Film review: 21 JUMP STREET

Poster design by Bemis Belkind

I perhaps fall into a strange demographic with regards to 21 Jump Street: I wasn't old enough to watch the show when it first came out but I am not so old I don't remember high school - all of 12 years ago.

The film adaptation 21 Jump Street is a film with a very knowing, self-aware script. There are more than a few little jabs at the entire concept behind re-invigorating the "franchise" with a remake of the TV show (more of an "in-universe" cinematic sequel) and the studio culture that encourages it. It is also a film very aware of the cliches of the cop-action genre and, like Hot Fuzz before it, plays up to them and plays them up.

From a script by Jonah Hill and Michael Bacall (the actor/writer on something of a hot streak lately) this incarnation finds Jonah Hill's Schmidt and Channing Tatum's Jenko as guys on opposite ends of the high-school spectrum. However, years after high-school, when they find themselves both signing up for the same police academy intake they become fast friends: Schmdit, the chubby brain helping Jenko with his tests and Jenko, the handsome but dim jock type, training Schmidt up for the physical side of things.

Due to, frankly, their own damn ineptness at anything approaching actual police work they find themselves swiftly bounced to the newly re-opened undercover operation at the eponymous address. There's a new drug doing the rounds at one of the local high-schools and Schmdit & Jenko must assume new identities and infiltrate the dealers and find the source.

But hey, high-school culture has moved on significantly since these two were last wandering the hallways. And due to Jenko's well-meaning stupidity theses two find themselves in the wrong identities: Jenko is hanging with the science geeks, while Schmidt finds himself, for the first time in his life, with the cool kids. Hilarity, explosions and tests on the bonds of friendship ensue.

Jonah Hill is in his known and recognised Jonah Hill mode, his comedy schtick now perhaps approaching Seth Rogen levels of saturation and awareness. More of a surprise is Channing Tatum, who has bounced around a number of attempts to really break out; from self important dancing movies to teary romantic drama, smaller character focussed roles and big silly fun action flicks. He brings a real sweetness to the dumb-jock Jenko, and an insecurity that really fuels his need to fit in and be 'cool'.

The film is directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, making 21 Jump Street another recent instance of animation directors making the transition to live action. These are the two behind one the most gloriously demented animated films of recent memory, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs and they bring that sense of comedic timing and a pretty good, if not outstanding, eye for action. In fact, a fair amount (and more than really necessary) of the action scenes are filled with strange, slightly unfinished looking CG effects. I don't know if the pair just felt more comfortable working in the computer when it came to these moments but they weren't really necessary; just about every instance could have easily been accomplished in camera.
21 Jump Street certainly doesn't re-invent the wheel when it comes to bromances, buddy comedies or cop-action films but then, it doesn't ever set out to. It is a film blessed with a script that knows exactly what it is, and with a couple of wisecracks and jokes that help elevate it above what it otherwise would have been.  

Film review: JOHN CARTER

From Mondo Tees, by JC Richard:
vastly superior to any of the official work

John Carter is a big-budget science-fiction adventure film, from a celebrated animation director branching out into live-action and based on a popular series of pulp novels first published over 100 years ago. And to top it all of, the series of novels have been so influential on pop culture over that last century or so, almost every beat of the story and every character detail has been re-appropriated by other filmmakers.

Andrew Stanton, director of Pixar classics Finding Nemo and WALL.E, had his work cut for himself then, bringing this long gestating passion project to the big screen. But as Brad Bird recently proved with Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, animation directors can make the successful leap to live-action. And so, despite a lacklustre marketing campaign and numerous critics condemning before it had even been released, I was looking forward to John Carter; especially to see if this proto-science-fiction tale stacked up.

The story finds ex-Confederate soldier John Carter (Taylor Kitsch) on the run from, well, damn near everyone. He's a complex man of conflicting characteristics:  a man weary of war who doesn't shy away from throwing himself into a fight. He is quickly established as a hurt, ornery man with a crafty intelligence and, while taking refuge in a cave lined with gold, finds himself miraculously and quite accidentally transported to Mars. The planet is known as Barsoom by it's, largely humanoid, inhabitants who are themselves all caught up in a planet-wide civil war: the evil, resource devouring Zodangans fighting the last outpost of Helium. Caught up on the sidelines are the Tharks - a harsher, more primitive race of 8-feet tall green-skinned, be-tusked, four-armed aliens.

It is a tribe of Tharks, and their leader the kinder, more thoughtful Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe), who first discover Carter on Mars. And thanks to the lower gravity on Mars/Barsoom Carter is gifted with vastly increased strength, able to leap huge distances in a single bound - he is very much a proto-Superman.

The leader of the Zodangans, Sab Than (Dominic West) is gifted with an ultimate weapon by the shady and manipulative Matai Shang (Mark Strong) - a member of an incredibly powerful godlike beings. He decimates the Heliumite forces, but offers to cease all hostilities if the Princess of Helium, Deja Thoris (Lynn Collins) consents to marry him. She runs and Carter (very literally) leaps to her rescue. Carter is a wrinkle in the plans of Matai Shang and finds himself becoming more and more involved with the world and war of Barsoom.

