Pacific Rim
If you are a fan of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth for their creatures and monsters, then you might like Guillermo del Toro’s latest. Let’s face it, who did like Hellboy’s cute and adorable fairies that devoured whole bodies in seconds? Granted, a gruesome idea, but it was very creative. No one can ever forget the enchanting scene of the death of the last Forest God in the same movie. The giant and gentle green creature told the tale of mother earth in one small scene. So, while some humans may shriek and make faces at Guillermo del Toro’s monsters, the smart ones know that these are the best of the best. They have background stories and seem more human than the rest of us.
This time, you won’t be disappointed. The subject matter might be repeated: a war between humans and monsters, but knowing del Toro’s style, this film will definitely be something different. “At first, watching Pacific Rim feels like rediscovering a favourite childhood cartoon – but del Toro has flooded the project with such affection and artistry that, rather than smiling nostalgically, you find yourself enchanted all over again,” wrote Robbie Collin of The Telegraph.
“That guilelessness is the root of Pacific Rim’s charm: the Jaegers romp around like enormous, weaponised four-year-olds, and there is a wonderful moment in a battle off the coast of Alaska where one picks up a fishing boat in the path of a monster and tenderly sets it aside, like a rubber duck in the bath. Whatever our ages, del Toro’s miraculous entertainment boosts us all up to its gleeful point of view, where cities become adventure playgrounds and oceans pools to paddle in. Giant robots, it turns out, can be great levelers,” Collin concluded.
The Lone Ranger
Johnny Depp teams up with Disney once again to deliver another quirky character. This time it is the Native American warrior Tonto. As expected, Depp is slathered with makeup, and dressed in what is supposed to be Native American clothes. Set in the 1930s, Tonto recounts the tale of a lawyer called John Reid who becomes a masked vigilante. Again, Depp is accompanied by actress Helena Bonham Carter, who plays the role of Red Harrington, a southern madame with a wooden leg. Quirky, indeed!
“What sort of a film is it? A family film, but too bloodless and archly self-aware to be a through-and-through western, and it’s something other than an unassuming cinema version of the much-loved radio and TV adventure serials that in fact spawned two films in the 1950s. It’s often self-consciously big and mythic, with Monument-Valley-grandeur tendencies that undercut the stabs at humour. Really, it’s yet another superhero-origin franchise product, like the recent Superman and Dark Knight films, giving massively elaborate explanations for the hero’s name and that of his horse,” wrote Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian.
R.I.P.D.
You would think that Jeff Bridges, a somewhat film legend, would be pickier about his movies, but then you would be mistaken. Bridges teamed up with Ryan Reynolds to deliver a sleazy comedy that borders on crime and action. The film can’t seem to make its mind on what it is. It is a shame that it has such a great line-up of actors including Kevin Bacon and Mary-Louise Parker.
“Less a bad movie than simply not a movie, R.I.P.D. gives every indication of having been a sloppy first-draft script (by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi) that the producers, in a strange spasm of innovation and despair, said, “Aaah, what the hell, let’s just shoot the damn thing.” Any consideration of the film deserves the same level of carelessness: no artful shaping of the review, no arduously composed lede and capper. So here is a rough transcription of my notes, scribbled in the 3-D dark, while sitting through the summer’s most inert film,” wrote Richard Corliss of Time.
