Out in Theaters: TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES

August 7, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Jonathan Liebesman, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tohoru Masamune, Will Arnett, William Fichtner

Like eating an entire pepperoni pizza to yourself, Jonathan Liebesman‘s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is an exercise in corpulent gluttony. The jocular quips drip just as much cheese as the pizzas they scarf. An unnaturally meretricious Megan Fox oozes virginal sex like fat from a pepperoni. The CG eye-candy glistens like glitter on a stripper. But like that greasy, calorie bomb of a meatlover’s pizza in the wreckage of a hangover, it works. The solitary fart joke even lands.

Like Norville Barnes, people have insisted this effort is, you know, for the kids, but I’m not entirely convinced. Firstly, TMNT rides in on the parent-frightening PG-13 wave, even though the violence is inconsequential and entirely bloodless. And involves turtles. Add to that the fact that a good spell of the humor riffs around a few hardly risible rapey jokes and the fact that one of the turtles courts an unrequited sexual obsession with Fox’s April O’Neill. From this we can pretty much conclude this isn’t solely intended for the kids. Unless they’re really into rape jokes now.

Continuing on that note…WAIT WHAT?! Are you telling me that not one but two of the characters (Will Arnett, shame on you) actively promulgate the fact that they want to lay a bone down on our pea-brained female protagonist? Even though she’s more 6th grade science fair student here than voluptuous femme fatale? Yes. And yes. Hmmm, I think I might be talking myself out of semi-liking this movie.

But I can admit up front that this was never a movie crafted with me in mind, making the fact that I found myself under the spell of a fair many turtle-chortles all the more miraculous. Not with the rapey stuff though. That’s still pretty weird.

In lieu of turtles forcing themselves on supple female jokes, what does actually work is the brothers themselves. Hell, why not throw that into the catalogue of adjectives to precede the word turtle: Teenage Mutant Ninja Brother Turtles! Because when you really break it down, the defining feature of this film adaption is the familial aspect of it. That and bulletproof shells.

I’m getting ahead of myself and thinking it’s probably time to actually break down the plot, as if that’s really a requirement for a movie called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Fox is April O’Neil, a low rent reporter with stars in her eyes. She wants the big stories. It’s Pulitzer or bust. Concurrently, she’s straight up bummed when she gets assigned news stories that have her bouncing on trampolines for the latest fitness craze. As if that’s a coincidence.

When she gets wind of a local terrorist group known as the “Foot Clan”, April takes matters into her own hands and decides to investigate Watergate style. Minutes later, she’s discovered the existence of the shell-bound ninjas. Soon after that, she realizes they’re the product of her own dead father’s experiment. Minds are blown.

As April cohorts with the turts, the judiciously evil Eric Sacks (William Fichtner) schemes with the blatantly bad, full metal jacketed Shredder (Tohoru Masamune). Their plan, world domination. Their strategy, does it really matter?

Step one: poison city. Step two: everyone’s a leper. Step three: sell cure for ONE MILLION DOLLARS! (Pinky to lip). It may be Doctor Evil-level silliness but, let’s be very clear here, Shredder is confirmed BA. The guy has a smattering of swords that he shoots out like they’re Spiderman goo and then sucks back up magnetically. If I may quote Jesse Pinkman, “Magnets bitch!!” It makes for some pretty geeky nerdgasms. Especially when everything is all fuzzy and scrambled.

Liebesman’s scenery is draped with clumpy snow, which not only got me excited for next year’s skiing season but set the table for some exquisite “high” stakes action sequences. As the set pieces comes to life, the cameras zip around like on a Nimbus 2000, keeping things hectic, fluid and fun. Though the Turtles keep their weapons mostly holstered, Liebesman whips his out like a kid leaving summer camp. His touch is perfectly puerile, his tone nefariously juvenile.

As TMNT rips to a rather forecasted conclusion, it’s quite clear that Liebesman’s goal has been accomplished. His film is a puckering cherry bomb. But rather than blow up in his face, it erupts in the toilet. Us feckless few snicker. His film is crapulously inconsequential. It’s the epitome of dumb summer movie. And it pulls in at under an hour and 45 minutes. For that alone, it’s way better than the latest Transformers flick.

C

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Out in Theaters: INTO THE STORM

August 6, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Into the Storm, Jeremy Sumpter, Matt Walsh, Max Deacon, Nathan Kress, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Steven Quale 2 Comments

Into the Storm encounters a litany of problems right from the get-go, many of which focus around the complete lack of talent in the acting department. Storm‘s stable of actors consist primarily of those that popular cable shows have chewed up and spit out, including The Walking Dead‘s Sarah Wayne Callies, Friday Night Light‘s Jeremy Sumpter, Veep‘s Matt Walsh and iCarly‘s Nathan Kress. Each bring their own unique ineptness to the table, failing to gel together as a cohesive cast even on the most basic of levels whilst embodying characters who we hope to see offed from the very moment we encounter them. This assembly is quite literally a wind tunnel of talent; a crew that raises the bar for the “Worst Acting of the Year” award higher than a tornado peak and drops it on its head. The scariest moment is realizing that it’s going to last for 89 minutes; the most disturbing, that all these people have careers.

Director Steven Quale and his team of effects “specialists” conjure up a series of tornadoes that make 1996’s Twister look cutting edge. Add to that the complete and utter lack of internal logic of the film – especially it comes to the potency of any given twister (a smallish ‘nado is able to suck bystanders off their feet from 100 yards away whilst one about a mile wide that tosses 747s like they’re toothpicks cannot) – and you have a movie that can barely stand on its own two feet even on dry land.

