Odeon - Colchester 101

The Nice Guys

1st June 2016colchester101

No sooner had 101’s movie reviewer Andy Oliver submitted his review of Warcraft: The Beginning then his was straight back to the town’s Odeon cinema to watch The Nice Guys for you.

Nobody does action, character and snappy, laugh out loud dialogue quite like writer/director Shane Black. His scripts are sharp, cynical, often brutal, often prone to misanthropy, always quotable and always hugely enjoyable. His characters are damaged, fast-talking and, more often than not, absolute scumbags. Black made his name as writer of the classic Mel Gibson action vehicle, Lethal Weapon and, along with all three sequels went on to script The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and The Monster Squad before graduating onto the rather excellent Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Iron Man 3 as writer/director. The Nice Guys might not be a revolutionary departure from Black’s previous work, or bring anything sparklingly inventive or new to the screen, but it’s difficult to care when you’re presented with something this damned enjoyable.

Set in an asphyxiated 1970’s Los Angeles and revolving around a labyrinthine plot that wouldn’t seem out of place in an Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen novel, The Nice Guys is a call-back to a time we still had buddy movies, a time before Hollywood invented “Bromance”. Private investigator Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a terrible person, he swindles old ladies and drinks so much that he has to have his 12-year old daughter drive him around town. When he accepts a case to find a missing girl it brings him into contact with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), a big hearted barrel of a man who makes his point with his fists and breaks limbs the way most of us break sweat: with little conscious effort. The problem is that Healy is in the business of helping the girl stay missing.

But when Healy decides that the girl shouldn’t remain hidden he teams up with March and his daughter, Holly (Angourie Rice) to discover why a porno film made by high-school environmentalists is so important to Detroit car manufacturers, and why so many bodies are dropping around them and bullets flying in their general direction.

Gosling and Crowe work amazingly well together and – this is going to sound a little weird, I admit – there’s more than a touch of Abbott and Costello about their double act: Crowe in charge and constantly exasperated, Gosling as the fall guy who’s never quite sure what’s going on. I can honestly say that I have never enjoyed the two of them as much I did here, Crowe’s earnest, lumbering resoluteness is stripped away and he’s (almost) likeable as Healy and Gosling delivers a whole truckload of goofy, manic charm in lieu of his usual brooding seriousness. Healy and March are riffs on the classic pulp noir anti-heroes of post-war “Men’s” novels, damaged individuals who might just stumble upon redemption even though they were never looking for it; amoral idiots who get a taste of doing the right thing and it doesn’t taste as bad as they thought it would.

So it is left to Angourie Rice as 12-year old world-weary Holly to be the moral centre of the movie. Like a Nancy Drew who grew up too fast, Holly sneaks into porn parties and confronts hitmen, she is the hero her father probably once dreamt he would be and the character Healy knows he possibly could be if he wanted to. Rice is great. No, not great, Rice is really, really great. Gosling and Crowe are bringing their A-game to The Nice Guys, Rice is absolutely knocking it out of the park.

Crowe’s LA Confidential co-star Kim Basinger turns up as the missing girl’s mother and Matt Bomer plays the big bad in typical Shane Black style (think Gary Busey in Lethal Weapon), full of barely restrained megalomania and psychopathy. They’re both great but, let’s be honest, they’re most definitely not the reason you’re watching this movie.

There’s a couple of scenes that hang around a touch too long and a dream sequence featuring a talking bee that could easily have been trimmed out, but on the whole it does exactly what it sets out to do and that is to entertain. It’s sleazy, amoral, hilarious and moves at such a cracking pace that you really don’t care that the plot seems to make little sense or even work. The Nice Guys is a great night out at the cinema and a movie that I’ll enjoy returning to again and again, you probably will as well.

Andy Oliver

Warcraft: The Beginning

29th May 2016colchester101

Once again our intrepid movie reviewer Andy Oliver brings you his take on the latest release at Colchester’s Odeon cinema. This time it’s the turn of Warcraft: The Beginning

There are people in the world that will absolutely adore director Duncan Jones’ Warcraft: The Beginning, a fantasy epic based on the best-selling video game, World of Warcraft, hard-core fans of which will revel in seeing the in-game world brought to cgi-rendered life, the rest of us may struggle to understand what on Earth that appeal may be, though. Whilst not being an out-and-out awful film, it’s certainly colourful and diverting enough, Warcraft is as lumbering and clumsy as the film’s ten-foot tall Orc protagonists and there’s more than a whiff of Disney’s epic-fail John Carter about it.

