Month: May 2011

Our setting is a post-apocalyptic world that’s been ravaged by a very long conflict between the Church and a strange vampire race. To fight the vampires, the Church has created The Priests, a group of specially trained warriors who’s specialty is vampire killing. The struggle is supposedly over, and most of the remaining citizenry is protected by the Church in walled-off cities.  But unknown to the Church, the vampires live on.  Outside of the city walls, in a frontier settlement, the daughter of a couple is abducted by the vampires.  Word gets back to one of the Priests (know simply here as Priest) about what has happened, with special significance to him because the abducted girl is actually his niece.  Priest leaves the city to try and find his niece, though it could mean excommunication from The Church.  Unbeknownst to Priest, there’s even more going on, involving a specific moment from his past.

That’s the basic premise to the new movie, Priest directed by Scott Stewart adapted from the Tokyopop comic series Priest by Hyung Min-woo. I am a big comic book fan, but sad to say, I don’t have any familiarity with this series.  I do have familiarity with Scott Stewart though as he directed last year’s Legion (also starring Priest’s lead actor Paul Bettany) and I wasn’t too thrilled by it, to say the least.  But, I thought the trailer to Priest looked pretty cool and so I was certainly open to giving it a chance.

And I’m glad I did.  I thought Priest was quite a bit of good, old B-Movie fun.  It mashes together a lot of familiar genre concepts with an overall Western feel.  The movie has a great look to it, and while it’s characters are somewhat simplistic, there’s still enough there that I wanted to follow their story.

I really liked the look of the film.  Since seeing the movie, I’ve now seen some little bits and pieces from the Tokyopop comic and overall it looks very faithful to the book with it’s actual production design.  Seeing this in live action though, I was also put in the mind of the art of Enki Bilal a French comic creator (and film director) whose work is best known (at least to me) for being run in the pages of Heavy Metal magazine.

I thought the visual effects were really nicely done, though for some, I know they’ll be biased against the use of CGI for the vampires and a reliance for Matrix-like techniques used in action scenes.  Personally though, I don’t mind the use of either, and as I said, I thought they looked quite cool here.  In addition, there’s a good bit of traditional animation used at the start of the film to immediately give us the history of the situation.

Priest is very nicely paced, briskly running under ninety minutes in time, without any real wasted space.  This is setting itself up as the first in a series of films, but honestly, I don’t know if it will have the chance.  We had a very small audience in attendance and with bigger releases like Thor and Fast Five out there right now, and even bigger movies to come, I don’t know if this will really succeed.  Regardless, I had a great time with it, as did the friends of mine who I saw it with.

As mentioned above, the cast is headed by Paul Bettany as Priest ad he serves the part well, with the right intensity but also with being believable in the film’s stylized action scenes.  He’s given some solid support with actors Cam Gigandet and Maggie Q.  Gigandet plays Hicks, the sheriff of the settlement who also has a personal stake in this.  Maggie Q plays the part of Priestess, who’s first assigned the duty to bring in Priest back to the Church, but as things unfold she joins him o his mission.  There’s some nice solid work from Brad Dourif, Christopher Plummer and Alan Dale for strictly set-up purposes.  Karl Urban plays the villain of the piece, known as Black Hat, and I’m just continually impressed by him with each part I see him in and he doesn’t disappoint me here either.

I chose to see this movie in 3D.  When I first saw the trailer for the movie it was in 3D and being promoted as being “shot in 3D” that certainly helped seal the deal for me.  Overall, I think the 3D is pretty good with this film offering up some real depth in scenes as well as doing a few in your face effects.  It does suffer some in some of the darker scenes.  Seeing this in 3D isn’t essential to your overall enjoyment though, and while I don’t regret seeing this in 3D by any means, I won’t give it a blanket recommendation either.  I liked it, but I wasn’t blown over by it.  As an aside though, the theatre that I saw this at, part of St. Louis’ Wehrenberg chain, had just added another 3D room, which of course was the one that we saw Priest in.  We actually had the pleasure of talking with one of the Wehrenberg higher-ups who was there to check everything out and he gave us quite a bit of insight into Wehrenberg’s plans for that particular theatre.  This was thoroughly fascinating to say the least and I certainly think it added to my overall enjoyment of the evening, but I digress…

Priest won’t change anyone’s world when it comes to it’s overall effect in the end, but still it is a fun diversion that’s very well made, looks great and has some solid performances.  I hope it does well enough for sequels, but I’m not holding my breath.  It’s good B-Movie fun though, and for that, I certainly recommend it.

Kenneth Branagh was definitely the right man for the job for directing Thor.

Ever since Marvel started their own film adaptations, their choice of directors for each film have certainly been interesting.  Neither Jon Favreau or Louis Letterier would’ve been the first guys to come to mind to helm Iron Man and Incredible Hulk respectively.  Joe Johnston, who’s directing Captain America coming in July, is a little more obvious choice, thanks to a lot of his previous movies with their special effects drive.  Joss Whedon, who’s doing next year’s Avengers is the only one so far that is overtly obvious, being a huge fan favorite for his previous genre work.

But Kenneth Branagh on Thor? On paper, with his Shakespearean background (which includes the film adaptations of Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing, my personal favorite, his four-hour epic version of Hamlet, and non-Shakespearean films like the thriller Dead Again and the Coppola-produced Frankenstein), he certainly seems interesting, but would he get it?  Would he be able to come in and make a big-screen adaptation that could capture the awe of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s work and still retain some humanity?

Oh hell, yes.  He certainly gets it and I just hope this isn’t his only time to get to handle the character.

