Bone Tomahawk (R)
A posse sets out from the town of Bright Hope in pursuit of some mysteriously sinister natives who have made off with a nurse, a deputy and their charge, a murdering vagrant. With an aging backup deputy, a paranoid man with a healthy trigger finger and a husband with a shattered leg, the local Sheriff heads out with his crew with no backup, no guide and no real hope of succeeding in the auspicious debut of director/writer S. Craig Zahller's surprisingly successful Horror/Western genre mashup.
A still mustachioed Kurt Russell (Hateful Eight) leads the men and the cast as the veteran Sheriff Hunt with supporting roles filled by fantastic character actor Richard Jenkins (The Cabin in the Woods), out-of-his-element Patrick Wilson (The Watchmen) and quirky Matthew Fox (Lost). This rousing group has a great script to play with and better repartee, and like the film are better than the sum of their parts. Jenkins in particular uses his great personal charms to enliven the role of dim-witted backup Deputy Chickory. The same can not be said for the female roles where a competent line reading has been sacrificed for a pretty face. The writing however is not to be blamed, as the jolly palaver and old timey vernacular of the dialog can attest to be the strongest asset of the film.
Not so strong are the visuals, a flat arid desert may be our playground but something perhaps could have been done to liven up the proceedings. Perhaps it was an attempt to accentuate the stark realism that underlies the plot, but more likely it is a symptom of the independent (and cheap) nature of the production that everything looks so one dimensional and backyard like. The posse's monstrous foes, a pack of cannibalistic troglodytes that even other Native-American fear come straight out of a 1980's D&D rule book. Alien, immutable and stoic, these cave-Indians are built like body builders and sound like video-game werewolves (which is quite silly). However the overall mythical, adventure-gone wrong feel to the plot lends itself to these creatures existing in a world where Tombstone meets Beowulf with a dash of Hostel.
This is where the genre mixing comes into full force. Bone Tomahawk is a long film, at over 2 hours with most of the action in the last half hour it can be a trek. In fact most of the beginning of the film can be seen as a ill-conceived camping trip through the badlands, and if it wasn't for the sharp characterization and pristine chatter among the group it would have sink into tedious sands from the wieght of pretension. Instead it builds tension quite slowly until the quick sudden release of bow strings and triggers, then blood bursts and appendages sever (the great practical effects show where the film makers allegiances lie) as it's genre mashup goes into full effect. To go 2 hours of tromping through the trail to sudden, violent, in your face charnel house really places the viewer squarely into the terrified boots of these law-loving prairie folk who are about to witness it up close and personal. It is shocking, brutal and very effective for both parties, and better than it has any right to be.
It's shortcomings easily outpaced by it's strengths, Bone Tomahawk is an auspicious start to a writer's career, one with interesting ideas and a zest for dialog. The movie itself is aptly named, the bony instrument would be blunt and cheap and yet just as effective as any expensive steel ax at cleaving, maiming or slaughtering, probably more painfully so.
7.5 Corn Chowders out of 10 (GOOD)
Showing posts with label 2015. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2015. Show all posts
The Revenant (2015)
The Revenant (R)
A man on a trapping expedition, mauled by a bear and wronged by his companions, crawls his way back to civilization and survival by sheer will and the lust for revenge in director Alejandro Inarratu's followup to 2014's Best Picture "Birdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)".
Based very loosely on the widely told tale of professional trail scout Hugh Glass (played with baby face and big bearded Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street)), a man so wronged even his own exposed ribs nor 200 miles full of blood thirsty natives will keep him from his vengeance. Leo plays him as the quiet type, surrounded by the vast blanketed mountains or picking his way through the tree studded fields he doesn't say much (having one's throat shredded by a momma grizzly may have helped). When asked why he fled civilized parts of the world, Leo's Glass mutters something about "Liking it where it's quiet". These are his best moments, but DiCaprio cannot so easily shed his Mega-star image and face beneath a bearhide and buckskins, and too often (despite his truly best efforts and solid acting ability), we are forced to admit that no, Leo does not resemble a wild Mountain-man of the frontier age, a man so hardy and full of spirit that he could survive the cold and wounds and misfortune. He looks, much as he did in The Aviator, like Leo DiCaprio.
Tom Hardy (Bronson), on the other hand, once again completely transforms himself for a role. As Glass' trapping partner Fitzgerald he is bitter, racist, self-serving and sports a plotting, devious mind. His country Texas twang feels great, every time the film gives him something to do he is riveting and completely steals the show from DiCaprio, there is a self confidence present that stands it's ground as an authentic Western ideology. Perhaps he wasn't as electric as Mad Max since he could not truly make the role singularly his own, but in Revenant he fits into Fitzgerald perfectly and is fantastic antagonist.
It is only too bad the film strays from what makes it good so often. The cinema, the wide open wild places look terrific while at the same time the CGI wild animals populating it detract. The long takes, now famous from these filmmakers, feel more constructed and sewn together with twine when done in nature than the smooth seamless backstage views. The compositing is distracting, mostly during the action sequences, there is a reliance on technology way out there in wilds of nature that simply clashes with the aesthetic being sold to us. As is some of the audio design, for instance the Natives all are dubbed strangely and out of sync, the words literally put into their mouths in post. More power to Inarratu for braving the forces of nature to capture this stuff with natural light and freezing actors and crew, but if Dances with Wolves had just had a herd of CGI buffalo that too would have stuck out like a sore thumb too. However there are shots here of such sublime beauty as to be in a Terrance Mallick film (in fact much can be seen as homage to T.M.), but unfortunately many do not help along the blood thirsty narrative. A man done so wrong would not sleep so placidly or have such a spiritual dream journey. And, like the many Hollywood epics before it, the script of the Revenant takes an amazing true life story of determination and grit and gussies it up with more drama for modern audiences, rehashing a classic trend that itself should be mauled and buried. A man did do this, crawled that great long way, survive a bear attack and had maggots eat his gangrenous flesh, there is no need to gussy it up and "humanize" it more. Revenge does not only come from blood, motivation not just from love and close ups of eye's leaking, the real story of Glass was already about how strong and hardy a human being could be, and diluting it with modern cinematic tricks really wounds it to the quick.
Much like its protagonist Glass, Revenant is ritualistically real. The snow, dirt and blood and environments is under his feet and nails and stains his clothes (costume). And yet mixed in equal parts is fabrication, with an empty spirituality, preachy modern morality and technological shortcuts. Where it gets it right, the opening Bear horror, the closing showdown with the fantastic Hardy, the rest is a barren cold wasteland of misspent ideals. All in a film just as lengthy as Hateful Eight yet without the constant, cartoonishly fired from the hip Western-fried delights. Greatness lurks beneath a thick ground fog of modern necessity, and instead of a tall tale we get a long one.
By the end, worn out by tiresome long camera takes, you stumble out of the theater on benumbed legs like a snow blind trapper with nothing to show for your journey except a deep yearning for hearth and home.
7 Historical Showdowns that never actually happened out of 10 (GOOD)
A man on a trapping expedition, mauled by a bear and wronged by his companions, crawls his way back to civilization and survival by sheer will and the lust for revenge in director Alejandro Inarratu's followup to 2014's Best Picture "Birdman (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)".
Based very loosely on the widely told tale of professional trail scout Hugh Glass (played with baby face and big bearded Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street)), a man so wronged even his own exposed ribs nor 200 miles full of blood thirsty natives will keep him from his vengeance. Leo plays him as the quiet type, surrounded by the vast blanketed mountains or picking his way through the tree studded fields he doesn't say much (having one's throat shredded by a momma grizzly may have helped). When asked why he fled civilized parts of the world, Leo's Glass mutters something about "Liking it where it's quiet". These are his best moments, but DiCaprio cannot so easily shed his Mega-star image and face beneath a bearhide and buckskins, and too often (despite his truly best efforts and solid acting ability), we are forced to admit that no, Leo does not resemble a wild Mountain-man of the frontier age, a man so hardy and full of spirit that he could survive the cold and wounds and misfortune. He looks, much as he did in The Aviator, like Leo DiCaprio.
Tom Hardy (Bronson), on the other hand, once again completely transforms himself for a role. As Glass' trapping partner Fitzgerald he is bitter, racist, self-serving and sports a plotting, devious mind. His country Texas twang feels great, every time the film gives him something to do he is riveting and completely steals the show from DiCaprio, there is a self confidence present that stands it's ground as an authentic Western ideology. Perhaps he wasn't as electric as Mad Max since he could not truly make the role singularly his own, but in Revenant he fits into Fitzgerald perfectly and is fantastic antagonist.
It is only too bad the film strays from what makes it good so often. The cinema, the wide open wild places look terrific while at the same time the CGI wild animals populating it detract. The long takes, now famous from these filmmakers, feel more constructed and sewn together with twine when done in nature than the smooth seamless backstage views. The compositing is distracting, mostly during the action sequences, there is a reliance on technology way out there in wilds of nature that simply clashes with the aesthetic being sold to us. As is some of the audio design, for instance the Natives all are dubbed strangely and out of sync, the words literally put into their mouths in post. More power to Inarratu for braving the forces of nature to capture this stuff with natural light and freezing actors and crew, but if Dances with Wolves had just had a herd of CGI buffalo that too would have stuck out like a sore thumb too. However there are shots here of such sublime beauty as to be in a Terrance Mallick film (in fact much can be seen as homage to T.M.), but unfortunately many do not help along the blood thirsty narrative. A man done so wrong would not sleep so placidly or have such a spiritual dream journey. And, like the many Hollywood epics before it, the script of the Revenant takes an amazing true life story of determination and grit and gussies it up with more drama for modern audiences, rehashing a classic trend that itself should be mauled and buried. A man did do this, crawled that great long way, survive a bear attack and had maggots eat his gangrenous flesh, there is no need to gussy it up and "humanize" it more. Revenge does not only come from blood, motivation not just from love and close ups of eye's leaking, the real story of Glass was already about how strong and hardy a human being could be, and diluting it with modern cinematic tricks really wounds it to the quick.
Much like its protagonist Glass, Revenant is ritualistically real. The snow, dirt and blood and environments is under his feet and nails and stains his clothes (costume). And yet mixed in equal parts is fabrication, with an empty spirituality, preachy modern morality and technological shortcuts. Where it gets it right, the opening Bear horror, the closing showdown with the fantastic Hardy, the rest is a barren cold wasteland of misspent ideals. All in a film just as lengthy as Hateful Eight yet without the constant, cartoonishly fired from the hip Western-fried delights. Greatness lurks beneath a thick ground fog of modern necessity, and instead of a tall tale we get a long one.
By the end, worn out by tiresome long camera takes, you stumble out of the theater on benumbed legs like a snow blind trapper with nothing to show for your journey except a deep yearning for hearth and home.