Set in the world of Azeroth, a medieval fantasy realm pulled wholesale from the minds of a million Dungeons and Dragons players, Warcraft centres around a clash-of-worlds plot device as Orcs, fleeing their dying home-world, come into conflict with the world of man. The portal through which the Orcs escape is powered by the dark magic of sorcerer, Gul’dan (Daniel Wu) and relies on human souls to keep it open. Learning that many of his fortresses have fallen to a new threat, the king of Stormwind (Dominic Cooper) Sends Commander Lothar (Travis Fimmel), Guardian Medivh (Ben Foster) and novice magician, Khadgar (Ben Schnetzer) to investigate. Meanwhile, Orc chieftain Durotan (Toby Kebbell) is beginning to suspect that Gul’dan’s magic may be responsible for the death of their home-world.

Whether Warcraft’s world building works or not for you will depend a lot on your experience with the game, I only ever dipped a toe in and, therefore, I found myself scratching my head for much of the film’s opening scenes. Jones is not aiming for the great fantasy epics like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones with his movie, rather Warcraft is more Conan the Destroyer or The Beastmaster in all their goofy glory. Coming from a background of smaller, character-led films (Moon and Source Code), this is his first foray into blockbuster epic territory and, unfortunately, it shows, the action and battle set-pieces feel at times confusing and blurred and the stakes never feel like they are escalating as it moves forward.

With its mixture of cgi and real characters the acting tends to lack consistency, some of the tones and choices seeming occasionally at odds with the narrative and attempted feel of the movie. The cgi characters often feel more emotionally realised than the hammy, at times over the top and, at times, annoyingly quirky performances of the human actors.

Warcraft: The Beginning is one of those rainy day kind of movies that, I suspect, people will opt for because there’s nothing else on. It’s the kind of film that many people will pick up in a three-for-two deal on dvd, watch once or twice and then leave on the shelf to gather dust next to John Carter and Wild, Wild West.

Andy Oliver

The Jungle Book

17th April 2016colchester101

Colchester 101’s very own movie critic Andy Oliver has taken himself along to the town’s Odeon cinema to see Jon Favreau’s live-action/computer-animated fantasy adventure The Jungle Book to bring you this review. We suspect he rather liked it!

The Jungle Book (BBFC PG)

For myself and many people of my generation – post-baby boomer/pre-generation X – Disney’s animated classic, The Jungle Book, holds a very special place in our hearts. For many of us it would have been one of our first visits to the cinema and the continually played soundtrack (the Frozen of its day) would have driven many a parent to distraction. With the advent of home video and streaming media The Jungle Book has become an all-timer, one of the most enduring and beloved movies for children of all ages and many will know the songs (written by Richard and Robert Sherman with the exception of the Oscar nominated The Bare Necessities, written by Terry Gilkyson) without ever having seen the movie. The voices of Phil Harris (Baloo), Sebastian Cabot (Bagheera), jazz man Louie Prima (King Louie) and menacingly bass upper-class of George Sanders (Shere Khan) are as familiar to us as many of our own family. It is a movie that has not only stood the test of time but straddled decades; is passed on to subsequent generations like some cherished and beloved heirloom and lights the faces of all who see it (I defy anyone to watch it and still feel morose or miserable after its enchanting 89 minutes are over); and holds a special place in the history of Disney (it was the last project Walt Disney took charge of). So why, one wonders, would that same studio risk millions of dollars on a flashy new version of Rudyard Kipling’s famous story when it is so much more cost effective just to live off the back of one of its classics? And is it possible to create something new and wondrous from a tale everyone knows and loves?

It is almost impossible to take your seat for director John Favreau’s new adaptation of The Jungle Book without some feelings of trepidation, the feeling that, somehow, this new version will sully your memories and muddy the reputation of one of your first loves. Let me put your fears to rest straight away: The Jungle Book is an absolute joy, a theatrical experience that adds to, rather than subtracts from, your love of the animated classic. It’s like discovering a new perspective of an old friend that makes you realise how deep and rich that person is in ways you’d never thought about before. And, believe me, no one is happier than myself to report this.

