Cowboys & Aliens

Arizona. 1873. A man wakes up with no memory of who he is, where he is, or what the metal bracelet attached to his arm is. He makes his way to the small town of Absolution, where he meets a mysterious stranger called Ella, and is recognised as Jake Lonergan, a wanted outlaw. Turns out he’s stolen gold from local cattleman Colonel Dolarhyde, and now Dolarhyde wants revenge. However, before he can take his revenge, an alien spacecraft attacks Absolution, and very quickly their feud becomes secondary to the extra-terrestrial invaders who seem hell bent on abducting the locals and destroying everything...

It gives me hope that one day I might be able to enter the film industry whenever I see a film like Cowboys & Aliens come to the cinema. You can picture the pitch meeting, can’t you? “What’s it called?” “Cowboys & Aliens!” “And what’s it about?” “Cowboys & Aliens!” “Well, who does it feature?” “Cowboys & Aliens!” I could go on. Seriously, the film is succinctly and aptly described by its title. This film feature cowboys and it features aliens. Cowboys & Aliens is the be all and end all of this movie. But is there an interesting plot? Is there a reason to watch it? No.

It annoys me that this is so poorly executed because the premise has limitless possibilities to be infinitely cool, and yet it spends so much time trying to balance out the western and sci-fi aspects of the film that it ends up failing on both fronts and being criminally boring and, frankly, awful. It’s too ludicrous to be a western. It’s too dull to be a memorable sci-fi. I realise usually I spend some time ambling towards my point and eventually making a judgement on it, but in this case, I wasn’t even disappointed by the film, I was more infuriated. I’ve been mulling this over for 12 hours as I write this and I don’t think I’ve seen a more frustrating film all year. The story is painfully clichéd and the characters are wooden and two-dimensional.

This wasn’t helped by the casting and/or the performances the cast gave. Daniel Craig is meant to play the classic western brooding, gruff loner/outsider, but you can’t attach yourself to him, even though he’s meant to be the protagonist. They give him a soapy back story and make him the reformed hero, but there’s no emotion involved at all. As for the antagonist, someone needs to help Harrison Ford because I’m fairly sure he had a stroke back in 1983 and no-one checked for the side effects because he went all the way through this, and pretty much every film he’s been in since Return of the Jedi, mumbling his lines and delivering the same facial expression, a seemingly fixed scowl, almost as if he didn’t want to be there. Olivia Wilde is only alright as the female lead Ella, delivering a similar performance to the one she gave in Tron: Legacy but then you don’t need much from her; she just needs to look good. And she does. Above all of this, however, there is a far bigger crime involving one particular piece of casting. Sam Rockwell. He’s here as a secondary character called Doc who doesn’t really do a lot. What a waste. I think Sam Rockwell is a fantastic actor, and has proven himself worthy of lead roles time and again, and to be given a lifeless role like this is shocking. He does well enough with what little screen time he’s given, but good lord is he ever misplaced in this.

I feel like this was a real missed opportunity. They could have avoided every cliché that they so willingly walked into here. Admittedly, the film does deliver exactly what an audience is going to want to see from a film called Cowboys & Aliens. There’s a bar fight. There are abductions. There’s destruction. There are plenty of aliens. There’s a partial romance. In between all that, the writing is just lazy, clearly just a bunch of writers giggling at themselves at the premise and doing nothing extraordinary with it. The script contains some really corking lines like “It’s not your fault” and “I know where they are”, every plot element is flimsily tied together by flashbacks and ‘shocking twists’ and those ‘shocking twists’ are so inane, you’ll either guess them straight away or be dumbfounded as to how ludicrous they are. Naturally, they’re key to the story and deliver information and elements needed to reach the conclusion, but by the time you get there, you’ll be wishing they’d gotten there sooner.

