The Wolverine: Jackson Kicks the Sushit Out of Japan.

Marvel's snarling anti-hero is back with aplomb. 

The Wolverine, Hugh Jackman's highly anticipated Japan based action/drama, was on today's menu and the result was a little bit like japans signature dish; tasty but hardly filling. 

Considering the film concerns a very angry, very hairy man who breaks more bones than he does sweat, The Wolverine actually finds a decent balance between action and drama.

Between the small talk and the punches there are some genuine moments where Jackman gets to flex his thesp-muscles. The fantastic opening scene with the bear means the audience can't help but be emotionally invested from the get-go. The Wolverine, arguably, gets it right where a lot of comic book films, including this summers Man of Steel, falter. 

Overall, there is a great pace to the film and the scenes where people aren't being torn from limb to limb do not look like they were slapped in there simply to provide rest-bite. By and large, this is down to Jackman's presence as a lead man. It's to his credit that he can keep the audience interested in a character who is actually very one dimensional on the surface. 

Unlike other super heroes, such as Iron man, even Wolverine's punchy comic one liners are carried out under that signature scowl, his facade refuses to change, yet Jackman still finds ways to subtly differentiate these moments in his performance. It might just be a matter of the Aussie raising a singular eyebrow, or the manner in which he recovers from a thorough beating. Either way you can see this is a man who has fully inhabited the character.

The rest of the cast remain reletively untested, Rila Fukushima is a watchable sidekick as Yukio and there are some moments between Tao Okamoto (as Mariko) and Jackson that do well to avoid being overly cringey. The rest of the faces get lost in the action sequences, and there are times when you're not quite sure whose fighting who and for what particular reason. 

This is where The Wolverine suffers. It weaves more yarn than it needs to. The plot is made to appear complex but no part of the end result is. Yakuza vs Samurai, dad vs daughter, politician vs window pane and everyone vs poor Logan. It's a melting pot where motives are never fully explored. 

Then, there are things that are also undercooked.

The Viper, played by Svetlana Khodchenkova, for instance comes and goes with no lasting effect. Her character is reminiscent of Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy and after a few encounters she becomes somewhat irritating. Her back story is about as shallow as a puddle. We don't care about her character because we don't know her thus her credentials are like "eh?". 

In fact, the stories penultimate scenes run dangerously close to cancelling out the previous hour and a half's good work at times. This is because there are brief spells when you feel like calling bullshit. The film often feels like a well rehearsed trick. The action is lean, Jackman's acting is on point, so you just go along with it. However, give yourself the time to think a lot comes into question. 

Mangold's film just about pips Tokyo Drift as my favorite Japan based summer blockbuster. The seemingly complex family feud soon crumbles away and ultimately leaves us with a Repunzel in the tower type narrative but Jackson's convincing performance and the healthy dose of claws-smashing-jaws action papers over the cracks for the most part. 

The slickness of the stunts and the CGI impresses with this latest X outing certainly cranking it up on the brutal scale. However, the narrative becomes a moo point after a while, limiting the satisfaction somewhat. 

*** 1/2 stars.

The Best Worst Film of 2013.

Before I start this review I feel compelled to mention that two 3D tickets to this particular film cost me £25. I went to watch it on a Sunday, so I only have myself to blame. This is an Orange Wednesday or no-go venture, trust me.

Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim" is the directors first fully blown blockbuster outing to date, with Blade II and the on-going Hellboy series perhaps the closest he's previously come to 'mainstream' cinema. Here, calling on a collection of gigantic robots (Jaegers- not the two for a fiver type variety) and big lizard shaped things (Kaijus), the Mexican filmmaker largely delivers displaying a mastery of scale that makes for a visually captivating monster mash up movie. The CGI is insanely detailed and, more importantly, in tune with the 3D- so much so that it manages to maintain a sense of realism throughout. No mean feat considering the subject matter. Credit where credit's due to ILM.