The film starts with a groan as Donnie (Max Deacon) introduces us to his autocratic father (Richard Armitage) and swoop-bangs of a brother, Trey (Kress) in inglorious “found footage” style. You see, he’s making a time capsule to look back on in 25 years because nostalgia and fuck you. It’s an obvious way to establish the mechanics of the film but goes on to become an overbearing, embarrassing ploy to dish out concocted melodrama and false tension. Characters dish on “discovering” the real meaning of life after the disaster has had its way with them; they ooze over the importance of coming together. It makes for trumped up, on-the-nose Americana hooah. Even the ripped up flags wave in the background.

Quale spends the first twenty-odd minutes introducing us to an assemblage of the most obnoxious people ever to inhabit the lands once known as the Louisiana Purchase. There’s the techie dweeb who can’t act, the helplessly love interest who can’t act, the nosy brother who can’t act, the overbearing dad who can’t act, the stubborn principal who can’t act, the noxious storm chaser who can’t act, the cowardly cameraman who can’t act, the four-wheelin’ rednecks who can’t act and the grumbling scientist who can’t act. Unfortunately, we only get to see one sucked into a firenado.

The plot is as simple as “Some say there’s a storm comin’, some say it’s already here.” When two storm fronts converge into one superstorm, Into the Storm becomes the Perfect Storm on land. It’s Syfy’s Shartnado. Five minutes in, a friend turned to me and asked if this was made to go straight to RedBox. Somehow, it escaped that fate. Somehow…

Perhaps the most miraculously bad portion of the film lies within the simple fact that nothing and no-one makes a lick of sense. In the midst of this small town, middle-of-nowhere cornburbia, an airfield the size of LAX materializes just so Quale can throw a baker’s dozen 747s through the air. The vice principal of the school has literally no idea how to navigate the small town he’s lived in for an innumerable amount of years. Characters ask if everyone’s ok even after literally watching town’s folk sucked into the maw of a viperous cyclone.

The grievances go on. Professionals stare down tornadoes ripping towards them without second guessing the imminent danger they’re in. A school bus full of children are evacuated into a sewer drain to inexplicably disappear a scene later. Characters disappear and reappear at the convenience of the story inventions like they’re Neo zipping through the Matrix. It’s as if the script (obviously written on a cocktail napkin or two) got blown away with the passing wind. How else to explain this logical shit storm?

If there is a saving grace to Into the Storm (and I’m almost willing to admit that there is), it’s that it contains some of the most hysterical unintentional comedy of the year. None of the intended jokes land but when Quale tones it down for a tearful confession or lets his characters bicker over who’s to blame for another character’s demise and then quickly has them console each other, the belly laughs come a’rolling out. It’s the movie equivalent of a dog shitting in your dockers; it’s so accidentally funny that you can’t help but want to scruff its hair and forgive it immediately.

Looking over Quale’s resume, it’s really no shocker that he served up such a trash heap of an experience, considering he only has super-sequel Final Destination 5 to his name. That being the case though, I would expect a little more invention in the “kills” department. I think we can all agree that the firenado was appropriately daffy (and a suiting end for a character who was fifty shades of fey) but that’s really all Quale offers up for human sacrifice. No-one gets ripped to shreds by the sheer power of wind? No knifenados? Wa’ happened?

Instead of satisfying our bloodlust, Quale dumps out a sludge of over-the-top twisters that would only look at home on the Syfy channel. As if that will make up for it. The only footage we’re really intended to pay attention to are those shot from behind character’s shoulders as they play chicken with the impending deathwind. With the exception of one or two scenes, it’s as visually interesting as a fan on its highest setting. It’s as exciting as rolling your car window down.

By the third act, Quale beckons forth a superstorm so girthy and otherworldly that I fully expected the perfunctory Weather Channel newscaster to spew, “My god. This one’s ten miles wide with wind speeds of up to a million!!” Taking a cue from the pastures upon pastures of incoherence that pollutes the rest of the film, it wouldn’t really seem like that much of a stretch.

But as the CG winds wind down, we’re left with the inexcusable knowledge that the people onscreen presumably once took an acting lesson or two and I feel compelled to tisk tisk them for their work here. Seriously, this ought to be embarrassing for everyone involved. Hand slaps for all.

Whilst the inadvertent humor disqualifies Into the Storm from the most painful movie experience of the year accolade, that’s still not something you want to pull for the box art quote. It’s a disaster of a disaster film, never meant to exist outside the shadow of Twister. As trucks get hucked and characters chucked, at least Storm can claim to have made me cackle. It can’t be denied that while laughing at you may be worse than laughing with you, it’s still better than not laughing at all.

D

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A Definitive Ranking of Marvel’s Movies

July 30, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Lists Tagged Captain America, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Iron Man 3, Marvel, Ranking, The Avengers, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Thor: The Dark World 1 Comment

Nowadays the mantra seems to go, “If you’ve seen ’em, rank ’em.” And me being the non-boat-rocking critic that I am, I’ve decided it pertinent to rank all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies what with Guardians of the Galaxy releasing wide today and all. As is with all lists, this numbered collection is infallible and completely definitive. Although other people may seek to disagree with the rankings laid out below, scientifically any contention is wrong. You know, because opinion is objective and I’m always right.