Yes, there is a lot of heavy plot mechanics and silly sci-fi names going on here. But there is also a fully conceived and constructed world. Obviously there is a vast amount of original material that Stanton and fellow script-writers Mark Andrews and Michael Chabon have been able to pull from to create this world. But it was these details, these constructions, that made me happy to go along for the ride; I never felt like the filmmakers were talking down to their audience.

And Lynn Collins' Deja Thoris - the Princess of Mars of the original story's title - is the strongest female character in science-fiction since Princess Leia and Ellen Ripley. In fact, it isn't difficult to see how much the character influenced Lucas' creation of Leia. Deja Thoris is strong, smart (she's not only a scientist but the lead scientist), an ass-kicking warrior who throws herself into the fray and who carries herself with an effortless sex appeal. Collins absolutely invests herself in the role, delivering even the most ridiculous sounding sci-fi dialogue with heart. She is a true bright spot in the film; offering heart, smarts and sex appeal.

Stanton proves himself no slouch in the action department. One scene in particular is a remarkable stand-out; Carter throws himself into a rampaging band of Tharks and becomes a one-man rampage. Stanton uses the scene to reveal the broken heart of the character and not just as an excuse to show-off some cool lookin' shit.

John Carter is hardly a revelation of a film or even a break-away hit; it has it's shaky moments, when you feel like it hasn't quite been carried off. But it certainly isn't the boring stinker a lot of people are proclaiming it to be. There's crazy aliens, a genuinely cute six-legged dog sidekick, a beautiful princess, a reticent hero and delicate solar powered ships that sail through the sky. The plot workings get a bit intricate and complicated but John Carter, overall, works. 

Film review: THE DESCENDANTS

Alexander Payne has been gone awhile after his award-winning Sideways. But thankfully, after an absence from cinema screens of 7 or so years he returns with George Clooney and Hawaii.

Clooney is Matt King, a lawyer whose family owns a large swathe of land on one of the islands.  The films begins with King's wife Elizabeth recently in a coma, seemingly lifeless. King, the back-up parent, must struggle to re-connect and guide his two young daughters while at the same time deciding what to do with the family's land. The land is held in trust, with King the sole trustee. However, the laws governing ongoing trusts are due to change and King & the cousins must decide who to sell their large swathe of untouched Hawaiian land to. It's a fair amount for any one person to juggle, and things are given an extra frisson when it is revealed to King that Elizabeth, prior to her vegetable-like state, had been having an affair.

Payne gives us a view of Hawaii not generally seen on screen. Past the beach-set poster and beach-casual attire of everyone, the film opens on life in downtown. Hawaii has cities just like anywhere else in the States; people struggle, people suffer and people die. There is no surfing here; this is no holiday in Hawaii to forget Sarah Marshall.

Instead King struggles to remember; to remember what his marriage was and not what he wanted it to be, to be remember how to talk to his daughters, to remember why his family are trustees of virgin, undeveloped Hawaiian land. For all those highly-charged emotions, there is a breath of comedy (often dark) that winds its way through the film. It isn't there to put the audience at a distance, but instead serves to humanise the events and the characters

There is a noticeable thematic strand that runs through all of Payne's films so far, in way or another: that of males confronting their own mortality (and generally fairly weak or weak-willed men). Whether it's Matthew Broderick's high-school teacher attempting to overcome Reese Witherspoon's over-achieving class presidential contender; Jack Nicholson's recently retired Schmidt taking off on a road-trip after a lifetime of safe simplicity or Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church carousing, drinking and navel-gazing around Californian vineyards. That continues, of course, in The Descendants with Clooney's King forced to confront the death of his marriage, and soon, the death of his wife.

There is not much here in the way of surprises, in that you are never really shocked by any character's reaction to an event or other character. But that is, in part, down to Payne's excellent character illustration and development; you find yourself unsurprised at their decisions because you get such a good feel for who these characters are. Clooney as the patriarch struggling to keep everything from his family to himself together has earned a number of critical plaudits already. And he is excellent, dialling down the usual "gorgeous George" charm to present someone smaller, a little broken. More human. Equally impressive is Shailene Woodley as King's eldest daughter, Alex. Alex is a slightly wayward teen, who has fought with her mother mainly because they are so similar. She has to help King with a lot of the heavy lifting, in looking out for youngest daughter Scottie and helping dad with tracking down the man who was sleeping with Elizabeth. There's a lot of conflicting emotions she has to deal with, a lot that has to be kept below the surface while she is outwardly outraged, and Woodley succeeds with the challenge.

The Descendants is a film I almost feel we're seeing less and less of: an intelligent, honest and relatable drama with imperfect, human characters. It can sometime seem we are bombarded with spectacle, whether it be blockbusters or awards-chasers, and so it is refreshing to have a film so seemingly intimate but with a lot to say.