A franchise hunted to extinction
Film
PREDATORS
Cert: 15
It’s 23 years since Arnold Schwarzenegger first did battle with one very ugly extraterrestial hunter, during which time there’s been a slew of spin-offs ranging from poor to dreadful. On paper the latest attempt to revamp the franchise seems encouraging, produced as it is by action whiz Robert Rodriguez, and with Predators battling men (rather than Aliens) again – and this time on their own turf.
A motley crew of tough guys (and one tough girl), headed by Adrian Brody, find themselves dumped into an unfamiliar jungle which, it soon emerges, is the Predators’ home planet. The stranded team work out that they’re hunting prey for the creatures, having been selected to represent the very best (or worst, depending on how you look at it) of human ruthlessness and cunning. A battle of wits emerges as they try to work out an escape plan while the Predators stalk them through the jungle – cue lots of gory action.
It’s all put together solidly enough but there’s nothing new here, and the case for whether there’s still life in this franchise is going to face an up-hill struggle. Brody – who won his best actor Oscar for Roman Polanski’s Holocaust film The Pianist – is better as a vigilante tough guy than one might assume, but the real problem with Predators is that it’s a bit dull. With the film unable to really deliver the shock value that it obviously intends, it seems all too clear that this franchise’s power to thrill is mostly gone.
Rhys Griffiths
THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE
Cert: 12a
THE third film in the saga about a teenage love triangle between a human, a vegetarian vampire and a werewolf marks the mid-way point in the series. Unless you’re the kind of young lady who goes wild for Robert “R-Patz” Pattinson in his guyliner, it’s just tiring to think there’s another two movies of such slow-burning blood-sucking dullness to go.
For the uninitiated, Bella (Kristen Stewart) is a moody goth teen living in Washington State’s wet and windy nowheresville, who’s in love with moody goth vampire Edward (R-Patz). She wants to be turned into a vampire, but he’s getting jealous of the time she spends with moody, muscly and frequently shirtless teen werewolf Jacob (Taylor Lautner). Meanwhile a new gang of vamps has been assembled by villainess Victoria, who wants to kill Bella, something she’s failed to do in two films and, considering how far there is still to go, no prizes for guessing how successful she is this time.
Eclipse is so slow-moving it’s stagnant. Director David Slade keeps it visually stylish, with the odd tasty vampire-on-werewolf fight scene, but let’s face it, the film’s goal is to tread water for two hours. It’s mostly filler, which in Twilight terms means a lot of brooding atmosphere and melodrama spread over a paper-thin screenplay. You’ll find yourself rooting for the baddies, hoping they finish Bella off and put us all out of our misery.
Preview:
SARGENT AND THE SEA
Royal Academy
He’s always had his detractors, but John Singer Sargent, the American artist who made his career on this side of the Atlantic in the Victorian era, is a painter who never goes completely out of favour. He’s too much of a crowd favourite with his perceptive, tender portraits of glamorous Belle Epoque society, rendered with a painterly touch redolent of Manet, Van Dyke and even Velazquez. Sargent may have been given to whimsy, and rarely troubled by any need to answer the big artistic questions, but his paintings are seldom less than gorgeous to look at.
So it should be with the Royal Academy’s latest exhibition of Sargent’s works, opening tomorrow, which focuses on his marine paintings – a lesser-known part of his oeuvre. As a young man in the 1870s Sargent spent several summers on the Normandy and Brittany coasts, producing seascapes and rustic beach scenes displaying his remarkable talent for capturing light and form. The exhibition features over 70 works drawn from these expeditions and Sargent’s other travels to the Italian island of Capri and various Mediterranean ports, as well as a selection of boating watercolours painted in Venice later in his career. It should offer illumination on the blossoming of the artist’s career, and act as something of a light-filled counterweight to what is a rather dreary Summer Exhibition in the RA’s main galleries.
Timothy Barber
Sargent and the Sea opens tomorrow at the Royal Academy of Arts, and runs until 26 September. www.royalacademy.org.uk