In case you didn’t know the story (unlikely), The Jungle Book tells of the adventures of a young boy, Mowgli (played with genuine charm and boyish intelligence by newcomer Neel Sethi) abandoned in the jungles of India, rescued by the avuncular panther, Bagheera (voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley) and raised by a wolf pack led by Akela (Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito) and his mate, Raksha (12 Years A Slave Oscar winner, Lupita Nyong’o). When the safety of the pack is threatened by the arrival of the damaged and vengeful tiger, Shere Khan (Idris Elba), it is decided that Mowgli should be returned to his own kind. So begins a journey in which the man-cub will meet such diverse and occasionally dangerous characters as the snake, Kaa (voiced here as exotically seductive by Scarlett Johansson rather than the comically sibilant Sterling Holloway), the power hungry King Louie (a giant Orangutan, or rather Gigantopithecus(?), played with Goodfella guile by Christopher Walken) and the blissfully mellow Sloth Bear, Baloo (a perfectly cast Bill Murray). There’s also a wonderful voice cameo by the recently deceased and much missed comedian, Garry Shandling as a porcupine with obvious obsessive compulsive desires.

Jon Favreau brings fun, wonder, thrills and joy to the table and it’s easy to see why the director of Elf and Iron Man was hired, there are the best elements of both in The Jungle Book. Favreau understands not only that this should be a cinematic event but, also, a children’s tale that even the oldest child will find touches their heart. This could have been a horrible mis-step by trying to bring the movie up to date with darker, more adult themes and action (I’m looking at you, Batman V Superman), but The Jungle Book understands the difference between adventure and action. The set pieces are incredible, such as Mowgli’s escape from Shere Khan during a water buffalo stampede and the climactic forest fire showdown, but there are quiet moments and sequences full of fun and warm humour that stick in the mind just as well.

The script (by Justin Marks) is deceptively simple, what appears to be a straightforward adventure story contains deep and complex themes and motivations especially when it comes to the villains. Railing against those story beats and characters that are dropped from the animated version, such as the “Scouser” vultures, would be petty when there is so much great stuff added such as the Water Truce and the primal, almost force-of-nature significance of the elephants. The Jungle Book breaks the constraints of being a word-for-word remake which allows it to breath freely and this is one of its many strengths.

Yes, there are a few scary and intense scenes that may not be suitable for pre-school children but that’s a judgement call parents should make, obviously many parents will know better than I what upsets their kids, just a nudge in case your little ones are a touch sensitive.

At times it is hard to believe that the entire film was shot in a warehouse somewhere in Los Angeles and that those aren’t real and really dangerous animals, such is the craftsmanship and technical know-how on show. It’s a beautiful, beautiful film and everything on show is a feast for the eyes and ears. The animals are most definitely animals, rather than anthropomorphised caricatures, they move and behave exactly as animals (despite the fact that they talk, obviously) and take the photo-realism of Life of Pi to the next level. Every one of them is there to move the story forward rather than to dryly showcase the technical know-how of the animators.

The Jungle Book is a theatrical experience writ large and you’ll want to see it on the largest and best screen available, you don’t want to be watching on your telly in six month’s-time wishing you’d gone to the cinema (I also wonder if the downscaling of the experience will reveal the film’s episodic nature to its detriment). Also, if you choose to watch in 3-D (a tricksy, gimmicky format I’m usually opposed to except for, maybe, Gravity) you’ll experience an incredible depth of field and beauty to the digitally created landscapes rather than the usual stick-poking gags and things flying out of the screen. You’re not looking at a jungle, you’re in a jungle.

If you only visit the cinema once this year, make sure you spend your hard-earned sheckles wisely and go see The Jungle Book. Forget about your worries and your strife.

Andy Oliver

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice

26th March 2016colchester101

Batman Vs Superman: Dawn of Justice (BBFC 12A)

If you are planning a trip to Colchester’s Odeon cinema to see Zach Snyder’s much anticipated clash of the superheroes then you’ll want to read Colchester 101’s very own resident reviewer Andy Oliver’s thoughts first.

Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (hereafter referred to as BvS, for the sake of brevity AND because I really hate that Dawn of Justice coda) is a broken movie. It just doesn’t work. It’s a member of that movie club that makes bazillions of dollars because of their subject matter and not because they’re any good (see Jurassic World, pretty much all of the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and ALL of the Transformers movies).

BvS sits awkwardly as a sequel because it treats Man of Steel as almost a prologue to the main story arc that this is trying to set up (non-comic book fans may not understand that the “Justice” bit of the title refers to a superhero team: Justice League of America*). So, although you don’t necessarily have had to have seen Man of Steel, BvS assumes you did.

BvS kicks off with a flashback to Man of Steel’s climactic battle that all but destroyed the centre of Metropolis, but this time we are watching it from ground level, from the perspective of the citizenry demoted to merely collateral damage. More specifically we follow Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) as he races to evacuate his employees from the Wayne Enterprises Building that stands amidst the super-powered carnage. It is this event that convinces Wayne that Superman (Henry Cavill) is a threat to humanity, not its saviour and that a world without Superman would be a safer place for hard working, ordinary people and so begins to plan (as his alter ego, Batman) to take the last son of Krypton out of the picture.

Skip to eighteen months later and whilst Batman is looking for a way to take Superman down, Clark Kent (Superman’s alter ego) in his capacity as a reporter for The Daily Planet is trying to launch a campaign against The Dark Knight whom he sees as an overly violent vigilante with no regard for the law.

Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) is also planning to destroy Superman, first by means of a lump of Kryptonite and then by reincarnating General Zod; there are senate hearings about bringing Superman under Government control that all come to hinge on a wheelchair and a jar or pee (I kid you not); a mysterious woman seems to be keeping tabs on Batman; Lois Lane (Amy Adams) keeps getting herself into situations only Superman can save her from and there’s a whole bunch of dream sequences that may or may not be some sort of reality in about fifteen movies’ time.

This all sets the scene for the showdown that the “Vs.” in the title alludes to, but you’ll have to wait about two gruelling hours of the film’s two and a half hour running time for it all to kick off. The last half hour is almost non-stop fighting as first the two heroes duke it out, then they have to come together to battle the reincarnated Zod (now mutated into an unstoppable killing machine called Doomsday and looking like a cross between a Lord of the Rings Cave-Troll and a Ferraro Rocher chocolate). The mysterious woman from earlier is revealed to be Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), who valiantly joins the fracas and – ta-dah – we have the core trinity of the Justice League of America.

It’s a pretty flimsy plot and, to be honest, it’s not very well told. There’s a heck of a lot of padding and time wasted on sub-plots that lead absolutely nowhere. The first hour, especially, feels thrown together willy-nilly with no effort made toward giving the film any pacing or narrative coherence, where the plot and dialogue should lead to the next scene the actual next scene is often a complete non-sequitur. Although this is an absolute bonus if you have a weak bladder, story-telling wise it’s a complete mess.

Director Zach Snyder seems more interested in recreating religious iconography and comic book panels than in actually telling a story, he’s a lot like (Transformers director) Michael Bay: he knows how to put an astonishing visual onto the screen, he just doesn’t know how to connect them into anything resembling an interesting and coherent story. He throws a lot of stuff into BvS that comic book geeks will love spotting but will leave a casual viewer scratching their head (yes, that is Robin’s costume, daubed with a taunt from The Joker, hanging in a cabinet in the bat-cave; yes, that’s the bit from Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns where the sunlight revives a skeletal Superman; yes, that graffiti did read “Who watches the watchmen?”, etc.). Even the cameos (in the form of short YouTube-like videos) from future JLA members The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg are whiffed, they’re hinted at twice before we finally get to see them and when we finally do the sequence is thrown hap-hazardly into the middle of one of the action sequences, once again destroying the film’s pacing.

Snyder quite obviously either doesn’t understand Superman or actively hates him. Superman’s whole thing is that he wants to be a hero, he wants to help the people of his adopted planet, Snyder’s Superman is a reluctant, brooding and occasionally Quixotic emo whose only touchstones to humanity are Lois Lane and his adoptive mother, Martha Kent. Cavill is given little to do acting-wise and that’s a shame as he seems such a personable guy off-screen.