Overall, in case you couldn’t tell, I didn’t like this film. You know when your parents say they’re not mad, they’re just disappointed? Well I wasn’t disappointed, I was maddened by this. It’s infuriatingly banal and uninventive, and that’s what I’ll take away from this. I will say this though, the aliens looked mildly impressive and the landscapes are fittingly stunning, as they should be for a Western, so it doesn’t fail completely. On almost every other level , though, it does. People will naturally flock to see this, and I understand that, but I hope those people walk out as disappointed as I did so that they learn their lesson like I did. Trust me on this: I have seen Cowboys & Aliens SO THAT YOU DON’T HAVE TO.

Rating: *

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Will Rodman is on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. His drug, AZ-112, may be the cure to Alzheimer’s, but his chimpanzee test subject turns hostile and the experiment is finished. However, she was merely protecting her child, who Will is forced to take home and rescue. Will lives with his father, himself suffering from Alzheimer’s, who takes a shine to the intelligent young chimp and names him Caesar. Over the years, Caesar grows older and wiser, whilst Will’s experimental drug appears to cure his father. However, Caesar is growing too smart for his own good, and after a misunderstanding involving a neighbour, he is sent to a sanctuary. It’s not long, though, before Caesar is using his intelligence to plot his escape with the other mistreated apes...

The Planet of the Apes franchise is legendary. The Tim Burton remake is, frankly, forgettable, but the original five films are solid. The original is a true classic. ‘Beneath the...’ is an apocalyptic horror film. ‘Escape from...’ was silly but good fun. ‘Conquest of...’ is a revolution-filled thriller and thoroughly misunderstood. ‘Battle for...’ showed signs of a failing franchise and ended the original series on a sour note. It makes sense that it would be brought back now, what with the advanced special effects and CGI on offer and that it has the potential to spark up a long dormant franchise with multiple sequels. For all of that to happen though, Rise of the Planet of the Apes is going to have to be good. So is it? Well, quite simply, it is good. Really good.

The interesting thing about this film is that it takes a new spin on the story of apes rising up against their human oppressors. Rather than have actors dressing as apes and talking, representing the evolved ape, the apes here are entirely CGI. They are all motion captured, which gives them realistic movements and facial expressions. The problem they were faced with going down this road, creating apes as we know them, was that there was no way of getting them to communicate with the humans. Enter Caesar, plot device de jour. Caesar is born with the Alzheimer’s drug changing his mind, so he learns sign language and develops superior intelligence. Therefore, we have a link between species, and the overwhelming plot gap is bridged.

This all comes down to yet another phenomenal mo-cap performance by Andy Serkis, then man who brought Gollum to life (and will do again in the two upcoming Hobbit films). He gets the mannerisms exactly right, and never over-exaggerates the facial expressions, keeping Caesar more ape than human in that regard. James Franco is deadly serious in his role as Will, not his usual laid-back stoner character, and he puts in a solid performance. He proves himself to be more than a one-trick pony and takes a lot of cues from his 127 Hours performance here in his facial expressions and mannerisms. Frieda Pinto does well enough as the female lead, and John Lithgow is convincing as Will’s Alzheimer’s stricken father. An honourable mention goes to Tom Felton in his first big post-Potter role as the nasty son of the sanctuary owner. Apparently he plays a bastard well, who knew?

At just under 100 minutes, this isn’t too long and offers enough to keep an audience interested throughout. My only slight problem with this, intelligent apes aside, is how long it takes to develop the idea that the drug is revolutionary and that Caesar is smart. It’s an idea which is brought across to you in the first 20 minutes and yet it still goes on explaining that the “drug is experimental” and that “Caesar has advanced intelligence”. We get it, we do. It takes a while to reach where everyone knows it’s going, where everyone wants it to go, and frankly you’ll be relieved when it does get there. I did like the character of Caesar though, the evolution of his intelligence is handled well and he is a human enough character that you begin to associate and sympathise with him by the end. Of course, the end is well written to leave it open for potential sequels, but then it wouldn’t be a PotA film if it didn’t. Also, there are numerous nods to the past: Mention of a missing space mission, a Statue of Liberty, and even the immortal line “Take your stinkin’ paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” I’ll be honest; the delivery of the line made me completely mark out, the film won me over there and then.

