CicoNut

We are now living in an era where we can look forward to a new ‘Star Wars’ movie each year. And luckily for us, the two Disney have released so far are amazing. While ‘The Force Awakens’ was light-hearted like the original, ‘Rogue One’ takes a darker turn, with a morally ambiguous lead cast and a more realistic war-like feel. The movie follows the story of Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), the daughter of an Imperial Scientist, who is unwillingly recruited by the Rebel Alliance to find her father and stop the Empire from unleashing their new planet-killer onto the galaxy. However, as her journey continues, she discovers the Rebel Alliance isn’t always quite as heroic as we would like to believe. One of the things that makes Rogue One great is that it isn’t black and white. While the Empire is still clearly evil, the Rebel Alliance is also shown to not always make the right choices, and one quote that sums this up pretty well is when Jyn tells Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) “You might as well be a Storm Trooper.” One thing that surprised me about this movie was just how great some of the performances were. Two actors I think people will be talking about are Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso and Alan Tudyk as K-2SO (the film’s main source of comic relief). While Tudyk provides plenty of laughs, Jones portrays her character’s strengths and flaws perfectly. All right all done here bye-bye! … Oh wait. I forgot about the best part of the movie – Darth Vader. Not since ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ have we seen Vader this merciless and evil. His screen time is limited, but extremely powerful and satisfying (particularly the absolutely badass ending). Rogue One is absolutely one of the best ‘Star Wars’ movies yet, with a dark story and a great cast of characters. The force is strong with this one!

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Okay, so Kubo is pretty weird – but in the best of ways. After all, what other movie have you seen that stars a magical boy, a monkey and a beetle samurai? The odds that you have come across this concept before is pretty unlikely. The movie is basically about a powerful young boy named Kubo (Art Parkinson) who embarks on a journey with his guardian, a.k.a. Monkey (Charlize Theron) and an amnesiac samurai-beetle (Matthew McConaughey) to find magic armour when his grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes) comes after him to convert him to the ‘dark side’, so to speak. And if that wasn’t already enough of an all-star cast, Rooney Mara voices Kubo’s two aunts, who are powerful and scary witches, both of who are excellently animated and acted. A strong link in this movie is the beautiful animation, which blends origami and stop-motion animation, which works surprisingly well. Some out-of-place CGI sticks out like a sore thumb, but luckily it is scarcely used. Kubo and the Two Strings is easily Laika’s best movie to date, with stunning animation, excellent voiceover work and one of the most original stories in recent memory.

Simply put, Pete’s Dragon is wonderful. It has a great cast, a beautifully animated dragon and great direction and storytelling. It completely justifies Disney’s schedule of live-action remakes of beloved classics. Robert Redford and Bryce Dallas Howard are excellent in their respective roles, and Oaks Fegley does a good job as Pete, too. The dragon, as I mentioned above, is spectacularly animated and believable. And it’s not just a big, fire-breathing monster, but has a whole personality and acts almost like a dog. In other words, it is made real and given just as much character as the human cast in the movie. Considering the original 70s movie was poorly received and quickly forgotten, director David Lowery and screenwriter Toby Halbrooks were able to change pretty much every plot detail, from Pete’s origins to where he ends up in the end. And, thankfully, they do a much better job second time around, adding much more emotional depth to the story and really making the audience care about the characters. Pete’s Dragon was a pleasant surprise and one of this year’s best movies. It boasts a stunning cast, top-notch animation and is Disney’s best remake in recent memory.

