Peter Stark – Behind the Proscenium

December 16, 2011December 16, 2011

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows [REVIEW]

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

With Wit, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen

Okay, Hollywood, I give.

It is FUN to see great literary figure turned into 19^th century James Bond.

There must always be explosions.

CGI must be in every movie ever made.

See, Hollywood?

You win.

For the rest of the film career of reviewing I shall just suck on my bong and sit through whatever I’m being paid to sit through.

And LIKE it.

No… LOVE it.

So, for the second time staged a witty director Guy Ritchie crime adventure with invented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s master detective Sherlock Holmes, a classic figure of English literature (that is not in this movie. Same name. Definitely not same guy.).

As in the first film from the year 2009 the script the action transferred to the Victorian era, which also comes from Doyle’s character. The men of the friendship of Robert Downey, Jr. played Holmes and his assistants presented by Dr. John Watson Jude Law delighted with lively war of words.

This time, the detective met his equal intellectually nemesis, Professor James Moriarty (also a name that appears in the Doyle stories, not so much the character), who is about to incite a world war and to seize the most important industries of Europeunder the nail.

The freaking nail!!!

To put the criminal played by Jared Harris, in the shaft, Holmes and Watson travel to Paris, Germany and Switzerland, as if they were secret agents of later generations of film (Bond, Bourne, whoever the closeted Cruise plays in MI: Whatever).

They fight often in the literal sense before picturesque scenery, in a gentleman’s club, a train, in the Paris Opera House, a posh hotel and a Swiss mountain chateau, a munitions factory and on the backs of horses.

Son of a bitch!

Doyle’s master detective was originally in the struggle with Moriarty in Switzerland – fall down the Reichenbach Falls, in death, before he then reanimated again for more adventures.

It takes the action back here and puts on an impressive waterfall, a CGI castle in ludicrous steep hillside (maybe the same town as “Immortals” 2,000 years later). There sits a peace conference, which Moriarty wants to make the starting point of World War II.

Or I – I was pretty high.

While Watson and the belligerent gypsy Sim, played by Naomi Rapace (Dragon Tattoo chick – For The Win!), inside Europe are trying to save to provide themselves Holmes and Moriarty at the balcony of a game of chess on the board and as spirited debate about the case.

Damn straight.

Enough already.

There was a plot, but that is unimportant.

Robert Downey, Jr. has mister fun good times.

The women were hot.

You saw SH#1 and liked it? This is also for your liking.

I suggest using a bong – with and Indica blend because that will make you like an idiot drool.

And being an idiot with drool is the only way to see this.

“Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows” has made me see the light. The light of my lighter as I take another major hit.

Hollywood is awesome.

Light up and pass the cheetos.

Kimmo Mustonenen – (Kimmo On Kino) – Behind The Proscenium

P.S. Ryan Murphy, thank you for a taste of Lindsay Pearce in “Glee.” I know now that you are listening! Two more Lindsay episodes – then we can be friends!

July 22, 2011July 22, 2011

Captain America: The First Avenger [REVIEW]

Captain America: The First Avenger

With With, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen

Back on the good old days as a new superhero epic didn’t look on film screens apparently every other week, film producers used to satisfy we, us, the public with nothing more than bare exhibitionism.

Now they are just a bore.

Or am I exhausted (thanks for the tired, Transformers)?

Captain America: The First Avenger has strong opening times, a noble execution for sure.

Unfortunately they cannot this standard of the quality support and into crappy melodrama in the last hour ignore (if you can stay awake – yet so loud, how can you sleep?).

This is a dishonor, because a world-striking film of the Captain America could have caused indisputable momentum (my new superhero name!) for The Avengers.

Unfortunately, it is to be not.

Which we have here something I condemn to be underneath the average film, by choppy drawing up and the characters of one dimension (more on this later).

Thus it goes.

As Thor early in the season, Captain America: The First Avenger is requested, in order to do a terrible lot. And that is to explain to us the origin of a Marvel Comics guy, who we don’t know – also to his friends, the family and the sidekicks, then place it in world saving an adventure to the exhibition.

And more!

Suggest a point of romance and prepare for its inevitable sequels as part of the next years studio profits generator, known as The Avengers. Ka-ching!

Chris Evans plays as Steve Rogers – a child of Brooklyn, would like so much his country to serve, and would like the leading role to beat the Nazis in the Second World War (and in the face).

Unfortunately he’s a small guy – with many physical problems, thus Rogers is deemed unsuitable – he even tries to register several times under different names and with different physicians completely around New York.

This has gotten the attention of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci) – a mysterious scientist working with defense contractor Howard Stark (Domenic Cooper), American Colonel Chester Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and British agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) to develop a medical procedure to turn everyday soldiers into super soldiers.