7 Historical Showdowns that never actually happened out of 10 (GOOD)
The Hateful Eight (2015)
The Hateful Eight (R)
"Reservoir CowDogs"
A pair of bounty hunters cross paths on the way to a snowed in Wyoming outpost, only to meet a slew of strangers holed up in a blizzard. One is hauling a live prisoner worth a $10,000 reward, and suspects everyone else of collusion, theft or chicanery. Some may live or die, but none will escape unbloodied in Quentin Tarantino's 8th film, the red-soaked return to form The Hateful 8.
First, it must be said that Hateful Eight is less of a genre-ape than his previous few films, if anything TH8 is in the genre of his own first film Reservior Dogs (stick with your own genres QT), but by moving the narrative to the post-Civil War era has allowed him to toy with the idea that sometimes in our past even the good guys were pretty bad. It turns into a slight whos-gonna-doit/who-dunnit but since every one is a racist/misogynistic pig of varying likeability the answer could be anyone and we'd be happy. The cast who plays these 8 are as much a who's who of past QT films as it's own plot points, and the story is framed like a stage-play, built from acts, using many of QT's previous trademarks that have come and gone through the years (the chapter marks from Kill Bill, the blood and crime drama of Res Dogs, the western-as-a-setting-to-provides-discussion-of-modern-race-relations of Django, the time distortion from most his films, the sudden out of place narrator and hidden-just-beyond-sight danger of Inglorious Basterds, and of course the director's cameo (though admittedly one of his least obtrusive)). All of these make H8 more of a classic QT film (unlike Django Unchained, which we may have been too-hard on but we hold QT to a higher level and expect something beyond just a genre-rehash for modern wish fulfillment). Hateful Eight is bolder than anything he's done in awhile, with a full commitment to his play-like setting with a large cast of regulars to mix it up in his bloody evil sandbox.
And those Hateful Eight are Kurt Russell (Death Proof) as John "Hangman" Ruth, brutally leading his prisoner Daisy Domergue (an almost unrecognizable Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the noose, the irreplaceable Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) as his fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren who must justify his own existence constantly due to the color of his skin, Walton Goggins and Bruce Dern (both from Django) as Southern Rebels still nursing their loss in the War of Oppression, and Tim Roth and Michael Madsen (both from Resevoir Dogs) dressed up as two dangerous dandies out of place on the Western frontier. There are other new faces and old, but they are all wrapped singularly into the fate of Daisy and her appointment with the hangman and those who would stand in the way. Madsen's bizarre toughguy routine is blunted by his equally bizarre Will Rogers wardrobe (sticking out like a saddle sore thumb). Yet Jennifer's deliciously evil spitting crone has some viewers screaming "anti-woman" for the violence she is subjected to and lack of white-knighting onscreen. However, what QT is going for, and has successfully captured, is the harsh world of crime and punishment on the outlying segments of civilized society, a place where a gun and a fist are daily occurrences, where death is just outside your door if you aren't huddled by a fire and keep your horses fed, a world with a deadly lack of information and shifting trusts, of self reliance and uneasy pacts, the non-idealized old west where lynching and Injun wars and getting shot in the back were the realities, and women really were second class citizens trying to make a life amongst these brutes. You can hate the player a bit, but you should really be hating the game more, and QT is shining the light on our forefathers.
Now it ain't all comin' up roses. The movie is lengthy, and although it pays off in spades for it's long run it is also very wordy (luckily no "in the middle of everything Superman speeches" here however). In that weighty runtime there aren't enough amazing moments to quite sustain; no Jew Hunter at the table, no ear severance dance, no showdown at House of Blue Leaves, no Bags on Heads, no high octane car crash leg ejection. There is however enough tension and blood to maintain entertainment. And with a delightfully bombastic score by Spaghetti Western master-composer Ennio Morricone (with some leftover bits from his score from Carpenter's The Thing), it marks the first film Tarantino has used an original score and it comes off perfectly (he still sneaks in some choice cuts from modern sources). The cast at large does a terrific job (love ya Bob!), with Roth and Leigh and Russell and Goggins in particular enjoying their dialogue time on screen as much as we enjoy witnessing it.
So what is the point of all this, the 70mm wide angles, the straight foray into the American west of an admitted genre-muckraker, the encapsulating music, the buckets and buckets of gore, the fur coats and facial hair, the disparity of North vs South, Black vs White, Man vs Woman, Everyone vs Mexican? Why Channing Tatum, why a Roadshow release, why yet another good excuse for QT to use the N-Word? For the best reasons of all. To tell a story that you can feel and see and hear and think about, and that is why Quentin wrote it and the actors enjoyed playing it and why it can be watched by us. All 8+ characters are to be reviled and cheered as they suffer loudly, it is shades of grey for who justly lives and dies and ultimately who is the least hateful and who triumphs despite being hateful themselves. It is almost a polar opposite of this year's other big (biggest ever) release, Disney's Star Wars The Force Awakens. TH8 is Non-PC, non-regurgitated, non-self referencing, non-market tested consumer approved popart, and it was all made on non-digital cellulose film for and by cinephiles. This is cinema as high-art succumbing to it's basest desires, the spoken word from the typed page, the cold puffs of breath from a boiling actor lost in their role, the mountain vistas splashed with golden sunlight and the grungy floorboards soaked in crimson lifeblood.
See y'all down the trail.
8 Well-Loved Lincoln Letters and Pots of Coffee out of 10 (GREAT)
"Reservoir CowDogs"
A pair of bounty hunters cross paths on the way to a snowed in Wyoming outpost, only to meet a slew of strangers holed up in a blizzard. One is hauling a live prisoner worth a $10,000 reward, and suspects everyone else of collusion, theft or chicanery. Some may live or die, but none will escape unbloodied in Quentin Tarantino's 8th film, the red-soaked return to form The Hateful 8.
First, it must be said that Hateful Eight is less of a genre-ape than his previous few films, if anything TH8 is in the genre of his own first film Reservior Dogs (stick with your own genres QT), but by moving the narrative to the post-Civil War era has allowed him to toy with the idea that sometimes in our past even the good guys were pretty bad. It turns into a slight whos-gonna-doit/who-dunnit but since every one is a racist/misogynistic pig of varying likeability the answer could be anyone and we'd be happy. The cast who plays these 8 are as much a who's who of past QT films as it's own plot points, and the story is framed like a stage-play, built from acts, using many of QT's previous trademarks that have come and gone through the years (the chapter marks from Kill Bill, the blood and crime drama of Res Dogs, the western-as-a-setting-to-provides-discussion-of-modern-race-relations of Django, the time distortion from most his films, the sudden out of place narrator and hidden-just-beyond-sight danger of Inglorious Basterds, and of course the director's cameo (though admittedly one of his least obtrusive)). All of these make H8 more of a classic QT film (unlike Django Unchained, which we may have been too-hard on but we hold QT to a higher level and expect something beyond just a genre-rehash for modern wish fulfillment). Hateful Eight is bolder than anything he's done in awhile, with a full commitment to his play-like setting with a large cast of regulars to mix it up in his bloody evil sandbox.
And those Hateful Eight are Kurt Russell (Death Proof) as John "Hangman" Ruth, brutally leading his prisoner Daisy Domergue (an almost unrecognizable Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the noose, the irreplaceable Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) as his fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren who must justify his own existence constantly due to the color of his skin, Walton Goggins and Bruce Dern (both from Django) as Southern Rebels still nursing their loss in the War of Oppression, and Tim Roth and Michael Madsen (both from Resevoir Dogs) dressed up as two dangerous dandies out of place on the Western frontier. There are other new faces and old, but they are all wrapped singularly into the fate of Daisy and her appointment with the hangman and those who would stand in the way. Madsen's bizarre toughguy routine is blunted by his equally bizarre Will Rogers wardrobe (sticking out like a saddle sore thumb). Yet Jennifer's deliciously evil spitting crone has some viewers screaming "anti-woman" for the violence she is subjected to and lack of white-knighting onscreen. However, what QT is going for, and has successfully captured, is the harsh world of crime and punishment on the outlying segments of civilized society, a place where a gun and a fist are daily occurrences, where death is just outside your door if you aren't huddled by a fire and keep your horses fed, a world with a deadly lack of information and shifting trusts, of self reliance and uneasy pacts, the non-idealized old west where lynching and Injun wars and getting shot in the back were the realities, and women really were second class citizens trying to make a life amongst these brutes. You can hate the player a bit, but you should really be hating the game more, and QT is shining the light on our forefathers.
Now it ain't all comin' up roses. The movie is lengthy, and although it pays off in spades for it's long run it is also very wordy (luckily no "in the middle of everything Superman speeches" here however). In that weighty runtime there aren't enough amazing moments to quite sustain; no Jew Hunter at the table, no ear severance dance, no showdown at House of Blue Leaves, no Bags on Heads, no high octane car crash leg ejection. There is however enough tension and blood to maintain entertainment. And with a delightfully bombastic score by Spaghetti Western master-composer Ennio Morricone (with some leftover bits from his score from Carpenter's The Thing), it marks the first film Tarantino has used an original score and it comes off perfectly (he still sneaks in some choice cuts from modern sources). The cast at large does a terrific job (love ya Bob!), with Roth and Leigh and Russell and Goggins in particular enjoying their dialogue time on screen as much as we enjoy witnessing it.
So what is the point of all this, the 70mm wide angles, the straight foray into the American west of an admitted genre-muckraker, the encapsulating music, the buckets and buckets of gore, the fur coats and facial hair, the disparity of North vs South, Black vs White, Man vs Woman, Everyone vs Mexican? Why Channing Tatum, why a Roadshow release, why yet another good excuse for QT to use the N-Word? For the best reasons of all. To tell a story that you can feel and see and hear and think about, and that is why Quentin wrote it and the actors enjoyed playing it and why it can be watched by us. All 8+ characters are to be reviled and cheered as they suffer loudly, it is shades of grey for who justly lives and dies and ultimately who is the least hateful and who triumphs despite being hateful themselves. It is almost a polar opposite of this year's other big (biggest ever) release, Disney's Star Wars The Force Awakens. TH8 is Non-PC, non-regurgitated, non-self referencing, non-market tested consumer approved popart, and it was all made on non-digital cellulose film for and by cinephiles. This is cinema as high-art succumbing to it's basest desires, the spoken word from the typed page, the cold puffs of breath from a boiling actor lost in their role, the mountain vistas splashed with golden sunlight and the grungy floorboards soaked in crimson lifeblood.
See y'all down the trail.
8 Well-Loved Lincoln Letters and Pots of Coffee out of 10 (GREAT)
Anomalisa (2015)
Anomalisa (R)
"He who would pun would pick a pocket"
A married foreign-born writer on a speaking tour of the US for his new book finds himself falling in love with a complete stranger who's main appeal is that she sounds like no one else. Her name is Lisa and she is an anomaly, and they also happen to be stop-motion puppets in director Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of his own three person play, Anomolisa.
