFarlane does a great job of managing his cast, who all give very good performances, and allows the audience easy access to this world through some clever yet simple plot points, like using a montage of Ted’s rise to fame after the world discovers that a stuffed bear has really come to life, and all questions about what the limits of that magic are answered during the course of the film.

I initially thought Ted would just be another third-wheel story with jokes thrown in, but it turned out to be so much more than that, with a wide range of humour, emotional turns and a fair bit of action thrown in.

Seth’s time on Family Guy is evident with cast members Mila Kunis (Meg), Alex Borstein (Lois) and Warburton (Joe) all on screen, but also his use of references, cameos and anthropomorphism. Flash Gordon takes centre stage here as John and Ted’s childhood favourite, but there are obvious points to Star Wars, Airplane and Indiana Jones. Sam Jones, Tom Skerritt, Ryan Reynolds and Norah Jones all make appearances, showing McFarlane’s work has definitely pulled plenty of attention.

 

Brian (the talking dog from Family Guy) is a clear comparison for Ted. As in the late night animation you’ll see the duality of Ted as both a person and a stuffed animal balanced, like comments on his lack of genitalia.

Ted is created primarily through motion capture technology with McFarlane himself used as reference. Overall the quality of the CG is really very good, and the interactions between Ted and other characters are completely believable.

As you’d expect Ted doesn’t take itself too seriously, but does show off what McFarlane is capable of.

With a wide range of humour, emotional turns and a fair bit of action thrown in, Ted is very funny and well worth a watch if you’re a fan of any of McFarlane’s work.

 

8.5/10.

The Dark Knight Rises

This film is, as many have called it, the most anticipated and franchise dependant feature since Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom menace, and rightly so. Christopher Nolan and his excellent team have brought to life an immense vision of the superhero created by Bob Kane in both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, both being hits with critics and fans alike.

Nolan has become one of the best new directors of our times and his army of followers believe he can deliver a brilliant end to his Batman saga.

I can assure you, he has.

Starring Christian Bale as the returning Batman/Bruce Wayne, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (A.K.A. Catwoman) and Gary Oldman as Commissioner James Gordon, eight long years have passed since the end of The Dark Knight. With Batman forced into exile due to taking responsibility for the actions of Harvey Dent, no one has seen him since the night the aspiring district attorney died. The passing of the Dent Act has however helped Gordon to clean up the streets of the city of Gotham and bring about a time of peace without need for the Batman. Unfortunately Bane and his crew hope to spoil that on a huge mission to wreak havoc on Gotham, and Bruce Wayne must don the cape and cowl once again to restore the balance.

Bale gets to do a lot more than growl, returning more to Batman Begins than The Dark Knight as we get to see much more of Bruce Wayne, who goes through almost as much building as in Batman Begins. We get to watch the tired and aging former billionaire pushed back out into the world and then realise that you don’t get to win by just being Batman. His whole ideology has to be reworked, and, in the words of the immortal Ra’s Al Ghul, becomes “more than just a man… a legend”.

Many people had worries whether Anne Hathaway, one of the only major actors new to working with Nolan, would be able to do Selina Kyle (the nearest we get to ‘Catwoman’ is newspaper headlines) justice, but I can assure you she is a great fit, and far more sultry than I imagined she would be. She is, as in the comics, not exactly trustworthy, and is out to gain the spoils of the rich now feeling more protected thanks to Gordon. She is skilled and deadly, and gets to kick plenty of butt alongside Batman.

Jim Gordon, having got to the top of Gotham’s police department, is man who has sacrificed so much for justice. He has able to pull the city out of the ground and gained the trust of every officer in the service. However when Bane strikes, Gordon has to out on his own again and round up as much help as possible for Batman in an attempt to stop Bane’s plan.

And what a plan it is. Tom Hardy is pretty damn scary as Bane, a mercenary with a plan of his own. Concerns that he is hard to understand through his mask are justified at points, but mostly he is very coherent, although still raspy and metallic. In The Dark Knight we saw the Joker causing fear and chaos to break the city, but this time Bane is far more clinical. He is set on one goal and has a master plan that he implements step by step. He forces the caped crusader to his limits, making him crawl out of the pit of his broken spirit, and maybe that may not be enough.