Thor tells the story of this god of Norse Myth, who in his arrogance and defiance of his father, Odin, is cast out of the fabled realm of Asgard and sent to Earth to learn a lesson in humility.  While on Earth, Thor meets with a small team of scientists, led by an astrophysicist named Jane Foster in who he finds an almost immediate attraction.  Upon being cast out from Asgard, Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir is also sent to Earth where no one can lift it, thanks to a spell put on it by Odin.  The Hammer becomes an object of definite interest to the secret organization known as SHIELD.  Now, Thor must retrieve his hammer and all the while, his brother Loki plots to take control of Asgard.

Now I have top admit, out of all of Marvel’s characters, Thor wasn’t always a big favorite of mine.  That changed when writer/artist Walt Simonson took over the comic back in the early 80s, and later I started to develop a better appreciation for him, in particular the earlier works by the aforementioned Stan Lee and jack Kirby.  This movie combines a lot of previous comic book elements to cast a new origin of sorts for Thor, though to be honest, I have no idea of what really counts for his origin in the comics these days.  There are some things here I could certainly quibble with (primarily Jane Foster being an astrophysicist and Loki not quite being as initially malevolent as I’ve known him to be), but overall, I think Branagh and company have presented something that could be palatable to both comic fans and non-comic fans.

Where Branagh really shines for me is when he’s dealing with Thor on Asgard.  This might be the closest I think we’ve ever seen, or could hope to see, the grandeur of Jack Kirby’s artwork translated to a live-action movie.  From battles with Frost Giants to the climactic battle with Loki, Kenneth Branagh looks like he’s having a great deal of fun creating this world.

Now it’s not perfect, there’s a few plot holes here and there and on a personal level, I would’ve liked to have seen more of the look of the comics show up here with some brighter yellows in some of the costuming and more use of Thor’s winged helmet.  But other than the plot holes, that’s a personal preference and doesn’t really affect the overall look of the movie.

Branagh skillfully weaves in other factors of this Marvel Universe being created for film and sets the huge scale for Thor. But it wouldn’t matter a lick if it’s title character wasn’t appealing.  Chris Hemsworth plays Thor and he carries this movie and does it quite well.  His Thor is both arrogant and charismatic and as this story progresses, he starts to display some real humanity as well.  Hemsworth is really a guy to watch and look forward to seeing what he does next, not only with Thor but with other movies as well.

He’s backed up with a huge cast which includes Oscar-winners Natalie Portman as Jane Foster and Anthony Hopkins as Odin.  Portman has a real infectious drive as Foster, but more importantly she has great chemistry with Hemsworth, making their attraction quite believable.  Hopkins has great presence as Odin, and there’s nothing really wrong with what he does here, but I almost would’ve preferred to have seen someone like a Max von Sydow in the part, as I just think his booming voice would’ve played better.  But still, Hopkins does good, solid work here.

Stellan Skarsgård and Kat Dennings play the parts of other members of Jane Foster’s team and they’re both good, with Dennings getting the funny lines (though they’re not obnoxious by any means).  Clark Gregg keeps the continuity with the other Marvel films as SHIELD Agent Coulson.  On the Asgard side, Idris Elba is a real standout for me as Heimdall, the guardian of the “bridge” Bifrost.  Elba is just as stoic as can be and with that, you get the idea of real power behind this defender.  Jaimie Alexander plays the warrior woman Sif and Josh Dallas, Tadanobu Asano and Ray Stevenson play the Warrior’s Three, Fanrdral, Hogun and Volstagg.  These four are solid support for Hemsworth and certainly eat up their parts.

The only bit of casting that I have a little issue with is with Tom Hiddleston as Loki.  Now, to be fair, Hiddleston doesn’t really do anything wrong here at all and certainly plays out to the vision of Loki that this film has.  That vision though is not necessarily the one I’m used to from the comics.  I’m used to Loki being a touch more sly and arrogant than what Hiddleston gives off here.  Now he does get there by the film’s end, but I would’ve liked to have seen a little more of that from the start.  I think someone like an Adrien Brody might’ve pulled that off a little better.  This isn’t meant as a slam on Hiddleston at all, just a personal preference based on what I know of Loki through the comics.

Thor is currently being shown in both 3D and 2D.  I opted to see this in 2D. I’ve seen a 3D version of the trailer and just wasn’t impressed by it at all.  As dark as the film gets in some places, I’d almost expect that the 3D would just fall flat.  And further, this wasn’t filmed in 3D so that certainly left me very wary of the whole thing.  Before our showing of Thor started, I peeked in to one of the 3D rooms at our theatre showing this.  It was a large room, with maybe fifty people or so in to see it that way.  By contrast, our 9:15 showing of Thor had almost four times the amount of people in to see it.  Hopefully, this is a sign of things to come with movies that just have the 3D tacked on.

Another note, do not walk out as the end credits begin to role.  As has been the case with the other Marvel movies, there is another scene at the end and this one is major in the set-up to The Avengers.

Thor is a whole lot of big fun.  While it’s not the same sort of fun that I had with Fast Five, it’s no slouch either.  Kenneth Branagh clearly gets it and delivers another facet to this expanding universe of Marvel films.  This has a star-making performance from lead Chris Hemsworth and his support is very, very solid.  The look of the movie is fantastic and I was left in awe of what Branagh did with Asgard.  if this is a sign of things to come, I cannot wait to see Captain America in July and I certainly hope Branagh gets the chance to fly with Thor again.  Highly, highly recommended.