Kaufman's work often comes down to the nerve wracking realities of relationships. With Anomalisa, taking it from the starkness of a play to a film, Kaufman chose (brilliantly) to use stop-motion animation which is counter-intuitive medium for a film about adult situations. Meanwhile character actor David Thewlis (The Big Lebowski) brings Micheal's desperation for love to poignant life, he fills the role with pudgy exasperation. His counter part Lisa meanwhile is played against type by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and she is a bubbling self depreciating mess with a heart of gold.
Our time in Anomalisa is short, and at first we are bewildered, then scandalized, then reproachful, perhaps even a bit traumatized. By the film's end all the cards are laid onto the table and our own personal judgments are set, but much like tarot what we see in those cards is entirely subjective. And for these all too real relationships and bad choices and desperate people, to be just puppets on film with their dialog dubbed is itself a spectacular statement on our lives, and justifies the lengths the filmmaker's went to make it this way. Anomalisa is as real a statement on our romantic entanglements as any film made in decades. It is equal parts frenetic passion and loathing nightmare, perfectly embodied by these complex dolls who live a life filmed at a just few frames an day under their masters hand. The high artistry of the animation, it's complexity and characterized-humanity, mirror perfectly the script's ability to autopsy these characters to their earthen cores. Don't be surprised if you find yourself thinking and feeling about this film for years to come. Do be surprised if you feel your face shift just so.
9 Fregoli References out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)
"He who would pun would pick a pocket"
A married foreign-born writer on a speaking tour of the US for his new book finds himself falling in love with a complete stranger who's main appeal is that she sounds like no one else. Her name is Lisa and she is an anomaly, and they also happen to be stop-motion puppets in director Charlie Kaufman's adaptation of his own three person play, Anomolisa.
Kaufman's work often comes down to the nerve wracking realities of relationships. With Anomalisa, taking it from the starkness of a play to a film, Kaufman chose (brilliantly) to use stop-motion animation which is counter-intuitive medium for a film about adult situations. Meanwhile character actor David Thewlis (The Big Lebowski) brings Micheal's desperation for love to poignant life, he fills the role with pudgy exasperation. His counter part Lisa meanwhile is played against type by Jennifer Jason Leigh, and she is a bubbling self depreciating mess with a heart of gold.
Our time in Anomalisa is short, and at first we are bewildered, then scandalized, then reproachful, perhaps even a bit traumatized. By the film's end all the cards are laid onto the table and our own personal judgments are set, but much like tarot what we see in those cards is entirely subjective. And for these all too real relationships and bad choices and desperate people, to be just puppets on film with their dialog dubbed is itself a spectacular statement on our lives, and justifies the lengths the filmmaker's went to make it this way. Anomalisa is as real a statement on our romantic entanglements as any film made in decades. It is equal parts frenetic passion and loathing nightmare, perfectly embodied by these complex dolls who live a life filmed at a just few frames an day under their masters hand. The high artistry of the animation, it's complexity and characterized-humanity, mirror perfectly the script's ability to autopsy these characters to their earthen cores. Don't be surprised if you find yourself thinking and feeling about this film for years to come. Do be surprised if you feel your face shift just so.
9 Fregoli References out of 10 (OUTSTANDING)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (PG-13)
"I've got a bad feeling about this." - Every Han Solo
"The Force! Man, that's your answer to everything." - Clerks
"Millennium Falcon? More like Millennium Pandering." - Me.
Sitting in a darkened theater with a dawning internal awareness that you might be the only one twisting in your seat, uncomfortable with the low-risk plot, the awkward references and dismal acting. The popcorn is gone, the soda dull, and in your head rings the awful words "It's just an another modern remake, they spent all that time and effort just to remake it, and its a bad counterfeit Picasso, a copy, a fake" while everyone else claps and thanks god for George Lucas' non-involvement. The trailers were a bill of goods, sold by the aggressively pandering suits at Disney Corp., pap made by a director who's made a career of swerving from expectations, and it's as well made as it is creatively bankrupt, a soulless zombie in an expensive knock-off Armani shambling forever towards higher returns. At least those terrible prequels TRIED to do something new and failed spectacularly. Awakens just regurgitates what worked before with a wet, money hungry plop.
Meanwhile Awakens looks like it was wholly constructed in the edit suite, scenes come and go at a breakneck pace just so they happen and not in anyway conductive to the pacing. A scene will end abruptly, cross wipe to a completely different part of the universe, then back to the first without rhyme or reason except for story reasons the 2nd had to be put somewhere. It doesn't feel thought out or meticulously planned unlike real SWs, it feels cobbled together good enough, and considering the plot is just "girls and guys with force and cute droids and xwings and star destroyers and deathstars again" there very little excuse for it. And there are soooo many conveniences of illogic, the new crew just stumbling upon the abandoned Falcon being the most egregious and unnecessary, apparently the Force can and will do that kind of thing now.
So it's a remake, let's treat it as such. The scope and feel, the "Lawrence of Arabia in Space" tone of Star Wars is completely missing from Awakens. There are few calm, slow moments of world building here; even the obligatory scene-wipes seem somehow forced and overly fast; you don't inhabit this world only glimpse it. The only exposition we get is from the fanfictiony text crawl and one very stilted and strangely unemotional conversation between a craggled Han Solo and a stone faced General Leia Organa (who looks for all the world like they tightened her girdle so much she can't move let alone act). Between her strange head tilting and his half hearted swagger it more resembles the cringey "I love you" scene from CrystalSkull than the one from Empire Strikes Back, instead of a stroke of genius its an actual figurative cinematic stroke. It's all punctuated by that "it's mysterious because we are keeping you out of the loop" thing that is the oldest of JJ Abrams' tricks, and we need more answers than action. Why would the Republic be in this ramshackle state, never mind the mention in the opening or the reams of comics Disney has put out, the underdog yet again? This is a movie, explain it! And John Williams, where are you? The only time the music is noticed is when it was once again rehashing the themes from the first trilogy, there is no new piece that stands out and marches around the theater announcing it's greatness. Then there is all the fan service, the god damned fan service. Capt. Phasma is a marketing dream and fanboy joke. The "No look shot" is as bad as Greedo shooting first, and you want your new bad-ass Jedi girl, who can do all these things without training cuz you say so, to inherit the beloved fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy? Then earn it guys, because otherwise its just another lame fan wish-fulfillment without the politically incorrect metal bikini. Awakens suffers from the worst case of big budget sequelitis ever seen, literally Jump22's ethos of "People want you to do the same thing, Again. Just a bit bigger. Same lines, same jokes, same action, everything."
It's not all rehash. JJ does some new things with the camera (but why god, why keep does he keep using the lens flares, it must be an injoke?). There are some fun ideas, new uses of the Force that seem a bit questionable, but the reformed Stormtrooper story idea is the best of the bunch (but who's character is involved in countless bumbly spoken word comic relief just enough to ruin it). He doesn't say "Yeah that's what I'm talking about!" once, but they probably did do a take and it's laying on the cutting room floor after checking TVTropes for relevancy and deciding against running it. Yet some of the attempts of new stuff are as bad as any prequel, Solo's side business is simply just busy work, eating up screen time and adding nothing to the affair but bad jokes and a lot of CG monsters. There is just enough practical effects thrown in to kill the "curse of the prequels" stink list for the fans, but the rest is all remake-orama, and none of it improves on the original. The fighter pilots all look wrong, and besides main ace Poe (well played by Oscar Issac, star of Inside Llewyn Davis), the Resistance seems to be staffed by fanboys-and-girls pulled from the ranks of Deviantart who don't yet have drivers licenses let alone a pilot's one. The bad guy is no Vader, he is a twink with a temper tantrum, the Emperor has been replaced with a pale CGI creature who looks like should be spitting out "GOLLUM GOLLUM". The Nazi Youth has taken over the Empire from the elder British statesmen because... box office? Old Men no longer start Star Wars it seems. The Rebels don't meticulously plan how to blow up the DeathStar 3.0, or send a crack team of top commandos and their entire fleet and barely scrape out a victory. No, they stand around a readout of the plans point at a spot and say "we blow this up, right?" and then Han Solo winks and says "I got this, you don't wanna know how" because his plan is stupidly self sacrificing; instead of bringing the Army he just flies over to infiltrate the planet with 3 people (2 he just met) and of course saves the day, obviously! There is no sense of urgency, the big kill-weapon has to charge up for like a day, but the Rebellion is so confident in Han getting the shields down (AGAIN!) that they don't even bother EVACUATING the planet that will eventually be blown up, maybe, "waiting to be killed, waiting to be killed".
In the end big things get exploded good, people hug, and yet it still doesn't end. The final oddity, the mapquest montage, the overdone out of place LOTR spinning helicopter shot with a stupid nospeak Skywalker cliffhanger, cementing that SWTFA seems more inclined to be the New Harry Potter YA film franchise than a true new Star Wars film in a finite universe.
Star Wars, we meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.
4 Chubby C3P0's Unexplained Self-Referential Red Arms out of 10 (BAD)
PS - Kids will never understand the sweet tension build and release of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, LucasFilm Logo, and sudden burst of StarField and music on the silver screen. Sad.
PPS - Alternative Title: SW - An Old Hype
"I've got a bad feeling about this." - Every Han Solo
"The Force! Man, that's your answer to everything." - Clerks
"Millennium Falcon? More like Millennium Pandering." - Me.
Sitting in a darkened theater with a dawning internal awareness that you might be the only one twisting in your seat, uncomfortable with the low-risk plot, the awkward references and dismal acting. The popcorn is gone, the soda dull, and in your head rings the awful words "It's just an another modern remake, they spent all that time and effort just to remake it, and its a bad counterfeit Picasso, a copy, a fake" while everyone else claps and thanks god for George Lucas' non-involvement. The trailers were a bill of goods, sold by the aggressively pandering suits at Disney Corp., pap made by a director who's made a career of swerving from expectations, and it's as well made as it is creatively bankrupt, a soulless zombie in an expensive knock-off Armani shambling forever towards higher returns. At least those terrible prequels TRIED to do something new and failed spectacularly. Awakens just regurgitates what worked before with a wet, money hungry plop.
Meanwhile Awakens looks like it was wholly constructed in the edit suite, scenes come and go at a breakneck pace just so they happen and not in anyway conductive to the pacing. A scene will end abruptly, cross wipe to a completely different part of the universe, then back to the first without rhyme or reason except for story reasons the 2nd had to be put somewhere. It doesn't feel thought out or meticulously planned unlike real SWs, it feels cobbled together good enough, and considering the plot is just "girls and guys with force and cute droids and xwings and star destroyers and deathstars again" there very little excuse for it. And there are soooo many conveniences of illogic, the new crew just stumbling upon the abandoned Falcon being the most egregious and unnecessary, apparently the Force can and will do that kind of thing now.
