Seventh Son (5/10): An epic fantasy adventure that wastes an all star cast

“We will meet again.”

Seventh Son is Sergey Bodrov’s (Mongol) latest fantasy epic film starring Jeff Bridges, Julianne Moore, Alicia Vikander, and Ben Barnes. It’s a big budget adaptation of Joseph Delaney’s novel, The Spook’s Apprentice, which failed to make a splash at the box office. It is set in a Tolkien-like fantasy world where supernatural forces live among humans. There are witches, warlocks, boggarts, ghouls, and many other dark morphing creatures, and then there are spooks who protect the people by hunting down these monsters. Bodrov relies heavily on the CGI effects, but the film does look good thanks to its production design. Bridges plays the sole remaining spook, Master Gregory, who is trying to hunt down the extremely dangerous witch, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore). Malkin plans on using her powers to reunite her followers and unleash evil across the world. After losing his latest apprentice (played by Kit Harrington), Gregory must train the young seventh son of a seventh son named Tom (Ben Barnes) who really doesn’t seem to be an interesting prospect. He only has a week to train him before reaching Malkin and preventing her from fulfilling her evil plan. Along the way, Tom falls for a young witch named Alice (Alicia Vikander) who has been spying on them. She isn’t a dark witch, but is following her mother’s orders.  Seventh Son doesn’t take itself too seriously and Bodrov jumps from one action set piece to the next without spending too much time on the characters and thus not allowing the audience to think too much about the silliness of it all.

The greatest disappointment is of course the weak screenplay that never allows us to engage with the characters despite being played by a fantastic cast. It’s inevitable not to thing about The Big Lebowski when seeing Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore working together again. Moore had a fantastic year, winning the Oscar for her lead performance in Still Alice, but here she doesn’t have anything interesting to do. She plays a typical and cliched villain. Bridges goes extremely overboard with his character, reminding us that we shouldn’t take this adventure film too seriously. It’s hard to understand his drunken mumbling which will remind us of his work in True Grit. Olivia Williams and Djimon Hounsou also have some small roles in this film, so it is a huge disappointment to see such a talented cast wasted in a big budget film like this. Barnes and Vikander are young talented actors that try to do the best with the material they are given. The Swedish actress has taken Hollywood by storm after her performance in the Danish film, A Royal Affair, and she has five films coming out this year. She’s an actress I will be keeping my eyes on. 

Seventh Son has been receiving terrible reviews, but it wasn’t as bad as I had expected. The plot moves along very quickly and in a very predictable manner, but it never tries to take itself too seriously and that is Seventh Son’s greatest strength. The action set pieces are fun and the film is short (under 95 minutes). Of course it isn’t a good film either, but considering it is light for the eyes it’s not a difficult film to watch. If you’re bored you might find the film entertaining and it’s a good way to kill time, but there is nothing memorable about it either. More than anything it’s a huge disappointment for wasting such a talented cast. There’s no character development, but the impressive set designs and quick pace make up for it.    

Furious 7 (8/10): The over-blown action scenes continue to improve the beloved franchise

"This time it ain't just about being fast.”

James Wan, who is well known for directing horror films (The Conjuring and Saw), took over the seventh film in this franchise replacing Justin Lin who had been sitting on the director’s chair since the third installment. What I found most interesting about this franchise is that it didn’t seem like it was going anywhere after its solid debut in 2001 since the first couple of sequels focused on different characters and storylines. Even when they got the entire cast back together in 2009 for the fourth film I didn’t feel like it was anything special. I’d always mildly enjoyed the films, but it wasn’t until Fast Five that I was really engaged with the series. Justin Lin may have not impressed me before, but when that film came out he decided to have fun with the overblown action scenes and audiences embraced it completely. We had the team reuniting together being chased by tanks and planes and pulling off nearly mission impossible tasks. My greatest concern for this film was that Wan wouldn’t follow that basic formula that had elevated the franchise in the first place. But in an early scene in the film those fears were soon gone when Wan practically gives the audience a wink by having Brian (Walker) telling his son that “cars don’t fly” when he playfully throws a small toy car through the window. We were about to find out that that claim wasn’t necessarily true because throughout this film we actually see several cars fly during the spectacular action scenes. 

By the end of Furious Six the franchise was tied perfectly together by uniting the events that took place in Tokyo during the third film with the present. In the fifth and sixth installments Toretto (Vin Diesel), Brian (Paul Walker), Tej (Ludacirs), and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) had finally found financial stability and cleaned their names to return home. The character of Agent Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) had helped reinvigorate the franchise and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) was brought back from the dead (well actually she never really died, but fans of the franchise know what I mean). Mia (Jordan Brewster) and Brian were enjoying their newfound family life, but as we found out in the end of the sixth film, Owen’s brother Deckard (Jason Statham) was set on avenging him. Their seemingly peaceful life  is interrupted as the team begins to be hunted down by this dangerous British criminal. Loretto is offered the opportunity to flip the papers on Deckard from being hunted to becoming the hunters when a secret government official known as Mr. Nobody (Kurt Russell) offers him a deal. A Somalian mercenary (Djimon Hounsou) has kidnapped a hacker known as Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel) who has developed a computer program known as God’s Eye that basically allows you to find anyone across the globe in a matter of seconds. If Toretto’s team can rescue Ramsey and retrieve God’s Eye he will let them use it to track down Deckard and catch him off guard. And so the adventure across the globe begins with flying cars, helicopters and droids exploding across the mountains of the Middle East, the elegant buildings in Abu Dhabi, and the city of Los Angeles. 

