Warcraft: The Beginning (Trailer)

Renowned game creator Blizzard attempts to capitalise further on micro transactions using a method known as macro transactions, more commonly known as petty theft.

It may come as something of a shock, but you are perfectly entitled to judge most figurative books by their covers. Judge them by their cover art, author, by-line and their title. Throw the first rock. Judge lest ye be judged. Carry the fate of us all, little one. If this is indeed the will of the Council, then Gondor will see it done. Incorrectly reference biblical passages and tangentially quote other films if you have to, but never settle for mediocrity. Warcraft: The Beginning is a good place to start your newfound judgemental freedom.

Some tales have titles that will capture an audience’s attention without the need for fancy graphics or catchy by-lines. Some will mislead you unintentionally (see: Batman Vs. Superman or 10 Cloverfield Lane). Then there is this. Warcraft: The Beginning might just be the most mundane, redundant title of all time. Given it is the first and only film of the franchise it is pretty safe to assume that it is also the beginning of the story. Instead of providing insight or creating intrigue, the only thing this title informs the viewer of, is that there will be Warcraft: The Middle and Warcraft: The End. Of course filmmakers don’t see the world in such a logical manner, and as such will most likely name the subsequent films Warcraft: Divide and Conquer and finally Warcraft Thr33. At least the games followed a consistent, numerical naming pattern.    

AND MY AXE.

The trailer itself is boring. I watched it more times than I had hoped and, even now, could not give anything but a generic summary of events. Humans and Orcs must band together in some world ending crisis, but also not all humans trust Orcs and also there is some baby Shrek, like the one from Meet the Spartans (see: below). We already have a film for nerds, it’s called Captain America: Civil War, we don’t need another one. I don’t believe it a coincidence either, that this film comes out a full two years after The Hobbit films had concluded. Wouldn’t want to flood the market with too many awful films about Orcs, Humans and Dragons.

Watching this I found myself distracted by other more exciting trailers, i.e. Suicide Squad. Unlike Warcraft, Suicide Squad’s trailer does not give away important plot points/twists, effectively engages the audience through clever use of popular music with rhythmic cuts and an appropriate amount of humour to break the mounting tension. Will this mean that Suicide Squad will be a 10/10 amazing film? Probably not. Does its trailer excite an audience and generate hype? A resounding yes. Sure it exploits an audience’s weakness for nostalgia, but it takes the first step to cinematic success by at least seeming intriguing. Plus, it has Margot Robbie in short shorts.

Final Prediction: Remember that Eragon film? Most people erased it from memory immediately. This will be Eragon 2.0, or should I call it Eragon: A Quest Fulfilled.

The Purge: Election Year (Trailer)

In what could easily be described as a time traveler's warning against Trump's presidency, The Purge: Election Year explores rudimentary sociopolitical rules (such as don't kill each other) with mass homicide, torture and theft.

You may think this cleverly constructed byline is merely a facetious commentary on a fictional film, but I genuinely believe it to be true. Without delving too deeply into the murky waters that is Trump's political views, it is plain to see he at least wishes to 'Make America Great Again'. (Let's for a second ignore that he intends to do this in the most racist and bigoted manner possible). What does he want once this is accomplished?

While it may be a little embarrassing that this fictional system of government is quite possibly more humane and sensible than the future Trump driven country, let's put aside our tinfoil hats for a moment here. This trailer suffers from what I like to call Saw Syndrome. Not only is a lot of the film veiled with a pale green hue (see images below), it's primary plot devices are also being stretched quite thin after 3 movies. Correlations between the films are quite simple to draw given both of their tendencies towards masks, not to mention at one point a character kicks a tripwire which in turn triggers a large blade to swing, narrowly missing their face in both films.

In terms of narrative the trailer says it all. Corrupt politicians attempt to utilise the unconventional methods of 'the purge' to remove troublesome senator, only to be foiled by American 007 body guard man. Bad guys wear masks, good guys don't. Everyone lives happily ever after...until next year.

I will refrain from giving an opinion until the film is released in it's entirety on July 4th (Independence Day you clever marketing people), so feel free to form your own opinions of the trailer in the meantime.

Captain America: Civil War

More accurately described as 'The Avengers: Group Conflict', this film highlights the human side of being superhuman. Turns out the super side is much more interesting. Starring every single B-List superhero.

There is no question why this film was made. Apart from the obvious profitability, it gives the PornHub servers a well-deserved break while millions of nerds masturbate for the full 2.5hr duration of the movie. Tissue sales must have doubled in this films first release week given the character cast given in this film. Even characters who obviously couldn’t or wouldn’t sign to this film are name dropped at least once. Ironman *rubrubrub* Spiderman*rubrubrubrub* Antman? *rub* Catguy?? *…* Black Widow *rubrubrubrubrubrub*. All in all, it makes for brilliant masturbatory material.

The issue here is that, believe it or not, this wasn’t made as a porn. It is supposed to be a story complete with narrative twists and turns. Instead we are presented with a full hour of relatively boring exposition setting up the precedent for the film which could easily be summarised in one sentence; a quorum of superheroes is divided when their actions are called into question after a series of terrorist attacks leave behind a trail of collateral damage. Basically Tony Stark and the worlds governments (both known for their heartless nature) grow a heart and feel that maybe thousands of innocent bystanders shouldn’t die as an indirect act of the Avengers, and rather as a direct act of terrorism. It is, in essence, stupid. 

Speaking of stupid, the top secret brainwash book is protected by a four-digit pin, during the introduction the villain is wearing a mask over a second mask, the head of school from Community plays the head of school of MIT, and Bucky is quoted saying “I’m not going to kill anyone” and then proceeds to collapse a man’s chest cavity with a brick. Think I’m done? Ironman’s sidekick Lt. James Rhodes survives a few thousand feet free fall in a suit which I can only imagine weighs a few hundred kilograms, a civil war is usually defined as “a war between citizens of the same country” yet this war contains a vast array of nationalities, the film title highlights Captain America as the subject and does everything to ignore him, and finally, somehow this film warranted an 8.4/10 on IMDB. 

It’s predictable, it’s slow to establish narrative, the narrative it finally develops feels contrived, the characters are mostly B-list and the continuous flash cutting during fight scenes gives me a headache. The worst part? I kind of liked it. It appeals to the inner nerd and the fight scene, while obviously there just to satisfy fans, is satisfying. But satisfactory is all this film gets with a 5/10 PornHub videos.

Term Life

A thieving father kidnaps his daughter to protect her from Mexican gangsters. It’s like Taken, but backwards and terrible. Starring that guy from Old School.

The advantage of making a film, as opposed to a book, is that you are allowed to show rather than tell. Term Life proceeds to ignore this fact and instead presents an hour and a half of pure narration. Of course this narration is essential, as it delivers 80% of the plot ...Did I say plot? I meant Rain Man-esque tips on how to rob bakeries, though these ‘tips’ are as mundane as “you need a way in and, more importantly, a way out”. Needless to say it’s not all as exciting hearing about what you could otherwise watch; it’s like having an annoying friend sitting beside you explaining every plot point.

When the film isn’t delivering its ear-load of weak plot, it provides a strange amount of broken family subtext. It’s an action film for middle aged, single fathers who miss their families and are still coming to terms the emotional hardship that divorce causes. The three main characters can be summarised as fatherly figure who has seen it all, actual father that is borderline autistic in terms of emotion, and angst-y teen daughter rebelling against the father that abandoned her. It’s like listening to an audio book on cliché character creation.

I will find you, and I will bore you.

Given that the film is delivered mostly verbally it also tends to move at something of a breakneck pace. A scene only takes as long as the narration takes to explain it, then it often jumps to an unrelated scene. It’s entertaining in the way that a burn might be, except burns heal and this film will never get better with age. With lines such as “Your Dad fills a lot of holes Kate”, and “my whole life I’ve been watching her” (spoken by the father about his daughter), who could resist a nice scalding third degree burn to the eyeballs.

The acting is average at the best of times, though upon further investigation I found that it was produced by WWE, as in the remarkably popular wrestling organisation. How the pieces all fall into place. Oh also the title just straight up doesn’t make sense. Life Sentence, Life Term or Heisty, Heist, Heist Family Issues would all have been more relevant.

As an audio book this film might warrant a passing grade, but due to it’s poor structure, plot delivery via excessive narration and all round terrible acting it warrants a 3/10 divorce papers.

High-Rise

A delusional adventure in alcoholism, substance abuse, violence and sexual undertones. Wait that makes this sound interesting. How’s this instead? A building of people go mental for two hours in something resembling a psychological commentary. Starring Simon Peggs stunt double.

If pressed to describe this film in one word it would be ‘intriguing’. If pressed to describe it in two, then I would choose ‘depressingly intriguing’. Don’t confuse intrigue with good though. War, famine and plague are all intriguing but I would be hard pressed to call them good, unless of course they were unleashed upon the creators of this movie.

Now it's just some film I wish I didn't watch.

In the realms of ‘Being John Malkovich’ or ‘A Clockwork Orange’ comes High-Rise, as what I can only assume is some sort of psychological commentary on modern life, or work, or patriarchy, or something. Incredibly heavy on symbolism and foreshadowing, it does it’s best to promote interest through ambiguity. An hour into this ambiguous journey, however, and you might start feeling a yawn in the depths and a heaviness in the eyelids despite the numerous on screen murders and sex scenes. At one point they eat a horse and I barely noticed. In fact the major reason I made it to the end was the graphically upsetting imagery and boyish hope that it might all come to some amazing point. It may have as well, but two hours in I had given up caring and was just praying for the ‘and then he woke up’ ending.

And I bet you didn't believe me.

Going in to this film I had no idea what it was about. I knew it was based on a book by J.G.Ballard that I had intended to read, and I had read a sentence summary along the lines of ‘A building of people cope with an ever increasing amount of anarchy’. I half expected a zombie film based in a hotel building if I’m honest, and to be doubly honest I was a bit disappointed when it wasn’t. It is, instead, a story of an uprising against hierarchy, loosely following one man through the process. Tenants at points seem to be of hive-mind and know everything that happens within the walls, and at other times seem completely imperceptible to the daily coming and goings. The main characters motives are never really clear, and as one should expect from an arty film it ends with a child sitting on a throne of electronic devices, smoking a pipe and listening to a radio detailing the logistics of capitalism. Of course you don’t get it. It’s art.

In terms of filmic devices it is sound. Music plays a key role at points, the camera angles and scope do well to promote emotion within scenes, and the actors all do a pretty good job. Even the child actors pull this one off, though I suspect it’s mainly because their roles entailed screaming, yelling, throwing things and running about. Basically being a child 101.

High-Rise’s main entertaining factor is that it is two parts confusing and one part graphic. Combining these, however, doesn’t create the tasty, entertaining tale I had hoped for. Instead it is long, tedious and disappointing, though I’m sure all the arty types out there would disagree with me stating that I ‘just don’t get it’. They would be right of course, I don’t get it. I don’t want to get it. The only place I want to get it is away from me. I give it 3/10 dead dogs. Why dead dogs? To be intriguing. Depressingly so.