In Finland, we call these push-ups.

When the procedure works, how can Steve Rogers best serve his country?

He best serves it by not being in a movie as lousy as The Green Hornet but that is not too hard.

Well, he becomes Captain America.

Who wouldn’t?

Most badly of all, Captain America: The First Avenger we get like two films, which are in one smashed.

We could have been with the first part of the film contently, with the Rogers and his abilities discovered and prove ourselves, a hero to be, but director Joe Johnston and the writing team believed to the necessity to go back and start a whole again other plotline over Nazi badasses, which tries to stand for one even still more bad leader than Hitler (what?!?) bent on world domination, Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving).

Is this Captain America nemesis number one? Better to save him for the upcoming sequel movie. This one is too long.

So, I give one drooping thumb.

Movie is in 3D, too bad script arrived in 2D – which is still 1D better than the acting!

Sad face for me.

Sad face for Captain America: The First Avenger.

Kimmo Mustonenen (Kimmo On Kino) – Behind The Proscenium

June 2, 2011June 4, 2011

X-Men: First Class [REVIEW]

X-Men: First Class

With Wit, Reviewed By Kimmo Mustonenen

I can declare X-Men: First Class the best since the mutant melee X2! Is this saying much? What?

As direct by Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake and The Stepping Donkey – as well as the stupid Kick Ass), this prequel is chaotic and baggy and too long, but watchable often funny strange, and occasionally a flash of cold steel.

It’s the Swinging 60s’ and telepathic brainbox Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his shape-shifting pal Raven (a blue colored sexpot Jennifer Lawrence – seen recently but much less hot in “Winter’s Bone”) are coming to terms with their mutant powers.

Contacted by CIA operatives Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne), who is tracking maleable mutant mastermind Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon from “Footloose”), Xavier agrees to share his expertise on Mutation.

Meanwhile, Holocaust survivor Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) is using his mutant powers to cut bloody swathes through Europe and South America in the search for Shaw, who transjected him to unspeakable Horrors in a Nazi concentration camp.

As Lehnsherr’s activities put him on Xavier’s radar, the boffin manages to convince the magnetic avenger to join the team of mutants he’s assembling to take Shaw down.

Yes!

Using technology devised by the genius mutant Hank McCoy (Nicolas Hoult), the duo begin to recruit and train a gifted crop of youngsters and as Shaw unleashes a devilish scheme to wipe out mankind, it’s up to these ‘X-Men’ to save the day.

What?

There’s much about First Class that’s X-ceptional (ha ha, I did it!) not least of all the casting of the equally admirable McAvoy and Fassbender as the two men whose warring ideologies give X-Men stories so much more abyss than the average comic book yarn.

As X-Men creator Stan Lee has always maintained, Xavier and Lehnsherr are based on Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, setting the tale at the height of the American civil rights movement is something of a master-stroke.

It also allow the director Vaughn to indulge in some far out 60s’ referencing, from depicting Lehnsherr as a smooth 007-style assassin to setting the action-packed finish against the backdrop of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Scripted on high by Vaughn’s Kick-Ass collaborator Jane Goldman, it’s ironic that’s the most youth-orientated X-Men adventure is as well the most adult. What?

Along with startlingly effective moments of violence and a slinky sexiness that’s likely to leave comic book nerds needing a lie down, there’s even the dropping of a well-timed F-bomb in a priceless cameo.

X-Men films have always been about the strength of the ensemble cast, and Vaughn has put together a fine group of young actors who work together with an easy charm and restless unease; Hoult and Lawrence’s (wow, that girl!) tentative romance being particularly effective.

Bacon is also in fantastic acting shape as the sneering villain. January Jones, regardless of various scenes with bra and panties pushed up, is fairly forgettable as his sidekick Emma Frost – even with her bustiness on display.

Jason Flemyng’s teleporting terror Azazel is scary enough to ensure the bad guys are satisfyingly formidable.

Capturing the spirit of the previous films without desperately struggling to achieve continuity with the theme, Vaughn portrays these familiar characters with honesty and gives them a strong origin story.

That rings true, nodding to past installments, without being overly reverent.

Unfortunately, it’s some wobbly CGI reminiscent of the disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and a rushed speed that prevents First Class from being the superhero equivalent of JJ Abrams’s Star Trek reboot fantastic.

With an extra six months in post-production and a less ramshackle edit, this easily must have been the best X-Men movie ever.

It is very close regardless, and its forms of Professor X downing a yard of ale for chatting up the girls down the pub has classic scene for the ages written all over it.

Kimmo Mustonenen – Behind The Proscenium (Kimmo On Kino)