Once upon a time there was a little girl named Hanna (Saoirse Ronan: The Lovely Bones). Hanna lived in a snowy forest with her father, Erik (Eric Bana: Star Trek, The Time Traveler's Wife), who has done his best to teach her everything she needs to know to be able to survive, but children grow up, and there is only so much a child can learn from her father before she wants to learn more.
Knowing that he will eventually need to let Hanna experience the rest of the world, Erik retrieves a box he has hidden for many years, and presents it to Hanna. He tells her that if she flips the switch on the box everything will change and she can leave, but that an evil witch named Marissa Weigler (Cate Blanchett: The Lord of the Rings) will come for her, and she will not stop until one of them is dead.
Hanna feels she is ready though, so she flips the switch. Erik leaves her to deal with the witch's coming minions, reminding her where they are to meet, and that she must always “adapt or die”. Hanna soon discovers that the evil witch is more dangerous than she realized, that she has the big bad wolf on her side in the form of a man called Lewis (John MacMillan), and that defeating her will not be easy.
“Hanna” is director Joe Wright's fairy tale for the modern age, and while the wicked witch is actually an intelligence operative, and the big bad wolf is really just a perfectly normal human assassin, the tropes and symbolism of many of the Grimm's Fairy Tales play large roles in the movie as we follow the titular character's journey across Europe to meet up with her father. You have the little girl lost, out of her element, and occasionally overwhelmed by the strange reality that no amount of survival training could have prepared her for.. You have her interacting with a villain who does not appear immediately villainous (and who has a fixation with her teeth that went kind of over my head). Finally, you have that fairy tale standard moral of what happens to children who don't listen to their parents.
This is not nearly as action-y as the trailers would have you believe, but what action there is is brutal and well choreographed. Instead of a hundred minutes of Hanna cutting a bloody Kill Bill-esque swath through her enemies, what you have is a fairly intense, and frequently humourous film with a fair bit of heart as well. There is a nice balance between humour and drama in the film that keeps it entertaining, and prevents it from ever becoming too cold or stark.
A lot of the things that I liked about Wright's last directorial outing, "The Soloist” are present again. This is a movie to be experienced more than just seen. While it does not have anywhere near the warmth of that movie, the titular character has a lot of the same sense of wonder as Nathaniel Ayers, when she's not busy killing her enemies anyway.
The only problem with this film is that it does slow down a bit at parts, but usually for a good reason. Some of Marissa's scenes in particular can drag on a bit, but they serve the purpose of developing her character. In a lot of bloody-rampage action films the villains are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. Alternately, some films spend so much time developing the antagonist that you actually start to feel sorry for them. That's not the case here; there's enough time spent on Marissa to let you know that she is her own person with her own drives and neurosis, but it's all kept vague to keep the focus on the fact that she is also a complete monster.
It's not a cheerful movie ( but how many un-Disneyfied fairy tales are?), but it is humourous and exciting, and I would even say a little bit beautiful. I found myself rooting for Hanna as she tried to come to terms with the fact that there is more to living in the real world than just being able to kill anyone who threatens you, being able to speak a dozen languages, and knowing how many muscles it takes to kiss. Ronan does a great job flipping back and forth between the rather bland and curious Hanna and the cold, calculating killer that will do anything to survive.
If you want a tense, exciting, but still funny movie that doesn't weigh itself down too much with unnecessary details this weekend, then I can't help but recommend “Hanna”. From the acting, to the visual presentation, to the great soundtrack, this is a fantastic movie. In the near future we will probably end up with an over-saturation of teenage girl assassin films, but I think that this will always stand out as one of the better ones.
“Hanna” is in theaters now.
Showing posts with label eric bana. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eric bana. Show all posts
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
"The Time Traveler's Wife"
In a summer filled with testosterone soaked action sci-fi movies like “Transformers 2”, “GI Joe”, and “Star Trek” there's a hole out there for something a little softer, a little more feminine, a little more SyFy meets Lifetime. Well pack your Kleenex, because coming to fill that hole is “The Time Traveler's Wife”.