Overall, it’s a fairly solid summer blockbuster, definitely one of the best this year, as it offers a coherent and well-structured narrative and, movie logic aside, neatly explains itself without bordering on the ridiculous. The apes looked good, an improvement on how fake they looked in the trailers, which was a pleasant surprise, and they were given true emotion and heart. This is close to being a great film; it’s an engaging and intelligent film which you can’t really go too far wrong with. This was a really pleasantly surprising film, it completely caught me off guard as to how good it was, and it's ended up being the best film I've seen in months. If you had told me back in April when the trailer was released that this would end up being my favourite film of the summer, I'd have slapped you in the face and called you a liar. I'd say I deserve the slap now.

Rating: ****1/2

Super 8

In 1979, in the small town of Lillian, Joe has just lost his mother in an industrial accident. His father, the town’s Deputy, is struggling to cope and Joe is retreating into making a zombie film with his friends on a Super 8 camera. However, shooting one night at a train station, they witness and accidently film a major train crash, where they find hundreds of mysterious white cubes. The accident brings the U.S. Air Force into town and triggers a series of strange events: People, pets and electric devices have begun disappearing, and no-one knows where they’re going. The team of young filmmakers become determined to figure out what’s going on when Alice, the star of their film, disappears... Or perhaps she was taken by a mysterious creature...

Oh, J.J. Abrams, how you love your secrets. First, you produced Lost, which started out with a huge plane crash and led to one of most addictive and infuriating TV series in recent history, the conclusion of which still has people talking a year after broadcast. Then, he came back and produced Cloverfield, a film which was known for months before as its release simply as 1-18-08 and offered no details of its plot in its trailers other than the Statue of Liberty’s head being torn off (though to be fair, that’s all you needed to know). Now, we have Super 8, another Abrams super-secret semi-autobiographical project about a train crash and some sort of alien creature. So has this been overhyped? On reflection, I'd say no. It's a great summer movie that has proper potential and lives up to it.

I'll be honest, this definitely wasn’t what I was expecting from an Abrams project. Though, on that last point, my expectations began getting subverted with every trailer that got released. Super 8 turned from another Cloverfield-style monster movie to a Goonies-style kid-driven adventure film which isn’t E.T., but shares a lot of common DNA and I’m not entirely sure if I was comfortable with that. Upon watching it, it’s a lovely story, and it still does have a bit of that Cloverfield monsterishness though in a far nicer, less apocalyptic chaos kind of way which actually makes for a far more comfortable and engaging viewing experience instead of going ‘OOH look, it crushed a building’ every two minutes.

The group of kids all put in great performances here, especially impressive considering lead actor Joel Courtney, who plays Joe, had never acted before. However, as with all film featuring a group of actors, there is a stand out, and this time around it’s Elle Fanning, younger sister of Dakota (Where’d she go, by the way?). She’s really fantastic as Alice, daughter of an alcoholic dad and actress in the Super 8 zombie film who develops a young romance with Joe. In particular, there’s a small scene where the actors are rehearsing dialogue for their film, the Super 8 isn’t even rolling, and Alice delivers this amazing heartbreaking monologue which just dumbfounds the kids and left me gobsmacked that someone that young could access as much as emotion as she does in that small moment. And then, as soon as her monologue’s over, she snaps back into normal Alice, the moment passes and it’s as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Fantastic. Other than that, Kyle Chandler is good enough as Joe’s dad, and Noah Emmerich is mildly frightening as the intimidating Colonel Nelec.

