Geostorm

"Aren’t you a little bit curious to watch the world burn?"

Gerard Butler V The Weather Geostorm. Such a stupid, made up nonsense word. When I first heard the title of the movie I laughed. It sounds like one of those parody B-movies boshed out by the Syfy channel on a regular basis, but the studio know how ridiculous they are. This is just like Geostorm, except it has better CGI, a greater budget and better-quality stars. However I still haven’t worked out whether director Dean Devlin (who has worked on Independence Day and Godzilla) intended it to be as funny as it was. He HAD to be in on it because it is a hoot. Well, I thought it was a hoot. I think I may have been the only one in the room who laughed all the way through.

It is 2019 and severe climate change has forced a vast number of nations to construct a worldwide network of satellites which can literally control the weather. But now, this very system that was built to protect the Earth is now attacking it, and it is down to two estranged brothers to solve the problem before the world is destroyed by the worst kind of storm ever; a geostorm.

I think it’s important to point out now that if you go into this movie expecting a serious, scientifically savvy movie based in reality then you’re in for a surprise. It would be a big ask to take seriously a premise that asks you to believe that Gerard Butler could play a scientist/astronaut whose accent is a mix of American and Scottish who can be responsible for building global satellites that can control the weather.

The trailer, the movie poster and the title itself all give the promise of total destruction by this ‘geostorm’, but then distracts the audience with a ludicrous 24-style government conspiracy plot, amusing scenes of people being chased by the weather (There's a scene involving a man on a camel in Dubai which was my favourite), and  ends with an unnamed, unrelated Indian boy being reunited with his dog. Yes, there is a beloved pet dog in danger in a disaster movie. And yes, it lives and millions of people die, but who cares as long as the dog lives? The movie continues to tick boxes straight from the disaster movie playbook, including a father and his shaky relationship with his child who thinks he’s a huge disappointment. There’s also a brotherly rivalry, lightning bolts that can blow up huge buildings, skyscrapers tumbling like dominoes and a ‘surprise’ villain who everybody knew would be the villain just by looking at the cast list. Unless you’ve never seen a movie before. Then I guess it was a surprise to you. And the word ‘geostorm’ is mentioned so many times it’s as if they didn’t want you to forget the title of the movie.

Obviously, none of this movie makes any sense, but that may have been predictable from the very beginning given the trailer and the opening scene which is narrated by a little girl in order to engage the audience. It cannot be protected against any criticism against its originality, unremarkable dialogue or even the ludicrous driving ability of the main characters. However, all of this absurdity makes it quite an entertaining viewing. It was never going to be a masterpiece but it is more fun and comical than you might expect.

The only thing missing from this movie is a scene where Gerard Butler shouts, “THIS. IS. GEOSTORM!” and kicks a tornado into space.

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain

  "I only get to live life forward. It never makes any sense until we're looking back".

6 Below: Miracle on the Mountain is the second stranded on a mountain film we’ve been given in the last few weeks, and although this one is based on a true story it doesn’t necessarily mean it is better than The Mountain Between us. It is based on the real events of Eric LeMarque who picked the worst time to go snowboarding in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and ends up being lost for eight days whilst facing hypothermia, frostbite and wolves.

6 Below is more like ‘the miracle to stay awake’ as we watch Eric LeMarque (Josh Hartnett) shout, fend off two wolves by shouting at them and shivering on repeat in a dull and bland mountain survival based on true events.

Now I’ve always been a fan of Josh Hartnett; Lucky Number Slevin, Sin City and Black Hawk Down are all fantastic films and he is a more than capable actor; however he wasn’t given a lot to work with here and is let down by the writers. The bulk of the film is bursting with tedious, repetitious shots of Eric being lost or shivering, and the only saving grace is the vast, immersive sound design with its whistling winds and howling wolves which capture the grand scale of the mountain that Eric is stranded on.

Throughout the film we learn possibly too much than we need to about Eric’s demanding and drinking hockey coach dad, his own pro hockey career demise and the subsequent descent into drug abuse through incredibly overacted and cringe worthy flashbacks. These flashbacks are unconvincing and take away from the action (Can we really call it action?) and their only purpose is to serve as the character development and provide us with a reason to root for him. His drug problem is completely glazed over and the demons he’s battling aren’t presented as serious. Seeing as this is a pretty grim true story (LeMarque lost both his legs to frostbite in real life) the film fails to create any real drama or sense of medical emergency due to its PG13 rating which whitewashes any blood or gore (or any actual drug abuse). The ugliest scene we get to witness is LeMarque ripping off his own frozen flesh and subsequently eating it. Yummy.

Perhaps had the writers pushed the drama immensely and given us some tension, 6 Below may have developed into a tragedy turned-inspirational story, but instead we are presented with an unconvincing struggle which had the potential to be on par with 127 Hours, but fell short by about 120 hours.  

The Emoji Movie

The Emoji Movie. 

The only question here is; how bad is it? This was the reason behind me deciding to watch it. And no Emoji Movie, you will not escape from this unharmed.

