"The Beekeeper" - Review

Adam Clay (Jason Statham) is living in tranquility as a beekeeper. When his neighbour and perhaps only friend Eloise (Phylicia Rashad) loses everything she has to a call centre scam, Clay takes revenge. This brings him into the orbit of a pair of FBI agents (Emmy Raver-Lampman and Bobby Naderi), the Hawaiian shirt sporting tech bro head of the call centres (Josh Hutcherson) and a path of violence unqeunchable...

Statham is among the last of a dying breed: the action movie star. We used to get the box office showdowns of Arnie VS Stallone at the top, then on the B-Tier (the better stuff, honestly) JCVD VS Dolph Lundgren, or if you were unlucky, Chuck Norris VS Any Actor. But too late we realised there was space for both in this world, and thank you to Statham and Scott Adkins for keeping the spirit of this alive.
This is a back-to-basics, completely unhinged and wacky Jason Statham script, but channelled through the "gritty urban edge" filter of David Ayer, so played 100% straight making it even funnier and 1,000 times more entertaining.
It tries to channel "John Wick" and every Seagal movie ever made: a stoic, quiet badass living a normal life just wants to get on with it, but then some bad guys do wrong and he embarks on this path of vengeance, with a competent action star in the lead who could do this in his sleep; only there are colourful 80s and 90s henchmen and supporting characters to fight, and even the villains are given the same "sane man subordinate" having to babysit "idiot boss" vibe of that film. There are some bright, colourful, honestly well lit set pieces; the FBI agents honestly had funny dialogue and made me laugh (one of them gets Statham/gravity-induced concussion and introduces himself as "Federal Bureau of Something, you know the deal") and feel like they're ripped from a fun 90s movie. They even tie into the plot, weirdly, and their storyline jusssssssssssst straddles the line of endorsing vigilante justice without going there or being weirdly right wing. Honestly the first part of the movie is oddly Boomer-preachy: characters ranting to the screen about these evil selfish call centre thieves stealing from the elderly, which is "worse than stealing from a child" because there is nobody to bat for them. Continuing the "John Wick" vibes: Jeremy Irons prattles about "you can't stop Beekeepers!" because "Beekeeper" was also the name of the covert government agency Statham worked for, but "Beekeeper" is a very silly thing to call it.
But then the movie fucking rules?
Honestly, the script goes completely off the range mental and escalates into, no joke, minigun battles in a petrol station, and a full frontal assault on the home of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (played by Jemma Redgrave for some God damned reason), with the balls to explain why there are so many fucking henchmen and goons at these call centres Statham is genociding. He hurls jars of honey at a person's head. It's unhinged, sheer Statham lunacy, and everybody plays it pitch perfect: special shoutout goes to the first guy at the call centre (David Witts) who is bringing mad "Jordan Belfort" energy and just an oily shitbag; and then the comically evil Enzo Cilenti who wears a suit made up of the word "GOAT", carries a gold microphone and tells everybody around him to ignore the mercenaries demanding it be shut down because "WE'RE HERE TO MAKE MONEY!"; the villains are cartoonishly evil, and even Minnie Driver shows up for 2 scenes to sic an assassin on Statham, then go "fuck it, you're on your own!" when that fails. But special praise must go to Josh Hutcherson, here making up for being the lead in the second worst movie of last year by playing Jake Paul. A crypto-douche smarmy shitbag wank stain in bleached blonde hair, belittling his protectors, demanding his minions keep making scam calls despite the murders going on, constantly taking drugs, skateboarding everywhere, and being into "wellness" and "New Age" song bowls and shit. It's like every scene he went to Ayer: "How can I make him shittier?". The movie also keeps introducing henchmen, with build up and characterisation, only to have them Punked, and finally settle on (correctly) a colourful zany South African mercenary with a prosthetic leg in the final act.
And throughout all of this, David Ayer is a terrible choice, who thus makes him the PERFECT choice. He shoots everything with that grim, gritty, "urban gangsta flava" (thank you Lindsay Ellis) style, with big soaring horror music every time The Beekeeper is mentioned, some fucking fun gore effects and brutal kills and people burning to death, the sort of grit and edge and cops-in-army-gear poe-faced seriousness which makes every single thing around it even funnier. Kudos. Kudos movie.
I had an absolute whale of a time, and get everything I wanted and hoped for. I can't even mention half of the insane shit here.

"Batman VS Superman: Dawn of Justice" Review - From the Vaults

"Man of Steel 2: Electric Boogaloo" is not a good movie. 

Let me have the easy jokes, please!

This is frustrating, as there is a good Ben Affleck fascist-vigilante movie in there somewhere, but it remains distant, mired by crap, like me trying to watch pornography when I haven't cleaned my glasses.

It suffers from all of the same problems which plagued the first one, only now it is a clusterfuck written (though I hesitate to use that word, more on that presently) by a fanboy, which serves only to make it insufferably smug about itself.

There is no plot, only things which happen. Yes, Fanwank Man does battle with Henry Cavill, but you have to sit through two hours of awful dialogue riddled with such heavy and blunt metaphors and clunky "wacky" references (such as Alfred referring to Batman as "A Phantasm") that when this tiny, almost inconsequential fight finally happens (though, not as a result of two characters, for there are no such things in this move, growing to hate each other and having at it, but as a result of some convoluted idiot scheme by a character I will get to momentarily) not even Ben Affleck hitting a man with a sink and delivering some of the few good lines of the movie can save it. Besides which, there is a tacked on fight with a cross between Tim Roth from "Incredible Hulk" and the alien from "Prometheus" at the end which also pads out the run time even further, in between enormous plot holes, contrivances and a complete lack of characters, arcs and any semblance of plot.

The film is like a comic book fan has taken the "coolest" panels from the few "serious" comics which are not downright embarrassing and mashed them together in an AMV whilst simultaneously trying to remake "Watchman", particularly ironic considering the director. I am pretty sure that Snyder has gone insane and believes that Rorschach and Dr Manhattan ARE Superman and Batman, as well as the fact that he can make good movies besides "Watchmen". 

The movie is dull, overlong and anemic in equal measure, but the biggest, most annoyingly glaring flaw (besides the whiplash inducing editing and fight sequences and fan wank) is, unfortunately, one of the few things I had been looking forward to:

Zach Snyder and his "Snyderverse" - Colourised.
Of course I'm joking: he wouldn't let non-white people do stuff

Jessie Eisenberg brings something to the table, in that he tries to add colour to the screen. Unfortunately, he was told to play it as Heath Ledger's "Joker", when he was meant to be playing Lex fucking Luthor. Every line from his mouth, every tic, every jolting, jerky movement and strange "eccentricity" he does are like chalkboards having fingernails dragged across them. The film grinds to a fucking halt whenever he appears on screen, which is a shame, as the character of Lex Luthor is a great one ripe for flamboyance, exploration and depth, and Eisenberg is a great actor. Unfortunately the corpse of Michael Shannon manages to be more intimidating as a villain than he does, and Tao Okamoto (who has three lines and is murdered brutally an hour in) is more interesting and threatening than he is, and also seems far more enigmatic and clever.  She and other amazing actors are completely wasted. Heck, it was only when I read the credits that I realised Patrick Wilson and Carla Gugino were in this. Diane Lane and Holly Hunter are incredible actresses, also totally wasted here (though Diane Lane still manages to carry herself with dignity, grace and pathos in a movie like this, Hunter is given virtually nothing to work with and still does her best) in favor of a grimy filter in place of us actually caring, or any real "Darkness."

However, there is one thing which sums up the cynical, horrible, pugnaciously repellent nature of a film this sneering in its contempt for the audience and the concept of fun and joy:

Senator Patrick Leahy has had a cameo in pretty much every Batman movie ever made. He is an old man who simply loves Batman and comic books, who always donates his fee to charity and is simply delighted to be there when Batman movies are made. Indeed, he has a cameo in this one (which I was searching for throughout) as a senator at the hearing alongside Holly Hunter. When this lovable old man who has nothing but love for the character showed up, I was happy, as he'd been given a cameo once again.

Then he was blown up, alongside Holly Hunter and Tao Okamoto, brutally, quickly and without any remorse. He was the last remnant of joy, a symbol of the love people have for a character or a medium and how it brings people together, and it was destroyed in a quest for "darkness", "gravitas" and "gritty realism". 

Fuck off, Snyder.