As for the alien creature itself, much in the same way you only saw glimpses of the monster in Cloverfield, you only get passing glimpses of this one before a full-on look at its face in the third act, taking a page once again out of the Ridley Scott/Alien book, less is more. However, once it's been revealed, you start seeing nothing but the monster, and ruins the mystique to a degree. There’s something distinctly spider-like about it, and seems like a distant cousin of the Cloverfield monster. I did have a small problem with the train crash, the catalyst for the events of the film. It was well executed, truly it’s a ballet of flying metal and explosions and utter chaos. The problem is it just keeps going. And going. And going. It’s an endless train wreck, which I assume is because Abrams got excited by the bright lights and the loud noises. It’s an important part of the film, is not the most important part, and any realism it might have had is thrown out the window because it becomes distinctly Michael Bay like. Urgh.

Overall, it’s a lovely throwback to both the 1980’s teen adventure film in the same vein of The Goonies, and family-orientated Spielberg films like E.T., which is hardly surprising given Spielberg's role as producer here, presumably to stop him suing Abrams from ripping off E.T. It’s a strange hybrid but it’s pretty cohesive. Spielberg’s influence is clear as the film deals with a young boy dealing with personal emotional problems as well as the wider alien conflict pretence. Abrams has gone and made a film which has a little bit of something for everyone and I know that’s a horrendous cliché, but Super 8 genuinely does. It’s E.T. meets The Goonies, so everybody wins, right?

Rating: ****

Captain America: The First Avenger

It’s the 1940s, America’s at war with the Nazis and Steve Rogers is a puny, 90-pound weakling desperate to sign up for the Army. However, he meets constant rejection. After fortuitously meeting a scientist, he ends up in a secret program to create the first super soldier. His bravery and fortitude see him chosen for the experiment, and he is transformed into a tall, muscular super solider. Unfortunately, the program dies, and he’s left to go on tour dressed as Captain America, promoting war bonds. However, when he performs a show in Italy and hears his best friend has been captured, he defies orders and goes behind enemy lines to rescue him, where he runs into the sinister Red Skull...

Marvel have had a very good 2011 so far. Thor, which no-one expected to succeed, went down well with critics and fans and made huge bank at the box office. Then, no less than a month later, the newest X-Men film came out, and again, it went down well with everybody (though not with this critic) and did well at the box office, if not as well as Thor. Now, less than two months after that, here comes Captain America: The First Avenger, Marvel’s third superhero release since Easter. Is it overkill? Perhaps. The only reason I’d complain about that is if they rushed these films out without considering the quality, if Captain America was a poor entry to the genre, made purely for the money. Luckily, it’s rather bloody good.

I like it because it’s different, it’s not set in the modern age, it’s a World War 2 story with plenty of evil Nazis (or rather rebel Nazi terrorists aka HYDRA) and, although the character was (and still is) basically one long propaganda exercise, the film has a rather lovely post-modern twist which plays up to the fact that Captain America is a propagandist comic book superhero, which will help this film translate into non-American cultures. Ultimately, we get more captain, less America. I also like it because it’s nice and silly! It’s proper, good old fashioned, family orientated, switch your head off and enjoy kind of entertainment, which is absolutely unsurprising given the director is Joe Johnston, director of The Rocketeer and Jumanji. The man knows not only how to make a film look good, but how to make it a good old fashioned romp for the whole family. I say well done to Marvel/Disney on yet another astute choice of director.

It’s helped along by Chris Evans, who plays Steve/Captain, and the fact that he is ripped. He looks like he could easily be a real-life Captain America, and even when Rogers is weedy (done with some weird CGI which puts Evans’ head on a smaller body, making his head look huge), Evans delivers a performance with heart. Then there’s Hugo Weaving as Johann Schmidt/Red Skull. It must be said, the Red Skull make-up looks impressive, and Weaving plays a frighteningly good Nazi, a really perfect superhero bad guy. Tommy Lee Jones doesn’t really do much in his role, he plays a bad-ass good guy well, and he does again here with a couple of funny lines thrown in for good measure. Hayley Atwell is Rogers’ love interest Peggy Carter, and tries so desperately hard to pull off the sassy female who can hole her own, but it just comes across as wooden and emotionless and stands out against the rest of the cast who seem to have fallen into their roles a lot easier.