I’m sure everyone’s cooked up with own list, either on paper or in their minds, and mine will incite fire to spew from your eyes and burn a hole in the screen but this is how I have to break down the Marvel movies. I’m chiefly taking into consideration my enjoyment of any of the below films but am also considering the relative importance of each in the grand scheme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and their impact on film in general. So ready your hunting knives, because here I go… Read More

Out in Theaters: GET ON UP

July 30, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Biopic, Chadwick Boseman, Dan Aykroyd, Get On Up, James Brown, Nelsan Ellis, Octavia Spencer, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Tate Taylor 1 Comment

Get On Up doesn’t know how good Chadwick Boseman is. Bursting with energy, filled with soul and one-hundred-and-sixty-nine percent committed, Boseman is a firecracker. Hell, he’s straight dynamite. How appropriate that he plays the man they once called Mr. Dynamite. It’s a certifiable shame then that the movie that surrounds Boseman’s accomplished concerto of a performance is overstuffed, poorly edited and, like the king of soul himself, doesn’t know when to quit.

Tate Taylor‘s (The Help) second feature starts, as all musical biopics apparently must, with the long, lonely saunter up to a final show of sorts. Old and beleaguered with regret, the icon is but a silhouette dwarfed by the enormity of a vacant hallway. Cut to Old Man Brown quite apparently hopped up on something of the Schedule 1 variety ranting at a room full of bootstraps-business folks and waving a shotgun over his head. This made-up Boseman’s all gums and shades but the scene only manages to paint the man as a Looney Tune.

Cut to bedazzled, toe-tapping Brown all get-up and no humility barking at a press conference. Cut to 6-year old Brown and his backwoods family eking by in some pinewood shanty. His momma turns to prostitution and his daddy beats him raw. All he wants is a lullaby. Cut to a teenage Brown stealing a three-piece suit and getting five to 13 years for it. Cut some more.

Cut, rinse, repeat. Cut, rinse, repeat. It allows for some mighty good scenes but makes for some mighty long-winded ones too. And while there’s lots rave-worthy stuck in there like gummies in a Cadbury Black Forest bar, the convoluted mess that is traveling from one scene to the next is an exercise in reckless abandon.

If only the editors had the good sense to slash 30 minutes of the film, we could have been dealing with something great. Had he tightened it up like Brown did his facial skin around the 90s, Taylor might have been working towards a gold statue nomination. Trim the fat, Tate. Trim the fat.

As is, Get On Up is a mostly pleasing patchwork of scenes that each contribute to a time, a place, and a feeling that then gets all that jumbled up and mismatched. Elephant heads end up on rhino bodies. A scene where friends feud with no sign of respite fades into them being immeasurably close confidantes. It’s not that we’re not smart enough to connect the dots, it’s that we shouldn’t be forced to do that work for Taylor and co. It’s like watching someone try to piece a puzzle together with one bright, shining star at its center; a star so massive and so bright, it apparently blinds, distorts and sucks in everything around it.

And boy oh boy is Boseman a star. As the one, the only James Brown, he’s surpassed impersonation, he’s transcended imitation. He lives and breathes James Brown. Every rubbery dance move, every superhuman split is Brown’s. That sagging eye and sneering falsetto; bonafide Brown. His salt-and-pepper speech crackles like a record player. I can’t tell if he’s actually singing or just doing the world’s best lip-synching. In all aspects, he’s Brown reborn.

Usually cloaked in beads of sweat, the character even gestures towards the camera every once in a while, occasionally monologuing in head-shaking fourth-wall breakage, but Boseman’s so catastrophically good that you actually welcome it. And props to the makeup team who for once hit the nail on the head when they age the 32-year old talent well past his prime. He doesn’t look the flour-face abomination that is Leonardo DiCaprio’s J. Edgar. But then again, Brown 55-year old visage looked like a drooping eggplant anyways. He’s a supernova but he’s paying the hefty price of admission for it. You can’t be a sun and not get burned.

But again and again, we must reckon with the fact that Boseman is merely the Shamu to Get On Up‘s Sea World. He’s a mighty presence but you’ll soon discover there’s not much else to the park. His role in Get On Up is the equivalent of using morels to make a cream of mushroom soup. You’ve got the finest ingredient in the world and you’re watering it down with a pool of a blasé, sometimes even flavorless, base.

It’s as if the editors found his each and every scene too indispensable to hack so they just shrugged and left it all in there. But you’ve got to trim even the prized rose if you want to win the trophy. Taylor seems too scared to bust out even the measliest of trimmers and ends up stabbing himself in the foot for it. His repetition of form is so ad nauseum that you’d think the prankster was trying to rickroll us. But goddammit if Boseman is not his savior; his knight is shining purple sequin. He’s so good, I can’t help but hyperbolize some more.

As Brown, Boseman’s got the magnetism of Tom Cruise, the jitters of Jagger, the paranoia of Scarface, the drive of Jordan Belfort and the moves that only Brown can call his own. He’s plays the Godfather of Soul like a black Marlon Brando. Commitment is his cup of tea. You believe it when he tells you he feels good. He even manages to dance circles around Academy Award-nominated co-stars Octavia Spencer and Viola Davis. And how perfectly suiting for a story about a man who the world could never keep up with.

And as much as it’s the story of Brown’s triumph, it’s also the story of his defeat. About his pride getting in the way of friends and family. About his shark and minnow relationship with Bobby Byrd (Nelsan Ellis) and how that would become the defining relationship in a string of failed ones. After all, you can move a million miles a minute but what’s all that fancy footwork worth if you don’t have anyone to share it with at the end of the day?