Ben Affleck makes for a much more human Bruce Wayne than any of the character’s previous incarnations, there’s a bit of the James Bond, playboy about him that works really well. As Batman he’s fine, he’s not “punch the air” great, but he’s, y’know, fine. And, at least, they’ve finally got a Bat-suit that seems flexible enough to actually move around in.

We don’t get to see enough of Wonder Woman to make a judgement call, really. What we do see looks pretty good, though, she’s every bit as powerful as Superman and there’s a glint in her eye when she’s fighting or flirting that makes me want to see more of her, she genuinely looks to be having fun when she’s doing either.

By far the worst thing in BvS though is Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor. I have no idea what movie Eisenberg thinks he’s in or who he thinks he’s playing, but I could quite happily live the rest of my life in happiness if I never see him again. Tonally, he’s all over the place, if Heath Ledger based the character of the Joker on Tom Waits then Eisenberg is basing his Luthor on Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face. He’s annoying and annoyingly played.

BvS is a frustrating experience, there are no character arcs that make any sense; characters take actions that make no sense; the whole third act hangs on a plot device that makes no sense; Snyder has no sense of pacing, story-telling or tension building; it’s incredibly dour with absolutely no sense of fun (the one joke appeared in the trailer and wasn’t that funny the first time I saw it) and, although it is not terrible it’s also not very good at all.

*The Justice League of America first appeared in 1960, today it sounds like something Donald Trump might rename the Republican party, sadly.

Andy Oliver

Deadpool

7th February 2016colchester101

Ryan Reynolds’ motormouth antihero Deadpool finally gets his own movie which opens at Colchester’s Odeon Cinema on 10th February. To get you in the mood, our intrepid movie reviewer Andy Oliver has been along to a preview and has this exclusive review for Colchester 101’s readers. We get the impression he rather liked it!

After just a single viewing of the new Ryan Reynolds vehicle (though that’s grossly underselling the term), Deadpool, I can confidently say that this is going to be massive to a certain demographic: It may well be the ultimate movie of the “Lad Bible” generation. It will launch a million internet memes and be quoted endlessly wherever 15 to 30 year-old boys gather.

For the rest of us? It teeters on a very thin line between entertaining and insufferably smug.

Created in the early nineties by comic book writer/artist Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool first appeared in Marvel’s X-Men spin-off series The New Mutants. Originally designed to be an antagonistic character he soon became one of the most popular characters in the Marvel Universe, an antihero with spectacular healing powers and a tendency to fill the panels with his verbose wit (earning himself the appellation, “The Merc with a Mouth”). His other “super-power” is his meta-awareness: an ability to break the fourth wall; he’s the only character who actually realises he’s in a comic book and frequently aims his quips and asides directly to the reader.

This is the second time Reynolds has played the character, Deadpool was first seen in the universally panned X-Men Origins: Wolverine but was so woefully handled that the actor (a fan of the character) campaigned long and hard to get a second chance to play him and, more importantly, to play him exactly as he’s written in the comics, to get it right.

The movie is basically a revenge tale scattered with, sometimes over-long, “Origin story” flashbacks. Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a mercenary soldier with a heart of gold who falls for the prostitute, Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) who services the “needs” of the customers at his favourite Merc’ bar. When he is diagnosed with inoperable cancer he volunteers for a treatment that will awaken his latent, mutant super-healing power. Unfortunately, the experiment is a cover for a torture chamber and when his power finally surfaces it leaves him horribly disfigured. Unwilling to let Vanessa see him in this state, he dons the persona and costume of Deadpool and vows to track down the villain responsible for his misfortune, Ajax (Ed Skrein).

And, uh, that’s it. To say this plot is thin is an understatement, it’s practically skeletal, even for a comic book movie it’s under-nourished. But that’s not the point of Deadpool, the plot is secondary to the gags and the action. It’s in these aspects that you will either love or hate this movie, if you ever wanted the scattershot comedy of Airplane! to be crossed with stylish ultra-violence of The Matrix or 300, then Deadpool is definitely the movie for you. For everybody else, Deadpool is a wobbly, flat-pack wardrobe overladen with designer great-coats and “wacky” shirts that you’ve only ever worn once and are, quite frankly, past their return date.

