You kids wouldn't last one day out in the Scorch.

Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials

(2015)

(SPOILERS) No mazes, amazingly, but this is a superior sequel to the original in most respects, relieved as it is of a daffy ending and further showcasing Wes Ball’s confident accession to the status of first-rate action director. He’s so good at engaging with a raft of set pieces – even those replete with wanton, rampant CGI zombies, surely a no-no since I am Legend, shurely – that there’s little time to pause and debate whether Maze Runner: Scorch Trials makes any sense, and observe how the performances are mostly so-so and the dialogue on the crummy side. As such, it’s easily the most entertaining of last year’s YAs.

Which are currently dwindling in confidence and stature, what with the decision to split the last Divergence in two leading to audiences not falling for that again, and Maze Runner 3: The Death Cure delayed until 2018 while lead Dylan O’Brien recovers from his nasty onset accident.

Shorn of the need to dwell on the unlikely (to say the least) reveal of the last movie, that the vital subjects of the experiment, immune to the Flare virus, are essentially cannon fodder, Ball and TS Nowlin (adapting all three of James Dashner’s novels; quite possibly it won’t get to the stage of prequel making, or Fox will opt for a TV spin-off at that point) can instead indulge one long chase.

First the kids are locked up by Aiden Gillen’s Janson, looking as disreputable as he always does, while whistling a vague register of blarney under his breath as he searches out inscrutable vowels by contorting his mouth in various unlikely directions. Not for long, though, as they soon bust out, having discovered a Coma-type facility in a secured wing, full of hanging bodies being used for dastardly plans. The truth, shockingly, is that they weren’t rescued at all; they’re still part of WCKD’s plot!

Escaping into the post-apocalyptic Scorch, the intrepid youngsters encounter a suitably derelict environment, host to a succession of sand and ruined cities. And dark tunnels filled with ~~zombie~~ Crank hoards. This is a piecemeal affair, loosely strung together by sporadic encounters with those who may or may not help our heroes, but Ball ensures it motors along like it has real purpose.

Helping matters are a couple of new additions to the cast in the form of Giancarlo Esposito and Rose Salazar (also of Divergent: Insurgent), the latter particularly making an impression where most of the original cast besides O’Brien are given little to do (Thomas Brodie-Sangster is almost irrelevant). There’s also Barry Pepper, evidently relieved that Battlefield Earth didn’t completely kibosh his prospects for appearing in further science fiction movies. Best of the bunch is Alan Tudyk as a preening night club owner luring young innocents, stoking them full of drugs, and then sending them back to WKD.

Ball does an especially blinding job during an extended sequence in a ruined San Francisco, as Thomas and Brenda first encounter zombies erupting from floors and walls, then peg it up an alarmingly listing building, with the hungry ones in hot pursuit, culminating in a show-stopping homage to The Lost World’s breaking glass window (for another such homage, see The Secret Life of Pets). The demands of a really awkward capture-rescue climax, which opts for the old “driving into the midst of the enemy and turning the tables” chestnut as if it was ever a really satisfying solution, rather confound him, but that’s hardly his fault; he’s doing his damnedest.

As for the reveal of Teresa’s (Kaya Scoledario) complicity, it might have been more tactfully disguised, rather than cutting to her looking furtively guilty or fretful throughout. What can she have done? This is one of those series where no doubt all will be forgiven, or atoned for, despite Brenda being a much better bet for the very in-demand Thomas. Whose rousing speech at the end isn’t all that, but provides sufficient motivation to return to the lion’s den and rescue his captured pals. The question is whether the extended interim between Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure will whet appetites or prove just that bit too long for those who currently care. It may have worked for Furious 7, but this isn’t that.

Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.

Comments

You're not only wrong. You're wrong at the top of your voice.

Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
I’ve seen comments suggesting that John Sturges’ thriller hasn’t aged well, which I find rather mystifying. Sure, some of the characterisations border on the cardboard, but the director imbues the story with a taut, economical backbone.

She was addicted to Tums for a while.

Marriage Story (2019)
(SPOILERS) I don’t tend to fall heavily for Noah Baumbach fare. He’s undoubtedly a distinctive voice – even if his collaborations with Wes Anderson are the least of that director’s efforts – but his devotion to an exclusive, rarefied New York bubble becomes ever more off-putting with each new project. And ever more identifiable as being a lesser chronicler of the city’s privileged quirks than his now disinherited forbear Woody Allen, who at his peak mastered a balancing act between the insightful, hilarious and self-effacing. Marriage Story finds Baumbach going yet again where Woody went before, this time brushing up against the director’s Ingmar Bergman fixation.

She writes Twilight fan fiction.

Vampire Academy (2014)
My willingness to give writer Daniel Waters some slack on the grounds of early glories sometimes pays off (Sex and Death 101) and sometimes, as with this messy and indistinct Young Adult adaptation, it doesn’t. If Vampire Academy plods along as a less than innovative smart-mouthed Buffy rip-off that might be because, if you added vampires to Heathers, you would probably get something not so far from the world of Joss Whedon. Unfortunately inspiration is a low ebb throughout, not helped any by tepid direction from Daniel’s sometimes-reliable brother Mark and a couple of hopelessly plankish leads who do their best to dampen down any wit that occasionally attempts to surface.