C+

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Weekly Review 49: AFFLICTED, DELIVER, ANOTHER, PRINCESS, BLOOD, HOMEFRONT

July 29, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Weekly Review Tagged Afflicted, Another Earth, Blood Simple, Deliver Us From Evil, Homefront, Princess Bride, Reviews, Weekly Review

It’s been a good month since I’ve posted a Weekly Review, betraying its namesake once again, so I have a hefty pile to pour on you. This week (read: month) took me through some familiar territory in an old classic, saw some decent recent horror movies and a pair of debuts from indie directors, one of which you’ll most certainly know. But let’s waste no more words, for it is time for Weekly Review.

Afflicted (2014)

If not wholly inventive in its take on the found footage horror genre, Afflicted turns a familiar movie monster trope into something new and entirely addictive. Derek and Clif are two best friends who embark on a journey across the world and happen upon a femme fatale who changes their trip and their lives. In a way, Afflicted is the horror equivalent of Chronicle with enough immersive effects to impress and a taut and unpredictable storyline to guide you through. And though it doesn’t go any place that could quite be labeled new, it’s a lot of fun getting to the end and that certainly scores some duckets for this guy. (B-)

Deliver Us From Evil (2014)

Scott Derrickson didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel with Deliver Us From Evil, an eerie tale of possession and exorcism, but he works the components that he has going for him with craft and care, making for one of 2014’s more unsettling horror movies, if not one of its scariest. Adding Eric Bana to the mix gives Derrickson’s fright fest much needed legitimacy, the only issue is that the saga draws on a little long and sags in the second act. But enough cat crucifixions and snappy bones can right any wrong and by the time the third act rolls around and that final exorcism takes the stage, you must commend Derrickson for not sparing the gory details. Shaved clean and soulless, baddie Sean Harris is pure id and his final freak out moments may need to be watched through your fingers. (C+)

Another Earth (2011)

Having just seen and enjoyed Mike Cahill‘s sophomore effort, I Origins, I decided it was due time to take a peek at his debut, which had scored so highly amongst 2011’s Sundance crowd. Luckily a friend and fellow critic had a copy to lend out, so I got to watching it without my customary timetable which involves drawn out months of putting it off. Thanks Nick. The product, while decidedly more amateur than I Origins, is equally provocative; it’s a tidy look at two people after their lives collide. Picking up the pieces seems impossible, especially when added to the metaphysical crisis that is the discovery of another earth that seemingly mirrors ours. It’s compelling in a philosophical sense and Brit Marling‘s hollowed out performance keeps you silently stunned throughout. (B)

Princess Bride (1987)

One of the best bad movies of all time, Princess Bride is all tongue and no cheek. It’s a brilliantly simple satire that works against incredible odds. The performances are hammy past the point of marrow, the sets drab and cheap-looking. Even that ROUS looks like a man crawling on all fours. But how simply unforgettable is this storybook classic from start to finish? Who cannot quote alongside Inigo Montoya as he monologues about avenging his father? Who can’t picture the Pit of Despair, the Cliffs of Insanity or the Fire Swamp? Who can’t mimic Peter Cook’s marble-mouthed wedding vows? There’s so much unforgettable about this movie that it’s a picture book of highlights, scene after scene. This is sarcasm at its most childish and wonderfully wanton. “To the pain.” (A+)

Blood Simple (1984)

As I’ve been working my way through the Coen Bros oeuvre, I’ve finally made it to their debut feature, which I’ve owned on Blu-Ray for a good while now. I’ll admit that I approached it with modicum of trepidation, not wanting to be disappointed with something that I expected to be not amongst their top shelf, but boy was I wrong. It starts out a touch talky but as it drifts into the second act, it’s as visually arresting as anything the auteur bros have done since, all without help from Roger Deakins. Their tale of lust and revenge takes us to the darkly comic corners they come celebrate later in their career, making this a proper starting mark for the twisted siblings to launch from. (B+)

Homefront (2013)

An 80s-style shoot-em-up revenge story with little new on the story-front but almost enough wham-bam flourish to justify a watch, Homefront represents the best a Jason Statham movie can be. Add to that the fact that James Franco slips into the character of a bayou meth outlaw named Gator and you can see the draw. Where it really fails to deviate from the course though is in the story department as director Gary Fleder brings nothing absolutely new to the table. Too bad. (C-)

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Capitol Hill Block Party Sees Spoon Slay

July 28, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Festival Reviews Tagged Capitol Hill Block Party, Music, RAC, Spoon, The War on Drugs

Spirits were high in Capitol Hill this weekend, as was the ratio of space bar music to instrumental bands.

Celebrating its 18th year as a festival, Capitol Hill Block Party in its current iteration is really only four years old. Or at least that last day is. You see it takes three full days to really call yourself a festival. It’s how you get Jack White, The Flaming Lips or MGMT to play. And while rock ‘n’ roll has been a defining feature of CHBP’s past, there seemed a notable lack of salty musicians strumming on the ol’ geetars. Instead, a population of laptop-wielders seemed to lock down a sizable amount of prime time on the main stage, to this writer’s chagrin.

There’s a magical limbo we get lost in listening to live music; the throb of the melody, the raw energy, the glorious mistakes and snapped strings: each contribute to a sense of communal losing yourself. Play the hits and we promise to dance until bloody-footed and tenitus-stricken. We commit ourselves to sonic hypnosis. Drink your beer, let your hair down. Take out the earplugs. Rock on.

With DJs, the performance often comes in a box. Unpack. Press play. Repeat. The mood is usually drug-addled or bored, or both. The energy, palpably manufactured. At least that was the scene in the hot summer sun, Sunday afternoon when xxyyxx’s set droned on like a bonus track of back-feeding guitars and Enya’s sounds of nature; it was sonic combustion at its most uninspiring.