“The Time Traveler's Wife” is a fantasy/sci-fi romance about Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana: “Star Trek”), a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel without warning, and the love of his life, Clare (Rachel McAdams: “The Notebook”) who is left waiting for him in her present. Now if this sounds like a familiar plot to you, you may remember NBC's 2007 series “Journeyman”; however this movie is based on a novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger which was published in 2003.
Henry works in a library, and is a loner and an alcoholic until he meets Clare Abshire, an artist who already knows him well. It turns out that Henry in his future travels back to visit Clare as a child, so while she has known him for most of her life he is only just now meeting her.
Clare and Henry fall in love, and, with the help of her friend Gomez (Ron Livingston: “Office Space”) manage to pull off a wedding (which is easily my favourite part of the film) and start a life together. Things don't stay sunny for long as Clare quickly realizes how hard it is to be married to someone who disappears sometimes for days at a time.
I found the ads for this movie to be somewhat misleading. I went into this expecting 90 minutes of watching Clare seethe about being left alone, but it's not that at all. The movie follows both characters pretty equally, and is actually quite lighthearted, marital strife aside, until about halfway through.
At about the halfway point the film decides to get dramatic by tipping its hand to you about how the film ends. The rest of the movie, even the humourous parts are then overshadowed by the ticking of a countdown clock that you cannot see . This is not necessarily a bad thing, but as the end draws closer more details are revealed infusing the whole movie with a sense of dread.
Like many movies based on books, this film does jump around a lot and tends to feel disjointed. Unlike a lot of movies where it feels like this is a result of cutting things from the book, it works here. A movie where one of the characters keeps jumping from one place to another would almost have to have this feel to it.
The actors all do a good job of bringing their characters to life, and Bana in particular does a great job of not seeming creepy as he is appears naked (when he travels his clothes do not go with him) in the bushes near a young girl and proceeds to spend years of her life setting her up to marry him. A different take on this story could make Henry seem like a manipulative pervert instead of a man pursuing true love.
While I would not describe “The Time Traveler's Wife” as a must see, it is a well made and pleasant film that will make you cry at the end if you are the sort that cries in films (I am not). I will however say that the film is a lot better than the trailers I have seen make it out to be. Unless you really like the actors, or really want to see a tearjerker this weekend, I would just wait for this to hit DVD.
“The Time Traveler's Wife” leaps into theaters on August 14th, and is rated PG-13. The film contains swearing, some blood, sexual themes, and some nudity (mostly Eric Bana's rear end).
Check out ”Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”, my free ongoing blognovel.
“The Time Traveler's Wife” is a fantasy/sci-fi romance about Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana: “Star Trek”), a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to time travel without warning, and the love of his life, Clare (Rachel McAdams: “The Notebook”) who is left waiting for him in her present. Now if this sounds like a familiar plot to you, you may remember NBC's 2007 series “Journeyman”; however this movie is based on a novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger which was published in 2003.
Henry works in a library, and is a loner and an alcoholic until he meets Clare Abshire, an artist who already knows him well. It turns out that Henry in his future travels back to visit Clare as a child, so while she has known him for most of her life he is only just now meeting her.
Clare and Henry fall in love, and, with the help of her friend Gomez (Ron Livingston: “Office Space”) manage to pull off a wedding (which is easily my favourite part of the film) and start a life together. Things don't stay sunny for long as Clare quickly realizes how hard it is to be married to someone who disappears sometimes for days at a time.
I found the ads for this movie to be somewhat misleading. I went into this expecting 90 minutes of watching Clare seethe about being left alone, but it's not that at all. The movie follows both characters pretty equally, and is actually quite lighthearted, marital strife aside, until about halfway through.
At about the halfway point the film decides to get dramatic by tipping its hand to you about how the film ends. The rest of the movie, even the humourous parts are then overshadowed by the ticking of a countdown clock that you cannot see . This is not necessarily a bad thing, but as the end draws closer more details are revealed infusing the whole movie with a sense of dread.
