Film Review: Ready Player One

"This Isn't Just A Game. I'm Talking About Actual Life And Death Stuff..."

With The Post earlier this year garnering a wide flurry of Oscar nominations and a critical consensus which boarded on the side of rousing positivity, a return to form for director Steven Spielberg after the yawn-inducing mediocrity of The BFG was welcomed with open arms, and with only three months since its' release here in the UK, Spielberg returns once again to the movie-fold with Ready Player One, a cinematic adaptation of Ernest Cline's 2011 science fiction adventure novel of the same name. Projected in 3D for its' preview screening release, Spielberg's latest primarily focuses on Tye Sheridan's (X-Men: Apocalypse) Wade Watts, a slum-stricken teen who uses the environment of the OASIS, a virtual reality gaming platform created by Mark Rylance's (Dunkirk) recently deceased James Halliday, to both escape his daily slumber and more importantly, to join many others in the hunt for three "Easter Eggs" left within the game by Halliday before his death which give the finder both riches beyond belief and the key to control of the entire OASIS itself. With pop culture references galore and an upbeat, heroic sensibility, Spielberg's latest undeniably should work in the hands of a filmmaker renowned for popcorn delights, but with a brain scorching over-reliance on digital effects and a screenplay both absent of emotion and effective engagement, Ready Player One doesn't work as a whole and is merely saved by individual elements which make it passable rather than thoroughly entertaining. 

With an obvious social commentary regarding the nature and impact of modern technology, Spielberg's movie mixes the subversive ideas within Cronenberg's Existenz and Videodrome with a obvious love for the science fiction genre in its' eye-watering levels of on-screen references, levels which makes The Cabin in the Woods look like a passing fling with its' respective horror genre, but too a staggering amount which by the half-way point does become overly tacky and cheap. With an entire segment dedicated to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, the set-piece is a real bottle spinner in regards to how one might respond, with my own personal obsession with Kubrick's masterpiece resulting in a subverted distaste to seeing our on-screen heroes quickly pop through the Overlook Hotel, music cues and all, and instead making me think how I would rather be watching The Shining instead. With Ready Player One a movie which Spielberg himself has coined as the most difficult movie he's worked on since Saving Private Ryan due to the staggering levels of visual effects, the CGI battle scenes really aren't worth the time, particularly in a final act which boarders on George Lucas style dullness and a complete lack of character engagement when at least eighty percent of the film is spent inside the OASIS itself with digitally designed "avatars". With Ben Mendelsohn once again resigned to Rogue One style typecasting as the film's one-note central antagonist and a ear-scraping level of exposition heavy dialogue, Ready Player One certainly has more negative aspects than positive, and for a director who time and time again has proven that giant gargantuan science fiction spectacle is part and parcel of his day job, Spielberg's latest annoyingly doesn't hit the heavy heights we are all very much used to.

Overall Score: 4/10

Catch-Up Film Review: The Limehouse Golem

"Here We Are, Again..!"

 Based upon the 1994 novel "Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem" by English author Peter Ackroyd, American director Juan Carlos Medina hits the big time this week after a string of independent, low-key releases with The Limehouse Golem, a British murdery mystery featuring the enigmatic figure of Bill Nighy in the leading role of Inspector John Kildare and a supporting cast which features the ever-reliable figures of Olivia Cooke, Daniel Mays and Eddie Marsan. Adapted from novel to screen by writer Jane Goldman, whose previous successes include Kick-Ass and the jet-black gothic horror of the worlds scariest 12A rated movie, The Woman In Black, Medina's movie is unfortunately a slog of predictability, one which forces through style over substance and shock tactics over story, resulting in a televisual murder mystery which ultimately feels rather too silly to be taken seriously even with some eye-catching performances from its' leading cast and effective gritty, murky cinematography from the film's DP.  

Put onto the case of the "Limehouse Golem" after a string of grisly, violent murders in Victorian-era London, Bill Nighy's Inspector Kildare's high profile history and attachment to former stage actor Elizabeth Cree (Olivia Cooke) is placed onto the local spotlight. With Cree on trial for the supposed murder of her husband, Kildare balances his attempt to prove her innocence along with revealing the identity of the crowd-pleasing vicious killer, one who has striked both fear and excitement from the bloodthirsty London audience. With the violence ridiculous, the dialogue cliched and the final twist so obvious even a half-asleep audience would have got there eventually, The Limehouse Golem doesn't quite manage to live up to the retro, murder thriller vibe it so obviously wants to excrete on-screen, and whilst Nighy, Cooke and Douglas Booth give it their best go, Medina's big-screen debut is B-movie fluff of which memorability isn't exactly its' leading trait. 

Overall Score: 5/10

Film Review: The Signal

William Eubank's The Signal follows in the footsteps of other independent, low-budget films that have been released this year that have tried to expand upon the horizons of the respective genre they have adhered to. For the case of sci-fi, we have already had Alex Garland's brilliantly edgy Ex Machina, and for horror, we had the not-so brilliant It Follows. The Signal focuses on two hackers, who on their way to dropping off the not-so-hacker female of the group, Bates Motel's Olivia Cooke, decide to come face-to-face with rival hacker NOMAD in the middle of Nevada. Hey, the film's set in Nevada. Guess what... There might be a twist of who's really there.

The first thing I have to say in the case of The Signal is that it succeeds in making It Follows seem a much better film than I first thought, with it's attempt at producing a kind of spooky, kind of arty sci-fi flick falling flat on its' face and instead, presents something so skull-shaterringly dull and incomprehensibly stupid, I was ready to leave as soon as the credits rolled in order to erase it  from my mind completely. I began to lose all hope entirely towards the latter stage of the film where it decides to sway from its' original echoes of horror as promised in the opening stages of the film and instead, turns into a cross between District 9 and RoboCop; and not in a good way.

In a sentence? Boring, boring, offensively stupid. The Signal reminded me how bad Series 8 and 9 of The X Files were, as the film feels like a rejected two-part episode of such albeit without Agent Scully, and without requiring a need from the audience to actually care about what is going on. Although it starts well, the film descends into something I'm sure you will find The Signal in the bargain bin soon. Not good.

Overall Score: 4/10