Thank god then for RAC, an artist who knows how to spin audio flax to gold. He weaves tracks, beloved or not, into pure joy. His remixes are definitive; his style unnaturally respectful. He makes Girl-Talk look like he’s trying too hard. The man is more producer than DJ. But no one ever wanted to see George Martin perform. When RAC hit the stage on Sunday, the crowd had thinned but he quickly won wanderers back. While onstage, the man proved an ability to drink a PBR tallboy while doing his craft. (And is it just me or does a DJ who is constantly fiddling with dials onstage look unprepared?) Ultimately, the same issue befell this power duo onstage: there’s just not much to watch here. There’s no need to project a man twisting knobs on the big screen amiright? Even for a guy with a soundscape this unified and composed, I find little joy in watching a man unpause preprogrammed noise while slurping a likely lukewarm shitty beer. Next.

Closing out my weekend, War in Drugs was an explosion; a wall of sound that couldn’t be taken down by Miley’s wrecking ball. Granduciel’s a great guitarist with a croon like Dylan and an attitude like Gallagher. The War on Drugs is at war with the future of music. They’ve got a foot in the past and a fistful of picks to rip through to prove it. Their nonchalance is borderline epic. Their shredding is sexy. They rock steady and they rock hard. What drones on the album throbs on stage They’re so rock solid in their tempo, you may as well call them the War on Metronomes. They didn’t follow the golden rule of rock and rock: start high energy, mellow out, close out blaring. They lacked the parabola that whips a crowd into a frenzy. They softened more and more as the sun set behind the Shell station.

When Spoon took the stage Friday night, it seemed clear their fan base was thin amongst the crowd of neon-colored ravers. But by the time they busted out “The Underdog” midway into their set, the crowd was already theirs; putty in their hands; proving it takes more than a guy and his laptop to make a show truly magical. Britt Daniel’s stunning vocals sounded lifted from the album. Only those brassy horns went missing. He wailed on crowd favorites like “Don’t You Evah”, “I Turn My Camera On” and “Don’t Make Me a Target” and deep tracks like “Cherry Bomb” and “I Summon You” alike. The energy was magnetic. We committed ourselves to thrash like animals. Seattleites even moshed. Spoon dished out the fest’s salvation in their grandiose rock-steady routine. Rock and roll saved the day. They were the weekend warriors.

Out in Theaters: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

July 25, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Bradley Cooper, Chris Pratt, Dave Batista, Guardians of the Galaxy, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Zoe Saldana

In 1977, George Lucas gifted the world Star Wars. Neither studio execs nor film critics could have ever predicted the momentous cultural phenomenon that Lucas’ strange little space opera transmogrified into; how it would touch every corner of the globe to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars; how it would leave an inimitable legacy for people to talk about from Boston to Beirut, Maine to Myanmar; how it would, quite simply, become one of the most important movies to ever be made. Everyone has seen Star Wars and if they haven’t, there’s a 97% chance it’s because they were born blind. Culturally, it’s a behemoth. Socially, it’s a must-know. Taste-wise, you like it or you’re a POS. It is the hive mind dictator itself; the all-encompassing King Shit. I’ve owned Star Wars toys since I could walk because who hasn’t?

Even now, almost forty years later, the prevailing zeitgeist within the science fiction community – from books to movies, TV shows to comic books – is populated by Star Wars‘ DNA, nearly to the point of pollution. Even when Lord Neckfat himself tried to capture lighting in a bottle again by making those junk jettisons that are the prequels, he forgot that his magnus opus was never about the special effects. Consider that Star Wars was for all intents and purposes a space samurai movie that shoed in equal parts Eastern philosophy and glo-stick swords. So what if the effects don’t hold up? We’re still dealing with giant slug gangsters and unforgettable cantina tunes and little green dudes who knew the force. And this is why we’ve witnessed such vehement backlash against Lucas’ irreparable re-tweaks, his ‘special ed’-itions: they take us out of the feeling of his dusty, late 1970s sci-fi sprawl. And it was always all about the feeling. And the feeling was good.

And like that untouchable trilogy, Guardians of the Galaxy may be poorly acted (Chris Pratt aside) but I’ll be damned if it’s not the closely thing we’ve ever got to that 1977 original masterwork. It’s wonky, weird, wild, completely cartoonish and fun as fuck. It’s Star Wars Revisisted. Its space crawl is Chris Pratt dancing to 70s top forty songs. It’s got an emperic baddie lording over all on Hologram Skype. It’s everything that Harrison Ford has every done melted down into one. It’s even got a Chewbacca. There’s quirk overflowing from every end, and enough tips of the hat to Star Wars to make even Sam Elliot nervous. I’m already Indiana Jonesing to revisit it because it feels good and frankly, I’m hooked on a feeling.

Unlike the pantheon that is the MMU, cross-pollination with the outside Marvel Universe is kept to a minimum (with no mention of Tony Stark, Steven Rogers, or that big green head-case). Guardians of the Galaxy is able to stand on its own two feet and for it, I’m willing to stand on mine and applaud. After all, it was this ceaseless commercialization that cheapened the massively over-rated Captain America 2; the same sludge that made Iron Man 2 such a nightmare. Rather than lean on the platform of a larger universe, Guardians creates its own, expanding on the worlds that Marvel’s created naturally and with a sense of lively misadventure largely missing from its more club-footed counterparts.