Since Iron Man 2, it’s been hard to judge whether or not the Marvel films have been done out of a genuine belief that the films would be a choice addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or whether they’ve been made purely to reach the endgame: The Avengers. With this, it’s half and half. It’s a good introduction to the character, the back story’s done well and the adventure/main plot is good, but it all gets rather silly near the end. WARNING! HERE BE PLOT SPOILERS! In order to get Captain America from 1940s America in which the film is set to 2010s America where The Avengers will be taking place, the film ends with Rogers crashing a plane into the Arctic, being found 70 years later and defrosted by Nick Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. It’s all very convoluted and a means to an end. Plus, it ruins a potential franchise, Captain America could have stayed in the 40s and fought a variety of different enemies, creating a really different stand-out franchise in the Marvel canon, but no. Now, any future Captain America films will be of the bog standard variety. Also, throughout this film, Captain America does an awful lot of jumping and leaping about. Now, he’s a super soldier yes, but he doesn’t actually have any super powers like Superman or Spider-Man. There’s no way in hell he’d be able to jump anywhere near that far, even with his super soldier super legs, it’s just poor scripting and decidedly dodgy wire/green screen work which brought my viewing pleasure back down to Earth with a bump.

Overall, it’s not at all bad as long as you’re willing to just switch off for a couple of hours and simply sit and enjoy it. There’s a love story tangent in there somewhere which is never really touched upon, purely because even though it’s a 2 hour film, they still barely fit in the origin story and Captain’s fight against HYDRA and the Red Skull. There’s a lot of silly comic book science used to explain everything which is forgiveable of a genre film like this, and it’s a refreshing change of pace from the norm. Except at the end. Where it all goes tits up. I’d say this goes alongside Thor as the best superhero film of 2011 so far though, and I can’t see anything knocking either of them off their perch. Well done Marvel, you’re winning me over from the DC side.

Rating: ***1/2

Horrible Bosses

Nick, Dale and Kurt are all stuck in awful jobs under the cosh of their horrible bosses. Nick’s boss at his financial firm is a psycho. Dale’s boss at his dental practice is a nymphomaniac. Kurt’s boss at an industrial company is nice, but then he dies, leaving his son to take over, who happens to be a cocaine addicted tool. Together, they joke about killing their bosses and being free of them, but it’s not long before the jokes turn to serious discussion. Hiring convicted criminal Motherfucker Jones as their ‘murder consultant’, they stake out their bosses and try to find a way of killing them and getting away with it...

Not a month ago, Bridesmaids was released, and oh how the nation laughed. A group of ladies came along and surprised everyone by actually being funny, making for a rom com which was genderless, which in my eyes was a first. Now, we have Horrible Bosses, which I’d argue is the male equivalent to Bridesmaids. We have the vast ensemble cast, the recognisable faces, an SNL star in one of the lead roles, the buddy element and the premise which carries plenty of potential for comedy. So can it match up to the highest grossing female-led R-rated movie of all time? No. But it is still funny.

This is mainly down to its cast. We’ll start with the three would-be killers. Jason Bateman plays Nick, the downtrodden financial worker who willingly takes shit in the hopes of one day gaining a promotion. I think everybody loves Jason Bateman, even after the number of decidedly dodgy comedy films he’s been a part of in the last few years. His part in Arrested Development cleanses all sins and will do so forever. Here, though, he’s given a really solid role as the pseudo leader of the three whilst still getting the famous Bateman lines he’s always given which he can deliver with his signature sarcastic/unbelieving tone. Jason Sudekis, the SNL feature player, plays Kurt in his second comedic lead role of 2011, but we’ll forget about Hall Pass. Here, he plays a ladies man who actually likes his job but not his new boss. Put it this way, he’s a dick but a likeable dick, which shows how well written his part is. However, the breakout here will be Charlie Day, playing Dale, a naive young idiot who’s on the sex offenders register after an unfortunate accident (it’s funny, not dark, trust me) and can only find work with a nympho dentist. He’s been playing this role for years on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (which if you haven’t seen, you should) and he carries it over and becomes the loveable loser of the piece and puts in yet another solid performance here. These three characters have been perfectly cast and really well written.

