Posts Tagged ‘Michael Fassbender’

Prometheus

Ridley Scott’s much anticipated prequel to Alien, Prometheus contains astounding visuals and superb special effects and thematically centres on the anthropological term of first contact whereby mankind goes into deep space in search of their mysterious origins and discovers species bent on annihilation. Featuring an all star international cast including Noomi Rapace from the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, as the pivotal role of Shaw, Michael Fassbender from Xmen: First Class and Inglorious Basterds as David and South African Hollywood superstar Charlize Theron as Meredith Vickers, Prometheus follows the terrifying journey of the Prometheus spaceship into an unchartered planet to discover the origins of mankind.

Whilst the origin of species  remains questionable this film theorises that it is all down to a gradual mutation of DNA and naturally instinctive survival is paramount, in this case one species dominating the others through treachery and deceit. In Greek Mythology Prometheus is a titan who is credited with the creation of man but is also punished by Zeus for the theft of fire for human use – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus. In the sci-fi universe of Prometheus man’s creation and the discovery of something infinitely more powerful than fire is all consuming.

Man’s insatiable quest for knowledge about their origins and his desire for answers that leads the motley crue of the ship to discover not one, but two alien races, one whose DNA feeds off the originator like a parasite and transforms into something purely evil and instantly recognizable. The only answer to creation provided in this film is to the question that the dubious David asks about his maker to Shaw’s love interest the doomed Dr Holloway played by Logan Marshall-Green last seen in 2009’s Brooklyn’s Finest.

As in the visually spectacular Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s iconic dreamlike vision of the future set in Los Angeles in 2019, which now as it happens is not that far off, Prometheus is set in 2095 and predicts humans quest to discover other life forms, a journey, which like most space travel in the 21st century is predominantly sponsored by large commercial corporations represented in this film by the icy crew manager Vickers played by Theron. Prometheus like Blade Runner and Alien is pure sci-fi thriller with some astounding visuals but leaves the audience  slightly lost in space as the elusive narrative drifts towards a rather sudden and unpredictable climax.

Where the plotlines rupture with some fascinating twists, it is the technical superiority of this film which triumphs making Prometheus eclipse Avatar on so many levels and is worth watching on a cinematic widescreen with digitally enhanced surround sound.

Like Alien, Thelma and Louise and GI Jane, Ridley Scott has often relied on strong female leads to carry his films, and Noomi Rapace is brilliantly cast as the gritty Dr Elizabeth Shaw and carries the intensity of such a murky monochromatic  movie. Best scene is Shaw’s speedy self diagnosis and instant electronic caesarian. Prometheus is brilliant as a Sci-Fi film and an enigmatic prequel, but is not Ridley Scott’s best work, yet still thoroughly entertaining but not quite as terrifying as the original Alien movies or the horrific Event Horizon and like Avatar could have been enhanced by a Sigourney Weaver cameo.

X-Men: First Class

Mutants Rule in the Sexy Sixties

James Mc Avoy (Wanted) and Michael Fassbender (Centurion) star as the young Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr known as Magneto respectively in the prequel X-Men: First Class , director Matthew Vaughn’s stylish version of the origins of the mutants set in the early sixties and placed within the dramatic historical context of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis, a homage to the earlier Bond films like Goldfinger and Dr No.

Complete with fabulous costumes and flitting between exotic locations from Vegas to Moscow to Argentina, X-Men: First Class is a superb reinvention of the X-Men franchise which was growing slightly weary after the 2009 film Wolverine. Featuring a varied and talented cast from Jennifer Lawrence, hot young star of Winters Bone, January Jones of the Mad Men series, Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man) and Kevin Bacon as the irrepressibly stylish villain Sebastian Shaw who pits the Americans and Russians against each other in a bid to start another nuclear war.

The alliance and subsequent friendship of Charles and Erik is the basis for this X-Men story before they became arch enemies. Charles Xavier has had a privileged upbringing in England and studied genetic mutations at Oxford University while the down-trodden Lenshir was subjected to Nazi horrors in a Polish prisoner of War camp, where his powers over metallic objects catches the eye of the immortal mutant Shaw, who realizes that the are many more mutants on the planet, owing at least in this film to the vast amount of radiation used during World War II culminating in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Xavier has the power to read minds and soon with the assistance of a covert CIA unit is able to form a band of young and untrained mutants as they are employed along with Lensherr to stop Shaw from extracting more nuclear energy by starting another world war. January Jones recreating her Mad Men look plays a diamond mutant, Frost with elegance and grace a lethal sidekick to the evil Shaw, played with relish by Kevin Bacon who seems to be getting younger in every film.

X-Men: First Class is a designer sequel with a positively retro feel, made all the more spectacular by fast-paced action and breathtaking CGI. McAvoy and Fassbender compliment each other as Xavier and Magneto a younger version of the rivalry so beautifully created in the X-Men trilogy by veteran actors Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan, capturing a slight homoerotic love for each other which in a superhero universe can naturally never be fulfilled.

Watch out for a cameo by Hugh Jackman as Wolverine and Rebecca Romjin as the older version of Raven, known in the earlier films as Mystique. There is no Cyclops or Storm, but younger and sexier mutants Angel played by Zoe Kravitz and Havok played by Lucas Till more than make up for their absence. If viewers enjoyed the X-Men trilogy then this will surely go down well as an original, stylish and very retro prequel explaining a lot about the origins of mutants and the passionate rivalry between Xavier and Magneto which is the crux of the earlier blockbusters.

Inglourious Basterds

She is watching us… the Voyeur as Killer

A Revisionist look at World War 2 with all the German angst, French charm and American parody…

Sooner or later Tarantino was bound to approach the territory of the 2^nd World War. While there has been a plethora of World War movies since the mid 1940s onwards, many have tackled the War from a purely Euro-American perspective focusing on the Nazi’s simply as the enemy. From Great battle films, like Saving Private Ryan to the more personal and heart-rendering stories of Sophie’s Choice and Schnindlers List and more recently Atonement.

The Rot started from within…

Valkyrie arrived, Tom Cruise’s fascinating yet doomed project about a plot to kill Hitler from within the highest rankest of the Nazi inner circle in 1944. Defiance followed, a superb story of Polish Jewish resistance set in the forests outside Krakow.  There was entertainment rumblings from Tarantino that after the Kill Bill films, he was planning a revisionist and slightly parodying version of World War 2…

Cannes Film Festival 2009

Cannes Film Festival 2009 and Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s long awaited film featuring a band of Jewish American Nazi scalp-hunters who take revenge on the Nazi’s  in German-occupied France in the early 1940s is premiered much to every cineaste’s delight. Basterds is far more than a revenge cult film against Nazi’s, it’s a statement about Cinema being used as propaganda. The references are rife, for as in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s best trait is revealed, a rambling but significant knack for quirky dialogue. Except in this film, authenticity dictates –so naturally the French spoke French, the Nazi’s spoke German and the Americans spoke a range of regional accents from Brooklyn to Tennessee slang. Tarantino assembles some fantastic European stars of contemporary cinema, from Til Schwieger to Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent.

Cinema as Propaganda

Tarantino makes comparisons between Joseph Goebbels – Nazi Minister for Propoganda and the then founder of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, both as masters of cinema and naturally propaganda. More specific are the references to Leni Riefenstahl, who rose to fame in the 1930s as a significant German film-maker churning out the Nazi blueprint for propaganda – Triumph of the Will.

Truimph of the Will

Riefenstahl, was later vilified once the war was over and went onto to become a documentary filmmaker in East Africa. There are also a sprinkling of humorous discussions about the American black athlete Jesse Owens who sparkled at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games much to Hitler’s dismay.  Watch out for a spoof on the British military featuring a contemplative Winston Churchill and a wonderful cameo by Mike Myers whose line, “we will have all the rotten eggs in one basket” is delivered with affected panache.

A French Spaghetti Western Tarantino Style

Basterds opening shots are reminiscent of the early spaghetti Westerns of Sergio Leone – with a scene straight out of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, except its not a dusty Mexican outback with outlaws escaping bounty hunters, it’s a pastoral scene of a French Farming countryside. This time there is no Sun-Burnt Clint Eastwood in a poncho. Enter Christoph Waltz, the urbane, elegant and lethal multi-lingual Nazi Jewish hunter. Waltz has some of the best dialogue in the film and effortlessly switches from German to French to English in order to ascertain his victims whereabouts. Yet Tarantino presents him as a man simply sent to do an unpleasant task, and one should not judge, but Waltz’s role is crucial to the films wonderful and intricate plot revolving around a cinema outside Paris and a German Film Premiere, where all plans go awry.

Christoph Waltz won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor following in the psychopathic tradition of Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men (2008) and Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight (2009). Tarantino’s find of this Austrian acting talent has Hollywood virtual blogs a buzzing.

Inglourious Basterds is long, brilliant, bloody and sophisticated with that right dose of European sensibility accurately shredded by an American’s tainted perspective on World War II and more subtly a comment on the Death of original Cinema and more about Film as a nation’s propaganda tool. If you are expecting an action-packed, traditional war film with a clear division of hero and villain, well then you are simply in the wrong movie. Tarantino tantalizes, shrills and insures that any audience seeing the Basterds will feel claustrophobic and trapped in a cinema from Hell.