However, the human aspect of the film is where it falls entirely flat on its shiny metal face. The performance of the modestly assembled cast (including Charlie Hunnam of Green Street fame and one time EastEnders star Robert Kazinsky) is bog standard at best; maybe owing to the fact that they have to relay an awful lot of cringe inducing dialogue which could have been pinched from any high concept film in the last 20 years. If Prometheus and Top Gun had a love child, this would probably be it. Leading man Hunnam and Luther star Idris Elba do what they can with a below par script but there's only so many "Lets end this!" war cries you can endure before you actually start to root for the monster.

A large chunk of the middle third attempts to rectify this by trying its hand at character building. We are temporarily veered away from punching aliens in the face and instead forced to sit through the back story of Elba's character, Stacker Pentecost, leader of the resistance. Despite Elbas' snarling exterior it is the least convincing part of the film. It had me muttering 'bollox' under my breath as I sat there itching for it to move on to another healthy dose of senseless violence. It all seems very slap dash and the interrelationships of the characters are often held together by a below par bit of dialogue.

Pacific Rim will satisfy a younger male demographic and offer hardcore del Toro fans fresh material that they will likely take to, reflected in its current IMDB rating of 8 (no, really) and its solid CinemaScore of A-. However, for those you that enjoy more character based films, acceptable dialogue and being on land this probably isn't for you.

One of the best worst films I've seen in a while (make of that what you will), but if I could go back to that crisp Sunday afternoon and spend the money on something else, I probably would have.

Rating:***

Crude Gold. Hollywood's Likely Lads Make for Big Laughs in 'This is the End'.

What an apt title.

Just as I finish my degree Hollywood's most affable group of comedy actors decide to make a film that culminates with the world as we know it ending. It spoke to me on several levels.

From the get go the film feeds the audience a steady supply of mild chuckles, with best friends Seth Rogen and Jay Baruchel sharing a few light-hearted spliffs (what else?) which, inevitably, leads to a course of man on man humping. This early display of boyish humour and hashed together montages really sets the tone for the rest of the film- although, by the end, two fully grown men scissoring each other on the living room floor will seem relatively normal.

The film then steps up the laughs when our two main protagonists move over to James Franco's boudoir for a A-list party that features several scene stealing cameos from Michael Cera. Cera plays the cocaine fueled sex pest in such hilarious dead pan fashion that it begs the question- why does he leave the party so early? The Superbad star's presence is rare in the sense that it adds to the film, wherein a lot of other exerts could have been chopped out and it would have had minimal impact on the laugh-meter.

"WE'RE PLAYING A GAME JASON!". 

RiRi gets groped, people sing about going commando; everything is hunky dory and seemingly in place. Then, of course, a huge sink hole emerges on the front lawn and the majority of our party get duly sucked in.

This is when things move from baffling to mind boggling, and for the most part, it tickled my pickle.

Eugh, that analogy just made me think of the Devil pumping horn sporting sperm into Jonah Hill.

The most satisfying thing about the film is that the majority of the laughs are unexpected due to the improvised nature of the dialogue. It may come in the form of a subtle facial expression from the softly spoken yet sinister Jonah Hill, the garish jizz fanatic Danny McBride, or a combination of the actors who, it has to be said, excel as an ensemble cast.

The film inevitably becomes a bit wayward at times and whilst the threadbare "buddies in crisis" narrative between Seth and Jay just about manages to hang together the film occasionally suffers from misdirection. Something can be momentarily hilarious and then it take a premature dip, or a joke can be elongated to the point where the only person still laughing is that wierdo at the back wearing a Donnay cap. This could have been easily resolved with some brutal editing but I'm kind of clutching at straws (not matches, thankfully) in terms of highlighting an obvious negative .

The films target audience is undoubtedly male, and I'd go as far as to say that the "laddish" humour may be quite suffocating for a female audience, probably best encapsulated by a rape gag concerning Hermoine Granger. However, none of the material is taken too seriously, with the actors managing to maintain an equilibrium between funny and offensive by often bringing the focus back to themselves with a well tuned self deprecating style.

I watched it with a group of friends and we were in stitches start to finish. The resounding opinion from my compadres was that they hadn't laughed as much since the first Hangover.

Purely in comedy terms I'd give it 4 stars, definitely not the smartest film, but brutal, gratuitous and joyfully ridiculous.

Have a good one folks.