So it's a remake, let's treat it as such. The scope and feel, the "Lawrence of Arabia in Space" tone of Star Wars is completely missing from Awakens. There are few calm, slow moments of world building here; even the obligatory scene-wipes seem somehow forced and overly fast; you don't inhabit this world only glimpse it. The only exposition we get is from the fanfictiony text crawl and one very stilted and strangely unemotional conversation between a craggled Han Solo and a stone faced General Leia Organa (who looks for all the world like they tightened her girdle so much she can't move let alone act). Between her strange head tilting and his half hearted swagger it more resembles the cringey "I love you" scene from CrystalSkull than the one from Empire Strikes Back, instead of a stroke of genius its an actual figurative cinematic stroke. It's all punctuated by that "it's mysterious because we are keeping you out of the loop" thing that is the oldest of JJ Abrams' tricks, and we need more answers than action. Why would the Republic be in this ramshackle state, never mind the mention in the opening or the reams of comics Disney has put out, the underdog yet again? This is a movie, explain it! And John Williams, where are you? The only time the music is noticed is when it was once again rehashing the themes from the first trilogy, there is no new piece that stands out and marches around the theater announcing it's greatness. Then there is all the fan service, the god damned fan service. Capt. Phasma is a marketing dream and fanboy joke. The "No look shot" is as bad as Greedo shooting first, and you want your new bad-ass Jedi girl, who can do all these things without training cuz you say so, to inherit the beloved fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy? Then earn it guys, because otherwise its just another lame fan wish-fulfillment without the politically incorrect metal bikini. Awakens suffers from the worst case of big budget sequelitis ever seen, literally Jump22's ethos of "People want you to do the same thing, Again. Just a bit bigger. Same lines, same jokes, same action, everything."
It's not all rehash. JJ does some new things with the camera (but why god, why keep does he keep using the lens flares, it must be an injoke?). There are some fun ideas, new uses of the Force that seem a bit questionable, but the reformed Stormtrooper story idea is the best of the bunch (but who's character is involved in countless bumbly spoken word comic relief just enough to ruin it). He doesn't say "Yeah that's what I'm talking about!" once, but they probably did do a take and it's laying on the cutting room floor after checking TVTropes for relevancy and deciding against running it. Yet some of the attempts of new stuff are as bad as any prequel, Solo's side business is simply just busy work, eating up screen time and adding nothing to the affair but bad jokes and a lot of CG monsters. There is just enough practical effects thrown in to kill the "curse of the prequels" stink list for the fans, but the rest is all remake-orama, and none of it improves on the original. The fighter pilots all look wrong, and besides main ace Poe (well played by Oscar Issac, star of Inside Llewyn Davis), the Resistance seems to be staffed by fanboys-and-girls pulled from the ranks of Deviantart who don't yet have drivers licenses let alone a pilot's one. The bad guy is no Vader, he is a twink with a temper tantrum, the Emperor has been replaced with a pale CGI creature who looks like should be spitting out "GOLLUM GOLLUM". The Nazi Youth has taken over the Empire from the elder British statesmen because... box office? Old Men no longer start Star Wars it seems. The Rebels don't meticulously plan how to blow up the DeathStar 3.0, or send a crack team of top commandos and their entire fleet and barely scrape out a victory. No, they stand around a readout of the plans point at a spot and say "we blow this up, right?" and then Han Solo winks and says "I got this, you don't wanna know how" because his plan is stupidly self sacrificing; instead of bringing the Army he just flies over to infiltrate the planet with 3 people (2 he just met) and of course saves the day, obviously! There is no sense of urgency, the big kill-weapon has to charge up for like a day, but the Rebellion is so confident in Han getting the shields down (AGAIN!) that they don't even bother EVACUATING the planet that will eventually be blown up, maybe, "waiting to be killed, waiting to be killed".
In the end big things get exploded good, people hug, and yet it still doesn't end. The final oddity, the mapquest montage, the overdone out of place LOTR spinning helicopter shot with a stupid nospeak Skywalker cliffhanger, cementing that SWTFA seems more inclined to be the New Harry Potter YA film franchise than a true new Star Wars film in a finite universe.
Star Wars, we meet again, at last. The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner; now I am the master.
4 Chubby C3P0's Unexplained Self-Referential Red Arms out of 10 (BAD)
PS - Kids will never understand the sweet tension build and release of the 20th Century Fox fanfare, LucasFilm Logo, and sudden burst of StarField and music on the silver screen. Sad.
PPS - Alternative Title: SW - An Old Hype
The Witch (2015)
The Witch (R)
"Something VVicked This VVay comes"
In Colonial America, a family is ostracized from their village and forced to live in the dark, deep woods. Soon enough evil things befall them and as they begin to accuse each other of their sins the evil black truth comes to light in the moody yet cultured The Witch.
First and fore most, the Witch attempts to be a period piece, with all actors attempting the proper antique accents. The costume and production design maintain this illusion well, and the impending pall of raw supernatural fear that the family's unrestrained ignorance precludes slowly begins to seep into our experience. Shockingly, there are no morals to preach or symbolic circumstances to glean, but a clean dusky cinematography and naturalistic dialog. The Witch is a supernatural horror story told in ye olde English style, like one they would whisper in the village about not trusting black cats or breaking mirrors. The strength of the acting forces you through their world, one without pittance and mercy. There are many moments, visual and contextual, that shine in the film, however the scene of the mother with the crows alone is one of the best horror moments of the millennium (Kubrick would be proud). Stylized, realized and altogether well presented without a hint of cheese, the Witch will scratch an itch you may not have known you had, probably with a craggly black finger nail.
7 Black Tom Talks out of 10 (GOOD)
"Something VVicked This VVay comes"
In Colonial America, a family is ostracized from their village and forced to live in the dark, deep woods. Soon enough evil things befall them and as they begin to accuse each other of their sins the evil black truth comes to light in the moody yet cultured The Witch.
First and fore most, the Witch attempts to be a period piece, with all actors attempting the proper antique accents. The costume and production design maintain this illusion well, and the impending pall of raw supernatural fear that the family's unrestrained ignorance precludes slowly begins to seep into our experience. Shockingly, there are no morals to preach or symbolic circumstances to glean, but a clean dusky cinematography and naturalistic dialog. The Witch is a supernatural horror story told in ye olde English style, like one they would whisper in the village about not trusting black cats or breaking mirrors. The strength of the acting forces you through their world, one without pittance and mercy. There are many moments, visual and contextual, that shine in the film, however the scene of the mother with the crows alone is one of the best horror moments of the millennium (Kubrick would be proud). Stylized, realized and altogether well presented without a hint of cheese, the Witch will scratch an itch you may not have known you had, probably with a craggly black finger nail.
7 Black Tom Talks out of 10 (GOOD)
Sicario (2015)
Sicario (R)
"Traffic Jam"
FBI Agent Kate (Emily Blunt) makes a grisly discovery during a raid on an Arizona suburban home believed to be holding hostages. The deadly results lead her into the path of working with CIA officer Graver (Josh Brolin) and his adviser Alejandro (Benicio del Torro, as grim as ever) in drug pushing Mexico to find the real bad guys responsible. What they find south of the border and the Vietnam-ish mess of cause and effect in the Norther hemisphere results in a brooding yet overstated hot button issue that is the literal militarization of the Police-state that is Sicario's core message, brought to us by Director Denis Villenueve (Prisoners).
Sicario is a dark film, about the dark circumstances and business/political practices surrounding the U.S.'s southern border. The lens is once again artfully wielded by Cinematographer superstar Roger Deakins (who also worked on Prisoners), but unfortunately in Sicario there are very few moments of clarity or calamity to bask in the beauty. And where Prisoners got away with some of it's more convenient leaps in logic and plot due to it's very high tension and the rush of Hugh Jackman's parental instincts, Blunt's Kate is often left confused yet capable. Emily does an admirable job, but the character as written barely accomplishes anything, merely allowing herself to be swept along into the further escalation like Hamlet in Afghanistan. Sure the script gives her the option of backing out, but her character for some unspoken reason must heroically go through with it despite all the implied torture/rape/murder that could (and already almost did) befall her. The film makers want a "bad ass female lead" but give her nothing to do but pout and be a damsel in distress most of the movie being led around by the nose by Brolen's CIA jerk (he plays a good jerk FYI). Benicio's silent but deadly hit man plays to his strengths but gives him nothing new or challenging, except not enough screen time. Meanwhile Kate is front and center with nothing but a confused gape as she is told and shown things without context or exposition (we know how you feel Kate). At least with Savages or Traffic or (god forbid The Counselor) there wasn't a feeling of "welp, thats the way it is gringos" *shrug*.
Sicario knows what it wants to say (guns guns guns and drugs) and who it wants to say it about (love and fear thy southern/northern neighbor), it just does it in a disingenuous "how bleak is the future huh?" fashion tinged with backhanded misogyny that it leaves a bad aftertaste. Stick with the Taco Bell instead, it's better for you (just not as much atmosphere).
4.5 Never Trust the Latino Advisor in a White Suit out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)
"Traffic Jam"
FBI Agent Kate (Emily Blunt) makes a grisly discovery during a raid on an Arizona suburban home believed to be holding hostages. The deadly results lead her into the path of working with CIA officer Graver (Josh Brolin) and his adviser Alejandro (Benicio del Torro, as grim as ever) in drug pushing Mexico to find the real bad guys responsible. What they find south of the border and the Vietnam-ish mess of cause and effect in the Norther hemisphere results in a brooding yet overstated hot button issue that is the literal militarization of the Police-state that is Sicario's core message, brought to us by Director Denis Villenueve (Prisoners).
Sicario is a dark film, about the dark circumstances and business/political practices surrounding the U.S.'s southern border. The lens is once again artfully wielded by Cinematographer superstar Roger Deakins (who also worked on Prisoners), but unfortunately in Sicario there are very few moments of clarity or calamity to bask in the beauty. And where Prisoners got away with some of it's more convenient leaps in logic and plot due to it's very high tension and the rush of Hugh Jackman's parental instincts, Blunt's Kate is often left confused yet capable. Emily does an admirable job, but the character as written barely accomplishes anything, merely allowing herself to be swept along into the further escalation like Hamlet in Afghanistan. Sure the script gives her the option of backing out, but her character for some unspoken reason must heroically go through with it despite all the implied torture/rape/murder that could (and already almost did) befall her. The film makers want a "bad ass female lead" but give her nothing to do but pout and be a damsel in distress most of the movie being led around by the nose by Brolen's CIA jerk (he plays a good jerk FYI). Benicio's silent but deadly hit man plays to his strengths but gives him nothing new or challenging, except not enough screen time. Meanwhile Kate is front and center with nothing but a confused gape as she is told and shown things without context or exposition (we know how you feel Kate). At least with Savages or Traffic or (god forbid The Counselor) there wasn't a feeling of "welp, thats the way it is gringos" *shrug*.
Sicario knows what it wants to say (guns guns guns and drugs) and who it wants to say it about (love and fear thy southern/northern neighbor), it just does it in a disingenuous "how bleak is the future huh?" fashion tinged with backhanded misogyny that it leaves a bad aftertaste. Stick with the Taco Bell instead, it's better for you (just not as much atmosphere).