The Emoji Movie has four plot arcs. There’s the phone owner, Alex trying to win over the girl he likes, then there’s Gene the ‘meh’ emoji and the problems he causes, then Gene’s parents for some reason and whatever they get up to then the villain, a smiley woman who is just some sort of smiley, evil dictator. Every emoji in Textopolis (seriously?) has their own function of being the emoji they are. The crying emoji always cries, the Christmas tree emoji is always a Christmas tree, and the shit emoji is always a piece of shit. Gene is a meh emoji but has trouble being just a meh emoji, because of something to do with his dad and his ‘genes’.  Aha, aha I get it.  So this fucks everything up for Alex when he tries to send an emoji to the girl he likes and ends up sending something else. Because we all know how important emojis are in getting a person to like you. 

Gene decides he needs a hacker to help reprogram him to just be a meh, forcing him to conform to the system that everyone else has been living by. Then he befriends a fat, annoying fucking hand called high-5 who is obviously voiced by James Corden.  Then they end up running through different apps. Just like Inside Out, but with apps. Urgh. They get chased by some triangle robots through Candy Crush and Spotify and stuff then they manage to fly on the Twitter bird to save the day. Yes, the Twitter bird. Then Gene becomes like, a Jesus emoji and creates an animated emoji full of multiple emojis and Alex sends this to the girl, and the girl is super impressed with it so walks over to him and accepts his invitation to the dance. And she actually says this line, “I like that you’re one of those guys who can express his feelings”. Yes, well done Alex. Proof that you don’t actually need to build up the courage to go and physically talk to a girl because you can just send her a fucking emoji instead. This is one last fuck you to the audience having made them sit through this dreadful movie for it all to be a complete waste of time, with no message at the end for the kids that are watching.

The board that sat around a table and came up with the idea of selling this hour and a half advertisement to an audience to make millions of dollars should be completely ashamed of themselves.  And that’s what it is, a load of colourful moving images slapped together under the façade of a movie, a movie where ‘movie’ is a part of the title to let everyone know it is in fact a movie and not just one long fucking advert.

Nothing in this movie was funny in the slightest. I sat throughout the whole thing with an expressionless gaze waiting for something funny to materialise. And the fact that the studio had Sir Patrick Stewart play a piece of shit and make literal shit jokes is all the more insulting to everyone who paid to watch it. Even if you didn’t pay to see this you have a right to be insulted for wasting your precious time and energy. The blatant use of popular music throughout the film is an obvious trap to make the kids think, “Oh yay I love this song this movie is great” and the fact that it is basically a rip off to Inside Out makes it even more evil.

It is out of touch, obnoxious, cynical and will no doubt leave disappointed faces on children. The only good thing about this is that I enjoy seeing children with disappointed faces.

The Mountain Between Us

Nobody knows where we are. We’re all we’ve got, me and you! That’s it.

 Survival movies are fairly popular this year. Josh Hartnett is stranded in a massive winter storm on the High Sierras in 6 Below, Daniel Radcliffe is lost in a South American Jungle in Jungle, and Kate Winslet and Idris Elba have crash landed on a mountain in The Mountain Between Us.

Between them they have survived a sinking ship (Titanic) and ran the extremely mean streets of Baltimore (The Wire) so we know a mountain and a cougar and hypothermia aren't going to be a match for them. Photojournalist Alex (Winslet) is getting married in the morning and Doctor Ben (Elba) is due to perform surgery on a young boy, but due to an impending storm all flights have been grounded. They team up and persuade a charter pilot to fly them home but unsurprisingly the pilot has a stroke and the plane crashes.  THE END. No not the end.

They are stranded in the middle of nowhere with just themselves and the pilot’s golden retriever. YES THERE’S A DOG I HOPE IT SURVIVES. And yes the pilot dies. Spoiler alert. As time goes by this disaster survival film turns into a budding friendship turn romance as the pair begin to argue and flirt and Alex wants to know more about Ben. And despite the life or death scenario the stakes do feel pretty low, as Ben manages to overcome anything that comes their way. Nasty gash on your leg? No problem for Doctor Ben. Dead cougar outside? We’ll cook the one Alex shot with a flare gun and eat it. I felt a bit disappointed at the end after expecting a ‘are they both going to die’ experience and was left with a tame romance which went on for too long. The lack of danger failed to convince me that they were ever going to be in any danger at all, and this started right from the off after the pair (and the dog) didn’t really sustain any real bad injuries from the crash. I’d have loved to have seen the outcome if the studio had the courage to make it either a straight romance or a straight up survival film.

If there is one thing everyone can agree on though it’s that the scenery is stunning. Shooting at real Canadian locations was definitely worth it and we get our first real view once Ben has left the crashed plane and the camera pans over the mountains. Speaking of camera work, I was a fan of the camera slowly panning around the inside of the plane before the crash. It kind of felt like a video game with POV shots. Which then suddenly disappeared now I think about it.

Elba and Winslet are both obviously great lead roles in The Mountain Between Us and it is an enjoyable and engaging watch if somewhat predictable, however I don’t think this will be remembered as a huge hit.