The structure of the film is both its strength and its weakness, the flashbacks allow us to get straight into the super-suited action, rather than the usual interminable wait to see the hero you actually paid to see, but tend to go on a bit too long and the action sequences tend to head downhill after the first set-piece. Rather than build the tension, the movie almost feels like it’s tailing off, like a balloon blown up to bursting point and then the air is slowly released in a squeaky-fart that’s initially funny but grows increasingly tiresome. Unfortunately, the best action scene in the movie not only comes right at the beginning, but the chances are you’ve already seen it – it’s been available on the internet for ages, it’s the highway battle released as test footage on YouTube. The final action scene is good enough but it’s all a bit generic and unsatisfying.

There’s probably fifty percent of the jokes that hit home, which is a pretty good ratio when you look at the majority of comedies released in the last twenty years, but when they miss they come across as smug and annoying. Deadpool is a lot like Bugs Bunny, he’s obnoxious, but you kind of enjoy his cruel antics, then again, five minutes of Looney Tunes is a lot more bearable than an hour and fifty of Deadpool. For me, the constant breaking of the fourth wall became very tiresome very quickly and I began questioning many of the “meta” gags as too knowing without any awareness at all. For instance, he references Green Lantern (Reynolds’ other high profile superhero appearance – and flop) but never questions the thinness of the current movie he’s appearing in, I would have been more invested in the film if his thoughts on his story echoed my own: “I know this is weak, but wait for the sequel”, uttered just once might’ve worked in its favour.

Ryan Reynolds is genial enough, though sometimes his delivery comes across as a little smarmy, and overall he hits the right note. Morena Baccarin looks like she’s just on the edge of doing something good if only the script let her, but mostly she’s just another damsel in distress, a sadly generic role that points to the sensibilities of the film’s target demographic. Ed Skrein is okay, I really can’t say anything other than that, he’s not bad but he’s not a great villain. TJ Miller, as Wade/Deadpool’s buddy, Weasel, steals it as the best secondary character and really nails the majority of his gags. There’s a few other comic book cameos: Colossus (Stefan Kapicic) a motion captured steel man, Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand) a surly teenage powerhouse and Angel Dust (Gina Carano) who’s… well, she’s in it. Karan Soni is funny as an Indian cab driver but Wade’s flatmate, a blind old black lady called Al (Leslie Uggams) feels like a wasted opportunity for some good laughs.

First time director Tim Miller shows more of his weaknesses than his strengths (he came from a background of video games and special effects, and it shows), whilst the scattershot script by Zombieland scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, mostly, delivers what the fans want.

Deadpool is an utterly juvenile experience, but that’s the point. It’s difficult to criticise a movie that so joyfully embraces its own immaturity. I didn’t hate it, Deadpool is diverting, at times fun, at times very funny and at times annoying and how much you enjoy it will depend on how many of those jokes hit home for you. There are worse ways to spend a couple of hours. Fantastic 4, anyone?

Andy Oliver

Creed

15th January 2016colchester101

Sylvester Stallone’s Italian Stallion is back for the seventh film in the Rocky series, but the first neither written nor directed by Stallone. Colchester 101’s Andy Oliver reviews the Colchester Odeon’s latest January offering on the big screen.

If you have loved the Rocky movies, as bad as some of them became, then you, like myself, may find yourself wiping a grateful tear from your eye at some of the wonderfully respectful moments that appear in Creed. The sight of Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) pulling his folding chair out of a tree in a cemetery; the crudely painted ‘Eagles’ graffiti daubed on a bridge; a pair of sneakers hanging from an overhead telephone cable; Cuff and Link, Rocky’s turtles, the only friends he has left now that even the incorrigible Paulie has died. Creed shares many of the same beats as the original Rocky, but it’s sly and canny about them, never letting the previous six movies hold sway over it. Creed is its own movie and, quite honestly, it is absolutely terrific.