4.5 Never Trust the Latino Advisor in a White Suit out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)
Ant-Man (2015)
Ant-Man (PG-13)
"Talk Loudly and carry a miniaturized stick"
Sneaking into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of it's smallest and underwhelming heroes as Ant-Man makes his unlikely screen debut. Doubly so when it ran into production trouble as long-time project gestator Simon Wright (director/screenwriter of Shaun of the Dead, who gets writing credit here) left Marvel over creative differences. However director Payton Reed (Bring it On) and the Marvel suits have made an entertaining sausage yet again, even if the ghost of "What If?" lingers off screen.
Paul Rudd (Fantana in Anchorman) pals around with Micheal Douglas as Ant-Man old and new. He's an ex-con thief who is trying to go the straight and narrow for his 3yo daughters sake. However he soon becomes embroiled in corporate espionage which somehow involves Douglas' Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) and his daughter Hope aka Love Interest To Be Woman, aka Evangeline Lilly. It's kind of Ironman light with more diverse comedy, the crew is out to stop Pym's old intern from selling Yellowjacket to the government, which would then use it to drone-strike everyone on the planet or something BigBusiness and Government are bad or whatever the kids on the internet are saying at this moment, hey they are our demographic right guys? The interesting tidbit of Ant-Man being the first comic book movie to deal with a second iteration of a character, a comic book staple of a mentor training his protege to don and take over a super hero identity, isn't really focused on because hey, Rudd is pretty charming and the whole movie is kind of filler for the next MCU super blockbuster that he can then appear in, right?
The missed opportunities and nuance be damned, because Marvel once again just makes a fun movie to sit back and watch. And hoooh boy, is this that type of movie. Training montages? Origin stories? Nostalgic looks back and the Soviet Cold war? Vaguely threatening slippery slope government types? This movie encapsulates everything that worked in those other MCU movies and boils it down to it's audience-friendly most. However it is the non-standard flairs that actually stand out and make Ant-Man fun. When the plot goes away from all the white people problems and gets a little colorful the humor enters into it's own. A fight early on with the Falcon is a diverse breath of fresh air (or is it? Captain America would have been a stronger cameo but no where near as fun either) but Lang's crew of wacky ethnic sidekicks give the film a funny kick in the shorts that Rudd plays off of wonderfully. When its Douglas' show all you can wonder is if the old Wolf of Wallstreet is just hoping his Pym stock price doesn't fall. But the movie's humor shines when Luis gives Stan Lee his best cameo yet. Added to that an exciting finale that takes too long to come (but since it involves a fight inside a crowded briefcase and on a Thomas the Train toy train set it's forgiven), and Ant-Man provides enough laughs and action to prevent 2 hours from crawling by.
The questions aren't all answered unfortunately. Wright's version, would it have been more humor driven, more Scott Pilgrim-like and idiosyncratic than Scott Lang pathos and melodramatic? What if Pym had invented Ultron instead of Stark like the comics foretold, it was just a couple months ago after all, would have a cameo in Avengers 2 been that hard (it would have at least provided more backstory and interest to both films, and Ant-Man was a founding Avenger after all)? And why merrily skip by the science without even attempting to explain the gobbedygoop, its fraught with unspoken SciFi mcguffins? How did this movie achieve the feat of making creepy crawly bugs cute sidekicks that aren't grossing every woman man and child out? Why earn the PG13 with a lot of out of place cursing? How long can MCU go without making a terrible film? And how did one of the biggest inside jokes in comic-dom, the infamously unfamous Ant-Man, get his own blockbuster comic book film that kids and adults adore? Let's see DC pull that off with The Atom.
7.5 Tales to Astonish out of 10 (GOOD)
"Talk Loudly and carry a miniaturized stick"
Sneaking into the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of it's smallest and underwhelming heroes as Ant-Man makes his unlikely screen debut. Doubly so when it ran into production trouble as long-time project gestator Simon Wright (director/screenwriter of Shaun of the Dead, who gets writing credit here) left Marvel over creative differences. However director Payton Reed (Bring it On) and the Marvel suits have made an entertaining sausage yet again, even if the ghost of "What If?" lingers off screen.
Paul Rudd (Fantana in Anchorman) pals around with Micheal Douglas as Ant-Man old and new. He's an ex-con thief who is trying to go the straight and narrow for his 3yo daughters sake. However he soon becomes embroiled in corporate espionage which somehow involves Douglas' Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man) and his daughter Hope aka Love Interest To Be Woman, aka Evangeline Lilly. It's kind of Ironman light with more diverse comedy, the crew is out to stop Pym's old intern from selling Yellowjacket to the government, which would then use it to drone-strike everyone on the planet or something BigBusiness and Government are bad or whatever the kids on the internet are saying at this moment, hey they are our demographic right guys? The interesting tidbit of Ant-Man being the first comic book movie to deal with a second iteration of a character, a comic book staple of a mentor training his protege to don and take over a super hero identity, isn't really focused on because hey, Rudd is pretty charming and the whole movie is kind of filler for the next MCU super blockbuster that he can then appear in, right?
The missed opportunities and nuance be damned, because Marvel once again just makes a fun movie to sit back and watch. And hoooh boy, is this that type of movie. Training montages? Origin stories? Nostalgic looks back and the Soviet Cold war? Vaguely threatening slippery slope government types? This movie encapsulates everything that worked in those other MCU movies and boils it down to it's audience-friendly most. However it is the non-standard flairs that actually stand out and make Ant-Man fun. When the plot goes away from all the white people problems and gets a little colorful the humor enters into it's own. A fight early on with the Falcon is a diverse breath of fresh air (or is it? Captain America would have been a stronger cameo but no where near as fun either) but Lang's crew of wacky ethnic sidekicks give the film a funny kick in the shorts that Rudd plays off of wonderfully. When its Douglas' show all you can wonder is if the old Wolf of Wallstreet is just hoping his Pym stock price doesn't fall. But the movie's humor shines when Luis gives Stan Lee his best cameo yet. Added to that an exciting finale that takes too long to come (but since it involves a fight inside a crowded briefcase and on a Thomas the Train toy train set it's forgiven), and Ant-Man provides enough laughs and action to prevent 2 hours from crawling by.
The questions aren't all answered unfortunately. Wright's version, would it have been more humor driven, more Scott Pilgrim-like and idiosyncratic than Scott Lang pathos and melodramatic? What if Pym had invented Ultron instead of Stark like the comics foretold, it was just a couple months ago after all, would have a cameo in Avengers 2 been that hard (it would have at least provided more backstory and interest to both films, and Ant-Man was a founding Avenger after all)? And why merrily skip by the science without even attempting to explain the gobbedygoop, its fraught with unspoken SciFi mcguffins? How did this movie achieve the feat of making creepy crawly bugs cute sidekicks that aren't grossing every woman man and child out? Why earn the PG13 with a lot of out of place cursing? How long can MCU go without making a terrible film? And how did one of the biggest inside jokes in comic-dom, the infamously unfamous Ant-Man, get his own blockbuster comic book film that kids and adults adore? Let's see DC pull that off with The Atom.
7.5 Tales to Astonish out of 10 (GOOD)
Dope (2015)
Dope (R)
"Slippery Slope N(word)"
From the slums of Englewood comes the story of Malcolm, a geeky straight A student trying to get into Harvard. At times joyfully refreshingly new, others painfully derivative, Dope is at the least an interesting new voice supplied by a new actor in a landscape of bland dull remakes of whitewashed Hollywood entertainment.
Dope begins with a 90s HipHop nostalgia, a groovy kind of energy that introduces us to Malcolm's world of the hood, a place where you can get shot for no reason but also most people don't. It's not a gloomy, trash ridden cess pit, it's a place where real people live and eat food and kids form punk bands and dream of escaping. Where not every household is broken (though quite a few are), and not every car is a low rider (just some), not every black man is a thug (but watch your backpack). Malcolm is not your average black kid either. Played with geeky-awkward-perfection by new comer Shameik Moore, Malcolm like many of his peers, must at some point give up his Yo MTV Raps childhood and make some tough life decisions. This is of course the point of the film, but is also where it loses much of it's fun.
Imagine if SuperBad stopped goofing and laughing about halfway though because it was time for "the point," and you have the toughest selling point of Dope. Now, there is no contention that a kid in Malcolm's hood, his age with his situation wouldn't run afoul of some hard choices. However the way it is handled is a bit nonsensical and confusing, and is quite a shock going from a happy-go-lucky "myfriendsarecoolbutIwantagirlfriend&nevermetmydad" to drug dealing bitcoin memes stand ins. The motivations to do so are unclear, and the tacked on romantic angle is exactly that, tacked on because every film has that. On the other hand, there really isn't another film like this, with this strong of an African-American voice and music and fashion, that is respectful and realistic and un exaggerated. And yet it also dips into amateurish tropes (the cliche white guy hacker/stoner, the dropped subplots loss of focus, the aformentioned romantic subplot, the sometimes dippy dialogue of the other characters) muddles the message and also sometimes fumbles the humor. However the acid washed sunsets and dayglo sneaker design of the production and a solid cinematographic base lend much to it's Indy cred. Like Do The Right Thing the preachiness that, yes, preaches the ending must be allowed since a young man like Malcolm so infrequently allowed a soapbox to kick it from.
7 Gotta Say it was a Good Day out of 10 (GOOD)
"Slippery Slope N(word)"
From the slums of Englewood comes the story of Malcolm, a geeky straight A student trying to get into Harvard. At times joyfully refreshingly new, others painfully derivative, Dope is at the least an interesting new voice supplied by a new actor in a landscape of bland dull remakes of whitewashed Hollywood entertainment.
Dope begins with a 90s HipHop nostalgia, a groovy kind of energy that introduces us to Malcolm's world of the hood, a place where you can get shot for no reason but also most people don't. It's not a gloomy, trash ridden cess pit, it's a place where real people live and eat food and kids form punk bands and dream of escaping. Where not every household is broken (though quite a few are), and not every car is a low rider (just some), not every black man is a thug (but watch your backpack). Malcolm is not your average black kid either. Played with geeky-awkward-perfection by new comer Shameik Moore, Malcolm like many of his peers, must at some point give up his Yo MTV Raps childhood and make some tough life decisions. This is of course the point of the film, but is also where it loses much of it's fun.
