Movie Review Round-Up #2 - So Many Movies I Can't Come Up With a Witty Title

I've had the opportunity to watch a lot of movies lately, and they've come from different sources - Netflix, Redbox, and even a couple new releases in several of our favorite local theaters. I have to say that it's rather amazing to me how delivery of material like this has changed over the course of my lifetime. I've witnessed first-hand the creation, boom, and subsequent decline of traditional, brick and mortar businesses geared towards movie rentals. With things like digital downloads through streaming services and vending machines that are capable of pushing out Blu-ray discs, movies are as accessible as they've ever been. I don't know that we'll ever see a day when going to a theater is passé, however it should be clear to Hollywood now more so than ever before that people aren't going to willingly drive to a cinema and plunk down their $10 to see a movie just because it's new or starring a beloved actor (yes, I'm pointing at you Lone Ranger). Why should they when they can just wait a few weeks or months and see the same film for $1.50 in the comfort of their own home? It's a marvelous time to be a fan of movies, is what I'm getting at. Here's my take on some recent selections.

Man of Steel

 It was going to take some doing in order for Warner Brothers and the Superman film franchise to recover from the disaster that was Bryan Singer's attempt at rebooting the series with 2006's Superman Returns. That film was filled with nostalgia and made every attempt to recapture the feel of the days when Christopher Reeve donned the signature costume that's as iconic as any superhero garb, and that was a major factor in its failure - that and the fact that Brandon Routh has the personality of a sheet of plain, white copier paper. How then can a character as beloved as Superman return to prominence? By including a creative mind like that of director Zack Snyder with a story that takes the "big, blue boy scout" in a more gritty and much darker direction than has ever been put on film before.

 Man of Steel stars Henry Cavill as the hero so incredible he carries three names - Superman, Clark Kent and Kal-El. He's surrounded by the characters you would expect to see; Lois Lane (Amy Adams), Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner), Martha Kent (Diane Lane), as well as his doomed parents Jor-El (Russel Crowe) and Lara-El (Ayelet Zurer). Michael Shannon appears as the villainous General Zod, an oddly adored character (mostly for having said "Kneel before Zod!") which was played previously by Terence Stamp in Superman II.

The story is more or less what you'd expect to see out of a film that's supposed to serve as a jumping-on point for new and old fans alike. You have Supe's origin story, now told with vastly more detail than has been laid out before. Personally speaking, I was very impressed with scenes depicting the struggle between Jor-El and General Zod on Krypton - I probably could've watched an entire movie about their conflict, the imprisonment of Zod and his forces in the Phantom Zone, and Krypton's cataclysmic end. Details regarding Kal-El's arrival on Earth and his upbringing by the Kents is told through flashbacks as we meet Clark fully grown, a man who's spent his life attempting to hide his abilities from humanity for fear of what revealing himself might mean. Clark finally accepts his destiny as Earth's savior when Zod escapes and locates the son of the man responsible for his banishment.

This is the sort of Superman film a modern audience needs. Plenty of action, solid writing, a quality cast, and the vision of a director who can make a potentially bland character into an identifiable hero who has flaws just like everyone else. Audiences got their fill of Superman engaged in a battle of wits as that formula didn't exactly lead to a remarkable product in Superman Returns; rather, this time around we see the full impact of what would happen if a group of beings who are essentially God-like in their combined powers and resiliency brought conflict to our world. It's a no-holds-barred final act that's as fulfilling as could be, but it has one major flaw in my opinion.

Throughout the whole of the film, we're shown how Jonathan Kent tried to inundate his found son with the responsibility his powers brought. Pa Kent knew Clark had a chance to be a hero or a villain, hence why he tried to show him how to appreciate humanity for all its weaknesses. I can't help but compare the battle between Zod & Superman in Man of Steel to that in Superman II. Reason being, in the older film Superman shows great concern over the fact that a trio of evil Kryptonians are about to lay waste to all of Metropolis which is why he draws them away from civilization. In Man of Steel, Superman doesn't seem too concerned about the fact that the fight he's engaged in is going to wreck a good part of the city, maiming or killing God only knows how many bystanders in the process. There will always be causalities of war, sure, but this is a little too egregious of an oversight to ignore.