Like many movies based on books, this film does jump around a lot and tends to feel disjointed. Unlike a lot of movies where it feels like this is a result of cutting things from the book, it works here. A movie where one of the characters keeps jumping from one place to another would almost have to have this feel to it.
The actors all do a good job of bringing their characters to life, and Bana in particular does a great job of not seeming creepy as he is appears naked (when he travels his clothes do not go with him) in the bushes near a young girl and proceeds to spend years of her life setting her up to marry him. A different take on this story could make Henry seem like a manipulative pervert instead of a man pursuing true love.
While I would not describe “The Time Traveler's Wife” as a must see, it is a well made and pleasant film that will make you cry at the end if you are the sort that cries in films (I am not). I will however say that the film is a lot better than the trailers I have seen make it out to be. Unless you really like the actors, or really want to see a tearjerker this weekend, I would just wait for this to hit DVD.
“The Time Traveler's Wife” leaps into theaters on August 14th, and is rated PG-13. The film contains swearing, some blood, sexual themes, and some nudity (mostly Eric Bana's rear end).
Check out ”Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”, my free ongoing blognovel.
Friday, May 8, 2009
"Fire everything!" A Review of "Star Trek"
Okay, lets face it, Hollywood is pretty much creatively bankrupt. This is why we see so many remakes and reboots of old movie or television series. Remakes/Reboots are generally not all that great; some end up just being horrible parodies (“Starsky and Hutch”, “The Brady Bunch”), some just totally do not get what the original was about (“Lost in Space”), and even the ones that really try to be faithful often come up lacking (“Friday the 13th”).
I grew up watching “Star Trek”, so the idea of doing “Star Trek: The College Years” worried me, and the early trailers did little to make me confident. Still, I looked forward to seeing it, because even if it sucks it could be fun to pick apart. Well, lets just say that my fears were totally unfounded.
The film opens with the birth of James Tiberius Kirk, and follows both him and Spock briefly through their respective childhoods up to academy age. When Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood: “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”) finds a young Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) picking a fight with a group of Starfleet cadets, he suggests to him that he if he was half the man his father was, he could make officer in Starfleet in four years. After some soul searching, Kirk decides that he's going to do it in three.
As the film progresses we meet Spock (Zachary Quinto: “Heroes”), the extremely flirty Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the gruff cynical McCoy (Karl Urban), the willing, if slightly inept Sulu (John Cho: “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle”), the extremely young Chekov (Anton Yelchin: “Charlie Bartlett”), and of course the engineering genius, Scotty (Simon Pegg: “Shaun of the Dead”). While the physical resemblances to the original actors are hit and miss, the mannerisms and characterizations or mostly spot on from Spock's dry even way of speaking, to McCoy's occasionally over dramatic moments. Even with new faces, it was a treat to see the old characters of my childhood on the big screen again.
One thing most of these types of movies try to do is shoehorn in every character cliché, and this movie is no exception. Sulu fences, Kirk has his thing for green women, Spock mind melds and neck pinches, Chekov cannot say his “v”s, McCoy is “A doctor, not a...”, and Scotty is “Givin' her all she's got”. In fact the only “Star Trek: TOS” clichés I missed were Kirk getting his shirt ripped, and McCoy saying “He's dead, Jim”. Unlike most remakes, it all works in this film; nothing ever feels too forced or too much like high budget fan fiction, and all of it was well received by the audience.
Some could criticize this film for having too many gags, from Scotty and the ship's water system, to McCoy chasing Kirk around in one scene and repeatedly injecting him in the neck with things that are causing comical problems, there is quite a bit of humour in the film. For those people, I would like to remind them of Kirk up to his shoulders in Tribbles; there are plenty of that kind of humour in the original series.
