Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Renegade captain Harlock is on the run from the Gaia Sanction that rules over Earth and the human diaspora that has spread out across the galaxy. He travels in his spaceship Arcadia, which runs on alien dark matter technology.

Harlock plans to set off 100 bombs at different parts of the galaxy to reverse time and fix the problems caused by the Gaia Sanction. Yama, brother of Isola (an important member of Gaia Sanction), infiltrates Harlock's crew and tries to stop him.

***

Space Pirate is a visually impressive but grandiosely nonsensical science fiction anime movie. It's okay to have a technically ridiculous premise, as long as you make the audience want to believe in the story - through good storytelling or engaging characters.

However, Space Pirate doesn't give you any reason to overlook its badly-imagined space opera world. It lacks the world-building integrity and rich character development of TV anime series such as Escaflowne or Neon Genesis Evangelion. Heck, even the Final Fantasies are better.

For one thing, Harlock himself doesn't get much screen time, appearing more as a shadowy enigma - a supporting character - than as the main protagonist. That role falls to Yama, who comes across as a cardboard character too.

Isola is the designated bad guy (complete with cliched physical disability - he can't walk). Unfortunately, he is literally a cartoon bad guy. And his soap opera relationship with Yama is painfully melodramatic.

Harlock's crew are also cardboard cliches. There's a super-confident hot blond in a tight-fitting suit (who looks like Heather Locklear) and a crude, salty cigar-chomping sergeant (not really a sergeant, and I might have imagined the cigar, but you get the idea).

The visuals are good. The overall design is some kind of steampunk tech that we've seen before but still looks interesting. Lighting is dramatic high contrast, a bit like the lighting in Underworld. I'm not a clothes guy but the baroque costumes look good. Each major character has his own signature design, with realistically rendered fabric textures.

The characters do move a bit like robots but you quickly get used to this and barely notice after a while. Facial expressions could be better but are good enough.

Unfortunately the space battles are unimaginative Star Trek-style visual-range laser fights between lumbering space battleships. Heck, the Gaia Sanction troops look like Stormtroopers.

Space Pirate is advertised with a breathless endorsement from James Cameron. I can't imagine what he must have been smoking.

Walking on Sunshine (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): During a stay in an Italian beach resort, Englishwoman Maddie (Annabel Scholey) falls in love with local Italian hunk Raf (Giulio Berruti) and decides to marry him after a whirlwind 5 week romance.

Her sister Taylor (Hannah Arterton) flies in for the wedding, only to find out that Raf is the man that she dumped three years ago, leaving Italy to return to England in order to get a university education.

Raf and Taylor agree to keep their past a secret from Maddie, but their attraction for each other is still there. Meanwhile, Maddie's bad-boy ex, Doug (Greg Wise) makes a surprise visit to try and win her back.

***

Walking on Sunshine is a fun, light musical-romance-comedy with a rollicking 80s soundtrack. It lacks the star power of Mamma Mia! and Rock of Ages, but equals them in pop nostalgia and probably exceeds them in dance energy.

Directors Max Giwa and Dania Pasquini have previously directed two StreetDance movies. I have never heard of StreetDance before but I guess there's a lot of dancing in them.

There's certainly a lot of dancing in Sunshine, with an entire airport lobby breaking out into song (Madonna's Holiday) and dance within the first few minutes of the opening of the movie. If you're too young to remember, this is classic 1980s music video-style.

There was a group of schoolgirls sitting behind me in the theater and they were giggling and squealing throughout the whole movie. So you don't have to be an old codger to enjoy the movie, but you might miss a few 1980s references.

The cast of unknowns acquit themselves well. Hannah Arterton has a Piper Perabo charm about her, while Giulio Berruti looks like a male model. It sounds like the actors sing their own songs, but I can't be sure. They aren't spectacular singers, but they are good enough. There is some professional support from Leona Lewis (who sang I See You in Avatar) who plays Elena, one of Taylor's friends. The best part? Pierce Brosnan doesn't sing in this movie.

Good use is made of the Italian setting, with the ancient stone buildings leaving the greatest impression. There's a spectacular mass tomato fight in a cobblestone alley, like the Running of the Bulls or Holi, only with tomatoes.

There's something special about the songs of the 1980s. Every generation thinks that about their music. I was a teenager during the 1980s so I'm probably biased, but unlike the music of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, 1980s music hasn't aged. Play one today and you could fool a teenager into thinking that it was a current hit.

However I can't help thinking that there are so many movies with 1980s pop/rock soundtracks now because the people who grew up in the 1980s are now movie directors, writers and producers. Or maybe they are just a middle-aged demographic ripe for milking money from. In 10 years, we'll be seeing a whole bunch of 1990s music movies. Hello Guns N' Roses.

The runtime of Walking on Sunshine is maybe 30% to 50% songs, so it's as much music as it is story. Which is great. If you're an eighties child, bring your kids to see it. If you're not, go see it and realize that once, your parents too were young.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): It has been 10 years since Caesar (Andy Serkis - Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) led the ape revolt against humans. The apes are now peacefully settled in the forest. A virus, part of the experiment conducted on Caesar and designed to cure Alzheimer's disease, has wiped out most of the humans. Some resistant humans have survived and have banded together in a fortified group of buildings in the city, led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).

The humans are running low on fuel. Malcolm (Jason Clarke) leads an expedition into the forest to restart a hydroelectric power generator. They stumble onto some apes and shoot one out of fear. An enraged Caesar lets them go but warns them to never come back.

Desperate for electricity, Malcolm returns and manages to convince Caesar to allow the humans to restart the power generator. Koba (Toby Kebbell) still hates the humans from his years in captivity, and tries to convince Caesar to stop cooperating with the humans. Caesar refuses to change his mind, causing Koba to take matters into his own hands.

***

Dawn is an entertaining but ultimately shallow sequel to 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The characters are just as rich and sympathetic as Rise's, making it an engaging drama, but not much more.

There's a new director - Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In, Felicity) replaces Rupert Wyatt. But Rise's writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, together with new writer Mark Bomback (Live Free or Die Hard), worked on Dawn too. This probably accounts for the continuity in feel from the first movie. If you liked Rise, you'll like Dawn.

Most people would classify Dawn as a science fiction action/adventure but it's more of a drama. It's about Caesar as the non-violent leader, reluctantly dragged into war. It's a character study. It's a good character study, but that doesn't change the fact that the movie is not really about apes.

One test of a "real" science fiction story, is to take out the science fiction element and then see if the story still works. Dawn still works as a story if the apes were replaced by an oppressed racial minority. That's because the story doesn't explore the consequences of intelligent apes - for example how apes come to terms with human technology, or how apes regard their less intelligent predecessors, or how apes relate to their former masters (Dawn touches on this shallowly), or how presumably inferior apes could defeat humans (the two sides fight, but again, the apes could be replaced by a racial minority and the story would be the same).

Like too many movies, Dawn uses its post-apocalyptic premise mainly as cool background. It doesn't think through its ramifications and the scenarios are not convincing:

• They need electricity mainly to power their radio, to contact other survivors. You need at most a few kilowatts for that. You can get that from a single car engine - which they do have. You don't need a freaking hydroelectric dam. That's megawatts.
• You can't so easily restart a hydroelectric power station that has been abandoned for 10 years. It's not just the power station. The electrical distribution system to the city will also be a complicated mess.
• They can't run their cars on methanol or ethanol? Sure, ethanol corrodes some engine parts, but this is fixable. Or at least address this option in the story.
• The human survivors are shown crowded in a few large buildings. They aren't out in the fields, growing food or hunting animals or scavenging for leftover technology?
• The apes are shown to easily start using guns, even out-shooting the humans. All without any training. In reality, even untrained humans will have difficulty shooting straight and keeping their guns working. Yet Koba is shown expertly shooting his automatic rifle in short bursts (without being startled by the sound or recoil), and switching to single-shot (semi automatic) mode when necessary.

It's not just this lack of science fiction and technical rigor that makes Dawn feel shallow. There is no arc for the characters. The good guys (both ape and human) are consistently good, and the bad guys (both ape and human) are consistently bad. Even Dreyfus, who acts more unexpectedly than the other characters, doesn't change in the course of the movie.

Call it a formula if you will, but this lack of a character arc makes Dawn feel like a kiddie movie. Caesar is an interesting character. The audience is kept wondering whether or not he will turn to the dark side. But in the end Caesar's big insight is that apes are too much like humans - they can be evil and violent too. That's trite.

I'm not saying that Caesar should have turned to the dark side. I'm saying that at least one of the characters should have changed.

Don't get me wrong. This is an entertaining movie. But it mainly engages your heart, not your head.

Visuals from Director of Photography Michael Seresin (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Mercury Rising) and Production Designer James Chinlund (The Avengers) are good - the ruined buildings where the humans hide out, the apes' peaceful hillside village.

Andy Serkis is fun to watch as the brooding Caesar. Jason Clarke is also convincing as the decent, brave, pacifist Malcolm. But he's too plain vanilla. He's like some mild-mannered TV sitcom dad. Too unbelievably nice.

Dawn is mainly about these two and their relationship of trust. Keri Russell (Felicity) makes an appearance as Malcolm's girlfriend, but she's barely supporting cast. Gary Oldman, also in a small role, is as good as always but he doesn't have much to do.

Rise was released 3 years ago. I liked it, but I'll have to admit that I don't remember the details. Did the apes ride horses at the end? I can't remember. They do ride horses in Dawn, which is cool because one of the strongest images from the old Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes movie, is apes riding on horses.

Begin Again (2014)

Plot summary (story synopsis): Talented songwriter Greta (Keira Knightley - Pirates of the Caribbean, King Arthur, Atonement, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit) doesn't take her work seriously, preferring to live in the shadow of her famous singer boyfriend Dave (Adam Levine - Maroon 5's lead singer). They break up after she finds out that he had an affair.

Meanwhile, formerly-successful music producer Dan (Mark Ruffalo - Bruce Banner in The Avengers) is fired from the recording label that he started. He is divorced from Miriam (Catherine Keener - Being John Malkovich, Captain Phillips) and living in a rundown apartment.

He stumbles across Greta singing one of her songs in a bar and is impressed by her talent. He tries to sign her up, but his former boss Saul (Mos Def - 16 Blocks, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) back at his old label wants them to record a demo tape first.

Low on cash, Dan decides to use volunteer musicians, and record along New York's streets to make use of their ambient sound instead of renting a studio. Over the course of a few days, Dan and Greta get to know each other better as they record the demo album, roping in Dan's daughter Violet (Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit, Ender's Game, 3 Days to Kill) to play guitar.

***

Begin Again is an effective mix of Before Sunrise and The Commitments. It's a slow but entertaining show-don't-tell love story with some decent music, shot against the backdrop of the less glamorous part of New York. A part that isn't often seen in movies. We see the cosy backstreets New York, with the Empire State Building being the only major landmark shown.

The story sounds a lot like Once, writer/director John Carney's 2006 movie, which I haven't seen.

Mark Ruffalo is convincing as the down-and-out producer. Keira Knightley is even better as the sweet but tough, perceptive and talented songwriter. This is one of her best roles. I haven't been a fan in the past - she's competent, but there's something missing. However this movie might have changed my mind. The supporting cast, as might be expected from their past work, is excellent.

The chemistry between the two leads, works. John Carney's script allows them to believably get to know each other. Their interactions don't feel fake or forced. Most of it is low-key. There are a few dramatic moments but these aren't melodramatic or overwrought.

It's less "talkie" than Before Sunrise, closer to Lost in Translation's casual unhurried approach. It lacks Lost in Translation's mesmerizing dreamlike atmosphere but it's still a pleasant ride for the audience.

Like Before Sunrise, the ending isn't a conventionally romantic one and might not satisfy the general public that likes neat endings. Hopefully, like Before Sunrise, there will be a sequel too.