In this regard, Guardians just might be Marvel’s crowning achievement. It’s pure unadulterated fun, made magical by hundreds of millions of dollars in top-of-the-line computer animation and made lovable by its plenitude of quirk and its narrow-yet-mammoth scope. The guardians may be set to save the entire galaxy but there’s an intimacy that’s lacking in similarly-sized superhero blockbusters. And did I mention how weird it is?

Guardians, more than anything that I can think of in the past decade, celebrates said strangeness like it’s a Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. It’s not dark, it’s not gritty, it’s not “an untold origin.” It’s double-filtered, locally sourced, FDA-certified organic mirth. An anthropomorphized tree and a shit-talking, gun-firing, whiskey-slugging raccoon aren’t even the weirdest elements of this symphony of strange. I mean James Gunn isn’t known for being reigned in so you better believe there’s plenty of weird to go around.

Michael Rooker (because who better?) is dyed blue and rocks a glowing metallic mohawk. His signature weapon is a magic arrow that zips around when he whistles. Gunn even let Dave Batista try to act. Sure he fails desperately but it’s not like Mark Hamill was ever a shining beacon of thespian promise. But seriously, Batista is a talent vacuum. The guy couldn’t act his way out of a First Grade Thanksgiving play.

As for the story, it starts on Earth with Peter Quill (Pratt). His death-bed occupying mother reaches out for his hand and he runs away, too frightened to face the reality of his mother’s demise. Cue a looking up at the stars bit as the heavens open up, a beam shoots down and little Quill is sucked up into a space ship. Alright, alright, alright.

Twenty years later and Quill’s an outlaw ravager, scavenging planets for goods to pawn. When his sights are set on a mysterious orb, a series of mishaps land him under the gun with a sizable bounty on his head. This is all a MacGuffin to assemble the eponymous Guardians as they all come together looking to score on Quill’s asking price.

This ragtag collection includes Groot (Vin Diesel), the walking, not-so-much-talking tree; Rocket (Bradley Cooper who sounds nothing like Bradley Cooper), a gun-toting, vest-wearing, expletive-yelling raccoon; Gamora (Zoe Saldana), a mean, green, alien-fighting machine; and Drax the Destroyer (Batista), a simple-minded, scarification-covered thug with a dead family. They’re as rag-taggy as the Millennium Falcon’s passengers, as disjointed as the Fellowship of the Ring. Some characters are better than others – I could do without Batista’s Drax ever opening his mouth and Saldana is surprisingly flat – but that’s par for the course.

The whole tree/raccoon angle though works wonderfully, their odd relationship giving weight to what could otherwise feel distant or simply strange. Continuing with my ploy to mainstream Star Wars analogies, Groot is very much the Chewie of the equation. His only utterances consisting of “I am Groot”, he offers little to a conversation other than a sympathetic expression or some much needed shrub violence. It’d be smart to avoid playing him in a round of Dejarik. Rocket, like Han Solo before him, is the only one who understand Groot, a bit that Gunn returns to whenever he needs to conjure up a chuckle or two. It’s weird but dammit, it works.

And for how much we fawn over Groot and his pet raccoon, our relationship with Quill isn’t one that neatly fits a description. There’s a distance we feel to him and his wise-cracking ways, but it’s a distance by design. Born of the general distrust of the world around him, he’s an alien that just happens to be human. Him being an abducted orphan and all, you sympathize with his armor of sharp witticisms, you sneer with him at a galaxy that’s too tidy and needs to be knocked down a couple pegs; you’re ok with him being a butterfingered outlaw.

Chris Pratt’s sarcastic banter is a weapon that he wields like a lightsaber. His each and every retort earns a snicker and Pratt has earned the right to play dumb and bumbling and yet oddly charming, a combination he wears perfectly here. From our first encounter with him, he’s a goon of an explorer, a whiff of an adventurer. He wants to be called Star Lord but he just hasn’t earned the handle (his ongoing relationship with said handle goes on to be one of the film’s many highlights.)

Guardians, in all rights, is about the creation of a mythology. It’s about carving out your stake in the world. It’s about grabbing a whip and a fedora and making the name Indiana Jones mean something. It’s about calling yourself Star Lord and not being satisfied until everyone else calls you that too. Darth Vader didn’t become the most feared name in the galaxy overnight. You gotta hone that shit (*hangs head that this was NOT what the prequel trilogy was about*).

Unlike previous Marvel movies, Guardians doesn’t rely on a cliffhanger; it’s not a sleek, flawless package; it’s not busy setting the table for what’s next; it’s not just another commercial for the inevitable team-up with Iron Man and Thor and Hulk and Black Widow and Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and Captain America and The Winter Solider and Falcon and War Machine (er, Iron Patriot?). It’s a well-balanced breakfast in itself: it’s properly buttered toast and scrambled eggs and orange juice and a little bit of Dave Batista trying to act all served up with a smile.

For once, you won’t demand “But where are the other guys?!” Gunn’s triumph is happy to exist in its own little universe and for it, trumps Marvel’s other heroes. In 1977, George Lucas gifted the world Star Wars. In 2014, James Gunn gifted the world Guardians of the Galaxy, in all its strange glory.

A-

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Out in Theaters: HERCULES

July 25, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Brett Ratner, Dwayne Johnson, Hercules, Ian McShane, Out in Theaters, Reviews, The Rock

Hercules is the equivalent of hiring a day laborer only to discover them dozing under the cabana 20 minutes later. You weren’t really ever expecting that much, just a tidy little one-and-done job, so you can’t help but flabbergast at the flagrant display of utter laziness. It’s truly an epic tableau of “who gives a fuck?” It’s so imposingly boring, you’d think you walked into a documentary about dust mites. It’s so recklessly rattlebrained that you think the screenplay is the product of ‘Myths by Charlie Kelly’. It’s the Kitten Mittens of sword and sandals movies. Every character and plot line is so mismanaged you’d think Halliburton were producing it.

In such, Hercules is not so much a movie as a movie impersonator. There’s characters and they’re doing stuff, and there’s fight scenes and fire and a CGI lion but when all is said and done, nothing happens. It’s the same story we’ve ignored and forgotten a hundred times before. Plot deviations are as satisfying as zero snickers bar. Surprise “twists” are as curvaceous as Calista Flockheart. It’s so aggressively blah that a cocaine fiend could doze off in the midst of it (because lord knows I did.)

I guess we can cover the “plot”, if for no reason other than to dissuade you from submitting yourself to it. Hercules, you see, isn’t really all he’s cracked up to be. He’s a hulking gun-for-hire; a wig-wearing mercenary. The muscley chump doesn’t even fight solo; that pussy needs a small troop of misfits (whose names we never bother to learn) backing him up at every turn. We’ve all been duped! If you’re gonna give Herc sidekicks, at least toss in Xena Warrior Princess, amiright? And for a guy who’s “half-God”, his bulky shoulders have been all but torn at the seams, with stretch mark highways recoiling against his unnatural mass of “Good God, I didn’t even know those muscle groups existed”.

Speaking of that half-God thing, it’s still unclear by the end of the movie whether “screenwriters” Ryan Condal and Evan Spiliotopoulos (oh ok, so he’s where all these mouth-heavy names are coming from) intended for Hercules to actually be a demi-God or if he’s just rocking the title for namesake purposes. Ian McShane offers something that’s supposed to resemble a stirring speech about Herc taking up the mantle of the name but that just muddies the waters on the matter. But that is characteristic of the whole endeavor. Again, who cares?

And the story goes a little like this: blah blah blah, I only fight for gold, blah blah blah, pretty princess needs help saving kingdom, blah blah blah, villages burned to the ground, blah blah blah, hired for twice his weight in gold, blah blah blah, evil Reeses and his centaur army, blah blah blah, Hercules trains good king’s army, blah blah blah, please make it stop. I mean you name your villain after a candy bar and don’t expect jeers? Come on.

And while we’re on the topic of Reeses (I know his name is actually spelled Rhesus but, again, who cares?), what an abortion of a character he is. I don’t even want to mention where his character goes (spoiler: nowhere.) I quite honestly think they forgot that he existed by the last act.

It’s all well and good to poke fun at Hercules but in all seriousness, it’s an abomination of storytelling, so bereft of skill and care, so mindlessly inconsequential that you will literally (fine, figuratively) be worse for wear having seen. After bearing witness to a completely unnecessary 300 sequel this year, we had hoped that the meat and potatoes warrior action thing had been put to bed for 2014. Brett Ratner manages to dredge it up again and make it improbably more boring than it was there.

But that Ratner guy really does possess an undeniable gift for making movies that lack a soul. Let’s just say he’s swung for the rafters here. So long as you manage to keep your eyes open, he will stun you with his complete and utter lack of storytelling prowess. He will wow you with characters speaking out the “themes” of the movies. He will try to hypnotize you into falling asleep so you won’t remember that you actually paid money to watch this.

If Hercules were a food group, it’d be French Fries. And not those extra crispy, uber-delectable French Fries. We’re talking the limp, soggy, sitting in oil all night French Fries. The “oh god, I’m just gonna throw these away” French Fries. The “did someone re-fry these French Fries?” French Fries. The ‘Rock with a Wig’ French Fries.

But let’s be honest with ourselves here, The Rock is good enough when he’s in something half-decent. Throw him in something with “Fast” or “Furious” in the title and he’s immensely watchable. Hell, I quite enjoyed him in Pain & Gain. Even The Toothfairy pushed the boundaries of…. wait, no, let’s just not go there. But while that formerly mentioned movie is an embarrassment, this is even more of an inglorious let down. I mean every time he’s called on to do something great, it usually involves pushing something huge or pulling on something strong. For both, The Rock sports a face like he’s pitching a legendary deuce.

For a movie all about being fit as shit, he’s only bashing things in the shadows or beating up on CGI. Once more, who cares? It’s a complete and utter waste of what that modern day Andre the Giant has going for him. With Hercules, Dwayne Johnson has hit Rock Bottom.

Driving home from the theater, I passed by a dojo in which a bunch of kids in stark white gis were thrusting their spindly elbows and yelping dramatically. A mom videotaped in the corner. I would rather watch that video than any given five minutes of this movie. It would have more life, energy and nuance than all of Brett Ratner’s Shatner of a film.

Hercules is the movie equivalent of having a pube stuck in your throat, you just want to cough it up and be free of it. Just keep telling yourself it will pass. Its legend will tell of how you’ll never get that 98 minutes back. I went in fully expecting to see a C- movie, too bad it was a full blown….

F

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Out in Theaters: A MOST WANTED MAN

July 25, 2014 by Matt Oakes Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged A Most Wanted Man, BLAH, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe

NOTE: I’ve tried to write something about this movie but I just can’t do it. It’s too dull to summon the energy to write more than one lousy sentence about. So that’s what I shall do. Behold: the one sentence review.

“Procedural to the point of blinding boredom.”

That is all.

D+

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Out in Theaters: LUCY

July 24, 2014 by Chris Bunker Posted in Out in Theaters Tagged Luc Besson, Lucy, Morgan Freeman, Out in Theaters, Reviews, Scarlett Johannson, Sci-Fi, Transcendence

Watch enough movies and they all start to look the same. Prescribing to an Ebertian view, that’s because they are the same, just with the details swapped in and out. Stereotypes and movies seem to be kin in this way: they’re developed from commonality. Like it or not, there’s a lot of bad smelling French folk, and it’s hard not to find a recent sci-fi movie that doesn’t stink.

Transcendence was borne from a growing fear of technological advancement and artificial intelligence. Really, it asked the right questions. The only problem: Wally Pfister was the one to raise his hand. Somehow he turned a good concept into I Spambot, a joke of a movie. Johnny Depp transforms into a computer and subsequently takes over the world. From nothing, he grows tentacles and conquers death, quite literally reviving people from the grave, even at one point building himself out of dark cyber-matter. The whole “is he a computer?” question hinged on figuring out whether Captain Crack still had any emotions. Except, no one really gave a shit. Whatever Pfister was going for, he failed miserably. Transcendence was so monumentally bad that no one could figure out who the joke was on.

Neil Burger’s Limitless wasn’t bad; it was just a nothing film. A mansion built on an eroded mountain slope is set to crumble. Anyone who’s ever opened a Psych textbook knows that 10% brain theory is a crock of shit fallacy. So … Bradley Cooper can take a pill that makes his brain more effective? College kids have a name for that: Adderall. At least he didn’t grow any tentacles. Limitless, just like its premise, was limited from the start. What happens when a human can use 100% of its brain? Well, apparently, Transcendence.

Lucy is a Luc Besson lucid dream. You don’t realize it isn’t real until halfway through. At the start it’s more of a nightmare.

The French director decided to expand the transhumanistic concept Transcendence garroted with a desk chair. “The average person uses 10% of their brain capacity. Imagine what she could do with 100%,” reads Lucy’s tagline. When they’re so blatant about a putrid concept like this, it’s tough to figure out if they can access their brain at all.

For what initially seemed like a brainless film, Scarlett Johansson felt like a good fit. The jury’s still out on whether she’s any good as an actress. As the eponymous Lucy, she goes from dumbfounded to unbounded in spurts. Her green eyes are a window into what appears to be a great big void. Caught in a massive scheme, she’s accidentaly drugged by Asian drug lords with “CPH4,” a brain-activating powder the kids are going to love, her mind starts to explode and her eyes circle the color wheel. Besson loads her brain like a phone charging: as she gets access to more and more brain power, her percentage flashes on screen.

She goes from 0-100 like Jason Statham in Crank. When her body intakes the drug, she starts seizing up. Besson throws in insert shots of cells splitting and blue energy surging through her bloodstream. Then she starts to float. All of a sudden she’s on the ceiling, tweaking out. None of it is remotely possible, though it’s made not to feel surreal.

Reprising his exact role in Transcendence, Morgan Freeman serves as Lucy’s resident cerebral professor. At the podium, he waxes about the cerebellum like he’s unveiling a new iPhone. What happens when the brain reaches 20% usage? 100%? Freeman, concerned, says there’s no way to tell.

With movies like Transcendence and Limitless getting more and more common, common sense seems to be going out the window. Things explode because they have to, else why would anyone care? Humans are given unfathomable powers—impossible even. Unnatural is made out as normal as an excuse to throw in big effects. Characters have endless capabilities. Don’t think about it. Eat your popcorn and be entertained by crazy CGI and bad writing. When did we turn into Androids?

I’m not sure quite when it clicked that I’d been duped. Besson’s got the uniquely weird French sense of humor that lends well to the satirical. Les Français always seem to be good at making fun of themselves, but they’re way better at making fun of everyone else. Lucy’s a truly awful adventure/sci-fi film. Seen through the lens of a bizzaro comedy though, it’s the funniest film of the year. It might just be the best superhero movie in years. Lucy is 86 minutes of eloquent parody.

Lucy’s powers quickly become insane. With a frenetic, hectic pacing, Besson fits in references to ET, Transcendence, Limitless, Inception, Planet of the Apes—basically any sci-fi movie that’s ever hit the big screen. She reads minds, steals memories with one touch; feels no pain; mind-controls German Shepherds; stops time and speeds it up; hacks into every cell phone, TV, computer; detects cancer and travels at the speed of light. She is limitlessness embodied, everything Transcendence should have been.

By the end, she’s swiping her way through time like she’s on an iPad. This movie has dinosaurs. At one point, she witnesses creation itself. None of it coheres, but it looks gorgeous. Nonsense platitudes about life and death are thrown in like the shots of zoo animals humping tossed in for fun. Freeman and Johansson babble about ones and twos and science—complete gibberish. ScarJo de-materializes and turns into a pseudo-Tomb Raider. Then she turns into a computer. A character asks what she’s doing and Freeman replies that she’s “searching for life and matter.” Obviously. Besson’s film is the Condescendence to Pfister’s Transcendence.

Lucy is a masterpiece of mockery and wit, made Hollywood by gorgeous, over-the-top CGI and Johansson’s and Freeman’s hilarious self-depricating work. With a first act that’s egregiously terrible, Lucy is one big trap that never fully lets you in on the gag. Shot in Taipei, Paris and New York, Lucy is stunning, unpredictable and laugh out loud funny. All of this packed in at less than an hour and a half, you leave the theater refreshed and giddy. What a shocker: a French guy made a movie that doesn’t stink.

A-

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