I can only presume there’s a never-ending pile of Young Adult fiction poised for big screen failure, all of it comprising multi-novel storylines just begging for a moment in the Sun. Every time an adaptation crashes and burns (and the odds are that they will) another one rises, hydra-like, hoping…

It's a trip I won't forget, Avon.

Blake's 7 4.11: Orbit

Robert Holmes’ fourth and final script for the series is a belter, one that combines his trademark black comedy with the kind of life-or-death peril that makes some of his more high stakes scripts for Doctor Who (The Deadly Assassin and The Caves of Androzani for example) stand out.

My name is Dr. King Schultz, this is my valet, Django, and these are our horses, Fritz, and Tony.

Django Unchained (2012)
(MINOR SPOILERS) Since the painful misstep of Grindhouse/Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has regained the higher ground like never before. Pulp Fiction, his previous commercial and critical peak, has been at very least equalled by the back-to-back hits of Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. Having been underwhelmed by his post Pulp Fiction efforts (albeit, I admired his technical advances as a director in Kill Bill), I was pleasantly surprised by Inglourious Basterds. It was no work of genius (so not Pulp Fiction) by any means, but there was a gleeful irreverence in its treatment of history and even to the nominal heroic status of its titular protagonists. Tonally, it was a good fit for the director’s “cool” aesthetic. As a purveyor of postmodern pastiche, where the surface level is the subtext, in some ways he was operating at his zenith. Django Unchained is a retreat from that position, the director caught in the tug between his all-important aesthetic pr…

So you made contact with the French operative?

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features opted to change the title from The Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a noirish, dour, subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

I just hope my death makes more cents than my life.

Joker (2019)
(SPOILERS) So the murder sprees didn’t happen, and a thousand puff pieces desperate to fan the flames of such events and then told-ya-so have fallen flat on their faces. The biggest takeaway from Joker is not that the movie is an event, when once that seemed plausible but not a given, but that any mainstream press perspective on the picture appears unable to divorce its quality from its alleged or actual politics. Joker may be zeitgeisty, but isn’t another Taxi Driver in terms of cultural import, in the sense that Taxi Driver didn’t have a Taxi Driver in mind when Paul Schrader wrote it. It is, if you like, faux-incendiary, and can only ever play out on that level. It might be more accurately described as a grubbier, grimier (but still polished and glossy) The Talented Ripley, the tale of developing psychopathy, only tailored for a cinemagoing audience with few options left outside of comic book fare.

You must find the keys for me!

Doctor Who The Keys of Marinus
Most of the criticisms levelled at The Keys of Marinus over the past 50 years have been fair play, and yet it’s a story I return to as one of the more effortlessly watchable of the Hartnell era. Consequently, the one complaint I can’t really countenance is that it’s boring. While many a foray during this fledgling period drags its heels, even ones of undeniable quality in other areas, Marinus’ shifting soils and weekly adventures-in-miniature sustain interest, however inelegant the actual construction of those narratives may be. The quest premise also makes it a winner; it’s a format I have little resistance to, even when manifested, as here, in an often overtly budget-stricken manner.

Doctor Who has dabbled with the search structure elsewhere, most notably across The Key to Time season, and ultimately Marinus’ mission is even more of a MacGuffin than in that sextology, a means to string together what would otherwise be vignettes to little overall coherence…

It always seems a bit abstract, doesn’t it? Other people dying.

Game of Thrones Season Six
(SPOILERS) The most distracting thing about Season Six of Game of Thrones (and I’ve begun writing this at the end of the seventh episode, The Broken Man) is how breakneck its pace is, and how worryingly – only relatively, mind – upbeat it’s become. Suddenly, characters are meeting and joining forces, not necessarily mired in pits of despair but actually moving towards positive, attainable goals, even if those goals are ultimately doomed (depending on the party concerned). It feels, in a sense, that liberated from George R R Martin’s text, producers are going full-throttle, and you half-wonder if they’re using up too much plot and revelation too quickly, and will run out before the next two seasons are up. Then, I’m naturally wary of these things, well remembering how Babylon 5 suffered from packing all its goods into Season Four and was then given an ultimately wasted final season reprieve.

I’ve started this paragraph at the end of the eighth episode, No One (t…

I take Quaaludes 10-15 times a day for my "back pain", Adderall to stay focused, Xanax to take the edge off, part to mellow me out, cocaine to wake me back up again, and morphine... Well, because it's awesome.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Along with Pain & Gain and The Great Gatsby, The Wolf of Wall Street might be viewed as the completion of a loose 2013 trilogy on the subject of success and excess; the American Dream gone awry. It’s the superior picture to its fellows, by turns enthralling, absurd, outrageous and hilarious. This is the fieriest, most deliriously vibrant picture from the director since the millennium turned. Nevertheless, stood in the company of Goodfellas, the Martin Scorsese film from which The Wolf of Wall Street consciously takes many of its cues, it is found wanting.

I was vaguely familiar with the title, not because I knew much about Jordan Belfort but because the script had been in development for such a long time (Ridley Scott was attached at one time). So part of the pleasure of the film is discovering how widely the story diverges from the Wall Street template. “The Wolf of Wall Street” suggests one who towers over the city like a behemoth, rather than a guy …

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog