Nextflix Reviews - Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets

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This looks like a massive budget sci-fi adventure, I vaguely remember hearing the name of it but wasn't tempted to go see it at the cinema. I wonder if the advertising people did a good enough job pushing it. It's based on a series of French science fiction comics called Valerian and Laureline which I have not heard of previously. Apparently producer Luc Besson has been wanting to make this movie for years even considering it way back in 1997 when he was working on The Fifth Element.

As the film starts we see the scope of the civilisations involved in the story during a starting sequence where we see beings from many species greeting and shaking hands with each other as they create a massive, planet sized space base, Alpha Station in the Earth's orbit. Eventually they become a danger to Earth so are set adrift to govern themselves. This is the City of a Thousand Planets, Valerian is a young Major in their security forces. He and his partner Sergeant Laureline start the film on a mission on a planet to capture a stolen converter, a small dragon like creature, the last of it's kind, that appears to poop out multiple replicas of whatever it eats! It is being sold on the black market by some previous residents of the planet Mül which was destroyed 30 years ago. We saw their homeworld get destroyed before the introduction of the title characters, an event that Valerian either dreamed or received a psychic flash about. He recognises them from his dream but when the mission goes pear-shaped he has to get out quickly before he can question them.

Just one of the friendly monsters we see in this movie

After a narrow escape they arrive back on Alpha Base to be faced with two threats, firstly a strange techno cancer has infected the base threatening to destroy it and secondly ruthless forces want the last converter and will go to extreme lengths to get it. The two appear to be connected as a group of Mül show up and kidnap the commander.

There are mysteries and intrigue around what happened to the Mül planet and what they are after that gets the partners into a lot of scrapes during the course of this 2 hour 20 minute movie.

The real star of this movie is the special effects and the imagination at work to create the many creatures and areas of the ship that we see. There are some scenes that almost leave you agog at the amount of detail that went into them. The early mission scene for example is in a kind of virtual reality market place so we see a fight/escape scene that exists in seemingly 2 different dimensions at once. Another seen sees a chase through Alpha Base that passes through a number of regions all vastly different to each other. This movie had a massive budget and it shows, although it apparently ended up a bit of a box office failure so I'm not sure if they'll ever be any sequels.

The action is top-notch and the story is passable, the only negative points is that the characters are perhaps a tad flat and lacking charisma, it's definitely worth a look just for the cool visuals.

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Nextflix Reviews - A series of Unfortunate Events

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I vaguely recall there was a film of this a good few years back now, with Jim Carrey I think, and I know this is based on a set of 13 children's books by the author Daniel Handler using the pen name of Lemony Snicket but I haven't read them at all, so I've no idea how closely the 2 series, so far, of this TV show mirrors them. 

The story is narrated by Lemony Snicket himself he provides exposition and links the 'events' together telling from a historical stand point. Along the way he promises that the outcome and fate of our young stars is one of perpetual doom. It follows the 3 talented Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus and toddler Sunny who are orphaned due to a terrible fire that guts their family home. They are adopted at 1st by their evil distant relative Count Olaf a hammy actor and all round terrible human being who has a gang of strange followers in his theatrical entourage. He is aware of a sizable inheritance soon to come the children's way and plans to seize it for himself. The children manage to get away from him and are passed on to be fostered by a procession of quirky relatives all the while being pursued by Olaf and his cronies.

This is a world where the children are smart and capable and most of the adults are daft as brushes who can't see through the ever improbable disguises of the Count. For two seasons they've travelled around passed between friends of their parents and unlocking some secrets about their parents lives and a secret society they belonged to called The V.F.D., some agents of whom try to assist them whenever they can.

Along the way they also meet the two surviving Quagmire triplets Duncan and Isadora whose lives seem to strangely parallel their own in many aspects, they lost a sibling as well as their parents in a fire. They become allies helping each other out of terrible situations of the Count's making. 

The tone of the show is very dark and comic but very strange, I am probably not at the right age to get it, it kind of seems too dark for me I am surprised kids like it but then Grimm's fairy tales of old were a lot darker than we eventually watered them down to. So it seems kids can deal with darkness, discomfort and even death in their entertainment a lot more than I would've suspected!

The 1st two seasons of the show have aired on Netflix so far and have covered the tales from the 1st 9 books of the series. It's seen them visiting an outlandish set of scenarios and characters such as the world's most prestigious snake expert, a house tottering precariously on the edge of a cliff, a wood mill staffed by hypnotised workers, a frankly horrendous orphanage, the penthouse of a pair of trend obsessed millionaires, a village full of bird loving loons, a hideous hospital and a failing carnival that decides to hold a raffle to decide which one of their freaks to feed to the lions to boost trade!