Now, the three bosses. Nick’s boss is Dave, played by Kevin Spacey. Spacey does brilliantly well in playing the rich, self-obsessed corporate psychopath and really compliments Bateman well. Kurt’s boss is Bobby, played by Colin Farrell. To me, this is probably the only underwritten character in the film and it’s disappointing. The joke is he’s a cocaine addict playboy, and that he’s bald with a comb over. The character doesn’t really progress further than that and ends up really 2-dimensional and flat. Then, there’s Dale’s boss, played by Jennifer Aniston. She is so unbelievably ‘un-Aniston’ in this film, if that makes any sense at all. She plays the highly sexual Dr Julia, who also happens to be quite psychotic herself. She has good chemistry with Charlie Day and it’s because she steps outside her comfort zone that she’s able to give one of her best performances in a long time. That whole story thread with Dale and Julia is probably the funniest of the three and that lies at the feet of Aniston and Day. Kudos, also, to Jamie Foxx as Motherfucker Jones (the story behind his name change is probably the cleverest, funniest joke in the film) for doing well enough with what he’s given.

Let’s be honest, this is a pretty dark premise for a film. Lots of murder involved, lots of plotting and y planning and scheming and misery. But, the ridiculousness of the premise, for a comedy film, sparks various situations in which there are some real laughs. Maybe not laugh out loud belly laughs, but still it’s humorous. It definitely surpasses the ‘Kermode Five Laugh Rule’ test with ease and just keeps going from there. Admittedly, quite a few of the jokes in the film which are misogynistic, but they fit within the ethos of the film. There are also some racist jokes in there, but again, they fit and they’re appropriate to the tone of the film. Another small gripe I have with the film is that the funniest story of the three, the Dale and Julia thread, isn’t given as much attention as the other two threads and doesn’t really play into the main dramatic story of the film. That seems like a silly statement, but you’ll understand once you see it yourself. I think they’ve missed a trick not placing that thread as the central one, but it’s understandable why they did it and everything works how they’ve done it so who am I to judge? And then there’s the ending. It just seems to happen, leading to somewhat of an anti-climax.

Overall, it’s a funny comedy with plenty of silliness in it, and I think it’s probably in the top 3 comedies of 2011 so far, behind Bridesmaids and jostling for second with Paul. Unfortunately, Bridesmaids casts a big shadow over this, and it falls short of meeting its high standard. This won’t appeal to everyone, I definitely see this as more of a guy’s comedy, girls will be far less likely to find this funny due to the content of the jokes and level of humour, but it’s worth giving it a go nonetheless. It never gets too dark, and the story never loses focus of what it has to achieve both joke wise and sense wise. This isn’t a classic, but it’s one of the funnier comedies of the year so far. Admittedly, that’s not saying much, it’s like saying having a cold is better than having a flesh-eating virus.

Rating: ***

Super

Frank has only ever had two good moments in his life: His wedding day, and helping a cop chase down a criminal. When his wife, Libby, leaves him for a local drug dealer, he turns to God to help him get her back and decide what to do next. Whether it was through divine intervention or his own fantasy, he comes to the conclusion that he must become a real-life superhero to fight crime and ultimately save his wife, who he believes has been kidnapped by the drug dealer. Thus, the Crimson Bolt is born, and with his trusty sidekick Boltie, his crime-fighting wrench and his catchphrase “Shut up, crime”, he begins getting attention in the local neighbourhood... but for all the wrong reasons.

James Gunn is a clever son of a gun (pun intended). In 2006, he wrote and directed Slither, a sharp, well-observed, self-reflexive horror comedy about killer slug-creatures, inspired by various 1970’s B-movie horrors. It went down well with this critic and various others too, and now Gunn has returned with Super. It would be easy to say that this is just another superhero film in amongst many, MANY others, in particular Kick-Ass, to which this shares more than a certain kinship. It would be easy to say all of that, but upon watching it, you’ll find that it’s way more than that. Super’s a funny, bleak, dark, horrifying, self-reflexive take on the superhero genre that’s got ‘cult’ written all over it.