Besides the main cast there are two that stand out: Joseph Gordon-Levitt is John Blake, a “hot-head” cop Gordon naturally takes under his wing, who becomes another Batman can trust, and Marion Cotillard, who plays Miranda Tate, new board member at Wayne Enterprises and potential love interest for Bruce Wayne.

This film is on a scale not seen since the black and white epics of yesteryear. Nolan’s hankering to create as much of the bigger scenes without relying on visual effects really pulls off with hundreds of extras, cars, and explosions you feel rumble through your skin.

The stakes here are well and truly raised as Bane executes each step of his deadly plot with precision. As usual the superb cover-up by Nolan and everyone involved has stopped almost every essential element from reaching the outside world, and so it is hard to say much without spoilers on every level. I will say that some of the rumours are true, some are half true.

Though this end for Batman is not without its faults, there are very few and therefore few people responsible for making them. The cast, new and old, are superb and the action is brilliant and awe inspiring. Though some plot points are a little predictable there are plenty of twisting moments to make up for them. The only let down was one climactic effects shot (again, trying to remain spoiler free) where after the scale of everything else, something that big seemed like it should have had more weight behind it.

Overall, a truly brilliant piece of cinema, and will please both comic book fans and film lovers alike. An extraordinarily written, directed, acted and every-other-category film, a triumph of vision and probably the best superhero film we’ll get in a long while.

A Must-See. 9.5/10.

Battle Royale (Director's Cut)

Directed by Kinji Fukasaku and based on the novel of the same name, Battle Royale is a tense and gripping action thriller, with some horror elements thrown in for good measure.

In alternate reality Japan at the beginning of the millennium, the country has virtually collapsed; unemployment is at an all-time high and the youth of the nation is out of control, schools and teachers desperate and without hope.

The Battle Royale Act is established as a last resort, passed by the government in hope it will reign in the teenagers through example and fear. The ‘battle’ itself is between a class of teens, shipped against their will to an evacuated island where they are forced to kill one another until only one remains, and if a winner is not determined after three days, they all die.

The hook of this film is the characters, how they are developed and how they meet their ends, what drives them to keep together as friends or kill their former classmates without hesitation. There are ‘good’ guys and ‘bad’ guys, messed up kids from all walks of life. Yes, it hits all the clichés, but these are high school kids. Fukasaku is excellent at keeping us tense and as paranoid as the students, and keeps our concentration on a few key groups throughout, adding each one after our main characters meet them. One group tries not to give in to this sick game whilst one plots a way to overthrow the system, others just try to stick together and last as long as they can. The main cast do a damn good job for their age, especially with the extreme alien concept. Unfortunately whilst one of the ‘bad’ guys (the class’s former teacher who oversees at least this round of student massacring) is a great character with as many problems as any of the students, the other (a student who willingly signed up to be part of the battle) is completely devoid of any explained motive.

The addition of the ‘kill screen’ where we see the names and student numbers of those who have just died keeps us locked in and gives us a sense of scale and focus that we are all too often deprived of in larger scale full-on action affairs.

 

The effects aren’t great to look at, and with such a focus on the visceral and gory deaths (due to the randomly assigned ‘weapons’) I did expect more. It’s also pretty hard to believe a teenage girl of any origin could still be alive and kicking after taking half a dozen bullets to the chest. I would also have liked to see a more present depiction of the need to avoid the danger zones; any student caught in these areas at certain times will be killed instantly.

Battle Royale carries a powerful message about what people are capable of when pushed to the brink; individually, as groups and a society. Though a lot of issues are left undeveloped or neglected (the state of the country as a whole, what event triggered the government to consider the law etc.) and a very odd ‘twist’ that should have been dealt with better.

Battle Royale is an interesting movie with message and action, and though there are plenty of undeveloped ideas I commend both writer and director on keeping focus on the characters and how human/inhuman they are.

Definitely worth a watch. 7.5/10.