Imagine if SuperBad stopped goofing and laughing about halfway though because it was time for "the point," and you have the toughest selling point of Dope. Now, there is no contention that a kid in Malcolm's hood, his age with his situation wouldn't run afoul of some hard choices. However the way it is handled is a bit nonsensical and confusing, and is quite a shock going from a happy-go-lucky "myfriendsarecoolbutIwantagirlfriend&nevermetmydad" to drug dealing bitcoin memes stand ins. The motivations to do so are unclear, and the tacked on romantic angle is exactly that, tacked on because every film has that. On the other hand, there really isn't another film like this, with this strong of an African-American voice and music and fashion, that is respectful and realistic and un exaggerated. And yet it also dips into amateurish tropes (the cliche white guy hacker/stoner, the dropped subplots loss of focus, the aformentioned romantic subplot, the sometimes dippy dialogue of the other characters) muddles the message and also sometimes fumbles the humor. However the acid washed sunsets and dayglo sneaker design of the production and a solid cinematographic base lend much to it's Indy cred. Like Do The Right Thing the preachiness that, yes, preaches the ending must be allowed since a young man like Malcolm so infrequently allowed a soapbox to kick it from.
7 Gotta Say it was a Good Day out of 10 (GOOD)
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Mad Max: Fury Road (R)
"What a Lovely Day!"
In the bombed out dusty future of our world, the remnants of society are banded together in savage attempts to survive the wasteland. Those, like Max, who cling to the past and refuse to submit to the new world are seen as mere untapped resources, lone wolves. And those that revolt against this insane patriarchy are pursued with chrome and bloody exhaust in Post-Apocalyptic godfather George Miller's 30 years in the making follow up to the Mad Max series, Fury Road.
With a character design dregged from the weird fantasies of Brom, vehicle designs that Ratfink would salivate over, a brutal world finally fully realized and minutia-ized, and stunts and action that are in-camera and astonishing to behold, Mad Max returns full throttle and on the red line. This is the kind of film either you know the genre and enjoy immersion or the over-the-top-ness will turn you off and you'll avoid. There are quite a few surprising twists thrown into the mix however, completely shattering the mold that Miller himself invented. CGI is prominent and a bit unwelcome (mostly it looks like for 3D showings and sometimes cheaply). Females now have a more prominent role, lead by Imperator Furiosa (the incomparable Charlize Theron who is well cast as the co-lead of the film). This may in fact turn off some of the muscle car and gear head beer swillers who traditionally enjoy Max films, as Furiosa commands much of the bad-assery on screen, what with the Evil-Dead arm and newly styled savage fem-action hero who somehow retains her femaleness (a woman Max she's not). Grrl Power is the name of the game in Fury Road, and many fans will astound at the backseat driving Max does for most of the film. Now played by Tom Hardy (Mel Gibson is retired in all but name due to his shenanigans), Max almost barely deserves to be in the title. And, unfortunately, Hardy is either not up to filling Gibson's Mad shoes or Miller unwilling to completely allow him to. The character is missing the insane drive and masculinity that Gibson brought the role, and combined with sharing the screen with Theron and having his character's madness upped to actual insanity really hampers one of the great action roles of all time. Perhaps a return of the character to full glory first without all the femme-fatals (sic) would have lessened the sting, but Max almost seems like just another of the interesting side-characters that colorize Miller's Apoc films.
And what colorful characters there are! The ultra-males, the seed saving grandmothers, the War Boys and concubines and Bullet Farmers, all tumor laced and disgusting. One is a stand out, young Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy in X-Men First Class) is a stand out as Nux the sickly War Boy. He has a manic energy and fanaticism that drives the first half and mellows the second, and is a stand out performance. All of the Max films have benefited from villains that you enjoy spending time with and seeing defeated, but Fury Road has so many of these characters whose insane lifestyle you just can't help but admire, who ride into battle like Valkyries with a Rock'N'Roll opera being performed live as they drive (like Wagner gene-spliced with GWAR) with flame throwers spitting and exhaust pipes flaming, that unlike much of the genre of post-apocalypse, Fury Road is a dangerous outback that seems fun to visit (even if no one would want to live there). The first break in the action left the audience winded, and then continued for another hour and a half. Fantastic stuff.
9 Don't Look Thumbs Up out of 10 (GREAT)
Bone-us Haiku
Shotgun eyes at dusk
Lizard skulls and blood bag dust
Chrome fenders eat well.
(Humongus Approved)
"What a Lovely Day!"
In the bombed out dusty future of our world, the remnants of society are banded together in savage attempts to survive the wasteland. Those, like Max, who cling to the past and refuse to submit to the new world are seen as mere untapped resources, lone wolves. And those that revolt against this insane patriarchy are pursued with chrome and bloody exhaust in Post-Apocalyptic godfather George Miller's 30 years in the making follow up to the Mad Max series, Fury Road.
With a character design dregged from the weird fantasies of Brom, vehicle designs that Ratfink would salivate over, a brutal world finally fully realized and minutia-ized, and stunts and action that are in-camera and astonishing to behold, Mad Max returns full throttle and on the red line. This is the kind of film either you know the genre and enjoy immersion or the over-the-top-ness will turn you off and you'll avoid. There are quite a few surprising twists thrown into the mix however, completely shattering the mold that Miller himself invented. CGI is prominent and a bit unwelcome (mostly it looks like for 3D showings and sometimes cheaply). Females now have a more prominent role, lead by Imperator Furiosa (the incomparable Charlize Theron who is well cast as the co-lead of the film). This may in fact turn off some of the muscle car and gear head beer swillers who traditionally enjoy Max films, as Furiosa commands much of the bad-assery on screen, what with the Evil-Dead arm and newly styled savage fem-action hero who somehow retains her femaleness (a woman Max she's not). Grrl Power is the name of the game in Fury Road, and many fans will astound at the backseat driving Max does for most of the film. Now played by Tom Hardy (Mel Gibson is retired in all but name due to his shenanigans), Max almost barely deserves to be in the title. And, unfortunately, Hardy is either not up to filling Gibson's Mad shoes or Miller unwilling to completely allow him to. The character is missing the insane drive and masculinity that Gibson brought the role, and combined with sharing the screen with Theron and having his character's madness upped to actual insanity really hampers one of the great action roles of all time. Perhaps a return of the character to full glory first without all the femme-fatals (sic) would have lessened the sting, but Max almost seems like just another of the interesting side-characters that colorize Miller's Apoc films.
And what colorful characters there are! The ultra-males, the seed saving grandmothers, the War Boys and concubines and Bullet Farmers, all tumor laced and disgusting. One is a stand out, young Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy in X-Men First Class) is a stand out as Nux the sickly War Boy. He has a manic energy and fanaticism that drives the first half and mellows the second, and is a stand out performance. All of the Max films have benefited from villains that you enjoy spending time with and seeing defeated, but Fury Road has so many of these characters whose insane lifestyle you just can't help but admire, who ride into battle like Valkyries with a Rock'N'Roll opera being performed live as they drive (like Wagner gene-spliced with GWAR) with flame throwers spitting and exhaust pipes flaming, that unlike much of the genre of post-apocalypse, Fury Road is a dangerous outback that seems fun to visit (even if no one would want to live there). The first break in the action left the audience winded, and then continued for another hour and a half. Fantastic stuff.
9 Don't Look Thumbs Up out of 10 (GREAT)
Bone-us Haiku
Shotgun eyes at dusk
Lizard skulls and blood bag dust
Chrome fenders eat well.
(Humongus Approved)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Avengers: Age of Ultron (PG-13)
"Got no strings, so whats holding it down?"
The heroically rag-tag team from past Marvel films are once again united against a single enemy, this time one accidentally created by their resident tech genius Tony Stark in Joss Whedon's middling follow-up to 2012's Avengers.
Beyond the changes to the convoluted characters from page to screen, the biggest grievances to be leveled at AAOU is the absolutely hackneyed writing. Nearly every action moment comes with a quip of some kind, or a re-quip, or a quip about an earlier quip. It really gets tedious and clunky, Whedon's flippant attitude towards tension really strains the credibility of whether or not anything is in peril. Meanwhile, like most huge sequels, the CGI has become more prevalent and overloaded, while the color palette has been oddly drained. Whole moments of action are obviously stitched together in the computer, but somehow still remain unclear, confused and jumpy. Much is simply unsatisfying to watch.
This is in "stark" (haha) contrast to the original Avengers, where Whedon's writing and structure issues were eventually uplifted by an epic sized brawl in New York where every character had moments of heroicism and bravery, they gelled as a team against a living breathing maniac hell-bent on enslaving humanity. In Age, Ultron is a smart-ass mega-robot voiced by James Spader (with a rather un-robot like attitude), who's evil motivations behind his evil plot are pretty much a shrug "cuz we said so" kind of thing. Spader does lend something to the sinister yet somehow ambiguously malign character (perhaps too much), but his robot army are a rather lame foe and his CGI presence just feels weak. At no time does Ultron seem a threat, and yet the new additions to the team do feel outmatched. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are introduced on Ultron's side (being X-Foe's Magneto's children and perpetual fence-sitters makes this an alright choice, even if Marvel can't utilize this part of the lore due to Fox's owning the X-Men licence), and yet are somehow easily able to defeat 90% of the team double-handed! Then they are offered up as lame-duck sacrifices by movie's end, for the feels that just don't manifest. Meanwhile Black Widow is irritating fan-boys to even more extremes. Now her femininity and allure can calm down the Hulk because, shipping!!!, and she is now the Avengers den mother, ugh. Now her ultimate spy-stealthiness includes a glowing outfit and matching glowsticks she does kung fu with (!?!?!) because... action figures sell?
Okay, so does anything save this film? Unfortunately this movie is just a baby step for other MCU movies, and is more obvious about it than previous releases. It is less satisfying within the Universe and on it's own than its predecessors, and we can hope that those films it (again) hints at as coming will actually deliver. Despite being excited by mentions of Wakanda or the Vision's wasted potential, we already have been teased to death about the Infinity War and now we need Thor taking his shirt off and jumping in a lake to preview his next film (Ragnarock)? The film is already overlong and underwhelmed with truly great moments, with an anemic amount of amusement and severe lack of immersion, the long runtime for these kind of inclusions could have really been reeled back. As much as I enjoyed the Hulk's rampage or how insufferable Stark is becoming, those kind of moments are few and far between.
The invisible strings from the Disney Exec's indeed seem long. The cult figure of Whedon and his fandom aren't immune to them, pulling this way and demanding that, ending up a puppet for mass-market appeal and humdrum committee decisions. In a world where comic-book movies are now common place and people in capes are socially accepted the MCU has finally shown a chink in it's bright blue armor.
4.5 "The Internet?" "The Internet." out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)
"Got no strings, so whats holding it down?"
The heroically rag-tag team from past Marvel films are once again united against a single enemy, this time one accidentally created by their resident tech genius Tony Stark in Joss Whedon's middling follow-up to 2012's Avengers.
Beyond the changes to the convoluted characters from page to screen, the biggest grievances to be leveled at AAOU is the absolutely hackneyed writing. Nearly every action moment comes with a quip of some kind, or a re-quip, or a quip about an earlier quip. It really gets tedious and clunky, Whedon's flippant attitude towards tension really strains the credibility of whether or not anything is in peril. Meanwhile, like most huge sequels, the CGI has become more prevalent and overloaded, while the color palette has been oddly drained. Whole moments of action are obviously stitched together in the computer, but somehow still remain unclear, confused and jumpy. Much is simply unsatisfying to watch.
