Archive for the ‘Jon Favreau’ Category

Star Wars:

The Mandalorian and Grogu

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Sigourney Weaver, Jeremy Allen White, Martin Scorsese, Shirley Henderson, Jonny Coyne, Steve Blum, Hemky Madera

Running Time: 2 hours and 12 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Iron Man and Cowboy and Aliens director Jon Favreau bravely enters the Star Wars Universe with panache and skill in his new film Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu starring a fantastic Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian, a bounty hunter in a galaxy far far away.   

The bounty hunter along with his cute side kick Grogu, who is like a miniature Yoda are sent on a mission by Colonel Ward wonderfully played by Oscar nominee Sigourney Weaver (Aliens, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl) to retrieve the nephew of the nefarious gangster Jabba the hut, Rotta the hut, voiced by The Bear star Jeremy Allen White. Sigourney Weaver in her fabled career has done every sci fi franchise including Avatar and Aliens so she is the perfect choice to appear in this Star Wars. Weaver is the queen of science fiction.

As the Mandalorian and Grogu travel across the galaxy to strange planets and bizarre circumstances they come across Rotta who is being held on an urban planet, with a production design reminiscent of Blade Runner.

Rotta is meant to be returned to the Hutt family but when the Mandalorian disobeys that order and sets him free, he gets embroiled in a series of monster clashes on the swampy home planet of Jabba the Hut and soon faces near death, devastation and despair.

Grogu as diminutive as he is, gets some help from some fellow creatures as they go back to rescue The Mandalorian from an intergalactic double cross.

Warning this film is deep sci-fi and will only appeal to fans of the Star Wars films. Despite the films lengths and that some scenes could have been edited, what elevates Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu is the brilliant original musical score by Swedish film composer Ludwig Goransson who has won three Oscars for best original score for Sinners, Oppenheimer and Black Panther.

If you love film music, Goransson is the master of propelling a narrative forward just using amazing orchestral sounds.

The second thing that makes this Star Wars film so riveting is the superb visual effects, despite the lack of human faces in the film. Most of the film is made up of monsters and robots except for Sigourney Weaver and a very dead pan Pedro Pascal in the unmasking scene in the swamp of the snake dragon.

While the acting and storyline is not fundamental in this genre, what this film really delivers in terms of deep sci fi is stunning visual effects, perfect world building and entertaining action sequences on various diversified planets involving X-Wing fighters, occasional storm troopers and numerous swamp creatures.

Highly recommended for Star Wars fans only, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is worth seeing.

This film cements Pedro Pascal‘s status as a contemporary Hollywood leading man, a Chilean actor who has catapulted to fame since he first appeared in HBO’s sensational series Game of Thrones.

Cowboys & Aliens

Director: Jon Favreau

Cast: Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig, Olivia Wilde, Paul Dano, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, Abigail Spencer, Wyatt Russell

Originally published in August 2011

It’s like this. It’s always a one horse town, Absolution. If you love Westerns and Aliens films in the tradition of 3:10 to Yuma and all of Sergio Leone’s films like The Good, Bad and the Ugly, you will love Cowboys and Aliens, it’s a cross-genre mix without subtly and it has the star of the James Bond film franchise’s recent acquisition, Daniel Craig (Casino Royale) looking very out of place in a western. He has Harrison Ford (Star Wars) to assist him as the town sheriff. Harrison Ford, ex Solo is there to help against an awfully bizarre alien invasion in Arizona 1873. Together they battle the onslaught of an Alien invasions in outer far west.

There are lots of explosions, gunfights and alien invasions but it’s never without some form of retribution. Cowboys and Aliens is entertaining but hugely commercial film with loads of action sequences and lots of gunfights with hard-arsed cowboys and nefarious aliens that are clearly there to exploit the vulnerability of humans in an attempt  to control the Planet Earth even back in the 19th century in the outback of Arizona of all places.

See Cowboys and Aliens and don’t expect mental stimulation, but loads of popcorn fun. It’s a sleepy hit for the Northern Hemisphere summer season. Cowboys and Aliens also stars Paul Dano (There will be Blood), Sam Rockwell (Moon, Iron Man 2), Keith Carradine (Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle) and Abigail Spencer (Oz, The Great and Powerful).

This is a cross over Sci Fi Western in the tradition of Yul Brynner’s 1973 film Westworld.

Iron Man

The superbly versatile character actor, Robert Downey Jnr has made a big screen comeback in the summer blockbuster Marvel comics’ film adaptation of Iron Man bringing a fresh twist on the superhero role. In recent years, we have seen numerous film trilogies about super heroes, from the X-Men to Spiderman become box office successes.

Downey returns to form with a Money Spinner

Iron Man opens promisingly with Downey Jnr playing Tony Stark a weapons manufacturer on a visit to Afghanistan. He is chatting boisterously with American soldiers in the back of an armoured vehicle, while sipping on a fine whisky, a decadent contrast to the passing landscape of the bleak Afghan province of Kunar. Stark poses for photographs and does not to take life seriously even though he is responsible for inheriting an empire that builds weapons of apparently mass destruction. Portrayed as somewhat of a playboy, as seen in flashbacks whereby Stark goes from gambling at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas while missing his own awards ceremony to seducing a blonde reporter at his immense Malibu mansion. All the while, drinks in hand, he casually races to his private Californian airstrip to board a luxury jet en route to Afghanistan, where he is due to present the latest product from Stark industries, Jericho, a rocket launcher with magnificent destructive capacities.

The self-indulgent Tony Stark is soon captured by a militant group of rebels, living in the Afghan mountains, certainly suggestive of the Taliban. There he is forced to build another weapon for this guerilla group, but aided by a mysterious fellow prisoner, he builds an iron suit, which is powered by a flashy blue battery that keeps shrapnel from entering his heart. The film follows similar superhero plots whereby the hero returns to his native California after annihilating his captives and finds that his very newly acquired powers are being undermined by those closest to him.

Besides the inconsistencies in storyline, evident of a group of screenwriters marrying diverging plot points, Iron Man follows most superhero storylines, from Spiderman to the more recent Ghost Rider, always ultimately rescuing the female lead, in this case, Stark’s efficient assistant Pepper Pots played with a surprising subtlety by Gwyneth Paltrow. What was so attractive in this film was this standard plot being treated with a subverted and ironically mature undertone, given that the hero is a middle-aged millionaire who draws on his own emotional vulnerabilities to eventually fuel his physical transformation from careless warmonger to conscientious saviour. Iron Man, the super hero, almost is an anti-hero, defeating the villain and saving the distressed damsel, while still retaining his own personal insecurities.

Thus, Downey’s performance fits perfectly with this subversion of a traditional superhero, as he smirks and delights in a clearly comic role, with significantly relevant undertones; especially enhanced by the fact that Iron Man doesn’t actually possess any supernatural powers, his ironclad flying suit is entirely his own creation.

Iron Man 2

Whilst it banks on the originality of the first Iron Man, the sequel is every bit as quirky, brilliant and action-packed with characters and fantastic settings. Robert Downey Jnr and Mickey Rourke rock!!!

The Monaco Grand Prix Sequence is spectacular and so is the wonderfully ironic script by Justin Theroux and of course a solid performance by Robert Downey Jnr. Watch out for Scarlett Johansson’s great transformation scene at the end – slinky in a catsuit!!! No more demure Girl with a Pearl Earring! There is a wonderful supporting cast including Sam Rockwell and Don Cheadle. If viewers enjoyed Iron Man and loved the anti superhero antics, then Iron Man 2 will definitely not disappoint especially with the ever charismatic Robert Downey Jnr back in the lead role as flamboyant billionaire playboy and arms industrialist Tony Stark taking on Mickey Rourke’s aggressive and slightly unhinged villain Ivan Vanko.