MONSTER HUNTER (2020)

 

Publicity poster for Monster Hunter (© Paul W.S. Anderson/Constantin Films/AB Digital Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Toho/Sony Pictures/Screen Gems – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 27 February 2022, my movie watch, which had been recommended to me a few days previously by Facebook friend Thomas Finley, was the fairly recent movie Monster Hunter (not to be confused with various earlier, entirely unrelated films of the same title), a live-action/CGI big-screen sci fi/fantasy extravaganza based upon the eponymous series of Capcom video games.

Directed, written, and co-produced by Paul W.S. Anderson, and released in 2020 through Screen Gems by Sony Pictures, Monster Hunter is all about a squad of U.N. soldiers who are seeking some missing troops in an unnamed desert but become  caught up in a bizarre lightning storm that acts as a space-time portal, instantaneously transporting them to another world in another dimension. There, all but one are swiftly killed by various terrifying monsters, including a ferocious and unutterably ginormous sand-dwelling horned horror aptly called the diablos (depicted in the Monster Hunter publicity poster opening this present review of mine), and an immense cave-dwelling horde of hideous gigantic arachnid-like monstrosities called nerscyllas that skin-crawlingly combine the worst features of spiders and scorpions, which is really saying something!

The squad's sole survivor, U.S. Army Ranger Captain Natalie Artemis (played by Milla Jovovich), teams up with a lone indigenous warrior, Hunter (Tony Jaa), and they duly help each other survive the terrrors that this (very) strange new world contains before eventually reaching Hunter's home.

Just before they do, incidentally, Artemis and Hunter encounter a placid herbivorous herd of very sizeable but thoroughly delightful beasts named apceros that resemble highly improbable hybrids of giant tortoises and ankylosaur dinosaurs. Also making an appearance is a far less placid plesiosaur-like water monster that lunges ferociously at an unsuspecting Artemis when she approaches the deceptively tranquil expanse of water in which it is concealed. Despite being highly amused by her shock reaction, Hunter swiftly uses one of his arrows to good effect to save the day – and Artemis!

Once inside the shelter of Hunter's abode, Artemis makes the grudging acquaintance of (after being temporarily imprisoned by) a non-nonsense hunter leader known as The Admiral (Ron Perlman), plus his humanoid feline cook (Aaron Beelner), who is a member of the sentient Palico species. Together with Hunter, this odd couple endeavour to set things right by assisting Artemis to defeat a monstrous dragon-like fire-breather called a rathalos that loses no time in threatening their very existence.

This daunting winged monster is the guardian of an immensely tall, mysterious edifice in the desert known as the Sky Tower, which was built long ago by the first civilization to develop the technology for travelling between worlds via the portals.

Unfortunately, however, the rathalos not only survives their attempt to slay it, but also actually manages to enter our own world via an open portal. Trouble! Fortunately, Artemis and Hunter are able to pursue it into our world too via the same portal, and successfully dispatch it – but then a second, black dragon, known as Gore Madala, appears!

Monster Hunter boasts some spectacular special effects, especially those showcasing its array of very unusual and highly original monsters (except for the rathalos, which looks very like the wyvern Smaug from The Hobbit movie trilogy). However, no sooner has it presented its climactic rathalos confrontation and the arrival of Gore Madala than the movie abruptly ends! Clearly, therefore, this is intended as the first film in a future movie franchise.

For me, Monster Hunter is great fun, and no doubt for other creature feature fans too, as long as you are not arachnophobic, that is – those nerscyllas truly are the stuff of nightmares, especially as they rear their young by impregnating living humans with them, in best/worst Alien tradition (and graphically shown in the film). You have been warned!

If you can stomach it (sorry!), be sure to click here to watch an action-packed official trailer for Monster Hunter on Y0uTube – or (if you hate spiders, scorpions, or both) don't!

To view a complete comprehensive listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Photographic still depicting a nerscylla, from Monster Hunter (© Paul W.S. Anderson/Constantin Films/AB Digital Pictures/Tencent Pictures/Toho/Sony Pictures/Screen Gems – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

TITAN A.E.

 

Publicity poster for Titan A.E. (© Don Bluth & Gary Goldman/Fox Animation Studio/David Kirschner Productions/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

My movie watch on 31 January 2022 was the spectacular animated science fiction feature film Titan A.E.

Directed by veteran animators Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and released by 20^th Century Fox in 2000, Titan A. E. is a space opera on a galactically grand scale.  A.E. stands for After Earth, because a dastardly race of pure-energy entities called the Drej have only gone and blown up our poor old planet!

Happily, some humans managed to escape in time, including leading scientist Prof. Sam Tucker (voiced by Ron Perlman) aboard a huge space vessel created by him named Titan that has the capacity to create a brand-new planet and populate it with all of the life-forms previously native to Earth, thanks to a genetic database onboard that stores every Terran species' DNA like a futuristic Noah's Ark. Sadly, however, Titan goes missing, and both the Drej and assorted humans-in-exile are seeking it, the Drej to destroy it, the humans to save it and enable it to achieve its original epic goals.

Chief among the latter is Cale (Matt Damon; Jean-Claude Van Damme, Christopher Reeve, and Matthew Broderick had all previously been considered for this voice role). Cale is Prof. Tucker's now-adult son, who has on his finger a golden ring given to him by his father, which turns out to contain a map that will track down Titan. However, only Cale can operate the map-encoded ring because it is linked genetically to him.

Assisted by Captain Joseph Korso (Bill Pullman) who was one of his father's friends, plus a young female spacecraft pilot (and Cale's eventual love interest) named Akima (Drew Barrymore), as well as a (very) odd assortment of aliens (voiced by the likes of Nathan Lane and John Leguizamo), Cale sets off in pursuit of Titan, but the Drej warcraft are in pursuit of him. Who will get there first, and how will Cale deal with the despicable double-crosses slickly engineered by two of his companions?

The background animation is spectacular throughout, and although I half-expected the characters to be yet another incarnation of the standard limited-animation variety constituting the staple ingredient of comparable space-themed Saturday morning cartoon shows from Hanna-Barbera, Filmation, and the like, I was pleasantly surprised that in this animated space movie they actually did a lot more than stand motionless while talking with only an eye-blink every so often, as was so typically the case with the latter genre in the past.

Then again, with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman at the helm, I should have expected that the animation would be of a far superior quality. Having said that, Titan A.E. had originally been conceived as a live-action movie before the project was passed to Fox Animation Studios. Sadly, however, it proved to be their final production before they closed down (their first movie, released in 1997, had been Anastasia, followed by its sequel, Bartok the Magnificent).

Also worth noting here is this movie's strong rock soundtrack, featuring a score composed by Graeme Revell as well as music by the diverse likes of Jamiroquai, Fun Lovin' Criminals, Texas, and The Wailing Souls. Oddly, cinema trailers for Titan A.E. often included Creed's song 'Higher', even though it does not appear in the movie itself. Nor does a song entitled 'Heart of Honey' that was written specially for it by Chris Cornell, Alain Johannes, and Natasha Shneider.

Titan A.E. is well worth watching if you're an animation fan, and especially if you're into space battles – lots of space battles! And if you'd like to experience a sample of its interstellar essence, be sure to click here watch an official Titan A.E. trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN

 

The official UK DVD of The City of Lost Children (© Marc Caro & Jean-Pieere Jeunet/Canal+/Centre National de la Cinématographie/Eurimages/France 3 Cinéma/Televisión Española/Union Générale Cinématographique/Concorde-Castle Rock-Turner/StudioCanal – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 22 December 2020, I watched the English-dubbed version of a quite extraordinary French fantasy movie, La Cité des Enfants Perdus, known in English as The City of Lost Children and released in 1995.

Directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pieere Jeunet, and starring Ron Perlman as a carnival strongman named One, it features a surreal steampunk-styled dockside city with Bladerunner overtones in which children are being abducted by a crazed malign scientist aptly named Krank (played by Daniel Emilfork), who wishes to steal their dreams using a bizarre machine created by him, because he himself is unable to dream when asleep.

Krank is aided and abetted by six simple-minded male human clones (all played by Dominique Pinon), a female midget named Martha (Mireille Mossé), and a large disembodied brain named Uncle Irwin (voiced by Jean-Louis Trintignant) floating inside a fluid-filled tank, plus a gang of cyborgs named the Cyclops, who trade Krank stolen children for mechanical eyes and ears. In addition, there is a pair of adult female Siamese twins yet who, inexplicably, are not identical (played by Geneviève Brunet and Odile Mallet), known collectively as the Octopus, who are also utilising children, all of whom are orphans, but in this case as juvenile pickpockets to sustain the twins' Faginesque lust for money and expensive baubles.

When a young child named Denree (Joseph Lucien) looked upon by strongman One as his little brother is abducted by the Cyclops for Krank, One swiftly swings into action, letting nothing get in his way in his attempts to rescue Denree. During One's perilous quest, he is secretly assisted by one of the Octopus's orphan pickpockets, a young girl named Miette (Judith Vittet), as well as by a mysterious amnesiac diver, who just so happens to bear a remarkable facial resemblance to Krank's six clone helpers (and is once again played by Dominique Pinon).

The City of Lost Children is a very complex movie that was co-written by one of its directors, Jeunet, together with Gilles Adrien, but it is also extremely intriguing, and full of weird symbolism that has been fancifully linked in the opinion of some writers to Freemasonry and even the Illuminati. Strange indeed, but it is fascinating to watch – and also to listen to, as it boasts a beautifully melancholic, haunting score composed by eminent American composer Angelo Badalamenti, whose other big (and small) screen successes include the scores for Blue Velvet, Mullholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks TV series.

In addition, his wistful, plaintive song 'Who Will Take My Dreams From Me?, sung evocatively by Marianne Faithfull, plays softly over this movie's end credits – click here to listen to it, and watch the accompanying clips from the film (albeit screened here seemingly through a colour-draining filter for atmospheric effect).

As if all of this were not enough, the extraordinary costumes that elevate this mesmerising movie to an even greater level of idiosyncratic strangeness were designed by none other than avant-garde fashion flourisher Jean-Paul Gaultier. And I haven't even mentioned the troupe of trained fleas that inject a violently-potent aggression-inducing compound into the bloodstream of anyone bitten by them in response to the commands of their owner Marcello (Jean-Claude Dreyfus). Ah, too late, looks like I already have done!

The City of Lost Children is unquestionably one of the most unusual yet memorable movies that I have watched for a long time, its distinctive imagery staying in my mind long after the film had ended. Giving an all-too-brief idea of what to expect if you should decide to watch it yourself, and I heartily recommend that you do, here is an official trailer for this phantasmagorical fantasy experience.

And to view a complete listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!