Gisele and Han were part of the reason why I enjoyed the previous films so much so I was worried that their absence in this film would hurt the movie, but the addition of Jason Statham as the main villain of the film elevated this to a higher level. There are great fight scenes between him and Dwayne Johnson and then with Vin Diesel that were incredibly entertaining. These are probably the best action stars of our generation and when the fighting choreography is filmed correctly you can’t go wrong with these guys.  There are also some fantastic action scenes involving fast car chases across a gorgeous mountain that ends in a Jurassic Park like cliffhanger. The action scenes are overblown, but that is what makes them so entertaining once you learn to accept the absurdity of it all and simply enjoy the ride. Over-the-top action scenes is what elevated this franchise in the first place and Furious 7 continues to play with that same premise taking advantage of Wan’s knowledgable work behind the camera and his use of different camera angles which makes the film look all the more entertaining. 

The greatest success of Furious 7 is being able to blend the incredibly fun action scenes with the dramatic elements involving the chemistry between the characters. We’ve grown to love these characters and each new addition always seems to work. Furious 7 takes some common themes from films like Mission Impossible or Ocean’s Eleven and applies them really well here. Tyrese Gibson plays a similar character to the one Matt Damon played in Ocean’s where he wants to prove his leadership qualities to the rest of the crew. There are elements recycled from other action films, but thanks to the cast it works extremely well in this franchise. And then you have the emotional aspect of this film surrounding Paul Walker’s untimely death. You can’t help but feel emotionally engaged towards his character knowing that the actor has recently passed away. There are several scenes of his face where the CGI seems evident, but the voice work was perfectly executed. The CGI never distracted me however, and I’m glad they decided to continue with the production of the film. The last five minutes are emotionally engaging and without spoiling the film all I can say is that the crew did him justice with a beautiful tribute. Furious 7 continues to build on an already engrossing franchise and it might just be my second favorite after Fast Five. 

My Review: How to Train Your Dragon 2 (7/10)

"Something is coming. Something you've never faced before."

I was a huge fan of the first film written and directed by Dean DeBlois thanks to its memorable characters and beautiful visuals. How to Train Your Dragon continues to be my favorite DreamWorks animated film, so I was highly anticipating this sequel. Although I really enjoyed this film, I felt a bit disappointed because I felt it wasn't up to par with the first one. I enjoyed the visuals and the characters once again, but I felt there was just too much action and too little character development. The film is very fast paced and I didn't find myself as absorbed by the story and the characters as I felt the first time. There are plenty of funny moments and kids will be satisfied with all the action scenes, but adults may get tired of the action overload at times. This is still a good film and perhaps one of the best animated films of the year as it does manage to keep the audience emotionally engaged and it has several funny scenes. The best thing about How to Train Your Dragon 2 is without a doubt the beautiful visuals which once again amazed me. It was a fun ride, but I would rather watch the first film over the sequel.

The film takes place five years after the original as we follow our hero, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) living peacefully amongst his people and dragons. He spends most of his time exploring new lands with his dragon, Toothless. His father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) continues to be the chieftain of Berk, but he plans on leaving Hiccup as his successor. Hiccup however, doesn't feel like he was meant to lead the people and would much rather prefer to continue exploring unknown lands. During one of his explorations, Hiccup and his friend Astrid (America Ferrera) run into some men who are trying to capture dragons. They both escape, but Hiccup decides to return and try to convince these men not to capture dragons but reasoning with them is pointless. A mysterious dragon rider named Valka (Cate Blanchett) shows up and takes Hiccup to a hidden island. He later discovers that Valka is his mother and that she has dedicated her life to saving dragons from Drago (Djimon Hounsou), a man dedicated to capturing and using them for his own personal gain. Together, and with the help of the rest of his friends from Berk they decide to stop Drago and his men before he starts another war and hurts more dragons. 

Sequels usually suffer from not being as fresh as the original, and that is what happened here as the interesting premise from the first film was missing. I was already familiar with this world of vikings and dragons and the new characters didn't really resonate with me. It didn't help that it felt so fast paced either, but there were some strong emotional moments that I wasn't expecting from an animated sequel like this. There is some heart to this story allowing it not to rely entirely on the beautiful visuals, but I guess my expectations were just a bit too high because I wasn't blown away by this sequel as most people were. I really wasn't too engaged with the action, but I did enjoy the comedy.