Empire Movie-Con III Day One
August 14th, 2010
Yes, it’s that time of year again. As most of you will know I provided some coverage of this last year, but getting tickets for ths year’s events was very difficult. This event is growing in popularity. I will not be at all suprised if it becomes impossible to get tickets in future.
Friday 13th August 2010
127 Hours - We saw the trailer for this, apparantly just finished that morning. Danny Boyle and Christian Colson did an interesting Q and A. I asked Danny Boyle about his use of locations, and how his films have a sense of place.
A Town Called Panic - Clips and trailer from this weird-looking Belgian animation. It looks like Robot Chicken. It was being promoted by Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, and they showed a funny little film by Adam Buxton, who was pretending to be one of the animators. The film itself looks alright. A bit too wacky for its own good.
Never Let Me Go - the trailer looked alright. It’s a new Keira Knightley film, set in an evil boarding school in Hailsham. I live near Hailsham, and it never looks this scary. The film’s producers, Andrew McDonald (who was acting a bit odd, like he was feeling the effects of prescription medication), and Allan Reich, talked a bit about it. They also mentioned they will be producing a new Judge Dredd movie starring Karl Urban, which they are shooting in South Africa.

Finally we saw The Expendables. I think this was one of the first screenings in the UK. THis is a movie written and directed by Sly Stallone. It’s very difficult to describe. It’s supposed to be an all-out 1980s style action movie, with men on a mission against impossible odds. It’s got a pretty exciting cast, including a still very good looking Dolph Lundgren, alongside other stalwarts of the Eighties: Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mickey Rourke and Eric Roberts, playing the exact character he always plays. The trouble with the film is it can’t seem to decide what kind of film it is. Sometimes it seems like a spoof, almost at Austin Powers levels. The characters are so broadly drawn I was waiting for Eric Roberts to cackle loudly whilst explaining just how Evil he was. Other times it feels like Sly was really trying to attempt emotional depth. Unfortunately these scenes got just as much of a laugh as the comedy moments. There are some actual exciting and gutsy moments that can be applauded and laughed along with in equal measure. but sadly these are undermined by the unintentional humour in the more serious moments.
There are several plot problems, loose ends and sub-plots which exist purely to give an excuse for another fight scene, or to provide some kind of character motivation. It also features some pretty dreadful scripting and line delivery, which when accompanied by a soundtrack mix loaded with explosions, gun fire and heavy rock, means that half of the script is impossible to understand. Some exposition scenes, particularly those between Stallone and Rourke, are just rumbling bass with no discernable consenants between them.
One main problem for me was the lack of an explanation as to the Expendables themselves; who were they? Why were they expendable? They can’t be that expendable, because not one of them dies in the movie. They all make it to the end, which is fairly unusual for this kind of film.
Although a lot of the action is quite good fun, eventually I just lost my patience with it. The film turns into a constant repitition of men beating each other to a pulp, or blowing each other into tiny bits. The Expendables go to what appears to be a South American island republic in an attempt to overthrow an evil regime lead by an ex-CIA drug baron. Whilst there, although they defeat the villian, they kill absolutely every last member of the military on the island. It becomes a massacre. Soldiers are trying to run away, and they get blown up, stabbed in the face, sliced in half, gunned down and generally abused. To top it off they blow up the government headquarters and all military facilities. The screen becomes a literal wall of fire. So once they leave as apparant heroes, with Sly feeling redeemed because he got the bad guy and saved the girl, who is supposed to pick up the pieces? Every male member of the population between 18 and 45 is now dead, so the governance, policing and repopulation of the repulbic is now being left to the women and the elderly.
This is also a very cheap-looking film. A lot of the explosions and squibs look like CGI, which is unexpected for a Hollywood movie. The last time I saw bullet hits this obviously computer-generated was in a film made by A level media students.
On the plus side, it does feature Jason Statham quite heavily. His is the standout performance in this film, acheiving the levels of testosterone-fueled charisma and action he reaches in the Transporter trilogy. In fact, it would have been a better movie if Stallone had realised that the rest of the cast truly were EXPENDABLE, and just pointed his camera at Statham for the full 90 minutes.