Still, I enjoyed this and I hope the momentum this film will generate puts Superman back on track. Unfortunately I don't think it will be able to kick start a movement towards a Justice League motion picture; there's no sense of organization to the DC Comics characters as it relates to their inclusion in a potential epic mash-up, which is exactly what MARVEL was able to do with their heroes leading up to The Avengers. Something that big has to fit logically inside a greater body of work and right now there's nothing to tie these various characters together.

/5 Superman Underoos


A Good Day to Die Hard

When you get to the fifth movie in a franchise, you're either talking about a series with enough story left to tell that it requires more sequels or one that makes barely enough money to still be considered a bankable hit. The Die Hard series definitively falls into the latter category.

A Good Day to Die Hard stars Bruce Willis as aging New York cop turned avid terrorist hunter John McClane. This time out he's on the way to Russia in order to help his son Jack (Jai Courtney) who's somehow managed to get himself involved with the doings of ne'er-do-wells who either want or have nuclear weapons. As it turns out, John's son is actually a CIA operative who hasn't exactly had a superlative relationship with his father. The two attempt to patch things up whilst shooting at people and surviving repeated calamitous incidents involving jumps out of windows from ridiculously high elevations.

I was 8 years old when the first Die Hard film was released. I'll be 33 in a few weeks, which means this series has been going on for the bulk of my life. That's rather amazing to consider, especially now that this franchise has continued even though the movies are more or less paint-by-number. McClane inevitably gets thrust into a situation where he has to protect or defend a person or resource, gets bloodied in the process, but ultimately prevails. The only real differences are the person/thing to be protected and the villain he's facing, although even those have been fairly predictable as John seems to have a thing for Germans and Russians.

This is the sort of movie you watch because you're a fan of the players involved or of the series itself. I still watch them because I have always thought Willis' performance in the original Die Hard was one of the best anti-heroes ever and I hold onto hope that that McClane is still out there, even though I think the best of him got used up way back during Die Hard With a Vengeance. That was the third film in the series and would've been a very suitable conclusion in my mind. It seems as though we're in for at least one more go-round with McClane as the sixth film to be titled Die Hardest has already been announced.

/5 Hans Gruber death faces




The Expendables 2

Speaking of movies that get made simply because of the fact someone out there still cares about our community of aging action stars from the 1980s & 90s, The Expendables 2 is here to show us all that just because you're drawing Social Security doesn't mean you can't use machine guns and save the world.

Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jean Claude Van Damme, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Chuck Norris, and the guy from those awesome Old Spice commercials - they're all here, and so is Thor's brother. No, not Loki, Chris Hemsworth's brother Liam (who didn't have much of a career prior to dating Miley Cyrus; apparently he got the better end of that deal). It's a huge cast, needless to say, and while it's a wet dream for people who still fawn over these actors it's really an attempt to grasp at straws for relevancy.

This is like seeing an aged professional wrestler (leave it to me to make a pro wrestling reference), popular in his day who should've been long-retired but hasn't because he either needs the work or still loves the business, having matches on cards that draw fans in the dozens instead of thousands. There's nothing about this that's redeeming. I watched Expendables 2 and I kept hoping for something truly awesome to happen but as it went on it became more farcical and genuinely depressing.

Time to hang up your ammo belts, boys - we'll always have Terminator 2 and Demolition Man to remind us of how awesome you are.

/5 Chuck Norris beards





Cloud Atlas

Every so often a movie comes around that attempts to make profound statements regarding how we, as human beings who exist for a mere moment in the grand scheme of things, could possibly be so intertwined with one another that a perception like love stands to span multiple lifetimes. Could an emotion be so strong as to leap through time, from one body to another, unbeknownst to those experiencing it? This is the underlying notion behind Cloud Atlas, a movie so esoteric that it could also be labeled pretentious.

Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, and Hugo Weaving all star in this picture as multiple characters who find each other, albeit in several different lifetimes. Beginning in the Colonial era and moving on through time into the future where mankind has abandoned Earth, the plot of Cloud Atlas centers around how love and kindness can be the ultimate trigger of change in our world as this is a recurring theme explored by every iteration of the souls of these characters.

Cloud Atlas reminds me very much of The Red Violin, a film which follows the history of a cherished violin as it is passed from one owner to another throughout several hundred years. They both are movies that attempt to show how a singular event, ideal or object can flow through generations, involving a multitude of players who may or may not know of each other or how their motivations may ultimately affect the world around them. I think The Red Violin is a better movie, if for no other reason than the fact that it doesn't have the sort of overwhelming agenda that Cloud Atlas does.

This doesn't strike me as the kind of movie casual audiences are going to be able to grasp or even care to watch, for that matter. There are a lot of moving pieces here, none of which are lined up congruently as the pacing has us jumping around from one timeline to another. It is, however, a well-acted piece and the cinematography is fantastic as are the special effects. (Side note: There are a LOT of rather disturbing prosthetic noses and eye make-ups in this movie.) In essence, it's more of a technical achievement than anything else.

/5 Asian Hugo Weavings



Despicable Me 2

Animated films have come a long way since I was a child. Back then cartoons were for kids and adults were shamed for watching them. Now studios realize that adults are the ones taking their children to the movies, so why not make those movies appealing to the child and the adult thereby doubling your audience in the process? Pixar, Dreamworks, Universal, and all the rest have realized this, which is why I have no qualms about having gone to see Despicable Me 2 the week it opened.

DM2 picks up where the first left off. Gru (Steve Carell) has made the transition into life as the adoptive father of 3 little girls - Margo, Edith and Agnes - and is now a former super-villain, having given up his old ways for the sake of being a family man. He finds himself unwillingly recruited into the role of a crime fighter when Lucy (Kristen Wiig), a member of the appropriately named Anti-Villain League, comes to ask for his assistance in a not-so-subtle manner. The two of them must find out who has hijacked a quantity of PX-41, a substance capable of mutating ordinary beings into ravenous monsters, before this new criminal mastermind can unleash their fiendish plot on mankind.

This is a a movie with a lot of heart as Gru's transformation into a hero is perfectly facilitated by the presence of his daughters. They are his world and he would do anything for them, and that's a fantastic message to send out these days when so many children and adults could use a good parental role model.

Steve Carell is brilliant in just about anything he does and Kristen Wiig makes for a great addition to the cast as she has a core understanding of comedic delivery. I certainly hope we get a third movie out of this series as there's definitely room to grow here. Is GM2 better than the original, though? That's a tough call as I found both films entertaining - I am somewhat inclined to say the original is slightly funnier than GM2 but that's really splitting hairs for the sake of doing so.

/5 Fluffy Unicorns


Oz the Great and Powerful

The Wizard of Oz is one of the most beloved films of all time, and rightfully so. It was a technical marvel in its era and the performance of Judy Garland is one that can truly never be forgotten. An attempt to recapture that same magic with a prequel is a tough challenge but director Sam Raimi has given it his best with Oz the Great and Powerful.

Everyone knows by now how Dorothy winds up in the land of Oz - she and her family's home are swept away from rural Kansas by a horrible twister which transports her and her dog Toto to a land of munchkins, witches, and wizards. In this same manner does Oscar "Oz" Diggs (James Franco), a small time traveling carnival magician and con man, find himself getting whisked away, albeit in a different vehicle (a hot air balloon). As it turns out, his arrival in Oz was expected as a prophecy foretold of his coming - unfortunately for him, whoever wrote the prophecy left some big expectations as the people of Oz had been longing for the great wizard they'd been promised. Oz must determine what he's to do in this new world and which witch is the witch he should be trusting.