The only criticisms I have about this film are small ones, for the movie is not perfect, but it's pretty close. There is a romantic relationship between two characters (I'm not going to spoil it), that neither myself nor my wife (who is the far greater Trekkie of the two of us) can think of anything in canon for. Since when do Romulans have face tattoos? Why are there no ground based defenses in the future? If a ship parked in Earth's orbit today and started drilling a hole in San Francisco Bay we would at least lob a few missiles at it. That's pretty much it for criticisms though, as pretty much everything else in this movie works as close to perfect as you could possibly hope for.
There is really no reason to not go see this movie if you consider yourself any sort of geek, nerd, Trekkie, or just a fan of action sci-fi. The cast is great, the script is fantastic, and this is easily the best thing that J.J. Abrams has ever had his name attached to. This movie is two hours of 99% pure awesome, so turn off your computer and go see it now!
Check out ”Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”, my free ongoing blognovel.
I grew up watching “Star Trek”, so the idea of doing “Star Trek: The College Years” worried me, and the early trailers did little to make me confident. Still, I looked forward to seeing it, because even if it sucks it could be fun to pick apart. Well, lets just say that my fears were totally unfounded.
The film opens with the birth of James Tiberius Kirk, and follows both him and Spock briefly through their respective childhoods up to academy age. When Christopher Pike (Bruce Greenwood: “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”) finds a young Jim Kirk (Chris Pine) picking a fight with a group of Starfleet cadets, he suggests to him that he if he was half the man his father was, he could make officer in Starfleet in four years. After some soul searching, Kirk decides that he's going to do it in three.
As the film progresses we meet Spock (Zachary Quinto: “Heroes”), the extremely flirty Uhura (Zoe Saldana), the gruff cynical McCoy (Karl Urban), the willing, if slightly inept Sulu (John Cho: “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle”), the extremely young Chekov (Anton Yelchin: “Charlie Bartlett”), and of course the engineering genius, Scotty (Simon Pegg: “Shaun of the Dead”). While the physical resemblances to the original actors are hit and miss, the mannerisms and characterizations or mostly spot on from Spock's dry even way of speaking, to McCoy's occasionally over dramatic moments. Even with new faces, it was a treat to see the old characters of my childhood on the big screen again.
One thing most of these types of movies try to do is shoehorn in every character cliché, and this movie is no exception. Sulu fences, Kirk has his thing for green women, Spock mind melds and neck pinches, Chekov cannot say his “v”s, McCoy is “A doctor, not a...”, and Scotty is “Givin' her all she's got”. In fact the only “Star Trek: TOS” clichés I missed were Kirk getting his shirt ripped, and McCoy saying “He's dead, Jim”. Unlike most remakes, it all works in this film; nothing ever feels too forced or too much like high budget fan fiction, and all of it was well received by the audience.
Some could criticize this film for having too many gags, from Scotty and the ship's water system, to McCoy chasing Kirk around in one scene and repeatedly injecting him in the neck with things that are causing comical problems, there is quite a bit of humour in the film. For those people, I would like to remind them of Kirk up to his shoulders in Tribbles; there are plenty of that kind of humour in the original series.
The only criticisms I have about this film are small ones, for the movie is not perfect, but it's pretty close. There is a romantic relationship between two characters (I'm not going to spoil it), that neither myself nor my wife (who is the far greater Trekkie of the two of us) can think of anything in canon for. Since when do Romulans have face tattoos? Why are there no ground based defenses in the future? If a ship parked in Earth's orbit today and started drilling a hole in San Francisco Bay we would at least lob a few missiles at it. That's pretty much it for criticisms though, as pretty much everything else in this movie works as close to perfect as you could possibly hope for.
There is really no reason to not go see this movie if you consider yourself any sort of geek, nerd, Trekkie, or just a fan of action sci-fi. The cast is great, the script is fantastic, and this is easily the best thing that J.J. Abrams has ever had his name attached to. This movie is two hours of 99% pure awesome, so turn off your computer and go see it now!
Check out ”Mallville – A Journal of the Zombie Apocalypse”, my free ongoing blognovel.
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