Super, on the surface, does admittedly seem like a rip-off of Kick-Ass: Normal man decides to make his own costume and become a superhero, fighting every day crime, gaining a fellow hero to fight alongside and eventually leading up to a battle with the local mob. Watch this though, and you’ll see within two minutes (I guarantee: Two minutes is all it’ll take) this is nothing like Kick-Ass. Super is dark. Pitch black, even. This goes way beyond dark humour, this is proper gallows humour. It’s bleak, and unrelentingly so. At times, the humour becomes ludicrous, when the Crimson Bolt goes on a justice spree with his weapon of choice, a wrench, but even then, it quickly becomes disturbing and somewhat shocking as you realise ‘Hey, this film is fucked up’. It’s not exactly a laugh fest, but then at times it is. You’ll understand when you see it, it’s hard to tell if you’re laughing at the jokes on offer, at how ludicrous the pretence is, at how messed up the depiction of violence in a film which truly springs it onto you, or if you’re just laughing out of major discomfort. Either way, it will make you laugh, but probably not for the right reasons.

Rainn Wilson plays the depressed/delusional/disturbed Frank/Crimson Bolt well enough, as the role requires him to be somewhat deranged and thoroughly downbeat. That was a lot of ‘D’ words. Ellen Page turns up to play Juno. Yeah, her character Libby/Boltie is an exact replica of Juno. On the plus side, Ellen Page knows how to play Juno and play her well, so it all works out. Liv Tyler turns up as Frank’s drug addicted wife, and doesn’t really do much as she spends most of the time high or getting high. Then there’s Kevin Bacon as drug dealer Jacques. What the hell?! What is with this renaissance of interest in Kevin Bacon? First X-Men, where frankly he was a bit rubbish, and now this, where he’s better and definitely a more convincing bad guy, but he’s still not the level of evil you need to pull it through, here he’s just an eccentric drug dealer when something else was needed from his performance.

Other than Bacon, the film’s pretty tight, there’s a couple of cool cameos (including Rob Zombie playing God, I mean come on!) and Super ends up looking and feeling like something in between a full blown Hollywood flick and a little independent film. It’s all shot in the shaky documentary camera style to suggest this is all real, which it really isn’t, and there are even some half decent effects and CGI being used here, in particular during the scene in which God appears before Frank in his vision. There’s also a surprisingly high amount of graphic violence; lots of blood, gunshots, corpses, bombs, vehicular violence, wrench shots and stabbings. Look out, as well, for some weirdly-placed Scott Pilgrim/Batman style animated words popping up in the same style as the fantastic opening credits.

Overall, this film is deceptively depressing. On the surface, it’s a nice, friendly, family friendly concept. Dig a little deeper, it’s a dark, bleak, bloody tale of revenge and despair that’s definitely for adults only. James Gunn is making a name for himself with these self-reflexive stories which aren’t afraid to poke a little fun at the genre the film falls under, but with Super, Gunn’s gone and made something which tears up the rule book and just goes all in, balls out and is unrelenting until the small glimmer of optimism right at the very, very end. The crying shame of Super is that people will go to see this, not get what they expected, and walk away hating it. Even worse, people probably won’t even see this at all. I urge you, if you see this at your cinema, and you’re thinking about watching something else, watch this instead. Go in with an open mind, and just set back and try to enjoy it, as uncomfortably dark as it gets. It's an 18 for a reason.

Rating: ****

Bridesmaids

Annie is a single woman in her mid 30's living in Milwaukee living with a weird Englishman and his weirder sister having failed with her bakery business and losing her boyfriend and all her savings. Life isn't going well. And now, her best friend Lillian is getting married and has asked Annie to be her maid of honour. Soon, Annie gets to meet Lillian's wedding party, which includes the ultra-competitive Helen. Can she balance her responsibilities to Lillian, her rivalry with Helen, her non-relationship with fuck buddy Ted and her blossoming relationship with policeman Nathan?