When the first trailer dropped for Suicide Squad, it looked like DC were making their very own version of Guardians of the Galaxy, with a quippy band of thieves and killers being sent on a mission to defeat a world-destroying threat. This led us to believe the movie would be as fun and enjoyable as Guardians. Unfortunately, we were wrong, as the finished product is the messiest, most inconsistent and poorly paced DCEU movie yet. I’ll start with my two major issues with this movie, which are tone and pacing. The movie goes from being dark and gritty to being fun and colourful, and feels like two completely different versions of the same movie mashed into one. The first trailer was even a lot darker then the ones to come, with a more sinister feel, while the second and third trailers were bright, colourful, and more like Guardians of the Galaxy. So you can tell DC weren’t sure which to go for, so to please both audiences they crammed both versions into one, which was a huge mistake. And as for pacing, this movie tries to tell about five different stories at once, from the Joker-Harley dynamic to Deadshot’s relationship with his daughter to the Squad’s mission itself. The movie goes from randomly inserted flashbacks to over-the-top action sequences to pop-song montages, while also trying to introduce us to all the characters and what crimes they’ve committed and all their personal vendettas, and so on. For instance, the character of Katana has a sword that traps the souls pf her victims, and her husband is imprisoned in it because her enemies killed him with it. I mean, WTF?! That’s an entire movie worth of material Warner Bros. could have made, but instead crammed it into a movie alongside the Joker-Harley dynamic, Rick Flag’s romance with Enchantress, Deadshot’s vendetta with Batman, and so many more unnecessary side-stories. And if a movie is all over the place like that, I can’t enjoy it and it ruins the film-going experience for me. There are also too many conveniences in the plot, and details the studio gloss over, which just frustrates me even more. And now, before I get into what I like about this movie, I just have to say a few words about Enchantress and the Joker. Enchantress can be grouped up with all those disposable Marvel villains in the sense that she is a forgettable, one-dimensional threat who can be disposed of after one movie. Cara Delevigne’s performance was awful, as she danced in front of a massive beam of energy shooting into the sky (seriously, how many times have we seen that in superhero movies?) with a ridiculous booming voice. And her brother was just the most one-dimensional, poorly rendered CGI monstrosity in recent memory. And as for the Joker, Jared Leto destroyed what the Joker stands for. Instead of wanting chaos and carnage, this Joker is all about bling and power. It didn’t help that he had nothing to do with the movie, and could have been cut out without effecting the movie at all. The fact that this is our Joker for the next many years makes me lose faith in DC. But now that I’ve gotten the cons out of the way, may I just say that the only two things about this movie that make it watchable are Margot Robbie and Will Smith as Harley Quinn and Deadshot respectively. These characters were the only two DC bothered to flesh out, with the best performances and scenes. Viola Davis also did a good job as Amanda Waller, but she wasn’t in enough of the movie as I would have liked. Suicide Squad is the worst movie in the DCEU to date, with a mostly forgettable cast of characters, an inconsistent tone and an even worse structure than Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Bourne is back after a nine-year break, but is that necessarily a good thing? Not that Damon and Greengrass’s return isn’t welcome – it most certainly is – but after the thrilling, pulsating and well-written original trilogy (The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, The Bourne Ultimatum), this instalment feels like a money-grab, as it is not only unnecessary, but Bourne’s situation is actually made worse and he ends up in a worse position at the end than he was at the beginning (Nicky Parsons is dead and the CIA are after him once again). The film is also lacking in those small, clever moments in the original trilogy where Bourne might use his intelligence to set a trap for incoming CIA agents or throw assets off his trail. For instance, in The Bourne Supremacy, after killing a former Treadstone agent, Jason opens the gas connection and puts a magazine into the toaster, so that when the magazine catches fire, the house will explode. Or when in ‘Ultimatum’, he calls the local police and tells them he hears gunfire, so that when the CIA come for him, they will be intercepted by the cops. Such moments are not in Jason Bourne, which takes away what makes Jason Bourne Jason Bourne. I guess this is all part of the fact that Tony Gilroy has not come back to write the movie, which is the biggest problem. However, these cons aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and the performances were great. Matt Damon was as good as he’s ever been in a ‘Bourne’ movie, and Alicia Vikander was a good, strong new character who’s blank, expressionless face made her character difficult to read. Tommy Lee Jones delivered the good, no-nonsense type performance we’ve come to expect from ‘Bourne’ antagonists. Julia Stiles was good for how much of it she was in, before she was killed off in a reenactment of ‘Supremacy’s opening. Speaking of the opening, the section in Greece was an astonishing achievement for any action movie, with pulsating chase scenes and well-choreographed action. The only issue was there were literally arrows pointing the asset in Bourne’s direction, which slightly undermined the tension in those moments. Jason Bourne has some thrilling action sequences and the cast delivers strong performances, which proves that even a second-rate ‘Bourne’ movie is better than most action flicks nowadays.