This is in "stark" (haha) contrast to the original Avengers, where Whedon's writing and structure issues were eventually uplifted by an epic sized brawl in New York where every character had moments of heroicism and bravery, they gelled as a team against a living breathing maniac hell-bent on enslaving humanity. In Age, Ultron is a smart-ass mega-robot voiced by James Spader (with a rather un-robot like attitude), who's evil motivations behind his evil plot are pretty much a shrug "cuz we said so" kind of thing. Spader does lend something to the sinister yet somehow ambiguously malign character (perhaps too much), but his robot army are a rather lame foe and his CGI presence just feels weak. At no time does Ultron seem a threat, and yet the new additions to the team do feel outmatched. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are introduced on Ultron's side (being X-Foe's Magneto's children and perpetual fence-sitters makes this an alright choice, even if Marvel can't utilize this part of the lore due to Fox's owning the X-Men licence), and yet are somehow easily able to defeat 90% of the team double-handed! Then they are offered up as lame-duck sacrifices by movie's end, for the feels that just don't manifest. Meanwhile Black Widow is irritating fan-boys to even more extremes. Now her femininity and allure can calm down the Hulk because, shipping!!!, and she is now the Avengers den mother, ugh. Now her ultimate spy-stealthiness includes a glowing outfit and matching glowsticks she does kung fu with (!?!?!) because... action figures sell?
Okay, so does anything save this film? Unfortunately this movie is just a baby step for other MCU movies, and is more obvious about it than previous releases. It is less satisfying within the Universe and on it's own than its predecessors, and we can hope that those films it (again) hints at as coming will actually deliver. Despite being excited by mentions of Wakanda or the Vision's wasted potential, we already have been teased to death about the Infinity War and now we need Thor taking his shirt off and jumping in a lake to preview his next film (Ragnarock)? The film is already overlong and underwhelmed with truly great moments, with an anemic amount of amusement and severe lack of immersion, the long runtime for these kind of inclusions could have really been reeled back. As much as I enjoyed the Hulk's rampage or how insufferable Stark is becoming, those kind of moments are few and far between.
The invisible strings from the Disney Exec's indeed seem long. The cult figure of Whedon and his fandom aren't immune to them, pulling this way and demanding that, ending up a puppet for mass-market appeal and humdrum committee decisions. In a world where comic-book movies are now common place and people in capes are socially accepted the MCU has finally shown a chink in it's bright blue armor.
4.5 "The Internet?" "The Internet." out of 10 (MEDIOCRE)
Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Jupiter Ascending (PG-13)
"Stupider is as Jupiter does"
The poor daughter of an immigrant house cleaner is sucked into a sci-fi vortex of space ships and soap operas in the Wachowski sibling's newest effort, Jupiter Ascending.
Mila Kunis is Jupiter, the female protagonist so gullible and worthless even her villain points out the overwhelming evidence of her own idiotic naivete to her face. Apparently she is the accidental gene double of the former Queen of the galaxy (humans have spread farther and ascended higher than us lowly Earthlings know), and the reigning Royalty is out to silence Jupiter before she lays claim to her Throne by birth right (and their Soylent Green-ish business model). A confusing mish-mash of Science Fiction tropes is awaiting her ladyship, the damsel in distress. Foremost is her Prince in shining armor, or in this case Channing Tatum with elf ears and glowing inline gravity space skates. The ridiculousness of that sentence was apparently lost on no-one but the filmmakers. The Wachowski siblings may be attempting to flaunt their new found feminine sides but Jupiter Ascending is nothing but a badly disguised romance novel with lasers and space princesses, the kind of fanfic usually reserved for the laziest alleys of the internet.
The CG is pretty but ineffective, the actors they squeezed into it just wave their arms around and grit their teeth and hope they look like they are piloting a star fighter. The production design is glossy but derivative and sadly you can't help but laugh every time Tatum's rocket shoes try to look cool, and meanwhile the jumpy exposition attempts to tie the story to real life UFOs on Earth and is slipshod and wildly uneven, Men in Black did a better job at covering plot holes through memory loss than does JA, and it was an action comedy!. Well thought out isn't Jupiter's strong suit, and neither is it's plot or heroine. Apparently audiences were supposed to feel for a poor, Russian migrant girl who inherits the planet and then gets to dress pretty for 2 hours while making the stupidest of decisions like a cinematic 1950s airhead. Eddie Redmayne (as one of the evil Abraxas siblings out to stop Jupiter) has now gone the gamut of Oscar winner one year to squealing over-acting scenery chewer the next, and being in this bomb may cut down on his appeal. Meanwhile Mila shows even less acting chops than normal, Channing is a mopey and uncharismatic bore who just goes PEW PEW while glowering. Even a Sean Bean cameo adds nothing to the proceedings, nothing! and there needs to be a whole lot more.
In short, Jupiter Ascending is a trip down, way down, descending to the level of a Harry Potter/Hungergames/Young Adult Book cash grab wanna be with no purpose or source material to support its many weaknesses and eccentricities. The movie Cloud Atlas could have been without an excellent writer in other words.
2 Must Love Dogs out of 10 (AWFUL)
"Stupider is as Jupiter does"
The poor daughter of an immigrant house cleaner is sucked into a sci-fi vortex of space ships and soap operas in the Wachowski sibling's newest effort, Jupiter Ascending.
Mila Kunis is Jupiter, the female protagonist so gullible and worthless even her villain points out the overwhelming evidence of her own idiotic naivete to her face. Apparently she is the accidental gene double of the former Queen of the galaxy (humans have spread farther and ascended higher than us lowly Earthlings know), and the reigning Royalty is out to silence Jupiter before she lays claim to her Throne by birth right (and their Soylent Green-ish business model). A confusing mish-mash of Science Fiction tropes is awaiting her ladyship, the damsel in distress. Foremost is her Prince in shining armor, or in this case Channing Tatum with elf ears and glowing inline gravity space skates. The ridiculousness of that sentence was apparently lost on no-one but the filmmakers. The Wachowski siblings may be attempting to flaunt their new found feminine sides but Jupiter Ascending is nothing but a badly disguised romance novel with lasers and space princesses, the kind of fanfic usually reserved for the laziest alleys of the internet.
The CG is pretty but ineffective, the actors they squeezed into it just wave their arms around and grit their teeth and hope they look like they are piloting a star fighter. The production design is glossy but derivative and sadly you can't help but laugh every time Tatum's rocket shoes try to look cool, and meanwhile the jumpy exposition attempts to tie the story to real life UFOs on Earth and is slipshod and wildly uneven, Men in Black did a better job at covering plot holes through memory loss than does JA, and it was an action comedy!. Well thought out isn't Jupiter's strong suit, and neither is it's plot or heroine. Apparently audiences were supposed to feel for a poor, Russian migrant girl who inherits the planet and then gets to dress pretty for 2 hours while making the stupidest of decisions like a cinematic 1950s airhead. Eddie Redmayne (as one of the evil Abraxas siblings out to stop Jupiter) has now gone the gamut of Oscar winner one year to squealing over-acting scenery chewer the next, and being in this bomb may cut down on his appeal. Meanwhile Mila shows even less acting chops than normal, Channing is a mopey and uncharismatic bore who just goes PEW PEW while glowering. Even a Sean Bean cameo adds nothing to the proceedings, nothing! and there needs to be a whole lot more.
In short, Jupiter Ascending is a trip down, way down, descending to the level of a Harry Potter/Hungergames/Young Adult Book cash grab wanna be with no purpose or source material to support its many weaknesses and eccentricities. The movie Cloud Atlas could have been without an excellent writer in other words.
2 Must Love Dogs out of 10 (AWFUL)
What We Do In The Shadows (2015)
What We Do In The Shadows (R)
"BAT FIGHT!"
Four Vampire roommates in New Zealand allow a camera crew into their den, a flat in Wellington that is soaked in blood and laughter in the new mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows.
Ridiculous and raucous, the flatmates interpersonal relationships drive the film as we discover the weird and zany lives of bloodsuckers. Co-written, starring and co-directed by Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement (of HBOs Flight of the Conchords), the film offers a peek into the underbelly world of the undead as they deal with finding victims, taunting (s)werewolves and doing the (literally) bloody dishes. Flatmates include Viago as a vampiric neat freak with a hole in his dead heart, Vladislav the Prodder has serious issues with his Ex leading to a lack of self confidence, Deacon is the brash newcomer at only 183 years old, and their terrifying master 8000 year old vampire Petyr sleeps in a sarcophagus in a basement covered with gore and bones. When Petyr converts a new kid named Nick to his brood, tensions arise in the house as rules are broken and fashion is stolen, leading to brushes with vampire hunters and irritable lycanthropes, culminating at the annual Undead masquerade ball where a human friend and the camera crew itself is in mortal danger from the attendees.
The film is often hilarious, the premise of mixing vampire jokes with bad roommate jokes is fantastic and rife with humor. The NZ cast is funny, the mockumentary angle, while trite, is effective, and it hits all the right veins of humor and horror. The camera work and editing can be a bit rough at times, but the special effects work in its favor and the characters will win over your black heart as they charm your neck out of hemoglobin and laughter. Perhaps a bit of a trifle, and it's low budget nature does rear it's shaggy head now and again, but in general you will be too distracted by the humor and good intentions of the filmmakers to mind being hypnotized into liking this silly goof-off
8 Vampires Vacuuming Vehemently out of 10 (GREAT)
"BAT FIGHT!"
Four Vampire roommates in New Zealand allow a camera crew into their den, a flat in Wellington that is soaked in blood and laughter in the new mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows.
Ridiculous and raucous, the flatmates interpersonal relationships drive the film as we discover the weird and zany lives of bloodsuckers. Co-written, starring and co-directed by Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement (of HBOs Flight of the Conchords), the film offers a peek into the underbelly world of the undead as they deal with finding victims, taunting (s)werewolves and doing the (literally) bloody dishes. Flatmates include Viago as a vampiric neat freak with a hole in his dead heart, Vladislav the Prodder has serious issues with his Ex leading to a lack of self confidence, Deacon is the brash newcomer at only 183 years old, and their terrifying master 8000 year old vampire Petyr sleeps in a sarcophagus in a basement covered with gore and bones. When Petyr converts a new kid named Nick to his brood, tensions arise in the house as rules are broken and fashion is stolen, leading to brushes with vampire hunters and irritable lycanthropes, culminating at the annual Undead masquerade ball where a human friend and the camera crew itself is in mortal danger from the attendees.