At every step they are hounded by Olaf with the situation they are in seemingly getting grimmer and grimmer. They certainly are 'unfortunate' that's for sure. Season two ends with an almost literal cliffhanger which may well leave you gasping to see the 3rd and I assume final series as this is set to cover the last 4 books of the set.

For me it's not compulsive viewing really, it's something to have on but the wackiness of the characters and situations doesn't really tickle my funny bone. I suppose it must entertain on some level or I wouldn't have continued watching it. I will certainly watch the last season just to see what happens to the children, Narrator Snicket always suggests that their final fate will not be a happy one, with even the title music suggesting we 'look away' as the story is not a pretty one. I assume they'll be a happy conclusion after all their hardship but who knows what these crazy kids are into nowadays and how it will end!!

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Nextflix Reviews - Cargo

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I think this is the full-length version of a short film that was doing the rounds, being shared on Facebook a while back. It starts out with a couple Andy & Kay and their baby living in a house boat on the river in Australia. They are scavenging for supplies as they go with their only interaction with other people being when they float past a family who pull a gun and eye them warily. 

This is a zombie movie, they've done the escape to somewhere remote part already before the film starts and have it relatively safe now, but maybe they got too comfortable and complacent and disaster strikes. Something bites Kay and she has 48 hours before she turns, Andy desperately tries to get her to a hospital but things go from bad to worse. Andy is now left alone and is himself infected, he desperately has to seek a way to get his daughter Rosie to safety before he turns. 

He meets other people along the way, all eking out an existence in a pretty barren remote rural landscape. There are zombies around but not enough at 1st to seem like a major problem, Andy has to be more wary of the living as some may have a shoot the bitten on sight policy. He is advised by a school teacher to leave Rosie with a mob of aboriginal people who have deserted the towns to go back to the old ways, away from the sickness that has overtaken civilisation.

As so often happens in these movies the living often prove to be as big a threat as the dead, with Andy having to avoid both on occasions whilst also trying to fight off his descent into zombiedom! It's a countdown all the way, can he find a safe haven for his child before he decides to have her for lunch? He does find an ally along the way, Thoomi an aboriginal girl and they have to learn to trust and help each other to get by.

This stars Martin Freeman of Sherlock, Hobbit and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame in the sort of role that I wouldn't expect to see him in, mind you he's in that film Ghost Stories too which is meant to be pretty scary and it's definitely on my one to watch list.

This film is a good story, but it doesn't really feel like that much of a horror, the zombies hardly ever get close enough to be that perilous it seems. The tension doesn't get ramped up as high as I imagined it would be either, I imagined Andy would be struggling hard with not eating Rosie but he never even gets close to it. Overall a cool enough movie but I think it missed a trick or two along the way.

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Other films starring Martin Freeman

   

DC Exhibition: Dawn of Super Heroes

So, I'd seen the ads, I'd seen people's posts about it on Facebook and I decided that I had to go and see it for myself, so off I jolly well trotted to the O2 at North Greenwich at 12 O'clock today to go and see the DC heroes on display. And jolly glad I am that I did cos it was fab. 

Click to enlarge

The venue was pretty quiet today which was nice, I could take my time poring over all the cool vintage art from 80 years of comics action. All the great names I knew from my collecting days and even a fair few I'd not heard of were on display. I was fascinated with the way it was put together with annotations in the borders and with the lettering and page banners etc all applied on top of the drawn page. You could see the alterations made as well and penciled guidelines. 

I love the older comics with their hokey stories and dated notions of romance, they have a kind of naive innocence of a bygone era that always tickles me.

If you are more interested in the movies rather than their source material then you shouldn't be upset as there are a wealth of props, models, costumes, concept art and storyboards from all the DC hero films and even some focus on the old 60's and animated Batman shows. The display rooms were divided by characters with focus on the more recent crop of movies. So Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad & The Justice League all got plenty of coverage. I would have liked a Green Lantern dedicated room as well but with the unfair negative feedback that movie got there was no chance of that!

Upon entering the exhibition you can get an audio exhibition guide which was easy enough to use and gave some fascinating insight into the comics world. My only real gripe was the lighting which was very muted. The info plaques were black with the white text on them in pretty small font and it made them hard to read. I also missed a load of the audio guide number prompts probably due to the lack of light also. (Although I am not sure if that was the fault of the light's dimness or my own!) Perhaps I was too enraptured by the art to notice the numbers.

Another small gripe but probably only specific to old bums with flat feet like me was that there could've been a few more seats to park weary butts in for a while.

Anyway, in summary I thoroughly enjoyed my couple of hours and thought it was excellent value for money. If it sounds like your cuppa tea the exhibit runs till September the 9th. 

Click HERE for more info.

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