So, what if you’ve never seen a Rocky movie before or maybe you’ve only seen a couple, do you need to do a marathon catch-up session to bring you up to speed with Creed? Absolutely not, Creed easily stands alone for the newcomer and everything you need to know is skilfully worked into its exhilarating script. Just sit down and enjoy. If you love it, there’s a six whole movies (of varying quality, it must be said) for you to dip into at a later date.

Adonis Johnson has never known his father and his mother has died whilst in his formative years, the movie begins with a young Adonis in juvenile detention, segregated from the general prison population for fighting. When Mary Anne Creed arrives at the detention centre, young Adonis discovers that he is the illegitimate child of former boxing world champion, Apollo Creed, who died in the ring before he was born.

Having been adopted by Mary Anne (Phylicia Rashad), ‘Donnie’ (Michael B. Jordan) grows up in privileged comfort, but the fighter inside him still rules the quieter side of him that has carved out a successful career working in finance, he fights in semi-professional bouts in Mexico by night and the office by day. He has ambitions to be a fighter, like his father, but when he finds that his Los Angeles gym have no interest in training him he moves to Philadelphia to find Apollo’s former-adversary and greatest friend, Rocky Balboa, and convince him to become his trainer.

Although initially reluctant, Rocky decides to help his friend’s son achieve his dream and, when an opportunity to fight for a world title reveals itself, finds that the young man’s life is mirroring his own and rediscovers the fighter within himself.

One of the great appeals of Rocky (the original movie) was not in the fighting but that it’s a really sweet love story about lonely people taking a chance, it’s about taking a leap of faith and trusting that strong arms are there to catch them. Creed also has a great love story that’s not tacked on but is integral to the plot. ‘Donnie’ meets and falls in love with Bianca (Tessa Thompson), an aspiring musician with degenerative hearing loss. The fact that both are pursuing careers that they both love and both understand will ultimately destroy them is what gives this love a remarkable power and an underlying tragedy. Neither ever questions the other’s love of their respective paths and there are no interminably angsty moments where either pleads the insanity of the other’s choice, it’s just an incredibly sweet and supportive love, beautifully imagined and played.

Jordan is magnetically great as the driven and internally confused ‘Donnie’ Johnson/Creed; he has an explosive temper and an expansive smile and quietly brings the character through a host of emotions; he has a confident swagger, but never comes across as cocky; he has his father’s sense of showmanship and Rocky’s humility. It’s difficult not to love his character.

Tessa Thompson, as ‘Donnie’s’ girlfriend, is sharp and funny and is full of righteous, take-no-prisoners, suffer-no-s**t attitude. She’s as driven as her boyfriend and this is a major part of his attraction to her. She’s no shut-in like Adrian, the love of Rocky’s life, Bianca is her own person, she doesn’t need ‘Donnie’ but her life and her music is enhanced and made greater with him in it.

Rounding out the trio is Sylvester Stallone, reprising the role that first brought him fame nearly forty years ago, and you have to ask, “Where has this Stallone been?” He is superb as the bumbling, shy, lost former world-champion. He has lost everyone he loved and is ready to just fade away until this young man enters his life, in health and in sickness Stallone manages to bring tears to your eyes. It’s a great performance, subtle, funny, heartbreaking and makes you wish you could have seen more of this Stallone rather than the violent, muscle-bound hero roles that seem to have padded out his career to date.

Fans of the Marvel super-hero Universe will, no doubt, be overjoyed that director, Ryan Coogler, has signed on to make that studio’s Black Panther movie after watching Creed. Coogler keeps the camera moving and, during the fight scenes, gets up close and personal with the boxers, weaving around and between them so that the viewer truly understands the brutality of each hit and the physical intimacy of the combatants. There’s even a single shot during one of the fights that lasts so long that when you finally notice it it leaves you reeling at its pure audacity. These aren’t camera set-ups for the sheer flashy, “Look-how-smart-I-am” bravura of them, Coogler uses his shots to serve the story not to make the viewer appreciate his style, it’s refreshingly honest and effective.

While that camera floats like a butterfly, it is in the emotional honesty that Creed stings like a bee. Whether or not you’re a fan of the Rocky movies, there is almost too much to enjoy in Creed and you may find yourself involuntarily shedding a tear and punching the air by turns.