The film is often hilarious, the premise of mixing vampire jokes with bad roommate jokes is fantastic and rife with humor. The NZ cast is funny, the mockumentary angle, while trite, is effective, and it hits all the right veins of humor and horror. The camera work and editing can be a bit rough at times, but the special effects work in its favor and the characters will win over your black heart as they charm your neck out of hemoglobin and laughter. Perhaps a bit of a trifle, and it's low budget nature does rear it's shaggy head now and again, but in general you will be too distracted by the humor and good intentions of the filmmakers to mind being hypnotized into liking this silly goof-off
8 Vampires Vacuuming Vehemently out of 10 (GREAT)
Inherent Vice (2015)
Inherent Vice (R) - Noir Review
"Smoke 'em if you got 'em"
Gordita Beach, LA County, SoCal, 1970. A stoned PI is approached by his beach bunny ex-girlfriend about a case that ends up involving surf bands, white yachts, billionaire Real estate developers being kidnapped, Indonesian Tar Heroin syndicates, Commie Black Lists, anti-subversive units of the LAPD, Dentists, kinky sex, overdose of drugs and not enough rock n roll in director P.T. Anderson's (The Master) adaptation of the infamous Tom Pynchon's famous novel, Inherent Vice.
Firstly, the acting is stupendous. The cast is led by Joaquin Phoenix as "Doc," the bleary eyed mumbling flat foot with a spliff and a straw sunhat instead of a Marlboro and fedora. His counter balance is with LAPD Detective "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, whose big shoes are filled with straight laced-rage and equal paranoia by Josh Brolin, bringing a much needed humor to his buttoned up meat head who likes to munch on frozen chocolate bananas. Other associates infiltrate the screen; Owen Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short (!) and Benicio Del Toro take turns at the absurd. But it's the femmes-(non)fatales that really shine with the leads, newishcomers Katherine Waterson sizzles with her own sensual light as Shasta the tricky ex and Joanna Newsome does a sunny double duty as a psychic friend and hippy dippy voice over narrator that really adds volumes to the post-60s ambiance.
Cinematographer Robert Elswit (BoogieNights and others) again gives PTA some knockout frames, and like Doc you may feel like someone slipped you a PCP spiked-joint filled with beautiful smoky colors that will put you on your ass, out cold. We, however, cannot avoid the bummers, and they are not hallucinations, we think? The manic energy of Anderson's earlier films is again missing when it is most sorely missed. This movie is a somber downer, but that itself isn't a criticism, the story is supposed to be a fuzzy headed hangover of a meandering Noir plot, memories of the night before terribly hard to dredge up through the haze of marijuana killed brain cells. However the red-veined eyes rarely ever impacts the lens, things are SAID and not VISUALIZED, which is a shocking misunderstanding of the book for a master visualist like PTA and company. This film has reverent regard for the source material, and to be sure this is one of the most faithful adaptations of a book, but instead of showing plot points the movie often only druggedly slurs them. This may make the plot over-complicated for some, extremely frustrating for others, where in the novel the clarity of the printed page helped somewhat.
The book? As a very faithful adaptation of the words, the film often sadly misses the novel's purpose. PTA's Inherent Vice is best when it riffs on the source material instead of sex-slavishly regurgitates it. The more exaggerated Cop vs Private Eye relationship is great stuff, the additional slap stick and notebook gags (which sadly stop about half way through) bring needed comic relief. The wish would be that PTA made more of those decisions instead of being 90% the page, which it is. For instead of being able to concentrate on the film, it brings up what was necessarily removed to achieve it's almost too long run time. The character of the places is almost gone, the surfer lifestyle mixed with the death of the 60s, the hectic surf music on the Dodge's radio dial, the post-Manson paranoia, the foggy beaches and scruffy surfers driving around in woodies and eating whole pies at delicatessens at midnight, this whole liver of the piece has been removed, and so the audience is left with the skeleton of the story with much of it's corpulent flesh shaved away, a junkie on a diet. Since music and moving pictures is what Anderson does best, it is a double downer that the soundtrack isn't affecting or period blaring rocknroll. Meanwhile everything else being so tied to the exact wording has hamstrung the film from the jazz-like improvisation that energized his early work or the darkly simpatico rhythms that fueled the madness of There Will Be Blood or The Master. Vice could really have used some of those offbeat vibes, and loudly.
And yet for every bad acid trip there is a good, and every scene Waterson's Shasta appears in outshines every other, even the Doc/Bigfoot bromances (which are subtly fantastic). The way the camera captures her, the way she embodies the poisonous image of "the ex," is obviously the focal point of Anderson's emotional reasons for making this film and wonderfully transports us to the mindset of a man hungup on a dame no matter how hard he tries. Her couch scene is worth the price of admission alone, for the reasons of her brazen acting courage, beautiful camera work, naturalness of environment, raw emotion and savage desires. Doc's feelings for Shasta aren't stated, they are shown, a tortuously toxic turn-on that he hides beneath layers of denial. It is a fascinating relationship, and a wonderfully realized hippy version of the black widow from noir-past as originally envisioned by Pynchon. It's an outstanding scene in a good film, and not the only one. They all have great acting and direction and cinematic panache, the entire film does. And yet the movie isn't great on its own, at least not yet. Perhaps with more viewings, as with the Master and yet so unlike his other films, that scenes that were great will overwhelm the rest and force it's entirety to greatness. *Sad Sax Solo* But unlike the movies whose company it wants to join, the neo-noir classics like Polanski's Chinatown or Altman's The Long Goodbye, Inherent Vice in the end fizzles like a wet zigzag joint (surprising for a writer so dedicated to fantastic endings and last words, even the book's ending has more punch). Perhaps, with time and a little TLC, Inherent Vice will blaze brightly, heavily potent and without it's (and our) former hangups to get in the way of letting us fade into the hazy spicy smoke of a complicated good time.
7 Painted Lady Neck Ties out of 10 (GOOD)
"Smoke 'em if you got 'em"
Gordita Beach, LA County, SoCal, 1970. A stoned PI is approached by his beach bunny ex-girlfriend about a case that ends up involving surf bands, white yachts, billionaire Real estate developers being kidnapped, Indonesian Tar Heroin syndicates, Commie Black Lists, anti-subversive units of the LAPD, Dentists, kinky sex, overdose of drugs and not enough rock n roll in director P.T. Anderson's (The Master) adaptation of the infamous Tom Pynchon's famous novel, Inherent Vice.
Firstly, the acting is stupendous. The cast is led by Joaquin Phoenix as "Doc," the bleary eyed mumbling flat foot with a spliff and a straw sunhat instead of a Marlboro and fedora. His counter balance is with LAPD Detective "Bigfoot" Bjornsen, whose big shoes are filled with straight laced-rage and equal paranoia by Josh Brolin, bringing a much needed humor to his buttoned up meat head who likes to munch on frozen chocolate bananas. Other associates infiltrate the screen; Owen Wilson, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short (!) and Benicio Del Toro take turns at the absurd. But it's the femmes-(non)fatales that really shine with the leads, newishcomers Katherine Waterson sizzles with her own sensual light as Shasta the tricky ex and Joanna Newsome does a sunny double duty as a psychic friend and hippy dippy voice over narrator that really adds volumes to the post-60s ambiance.
Cinematographer Robert Elswit (BoogieNights and others) again gives PTA some knockout frames, and like Doc you may feel like someone slipped you a PCP spiked-joint filled with beautiful smoky colors that will put you on your ass, out cold. We, however, cannot avoid the bummers, and they are not hallucinations, we think? The manic energy of Anderson's earlier films is again missing when it is most sorely missed. This movie is a somber downer, but that itself isn't a criticism, the story is supposed to be a fuzzy headed hangover of a meandering Noir plot, memories of the night before terribly hard to dredge up through the haze of marijuana killed brain cells. However the red-veined eyes rarely ever impacts the lens, things are SAID and not VISUALIZED, which is a shocking misunderstanding of the book for a master visualist like PTA and company. This film has reverent regard for the source material, and to be sure this is one of the most faithful adaptations of a book, but instead of showing plot points the movie often only druggedly slurs them. This may make the plot over-complicated for some, extremely frustrating for others, where in the novel the clarity of the printed page helped somewhat.
The book? As a very faithful adaptation of the words, the film often sadly misses the novel's purpose. PTA's Inherent Vice is best when it riffs on the source material instead of sex-slavishly regurgitates it. The more exaggerated Cop vs Private Eye relationship is great stuff, the additional slap stick and notebook gags (which sadly stop about half way through) bring needed comic relief. The wish would be that PTA made more of those decisions instead of being 90% the page, which it is. For instead of being able to concentrate on the film, it brings up what was necessarily removed to achieve it's almost too long run time. The character of the places is almost gone, the surfer lifestyle mixed with the death of the 60s, the hectic surf music on the Dodge's radio dial, the post-Manson paranoia, the foggy beaches and scruffy surfers driving around in woodies and eating whole pies at delicatessens at midnight, this whole liver of the piece has been removed, and so the audience is left with the skeleton of the story with much of it's corpulent flesh shaved away, a junkie on a diet. Since music and moving pictures is what Anderson does best, it is a double downer that the soundtrack isn't affecting or period blaring rocknroll. Meanwhile everything else being so tied to the exact wording has hamstrung the film from the jazz-like improvisation that energized his early work or the darkly simpatico rhythms that fueled the madness of There Will Be Blood or The Master. Vice could really have used some of those offbeat vibes, and loudly.
And yet for every bad acid trip there is a good, and every scene Waterson's Shasta appears in outshines every other, even the Doc/Bigfoot bromances (which are subtly fantastic). The way the camera captures her, the way she embodies the poisonous image of "the ex," is obviously the focal point of Anderson's emotional reasons for making this film and wonderfully transports us to the mindset of a man hungup on a dame no matter how hard he tries. Her couch scene is worth the price of admission alone, for the reasons of her brazen acting courage, beautiful camera work, naturalness of environment, raw emotion and savage desires. Doc's feelings for Shasta aren't stated, they are shown, a tortuously toxic turn-on that he hides beneath layers of denial. It is a fascinating relationship, and a wonderfully realized hippy version of the black widow from noir-past as originally envisioned by Pynchon. It's an outstanding scene in a good film, and not the only one. They all have great acting and direction and cinematic panache, the entire film does. And yet the movie isn't great on its own, at least not yet. Perhaps with more viewings, as with the Master and yet so unlike his other films, that scenes that were great will overwhelm the rest and force it's entirety to greatness. *Sad Sax Solo* But unlike the movies whose company it wants to join, the neo-noir classics like Polanski's Chinatown or Altman's The Long Goodbye, Inherent Vice in the end fizzles like a wet zigzag joint (surprising for a writer so dedicated to fantastic endings and last words, even the book's ending has more punch). Perhaps, with time and a little TLC, Inherent Vice will blaze brightly, heavily potent and without it's (and our) former hangups to get in the way of letting us fade into the hazy spicy smoke of a complicated good time.
7 Painted Lady Neck Ties out of 10 (GOOD)
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- Kevin Gasaway via HardDrawn
- Turlock, California, United States
- Media and Reviews by Kevin Gasaway