For years and years now, Kristen Wiig has been one of, if not THE, best things about Saturday Night Live. It's nowhere near its glory days, but Wiig's versatility, writing skills and numerous characters have kept the show fresh. Recently, she's begun to make the leap from small screen to big screen. After popping up in cameos in various Judd Apatow films and taking a few voice roles in a few animated films, her first starring role came in SNL film MacGruber last year, then she appeared again earlier this year in Paul. Now, she's back, having co-written and starred here in Bridesmaids. So can she carry a film? Do her talents translate to the big screen. You're damn right they do. They do in a big way.

This, for all intents and purposes, has 'chick flick' written all over it. Group of women preparing for a wedding. Laughs ensue. Well, frankly, this is a chick flick with balls. It crosses the gender divide without looking back, not because the humour is aimed specifically at one gender or the other, but because the humour in the film is actually funny. It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman, this is a damn funny film, and there's something for everyone. There's the Office-style cringe-worthy humour. There's the 30 Rock-style silly humour. There's the Arrested Development-style clever humour. There's even the South Park-style toilet humour. This film literally covers all bases in order to try and illicit as many laughs from the audience as possible at it works. There's a coherent, well thought out plot keeping everything together as well, and the various situations the wedding party find themselves stay true to life and never get truly ridiculous. It all just fits together and works.

Of course, this is all down to Wiig. With co-writer Annie Mumolo, she's written a film which could, and if there's any justice should, launch her into leading lady status. Her acting is bang on as well, as you'd expect from someone who does an hour and a half of live sketch television every Saturday night. Therefore, the same level of performance is given by Maya Rudolph, a fellow SNL alumnus, who plays Lilian. Rose Byrne's pulls off the upper class bitch Helen with joy, you can see how much she's enjoying her role as the scheming, conniving rival with every scene she's in. However, one of the understated things about this film is the performance of Melissa McCarthy. Her role as the toyboyish yet raunchy Megan is brilliant, was well written for McCarthy and she plays it through the film straight as an arrow and has what are probably the two best and funniest lines in the film. These four do, unfortunately, leave the other two members of the wedding party, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper, in the dark. Chris O'Dowd makes a good turn as the charming police officer trying to woo Annie, but he's outshone by an uncredited Jon Hamm as Annie's fuck buddy Ted. You know this film is well written when it manages to turn Jon Hamm into an absolute dick within the first minute. You can tell he enjoys being the chauvinistic bastard for a change as well.

I will say that there are a lot more laughs in the first hour and a half than there are in the last half an hour, I don't remember laughing that much during the third act as things turn rather serious and far less jovial, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, I'd say that shows Judd Apatow's influence, as he was on board as a producer. He probably pushed for a more serious third act similar to those seen in The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up and Funny People. Not to say there are no jokes, it just eases up on the gas pedal a little. Plus, there is the underlying story throughout of people growing up and moving on from past friendships. Her friendship with Annie is Lillian's last and only link to her old life, and it's sad to see how she's begun to move on whilst Annie either can't or won't. It's really sharply observed and well played out on screen.

Overall, this is a really funny, really heartfelt comedy that is anything but a chick flick, despite the decidedly oestrogen-filled premise and cast. Kristen Wiig has proven her comedy skills once and for all on a major stage, and the door is now open for her to move on to bigger things. Melissa McCarthy also has an opportunity after this to become a huge star, though her sitcom may put the kibosh on that. This goes from witty to silly to gross-out back to witty throughout, it really strives to make as many people laugh as often as possible, and for me at least, it more than achieved its aims. Definitely the best comedy of the year so far by a long, long way. Considering this is two hours as well, it packs the laughs in far more than, say, the two hour Dinner for Schmucks. Yes, I will keep coming back to it.

Rating: ****