I will be completely upfront with you in admitting that I am not a big fan of James Franco. I have yet to see a piece of work from him that has struck me as being tremendously worthy of praise as everything I've seen of him comes off as an actor who's trying not to look like he's acting. Maybe that's just me - regardless, I think the role of Oz probably could've gone to half a dozen other leading men in his age range and the end result been better. He's not necessarily bad here, it's just that a more vivid personality might have been a better option than him. (Sam Raimi has his favorite recurring partners, of which Franco is apparently one, which is why Bruce Campbell and Sam's own brother Ted still get work.)

Franco had the good fortune to be stood up next to three beautiful actresses in the form of Rachel Weisz, Mila Kunis, and Michelle Williams, each of who play the infamous witches of Oz (Weisz & Kunis being wicked, and Williams being good). I can't not point out that it's almost impossible for me to see Mila Kunis and not immediately put Meg Griffin's face over her own. I've clearly watched too much Family Guy in my life for that to be happening to me.

All in all, Oz the Great and Powerful is an entertaining movie and definitely capable when it comes to fleshing out the back story as to how Oz came to be how it is when Dorothy arrives. There are a couple little tributes here and there to the future of Oz, as you might expect, and I almost wish there had been more of them.

 /5 Stoned James Franco Faces

Rise of the Planet of Silly Remakes

Science fiction is a favorite genre of mine.

I enjoy it because the vastness of its scope is nearly unlimited seeing as how science is a continually developing part of our culture, which means that the boundaries of the genre are as far flung as the reaches of our own universe.  The premise of science fiction is that the primary source of creativity lies in some piece of scientific fact that is then toyed with in order to assemble an alternate reality in which a particular set of possibilities seem to be likely.  Where problems arise is when creators take an idea that's based in reality with theories to support it then they manipulate it so that it suits the plot they're trying to construct - the notion of taking creative liberties, as it were, is what puts the fiction in science fiction. (The willingness of the audience to suspend their sense of disbelief is key to the success or failure of the effort to try and distort reality as we know it.) This is how we've gotten such amazing pieces of cinema as the 2010 Syfy Movies production Mega Piranha, starring Barry Williams (better known as Greg Brady from "The Brady Bunch") as Bob Grady (because having him play a character named Breg Grady would've been too much of a stretch).

In Mega Piranha, a school of altered piranha are created through genetics research.  Needless to say, the experiments don't go as planned and before long there's a group of gigantic, blood thirsty piranha headed towards Florida - and, of course, it's the height of tourist season.

Before I go any further, let me ask the obvious questions: Why?  What purpose could better piranha possibly serve mankind?  We're talking about fish that are basically swimming razor blades with insatiable appetites that will eat anything they encounter.  Are they going to be able to function as personal bodyguards or willingly dip themselves into cornmeal before flipping into a deep fryer?  Those are the only situations where I can see a reason to actually pursue this kind of work.  It's material like this that has put a black eye onto the sci-fi genre in terms of it being taken seriously, but at the same time modern audiences realize that it's meant to be taken with a grain of salt.  Besides, if a movie is labeled as being the "Syfy movie of the week" or is in any way associated with Roger Corman, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that it's going to be a steaming dump of a film.

There are, however, plenty of quality works of science fiction where the plausibility of the scenario being presented is somewhat high.  A perfect example of this is Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (adapted from Michael Crichton's novel), which is an absolutely brilliant combination of film making and usage of science in developing an amazing yet still believable story.

 

On the opposite side of the spectrum is a movie that has drawn my ire for two reasons.  First and foremost, it is a remake, and we all know exactly how I feel about movie remakes. (Some media outlets are calling it a re-imagining instead of a remake as it isn't directly tied to the previous effort on which it's based.  Call it whatever you want - if it swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has feathers like a duck, it's probably a duck...) What's worse is that it's a remake of a movie that's already been remade once before (I guess Hollywood doesn't have a limitation on Mulligans). I'm talking about none other than Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Interestingly, there are two versions of the poster - one making Caesar
appear more sinister with the other posing him as a heroic figure

In the original Planet of the Apes film, a group of astronauts are set to go off in exploration of deep space.  After launch, the astronauts remain in a state of suspended animation for several thousand years until their craft crash lands in a body of water on what appears to be an unknown planet with soil that is found to be incapable of sustaining vegetation.  They soon discover that there are humans inhabiting the planet but that they exist in a beastly state with no sense of order or culture.  As it turns out, apes are the dominant species of the planet and these primates commonly hunt humans, either killing them or using them for slave labor and scientific experimentation.  By the end of the film a revelation is uncovered that this planet isn't some alien land but rather a version of Earth that exists in the distant future.  It's a classic piece of sci-fi that twisted the idea of man having evolved from apes as well as having taken advantage of growing fears of what could happen if full-scale nuclear war were ever to occur in order to create a desolate vision of the world to come.

The poster for Planet of the Apes (1968)
starring Charlton Heston

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (there should never be that many the's in a movie title) is more akin to Mega Piranha than its forebear in that the origin of the ape uprising it presents lies in scientific testing on primates, specifically that to try and reverse the effects of Alzheimer's disease in humans.  The study, performed on a chimpanzee named Caesar, inadvertently creates an ape that develops significantly advanced cognitive abilities.  Realizing that he and the rest of his lab-monkey brethren have been held captive and generally mistreated, Caesar leads a revolt against their captors as well as the rest of mankind.

Sounds like a fairly solid basis for a sci-fi Summer blockbuster, doesn't it?  I'll admit that in the grand scheme of things the idea of genetically modified chimps attacking the scientists performing tests on them seems more logical than a group of astronauts from the 1970s surviving a several thousand year trip into the future.  The point where my ability to suspend disbelief completely evaporates as it relates to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, aside from the idea that James Franco is a brilliant scientist, is the notion that what I assume to be a fairly small group of apes (I'd think it would have to be a relatively small group because: A) California is the setting of the film and last I checked there are no indigenous species of ape in that part of the world, and B) even if Caesar is super-intelligent the idea of him being able to replicate the serum that created him as well as develop the means to deploy it to a larger section of the ape population is ridiculous) is able to overthrow all the governments, all the police forces, and all the military outfits of the entire planet - not to mention all the hunters, gang bangers, and random gun owners out there who would love to stuff and mount the head of a silverback gorilla on the wall of their living room.

Caesar may be a smart monkey, but can he dodge a sniper's bullet?  Caesar may be able to do differential calculus, but can he survive sustained battery from artillery and carpet bombings?  The nail in Caesar's coffin comes in the form of four words: Navy Seal Team 6.

Keep in mind that I haven't seen the movie, nor do I plan to, and I've already put this many holes into the feasibility of its plot.  My reasoning for pointing these things out is that I am fed up with the lack of creativity that Hollywood has expressed over the past few years.  That along with the fact that the only films being remade are ones that really don't need to be remade. (There is one film that I do wish would be remade, but will not mention by name since I'm saving it for a future blog entry, because I feel like it could genuinely benefit from current special effects technology which was in its infancy when the film was made.) What was wrong with the original Planet of the Apes, I ask you, that remaking it a second time was a necessity?  You wouldn't eat a pizza that you'd already eaten (if you catch my drift) just because it tasted good the first time around, so why would you want to see a movie that's been done (and done well) before?

Studio executives want my money but in cases like this I refuse to give it to them - I cannot justify paying to watch a film that comes across as being this flawed.  Originality and ingenuity have taken a back seat to movies that are easily marketed and sold based on the public already being aware of a particular brand or franchise.  There are at least 4 more remakes being released this year - Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, Footloose, and The Thing - with who knows how many more to be released in 2012.  Obviously just because something is novel in its approach doesn't automatically mean it's going to be good, but at least it's not a re-hashed product that's had a new coat of paint slapped on it in an effort to dupe audiences into thinking it's any different than what they've already experienced.