Andy Oliver

The Hateful Eight

10th January 2016colchester101

Whilst Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to break box office records, Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie, and his second western, The Hateful Eight, has begun its run at the Odeon. Colchester 101’s Andy Oliverwas one of the first to see it and has written this review.

Without beating around any bushes I’m stating this right at the start of the review: The Hateful Eight is a difficult, brilliant and, sometimes, frustrating movie. It’s a movie that is a hard watch, there’s almost too much going on beneath the brutally harsh surface; it’s a scathing indictment of America not just then, but now; the language shoots bullets at the characters and the audience; the violence is shocking and extraordinarily bloody; and, yes, it’s way too long, some scenes drag out for ages and add nothing to your understanding. The Hateful Eight is Quentin Tarantino at his best and, occasionally, at his most indulgent worst.

Oh, and it’s really, really funny (in a twisted kind of way).

Set during the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War, The Hateful Eight begins with bounty hunter, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) flagging down a ride from a passing stagecoach in the snowbound landscape of Wyoming. The passengers in the stagecoach just happen to be fellow bounty hunter, John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his ‘bounty’, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). As the party look to stay ahead of an advancing storm they pick up a second hitcher by way of Sherriff-to-be Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) but find they’ll have to take shelter at a frontier trading post, Minnie’s Haberdashery. It’s here that the majority of the movie’s action plays out in a kind of Agatha Christie one-set stage play, except this is not a Whodunnit as it is a who’s gonna do it?

Also sheltering in Minnie’s are yet more weird and disparate characters, effete Brit, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), cowboy, Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), aged Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) and a Mexican called Bob (Damian Bichir), who may, or may not, have been left in charge of the trading post by its proprietors. As suspicions grow between all those sheltering from the blizzard, it becomes obvious that one, or more, may be there to try to rescue Domergue from imminent demise at the end of the hangman’s noose.

The Hateful Eight is probably Tarantino’s talkiest script since Reservoir Dogs, and the dialogue crackles back and forth as these despicable characters start to engineer the deaths of each other as secret grudges and new recriminations boil to the surface. There will be blood. Lots of it.

The casting of the movie is absolutely en pointe, there’s not a poor performance amongst the ensemble and Jennifer Jason Leigh is standout incredible as the maniacal, terrifying Daisy Domergue. At the start of the film you’ll be shocked and possibly upset by the violence meted out on her character, but there’s a reason she’s in chains: the screen probably hasn’t seen such a dangerous, unhinged and manipulative character since Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight. She’s terrific.

The Hateful Eight feels like a response to Tarantino’s last two movies, Inglorious B*****ds and Django Unchained, both revisionist revenge movies in which the Jews finally get to take a proper revenge on Hitler and a freed slave delivers an explosive two fingered salute to the wrongs exacted upon black plantation workers during the Reconstruction. Where white audiences could feel good about siding with the black man in Django, there is a huge finger pointing us down in The Hateful Eight. A viciously racist Confederate terrorist is raised to the position of lawman, you only have to watch the news or pick up the papers to understand where this is coming from and we, the white audience, are the ones watching from a distance and doing little but tutting. Tarantino has been accused of constantly and flippantly using the “n” word in his movie, here he uses it to devastating effect, it’s as deadly as the bullets that copiously fly in the final act. There’s also a conceit involving a letter that I won’t go into, I’ll let you discover it yourselves, anything I were to say about it would be a major spoiler.

The more cine-literate of you won’t help but notice Tarantino’s homage to John Carpenter’s The Thing, there’s an unused part of Ennio Morricone’s score to begin with. All these characters are trapped in a snowy waste and one, or more, may be hiding a secret, an infection of hate that continues to plague western society to this day. It’s an incredible use of homage to put across a thematic message that few film-makers working today would even consider, let alone have the skill to pull off.

And, yes, it’s too long. Probably half an hour and this is bound to give ammunition to nay-sayers of Tarantino and, even as a fan, I would agree that he can sometimes be too verbose in his scripts and linger too long on a shot he deems perfect. Brevity, thy name is not Quentin.

The Hateful Eight is not a film that will be universally loved, but it’s not asking to be. It is asking questions of the audience that the audience will not always enjoy finding the answers to. And that is its power.

Andy Oliver