Two hundred years after Henry Frankenstein strung “a dozen used parts from eight different corpses” together and brought them to life with a bolt of electricity and the cry of, “Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive…” the creature is back for a new adventure based on the graphic novel called “I, Frankenstein” by Kevin Grevioux.
This time around his green parlor and neck bolts are gone, replaced by a chin cleft Igor could hide in and scars lining his unusually fit body. He’s a tormented soul, or rather, it is his lack of a soul that torments him. “I care not for the world of men,” he says, “I go my own way.”
For hundreds of years instead of terrifying villagers Dr. Frankenstein’s creature, now dubbed Adam (Aaron Eckhart) has hidden himself in the most remote places where he thought no human, demon or Gargoyle could find him. But he was wrong.
It seems a legion of 666 fiends, led by a demon prince named Naberius (Bill Nighy) are desperate to find Adam so they can learn the secret of reanimating corpses. Naberius plans on inserting demon souls into dead bodies to create an unstoppable army and “unravel the mortal coil of life.”
On the other side are the Gargoyles, commanded by Leonore (Miranda Otto), an archangel determined to help Adam find his humanity and save the human race.
An unholy mix of religion, martial arts (Adam has some slick Bruce Lee moves) and Mary Shelley, “I, Frankenstein” should have been called “Aye, yi, yi, Frankenstein.”
There is some cool gothic Gargoyle imagery on display and a variety of posh English accents to class to the joint, but it seems only Nighy realizes that this would have played better as a campy comedy.
In amongst the over earing narration, dropped storylines—for instance, a bride for Adam is mentioned and then never mentioned again—and shots of Adam peering around corners, every now and again someone will say, “I think your boss is a demon prince.”
Mel Brooks would have known how to stage that line. For all its atmosphere—i.e.: darkly shot scenes—“I, Frankenstein” would have been a lot more fun if it embraced its silly side just as Adam must embrace his humanity. With humanity comes a sense of humor, right? Not in this case. The movie plays like a satire of bad horror movies that forgot it was a satire.
The time travel in “About Time,” a new rom com starring Domhnall Gleeson and Rachel McAdams, is what Alfred Hitchcock would have called the McGuffin. It’s the thing that drives the movie’s plot but ultimately isn’t that important to the story.
When Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) turned 21 his father (Bill Nighy) lets him in on a family secret—he comes from a long line of time travellers. “We can go back and kill Hitler,” or shag Helen of Troy,” explains dad, they can simply go back to the recent history and make minor changes.
With visions of inter-dimensional travel in his head he does what any twenty-one year might do. Use his unique ability to get a girlfriend. The object of his affections is Mary (Rachel McAdams), but to win her over he’ll have to use his special gift to hone his Casanova skills.
As they live their lives together, however, he comes to discover that not everything can be solved with a quick trip back in time.
“About Time” is the kind of movie critics will call sappy and sentimental. They’ll bash it because it wears its heart on its sleeve, which is exactly the reason I liked it.
After “The Time Traveller’s Wife” it’s time Rachel McAdams got a time travel romance right!
It’s a silly premise but for me the idea wasn’t about the time travel but the lessons Tim learns while jumping dimensions about life and happiness. It is sweetly romantic, but it plays better as a comedy about family than a rom com or sci fi farce mainly because of its unlikely and charming leading man.
If John Hughes had made British films he would have loved this guy. He does have a bad haircut, but I thought he was a charming, if unlikely, leading man. He has a way with a line and I felt there was a real arc to his character. He literally grows up and becomes a man on screen, which is something you don’t see in rom coms very often.
“About Time” is a bit labored at times, but McAdams is an engaging presence, Nighy is warm and odd and Richard E. Grant, who is only on screen for three minutes manages to steal the show with a beautifully timed slow burn.
When British author H.G. Wells created the term “time machine” way back in 1895, he could never have imagined the lasting impact his ideas of fourth dimension travel would have on the career of Rachel McAdams.
His book, The Time Machine, has been filmed twice for the big screen, but the ideas of shifting ripples of time have also inspired three very different movies starring the London, Ont., born actress.
This weekend she co-stars with Domhnall Gleeson and Bill Nighy in About Time as the present day girlfriend of a 21-year-old who uses his ability to switch time zones to learn information to woo her.
“I know I have a little bit of time travel in my past but this is different,” McAdams says. “The element of time travel thrown in was unique and quirky and dealt with lightly.”
Previously the Mean Girls star appeared as Clare Abshire in The Time Traveler’s Wife, starring opposite Eric Bana playing a Chicago librarian with a genetic disorder known as Chrono-Displacement that causes him to involuntarily travel through time.
From the outset their relationship is a strange one. When they first meet she has known him since she was six years old, but because his syndrome flips him to random times in his life on an ever shifting timeline he is always meeting her for the first time. Confused? Not as confused as Clare, who tries to build a life with Henry even though his ailment keeps them apart.
Based on a best-selling novel, it’s a three-hankie story about love with no boundaries and how romance can transcend everything, even death.
In Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris it’s Owen Wilson who jumps through time — finding himself transported back to 1920s Paris and hanging with F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), seeing Cole Porter sing at a party, drinking with Hemmingway — while McAdams stays put, bringing him back to reality, as his irritating present-day fiancée Inez.
But what about actual time travel? When she was asked by AOL if there was anything she would go back in time and change in real life, McAdams said, “I was a figure skater, so I would take back a lot of fashion choices on the ice. A lot of sequins. I would pull back on the sequins a little bit and maybe less blue eye shadow.”
“Pirate Radio” is about the indomitable never-say-die spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. It’s about a group of DJs on a ship in the North Atlantic who spent the late Sixties bringing the music to millions of British kids. It’s a good story, but maybe the fictitious story of Radio Rock would mean more today if the music meant more today. Popular music doesn’t have the same rebel spirit it once did, and as such it’s hard to imagine that once, many years ago people were willing to die for the music they loved.
The action begins when Carl (Tom Sturridge), a rebellious teenager recently expelled from school, arrives on the pirate radio ship. He’s been sent by his mother to stay with Quentin (Bill Nighy) his flamboyant godfather, in the hopes of straightening out his life. Fat chance. He’s surrounded by a group of rogue DJs—The Count (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Simon (Chris O’Dowd), Angus (Rhys Darby), Midnight Mark (Tom Wisdom), DJ Smooth Bob (Ralph Brown) and the decadent “king of the airwaves”, Gavin (Rhys Ifans)—a less-than-wholesome group who are the collective voices of rebel rock. Life on the boat is a nonstop party until the creation of the Marine Offences Act, which aims to silence the rowdy DJs and their “rock ‘n’ roll pornography,” a failed marriage drives a wedge between the DJs and a blown engine threatens not only the existence of Radio Rock, but the lives of the DJs as well.
The tone of “Pirate Radio” is pitched somewhere just slightly above reality, just below parody. Its version of the freewheelin’ Sixties feels unreal, as if people back then were all colorfully dressed wild men and women without a care in the world. It’s obviously a highly idealized vision of the time that will appeal to boomers with rose colored memories of the time, but for the rest of us it will likely seem a bit naïve. The characters, as presented here by some very good actors, are caricatures from the Swinging Sixties and not fully developed people.
Philip Seymour Hoffman comes closest to creating a real character as a man who becomes racked with melancholy when he realizes he is likely “living the best years of his life” and his trip back to dry land will be downhill, but by and large reality gets lost in the feel-goodness of it all.
It’s a story about sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll with little of the former and lots of the latter. In fact, “Pirate Radio” may be the first movie in some time that is actually more fun to listen to than actually watch. It has a blazing soundtrack, rich with great Brit rock like The Easybeats’s “Friday on My Mind” and Arthur Brown’s “Fire” but the film itself plays like a series of events rather than a movie. There’s just not enough story and a few too many dance numbers here to justify a two hour running time.
“Pirate Radio” has its heart in the right place and is an enjoyable piece of 60’s fluff, but I would have been happy to simply have the soundtrack and leave the movie behind.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” is predictable and a bit stuffy but it is hard to dislike this movie’s lost in translation story because it is so obviously aiming to please.
Featuring a cast which includes most of the senior members of British Equity, the movie quickly introduces us to Evelyn (Judi Dench), a widower whose husband left behind a great debt, Douglas and Jean (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton), a retired couple without a nest egg, the infirm Muriel (Maggie Smith), Supreme Court judge Graham (Tom Wilkinson) who impulsively leaves the bench, aging lothario Norman (Ronald Pickup) and Madge (Celia Imrie), a much married woman in search of a sugar daddy.
Their common link is uncertainty over how to spend their golden years. Individually they come up with he idea to outsource their retirements to a senior’s hotel in Jaipur, but what looked like an Eden on the brochure turns out to be a dilapidated guesthouse run by the feckless Sonny (“Slumdog Millionaire’s” Dev Patel). Together and individually this band of ex-pats explore life in their adopted country.
“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” offers up of fish-out-of-water clichés—“If I can’t pronounce it, I’m not eating it!”—mixed with a story about rebirth, regrets and the Kama Sutra. Despite the setting, it’s a bland blend, but the likes of Dench, Nighy, Smith and Wilkinson salvage some real humanity from the script’s saccharine offerings.
Wilkinson, as a gay man who travels back to India to find his first love, is particularly effective. He effortlessly underplays the character of Gordon, the staid lawyer who bears guilt for an indiscretion that may have ruined another’s person’s life, portraying a man who sat in judgment of others all the while judging himself. It’s a marvel of subtlety, richly detailed, yet simultaneously delicate.
The rest of the cast of old pros hand in good work, but aren’t given the same caliber of material to work with.
Perhaps it’s because there are too many stories colliding on screen, filling up the running time with details and unnecessary scenes–in addition to the retiree’s stories there are also Sonny’s subplots about love, family and trying to save the hotel. Or perhaps it’s because the filmmakers are tying to present something for everyone, but “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” feels like there is a really good movie hidden away in the layers of the film struggling to get out.
