Movie Review – Ready Player One

Steven Spileberg’s newest film Ready Player One takes us on a thrilling entertainment ride, but you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen from the moment it starts.

⭐ ⭐ ½
Josip Knezevic

At the start of Ready Player One, Spielberg suggests his new movie is intended to present a potential future for Earth in 2044. The society we are introduced to is one that sets aside reality and focuses instead on creating new worlds through virtual simulation. This is known as the OASIS, which if you really want to know, stands for: Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation. I know, it’s a mouthful. The OASIS is the brainchild of game developer James Halliday (Mark Rylance), who’s death provides players the opportunity to gain complete ownership of the game if they can hunt down three Easter Egg keys hidden inside the simulation. Enter stage right, young and ambitious, but hopeless dreamer: Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan).

As we watch Wade hunt down these three magical keys, the film itself takes on a video game feel, and just like most games, Ready Player One follows a classic structure. From the get-go, we all know the hero will rise and inevitably overcome all three levels to ultimately defeat the villain (Ben Mendelsohn) who wants to take control of OASIS for his own evil pursuits. This is all well and good if you’re satisfied with a predictable film and a simple formula, and when you think about it, many of Spielberg’s films fall into this category.

Spielberg is a director who likes telling stories that get wrapped up in a nice little box, with all the conflicts resolved by the end of the film so you’re not left wanting more He’s done this for Jurassic Park, E.T the Extra-Terrestrial and many others. It’s why his films have grossed a stupendous amount of money and is one of the reasons he’s become one of today’s most popular directors. But does this mean he’s a filmmaker who challenges you to think about what his film has to say, long after the credits have rolled? Probably not. He’s not a Stanley Kubrick or a Terry Gilliam.

Nevertheless, I’d still recommend seeing this film. Some of the action sequences are fantastic, particularly in the opening and final scenes. I also enjoyed a lot of the nostalgic references to the 80’s, even though the film is set in the future. Even though it’s cliched and predictable, with familiar plot structures and character tropes, Ready Player One is still a blast and a fun ride.

Ready Player One is available in Australian cinemas from March 29 

Image courtesy of Roadshow Films 

 

Movie Review – X-Men: Apocalypse

Bryan Singer’s fourth X-Men movie is exactly what it is: the fourth out of four.

⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Zachary Cruz-Tan

X-Men: Apocalypse is a conundrum; a reflection of the superhero genre that is neither pithy and smart, nor very boring. It’s a strange film indeed; one that thinks it’s pushing forward into new territory, but is really just regressing in the most futuristic way possible. This is the ninth film in the series, and it feels – in many areas – like the first. Or at least the first of a new line of movies that will forever recycle its limbs like a gecko chasing its own lopped-off tail.

This is the fourth superhero movie of the year, and the third to feature an all-star juggernaut cast that goes crash-bang-boom against itself. The first was terrible – a grim, washed-out explosion-fest that had the charm of a nasty itch. The second was perhaps one of the greatest superhero movies I have seen. The third is simply confused. Like all the X-Men movies, Apocalypse is a farmer who has no idea how to round up his sheep.

There are so many characters here that I gave up counting after 233. There’s Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner); Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Storm (Alexandra Shipp); the teleporting Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee); Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence); Angel (Ben Hardy); Quicksilver (Evan Peters); a lot of newbies; and of course Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who have been locked in a personal struggle since time immemorial. You’d think that after 16 years these characters would’ve advanced beyond the dour socio-political differences that govern their lives, but no – here in 2016, after nine films, Xavier and Magneto are still arguing over apples and oranges, and it seems to be sucking the mirth out of everyone else. Next to the X-Men, Captain America and Batman look like cheerleaders on spring break.

The plot has been issued and recycled more times than I care to count; an all-powerful mutant called Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), whose powers apparently include sewing, returns from a 5,000-year-old crypt to wreak havoc upon the Earth in a manner most unpleasant, which today means tearing it to bits using CGI tricks. The X-Men must once again unite to remind all the children just how very important teamwork is.

The movie races past exposition like a bullet train. There are so many characters and storylines that need screen time; I imagine Bryan Singer spinning them all like plates on poles, only this time, the plates are starting to crash.

Many of the subplots make little sense, and the movie’s big idea of progress is Xavier losing his hair. Yet for all its blindness, the movie is embarrassingly entertaining. It is proficient, confident filmmaking, at least in technical terms. The action is loud and absurd, like any good superhero movie. The acting is supremely serviceable. It’s great, sardonic fun. It just isn’t one of the X-Men’s better outings.

For goodness sake, someone shove these characters into the next millennium. Look at Captain America: Civil War. See where those characters have gone, are going, and will go. There’s a new horizon waiting for them. Xavier and his band of unmerry men have been tumbling around in the same forlorn universe for over a decade. Give them a break. They’re already going bald.

X-Men: Apocalypse is available in Australian cinemas from May 19

Image courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox